I wasn’t aware that something like this would qualify as a “hate crime” in Scotland, though nobody was injured. A man trained a bulldog to salute Hitler, apparently to tease a girlfriend who thought the dog (apparently hers) was adorable. In an ill-advised trick, he tried to turn the dog into a Nazi, training it to make the “Sieg Heil” salute on command. Then he posted the video online. I’m pretty sure this is it:
As you see, the dog was trained to perk up when he heard the words “Do I gas the Jews?” (or “Jews”), and to raise one foreleg when he saw a picture of Hitler or heard “Sieg Heil”. (I suspect the “gas the Jews” statement offended people far more than did the salute.) It’s odious, a reprehensible thing to do to his girlfriend, and completely tasteless.
But should be be arrested for posting this? He was. From the Guardian:
A man has been arrested over an online video that reportedly shows a dog making a Nazi salute.
The 28-year-old, from Coatbridge in North Lanarkshire, faces hate crime charges over the video, Police Scotland said.
The clip allegedly shows a pug sitting in front of a screen showing footage of Adolf Hitler and appearing to make Nazi salutes.
Officers said the video had been shared online and “caused offence and hurt to many people in our community”.
A Police Scotland spokeswoman said: “A 28-year-old man was arrested on Thursday 28 April in relation to the alleged publication of offensive material online (improper use of electronic communications under the Communications Act 2003).
“A report has been submitted to the procurator fiscal.”
DI David Cockburn said: “Posting offensive material online or in any other capacity will not be tolerated and police will act swiftly to tackle hate crimes that are motivated by malice or ill-will because of faith, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability.
“This clip has been shared and viewed online, which ultimately has caused offence and hurt to many people in our community. There is no place for hate crime in Scotland and police take all reports of incidents seriously.”
This one really tests the limits of free speech. It’s clearly offensive not just to Jews, but to every rational person (I feel for his girlfriend—if she still is his girlfriend). And it may well violate the hate crime laws of Scotland. But should there have laws that would lead to arrest for such speech?
“Should I gas the Jews?”, horrible as it is, is not a statement designed to incite imminent violence. It was, after all, spoken to a dog, even though it was posted online. What was injured were feelings, and nothing else. And the lout’s actions were motivated not by malice, I think, but by stupidity.
In the U.S., this would not qualify as a violation of free speech on those grounds. As far as I know, you can say—as the remnants of the Nazi party do—”We should create another Auschwitz”—even more odious than what the Scotsman was doing. And that is not illegal.
Here’s a photograph, which I posted before, of people in New York protesting on Israel Day: May 31, 2009. The police apparently guarded the protestors:
This anti-Semitism is pretty much the equivalent of the video above. I could show similar photographs of signs saying, “God bless Hitler,” or “Be prepared for the REAL Holocaust,” and those could be construed as even worse than the bulldog video. Should the people carrying those signs be arrested as well? (They would be, of course, in some countries.)
My judgment is that posting the video should not be a criminal offense. The man should be shunned, mocked, and de-friended, but not arrested. Of course if he violated an existing law, he faces the consequences. But my question is whether we should have laws that permit arrest for videos like the one above. What do readers think?
This reader agrees that this idiot should be mocked and scorned. But arresting bigots for saying stupid things is a bad thing to do. Nobody has a right to not be offended.
Mocked and scorned by whom?
There are (hundreds of?) millions of people on this planet that would greet the news of the death of the last Jew with a cheer.
Society cannot be relied upon to police itself when it comes to anti-Semitism. History has taught us so.
Uh…. how about by decent people?
Society can’t police itself? Then which aliens do you suggest we hire for the job? (Show me a police force that isn’t part of society.)
Sure. This is why we rely on decent people everywhere to ensure that only sober folks get behind the wheel. Their constant mocking and scorn has eliminated drunken driving. There is no need for legislation, enforcement or punishment.
P.S. The police is an organ of government. Not a member of society.
Organs of government, like all human social organs, are how society is organized. Not all problems faced by societies need to be resolved by policing. People saying stupid things is one of these.
Talking about “saying stupid things”, if it isn’t out of place to introduce a humourous note, but I thought the guy was saying “Do you want a glass of juice”. I was wondering what all the fuss was about.
Yet we choose to resolve many mundane things through policing. Things which are, indeed, far less insidious than Jew hate.
We do? I don’t.
Absolutely agree with you, GB. We do not need the Thought Police.
cr
I don’t.
Where was the Jew hate.
Have you ever watched Mel Brookes?
Arrest him too?
My opinion is a firm no. I think criminalizing the kind of behavior on display in this case causes more harm overall to society than allowing it.
I am confident that in this case other citizens exercising their right to free speech in response to this tasteless individual’s attempt at a prank (or whatever) would have been a wholly adequate response.
I agree. This bloke is a complete prat. In many ways bringing attention to him by arresting him is likely to make any genuine anti-Semitism worse.
However, I suspect the current political climate in Britain might be part of this. Several senior politicians, including the leader of the Labour Party, have displayed anti-Semitic attitudes.
We should not have such laws. Sure, these people should be, as you say, shunned, mocked, and de-friended. But arrested? Absolutely not.
He’s clearly not a true Scotsman.
The vast majority of content on the internet is offensive to me because it is either meant to be offensive, is trying to defraud me, or because it is so stupid it hurts my already low opinion of my fellow humans. Only a tiny fraction of content requires law enforcement intervention and the nazi dog isn’t one of them.
Excellent point. I agree, all the obnoxious, intrusive, often deceptive, advertising is very offensive to me. Society would be much better off if the perpetrators of all that crap were charged with a crime and sad sacks like this Scotsman were left alone.
Damn! 95 replies when I logged in, and I only got to #4 before the “No True Scotsman” was invoked 🙂
I agree this should not be illegal. And we Scots have at least our fair share of idiots like this.
I totally agree with Mr. Coyne.
These laws shouldn’t exist.
For such hate crimes, why not have a legal punishment which isn’t a useless arrest but some education and an official mockery? People officially ridicule the “criminal” but the person is also forced to go through some history or videos from the camps. Most likely won’t change anything inside a “brainwashed brain” but at least its better than useless and boring deterrents (in such cases) like arrests.
Am I not thinking right? Maybe I should go back to sleep…
In how many European countries is expressing pro-Nazi views a criminal offense? (Few countries take free speech as seriously as the US.)
A more reasonable Internet is a nice goal, but making it illegal to post anything offensive? That’s certainly never going to be abused.
I must agree, arresting the guy is a disgrace. Btw,the pooch looks more like a pug than a bulldog, but I know you’re not a dog person.
Owning a pug instead of a real dog is the crime here, methinks. #gasthepugs
That is something I can agree with. Pugs are a very poor representative of the species
Yeah, those bug eyes, and the constant wheezing and snorting!
Yeah, I don’t think they’re any sort of dog, and they’re certainly not a cat. Nor a rat.
Maybe some sort of giant Bug?
😉
cr
The problem here appears to be that the concept of a “hate crime” is supposed to mean a crime motivated by hate, but they’re misinterpreting it to mean hate is a crime. I can understand that to a point because I never thought the idea of “thought crimes” made any sense in the first place. A crime is a crime.
Oops! I wrote “thought crimes” when I meant “hate crimes”, but then, what’s the difference?
Very good point! “Hate has become a crime.”
The argument for hate crime legislation is that the behavior is designed to intimidate a entire group of people, not just the person upon whom the crime is inflicted.
In principle, the idea that your thoughts affect your punishment seems distasteful, but then, most of us would agree that accidents shouldn’t be punished to the same degree as intentional harm.
This isn’t even motivated by hate, necessarily. It was a prank. He trained the dog to be a Nazi BECAUSE he thought the Nazis were awful. That was the point. He wanted to make her adorable dog do horrible things.
It’s a pretty nasty prank, as while it might make for a really good look on her face the first time she saw the pug salute Hitler, that kind of training looks like it’s not going to go away easily.
Most likely, the guy thought only of the pranks payoff, and didn’t really think about the long term consequences. He’s an idiot, but based on the information we have, there doesn’t seem to be a shred of hate to this.
Before I watched the clip, I thought that this stunt might be an example satire gone horribly wrong. After watching it, I don’t think so. I can’t see how satire can go that wrong. But no, I don’t think this guy should be arrested. Getting arrested for teaching a bulldog to salute Hitler sounds like satire itself.
“Getting arrested for teaching a bulldog to salute Hitler sounds like satire itself.”
Wins the thread!
(I do seem to recall that people used to regard the bulldog as Churchillian, which adds a trace of irony).
cr
In the UK this:
‘The police and Crown Prosecution Service have agreed a common definition of hate incidents.
They say something is a hate incident if the victim or anyone else think it was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on one of the following things:
disability, race, religion, transgender identity, sexual orientation.’
So limited free speech and open to all sort of extension.
Interesting to note that the list does not include class.
What an incredibly weak standard. Hostility is usually driven by momentary anger, not hatred, and prejudice is usually driven by ignorance, not hatred. And it only takes one person anywhere to misinterpret something as hostility or prejudice based on a protected characteristic for you to be deemed a hate criminal? Crazy.
I’d much rather live in the wild west of people being able to say pretty much anything. But then I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist.
In Canada we have hate crime legislation
The statute states :(i) evidence that the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or any other similar factor, . . . shall be deemed to be aggravating circumstances.”
Some if I assault someone because they are a member of a specific ethnic group I may be charged with a hate crime. However I think I need to be committing a crime first, for it to be labeled a hate crime.
So unless posting a video of a saluting pug is a crime in itself, I don’t think I would be charged with that in Canada.
Hate speech is a crime in Canada but I’m not sure if this would qualify. There haven’t been many prosecutions, that I’m aware of.
James Keegstra was arrested for hate speech:
“Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group” for “promoting hatred against an identifiable group by communicating anti-Semitic statements to his students”. During class, he would describe Jews as a people of profound evil who had “created the Holocaust to gain sympathy.” He also tested his students in exams on his theories and opinion of Jews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Keegstra
“..if the victim or [i]anyone[/i] else [i]think[/i]…”
Wow. That’s a pretty damn horrible standard.
So when my jewish friend was being the insane and arbitrary “Jewish Banker” (her words) during a game of Monopoly, if anyone else overheard that coversation, and thought it was motivated by hate, then my Jewish friend would be accussed of anti-semitism.
How the hell did that law pass when there are TWO massive loopholes for abuse within just a few words?
Since free speech is the theme here – I can only say this person is one sick bastard. I would not want to meet his parents.
Possibly he should be arrested for inhuman treatment of dogs.
What’s inhuman (inhumane?) about teaching a dog to do tricks?
cr
He did say that he was going attempt to turn the dog into the most “uncute” thing…
So, whilst it seems he does not have pro-Nazi feelings…
…his prank was unfortunately-judged and in definite poor taste.
What he did should not be a criminal offense.
Hate speech laws, and all other laws, are based on the notion that what humans do or say is done by the action of free will. But the man who taught the dog has no more free will than the dog. Both are animals responding to forces within themselves that arise spontaneously. Yet they arrest the man but do not arrest the dog.
” is done by the action of free will.”
Not at all.
Because they have no other choice.
It’s unclear whether this is a crime under current laws. The Communications Act 2003 was originally intended (before social media) to prevent someone telephoning someone in person and being abusive or offensive.
More recently, the guidelines to prosecutors suggest that posting this video is not in itself something that should be prosecuted.
The situation is thus someone unclear, and will remain so until there is further case law. Certainly, Parliament has never *intended* to outlaw things like this; if it is now illegal that has happened by accident.
Meanwhile, the *police* are way too keen on trying to outlaw speech that anyone might get slightly upset by.
That was my take, too. It will be interesting to see if this ever comes to court, and if so what the outcome will be. I would guess that most people in the UK would react as most people here have, ie that this video is reprehensible but not criminal.
And Coel is also right about the current tendency of the police to overreact, possibly because of their perceived insensitivity and inaction in the past; see for example this story http://www.gspellchecker.com/2016/05/manchester-police-chief-thinks-youre-not-free-to-offend-religion/
Perhaps it’s just the police who are upset by it.
Hate speech laws can be abused very easily. One man in London told a police constable “Your horse is gay”. The constable arrested him on a hate speech. Eventually the court threw it out but by then the man had spent time being arrested, had to get a lawyer and spend time in jail.
Just the charges are a punishment in themselves and are often used by some police as a method of reprisal or control.
Maybe it’s just me, but I find the police’s reaction to be more Gestapo-like than anything the guy did.
cr
I agree this shouldn’t be illegal, but can’t agree, without knowing her, that this was an “odious, a reprehensible thing to do to his girlfriend”. It’s similar to the type of thing I might do to my wife, or vice versa, and the reaction would be either laughter, or the rolling of eyes.
I wanted to add that I think his biggest mistake, perhaps his only mistake depending on how his girlfriend reacted, was posting this online.
My wife and I love dark humor, we’ve made jokes about things, between ourselves”, that would make “Should I gas the Jews?” tame by comparison. Things that would instantly have us condemned if we posted them online without people knowing us personally.
Agreed in spirit, but not in example. I’ve said things far worse than “Should we gas the jews”, but that was to people who appreciated dark humor. You need to be careful who you tell those jokes to, because knowing who you’re audience is is quite a lot in comedy.
However, why I think this crosses the line of pranks to pull on loved ones is that the dog isn’t going to stop being trained once the prank runs it’s way to completion. They’ll both laugh and she’ll roll her eyes… and then eventually realize that the dog is going to be trained to behave VERY questionably around strangers for a long time.
The guy didn’t tell a dark joke, he made the dog INTO a dark joke. And un-doing the damage ain’t easy.
I’m not sure how the training issue could be a problem. If all you had to go on was the dogs behavior you’d have no clue that what the dog was doing was in any way related to Hitler or Nazis.
What is going to trigger the dogs trained display? If the trigger is inadvertent, for example a WWII documentary happens to be on showing an appropriate scene when the wife walks into a friends house with the dog, how could anyone guess that the dogs display has something to do specifically with Hitler or Nazis, or what the dogs display is intended to mean (by the human trainer)?
If the trigger isn’t inadvertent, meaning that the trainer is intentionally cuing the dog, well then shame on the trainers behavior perhaps, but how is the dogs trained response a problem in any way? It isn’t as if the guy trained it to be a “white dog.” He trained it to do silly, cutesy, sometimes annoying, doggy things.
Agreed. How could you tell that’s a ‘Nazi dog’? Its Hitler salute just looks like paw-waving to anyone not ‘in on the joke’.
cr
I’m heartened to see so many here agree it shouldn’t be a criminal matter.
Sadly, there are too many forums (fora?) where people would gladly see him go to gaol.
This is a slippery slope which certain European countries e.g. Germany and Austria have already slid down where “Holocaust Denial” is a criminal offense punishable with imprisonment.
The result being that bonafide historical inquiry that might even hint at being perceived as being interpretable as questioning some detail of fact held by the officially approved holocaust narrative will never even be contemplated by a historian or journalist expecting to avoid arrest let alone have a career.
This has the result that the field is left to cranks and dyed in the wool antisemites. The latter also seeing their pet conspiracy theory being fueled by prompting the question: if it’s all so true why does it (the holocaust) need special governmental protection which no other fact of history is provided with?
Similary posting a dog making a nazi salute is criminalized while posting images ridiculing and insulting the prophet of Islam is an expression of free speech? Goose, gander.
Please note that there would be no chance the perpetrator of this stupid stunt would ever be found guilty of anything in a German court.
The laws concerning restrictions on free speech are quite specific in Germany. Many foreigners seem to have a very sketchy understanding of the pertinant laws in Germany.
Still, there is Lutz Bachmann.
Donald Trump better not go to Germany.
Maybe not Mel Brookes either.
Lutz Bachmann, a founder of PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West) an organization that sees “Islamism as a misogynist and violent ideology” was convicted of “inciting racial hatred” in Germany. His conviction is based on his Facebook posts in 2014 in which he allegedly called refugees “cattle,” “scum,” and “riff-raff .”
Meanwhile the internet is awash with videos (suppressed in the mainstream state-sponsored media)of refugees appearing to behave exactly as Mr. Lutz describes, and worse.
Aw, m8. It went on for a bit too long, but I thought the video was rather funny, especially the very end. His stated rationale implies that he’s against Nazism. It’s clearly a joke – maybe a bad joke – and the guy’s just trying to get a rise out of his girlfriend. This shouldn’t be illegal.
Funny? That is some sense of humor.
I’m with you there Adam, along with about 95% of people who gave the video a thumbs up.
Good for you. In your world, majority rules.
“Good for you. In your world, majority rules.”
No, in my world the majority opinion is a good indicator of the majority opinion.
It is also, by the very act of stating it, an indicator that one thinks that majority opinion is correct. Why else would you say it?
I would only remind those who say it for whatever reason – fortunately for all of us, we do not live in a pure democracy.
“It is also, by the very act of stating it, an indicator that one thinks that majority opinion is correct. Why else would you say it?”
I would never say the majority is correct when it comes to a subjective opinion as to what is funny. It was the fact that you essentially did just that, that I was responding to.
That being said what is generally considered funny or not is entirely based on subjective consensus. So when it comes right down to it the fact that 95% of people find it funny justifies my saying you have a poor sense of humor rather than the contrary.
“the fact that 95% of people find it funny justifies my saying you have a poor sense of humor”
I believe you just made my point. When you are in a hole the best policy is to drop the shovel.
“I believe you just made my point. When you are in a hole the best policy is to drop the shovel.”
Except once again that wasn’t my point, I was just throwing your reasoning back at you.
If ignorance and stupidity were a crime we would need many more prisons and we have gone broke already. The scrutiny might be on the education, or lack thereof for this person, and his parents, assuming he has any.
On this side of the pond we ponder why millions of people apparently want their next president to be a man-baby.
The thought of arresting anyone for doing that is completely foreign to me.
Social media is one of the best things that ever happened to the human race. Instead of not knowing where all the ignorance and prejudice rests in our civilization, they do their advertising for us.
With devolution, we in Scotland always faced the prospect of a virulently nationalistic party (the SNP) running most aspects of the country, and that has been the case for the last ten years, with another five (at least) to go after the elections a few days ago. The Labour party has provided singularly inept opposition. There is no second house to scrutinise legislation. The committee system that is supposed to perform that function is stuffed with SNP MSPs, and its rare criticisms are ignored at will. The situation now is that arbitrary personal opinions of ministers are regularly translated into law surprisingly quickly and with little proper discussion. (The Scottish parliament passes nearly twice as many laws as Westminster!) While the police are nominally un-political, it is not surprising if they tend to reflect the rather holier-than-thou attitude of the dominant political party.
I do not approve of what the guy did. I think that it was stupid and pretty obnoxious, but his proposed prosecution was probably inevitable in the present milieu. Whatever happened to the Scottish Enlightenment?
Query: do we have laws against incitement to violence? If so, this incident might fall under that. If he convinces a judge/jury he was really joking, he could still be ordered to pay a fine and/or do community service (preferably, at the Holocaust Museum) and/or take a course about the harm done (all right this time, but don’t do it again). That said, even incitement laws would be anti-free speech. Sigh.
I think (sometimes at any rate) it is useful to distinguish between “hate crimes” and “hate speech” laws. I’d have to say that this goes into the latter, and hence should be protected expression. “Hate crimes” laws are in my view ones which should be periodically modified as the status of groups changes; it should not be assumed that the “playing field” is always unlevel in the same way.
I agree with most. What the guy did was not good, and if it’s really what he believes (rather than a really, really tasteless joke), he is reprehensible, but what he did shouldn’t be illegal.
Making a bigot a martyr just gives people reason to support the bigotry as well as the person punished.
“What the guy did was not good, and if it’s really what he believes (rather than a really, really tasteless joke), he is reprehensible, but what he did shouldn’t be illegal.”
I think he made it clear he’s not a Nazi, and that he understands it’s tasteless. That’s what he, and the majority of people who thumbed it up find funny about it. It’s like a dead baby joke, or the kind of humor I recall Mad Magazine doing. If people didn’t recognize it’s tastelessness they wouldn’t find it funny.
Let’s try this, especially since you brought it up. Dead baby joke. Not like a dead baby joke which usually ends with a truck load of dead babies. HA HA This can be just tasteless humor, as you say. The difference is we all know there is no truck load of dead babies. There never was. But “let’s gas the jews” said about 20 times did happen and Hitler did it. Not funny, regardless of how many idiots on facebook think so.
But, of course, whether if is funny or not is off topic.
Humor is rather a subjective thing, subject to critical (not criminal) judgement.
“The difference is we all know there is no truck load of dead babies.”
How do you make a dead baby float. You start with two scoops of dead baby. No truckloads required unless you franchise.
The problem I have, and why I’ve defended the “joke” is that the notion it IS offensive, rather than YOU WERE offended by it, is what feeds the mentality that would criminalize it. It’s rather similar to people who would say drawing Mohammed IS offensive feeding the mentality of people who would kill cartoonists. If it offends you fine, but don’t say I, or Adam, or anyone else is wrong, or has a warped sense of humor if we find it funny, and aren’t offended.
So where people forced to go online and watch this video or were they offended merely at the thought that someone had made and posted it. Personally I wouldn’t have bothered to watch it based on the picture above. It seems no one is able these days to not watch or read or hear or see something offensive and complain. The illogicality of it all is that no crime is committed until someone is post facto offended.
As for free speech – Europe abandoned that idea long ago as it was a danger to what the brits, in their sharply divided and stratified country are wont to call “community cohesion”.
There are free copies online of both Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” and Leni Reifenstahls’ “Triumph of the Will”. Both are public domain and hence on the Internet Movie Archive in their entirety. What’s the statute of limitations on these things?
I really got to wondering what these phrases sound like in a Scottish accent (as I am currently using a FedEx computer without audio) and ran them through a English to Scottish online translator.
I got
Shuid ah gas th’ jews?
Posting this on the internet was a mistake, not a crime. I’m assuming that the joke was thought funny by the perpetrator and his girl. I can’t imagine it being posted to share with others if not intended as humor. As has been pointed out, private humor can be pretty raw or crude, but appreciated in-house. And, there have been numerous professional comedians that perform(ed) crude, offensive humor to the chagrin or delight of the public.
However offensive it may be to some to portray the holocaust and the Nazis as subjects of humor, it is far better than Turkey’s insistence that there was no Armenian genocide. Talk about it. Hate it. Laugh at it. Discuss it. Bring it into the open so it won’t fester and break out again in humanity.
Free speech should not ever be a crime.
Society has a right to determine that some things are not okay to do and say publicly. This is not an expression of an idea. It is hate for hate’s sake — and that he thinks it is a joke may even be worse.
Should this jackass go to jail? No. Should he publicly have to face the consequence of being an asshole? Yes. Make him face the court and plea to being a shithead, then give him 50 hours of community service or something.
Being a shithead is not a crime. It is not something to be adjudicated in court.
Off topic again for me. The free speech part of this is easy. What is apparently difficult is not knowing a tasteless and pathetic joke. Hell, maybe that’s why so many people enjoy Trump.
“What is apparently difficult is not knowing a tasteless and pathetic joke.”
There you go again claiming to be able to objectively determine what subjected opinion is correct, or not. Since you’re on a roll how about giving the age old vanilla, or chocolate conundrum a shot.
Is someone here saying this wasn’t tasteless and pathetic? I must have missed that. I thought this page was addressing the question of criminalization of speech.
I am saying it wasn’t tasteless and pathetic.
The legal matter is important and under discussion but also important is a discussion on the rush to condemn and discipline , one way or the other, those who transgress ‘someone’s’ sensibilities.
As I said elsewhere, shades of Tim Hunt.
It was a joke.
I’m not sure who you are arguing against. I agree it was a joke. It was a bad tasteless joke, IMO. Options about what constitutes tastelessness vary. Which is why criminalizing thought crimes is a bad idea.
You think it was funny, it seems. That’s your right. And it it’s the right of those of us who disagree to let yoyo’s like the fellow who trained the dog know that we think he’s an idiot for doing it.
“And it it’s the right of those of us who disagree to let yoyo’s like the fellow who trained the dog know that we think he’s an idiot for doing it.”
I have no problem with you or anyone else expressing their opinion. I happen to think it was funny. The problem I have is with people saying “it’s tasteless”, or “you have a warped sense of humor if you think it’s funny”, statements made as though they are objective facts. It’s the difference between a Muslim saying “cartoons of Mohammed offend me”, or “cartoons of Mohammed are offensive”. The latter leads to blasphemy laws, or the murder of cartoonists.
If only Jerry had this video when he participated in the cats versus dogs debate. Good luck teaching your moggie to “Sieg Heil!”
I don’t see either why this would warrant an arrest, or even a fine — possibly not even in Germany, and we do have special laws against this kind of speech or ideology (Americans need to consider that this has a taste of treason, but is also justified to combat hate crimes and special historical responsibility). Someome would get into hot water though, too.
In this case, the presentation doesn’t even bring a “he really means it” across. He’s a kind of punk. It was crass and in bad taste, but nothing more than that. Approriate would be taking it down, not drawing Streisand-attention to it.
I’m pretty sure he didn’t ‘mean it’. I doubt any Nazi sympathiser would conclude their video with a picture of a dog wearing a Hitler moustache.
cr
FFS! The guy even starts off with “I thought I would turn him [the dog] into the least cute thing I could think of, which is a Nazi”. Quite obviously the rest of the video including the offending question is in that context, it isn’t aimed at promulgating Nazism. The whole premise of the video is that Nazism is objectionable! Calling it a hate crime is ridiculous.
If this guy is going to be prosecuted for this video then any comedian who satirises the Nazis is equally at risk. Like for example this one from Ricky Gervais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfBAkD8K-nw
cr
Exactly, or Mel Brookes.
+1
So again we calls for shunning, mocking, scorn.
And, calling him names and some character assassination.
For making a joke. Shades of Tim Hunt.
He said Nazis were the ‘least cute’ thing he could think of.
Indeed.
He made an analogy between dogs and nazis. He implicitly repudiated Holocaust denial. He implied being a nazi is a hateful thing.
Tasteless? Sure. Odious? Not remotely.
The reason for our Constitutional guarantee is not to protect speech that no one objects to — such a law would serve no purpose. The entire point is to safeguard us all against the possible eventuality that we may at some future time find ourselves on the other side of the equation.
I’d say to the girlfriend, “you can’t dump him fast enough”
Agree with Prof Coyne though I think arresting him was definitely over the top, out of proportion and inappropriate, and the laws need revision or at least more sensitivity and common sense in their application. After looking at the video I think its likely to just have been meant facetiously – however bad taste. It does seem to be comical and a send up. Given recent (and current) modern history though, there is tho the issue of some people sympathsizing with the expressed sentiments and it having an encouragement effect on some people living within UK, Scotland, Ireland.