The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Breitbart Media

Kent school shelves Milo Yiannopolous talk amidst extremism fears

Author

By John Glenday, Reporter

November 23, 2016 | 2 min read

A Kent school has abruptly cancelled a planned talk by alt right figurehead Milo Yiannopolous, in which he was due to address pupils at his former alma mater, after concerns were raised by a government counter-extremism unit.

Langton Grammar in Canterbury was forced to act after the Department for Education intervened to prevent the talk, scheduled for Tuesday (22 November), from taking place amidst safety fears stoked by planned demonstrations to coincide with the event.

A school spokesperson told the Press Association: “We note that, within 24 hours of advertising the event, 220 Langton sixth-formers had, with parental consent, signed up for the event and that objection to our hosting Mr Yiannopoulos came almost entirely from people with no direct connection to the Langton. The staff and students of the school were overwhelmingly in favour.

“While disappointed that both the pastoral care and intellectual preparation we offer to our students has been called into question, we at the Langton remain committed to the principle of free speech and open debate and will resist, where possible, all forms of censorship.”

Yiannopoulos is a senior editor at US news website Breitbart, whose chief executive Steve Bannon was recently named as Donald Trump’s chief strategist.

Reacting to the ban on Facebook Yiannopoulos said: “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 my talk ‘Muslims are awesome!’ the National Union of Teachers [NUT] and Department of Education would have been cool with me speaking.”

The DfE insisted that the decision to cancel was for the school to take alone.

Breitbart Media

More from Breitbart

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +