A Chelsea supporter who directed anti-Semitic tweets at Tottenham Hotspur fans has now been jailed, the BBC have revealed.
The fan accused, who has been identified as Nathan Blagg, 21, is said to have posted several reprehensible tweets including photos of Auschwitz and a man doing a Nazi salute.
The tweets were posted between September 2020 and February this year.
In one of his tweets, Blagg is said to have posted a picture of the train tracks to Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz on Twitter, along with the message: “Spurs are on their way to Auschwitz.”
He is said to have told police the tweets were “banter between mates”.
District Judge Michael Hamilton rejected Blagg’s defence and handed him an eight-week sentence on Friday. He stated that only immediate custody would be a suitable punishment for Blagg’s “grossly offensive” tweets.
Hamilton told Westminster Magistrates’ Court: “Quite frankly, the content of these messages was despicable.
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“References to the Holocaust and other matters cannot, on any view, ever be categorised as banter.”
This is not the only incident of anti-Semitic abuse that has come to light this week, with footage emerging that The Daily Star claimed showed ‘West Ham fans’ singing a hateful song towards a Jewish man on a plane.
A 55-year-old man was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of committing a hate crime on the back of the video’s emergence.
Spurs Web Opinion
It is a positive development that people are no longer able to get away with racist or discriminatory abuse on social media as a result of hiding beyond anonymity.
The authorities should continue cracking down on such abuse and they need to be aided by the social media giants. Unfortunately, incidents like these are still far too common and show that there is a lot of work to do to make football a discrimination-free environment.
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