Joshua Bonehill-Paine (born 7 December 1992), also known as Joshua Bonehill and by the pseudonym Crewkerne Man, is an English political satirist and Conservative Party politician, and a former neo-Nazi, internet troll, and convicted criminal. He created the YouTube channel The Crewkerne Gazette in March 2025, which publishes AI-generated videos. He was imprisoned in 2015, but in 2018, following his release, said that he had abandoned his far-right views while in prison, and started delivering counter-extremism lectures.
In 2015 his blog, The Daily Bale ("Britons Against Left-wing Extremism"), published several racist and anti-immigration hoaxes, as well as false accusations against his opponents. He described himself as "a proud anti-semite". Bonehill-Paine's online activity led to criminal charges being brought against him for harassment, antisemitic commentary and hoaxing, including a 2013 online hoax that led to the owners of a Leicester pub receiving death threats, and other false accusations, for which he received a suspended prison sentence. He was described as an "internet troll" by the prosecutor at a 2014 court hearing. He was arrested in June 2015 for inciting racial hatred against Jews, for which he was found guilty in December, receiving a jail sentence of three years and four months. In 2016, he was sentenced to two years in prison for racially-aggravated harassment to be served in addition to his first sentence.
Bonehill-Paine said that he began to question his previous antisemitic views after reading the Bible during his second year in prison. He has also stated that he abandoned his far-right views following the murder of Jo Cox. He completed the Home Office-accredited Healthy Identity Intervention Programme while in custody and passed the government's Prevent deradicalisation programme. He was released from prison in May 2018; following his release, he said he had delivered counter-extremism seminars to schools, police and universities focused on challenging antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Bonehill-Paine created his YouTube channel in March 2025, initially going by the pseudonym Crewkerne Man. He has been profiled in the press as a prominent figure in the emerging genre of AI-assisted political satire. Bonehill-Paine was publicly revealed as being the real identity of the Crewkerne Man in February 2026; he apologised for his past antisemitism.
In August 2026, Bonehill-Paine was selected as the Conservative Party candidate for the Crewkerne South ward in the 2027 Somerset Council election, although after controversy, he withdrew his candidacy.
Early life Joshua Mark John Bonehill-Paine was born in Yeovil, Somerset. He went to a public school. After being expelled from school for fighting, his parents put him in the foster care system at the age of 13, missing most of his education before retaking his GCSEs at college.
He then joined the Conservative Party, seeking to become a Conservative candidate in the 2011 South Somerset District Council election. After failing to be selected, on 11 March 2011 he broke into and burgled a police station in Chard, Somerset using his Conservative Party membership card, while drunk. He was discovered by a constable outside the station in the early hours wearing a police uniform, and noted their poor security. He resisted efforts to arrest him, assaulting two officers in the process, and was found guilty of the offences of burglary, assault and criminal damage, also pleading guilty to criminal damage committed on 30 March to a flower bed in Yeovil. Bonehill-Paine was sentenced to a 12-month community order with 100 hours' unpaid work and supervision by the probation service.
In 2013, Bonehill-Paine announced plans to lead a "Stand Strong" march in Woolwich, a month after the murder of Lee Rigby, describing it as a protest against "extremism, terrorism and oppression".
In February 2014, Bonehill-Paine appeared in court in Yeovil on charges of malicious communications on Facebook, relating to comments regarding the UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, in October the previous year. That September, Bonehill-Paine announced that he was in the process of registering a political party in Yeovil, called the National British Resistance party. He described it as having "ambitions to replace the British National Party (BNP) and gain mainstream support", with the intention of contesting elections in a countering violent extremism programme.
Political views In a 2026 interview with The Times, Bonehill-Paine said that his "personal politics oscillated between the Conservatives and Reform" and that he had received a Christmas card from Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, while adding that "no party was off limits" in his satire.
Political candidate On 3 August 2026 Bonehill-Paine was selected as the Conservative candidate for the 2027 Somerset Council election in the Crewkerne South ward of Somerset. His selection was criticised by former Labour MP Baroness Berger, whose racial aggravated harassment by Bonehill-Paine in 2016 led to him being convicted and jailed. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch defended his candidacy, saying he had been rehabilitated and that her party "believes in second chances". After some controversy, he withdrew his candidacy on 5 August
Criminal acts, convictions, and imprisonment
Malicious claims on blog Bonehill-Paine's blog, The Daily Bale, ran hoax stories which were repeated as fact on social media, as well as false accusations against his opponents. He described himself as "a proud anti-semite".Annalies Winny "Stamford Hill anti-Jewish rally", Hackney Citizen, 2 February 2015 A story from The Daily Bale went viral in August 2013, falsely reporting that The Globe pub in Leicester had refused to admit members of the armed forces, so as not to offend immigrants. People who had read the story threatened the pub with arson and made death threats to the owners. Bonehill-Paine stated in an interview that his intention was to create "a shocking campaign" that people would "share quickly on social media". Security expert Graham Cluley called the stunt "utterly irresponsible and frankly moronic". In April 2014, Bonehill-Paine was sentenced to 180 hours of unpaid work and two years supervision for malicious communications over this incident. A year later, for breaching this community order, magistrates added another 10 hours of unpaid work to the sentence.
In February 2014, a hoax story about a six-year-old girl from Croydon being kidnapped by an Asian child grooming gang was shared on social media. A September 2014 story made false claims about an Asian youth punching a baby and throwing it against a wall, which Bonehill-Paine later said had been written by an English Defence League member and published "without researching the actual article first". The next month, Bonehill-Paine's blog spread a hoax that a Somali immigrant with Ebola had gone missing in Leicester. A fake NHS poster making this claim was publicised by Bonehill-Paine's website, reportedly distributed by one of his supporters in Leicester, and seen in a medical centre in the city.
In October 2014, he pleaded guilty to charges of malicious communications and harassment relating to articles on his Daily Bale blog falsely claiming that innocent people were paedophiles, drug dealers or religious zealots. During one hearing, he took issue with being called an "Internet troll" by the prosecutor, Dafydd Paxton. Sentencing was postponed until 12 January 2015 due to other "very serious" investigations involving him, including alleged incitement to racial hatred against a Member of Parliament, and later postponed again until 5 February. The hearing eventually took place on 9 February 2015, when he was given a three-month prison sentence suspended for 18 months, in addition to 80 hours' unpaid work and ten sessions of "education, training and employment". He was ordered to pay £85 costs and a victim surcharge of £80.
Public order offences and tweets to Jack Monroe In February 2015, Bonehill-Paine was due to be charged in St Albans under s.38 of the Public Order Act 1986, the "contamination of goods", for publishing an article on his website suggesting that fruit and vegetables from Tesco were infected with Ebola. The offence carries a maximum 10-year sentence. In October 2015, he was tried at Stevenage Magistrates' Court for "misusing a public computer network to propagate grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing material" in two online articles, one being the Tesco Ebola hoax and the other encouraging the immediate killing of disabled babies for the purpose of eugenics. The district judge cleared him of both charges citing the freedom of speech guaranteed by the Human Rights Act.
In April 2015, Bonehill-Paine claimed to have been the man arrested and released on bail on suspicion of sending "hate" tweets to Jack Monroe, a Guardian columnist.Jenn Selby "Jack Monroe: Man posing as Ukip candidate arrested for abusing gay poverty campaigner", The Independent, 19 April 2015Press Association "Jack Monroe Twitter abuse: man re-bailed", The Guardian, 25 April 2015 The tweets were made by a hoax account purporting to be from a former UKIP candidate, and UKIP reported the account to the police. In a statement on his website, Bonehill-Paine did not admit responsibility, but said that the tweets were "of a comical nature and [I] commend the level of free speech used".
In May 2015, Bonehill-Paine pleaded not guilty to a charge of harassment after it was alleged that he had left a swastika in the home of a Hertfordshire woman with whom he had spent two nights, describing it as a gift that had been touched by Adolf Hitler, before sending her a string of abusive messages and letters and asking her to become "his Eva". The case was adjourned until 15 July.
Antisemitic protests In January 2015, Bonehill-Paine called for a "mass protest" in March that year against what he perceived as the "complete Jewification" of Stamford Hill in north London, an area with the UK's largest ultra-orthodox Charedi population, with particular focus on the volunteer neighbourhood watch group, Shomrim, which he falsely asserts is an illegal religious police force. The Community Security Trust (CST) was in talks with local police, and local Jewish leaders were described as calm about the threat. Dave Rich, a CST spokesman said that Bonehill-Paine had "a long record of racist provocation and antisemitic abuse but he doesn't have much record of being able to mobilise large numbers of people on the street". Bonehill-Paine's protest was later cancelled due to lack of support.
In February 2015, Bonehill-Paine was arrested by police officers investigating allegations of inciting racial hatred relating to "two visual and written publications on the internet", and released on bail. He was arrested on suspicion of "racially aggravated harassment and malicious communications".