Follow Up

A while back, I posted about a pommy YouTuber by the name of Carl Benjamin, who had lost his main source of income, when payment-services provider Patreon kicked him off their platform, after they found out that he had once called a group of far-right racists "white niggers".

Well, it seems that C.BenJamin has had something of an interesting time since then; and as I'd mentioned him before, I thought I'd bring you all up to speed. As a staunch nationalist and Brexiteer, he's been running in the European elections, as a member of UKIP. This has not been going well.

Apparently, a number of years ago, he got into a twitter spat with a Labor MP called Jess Phillips. Phillips complained that she had been inundated with rape and death threats via the platform. BenJamin looked into the matter and concluded this was a lie, since telling someone, "I hope you get raped and murdered", is not technically a threat. In order to test how liberal her definition of the term "threat" was, he tweeted at her the now infamous phrase, "I wouldn't even rape you". A large number of his followers echoed these sentiments, and this torrent of … um, abuse? … ended up becoming a (very) minor news event in Britain.

Well, it seems this (very) minor news event has now come back to haunt C.BenJamin, as his (non)threat has been the only thing anyone has wanted to talk to him about during his campaign. As one commentator put it, BenJamin has basically made himself the face of rape in England. Reporters have heaped scorn upon him, rape victims have come out to shout abuse at him, he's been pelted with fish and had milkshakes tipped over him, fellow UKIP candidates have distanced themselves from him, and the former UKIP leader—Nigel Farage—has labeled him disgusting, and stated that he warned the party not to open its doors to the lunatic fringe.

And amidst all this controversy, UKIP have completely tanked in the polls. I believe results are due to be announced tomorrow, but it seems like C.BenJamin's tilt at politics has not played out exactly as he would have envisioned it.