In a recent music video, a pale-faced skinhead rapper named Danny Bones walks the streets of London while chronicling the decay of English society all around him. He has an ugly mug and wears black steel-toed combat boots, typical of the Hammerskin Neo-Nazis. His targets are the government, the rich, immigrants, and multiculturalism. Bones, it seems, is a part-time musician and a full-time provocateur. His videos on YouTube and social media have amassed millions of views.
There’s just one thing: Danny Bones isn’t real. He’s an AI-generated influencer created by the Node Project, a secretive creative agency that has produced media for the far-right political group Advance UK, which receives funding from rightwing billionaires, including Elon Musk. It’s worth mentioning the Node Project denied that it is funded by Advance UK. Some might wring their hands with fear and loathing at the awful future awaiting us, where Nazified AI characters herd everybody into ovens.
Gen Z G.I. Joe
The Node Project thinks this is clever. We think this is hilarious. We’re watching Bones’ videos for entertainment. Imagine: A fugly, pasty-ass, incel is their avatar. What’s clear is that the Node Project is a joke, run by morons, bankrolled by billionaires who don’t realize they’ve hired incompetents. It’s unsurprising. Fascists often fail at implementation.
Bones appears in several videos like this, along with others that seem almost like short propaganda films. In one, he is portrayed as an officer in a deportation unit, another as a rebel soldier in a future civil war, where he fights for “the patriots” against Islamic and African forces. It’s hard to believe that young Europeans would be dumb enough to fall for this twisted Boomer’s image of a Gen Z G.I. Joe.
While many of Bones’ fans clearly understand his posts are all AI slop, others probably think he’s a real person. Many agree with the ethos of Bones’ song “This Is England,” but most of the comments seem like bots and paid shills. The editing is awful; his mouth doesn’t move in sync with the voice.
In any case, the Node Project’s digital agitprop is hitting a nerve with a certain set of people: Western ethnonationalist who have had enough of the brown people in their neighborhoods.
Outside the UK
Beyond the usual talk of AI taking everyone’s jobs, a new manifestation of AI has been forming in mainland Europe. AI-created media pushing far-right views are flooding the internet. Cheap to make and made to enrage, these viral videos and photographs have racked up millions of views.
Ahead of recent elections, Germany’s AfD and France’s National Rally both produced nativist, anti-immigrant-themed videos and photos using AI. In Germany, blond-haired natives are threatened by dark-skinned immigrants. In France, African migrants land en masse on French beaches. All the images are fake, but look nearly photorealistic.
“Having such an easy mechanism to disseminate…a divisive message is quite scary. It’s becoming easier and easier,” said Simon Childs of Navara Media. While Childs was referring to Bones and the Node Project, he just as well could have been talking about the Islamophobic memes that appeared on social media following the 2024 Southport Knife Murders in the UK.
In the aftermath of the grisly attack, false posts of an Islamic conspiracy accumulated on X and other social media, culminating in rioters attacking a mosque, which was completely unconnected to the perpetrator.
American Politicians Get in on the AI Slop
While AI-generated media has been broadly utilized by the far right in Europe, they are far from having a monopoly on it. In October 2025, US President Trump posted an AI-generated video depicting him flying over a No Kings rally in New York City and dropping excrement on the crowd. In April, he posted an AI-generated picture of him as Jesus.
But Trump is not alone. In December, California Governor Gavin Newsom posted an AI-generated video of Trump sobbing in handcuffs. Concurrently, another AI-generated image depicting Trump using a walker floated widely around the internet. The image, thought by many to be real, was created by Google’s Gemini.
Not Inherently Difficult
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Spencer Pratt, a long-shot candidate for mayor, has sprung into contention after AI-generated videos made by his supporters went viral.
Pratt, a former reality TV star, is competing in a crowded field against an incumbent mayor.
However, his populist message connected with filmmaker Charles Curran. Inspired, Curran generated a Batman-themed video portraying Pratt as the hero and Governor Newsom and the current mayor, Karen Bass, as villains.
Borrowing heavily from the imagery of Christopher Nolan’s popular Batman movies, the video feels cinematic, if a little wonky. But clearly it’s had an effect. Since then, Curran has made Star Wars and Marvel-themed videos on Pratt’s behalf.
While Pratt has no involvement with the AI-generated videos, he reposts them on his social media. For Charles Curran’s part, he recently explained he can make an AI video in about half an hour. In his words: “It’s not inherently difficult, which is why I think you’ll see a lot more of this.”
The Medium Is the Message
In 1964, Marshall McLuhan, a celebrated media theorist, famously coined the phrase “The Medium is the Message,” meaning that media shapes our perception of life and informs the pace and patterns of society, more than its content does.
This is certainly true of the current era of AI-generated media. While some videos and photos are already photorealistic, others, like the Spencer Pratt Batman videos, are clearly fake. But does it matter? If it still grabs people’s attention with provocative visuals, does it matter to the audience that the visuals aren’t real?
A good portion of Bones followers know he’s AI. It doesn’t bother them. His message and the “entertaining” way he delivers it matters more.
On Instagram, an influencer named Jessica Foster enjoys millions of followers. She is the “American Army Girl,” blond and beautiful in her army fatigues. Often she poses on military bases. A few times, she’s even posed with President Trump.
Just like Bones, Jessica Foster is AI. This might be unclear to some of her right-wing followers, as her photos are a bit more convincing than Bones’ dystopian videos. But for her many followers who know she’s AI and keep following, it clearly doesn’t matter.
Neo-Nazism in the Age of Male Loneliness
The image feed of an attractive woman serving her country while posing for selfies with the president is like catnip to the MAGA crowd, many of whom struggle to find their female MAGA counterpart. To their dismay, they are finding out that many women insist on dating men who believe that women should have equal rights. For MAGA men, it matters little that Jessica Foster is AI slop; the beliefs and values she espouses are real.
Danny Bones and the Node Project would like to think so. Bones has a long way to go before he has any influence whatsoever. Even though it can be created in a few minutes, AI slop doesn’t go viral without as much or even more effort than it takes for real-life content, as the dorks working for Node Project have probably realized. Most of Bones videos have thousands, not millions, of views.
It’s perhaps notable that there isn’t a real Bones, partially because men who are ethnonationalist have seldom been attractive to females. Ask any male Gen Z Trump voter if his 2024 decision has helped his dating life. Go on social media, and you’ll see them whining about how women ghost them after finding out they voted for Trump.
The advent of Bones is like a sort of admission or recognition by the billionaire funders of the Node Project that in the future, they must rely on AI to promulgate their anti-immigrant agenda. They’re basically doubling down on the male loneliness epidemic.
The real danger of AI propaganda may not be that people are fooled by fake content, but that they willingly embrace it anyway.
Author: Tim Tolka, Senior Reporter
