Free Count Dankula

It’s official: jokes can now land you in prison. Markus Meechan – known on YouTube as Count Dankula – has been found guilty in a Scottish court of law for the crime of hate speech and breaching the electronic communications act. His arrest followed a viral online video in which Meechan can be seen encouraging his girlfriend’s pug to give a Nazi salute and to respond enthusiastically to the phrase ‘gas the Jews’. His sentence will be passed at Airdrie Sheriff Court on 23 April.

The intention behind the video is unambiguously comedic; the very concept of a Nazi pug could hardly be interpreted otherwise. This has not stopped Sheriff Derek O’Carroll, the judge presiding over this case, from finding Meechan guilty and declaring that ‘the description of the video as humorous is no magic wand’. Without wishing to resort to stereotypes, I can think of no one less qualified to assess the merits of comedy than the Scottish judiciary.

The notion that free speech is not under threat in this country is no longer a sustainable claim. Meechan may not be the first to be prosecuted for offensive jokes, but his case sets a particularly dangerous precedent by which even professional comedians might be criminalised for their material. This kind of gradual authoritarianism has already emerged in Canada, where comedian Mike Ward was fined $42,000 by the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal for telling a joke about a disabled boy. The seemingly unstoppable rise of offence culture, largely fuelled by social media, means that the UK is unlikely to be far behind.

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