Here's BBC Trending's Mike Wendling on recent UKIP candidate Carl Benjamin, as featured in a piece in Scotland's The Herald:
“He’s cultivated a fan base, he’s cultivated quite a passionate fan base, but he’s not alt-right. He’s explicitly said that he doesn’t believe in the alt-right.
“On the other hand he’s obviously very offensive. He claims to be for free speech but it’s more specific than that, it’s not really about free speech it’s about the freedom to offend people.
“If you have a message that gets so many people riled up then surely you can convert that into a political message if you do it the right way. But maybe that is the problem, maybe it’s simply a fact that the actual campaign is not as compelling as your YouTube videos.
“The significance is that they are people with large YouTube followings, who come from fairly provocative, offensive, or extreme right positions and they have not been able to translate that into a political movement.”
[Mr Wendling added he has not conveyed] “any sort of philosophy” [during his campaign]. “All he’s known for is a rape joke.”
“There’s always been a disconnect between developing a large social media presence and turning that into a mainstream electoral success.
“The jury is definitely still out on the actual influence of social media.”
