November 8 – A fanatical Chelsea fan who posted antisemitic and racist tweets aimed at supporters of rivals Tottenham Hotspur, a club with large Jewish following, has been jailed for eight weeks.
Nathan Blagg told police his tweets were “banter between mates”, but they included photos of Auschwitz and a man performing a Nazi salute.
He is the second English football fan to be jailed in the past week for posting racist abuse on social media. Jonathon Best, 52, posted an 18-second video on Facebook in which he made a “grossly offensive” rant about the Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka after the missed penalties the Euro 2020 final against Italy. He was sentenced to 10 weeks in jail.
Blagg was sentenced pleading guilty to seven counts of sending offensive messages between 29 September last year and 5 February.
Blagg posted a picture of the train tracks to Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz on Twitter with the message: ‘Spurs are on their way to Auschwitz’.
Another post featured a faked picture of former health secretary Matt Hancock holding a microphone saying the same thing.
District Judge Michael Hamilton described Blagg’s tweets as “abhorrent and grossly offensive”, adding that only an immediate jail sentence would be a suitable punishment.
“Quite frankly, the content of these messages was despicable. References to the holocaust and other matters cannot on any view ever be categorised a banter,” he said.
Blagg, 21, has removed himself from Twitter and has been banned from attending football matches.
Kalsoom Shah, from Britain’s Crime Prosecution Service, commented: “Nathan Blagg thought hiding behind a screen could shield him from the consequences of posting hateful and abusive content. That is absolutely not the case.”
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