“The comparison is flawed and you have spoken unnecessarily offensively and unlawfully of survivors of the Holocaust,” the court ruled. “The right to free speech for a representative of the people is not unlimited,” it said.
The Chief Rabbi of The Netherlands, Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, expressed his satisfaction with the court judgment. “That comparison is an implicit trivialization of the murder of six million Jews and is hurtful to survivors of the Holocaust and their relatives,’’ the rabbi said.
A Dutch judge has ruled that far-right politician Thierry Baudet will no longer be able to use images of the Holocaust when speaking zaout thre coronavirus.
MP Thierry Baudet, founder and leader of the far-right Forum for Democracy (FvD), was found guilty by a court of “creating a breeding ground for anti-Semitism over several social media posts in which he compared the Dutch government’s coronavirus measures to the Holocaust.
Baudet, among other things, described the non-vaccinated as “new Jews” and those who look away as “new Nazis”. He had also compared the photo of a non-vaccinated child deprived of the ‘’Saint-Nicolas’’ party to that of a Jewish child wearing a yellow star.
“The comparison is flawed and you have spoken unnecessarily offensively and unlawfully of survivors of the Holocaust,” the court ruled. “The right to free speech for a representative of the people is not unlimited,” the court said.
He was ordered to delete four social media posts within 48 hours or be fined €25,000 per day that they remain online. He was also banned from reposting any images linking the Holocaust and the coronavirus.
Two Jewish organizations and four Jewish survivors of World War II had filed a lawsuit against the politician because of his comparison.
The Chief Rabbi of The Netherlands, Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, expressed his satisfaction with the court judgment. “That comparison is an implicit trivialization of the murder of six million Jews and is hurtful to survivors of the Holocaust and their relatives,’’ the rabbi said.
“While the Jewish community is satisfied with the verdict, we are facing anti-Semitic reactions beacuse of it.’’
“I express the wish that sympathizers of MP Baudet will also abide by the judge’s decision and that they are aware that with these absurd comparisons they are once again adding salt to the unhealed wounds of the Jewish community.”