Baudet also convicted on appeal for Holocaust comparisons

ANPThierry Baudet

NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 14:25

FVD leader Thierry Baudet should not have compared the corona policy with the Holocaust. That is the ruling of the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam.

In December 2021, the preliminary relief judge already ruled that the member of parliament had to remove tweets with references to the Holocaust and the run-up to it. In addition, he was banned from using images of the Holocaust in the context of the debate about the corona measures.

The judge imposed a penalty of 25,000 euros per day or per time when the prohibitions were violated. Baudet removed the messages, but appealed. He spoke at the time of an “insane, incomprehensible verdict”.

The Court of Appeal has now reached the same conclusion as the preliminary relief judge on appeal. According to the court, the rights of Holocaust survivors and relatives prevail over freedom of expression.

‘Trivializing the Holocaust’

According to the court, the tweets of the FVD leader lead to “triggering the Holocaust” and may have also led to “the spread of anti-Semitic statements on the internet”.

The Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI), the Central Jewish Consultation (CJO) and four Jewish survivors of World War II filed summary proceedings against Baudet after the publication of the tweets in November 2021. In one of the messages, unvaccinated people were ” the new Jews”.

‘Delighted with verdict’

In a statement, CIDI says it is pleased that the court has upheld the court’s ruling. “It is of great importance to the Jewish community that the Court of Appeal has also ruled on appeal that these kinds of comparisons between the Holocaust and a pandemic are unlawful.”

The CIDI thinks that Baudet’s comparisons were “historically completely wrong”. They are “unnecessarily hurtful to Holocaust survivors and next of kin. Moreover, they erode the meaning of the Holocaust.”

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