Daily Bale

The Daily Bale (short for Britons Against Left-Wing Extremism, its original title; it also refers to itself as simply Bale) is an online outfit owned and edited by Joshua Bonehill-Paine, which has at various times operated a blog, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account; these are prone to being shut down and then restarting under slightly different names. Its primary activity is posting completely fabricated stories about right-wingers being cruelly persecuted by left-wing activists, particularly Hope not Hate, as with many other "journalistic" sites with "Daily" in their name.

Given the ludicrous nature of the claims made by the group, it is unclear whether Bale is making a genuine — if singularly incompetent — attempt to smear critics of the English Defence League, or whether it is some kind of parody that got out of hand.

Ownership
The articles on the blog are occasionally credited; the names of the alleged authors include Terrance Barlington, Ajax Somerton, Steven Sodholmy and "NH". However, as the blog has shown a definite fondness for inventing fictional people, this should be taken with a grain of salt. All the names are most likely Joshua Bonehill.

Members of the group "Still Laughing at UKIP" managed to infiltrate Bale's Facebook page, and revealed that the administrators are Joshua Bonehill, Justin Fulkirk, Dave Peters, Theodore Pimpleton and Wendy Wentlock. Bonehill has a history of creating false evidence to smear anti-fascist groups, and has been fingered as the "brains" behind the Daily Bale.

A screenshot was tweeted late on the morning of 16/01/2014 by @EDLNewsXtra which appears to be a confession by Joshua Bonehill to being either involved, or behind Bale. Indeed, on the same public Facebook page, he now claims to be the 'CEO and Founder' of Bale. In a later blog post entitled "My Struggle", he outlined an incident that led to the founding of the Daily Bale: "The final straw really came when at 1am in the morning I heard a large crash on my front door and heard somebody shout 'Nazi Racist' before stuffing a McDonald’s banana milkshake through my letter box."

More recently the Daily Bale has a page admitting Joshua Bonehill is behind the site.

Lies
Bale appears to have been responsible for a story that went viral across the far-right British blogosphere in 2013, about an EDL member named John Green who "was made the victim of an ongoing smear campaign by the left wing extremist blog, Hope Not Hate" and committed suicide after losing his job. However the HnH website makes no mention of an EDL supporter named John Green, and the photo used to illustrate the story actually shows Andrew Bunby — a man who went missing in 2007.

Shortly after this incident, Bale published a story about an anonymous EDL supporter, who turned to self-harm after she was exposed by HnH and the website EDLNews. This account was accompanied by a photograph of a scarred forearm, with the caption "Another Hope not Hate victim". However, this photograph was lifted from Wikimedia Commons, where it had been uploaded in 2006.

These two stories are just the tip of the Bale iceberg. Bale had previously reported that an 81-year-old war veteran and EDL supporter, Jeremy Longford, was attacked by a left-wing mob. Mr. Longford is just another fictional character, however: the picture used in the article shows an American victim of assault, Jose Rodriguez. Likewise, the story about a man called George Banbridge, allegedly refused service at Burger King for being a British soldier, was made up — the individual in the photo is one Captain Jeremy Hann. A later incarnation of the blog continued this tradition, posting a photograph of an elderly assault victim and claiming that he was a Bolton army veteran attacked by a Unite Against Fascism member when, in fact, the man in the photograph is a New Zealander.

Other posts on the site have mixed fact with fiction. One such article is about the paedophile activist Tom O'Carroll; O'Carroll is definitely a real person, but Bale claims — without providing any actual evidence — that he is connected to Hope not Hate, and that the group's frontman Nick Lowles is also a paedophile:

Indeed, unsubstantiated accusations of paedophilia are a recurring theme across Bale.

While Hope not Hate is the main target of the group, it also has a byline in attacking certain members of UKIP, using similar tactics. In addition, the blog has an unsavoury obsession with smearing people who have Down's Syndrome.

The Globe incident
One lie from Bale which had repercussions involved the Globe pub in Leicester. Bale ran a faked story claiming that the Globe was barring any British army personnel so as not to offend immigrant customers; the story was linked to by an admin at the official English Defence League Facebook page, before being removed and subsequently reposted by a different admin. The staff of the pub were reportedly treated with aggression and abusive phone calls from people who believed Bale's lie, and the Globe even had to close down temporarily. The EDL admin later deleted the link and apologised to the Globe.

Bonehill was charged with malicious communications and, in March 2014, pled guilty in court to lying about the Globe. In a subsequent interview with BBC Asian Network, he attempted to defend himself:

To swallow this argument, you would have to see no distinction between using a subjective term such as "far-right" and making the demonstrably false statement that a particular pub is not serving military personnel.

Attempts to smear Nikki Pilkington
The Daily Bale was responsible a campaign against a woman named Nikki Pilkington; Pilkington has speculated that this is because her step-sister Maggie Chapman had been involved in a dispute with Joshua Bonehill, the likely owner of the Daily Bale.

The blog ran a story claiming that Pilkington had stolen from the grave of Lee Rigby — despite the fact that she lives over two hundred miles from where Rigby is buried. Predictably, this resulted in Pilkington being harassed by people gullible enough to believe the Daily Bale. "You should be hung along with the twats that murdered Lee Rigby", said Lacey Adams; "deffo smash her back doors in with a dead mans dick", posted Kevin Turner.

The blog then ran a bogus story on Pilkington's daughter, claiming that she decapitated a cat for fun. Bizarrely, this was accompanied by a picture of her which had been Photoshopped to make it look as though she suffered from a facial deformity.

Outright lunacy
In one particularly bizarre article, Bale reported the statistic that 275,000 Britons disappear each year, and theorized that they are being kidnapped by left-wingers:

Later on, the blog ran a story entitled "White Man attacked by feral cats". This was copy-pasted from a report about a French woman of unspecified ethnicity being attacked by cats; Bale simply altered the victim's identity to that of a white male and added the tag "Racist cat attack". Other curious reports from Bale include the claim that Princess Diana was killed by communists.

People who believe this rubbish
Quite a few nationalists have eagerly swallowed Bale's lies. Here are just a few examples of those poor, gullible souls...


 * In a thread at Stormfront, several members showed their pain and grief at the suicide of John Green, despite the fact that the man never existed in the first place. "So what are the coppers going to do about it?... are the coppers saying it was the wrong kind of hate to justify their involvement and Mr Green the wrong type of victim?" asked one poster. Coppers is a UK term for the police.


 * The Bolton BNP blog also covered the non-story of Green's suicide. The blog's slogan — "HERE YOU WILL FIND THE REAL TRUTH TO WHAT THE GOVERNMENT COVERS UP AND TO WHAT THE PAPERS HIDE FROM YOU" — becomes just that little bit more ironic. Insert your own gag here.


 * The Anglo-Saxon Foundation lapped up Bale's dubious claim that a Romanian supermarket in Poole had banned English customers. "This is what the liberals want- an apartheid state with the English at the bottom. They're having orgasms at this", declared member "Witnere". But then, since these are the same people who went away thinking that an underground Jewish group called Goy Cabal was plotting world domination after misinterpreting a joke on someone's Wikipedia profile, it is clear that critical thinking skills are not their forte.