A Former Bundestag member of the far-right AfD was convicted by a court for comparing COVID measures to the persecution of Jews by the Nazis in a Facebook post.
Florian Jäger, an Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician who served as a member of Germany’s national parliament, the Bundestag, posted a video on his Facebook page in 2021 in which he claimed that the German government’s COVID measures were comparable with the November pogrom terror campaign against German Jews in 1938, reports the DW.
The issue was taken to court, and Jäger was convicted in Munich on August 18. The court ruled that the comments in his video post amounted to incitement, hence sentencing Jäger to pay a fine of €2,700. The amount was reduced from €5,400 due to the poor state of the politician’s personal finances. Jäger has one week to appeal the decision.
Senior prosecutor Andreas Franck, an antisemitism officer of the Bavarian judiciary, argued in court that Jäger had intentionally sought to incite. „If the Holocaust is degraded to an arbitrary object of comparison for measures that are perceived as unwelcome, then the protection of Jewish people from antisemitic attacks would also be dragged down „. He added that as a politician, Jäger was quite aware that he was inciting to hatred with his video, and „poured petrol on the fire.”
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