HOAX – ‘Wiltshire Church To Become Mosque & Bodies Dug Up’

This message, which is currently circulating rapidly via social media, causing angst and consternation as it travels, claims that a historic British church in Wiltshire is being converted to a mosque. The message also claims that bodies buried in the church’s graveyard will be dug up and moved elsewhere.

The message features a photograph of the church.

However, the claims in the message are outright lies designed to foster the political worldview of an organization that calls itself ‘National British Resistance’.

The pictured church – St Michael’s, Stanwix – is not in Wiltshire as claimed. Instead, it is located in the Stanwix district of Carlisle, in North West England.

And, the church is still very much an active Christian church. There is no substance whatsoever to the claim that the church is going to be turned into a mosque.

The false claims in the message are obviously intended to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment among recipients and promote the bigoted, fascistic agenda of ‘National British Resistance’. The organization’s website, complete with swastika derived logo, outlines its sickening manifesto, which includes executing illegal immigrants, locking up people with mental illnesses in ‘state owned asylums’, and isolating ‘sick and diseased’ people from the general public.

But in fact, ‘National British Resistance’ is founded by the notorious Internet troll, Joshua Bonehill.  Bonehill is also responsible for a hate-filled political blog called The Daily Bale, which publishes and promotes lies disguised as news articles.In April 2014, Bonehill was charged with malicious communication and narrowly escaped a custodial sentence after he published an article that falsely claimed that owners of the Globe Pub in Leicester, UK, had banned all British military personnel from entering their premises for fear of upsetting local non-British customers. After the false claim spread via social media, pub staff received a barrage of abuse and threats and the pub was forced to close for a time for security reasons.

Via The Daily Bale, Bonehill also spread a fake missing child poster that falsely claimed that 6-year-old Amy Hamilton was missing from the Croydon area of London after a suspected kidnapping by an ‘Asian grooming gang’. In another fake message designed to stir racial hatred, Bonehill falsely claimed that ‘an Asian youth’ had punched a baby in the face.

The ‘National British Resistance’ website describes Joshua Bonehill in reverent, quasi-religious terms as ‘the Founder’ and ‘leader and saviour of the people’. In fact, it seems very likely that Bonehill himself wrote the descriptions.

Nothing published by Bonehill should be taken seriously. By his actions, he has repeatedly shown that he is a person so debased and immoral that he is willing to tell heinous and damaging lies just to foster his own sickening political agenda.Bonehill has lost every shred of credibility as a political commentator.