'Between Caliphate And Dictatorship'
Corrupt Brussels Officials Reveal The Kind Of Future European Left Wants
What a day this has been. I never imagined that I would witness the banning of a peaceful political meeting in a supposedly free and democratic country. But that’s what nearly happened today in Belgium — in Brussels, the capital of the European Union.
I say “nearly,” because despite the attempts by the municipal government, aided by the police and urged on by Antifa, the National Conservatism conference went on, though in a much constrained fashion. After having two venues cancel on us at the last minute, under pressure by both the mayor of Brussels, and two district mayors, police entered the Claridge event space with the intention of shutting the meeting down.
They were greeted by a wall of TV cameras from press covering the event, and apparently thought better of it. What they did was to station themselves outside the doors (see photo above), and to refuse to let people enter. If you left the building for any reason at all, you were not allowed back in. They were clearly hoping to choke off the event without staging a spectacle that would be beamed around the world by the gathered media.
Eric Zemmour, who ran for president of France, was refused entrance. Here is the moment:
Zemmour later tweeted:
Cardinal Gerhard Müller of Germany, former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, would almost certainly have been refused entry too, but somehow he managed to sneak into the building. Here’s what he told me when I talked to him briefly, a few feet away from the police line:
Today’s antics were ordered by Emir Kir, the mayor of this particular Brussels district. Here is his official order, translated into English:
Note especially these justifications for the act:
Euroskeptics! Oh, the humanity. And:
Do you know who proposed to disturb the peace? The Antifa coalition who demanded that NatCon be shut down. Instead of protecting the ability of conservatives — including elected leaders (like former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, UK Member of Parliament Miriam Cates), MEP Ryszard Legutko, Cardinal Müller and other to gather for speeches — to exercise their legal right to free assembly and free speech, the municipal authorities and the city police claim to have been acting to protect us from Antifa, which threatened to act violently if we went ahead with the event. A heckler’s veto, with the full support of the municipal government and the police.
Antifa found the names of suppliers to the conference — caterers and others — and threatened to ruin them professionally, and even reportedly threatened their family members. The Tunisian man who owns the venue bravely refused to bow to them, even though they even threatened his wife.
Emir Kir, the mayor of the Saint-Josse district, is a former Socialist party member who was kicked out of the party in 2020 for breaking party policy. He received a delegation of Turkish mayors, including two members of the extreme right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an ultranationalist party generally characterized as neo-fascist because of its extreme ideology and history of supporting political violence against its opponents, chiefly through the Grey Wolves, its paramilitary wing.
One attack that made international headlines was a 2015 assault on Korean tourists in Istanbul. The attackers, angry over the Chinese government’s persecution of Uighur Muslims, mistook them for Chinese. At the time, the party’s leader Devlet Bahçeli downplayed the attacks, saying, "These are young kids. They may have been provoked. Plus, how are you going to differentiate between Korean and Chinese? They both have slanted eyes. Does it really matter?"
After his expulsion from the Socialist Party, Kir accused the Socialists of racism and Turkophobia.
Brussels residents I talked to at the conference told me that Kir is considered to be Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s representative in Brussels. The MHP is the chief ally of Erdogan in the Turkish parliament. Their paramilitary branch, the Grey Wolves, have been linked to terrorist acts, and are banned in France.
Yet this is the same Emir Kir who banned NatCon from meeting in his his district on grounds that among us are Euroskeptics, traditionalists, pro-lifers, and supporters of the traditional family.
My belief is that this is a classic case of Islamo-gauchisme — that is, the alliance between the Islamists and the political left. Brussels is something like 30 percent Islamic. Both Emir Kir and the two Socialist mayors are bolstering their own local political profiles. Late in the day, the Prime Minister of Belgium issued the following statement:
I am grateful for this statement, but I hope PM De Croo backs it up by ordering the police to stand down tomorrow, except to protect the conference from Antifa, especially when Hungarian PM Viktor Orban speaks. PM Rishi Sunak of the UK also issued a statement condemning the repression, as did Italian PM Giorgia Meloni. US Sen. J.D. Vance told me he is drafting a letter of protest to the Belgian Ambassador.
NatCon has been greatly blessed to have in its corner Alliance Defending Freedom, the international legal organization defending the religious liberty of Christians, and which deserves your financial support. Paul Coleman, the British lawyer who directs ADF International, and who is a speaker at the NatCon conference, sent his legal team into court today to argue for the right of the conference to go ahead. He issued this statement:
Open dialogue is supposed to be at the core of European politics; yet here in the capital of the EU, a thoughtful exchange on policy has been shut down by unilateral decree. This is a watershed moment where the true censorship crisis in Europe is on full public display.
The crushing of political opinions opposed by those in power is something that should be relegated to the darker chapters of European history.
ADF International is supporting an emergency legal challenge against the mayor’s order to shut down the conference, arguing it is contrary to the fundamental rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly – the pillars of truly democratic societies.
As far as we know, tomorrow’s conference events will still go on. But what happened today was historic. Here in the capital of the European Union, a peaceful political meeting of mainstream conservatives was under attack by government authorities collaborating with violent left-wing extremists (Antifa), who deployed police in an attempt to shut it down — or, failing that, make holding the meeting as difficult as possible. Mayor Kir even tried to shut off electricity to the building, and to ban catering. If a phalanx of TV cameras from the press hadn’t been in the hall at the time, I suspect the cops would have rounded us all up.
This is what the European Left will do to all of us. Not every person of the Left — there have been a few good leftists, like Prof. Kathleen Stock, on Twitter speaking out against this, and here’s a good critical analysis by the left-wing New Statesman — but this is exactly the kind of thing that vindicates what leaders and intellectuals of the Right in Europe have been warning about. One Belgian in the hall said, “What we’re living with in Brussels is the final chapter of Houellebecq’s Submission.” Another Belgian said, “Now you can all see what we have to put up with in this country.”
(Incidentally, though I filed a formal complaint with The Guardian over their smearing me by mischaracterizing my views on the Christchurch massacre, the paper did not clarify its article, and instead repeated today the talking point from the Antifa press release.)
A friend in the US, following the controversy on Twitter, said, “I bet you never expected to see Live Not By Lies come true.” Oh, but I did. What happened today is going to become more the norm in all democratic European countries governed by the Left — even as they ramp up their denunciations of Hungary as some kind of fascist hellhole. Nota bene:
As I said, readers, this was a historic day. We all saw here in Brussels — and those following online — exactly what the “rule of law” means here in the EU capital. In a way, I’m grateful for what happened, especially as Europe heads into EU parliamentary elections in June. Voters need to know exactly what their future will be if these cretins aren’t stopped. In his NatCon speech, Tom Vandendriessche, a Flemish MEP, quoted former European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, who once told a German journalist how the EU elites work:
“We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.”
Do you see what I’ve been trying to tell y’all about what it’s like in Europe, and what the mainstream US and UK media don’t tell you? This has been a shocking event with profound repercussions for liberty in Europe. Will the US media write about what happened?
I hope Europe wakes up. The hour is late.
Rod, your reporting on what's going on there is much appreciated. Stay safe, but also stay strong!!
This is a prime opportunity for European conservatives to avoid playing the victim. Instead: lawfare. Alinksyite tactics, like forcing these governments to live up to their own much-touted beliefs. Researching the hell out of Antifa supporters, as Rufo did with the Harvard plagiarist, and exposing them, until their peers have no choice but to deal with them.
Conservatives often respond ineffectively: they either play the victim, or fantasize about violence. They also flap their gums a lot in forums that are increasingly designed not to persuade others to join them. I haven't seen the program, but my hope is that this conference isn't just lamentation and useless mutual reassurance, but practical strategizing about how to persuade neighbors, engage in relentless lawfare, ruin enemies, and win politically. At this point the rest is just gum-flapping.