LOS ANGELES (AP) — Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was trying to clarify past comments on relationships between boys and older men after a conservative site posted a collection of edited video clips that set social media abuzz.
After the polarizing Breitbart News editor was invited this weekend to speak at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference sparked a backlash, the Reagan Battalion tweeted video clips Sunday in which Yiannopoulos discusses Jews, sexual consent, statutory rape, child abuse and homosexuality.
Yiannopoulos wrote on Facebook blamed deceptive editing and his own “sloppy phrasing” for any indication he supported pedophilia.
The British author says he spoke of his own relationship when he was 17 with a man who was 29. The age of consent in the U.K. is 16.
It’s unclear who edited the videos.
Yiannopoulos writes for Breitbart News, considered by many a platform for the so-called “alt-right” movement, an offshoot of conservatism that mixes racism, white nationalism and populism.
The Reagan Battalion is a blog that describes itself as “news, information, commentary, from a conservative perspective.”
