A series of protests against the right-wing author’s book tour in America brought free speech debates to the top headlines.
Milo’s unpublished book Dangerous is back to the top spot on Amazon’s book chart. This was announced after the last anti-Milo protest at University of California, Berkeley, turned violent and attracted even more media attention to the controversial journalist and technology editor of Breibart News.
The title is to be released on 14 March, but pre-orders of the book, published by Simon & Schuster, have already boomed the publication to the bestsellers’ list.
However, success of the book was over-shined by the controversies and ‘anti-hate speech’ protests across American universities. The last one happened in Berkeley, California, on Wednesday evening. Earlier in January a man was shot and wounded at protest outside the University of Washington.
Republicans cancelled Milo’s talk at UC Davis on January, as well as UCLA last week, making Berkeley his grand finale. No further talks are announced neither on his website, nor on the main bookstores both in the US and the UK, although the book is coming up just in a few weeks time.
However, recently published information says that Milo is determined to come back and talk at Berkeley. After the cancelled talk appeared rumours that the journalist was where was planning to use the event to “publicly name undocumented students”. Milo denied the allegations in the interview with the Independent.
Milo Yiannopoulos is known for his open criticism of modern feminism, leftism, safe space policies at university campuses, and open support to the President Donald Trump.
Publisher Simon & Schuster was openly criticised for publishing Milo’s book.
Almost two hundred children authors and illustrators wrote an open letter to S&S, some American bookshops refused to store Dangerous, and author Roxane Gay, withdrew a book she had planned for Simon & Schuster.
However, Milo Yiannopoulos is supported by many free-speech promoting students and commentators.
Brendan O’Neil, writer for the Spectator, continues supporting Milo, Brexit and Trump, not because he supports them, but due to the freedom of speech, however offensive it might seem he wrote on his Facebook account.
In his column for Spectator he wrote: “It’s tempting simply to ridicule the students and anarchists who gathered in vast numbers in Berkeley last night to insist that Breitbart provocateur and Trump fanboy Milo be thrown off campus.
“It’s tempting to hurl the usual epithets: they’re snowflakes, wimps, typical touchy millennials. But that isn’t enough. It doesn’t cover it anymore.”
“The Berkeley fury confirms we face something far worse than spoilt yoof acting up. This was a positively pre-modern outburst; a mob; an ugly, irrational use of force and fire to prevent the expression of ideas. Future historians will study this, surely, and wonder how such censorious hysteria came to take hold of the leading academic institutions of the west.”
Similar issues arose at City, University of London, earlier this year, when Students Union ‘banned’ newspapers, such as The Daily Mail, The Daily Express and The Sun for their offensive writings. It triggered students, from both left and right, to protest the decision, as City is known as one of the top journalism schools in the country.