'Nazi pug' man fined £800 for posting 'grossly offensive' video

"You use the command Sieg Heil, having trained the dog to raise its paw in response and the video shows a clip of a Nuremberg rally and a flashing image of Hitler with strident music. You say the video was only intended as a joke to upset your girlfriend, whose dog you used, and nothing more.

"On the whole evidence..I found it proved that the video you posted, using a public communications network, was grossly offensive and contained menacing, anti-Semitic and racist material."

He added: "The fact that you claim in the video, and elsewhere, that the video was intended only to annoy your girlfriend and as a joke and that you did not intend to be racist is of little assistance to you.

"A joke can be grossly offensive. A racist joke or a grossly offensive video does not lose its racist or grossly offensive quality merely because the maker asserts he only wanted to get a laugh."

Mr Meechan – who was supported in court by Tommy Robinson, former leader of far-right group the English Defence League (EDL -  said: "This is a really dangerous precedent to set - for people to say things and their context to be completely ignored and then they can be convicted for it.

"You don't get to decide the context, other people don't get to decide the context, the court decides. That's dangerous."