The UK’s Conservative Party has selected a former neo-Nazi activist convicted of harassing a Jewish lawmaker to run as its candidate in a local election, the Guardian reports.
Joshua Bonehill-Paine has been convicted of multiple crimes. He was convicted in 2014 of assaulting a police officer, according to the report. and the following year he went to jail for more than three years for posting antisemitic material in advance of a neo-Nazi rally.
The year after that, he was also found guilty of harassing Luciana Berger, who is Jewish and was then an MP for the Labour Party, calling her a “rodent” and an “evil money-grabber,” the Guardian reported. He ran a group called the “National British Resistance.”
Bonehill-Paine, who now publishes satirical AI videos, says he has served his time and come clean about his past, but his selection as a candidate drew condemnation from Reform UK, which is to the right of the Conservatives.
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