Man Teaches Pug Nazi Salute, Is Charged With Hate Crime

A 28-year-old Scottish man insists it was all a joke "to annoy my girlfriend," but his video of himself training her pug to make a Nazi-like salute has landed him in the slammer on hate crime charges, reports the Guardian. Markus Meechan posted the video, which he calls "M8 yer dug's a Nazi," on YouTube in April, and it quickly went viral. The video now has more than a million views, including roughly 16,000 likes and 1,000 downvotes. In the video he repeatedly asks his girlfriend's dog, Buddha, if the pug wants to "gas the Jews" and teaches him to raise his paw to the command "Sieg Heil," reports the Scottish Daily Record.

Meechan leads the video with the disclaimer, "My girlfriend is always ranting and raving about how cute and adorable her wee dog is, so I thought I would come up with the least cute thing that I could think of, which is a Nazi." He writes in a blog post that he was subsequently fired from his temp job at a call center, which he "knew" would happen, and he was ultimately slammed for his "outrageous" attitude, per the Independent: "Everyone's going to actually think that I hate Jews now and I don't at all. I'm kind of panicked about it. Honestly, I don't hate anyone, the whole purpose of this was just to annoy my girlfriend." Police say that there is "no place for hate crime in Scotland and police take all reports of incidents seriously." (These neo-Nazis shaved a swastika into their victim's hair.)