YouTube comic Markus ‘Count Dankula’ Meechan has vowed to defy the Scottish judiciary after his attempts to appeal a conviction for teaching his girlfriend’s pug dog to respond to “grossly offensive” commands as a joke.
The politically incorrect comic, a strident anti-Communist who describes himself as a “centre-left libertarian” and clashes frequently with genuine white nationalists online, was fined £800 for a viral video in which the pug, named Buddha, was filmed watching Adolf Hitler speeches and raising its paw in response to the command “Sieg Heil”.
Meechan stated in the video that its purpose was to “piss off” his girlfriend, who thought the dog was the “cutest thing in the world”, by turning it into “the least cute thing that I could think of, which is a Nazi”.
However, the sheriff — a type of Scottish judge — ruled it was “self-evident” that his video was anti-Semitic over the protestations of the accused in a trial without a jury.
The YouTuber denounced the conviction as “a very, very dark day in regards to freedom of speech and freedom of expression” and vowed to appeal it, and crowdfunded a huge legal war chest to do so from sympathetic members of the public.
But in the latest video uploaded to the Count Dankula channel he claims his attempts to appeal have been rejected, in terms which he suggested could be interpreted as a veiled threat to his lawyer to “back off”.
My appeal has now been fully rejected. I made a video discussing what I am able to make public.
It's not quite over yet, but I explain more about that in the video.https://t.co/vdz0IAtm8V
— Count Dankula🏴 (@CountDankulaTV) August 7, 2018
“My appeal has been completely rejected at both stages,” he informed his audience of almost 310,000 subscribers.
Reading from what he claims is the first rejection letter, Meechan said he was told his conviction was “not arguable”.
“This was a deeply unpleasant offence in which disgraceful and utterly offensive material was very widely distributed by the appellant. This was to the considerable distress of the [Jewish community] and — just as disturbingly — to the apparent approval of a large number of persons who appear to share the appellant’s racist views,” the material reads.
The letter claims Meechan was fortunate the “learned sheriff” did not hand down a custodial sentence, and even goes on to suggest that Meechan’s lawyer fortunate he did not himself “require representation on the matter of contempt [of court]” for endorsing Meechan’s “defiance”.
“What does that last paragraph look like to you?” the Scotsman asked viewers.
“Looked like a little bit of a message to my lawyer there, didn’t it? ‘Back off’.”
UPDATE : This is the first appeal rejection letter, sensitive information has been redacted. pic.twitter.com/QVRxKsz9fA
— Count Dankula🏴 (@CountDankulaTV) August 8, 2018
Meechan added that he is not quite at the end of the road in terms of legal recourse, and that his team will attempt to have the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission force the courts to hear his appeal — but that, in the meantime, his unpaid fine will remain active, and must be paid by October 2018.
Meechan reiterated his previous vow that he would refuse to pay this fine, “because I am not a criminal, I have done nothing wrong; the intent and context of what I did was completely ignored and what was substituted was this completely farcical apparent secret racist Nazi ideology”.
He suggested that, “whether we like it or not, boys, I’m going to jail” — unless his attempts to win an appeal do somehow succeed.
“I’m obviously not happy about the fact that I’m going to have to go to jail, but I’m more than prepared to do it for what I believe in,” he concluded.
“I absolutely refuse to sacrifice my principles just so I can get an easy time under a law I shouldn’t even be getting charged under… a law that I feel shouldn’t even exist in the first place.
“I will not bend the fucking knee. I am not fucking backing down from this, so fucking come at me bro,” he declared.
“Let’s fucking do this.”
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