A 24-year-old man has been jailed for two years for harassing Labour MP Luciana Berger in a string of anti-Jewish blogs.

A jury at the Old Bailey found Joshua Bonehill-Paine guilty of racially aggravated harassment on Wednesday.

During sentencing, the judge described him as someone who had "amassed a formidable record of hate crime", despite being aged only 24.

Mr Justice Spencer said Bonehill-Paine, of Yeovil in Somerset, was responsible for a "cruel campaign of vile racist abuse" on his "obnoxious" online newspaper.

The court had heard that Bonehill-Paine had posted five blogs about Ms Berger, the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, after fellow far-right extremist Garron Helm was jailed in 2014.


Bonehill-Paine posted articles online calling her a "dominatrix" and "an evil money-grabber" with a "deep-rooted hatred of men".

In one, he claimed the number of Jewish Labour MPs was a "problem".

He illustrated his posts with offensive pictures, including one of Ms Berger's face superimposed onto a rat.

During this time, Bonehill-Paine was on bail awaiting sentence for making false claims on Twitter accusing several people of being paedophiles.

While he was on police bail over the matter involving Ms Berger, Bonehill-Paine had been stirring up racial hatred in a flyer for a neo-Nazi rally in north London.

He was jailed for three years and four months last December for that advert, which had a picture of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz and promised "an absolute gas".

Mr Justice Spencer said that, with Bonehill-Paine being due for release at the end of April next year, a consecutive sentence for the racist blogs was "fully justified".

He also imposed an order barring Bonehill-Paine from contacting Ms Berger, directly or indirectly, or her former assistant and other people named in court.

Under the order, police will also be able to monitor Bonehill-Paine's online activities for the next five years.

The judge described Ms Berger's evidence as "restrained" and "dignified", after she told jurors that online abuse did not always remain online, something the he said was shown by the death of her fellow MP Jo Cox.

Speaking after Bonehill-Paine was found guilty on Wednesday, Ms Berger had said the conviction should send a "strong signal" that no one need "suffer in silence".

She added: "Together we can show that they are not, nor will they ever be, tolerated."