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‘Migrants from Calais to 300k apartments & aggressive security,’ shouts the YouTube video’s title, as the man behind the camera attempts to give viewers a tour of asylum accommodation he has entered without permission before being ejected by security. The cameraman, Scott Chesterman, is the owner of Bare Britain Audits, a channel with 120,000 subscribers and videos viewed over 11 million times.
His video forms part of a growing trend of ‘auditing’ content on YouTube. Auditors play as citizen journalists, cashing in on views for videos they claim reveal the rot at the heart of Britain.
Chesterman’s videos portray migration as an existential threat to Britain, seeking out and provoking confrontation with anyone and everyone he sees as complicit in facilitating an “illegal invasion”, from asylum accommodation staff to anti-racist activists and protestors.
Byline Times can reveal, however, that Chesterman has a history of abusive behaviour towards women and is using his growing platform to continue this pattern.
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In April 2014, Chesterman was found guilty in Banbury Magistrates’ Court of breaching a non-molestation order from Durham County Court after sending several text messages to a person he was prohibited from contacting. Four months after the magistrate’s ruling, Chesterman posted a meme on his personal Facebook profile that read “I nominate my ex to the hot boiling water challenge.” Chesterman has continued to post aggressively and threateningly towards his ex-partner, writing a status in 2017 that expressed a desire to kill her, and one in 2018 that he hoped “life throws [her] under a bus.”
He is far from the only member of the growing auditor community with a history of violent and abusive behaviour. Curtis Arnold, the man behind DJE Media, whose videos regularly see him harassing vulnerable individuals and attempting to portray the areas he visits as dangerous and lawless, is a convicted sex offender, having been found guilty of voyeurism, causing a person to engage in sexual activity. Anthony Styles, whose channel AJ Audits regularly posted videos of last Summer’s hotel protests in London and Epping, served four years in prison for indecently assaulting a 14-year-old.
Many in the auditing community have turned against Styles (Chesterman has published a video condemning his actions as disgusting), whose YouTube channel is no longer active, but Chesterman’s past appears not to have disturbed the growing community he has sought to build around himself.
As well as being able to subscribe to Bare Britain Audits channel for £4.99 a month to access exclusive videos, Chesterman runs a Discord server for more loyal followers of his content. Byline Times gained access to the server and, as one of its 175 members, was able to view conversations that took place in the channels. Concerns were often raised about the threat that asylum seekers pose towards women, while discussions also included far-right talking points such as the ‘Great Replacement’ theory, posts on how to buy semi-automatic rifles, police corruption, and the regular sharing of Islamophobic and antisemitic memes.
The server also had a channel named ‘xxx-rated-adult’ where Chesterman’s occasional collaborator and fellow auditor, DP Audits (who was recently revealed to have sent rape threats to a pro-refugee campaigner) posted pornographic images, as well as other members of the channel who shared images that sought to objectify and degrade women, tacitly and in some cases, outright endorsed by Chesterman as moderator of the server.
Jenny*, an activist based in the West Midlands, has seen firsthand how the rising anti-migrant sentiment in Britain, coupled with the growth in his fanbase, has only emboldened Chesterman and his aggressive behaviour towards women who attend anti-racist protests.
She first encountered the auditor outside an Elbit Systems factory in 2022. While Jenny was there as part of an encampment opposing the Israeli arms company, he had been attempting to fly a drone over the factory. The chance encounter “was actually really positive for us,” Jenny says. “He interviewed somebody who had been in Gaza, and he was able to tell this really emotive story. And Scott put it out on his Bare Britain Audits account.”
“But then he very quickly declined into this, really highly aggressive, getting in people’s faces type, saying horrible things about us personally as individuals,” says Jenny, who has since seen Chesterman become a regular feature of anti-migrant protests. “It’s pretty grotesque that they say we’re here to protect women and we’re here to protect children, when they act in such an intimidating way that really scares a lot of people.”
“I don’t think that they actually see the people on the end of this abuse as real people,” Jenny explains. “The dehumanisation of migrants and refugees and women, the rampant misogyny in society, I think, enables them to do the horrible things that they’re doing. If they saw us as human beings, I can’t see how they would be treating people this way.”
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