First off, I never cared about Milo until I began seeing blurbs about Dangerous in Publisher's Weekly . They all raised the issue of the morality of purchasing Dangerous. Is it professionally responsible? Is it censorship not to? (Yes.) As an information professional I have always been very interested in intellectual freedom issues and am a card carrying member of the Freedom to Read Foundation so as soon as my industry colleagues began to tell me how dangerous Dangerous would be, I knew I had to read it as soon as possible. And so I started following Yiannopoulos for literally no other ideological reason.
Then the book deal was cancelled by S&S, my immediate reaction was that he would self-publish it anyways. This ended up being true. Despite still having a platform and fan base, the cancellation put a chilling effect on the publicity of the book. Many libraries simply do not purchase self-published material on principle because it has not been professionally reviewed. That decreases access for anyone who is either financially unable to purchase the book on their own, anyone who may not have access to Amazon.com, or anyone who is interested but not committed to buying it. The interested but not committed are the most relevant group here, because hearing someone in their own words is more valuable to learning about them than what other people say about them. Which is exactly why I watched that entire infamous "pedophilia" podcast myself and came to my own conclusion (being: what he said was indeed strange but I followed his logic easily). Both Non-Pedophiles AND Pedophiles still have 1st Amendment rights anyways. I emailed my old Intellectual Freedom & Censorship professor from grad school about the cancellation and her response was that Milo already had a platform so it's not the same type of insidious censorship. I respect this professor but I disagreed with her opinion.
I have faced book challenges at my job. People have called for me to be fired whilst rampaging through the library, screaming and beating themselves over a book they allowed their child to read. Censorship sucks and defending the 1st Amendment is hard but ultimately always worth it. It is important to be mindful that censorship can come from both the political right and the political left. It seemed a bit ironic to me that all these alleged advocates of free speech were refusing to get a book called Dangerous because it would be too dangerous for people to read. I ordered the book on July 5, 2017 and read it within 48 hours.
Like I said, I have little to no experience with Milo so I fact checked a lot of his statements and citations. I soon found that they were all legitimate and ended up putting 2-3 sociopolitical books on my to-read list. I read rather widely...for example I have read Donald Trump and I plan on reading Hillary Clinton's upcoming book. I'll read anyone's book to gain insight into their mind. Trump was pretty unbearable to read - no matter my view on his politics - the writing was bad. Milo was more invigorating to read than Trump, probably because he is by trade a professional word slinging journalist. I would also recommend reading this entire book in Milo's super-gay voice; it makes the experience all the more enjoyable.
My final point is this person that the entire world tells me is an untrustworthy dangerous lunatic is in reality...not that. It is important to note that I would not have known this at all if not for having the opportunity to read his own words in concentrated book format. Shock value Breitbart articles are a different reading experience entirely. I'm not saying I agree with literally all the things Milo Yiannopoulos says or stands for but that doesn't matter. I disagree with many things many writers have to say but it does not mean I will refuse to read them. Dangerous is a decent book and censorship is dangerous.
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