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He ran for office in the UK as a member of the far-right UKIP party.

In June 2018, Carl, along with Milo Yiannopolous, Paul Joseph Watson, and Mark Meechan managed to take control of UKIP and steered it from cryptoracism to open racism. It got so bad that Nigel fucking Farage left UKIP, citing the fact that it had become too racist (but since this is Farage we're talking about, it's more likely he just left because he wasn't in full control any more).

Carl ran as a UKIP candidate for the South West region in the 2019 European Parliament elections, but by that point the racists had largely abandoned UKIP for Farage's Brexit Party, and so UKIP lost both of their seats.

RationalWiki has an extensive analysis of exactly how full of shit he is.

Thaaaaaaat doesn't sound like someone who anyone would want to associate with

Has any non-politician run (and won) the election? Ronald Reagan did it and he's universally hated. Kanye tried but his number of votes is peanuts compared to the latest two candidates.

Saying that Ronald Reagan is "universally" hated ignores the cult that the Republican Party built around the man after his presidency.

But to the public, he is. Unless the people buy into the cult, in this case, I'd be wrong.

Well… Donald Trump was technically not a "politician" before he ran for president.

To the left-wing, liberal public perhaps.

To anyone not under that category, well, the fact that Reagan "won" the Cold War gives his name a lot of clout still.

(He didn't win shit, to be clear, the URSS collapsed entirely thanks to its own leaders being completely fucking inept and the whole thing being unsustainable from the start)

Reagan won 44 states and 489 Electoral College votes, plus he won the popular vote by about 8.5 million. The man was genuinely popular in 1980; it's only with hindsight that opinion has turned against him.

He was also governor of California before be ran for president, so I would say he was a politician prior to winning. Trump does count as an outsider.

I've never thought about it, but I assume people who aren't into politics (i.e. most people) don't have an opinion on Reagan one way or another. Especially if they were born years after his presidency ended.

Correct, though most people, when asked, say "I thought he was popular?" His cultish popularity hasn't really spread, but it is enough that until very recently word of mouth was that he was a fine president, because only the crazies cared enough to say anything.

It's only now, as the systemic racism and anti-poor policies that he helped perpetuate is being dragged out into the light more, that people are listening to the side that says he was a terrible president.

Reagan's popularity tends to scale with the age of the person you're asking. People born right before, during, or after his term tend to dislike him. People who were adults when he was elected are usually more neutral or positive towards him.

Youtubes Comment Filter is completely out of control currently. You cannot even post a Link or words like "Antisemitism" in some context without it automatically being removed.

Edited by Forenperser on Mar 7th 2021 at 8:59:04 PM

Which is utterly ridiculous because actual antisemites normally don't even use that word.

It's generally used by people trying to combat antisemitism and/or inform about it.

So it's basically YouTube defending bigots. Again.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Mar 7th 2021 at 8:53:31 PM

Yes. I am currently trying to refute on idiots argument, but the f*cking system won't even let me post any kind of quotes or links.

Ridiculous.

That’s probably in response to a recent tidal wave of bots spamming links in reply to every comment on every video. The bots ruin it for everyone: be mad at them, not YT.

Well that's one thing, but like I said, even direct quotes with these "dirty" words don't work.

I have to ask why you're trying to have political discussions on YouTube in the first place. I gave that up as a lost cause years ago. Just go to Twitter where it's much easier to have pointless, screaming arguments with idiots.

I don't actively seek them out. Some idiot approached me and made false accusations in this case.

And no, I will never ever get on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

You were still in the Youtube comments at all, so it's still a "What else do you expect" moment.

The You Tube comments are a bigger Social Media cesspool than Twitter and Tumblr combined.

EDIT: By this I mean that Twitter and Tumblr are sites that tend to have people form echo chambers, Youtube can be very much a warzone with how "anything goes" the comments can be.

Edited by powerpuffbats on Mar 7th 2021 at 4:47:20 AM

Granted, on Youtube it is possible to form arguments that aren’t the length of marketing slogans, unlike Twitter.

That just means bullshit conservative talking points can be more long-form.

Twitter and the YouTube comment section (and also Reddit) are both terrible for different reasons, and in some different ways.

On the question of bots, someone on Youtube is creating them to detect whatever falls into hate speech. A bunch of flawed bots, I believe, so Youtube should get half the blame.