Far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has been revealed as a speaker at next week’s influential Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to give his message at a time when “political correctness is properly being discarded”, said its organiser.
The Breitbart news editor, who was permanently banned from Twitter in July 2016 for instigating racist and sexist abuse of Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones, will take the stage alongside other speakers including US vice-president Mike Pence and Senator Ted Cruz.
Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the organiser American Conservative Union (ACU), said he thought the conservative movement could handle the controversy sparked by the invitation of the notorious internet troll and noted that “ACU has publicly taken on racism and the alt-right and will continue to do so aggressively”.
Statement from Chairman @mschlapp re #CPAC2017. pic.twitter.com/wB6GgO8g1p
— ACU (@ACUConservative) February 18, 2017
Seventy-five speakers have so far been announced for the annual gathering of conservative organisations in Washington, which begins on Wednesday. The keynote speaker will be Michael Reagan, the eldest child of former president Ronald Reagan.
On Friday night, Yiannopoulos appeared on HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher and insulted comics Lena Dunham, Leslie Jones, Amy Schumer and Sarah Silverman. He said: “The Democrats are the party of Lena Dunham. These people are hideous, mental people. The more the American people see of Lena Dunham, the fewer votes the Democratic party is going to get.”
Yiannopoulos added that Schumer and Silverman “used to be funny before they contracted feminism”.
One the abuse of Leslie Jones that saw him banned from Twitter, he said: “I simply don’t accept that an A-list Hollywood celebrity is sitting at home crying over mean words on the internet.”
Maher, a free speech advocate, told Yiannopoulos he thought he was “colossally wrong” on most issues
The show was followed by an expletive-ridden online segment with three panellists: comedian Larry Wilmore, author and counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance and Georgia Republican Jack Kingston.
This month the University of California, Berkeley had to cancel a speech by Yiannopoulos after thousands of students gathered in protest and a group of black-clad activists shot fireworks at the speech venue. US president Donald Trump later criticised the university’s stance on free speech and brought into question the institution’s federal funding.
Associated Press contributed to this report
