Judges in Amsterdam have ordered far right Dutch politician Thierry Baudet to remove tweets in which he compares the current coronavirus regulations to the Holocaust, and to stop using photographs from the Holocaust to make his point.

Two Jewish groups and four Holocaust survivors took legal action against Forum voor Democratie leader Baudet after he repeatedly made the comparison in public. This, the organisations said, ‘is seriously offensive and unnecessarily hurtful to the murdered victims, survivors and relatives’.

The court ruled that while Baudet’s comments may not have been intended to belittle the Holocaust, ‘by comparing the coronavirus policy and persecution of the Jews, which bear no relation to each other, he was implicitly downplaying what happened to the Jews.’

At the same time, Baudet was creating a breeding ground for anti-Semitism, the court said.

Baudet was ordered to remove the tweets or face a €25,000 a day fine.

Three statements

The organisations had highlighted three statements made by Baudet. In one he said that ‘the unvaccinated are the new Jews, those who look away, the new Nazis’. He also made a comparison between children who could not go to a Sinterklaas party because they were not vaccinated and a boy with a star of David on his back in the Lodz ghetto.

In the third incident, he said it was ‘totally ironic’ that the former Buchenwald concentration camp had brought in special measures for the unvaccinated. ‘How can they still not see that history is repeating itself?’ Baudet said.

Ronny Naftaniel, of Jewish group CJO, said after the verdict that ‘not being able to go into a café because of personal choice – not being vaccinated – cannot be compared with the murder of millions of people, based on who they are.’

Appeal

FvD said in a reaction on Twitter that the verdict was ‘hallucinating’ while Baudet himself said it was ‘incomprehensible’ and retweeted all the notes which the court ruled should be removed. On Thursday morning, he did remove them all.

Baudet also said he plans to appeal against the ruling.