Billionaire Robert Mercer Denounces Milo Yiannopoulos, Calling His Prior Support 'A Mistake'

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Billionaire Robert Mercer Denounces Milo Yiannopoulos, Calling His Prior Support 'A Mistake'

Hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, a major Republican donor to the Trump campaign announced Thursday that he is selling his stake in Breitbart News to his daughters; pulling all of his funding from Milo Inc., the new controversial entertainment venture run by Milo Yiannopoulos, and is also relinquishing his co-CEO title at Renaissance Technologies for a non-management role. Vanity Fair writes:

In an open letter to investors, the 71-year-old strongly denounced the white nationalist movement that has come to be associated with several of his far-right political causes, tainting his reputation and putting Renaissance Technologies in the crosshairs of a divestment campaign. “Of the many mischaracterizations made of me by the press, the most repugnant to me, have been the intimations that I am a white supremacist or a member of some other noxious group,” he wrote. On the contrary, he said, “a society founded on the basis of the individual freedom that flourishes under a limited federal government has no place for discrimination . . . Discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, creed, or anything of that sort is abhorrent to me. But more than that, it is ignorant.”

Mercer acknowledged his relationship with Steve Bannon, saying that he respected Bannon but also disagreed with him on political alliances. But it was Yiannopoulos, writes VF, that received condemnation for his neo-Nazis views. 

Milo Yiannopoulos & Berkeley Patriots Cry Foul As Free Speech Week Falls Apart Over Incompetence

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Milo Yiannopoulos & Berkeley Patriots Cry Foul As Free Speech Week Falls Apart Over Incompetence

Former Breitbart editor and style diva Milo Yiannopoulos promised to shake things up in Berkeley -- and hopefully inspire Antifa & friends to confirm every comment Trump has made about them -- with four straight days of conservative thought and luminaries. Billing the event Milo Yiannopoulos's Free Speech Week in Berkeley, all the major press reported that Steve Bannon would be joining Ann Coulter in raising hell on one of America's most liberal campuses. 

UC Berkeley said as late as Friday afternoon that they are prepared to spend more than $1 million for security at the events, bringing in hundreds of police officers from around the Bay Area. Other student leaders say the event is 'off'. 

Fake Letter Requesting Removal Of Dana Schutz' 'Open Casket' Emmett Till Painting Dials Up Protest Temperature

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The controversy around artist Dana Schutz' controversial painting 'Open Casket' and the horrific death of Emmett Till continues at the Whitney Biennial. This shocking image above appeared in Google Images and is from former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos' website. 

The debated work is based on a photograph from the funeral of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black American who was murdered in Mississippi for flirting with a white woman. 

Schutz shared her perspective about the painting with ArtNet News, saying:

You’ve said in the Times that you approached the painting as a mother, and as a way to explore a mother’s pain. Would there have been no way to address the subject without, as your critics would have it, appropriating black experience?

It was the feeling of understanding and sharing the pain, the horror. I could never, ever know her experience, but I know what it is to love your child. I don’t know if there would be a way to address the subject without some way of approaching it on a personal level.

Could you have foreseen that you were stepping on a third rail by treating this explosive subject? If so, what made it necessary to paint Emmett Till specifically?
Yes, for many reasons. The anger surrounding this painting is real and I understand that. It’s a problematic painting and I knew that getting into it. I do think that it is better to try to engage something extremely uncomfortable, maybe impossible, and fail, than to not respond at all.

Will the reaction to the painting change anything about your practice in the future?
I’m sure it has to.

On Thursday morning several new outlets including Artsy, Frieze, and Out Magazine published parts or all of an open letter alleged to have been written by the artist Dana Schutz, requesting that the painting be removed from the exhibition. Shortly after, the letter addressed to Whitney Biennial 2017 co-curators Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks was declared to be a fake by  Stephen Soba, the Whitney Museum’s director of communications.

Queer artist Parker Bright has maintained a vigil in front of the painting, blocking its view. Bright met with Lew and Locks to express his views, and he was assured that Schutz would not sell the painting or profit from it in any way, writes Out.

Artist Hannah Black sent a letter earlier in the week to the curators, requesting that the painting be moved and destroyed. AOC will revisit this story after digesting a number of essays and thoughtful pieces about the controversy.

Read AOC's original story, including the full text of Black's letter to the Whitney and new details around Emmett Till's death: Dana Schutz' Painting Of Emmett Till Creates Controversy At Whitney Biennial 2017 AOC The Wokes

Milo Yiannopoulos: Out At Breitbart, Out At CPAC & Out Of A Book Deal, The Showman Will Rise Again. Shed No Tears for Milo

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Milo Yiannopoulos Resigns From Breitbart News After Pedophilia Comments The New York Times

We don't want to spend too much time updating Milo Yiannopoulos's 24-hour horror story, except to say that Milo's career had an update Tuesday, February 21. In a mind-boggling 24-hr downfall, Mr. Yiannopoulos lost his speaking engagement at this weekend's conservative CPAC conference; had his publisher Simon & Schuster cancel the publication of his upcoming book 'Dangerous', and today -- with six Bretbart reporters ready to resign if he didn't -- Milo stepped down from his job as senior editor at Breitbart News. 

As Trump, Bannon & Company try to rip America to shreds, something good actually happened. Milo Yiannopoulos isn't one to say he's sorry. Refusing the niceties of and decency and civility, the big personality man boy very capable of baiting the left and with zero inhibitions about any form of self-censorship, Milo appeared in Lower Manhattan looking remarkably sober in Lower Manhattan today. 

“I don’t think I’ve been as sorry about anything in my whole life.”

"His glib remarks about pedophilia by Roman Catholic priests and his endorsement of sexual relations with boys as young as 13 drew widespread condemnation from many of the conservatives who had long stood by him, even as he offended so many others with his insulting remarks about Hispanics, African-Americans, Muslims and Jews," writes the New York Times.

It's amazing that women somehow never to make the list. Milo Yiannopoulos loathes women, especially smart, brainiac women who believe in equal rights.

Note, that this brainiac supports the First Amendment and Milo's right to talk his trash on university campuses. Hiding in a safe zone does not help build the necessary skills to confront the Breitbart News crew, and our young students need to get tough and grow up. The Breitbart men are running the White House for heaven's sake. ~ Anne

Related: Milo Yiannopoulos Loses 'Dangerous' Book Deal & CPAC Speech. Is His Breitbart Job Also On The Line? AOC Women's News

Milo Yiannopoulos's Symphony of Victimhood The Daily Beast

Here's Why The World's Biggest Brands Are Blacklisting Breitbart BuzzFeed

Milo Yiannopoulos Loses 'Dangerous' Book Deal & CPAC Speech. Is His Breitbart Job Also On The Line?

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Milo Yiannopoulos Loses 'Dangerous' Book Deal & CPAC Speech. Is His Breitbart Job Also On The Line?

Breitbart's controversial editor Milo Yiannopoulos has enjoyed a very bad day. The controversial provocateur was trying to clarify past comments on relationships between 13-year-old boys and older men after a conservative site Reagan Battalion posted a collection of edited video clips that blew up in the pretty boy's face. 

The website took this action not only posting but tweeting the video clips Sunday in which Yiannopoulos discusses Jews, sexual consent, statutory rape, child abuse and homosexuality. The action is generally believed to be in response to the alt-right hero becoming a keynote speaker at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.