Politics

YouTuber convicted, faces prison for ‘offensive’ joke video

The United Kingdom has taken steps to deal with yet another serious threat to its national security.  This time, the threat comes in the form of speech — specifically, a joke video posted to YouTube by Mark Meechan, also known as “Count Dankula,” who trained a pet dog to do a Roman salute (That’s the “Hitler” salute, for those in Rio Linda, as Rush Limbaugh might say) when he said the words, “Seig Heil.”

Authorities jumped on this and Meechan was convicted by a UK court of being “grossly offensive” and now faces jail.

The Daily Caller reported:

The stunt was not meant to promote fascism or white supremacy in any way and was merely a joke done to irritate Count Dankula’s girlfriend. The court appeared unfazed by this argument, and found him guilty of a crime that could result in two months of jail-time.

Whether you find the joke offensive or not, it’s hard to argue how a sieg-heiling pug is a threat to anyone, especially when it was not meant as an endorsement of national socialism. This dog is not going to create a Woofen-SS division just because he can raise up his paw in return for a treat.

You read that right — Two months in jail for a joke.

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The Daily Caller said that Meechan is “not the first British citizen to play up the Nazis for laughs or apolitical shock.”

Fans of Monty Python may recall that the show once had a skit where the crew dressed up as Nazis and threw up the salute for comedy, the Daily Caller said. They were not arrested for such an act.

The Daily Caller further said:

The original punk rock scene were fond of the shock value of Nazi symbols, even though most of the bands were very left-wing and did it to offend conservatives. The Sex Pistols are still cultural icons in spite of their Roman salutes.

The media’s favorite royal Prince Harry dressed up as a Nazi, complete with a swastika armband, at a 2005 costume party. That poor choice has not detracted from the glowing praise he usually receives from the press and he was never charged with a crime.

Interestingly enough, teaching your dog how to sieg heil angered actual Nazis. The Third Reich tried to punish a Finnish man who taught his dog how to Roman salute because government officials took grave offense at such an act.

Fortunately, the post said, free expression is valued in the United States and is guaranteed under the First Amendment — at least for now.

But free speech and free expression is not protected in the UK, the country which gave us the Magna Carta and English Common Law and great leaders like Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.  Now, it bans visitors based on their conservative political views.

Today, authorities rule the country with an iron fist over the mouths of their citizens with hate speech laws that suppress political dissent.

“Criminalizing offensive jokes does nothing for public safety — it only undermines free speech and sends a message to dissidents to get in line,” the Daily Caller said.  “The UK has many problems, such as thousands of jihadis living in its country and rising knife crime. Fascist-saluting pugs are not one of them.”

Paul Joseph Watson, writing that “not a single person complained about the video,” noted, “Apparently, you can’t have multiculturalism and free speech at the same time.”

Sadly, with this action, the UK has become the real joke…

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Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

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