Count Dankula Convicted For "Nazi Pug" Joke (Faces Jail)

Originally published on Mar 22, 2018
Count Dankula Convicted For "Nazi Pug" Joke (Faces Jail) is a video about Markus Meechan aka Count Dankula. Dankula is a youtuber that was convicted of a hate crime in the UK on Tuesday after teaching a pet dog to give a Nazi salute and posting the video online. Count Dankula was found guilty under the UK's Communications Act after posting a video that went viral. The video showed his girlfriend’s dog reacting to phrases such as “Sieg Heil," "Jews" and "Gas the Jews" with what appears to be a Nazi salute.
Sheriff Derek O'Carroll said Meechan’s video was “grossly offensive” and did not believe Dankula's defense that it was only a joke to annoy his girlfriend.
Dankula's case became widely known after he was arrested in 2016 when the video went viral and got over 3 million views. Suzanne Kelly his girlfriend, defended Dankula in court last year, saying he is not anti-Semitic and has “always been very supportive towards minority groups.”
"Buddha (the dog) will lift his paw to virtually anything if he gets a treat for it. We have taught him to lift his paw to food, like ham or cheese,” she said in court. "They were just words to make him lift his paw and I know those words were used in the context of the video."
Tuesday’s verdict prompted support from comedian Ricky Gervais, who then tweeted: “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."
"There has been a huge miscarriage of justice." stated Dankula.
"I think it is a very, very dark day in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. One of the primary things that must be considered in cases like this is context and intent and today context and intent were completely disregarded,” he continued with. "For the system to actually disregard such things means that your actions no longer matter - they decide what your context and intent is."
"For any comedians making jokes in Britain, I'd be very, very worried about your future because - the context and intent - apparently they don't matter anymore."
Dankula's sentencing date is April 23.