A fan of the Chelsea F.C. UK soccer club has been sentenced to eight weeks in jail for posting anti-Semitic tweets targeting rival Tottenham Hotspur supporters, including an image of a man performing a Nazi salute and photos of Auschwitz.
Nathan Blagg, 21, was sentenced on Friday for the posts, that he described to police as “banter between mates.”
In October, Blagg, a Chelsea season ticket holder, pleaded guilty to seven counts of posting anti-Semitic and racist material on Twitter about players and fans.
Judge Michael Hamilton described Blagg’s actions on social media as “abhorrent and grossly offensive,” telling the man that an immediate jail term was appropriate punishment, BBC News reported.
"Quite frankly, the content of these messages was despicable,” the judge told Westminster Magistrates' Court. "References to the holocaust and other matters cannot, on any view, ever be categorized as banter."
According to the Crown Prosecution Service, Blagg’s prison term was increased by three weeks due to the racial hate element of the charges.
The tweets were sent between September 2020 and February 2021.
During last month’s hearing, prosecutor David Roberts described the social media posts as allegedly “racially aggravated,” especially “given the context of Tottenham Hotspur's fans coming from a Jewish area.”
Hotspur has a historical association with Jewish supporters and is still identified by rival fans as a Jewish club, even though today it does not have any more Jewish fans than any other London team.
According to the Daily Mail, Robert told the court that “life-long Chelsea supporter” Blagg had posted to Twitter an image of the train tracks leading to Auschwitz that was captioned: “Spurs are on their way to Auschwitz.”
Blagg also wrote: “Yids tomorrow, which means for the next 48 hours I can tweet as much anti-Semitism as I want without being told off” and “Gas a Jew, Jew, Jew.”
Blagg was arrested in February after a fan of West Bromwich Albion discovered his posts, contacting Chelsea’s security team.
Blagg’s lawyer told the courtroom that her client had a “lack of maturity” and that he was “deeply remorseful.” She added he has also stopped using social media.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)