Sarah Silverman slams Simon & Schuster’s $345,000 book deal for alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos

SARAH Silverman has led a chorus of anger over a book deal for a troll banned from Twitter for harassing a black actor.

Yiannopoulos taunted his critics on Facebook claiming that “every line of attack the forces of political correctness try on me fails pathetically”. Picture: AFP

A MAJOR book publisher has come under fire after reportedly paying $US250,000 ($345,000) to a right-wing internet troll who was banned from Twitter for harassing a black actor.

Milo Yiannopoulos, who signed the deal with Simon & Schuster, has courted controversy for labelling transgender people “mentally ill”, calling feminism “a cancer” and claiming that the Black Lives Matter movement is a “hate group”.

Comedian Sarah Silverman led the chorus of complaint against the book deal for Yiannopoulos. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP

Yiannopoulos was kicked off Twitter in July after his followers harassed the Saturday Night Live comedian and actor Leslie Jones with racist abuse. Jones quit Twitter as a result of the attacks.

Comedian Sarah Silverman led the chorus of complaint against the book deal for Yiannopoulos, who is a tech editor at the alt-right news site Breitbart.

The guy has freedom of speech but to fund him & give him a platform tells me a LOT about @simonschuster YUCK AND BOO AND GROSS https://t.co/CNDUDOHzke

— Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) December 29, 2016

If you approved a $250K book deal for the troll promoting racist, sexist views so extreme he got thrown off this platform - we need to talk.

— Carolyn Kellogg (@paperhaus) December 29, 2016

“The guy has freedom of speech but to fund him & give him a platform tells me a LOT about @simonschuster YUCK AND BOO AND GROSS,” she tweeted.

Carolyn Kellog, the book editor at the Los Angeles Times, echoed Silverman’s views, tweeting: “If you approved a $250K book deal for the troll promoting racist, sexist views so extreme he got thrown off this platform — we need to talk.”

The Chicago Review of Books went even further, vowing not to cover any new Simon & Schuster titles in 2017.

Yiannopoulos was kicked off Twitter in July after his followers harassed the Saturday Night Live comedian and actor Leslie Jones with racist abuse. Picture: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images/AFP

Yiannopoulos, meanwhile, taunted his critics on Facebook claiming that “every line of attack the forces of political correctness try on me fails pathetically.”

He wrote: “I’m more powerful, more influential, and more fabulous than ever before and this book is the moment Milo goes mainstream.”

Yiannopoulos is openly gay and calls himself the “dangerous f**got”. Picture: Supplied

He also gloated that the book, which is titled Dangerous and will focus on the rise of the “populist, nationalist Trump phenomenon” had already reached number 5 on the Amazon Bestseller list thanks to pre-orders.

Yiannopoulos, who is openly gay and calls himself the “dangerous f**got”, signed the deal with Simon & Schuster’s conservative imprint Threshold, which has printed books by other conservative figures such as Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh.