"Nazi dog" trainer fined £800 for posting video

A man who trained his girlfriend's dog to raise its paw in a Nazi-style salute on hearing the phrase "Gas the Jews" and then posted a video of it on YouTube, has been fined £800.

Mark Meechan was found guilty last month under s 127 of the Communications Act 2003, which makes it an offence to use a public communications network to send certain types of messages including those that are grossly offensive or threatening. He denied the charge but Sheriff Derek O'Carroll found it proved that the video was grossly offensive, containing menacing, antisemitic and racist material.

The accused claimed that the video, entitled “M8 Yer dug’s a Naazi”, was posted as a joke to annoy his girlfriend. The case has proved controversial between those who believe that while offensive, the video was. not harmful and should be protected under freedom of speech, and those who claim it is liable to incite to racial hatred.

Passing sentence, Sheriff O'Carroll told Meechan: “The centrepiece of your video consists of you repeating the phrase 'Gas the Jews' over and over again as a command to a dog which then reacts. Sometimes the phrase is 'You want to Gas the Jews'. You recite 'Gas the Jews' in a variety of dramatic ways. 'Gas the Jews' in one form or another is repeated by you 23 times within a few minutes. You use the command Sieg Heil, having trained the dog to raise its paw in response and the video shows a clip of a Nuremberg rally and a flashing image of Hitler with strident music. You say the video was only intended as a joke to upset your girlfriend, whose dog you used, and nothing more.”

Observing that Meechan had intended the video to be “as offensive as you could make it”, and had posted it on his own unrestricted publicly accessible video channel, he continued: “The evidence before this court was that the video was viewed as grossly offensive within Jewish communities in Scotland and that such material tended to normalise antisemitic attitudes and provoke further unpleasant antisemitic messages and as such, this video using menacing language, led to great concern. The reaction by employers in the local area suggests that not only Jewish people found this material highly offensive: you say you lost a number of jobs as a result.”

Although the statutory test was a high one, it had been satisfied. The claim that the video was intended only to annoy Meechan's girlfriend and as a joke did not help him: “A joke can be grossly offensive. A racist joke or a grossly offensive video does not lose its racist or grossly offensive quality merely because the maker asserts he only wanted to get a laugh.

“In any event, that claim lacked credibility. You had no need to make a video if all you wanted to do was to train the dog to react to offensive commands.”

The sheriff stated that although he had invited both legal representatives to make submissions during the trial about the law on freedom of expression, that had been done only to a very limited extent. “In the absence of focused submissions on that topic by either the Crown or the defence, all I can say is that, while that right is very important, in all modern democratic countries the law necessarily places some limits on that right.”

He noted that Meechan, a first offender, had a “very favourable” social work report which showed him as of low risk of reoffending. 

“In these circumstances, I rule out a custodial sentence and therefore any alternative to a custodial sentence.” Having regard to his resources, he fined him £800, with six months to pay.