‘Joker’ who taught partner’s dog to Sieg Heil is guilty of hate crime
AN internet prankster who released a viral video in which he teaches his girlfriend’s dog to Sieg Heil and react to the phrase “gas the Jews” is at the centre of a global freespeech storm after being convicted of a hate crime.
Mark Meechan’s Youtube video of the pug Buddha has been viewed more than three million times has been described by in court as “reckless” and “extremely offensive to the Jewish community”.
But the 30-year-old from Coatbridge insisted he wanted to turn her dog “into the least cute thing imaginable” to wind up his girlfriend Suzanne Kelly.
In a landmark ruling yesterday, Sheriff Derek O’carroll found Mark Meechan guilty at Airdrie Sheriff Court of a charge under the Communications Act of posting a video which was “anti-semitic and racist in nature” and was “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”.
But the court battle has attracted global attention – in particular from right-wing media pundits including Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, and even Canadian commentator Lauren Southern, who is said to have been banned from Sky News following an anti-immigration rant but travelled to North Lanarkshire to report on the perceived ridiculousness of Meechan’s situation.
In the wake of the guilty verdict, comedy star Ricky Gervais was among those to support the Coatbridge blogger.
He said: “A man has been convicted in a UK court of making a joke that was deemed ‘grossly offensive’. If you don’t believe in a person’s right to say things that you might find ‘grossly offensive’, then you don’t believe in Freedom of Speech. I hate religion. I’ve criticised and ridiculed it for 40 years. Yet if my government tried to ban it or criminalise it, I would march alongside those poor fools and fight hard for their right to believe any f ***** g stupid nonsense they chose.”
But among those who supported Meechan at court yesterday was former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson.
Meanwhile, Nick Hentoff, a leading criminal defence and civil liberties attorney in New York, pointed to the case as an example of hate speech prosecutions that are “patently absurd”.
After the hearing Meechan, who has always denied any wrongdoing, said there had been a huge miscarriage of justice.
He said: “I think it’s a very, very dark day in regards to freedom of speech and freedom of expression. The thing that was most worrying is that one of the primary things in any action that is to be considered is things like context and intent, and today context and intent were completely disregarded. For the system to disregard such things means that your actions no longer matter, they decide what your context and intent is.”
But Scots Jewish leader Ephraim Borowski said videos like the Nazi dog’ footage served to “normalise antisemitic views”.
The director of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (SCOJEC) said the video was extremely offensive and said the Holocaust “is not a subject for jocular content”.
In court, he said: “In many ways, the bit I found most offensive was the repetition of ‘gas the Jews’ rather than the dog itself”.
Sheriff O’carroll said: “In my view, there is no doubt it’s [the video] grossly offensive. He said Meechan knew the video was offensive as he said himself during his evidence that he ‘likes offensive comedy’.”
The sheriff added: “He said he chose ‘gas the Jews’ as it was the most offensive phrase that he could think of.”
At the start of the video Meechan posted, he says: “My girlfriend is always raving about how cute and adorable her wee dog is so I thought I would turn him into the least cute thing I could think of, which is a Nazi.”
Sentencing was deferred until April 23.