The anonymous man behind a slew of viral satirical AI music videos of politicians was a notorious far-right figure sentenced to more than five years in prison for multiple hate crimes against Jewish people, Channel 4 News can exclusively reveal.
Described in fawning profiles in the UK media as “the Banksy of politics” and “the most important political satirist of the moment”, he is responsible for viral videos of Angela Rayner and Kemi Badenoch.
Now the key figure behind the Crewkerne Gazette has been identified by Channel 4 News as Joshua Bonehill-Paine.
In the 2010s, he was a key figure in the extreme right, labelled as a neo-Nazi and prolific online troll. He described himself as a white nationalist, fascist and “proud antisemite”.
Inciting racial hatred
Bonehill-Paine’s crimes include inciting racial hatred against the Jewish community and racially aggravated harassment against the then Labour MP Luciana Berger, now Baroness Berger, who is Jewish.
In his Crewkerne Gazette work and media appearances, he has sought to conceal his identity and criminal past while building a platform of significant political influence, generating over 100 million views.
Hours after being contacted by Channel 4 News with the allegations, he posted a video on his platform, admitting to it and saying: “I regret my past and the mistakes that I have made. For me, I can’t move away from them because of the nature of the antisemitism that once ruled my life.
“I think that we have a huge problem with antisemitism in this country right now. I was absolutely disgusted to see the awful attack on that synagogue in Manchester. But also the way in which antisemitism seems to have been normalised in this country.
“It’s no longer a case of neo-Nazis being antisemitic, we’re seeing antisemitism within the left, within the far left. Also within the extreme Islamic communities in this country.”
Viral videos
Now going by the name Joshua Paine, he produces AI-generated satirical music videos primarily targeting Labour that have consistently gone viral and shaped the political conversation, monetised with advertising revenue from social platforms.
His video of then Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner MP, amid a tax scandal, was set to a grime beat and was viewed over 11 million times and featured on the front page of the Sun. Bonehill-Paine has said online that his viral Rayner video “may even have contributed to her resignation”.
In interviews with UK media, where he appears anonymously as “Crewkerne Man”, he has said: “Having your name out there dilutes what we’re trying to achieve.”
On Sky News, he wore what a presenter described as a “disguise” and he told GB News: “A reason for my anonymity is to protect my free speech.”
Assaulting police officer
In 2014, Bonehill-Paine was convicted of malicious communications over an anti-Islam hoax that led to death threats against the owners of a Leicester pub. It wasn’t his first run-in with the police – he had a prior conviction for assaulting a police officer and the burglary of a police station.
In a separate case, Bonehill-Paine was convicted of inciting racial hatred for promoting an antisemitic demonstration in Golders Green. Posts on his website encouraged people to attend an “anti-Jewification event” and shared a poster of a cartoon Adolf Hitler and a suggestion that the demonstration promised to be “an absolute gas”.
For this he was sentenced to three years and four months’ imprisonment.
Then in 2016 he was also found guilty of racially aggravated harassment of Luciana Berger, then a Labour MP, who is Jewish. Bonehill-Paine had published five blog posts about Berger, superimposing her face onto a rat and describing her as “a rodent”, “evil money-grabber” and “a dominatrix”.
‘Formidable record’
The sentencing judge said he had “amassed a formidable record of offences of hate crime using the Internet”. He was sentenced to a further two years.
After serving his sentence, he says he is rehabilitated and delivered lectures as part of a countering violent extremism programme, in which he showed in a presentation an image of himself addressing a BNP meeting in east London in August 2014.
Finding it hard to get a job, he then worked as a crypto investor and as the director of a web services firm, before launching and becoming the public face and main figure behind the Crewkerne Gazette last year, with at least one other contributor.
He has told Channel 4 News it’s just satire. But beyond the viral music videos mainly targeting Labour, Bonehill-Paine also has used the Crewkerne Gazette platform to publish overtly political content – polemical monologues and fabricated AI advertisements that go far beyond satirical or comic commentary.
In a YouTube video in October 2025 on Islamist extremism, he called on the Labour government to “enforce the law without fear, close the mosques that incite hate, prosecute the charities that launder extremism”.
After the killing of a man in Uxbridge for which an Afghan refugee faces a murder charge, he was more explicitly partisan still. He told viewers to make change happen not by violence but at the ballot box by voting for the right: “You do not reward the same parties who have let this slide and then told you to shut up about it… You vote for Reform UK or for a broader coalition of parties on the right.”
And in September 2025, Crewkerne Gazette published an AI-generated dystopian video advertisement showing police with guns drawn arresting someone for posting innocuous online content, saying: “Anybody can be arrested for posting content online – most arrests come for the kind of content that opposes government policy.” No source for this claim was provided.
Bonehill-Paine has said his Crewkerne Gazette platform is hardly “far right thugs using AI to promote hatred”.
But this online satire, that targets primarily Labour politicians, is made by the same man convicted of using these online methods to incite racial hatred and of the racially aggravated harassment of a Jewish Labour MP.
‘Very angry’
Bonehill-Paine told Channel 4 News: “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.
“I went across the country to colleges, schools, university , working with the probation service, the police service, to try and help prevent other people from following in my footsteps.”
Well done C4News for identifying this broadcaster and video creator. Anonymity is a curse in social media and should be outlawed. If you aren’t prepared to put your name and face to your views and propaganda you should just shut up.
He has no-way changed his views …… he has just learned to post so-called satirical videos so he doesn’t get charged .