Fake news — or all too real?

By David Futrelle

The results are in for the European elections, and as a confused American I have no idea what they mean, for the UK or Europe as a whole. (I’ll leave the explanations to people who understand this better than me.)

But there’s one thing that’s clear to even me: Barring a miracle, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), is toast, and a good part of the blame for that rests on the shoulders of YouTube-blabber-turned-UKIP-candidate Sargon of Akkad, aka Carl Benjamin of Swindon.

UKIP earned a whopping 3.3% percent of the vote, winning the party a grand total of zero seats in the European Parliament. In Swindon, Sargon’s home town, the party scored a little better, but the dropoff in votes for UKIP from the last elections was even more humiliating than in the country at large.

To be fair, most observers agree, the real cause of UKIP’s implosion was Brexit kingpin Nigel Farage’s defection to his brand-new Brexit party, which came in first in the election, boosted by all the former UKIP voters who defected with Farage.

But Sargon definitely didn’t help. Indeed, he may have driven the final nail into UKIP’s coffin. Over the course of his brief campaign, Sargon managed to embarrass himself and his party so thoroughly that neither may ever recover.

He began his candidacy by doubling down on a rape joke directed at a Member of Parliament, and spent much of his time answering questions about the joke and other horrific comments he’d made in the past — including a pretty creepy take on pedophilia (“it depends on the child”).

Also, he got milkshaked, and at one campaign stop he was pelted with fish.

But it wasn’t just Sargon who was constantly getting asked questions about his rape joke and other awful statements; other UKIP candidates spent so much time dealing with the Sargon issue that a top party official told the Guardian yesterday that she thought

Ukip’s EU campaign has been overshadowed by Sargon of Akkad’s disgusting comments and rape jokes and things he has said in the past. That’s very much marred Ukip’s reputation.

Naturally, Sargon’s many detractors online — of all ideological stripes — reacted with glee to his massive failure, prompting one person to post this meme highlighting this rare moment of agreement between Twitterers and the trolls of 4chan.

And then there were these memes:

On Twitter, the jokes and comments were mostly clean, if not always polite.

lol it took Sargon one month to completely destroy a political party pic.twitter.com/pjtd1p8Ray — YOUTUBE.COM / VITO (@VitoGesualdi) May 27, 2019

[UKIP post-election meeting]



Gerard Batten burries his face in his hands. Dankula continues scrolling through memes on his phone.



Sargon: Well, consider the forum in Athens-



Batten: Fuck off, Carl. — Turning Point UK Glasgow (@TPGLA1) May 27, 2019

https://twitter.com/MrCruelWorld/status/1133004726453194752

Ukip got 0, confirming my claim

Sargon is a double agent, actually the wokest sjw amongst us — KoumePoster (@koumeposter) May 27, 2019

Things got a little more … intense on 4chan’s /pol/.

Here are a couple of fans defending Sargon and fellow far-right election-loser Tommy Robinson: