Julian Assange attacks ‘censorship’ of Milo Yiannopoulos over paedophile controversy
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is defending far-right figurehead Milo Yiannopoulos, as the latter faces fury over comments about child abuse.
Yiannopoulos, who has built a large following as a Donald Trump supporter, had his book deal axed and was dropped from the Republican CPAC conference this week, after explosive tapes featured him allegedly defending men who have sex with underage boys.
The outspoken journalist came under fire after clips surfaced in which he appeared to defend men who have sex with underage boys.
In one video, taken from an old livestream, Yiannopoulos attacks the age of consent as an “arbitrary one-size-fits-all policing of culture”.
He also claimed that “in the homosexual world, particularly, some of those relationships between younger boys and older men (…) help those young boys discover who they are”.
After publisher Simon & Schuster axed a pricey book deal with Yiannopoulos over the comments, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange took to Twitter to deride the “censorship” of his views.
He wrote: “US ‘liberals’ today celebrate the censorship of right-wing UK provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos over teen sex quote.”
When a Twitter user pointed out that the very un-liberal organisers of the Conservative Political Action Conference dropped Yiannopoulos as a speaker over the row, Assange said: “Issue is ‘liberals’ cheering on a clearly illiberal act – book censorship – for political reasons with morality as cover.”
Assange has sought to evade authorities since 2012 by living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Despite Assange’s insistence that he is seeking asylum to avoid extradition to the US, the only outstanding warrant for his arrest is from Sweden, where he is wanted in connection with a rape allegation.
Donald Trump has previously praised Wikileaks for publishing illegally hacked emails from the Democratic National Convention – casting doubt over the future of any speculative case against the Wikileaks founder for hacking-related charges in the US.
An investigation last year suggested that Wikileaks mass data dumps endangered gay men in Saudi Arabia.
A probe of 120,000 Saudi files dumped on Wikileaks revealed the unredacted government documents included health and crime records, exposing personal data of everyday Saudis.
It identified at least one man with a gay sex conviction – as well as a number of rape victims and people living with HIV.
