Britain says it won't allow a controversial American dating coach to enter the country as his presence isn't "conducive to the public good."
[Fair warning: If you click on any of the links in this story, you will see offensive material.]
The American in question is 25-year-old Julien Blanc. His Twitter profile says he is the executive coach for Real Social Dynamics, a dating advice company. Blanc was scheduled to make public appearances in the U.K. in February 2015.
Blanc often makes references that most people would see as racist and derogatory toward women, and he appears to condone emotion and physical violence toward them. Men reportedly pay up to hundreds of dollars for his dating advice.
Blanc's offers services such as this: "Make girls beg to sleep with you after short-circuiting their emotional and logical mind into a million reasons why they should ..." [We aren't sure what that means, either.]
More than 150,000 people had signed a petition urging U.K. authorities to deny Blanc entry.
The British Home Office told media that it won't discuss an individual case, but a statement quoted by U.K. media said: "The home secretary has the power to exclude an individual if she considers that his or her presence in the U.K. is not conducive to the public good or if their exclusion is justified on public policy grounds."
The law has been used in the past to deny entry to people such as far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders and the late Fred Phelps, head of the Westboro Baptist Church.
Earlier this month, Blanc had to end his tour of Australia after protests.
"This guy wasn't putting forward political ideas," Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said at the time. "He was putting forward abuse that was derogatory to women, and those values are abhorred in this country."
After his exit from Australia, Blanc told CNN he "wanted to apologize to people I have offended in any way; it was never my intention and I just want to put it out there. I'm extremely sorry for everything that has happened."
He said some of the controversies generated by his online posts were "a horrible attempt at humor and, unfortunately, a lot of it also got put out of context."
Blanc's critics are also trying to deny him entry into Brazil, Canada and Japan, where he was scheduled to host his dating seminars.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.