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The person behind an anonymous social media account that posts AI videos of UK politicians has been identified as a man who has spent time in prison for multiple hate crimes directed towards Jewish people.
Joshua Bonehill-Paine was identified by Channel 4 News as the owner of Crewkerne Gazette, a satirical X account that created AI videos depicting politicians such as Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham apparently singing popular songs from artists such as Amy Winehouse, Barry Manilow and Elton John with altered, politically themed lyrics.
Bonehill-Paine, 33, who has previously described himself as a “nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights”, has a long history of discriminatory behaviour. This has included perpetuating fake stories such as a pub in Leicestershire refusing to admit members of the armed forces so as to not offend immigrants, and a six-year-old being abducted by an Asian grooming gang in Croydon.
Bonehill-Paine told the Guardian he no longer held antisemitic views, providing proof that he had passed the government’s Prevent awareness course and that he had worked in counter-extremism education.
He has described himself online as now holding “a deep affection for Israel”.
In early 2015 Bonehill-Paine attempted to organise a mass protest in Stamford Hill, north London, to rally “against the complete Jewification of the borough”, and later in the year tried to organise another in Golders Green, an area of the city with a large Jewish population.
He promoted the latter with a cartoon image of Hitler and wrote that the event would be “an absolute gas”. He was sentenced to three years and four months in jail for inciting hatred against Jews.
Later, in 2016, he was found guilty of racially aggravated harassment for abuse directed at the then Labour MP Luciana Berger, who is Jewish, which included posting messages to his blog calling Berger “a rodent”, “evil money-grabber” and “a dominatrix”, and uploading an image of a rat with Berger’s face superimposed over it. He was jailed for another two years, which was added to his existing sentence.
Bonehill-Paine said on Wednesday he was “extremely sorry for the pain and distress” he had caused Berger, and he hoped she could forgive him for his past actions, but had not reached out to her directly as he did not “want to alarm or distress her, even after a decade has passed”.
The Crewkerne Gazette’s work has been lauded by publications such as the Sun, which featured a video created by the account showing Rayner rapping to a grime beat during her tax scandal.
The Times called him the “Banksy of politics” and GB News interviewed Bonehill-Paine, who went by the online alias of Crewkerne Man, on air three days before his identity and past were uncovered.
The account’s work has also been highlighted by politicians including Jacob Rees-Mogg, who shared a video from it on X, and Adam Dance, the Liberal Democrat MP for Yeovil, where Crewkerne is based. Dance also said on an episode of BBC Sunday Politics West that Bonehill-Paine’s work was a positive example of engaging audiences with politics.
When asked about Bonehill-Paine’s identity, Dance said he was not aware of who was behind the Crewkerne Gazette account at the time of his comments, which were “about the transparent use of AI in politics, not about endorsing any individual. I absolutely condemn antisemitism and harassment in all its forms, and I do not support the person now revealed to be behind that account.”.
In a YouTube video Bonehill-Paine posted on Tuesday he expressed regret for his past comments towards the Jewish community.. He said: “I felt very angry at how I had treated the Jewish community in this country. I wanted to do something to rectify it, so I began working in counter-extremism education.”
He added: “I went across the country to colleges, schools, universities, working with the probation service, the police service, to try to help prevent other people from following in my footsteps.”
He later told Channel 4 News: “What I am going to do is to continue doing what I’ve done for the last five years, six years, which is counter-extremism work, working to prevent people following in my footsteps, hopefully stopping people from making the same mistakes that I’ve done.”
