The 42-year-old has been fired as a primary school teacher. As a video blogger, he repeatedly attracts attention with his right-wing extremist positions. Now that has consequences.
A Berlin court has sentenced right-wing extremist video blogger Nikolai Nerling to a suspended sentence of nine months. In addition, the 42-year-old, who calls himself a “people’s teacher”, has to pay a fine of 3,000 euros to the Amadeu Antonio Foundation. This campaigns against racism and right-wing extremism.
Nerling is “historically revisionist,” said judge Stephan Markmiller. He plays with provocations and national sentiment “on the razor blade of criminal liability” and tests limits. In the present cases, he exceeded this limit.
The Tiergarten district court found the 42-year-old guilty of incitement to hatred in two cases, trespassing, using signs of unconstitutional organizations, insult and violation of the confidentiality of the word. According to the judge, Nerling deliberately sought attention in order to arrive in the right-wing scene and become known.
The accused, who had his birthday, had previously testified comprehensively about the allegations and confessed to the “right-wing scene”. More than a dozen of his followers came to the start of the process. Nerling smiled at them from the dock and waved a few greetings.
Process under increased security precautions
As a precaution, Judge Markmiller pointed out at the beginning of the trial that he did not accept expressions of opinion such as clapping or heckling and that this would have consequences. The process took place under increased security precautions. There were no incidents during the hearing.
However, Nerling used a short break in the process to represent the positions of hate speechist Ursula Haverbeck, who denies the Holocaust, in front of the courtroom. The 93-year-old was sentenced to one year in prison last April in Berlin for incitement to hatred. A spokesman for the Berlin public prosecutor’s office could not say when she would have to start her prison sentence.
In March 2018, the video blogger published an interview with Haverbeck, in which she denied the Holocaust, on a YouTube channel he runs. This count was one of the six blocks of the indictment. The 42-year-old said in court: “I wasn’t aware at the time that what she said could be punishable.” Nowadays he would not upload the interview like that anymore, he stated. “I wasn’t that experienced then.”
“Per se no aversion to Jews”
In another case, Nerling deliberately wanted to attack a man’s Jewish identity in a video, according to the prosecution. The accused denied this. “I don’t dislike Jews per se,” he said. The background to the case was a concrete dispute with the person concerned. Nerling wanted another allegation that he was distributing pictures of a person showing the Hitler salute on the Internet to be understood as an art action. “In my view, no real damage has occurred,” he said of the allegations as a whole.
As a witness in court, a police officer said about the accused’s behavior: “In my view, he is not the classic right-wing extremist. He is very educated and eloquent.” The state of Berlin had fired the man from his primary school teacher job several years ago because he had represented extreme right-wing positions on his YouTube channel.
The public prosecutor had demanded a suspended sentence of eleven months and a fine of 3,000 euros. Nerling’s defense attorney saw only a few allegations of the prosecution confirmed and pleaded for a fine of 4,000 euros (100 daily rates of 40 euros each). The verdict is not yet legally binding.
Source: Stern
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