Free Speech Is Dead in Europe

“Political language,” wrote George Orwell, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Nowhere is this more evident today than in the phrase “liberal democratic values,” which is routinely invoked to justify measures that are neither liberal nor democratic. For one reason or another, the “defense of democracy” invariably seems to require a level of political repression that would make history’s most notorious authoritarians blush.

The most recent example of this comes from Belgium, where the 30-year-old right-wing activist Dries Van Langenhove has just been sentenced to a year in prison and a €16,000 fine for privately espousing what were deemed to be “thoughtcrimes” in the eyes of his government.

Van Langenhove’s criminal charges, Politico writes, included “hatred” and “racism”; the venue in which those crimes were committed was a private online group chat between the activist and his friends. (Notably, the criminal charges were leveled at internet memes sent by others in the group chat; Van Langenhove’s crime, in that context, was merely his digital proximity to the messages.) The nefarious criminal conspiracy was originally uncovered by a 2018 TV report, triggering the multi-year-long (and multi-million-euro) investigation into the young men’s correspondences on behalf of the government of Belgium. On top of the jail time and the hefty hit to his bank account, “the judgment also deprived Van Langenhove of certain civil rights for a period of 10 years, during which he won’t be able to serve in public office or run in elections,” reports Politico.

While delivering the sentence, the judge presiding over Van Langenhove’s trial accused the young Belgian of creating “a hostile atmosphere in society.” “He contributes to antagonism, discord and conflict,” the judge added, “and thus fosters physical and psychological violence.” A lawyer for the Human Rights League, a powerful Belgian activist group that helped bring the case against Van Langenhove, gloated that the ruling sent “a clear signal.” On that count, at least, he was correct; and if that signal doesn’t shake Western civilization out of its slumber, nothing will.

Belgium Isn’t Alone

The right wing in Europe is ascendant. On that, commentators of all political persuasions agree. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s nationalist Brothers of Italy party swept into power in 2022 and has only strengthened its position since. In France, the right-wing National Rally’s Marine Le Pen is leading President Emmanuel Macron in the polls for this summer’s European Parliament elections. In the Netherlands, a surge of anti-immigration sentiment led to a stunning victory for a coalition led by anti-Islam activist Geert Wilders in November. In Germany, the rightist Alternative for Germany is poised to win unprecedented victories in this year’s elections, “break[ing] the ‘cordon sanitaire’ erected around it by Germany’s more mainstream parties that have so far refused to entertain coalition talks with the far-right faction,” writes the Washington Post. (All the aforementioned parties and figures are persistently described as “far right” in the breathless reports from legacy media.)

Brexit’s legacy may have been betrayed by the political elites in Westminster, but the populist fervor it came to symbolize has swept across large swathes of the West. As the avatars of that populism have breached the fortress gates, the political establishments in each respective country have grown increasingly alarmed and desperate. And as their desperation has grown, so too has their willingness to utilize extreme measures to suppress the opposition — to defend liberal democracy, of course.

Belgium is one of many examples. Vlaams Belang, the right-wing anti-immigration party that Van Langenhove represented in the parliament of Belgium from 2019 to 2023, “is now the biggest political force in Belgium,” explains Politico. Perhaps it’s simply a coincidence that Van Langenhove’s group chats happened to pique the interest of his country’s political and media elites just as his party began to surge in momentum. But if it is, it is one that coincides with many other very similar coincidences across the Western world. (READ MORE from Nate Hochman: Becoming Haiti: How Biden Is Transforming America Into a Gang-Infested Wasteland)

In Germany, for example, elites are openly musing about “simply banning” the Alternative for Germany outright — and, in the meantime, are busying themselves with doing everything they can to change election laws, force through constitutional amendments, and bolster various legal “protections” to make it as difficult as possible for the party to win power. In Ireland, the government is currently on the verge of passing what is arguably the most radical “hate speech” law in history. As I noted on X in November, the bill “criminalizes the mere possession of materials that are ‘likely to incite violence or hatred’ — books, videos, or even memes on your phone.” The bill prohibits “hatred” against a number of “protected characteristics,” which include sexual orientation, “sex characteristics,” and the “preferred gender” with which a “person identifies,” among others.

The bill defines “hatred” as “hatred against a person or a group of persons in the State or elsewhere on account of their protected characteristics.”

Protected characteristics include “national origin.”

Would criticizing Ireland’s open borders even be legal under this bill? pic.twitter.com/j9jA8kGDFM

— Nate Hochman (@njhochman) November 26, 2023

In Finland, the prosecution of Päivi Räsänen — a member of the Finnish parliament and the former Finnish minister of the interior — is approaching its fifth year. As Paul Coleman explained in a recent piece for the Critic, Räsänen’s crime was tweeting a Bible verse — yes, a Bible verse — while explaining her Christian view on sexuality and marriage in 2019. After “[l]engthy police interrogations followed by criminal prosecution,” Coleman wrote, “Räsänen was dealt three criminal charges, carrying a potential prison sentence of two years, for the tweet, in addition to her comments on a 2019 radio debate and in a church pamphlet she had authored nearly 20 years before. Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola was charged alongside her for publishing the booklet for his congregation.” (READ MORE: Finnish Politician Goes Back to Court for 2019 Bible Tweet) 

Europe and America Are Linked

These stories abound across the European continent. Just this month, Samuel Melia, a right-wing activist in the U.K., was jailed for distributing stickers; his crime, according to the official statement from the Crown’s prosecutors, was “intent to stir up racial hatred.” (The statement itself is Orwellian to an almost absurd degree: Upon Melia’s arrest, “a number of stickers were found in his wallet, which included slogans expressing views of a nationalist nature.”)

So what does Europe have to do with America? Other than our common civilization and shared cultural heritage, the answer is that the ruling class in the West is an international body; elites in the U.S., the U.K., Belgium, France, Germany, and so on are often educated at the same elite institutions, are acculturated into the same basic worldview, and profess a similar set of political objectives. This is why the populist and nationalist movements that have arisen to oppose those elites across the West have borne a notable (though not identical) resemblance to one another, both in their rhetoric and their political goals, despite the substantial differences between the nations from which they arise.

Thanks to the enduring wisdom of the men who wrote our Constitution, we Americans are beneficiaries of far stronger and more stubborn free speech protections than our peers in Europe. Beleaguered and degraded as those protections may be, they have insulated us — at least thus far — from the most extreme kinds of censorship and persecution that has engulfed so much of our civilization.

But no reasonable observer of the past decade in American politics could think that what is happening to Europe cannot happen to us too. (In some instances, it already is: Just ask Douglass Mackey, the American who was recently sentenced to seven months in prison for posting an internet meme.) Many of the most powerful people in our country would jump at the opportunity to “defend democracy” with the same means as their European contemporaries, if given the chance. It’s our duty to make sure they never are.

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