Milo Yiannopoulos speech killed after U.K. Counter-Extremism Unit pressures school

A Breitbart News provocateur who jokingly refers to himself as a “dangerous f——t” just had a speech shut down by the U.K. Department for Education’s Counter-Extremism Unit.

“Alt-right” pundit Milo Yiannopoulos was readying to address a crowd at his old high school this week before government officials contacted Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury. School officials said parents and students had been looking forward to the Tuesday event.

“My old high school has been bullied into canceling my talk on Tuesday by the ’counter-extremism’ unit at the U.K. Department of Education,” the Breitbart technology editor wrote Monday on his Facebook page. “Who even knew the DoE had a counter-extremism unit? And that it wasn’t set up to combat terrorism but rather to punish gays with the wrong opinions? Perhaps if I’d called the speech ’MUSLIMS ARE AWESOME!’ they’d have left us alone. Disgusted.”

James Soderholm, professor of humanities at the school, told BBC that a heckler’s veto was essentially imposed on the school.

“Within 24 hours of advertising the event, 220 Langton sixth formers had, with parental consent, signed up for the event,” Mr. Soderholm told BBC Monday. “Objection to our hosting Mr Yiannopoulus came almost entirely from people with no direct connection to The Langton. The staff and students of the school were overwhelmingly in favor.”

One of the groups opposed to the speech was the National Union of Teachers, the network reported.

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Mr. Yiannopoulos, a strident supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, has been a lightening rod for controversy this year. American schools such as DePaul University in Chicago routinely deny him the ability to speak on campus, or make his team navigate extra bureaucratic red tape to do so. He was also permanently banned from Twitter over the summer after engaging in an argument with “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones.

“If at first you don’t succeed (because your work is terrible) play the victim. Everyone gets hate mail,” Mr. Yiannopoulos tweeted Ms. Jones before his account was suspended.