Milo Yiannopoulos to join UKIP candidate Carl Benjamin on campaign trail
Milo Yiannopoulos (L) (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty) and Carl Benjamin (R) (Leon Neal/Getty)
Milo Yiannopoulos is set make a number of appearances with UKIP candidate Carl Benjamin on the campaign trail in an attempt to help his bid for the European elections.
Yiannopoulos confirmed that he would be joining Benjamin’s campaign in a Google Hangout between the pair posted on YouTube on Monday night, Buzzfeed reports.
He said during the video that he could turn up to one of the campaign events dressed as Labour MP Jess Phillips to “troll” Benjamin. Police announced two days ago that they are investigating Benjamin after he said in a YouTube video that he might rape the MP.
Milo Yiannopoulos praised UKIP for not censoring Carl Benjamin’s ‘jokes’
In the video—which is more than three hours in length—Yiannopoulos said to Benjamin that UKIP is “your party now, isn’t it?”
“If I may say so, I’m quite surprised you haven’t been fired or deselected yet,” Yiannopoulos continued. “And it’s not because you’ve done anything outrageous or wrong, it’s that I never imagined for a second that there would be a political party not just in the west but in Europe that stands up for your right to make a joke.
“It’s quite surprising to me that they’re actually doing what they said they were going to do. It’s a great compliment to them.”
Benjamin defended UKIP, and said they “definitely are a party of free speech.”
Carl Benjamin was questioned about his comments to Jess Phillips at the launch of his campagin
The UKIP candidate and YouTuber has attracted controversy since the party announced his candidacy for the European elections last month.
At the launch of his candidacy, he was questioned about an old tweet he had sent to Phillips in 2016 which said: “I wouldn’t even rape you, @jessphillips. #AntiRapeThreats #FeminismIsCancer.”
Lisa Maree Williams/Getty
When confronted by journalists about the tweet, Benjamin replied: “I’m not answering your questions, I’m not apologising for anything, you dirty, dirty smear merchants.”
When pressed, he said: “I think we should treat women the same as men.”
Milo Yiannopoulos was banned from Facebook earlier this month
Meanwhile, Yiannopoulos—who is former editor of right-wing news website Breitbart—was banned from Facebook earlier this month.
Facebook said in a statement: “We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology.
“The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today.”
Many right-wing figures cut ties with Yionnopoulos in 2017, when he was accused of endorsing pederasty in a series of video clips.
In one video Yiannopoulos attacked the age of consent as an “arbitrary one-size-fits-all policing of culture”.
He claimed: “In the homosexual world, particularly, some of those relationships between younger boys and older men — the sort of ‘coming of age’ relationship — those relationships in which those older men help those young boys discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable, sort of rock, where they can’t speak to their parents.”
