Baudet deletes tweets comparing Holocaust and Covid

FvD leader Thierry Baudet removed four posts in which he compared the Cabinet's coronavirus policy with the Holocaust from social media, as per a ruling by the court of Amsterdam. He again tweeted that he would appeal against the verdict.

"I am deeply saddened that I am not allowed to express what I deeply believe, and I will not resign myself to it. We will definitely appeal," Baudet said on Twitter. According to Baudet, the Amsterdam court made "a totally hallucinatory ruling" restricting his freedom of expression.

On Wednesday, the court ruled in a case brought by Jewish organizations CIDI and CJO and several Holocaust survivors. They argued that Baudet's posts, including one in which he compared a photo of a child with a Star of David awaiting deportation to a picture suggesting that an unvaccinated child could not attend a Sinterklaas party, were deeply offensive and hurtful. 

In addition to ordering Baudet to remove the posts or face a penalty of 25,000 euros per day, the court also ruled that Baudet may no longer use images of the Holocaust in the context of the coronavirus debate. "You have spoken unnecessarily offensively to victims and surviving relatives of the Holocaust," the judge said. "The right to freedom of expression is not unlimited."

The ruling came as a relief to the Holocaust survivors attached to the case, CIDI said to BN De Stem. "They have a sense of justice," the organization for information and documentation on Israel said. "With the ruling, the judge made an important contribution to indicating the limits of the public debate." CIDI and CJO don't want to take a position in the coronavirus debate. "However, there are limits, for example when a group of people is unnecessarily damaged in their dignity as Holocaust survivors or in their memory of the war period."