Scottish comedian Mark Meechan, better known as Count Dankula, has posted a video on his demonetized YouTube channel, describing the multi-year legal saga he has been going through for making a joke that some people found offensive.
And this legal path he has been following in an attempt to clear his name has now reached a fork in the road, with the YouTuber asking his audience to help him decide which way to go.
Count Dankula, you may remember, is behind the “Nazi Pug” video – which was a joke – where he is seen teaching his now-wife’s dog to behave like “the least cute thing that he could think of,” namely, a Nazi giving a Nazi salute. But ended up causing outrage online, amplified by the bloodthirsty media.
In 2016, Dankula was accused of posting an offensive, under British law, message on an internet platform. “Offensive” is a subjective category and the law itself is suspect; nevertheless, he was found guilty in 2018 and ordered to pay a fine of £800.
But since he doesn’t feel like a criminal and resents having a criminal record and becoming unemployable, he decided to appeal.
Dankula then had a fundraiser to cover his upcoming legal costs, hoping to get £100,000, but ending up with £190,000 (c$238,000).
Since that time, he and his legal team have been submitting appeals to all available legal instances. The Sheriff’s Court of Appeals in Scotland twice rejected his submissions, and then Dankula’s legal team managed to get a hearing before three top judges in the land in order to gain access to the High Court.
But this failed too.
“A very expensive way of being told to go fuck myself,” Count Dankula observes.
Finally, he and his lawyer appealed to UK’s Supreme Court but the case was rejected as “incompetent” – apparently, literally with no further explanation.
All of this has cost a shocking lot of money – £140,000, to be precise.
Meechan is adamant that he does not want to have any more fundraisers, but is now debating whether to spend the remaining money by turning to the European Court of Human Rights (which is not an EU institution) – or donate it to charity, as he had hoped to do.
This is that fork in the road, and Meechan is letting his audience decide in a democratic manner: by voting in a poll. The poll question is: “Should Count Dankula v. The United Kingdom happen?”
(95% said “yes” as of late on Wednesday)
