Perhaps the most foundational principle of a democratic society is that the right to participate in organised opposition to the Government or Governing body is sacrosanct. There are many countries that have elections without being truly democratic. The people of China, for example, are permitted to vote, but only for one party. Speaking out openly against that party in China can land you in prison, and in some cases cost you your life.
In Brussels, today, the right to participate in organised opposition was openly, and thoroughly, trampled. The organisers of the National Conservatism conference found themselves, and their guests, effectively barricaded inside their venue by the Belgian police, with those who left the venue unable to re-enter.
This is currently the scene outside (via Reuters) the @NatConTalk and inside. No-one allowed in, no-one allowed to re-enter. This also applies to journalists. At the moment I’m very much stuck inside #brussels pic.twitter.com/jC5cbNwUE6
— Darren McCaffrey (@darrenmccaffrey) April 16, 2024
It should not be relevant, but must nevertheless be said, that the conference in question is not some fringe event. It was due to be addressed by no less a figure than the Prime Minister of Hungary, an EU member state. Other speakers included a Cardinal of the Catholic Church; the former British Home Secretary; Germany’s Dowager Princess Gloria of Thurn and Taxis; and the former chief speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher. However, the right to organise opposition is not granted to statesmen and cardinals alone: Had the conference simply featured a collection of sixteen ordinary citizens, the right to organise opposition would still have been sacrosanct.
The official reason for the attempt to cancel the conference was given as being based around a supposed threat to public order and safety. Yet there is no credible person alive who believes that any threat to public order and safety arising from the conference would have originated with the participants. Instead, the local authorities in Belgium chose to enforce a kind of heckler’s veto on political opposition – a risk of trouble may have perceived to have come from those in Belgian society violently opposed to the ideas expressed at the conference, rather than from those attending.
Governments certainly have a role in defending public order – but that role is not and never can be a neutral one. Their first duty, as the sole legitimate wielders of physical force in a society, is to use that power to vindicate the rights of their citizens. A Government that sides with those who threaten to use force to silence their opposition, by actively pre-empting those threats by using force to silence the opposition themselves, can no longer call itself democratic. It can barely even call itself western.
Indeed, we must consider the reality that the Mayor of the division of Brussels who ordered this decision is not of western heritage. Emir Kir, a member of the socialist party of Belgium, is the second generation son of Turkish immigrants to Belgium. He is Mayor of a district that has the highest proportion of immigrant voters in all of Belgium, with more than 44% of voters either being first or second generation immigrants, and a majority of those originating from countries that are either not democracies, or are Islamic, or both. When it comes to questions of immigration, we are often asked to think in purely mathematical and resource terms, about whether a country can cope with the demands placed on its infrastructure and housing needs. We are less often asked to think about how significant immigration over the long term can alter the fundamental values of a society.
These are, ironically, the very questions that the National Conservatives seek to discuss. They are important questions: The nations of Europe are divided in many ways, culturally, and linguistically. By and large, however, they share a particular set of values around individual liberties and rights that, many people feel, are worth preserving.
The irony is that in the suppression of their conference today, the National Conservatives received the clearest evidence one could that their fears for the survival of those values are well placed.
It should be noted, of course, that the trend towards illiberalism in the west is not entirely – or even primarily – the result of immigration alone. The continent has far too many people of its own production who stand ready to cast aside the right to dissent in favour of enforcing what might be called tolerance and progressivism at the point of a sword. We have seen similar trends emerging here in Ireland, with the stalled passage through our parliament of legislation that purports to make certain thoughts and private communications illegal.
We have not yet, however, seen anything quite so blatant as what occurred in Brussels today.
As a general rule, a message that the authorities will go to great lengths to censor is always worth hearing, and understanding. Human progress has almost always advanced through ideas that somebody in authority has first deemed dangerous and a threat to their authority. That was true of the ideas of Gallileo, Martin Luther, Padraig Pearse, Jesus Christ, George Washington, Martin Luther King, the Suffragettes, and countless more. The National Conservatives may not have pretensions of having the stature of any of those people, but they have, by the very fact of their attempted silencing, been accorded an importance that we should all take notice of.
What happened in Brussels today is a clarion message to all of us who believe that there are values in western civilisation worth defending. We are engaged in a battle about much more than individual policies or short-term economic or foreign policy direction. The battle ongoing in Europe is about whether the things that made it Europe in the first place shall be preserved, or shall be allowed to be destroyed.
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Its very obvious the EU has outlived it’s usefulness and it’s a purpose. Brought into being to have a reliable supply of food for Europe and to prevent further European wars, one would have to be very naive indeed not to be aware that the EU and NATO are fighting a proxy war with Russia in the Ukraine, and losing. The sovereignty of member states has been taken away by this unelected entity. Over 234 members of the European parliament are useful assets to another master including our Irish MEP’s. I expect that sooner or later it will break up owing to wars or just corruption
Right now it seems to be headed toward a supranational European superstate — even Brexit was not enough to significantly slow that momentum — it would help if Hungary were to announce Hexit (I honestly don’t see why they want to stay in, they are constantly at odds with the EU on very important issues, e.g. migration and military aid to Ukraine) — this might cause other dominoes to fall.
Other than that, I don’t know — Germany, the EU paymaster, is at the moment solidly behind the EU agenda — this would change if the AfD were to finally attain power, e.g.by being part of a coalition government — but they are also strongly demonized by the media, and there is a general agreement among all the other parties that the AfD will never be considered as a coalition partner, regardless of how many people vote for the AfD — this is the idea of ‘democracy’ that prevails in the EU.
It will not simply “break up.” It is parasitic in nature and will continue to feed off of it’s host until it is plucked out and trampled on.
The Belgian Prime Minister has already called the attempt to cancel the conference ‘unacceptable’.
A spokeswoman for the UK Prime Minister has called it ‘deeply disturbing’.
Simon Harris should also condemn it in similar tones. But has Ireland already gone so far down the road towards the curtailment of free speech that to do so would be so hypocritical as to invite ridicule?
This is why the American second amendment exists. It is to make sure that the government doesn’t have a monopoly on force.
Seems to have been censored on RTE
Suppression of free speech is a direct attack on democracy. The EU is profoundly undemocratic. It is totally in line with the NWO agenda. Ireland has to leave the EU if we are to survive as a free sovereign nation.
Worrying about Belgium is only a deflection from Ireland’s catastrophe. Ireland had gold in the palm of its hand. That gold was given to it by the Lisbon Treaty, which gave it the full rights of opt out from the EU migrant pact, without penalty. What a freedom, what a right that was. It was stolen from us, not by immigrants or Muslims but by low life, Irish low life that we elected to our Oireachtas. There should have been mass outcry by all the opposition, I don’t mean SF, but by the anti immigration opposition and by the people of Ireland. Sadly no, all of them too politically correct to raise the shout in the Dáil, raise a din. They remained obedient to the silence that was imposed and sold us out. The public guilty of insouciance, many not even knowing. Forget about Belgium. It was only a minority immigrant manoeuvre there. But the Irish are doing this to their very own. The Irish are swinging the Irish now. Those on our side are no good. They did not lead, they did not rail against injustice, against the right to speak out. The resistance needed is missing. The Irish are on the run and it’s the Irish who are chasing them, all in favour of the bogus now. A pivotal moment in Irish history and all Gript can worry about is the rights of conservatives in Belgium. The repression in Ireland is phenomenal, there will be no recovery from this, the will is absent. The illegal without a word of English in his head or even a paper, not even a bogus one, can walk in and steal all from you. You have gone lower than a whisper now, you have gone completely silent. Burn your history books, you forgot what they contain long ago. Our country is lost, guaranteed to be controlled by mass immigration forever. Sold us out. Handed away the rights the treaty of Lisbon gave us, right over our very heads. The next few months will make no difference. Not the slightest. The record shows we do not have the calibre of politician needed to oppose this and to win. He didn’t shout before, he won’t shout after.
Democracy is defined by the people who participate in it who should be a reflection of the people they serve. When the people participating in the democracy only represent themselves with impunity masquerading as the public representatives, then democracy ceases to exist. The funniest thing I have ever heard of was the party mandate which shows what they represent when in fact it should not exist at all because what they represent is the people and the peoples mandate is what should be on their mandate for who they are trying to appeal to. Now we have a situation where the party’s mandate is what it is and the people must relate to the party rather than the other way around. Party politics is nothing more than a totalitarian con where one mans will holds precedence over anything else including the people which makes every td completely powerless and all we get is sound bites and no action which is exactly what we have today. If the leader is paid off and corrupted and his will is pushed to the others, the barrel of apples is truly rotten to the core.Personally I think that central government should be abolished in its entirety as it has been used for nothing more than a vassal of control over soverign people. We are sovereign which means no government has the right to tell anyone what to do and dissolving government to province level would dilute their power. National issues would have to be agreed by all provinces. Its just a thought but first we must remove every existing party politician.
A lot of Looney left wing people, and Muslim countries are actually very much aligned in the shutting down and silencing of free speech.
Its so parodoxial that two are so alike yet the left supposedly stand for womens rights and the LGBTQ community and muslims are anti womens rights and depise LGBTQ. Yet because Muslims are not your typical white male or woman the left seem to prefer them to us.
It doesn’t matter just like when Josef Pushka tried to rape and commit murder.We the white male have to hear on the radio for weeks after Josef Pushkas escapades about how we “irish white males” share the collective guilt and hold responsibility for not correcting men who behave like that to women.Crazy really but i dont have friends like Josef. Oddly Josef is in prison now telling everybody he is innocent,so i am not sure if they locked up his interpreter also.
Funny though how they want to flood the country with the same people that hate them.Or actually it isn’t funny.Are they of the guilty self hating white males and females that hate themselves so profoundly that their only desire is to be dominated ,raped or eradicated.
This is what happens when you allow positive discrimination,entertain different genders and cultural appropriation all of which comes from America the land of the free, home of the school shootings
Just for the record no white men cared when Beyounce wore arseless cowboy pants either and i hope they never do.
Excellent article, thank you Gript
I often wonder if the individual policemen on the line agree with what they are being asked to do .
Are they made aware of what their duties entail before they go on duty ?
If they disagree with what they are asked to do can they opt out ?
It must have been obvious to all the police on the line that the conference posed no threat to the public safety.
The same question could be asked about the Gardai in Newtownmountkennedy and other places in Ireland
That’s an interesting question .
As I understand it the press got hold a copy of the actual instructions from the mayors office to the police. Assuming that nobody in the Mayors office leaked this to the press then it was leaked by someone in the police. So privately at least some of them are sufficiently appalled to take such steps.
They can walk away at any time. No government can force the Guards to behave like a pack of jackals. A lot of them seem to enjoy their work of beating up women in an attempt to provoke a “far right” reaction that RTE can film and lead the news with.
Today’s event was disgraceful but not surprising. It should be condemned by all democrats. The mainstream media will say nothing as the censorship was orchestrated by the left. The EU is becoming more like the USSR, China or North Korea by the day.
This is the future that the Marxist left want for Ireland. They will willingly incarcerate anyone who disagrees with them That is the real reason behind the hate crime bill. Hard times ahead for us all if the left are re-elected.
The EU has – as its official anthem – Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (or Freedom) from Symphony No.9. I always thought that the hijacking of a piece of that great composer’s work by the barely democratic EU was suspect. The EU should commission the writing of an “anthem” – and stop appropriating the work of a profound genius and individualist in an attempt to aggrandize its increasingly squalid little project !
Without the media pounding ‘far-right’ = bad into the heads of politicians (who don’t want bad publicity) and members of the public too dumb to think for themselves, this kind of thing would not happen — it would be recognized that these people have a right to hold their meeting, and a ‘mob veto’ cannot be allowed — but the media controls the minds of politicians and many members of the public — until and unless you can do something about that, this sort of thing will continue to happen — it would be difficult to overestimate the power of the media in matters like this — they are an insidious and hypocritical force, constantly blathering on about ‘democracy’, while at the same time enforcing ideological conformity.
There is but one solution, but we will only see and acknowledge this at the 11th. Hour. 😱😡😨
🇮🇪IREXIT🇮🇪IREXIT🇮🇪IREXIT.
One word: Hamtramck!!!! Couldn’t write it.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂