Free Speech Is Dead in Europe

Belgium’s conviction of Dries Van Langenhove is proof.

“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.
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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 psychologic...