Justice will not prosecute FVD leader Thierry Baudet because of his comparison between Jews and unvaccinated. The Public Prosecution Service announced Thursday to dismiss the Baudet case because he would have acted “not punishable”. The FVD member had written on Twitter that the corona measures were comparable to the situation of Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. According to Baudet, the unvaccinated were “the new Jews” and “outcasters” were the “new Nazis and NSB members”. Earlier, the judge ruled in summary proceedings that he had to delete his tweets.
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The Public Prosecution Service states that its statements were aimed at “magnifying the inconvenience of the corona measures” and not at “playing down the Holocaust”. The reports also would not incite “hatred or violence.” In addition, the Public Prosecution Service reasons that criticism of cabinet policy “touches the right to freedom of expression to the core”. Condemning a Member of Parliament is only justified if words “go beyond hurting, shocking and disturbing” and “inciting hatred, violence, discrimination and intolerance”. According to the court, that is not the case.
The reason for the case is a lawsuit that was brought by the Central Jewish Consultation, the CIDI and four Holocaust survivors against Baudet. In December, the judge ruled that the FVD leader had to remove the messages because the parallel was “actually flawed”. Moreover, according to the judge, with the tweets he would have contributed to a climate that fuels anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, the Public Prosecution Service states that Baudet was not guilty of a criminal offense, pointing out that civil law can deviate from criminal law in a legal sense.