Is political speech free in the capital of Europe? Incredibly, given the antics of the Brussels mayor and other officials over the past few days, the answer seems to be no. Pay attention: the scandalous events of the last week have massive symbolic weight for the future of Europe.
Yoram Hazony has been hosting National Conservatism (NatCon) conferences on two continents for the past few years. On Monday, the day before the April 16 kickoff of this week’s event in Brussels, the Israeli-American scholar, who runs the Edmund Burke Foundation which is sponsoring the conference, should have been busy putting the final touches on the gathering.
This week’s meeting features Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, former French presidential candidate Eric Zemmour, former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, senior right-wing British politicians Suella Braverman and Nigel Farage, MEP Ryszard Legutko, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, and other conservative intellectuals (including me) from the UK and Europe. Critics have denounced NatCon as a ‘far right’ gathering. Absurd. If you want to know where the vital conservative center is in Europe today, you will come to NatCon Brussels to see for yourself.
Yet disgracefully, the event nearly didn’t go forward. It was cancelled twice—by two different venues. While no one formally banned NatCon from gathering in Brussels, the city’s Socialist mayor, Philippe Close, simply pressured venues that promised to host the conference to drop the event.
NatCon had agreed with Concert Noble to return to the venue for its second NatCon Brussels. Last week, only days before the opening session, Edificio, the company that manages the Concert Noble, withdrew from its commitment to host the conference. Edificio said it had faced pressure from the mayor, who himself was instigated to act by the Belgian Anti-Fascist Coordination (Antifa).
In a statement Friday, the venue owners said, “Edificio has no intention of taking any position other than that of respecting the key European values of democracy which have enabled Belgium and the European Union, of which Brussels is the capital, to enjoy a long period of peace and prosperity since the Second World War.”
This is both cowardly and a lie. Not a single speaker appearing at NatCon is anti-democratic. Not one. The Brussels mayor, on the other hand, abuses the power of his office to silence political speech he doesn’t like, by pressuring a business owner not only to sever a contract, but to release a shameful statement proclaiming its support for ‘democracy’ when it has just taken a flagrantly undemocratic decision.
Given Antifa’s proven record of using violence to enforce its beliefs, it cannot be ruled out that Edificio also acted to protect its property from vandalism at the hands of the far-left mob. If so, capitulating to the threats of political thugs is an action with precedent in Europe’s 20th century history, but it has nothing to do with democracy. This is “peace and prosperity” purchased at the cost of principle and freedom.
The NatCon team scrambled to find another venue at the last minute, and secured space at the Sofitel Brussels Europe, in the Etterbeek commune in Brussels. Incredibly, on the eve of the conference, Sofitel pulled out. In fact, lawyers had to go before a Belgian judge on behalf of the organizers to try to enforce the contract by court order.
The mayor of Etterbeek told The Brussels Times that he “informed the local police authorities, who contacted Sofitel and the management decided to cancel the event.”
The Etterbeek mayor went on to say that the NatCon organizers were unhappy about this. “The police arrived to explain that the Sofitel wasn’t the one to cancel and that this was the right thing to do,” he said. “They then left peacefully.” This is patently untrue. The police never approached or even spoke to the NatCon organizers.
Think about that: rather than defend the right of European citizens and invited guests to gather peacefully to hear speeches, Brussels’ leaders served the enemies of free speech and democracy.
According to an open letter (in which they make a slanderous accusation against me), a coalition of Belgian Antifa organizations are planning to “remain vigilant” to shut down NatCon. The Guardian more or less reprinted the Antifa press release.
Somehow, the organizers found a third venue, the name of which they are keeping under wraps for now, and the event will go on as planned. If Antifa discovers its location, and attacks the gathering, will Belgian police protect us? It is terrifying that any European has to wonder.
Yet the conference must go on. The far Left and its sleazy accomplices in government cannot be allowed to prevail over the fundamental principles of free speech in a liberal democracy. These mayors have disgraced their cities by treating them like an American college campus. They send the signal that the only Europeans allowed to assemble and speak in Brussels are those on the Left, and figures of the feeble European establishment Right, who pose no challenge to the status quo.
Why is the mayor of Brussels so afraid to allow a contrary opinion to be heard in his city? It is somehow fitting that Mayor Philippe Close has taken this contemptible stand. Typical of the Left’s worst politicians, Close cannot bring himself to face the reality of life in contemporary Europe.
For example, he governs a city with a large Islamic population, one that is home to one of Europe’s most radical Muslim communities. Last month, Belgian police arrested four young jihadists who were allegedly planning to carry out a terror attack on a Brussels cultural center. The terror watch level in Brussels as NatCon gathers is at level three, with level four being the highest rating. Jews in Brussels report that antisemitism has increased dramatically since the October 7 attacks in Israel. Funnily enough, Jews in Budapest, and in Hungary, are not having these problems.
And yet, when a newspaper twice asked him about rising Islamism in the Belgian capital, the atheist mayor warned about the threat of “Catholic fundamentalism”—this, in a country where the Catholic Church is in steep decline.
Mayor Close is an archetypal left-wing politician in that he fights the enemies of democracy he wishes he had, rather than the ones that actually exist. The kind of speakers and attendees who come to NatCon are looking for an alternative to both the European Left, with its lunatic values of wokeness, open borders, multiculturalism, and gender ideology; and the feckless European establishment Right, which has conserved nothing.
Who knows? By the time you read this, the third venue might have been intimidated into kicking NatCon out on the streets. If it does, then we will stand on the sidewalks of Europe’s capital if we must, and speak the truth. We cannot be intimidated by these bigots and thugs. What they are trying to do to NatCon in Brussels today symbolizes what they will do to everyone on the European Right tomorrow, if given the chance.
These people have hollowed out democracy and wear it as a skin suit. That much is clear by their attempt to silence an intellectual conference featuring a democratically elected head of an EU member state government, a distinguished Catholic cardinal, and other top conservative figures. A Europe in which government officials, collaborating with left-wing mobs, shut down open debate, in part by pressuring businesses to do the government’s bidding, is neither liberal nor democratic.
We of the National Conservative coalition refuse to live by the lies these people expect us to. We will not go meekly into the shadows. European voters should watch closely what happens here this week, and let it inform their vote in this June’s European Parliamentary elections. What Antifa and its government collaborators are doing to us this week, they will do to you if you give them the chance.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/we-will-not-go-meekly