Update from Meechan himself (From July 21, 2016)

One of the weirdest stories to surface recently has been that of Markus Meechan, who taught his girlfriend’s dog how to perform something similar to a Nazi salute. The success of the online video also led to his arrest.

Meechan (from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Scotland) uploaded a video to Youtube (M8 Yer Dugs a Nazi), depicting a pug named Buddah responding to the phrase “gas the Jews,” raising its paw in an imitation Nazi salute when it heard the words “Sieg Heil”, and viewing footage of Hitler giving a speech. The video was uploaded on April 11, and to date, has close to 1.9 million views, with a 16:1 ratio of likes to dislikes.

Meechan says in the video that My girlfriend is always ranting and raving about how cute her dog is so I thought I would turn her into the least cute thing you could think of which is a Nazi. After the video went viral, Meechan denied being a racist, insisting it was all done in order to annoy his girlfriend: I am so sorry to the Jewish community for any offence I have caused them. This was never my intention and I apologise.

On April 28, Meechan was arrested, and after spending a night behind bars, he was released pending further investigations. According to detective Inspector David Cockburn of Lanarkshire CID, this clip was shared online and has been viewed almost one million times. I would ask anyone who has had the misfortune to have viewed it to think about the pain and hurt the narrative has caused a minority of people in our community. The clip is deeply offensive and no reasonable person can possibly find the content acceptable in today’s society. This arrest should serve as a warning to anyone posting such material online, or in any other capacity, that such views will not be tolerated.

Ephraim Borowski, director of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities: To regard the meticulously planned and industrialised murder of six million people solely on the grounds of their ethnicity as a joke is outrageous, and for someone who does so to claim not to be racist, beggars belief.

Racist or not, I’m not quite sure Meechan is still proud of teaching Buddah how to act like a proper Nazi.