Nazi salute pug man to appeal over £800 fine
Man stands by his Holocaust ‘joke’
A MAN who posted a video online of his girlfriend’s pet dog giving Nazi salutes is to appeal against his £800 fine.
Speaking outside court yesterday, Mark Meechan, from Coatbridge, said: “A really, really dangerous precedent has been set for people to say things, their context to be completely ignored, and then they can be convicted for it.
“You don’t get to decide the context of what you said, other people don’t get to, the court gets to – that’s dangerous.”
Defending his video, the 30-year-old added: “It’s the juxtaposition of having an adorable animal react to something vulgar – that was the entire point of the joke.”
Earlier, Ross Brown, defending, told Airdrie Sheriff Court his client was a “tolerant and liberal” man.
He said Meechan was concerned about the impact his conviction might have on comedians such as John Cleese, Frankie Boyle and Ricky Gervais if they were to perform in Scotland.
Brown said: “His difficulty, it seems, was that he was someone who enjoyed shock humour – both giving and receiving it – and went about his life under the impression that he lived in a jurisdiction which permitted its citizens the right to freely express themselves.”
Meechan filmed the pug responding to statements such as “gas the Jews” and “sieg heil” by raising its paw.
He claimed he made the video as a joke to annoy his girlfriend but the footage went viral after it was posted on YouTube in April 2016.
Meechan was found guilty of posting material that was “grossly offensive” and “anti-Semitic and racist in nature” in breach of the Communications Act. The offence was aggravated by religious prejudice.
Sentencing him, Sheriff Derek O’Carroll said Meechan’s girlfriend did not even subscribe to the channel he posted the video on.
He added: “You purposely used the command ‘gas the Jews’ as the centrepiece of what you called the joke, surrounding it with Nazi imagery and the ‘sieg heil’ command so there could be no doubt what historical events you were referring to.”
The sheriff added that while the right to freedom of expression is very important, “in all modern democratic countries the law necessarily places some limits on that right”.