And then when we go outside of that,
where you actually have the state coming down and trying to protect people's feelings and all that,
You can see that happen, Spiked has a really great documentary called "The Curious Case of the Nazi Pug."
You guys can go watch it, it's about a 20 minute documentary,
and it's about this youtuber, Count Dankula...
(laughter)
[BORIS] Sounds like a very serious person.
[ALEX] Of the Hungarian House of Dankula.
[LOU] And a while back, he taught his girlfriend's pug to give the Nazi salute.
[LENORE] How can you tell it's different from a shake?
[LOU] Exactly...
[BORIS] Because he did it in response to 'Seig Heil.'
[LOU] It was in response to "Gas the Jews" actually...
[ALEX] In defense of the dog, the dog did not know that it was a Nazi salute.
[LOU] But, Brendan, can you talk a little bit about that case,
and also, you spend your time between the US and Europe,
and just what's going on there as far as that case and hate speech in general.
[BRENDAN] We don't have freedom of speech in Britain, which is a real shame,
because it's one of the birthplaces of the idea of freedom of speech
going back to the Levellers in the English Civil War, John Milton, John Stuart Mill,
all these great warriors for freedom of speech and now we've just abandoned it.
The Nazi pug story is, on one level, hilarious and ridiculous.
This guy, as you say, he was a youtuber, he had like 8 followers, no one was following this guy.
Now he has hundreds of thousands because he taught his girlfriend's pug to do a Nazi salute,
because he wanted to irritate his girlfriend.
And he thought, what's the best thing...what's the worst thing you could do to a cute dog? Turn it into a Nazi.
So he put this on youtube. No one complained about it.
Literally no one. The police in Scotland caught wind of it, they heard about it,
and they went out looking for people who would feel offense, and they went to Jewish groups and so on,
and they eventually found someone who felt offended.
He was arrested under our Communications Act, section 27 which says "You cannot be grossly offensive online."
We have a law against gross offensiveness.
[ALEX] That's the whole point of the internet!
[BORIS] How do they decide that?
[BRENDAN] Well, it's entirely subjective, it turns out.
And he was taken into court and he was found guilty of being grossly offensive.
He was spared a prison sentence,
I think if he'd been sent to jail it would have been a serious problem for Britain,
but he was fined £800, which he's refusing to pay on principle, which I think is quite right.
[BORIS] So he will go to jail?
[BRENDAN] So he might still go to jail.
