Kanye West enlists former Canterbury schoolboy Milo Yiannopoulos to run campaign to be US president
Published: 15:35, 02 December 2022
Updated: 15:36, 02 December 2022
A former Kent schoolboy has been enlisted by Kanye West to help run his US presidential campaign.
The rapper, who has changed his name to Ye, announced his bid last month ahead of the 2024 election - amid a string of controversies.
And last month he suggested he has recruited former Canterbury schoolboy Milo Yiannopoulos as his campaign manager, according to the BBC.
The alt-right commentator and former editor of Breitbart - a far-right news website - attended Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys.
In 2016, his former school cancelled a talk he was due to give after the Department for Education counter-extremism unit told senior staff his presence was a risk to pupil safety.
More than 220 pupils had signed up to hear the talk by Mr Yiannopoulos, who was expelled from Langton Boys.
He was shunned by mainstream conservatives in 2017 after he was accused of advocating paedophilia.
Videos emerged of him saying that sex between "younger boys" and older men could be a "coming-of-age relationship… in which those older men help those younger boys discover who they are".
The fallout led to publishers ditching plans to release a book by the controversial figure after his comments provoked outrage.
He had been paid a $250,000 advance by Simon & Schuster ahead of publication of Dangerous in 2017.
The 38-year-old, who was born in Chatham, also resigned as an editor of Breitbart after admitting his "poor choice of words" was detracting from his colleagues' work.
More recently, he served as an intern for US congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been accused of promoting far-right conspiracy theories.
Meanwhile, NBC News reported Mr Yiannopoulos helped arrange for prominent white supremacist Nick Fuentes to travel to Florida for a dinner with former president Donald Trump and rapper Ye.
Since the meeting, Trump has been criticised by senior Republicans and Jewish leaders.
Ye said his request for a running mate left the former president "most perturbed".
In a video, West said: "Trump started basically screaming at me at the table, telling me I'm going to lose. Has that ever worked for anyone in history?"
It was reported today the rapper has been suspended from Twitter and accused of "inciting violence" over offensive tweets.
Elon Musk, the new boss of the social media platform, tweeted the rapper had "violated our rule against incitement to violence" and that his "account will be suspended".
Yesterday, in an interview with US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, West praised Nazis and Adolf Hitler.
The rapper was only allowed back on Twitter two weeks ago after he was banned for sharing anti-semitic posts.
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Brad Harper