The European War on Free Speech
Jared Taylor, Special to AR News , Dec. 3, 2008
Americans of a certain generation remember Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky, and Vladimir Bukovsky—Soviet-era dissidents who faced criminal charges simply for speaking out against a tyrannical system. We admired them for their courage and scorned the cowards who muzzled them.
Today in Europe, in part of what we jokingly call “the Free World,” there still are dissidents who are persecuted and even jailed for speaking out. They, however, get none of the admiration the Soviets got and most Americans don’t even know their names. That is because our rulers and elites support freedom of speech only when they agree with it, not on principle. They don’t care or even notice if Europeans behave as brutally as the Soviets did, so long as their targets are “racists” and “xenophobes.”
Consider only the most recent victims of political persecution: Frank Vanhecke and Suzanne Winter. Mr. Vanhecke is a member of the European Parliament and former president of the Vlaams Belang (VB), a party that lawfully and peacefully campaigns for Flemish independence from Belgium and an end to Islamic immigration. In 2005, the local VB publication in the Flemish town of Sint-Niklaas published a 130-word article claiming that Muslims were vandalizing town graves and that Islam was “a culture that has no respect for the dead or for the symbols of a different faith.” The vandals were later identified as Belgians, and the VB publication immediately issued a correction, but the authorities still pronounced the article “racist.” Mr. Vanhecke did not write the article, nor did he see it before it was published, but the Socialist mayor of Sint-Niklass brought charges of “racism” against him because he was then head of the party.
Belgian authorities leapt at the chance to prosecute Mr. Vanhecke but were prevented by his immunity as a member of the European Parliament. The Belgian justice minister therefore lobbied the Euro-parliament to strip him of immunity, which it did in an overwhelming vote on November 18. Mr. Vanhecke can now be tried, and faces up to two years in prison if he is found guilty of “racism.” He could also be stripped of civil rights for five years, during which time he would be barred from holding elective office. This would be a great victory for the Belgian establishment; Mr. Vanhecke was to be the lead candidate on the VB list for Euro-parliament elections in June, in which nationalist parties across the continent are expected to make solid gains.
This prosecution is openly political. Aside from the absurdity of making it a crime to criticize Muslims, Belgian law requires that if the author of an offending text is known, he must be charged first—an editor or supervisor can be charged only if the author is not known or has already been found guilty. The name of the author is known, but the Belgian establishment is not interested in him; it wants the former head of a party it hates. It is, of course, only continuing the brutal procedures is perfected in November 2004 when it managed to ban the entire Flemish party through trumped up charges of “racism.” Belgium, in other words, is behaving in ways that would have made Leonid Brezhnev proud—and America looks the other way.
Austria has also decided to put a dissident politician through the same tyrannical procedure. Suzanne Winter is a member of parliament for the Austrian Freedom Party, one of Europe’s most dynamic nationalist parties, formerly led by the charismatic Joerg Haider. During a campaign for city council in Graz last January, she said that Islam was “a totalitarian system of domination that should be cast back to its birthplace on the other side of the Mediterranean,” that Mohammed had written the Koran during a series of “epileptic fits,” and that by today’s standards he was a child molester because he married a six-year-old. The president of the Islamic Communities of Austria, Anas Schakfeh, warned that Miss Winter had stirred up a “wrathful mood” among Muslims and that he could not rule out violence. Indeed, Miss Winter had to hire bodyguards when a threatening video appeared on YouTube.
Needless to say, Miss Winter won her city council election, and on the strength of her growing popularity took a seat in the Austrian parliament in legislative elections in September. (If you were a subscriber to AR you would know all about these important elections—see the first page of last month’s issue here .) This was clearly a woman who had to be stopped. On November 26, under pressure from prosecutors, Austrian legislators voted to lift immunity so she could be charged with incitement, degradation of religious symbols, and religious agitation.
Miss Winter met the vote with her head held high. She welcomed a trial, she said, because “only through the considerations of an independent court can clarification be obtained on this issue.” She denounced the charges against her as “political hatred by confused, self-proclaimed thought-guards,” and said that such a prosecution could take place only under a “dictatorship of conscience.” She faces up to two years in prison if convicted.
Again, the American establishment is silent, and its silence speaks volumes. What does it tell us about what our own dissidents may expect from a notoriously leftist new president and a solidly Democratic Congress?
(Posted on December 3, 2008)
Comments
I don’t think you can even qualify as a dissdent these days unless you teach at Harvard or MIT.
If the sheeple in all of the European countries knew anything about our country, they would know what our First Amendment is, and how very often it comes to the rescue of our right to free speech.They really should try to to have something like it for themselves.
The chilling conclusion that I draw, from Mr. Taylors comment,— “and America looks the other way”, is that, America’s elite agree with “it”, and want this tyranny here as well. We certainly have enough traitors to make it a reality in the U.S. It is frightening how some groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, The ACLU, the different ethnic interest groups like LA RAZA, MALDEF, LULAC, the NAACP, and others have already been succesfull in prosecuting some Americans for simple freedom of speech issues. Untile now,they still seem to be less succesfull in their fascist and communist ways then Europe is—but for how much longer. The tyrannical bands play on while Americans sleep.
A keen example of why politics are always dominated by venal men, and a demos that relies on politicians to save it is doomed.
The European governments who fanatically embrace multiculturalism today are every bit as bad as their prior governments that advocated Nazism, Fascism and Communism.
Their methods and criminal wrong doings are nearly the same. The only thing that has changed is their ideology.
They are already engaged in bogus charges on innocent people, tried in kangaroo courts.
It makes one wonder when they will begin gassing people for being politically incorrect.
And this is why I have been saying that blogging is fine as a tool to stay informed. However, we must take this info and use it to save ourselves. I never thought I would have to worry about my thoughts becoming words. There are organizations of all sorts that we can become members of. Join one of them and fight for your rights as a citizen of your white race. It is already too late to fight for the freedom of your country. It is no longer yours. It is gone. All you can do now is save your race.
This is touches on a very important subject, but it is overly brief. There’s a lot of recent relevant material that is not covered, let alone less recent but still relevant incidents, to wit:
Federick Toben: Arrested off a plane in London on a German warrant.
Simon Sheppard & Steve Whittle: Convicted in Britain for internet “hate literature”, fled to US and requested asylum. Currently held in a California jail.
David Irving: Renowned historian. Previously imprisoned in Austria.
The London “Race Hate” prosecution of Nick Griffin and Mark Collett
The many persecutions of the “Canadian Human Rights Commission” including forging fake “hate” messages on a Canadian BBS, using stolen WiFi, as a pretext for prosecuting the BBS owners.
Ernst Zündel: Deported from US. Held in solitary in Canada then deported to Germany. Currently in German prison.
Germar Rudolf, scientist: Deported from US (so much for asylum). Currently in German prison for “inciting race hate”.
Horst Mahler sentenced last year in Germany for 6 mo for giving a contemptuous “Hitler salute” to his prosecuters.
Many more that I can’t think of, off the top of my head, right now.
“Freedom of expression” has become a kind of museum piece in the Western world: you may admire it and speak in praise of it, but don’t you dare appropriate it for yourself or you’ll be prosecuted.
“Again, the American establishment is silent, and its silence speaks volumes. What does it tell us about what our own dissidents may expect from a notoriously leftist new president and a solidly Democratic Congress?”
Exactly what one would expect from villians who, “know’st no law of God nor man,” Mr. Taylor. We can expect a return to the Clinton years, where only the US Constitution and public outrage might hold them back from their worst beastial wants in the areas of discourse or reason.
Of course, when muslims openly threaten to murder “dhimmis”, no one gets prosecuted at all. This isn’t about preventing agitation. It’s about the same kind of European cowardice that allowed Hitler to come into power.
If they ever try to dismantle Americans’ right to free speech, they’d better convert at least one entire state into a prison camp. Because I would die before giving up my right to freely express my views.
I am often active on a local TV news website, where I get into it hot and heavy with a liberal fool or two… on the fact the average illegal immigrant from Mexico is also a criminal in the other sense of the word. Not being above financing his stay with a little shoplifting, pilferage and petty theft. I urge all AmReners to do likewise. To ‘force’ their fellow citizens, wherever they live, to have to realize not all Americans have been so brainwashed with those years of p.c. slop they’ve lost the ability to think and reason.
“Again, the American establishment is silent, and its silence speaks volumes. What does it tell us about what our own dissidents may expect from a notoriously leftist new president and a solidly Democratic Congress?”
Exactly what one would expect from villains who, “know’st no law of God nor man,” Mr. Taylor. We can expect a return to the Clinton years, where only the US Constitution and possibly public outrage might hold them back from their worst bestial wants in the areas of discourse or reason.
In short, it is going to be a horror show similar to Night of the Living Dead!
What we have in Europe now, is simply a tragically grotesque Doppelganger’s omen of what to expect here in the USA in the next four years. Why else would Europe’s “elitists” and shambling Marxist rabbles over there, be so excited to have the same return to the USA’s soil so “majestically?” Is it because they now “can love US again,” as was proclaimed on the Telegraph.co.uk link below:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/06/do0604.xml
I think not!
It is because they know that their wicked and wretched counterparts have a four year shot at doing to the USA, what they are doing to themselves.
As always, God help us all!
“Again, the American establishment is silent, and its silence speaks volumes. What does it tell us about what our own dissidents may expect from a notoriously leftist new president and a solidly Democratic Congress?”
Unlike Belgium and Austria, the United States has a First Amendment and a voluminous body of case law on the subject of free speech. I don’t doubt that the left would love to criminalize truthful, albeit offensive, speech. But they will have a much tougher row to hoe.
Islam is a religion not a race, how can “racism” be at issue in these cases? And, given that racism is universal in humans, how can it be criminal? Well, we all know the answers, don’t we? Such laws are not meant to promote justice. They are hostile acts by organized minorities targeting the most peaceful and law-abiding segment of a nation, much like our “hate crime” laws. All these are prime examples of Dr. Sam Francis’ Anarcho-Tyranny
We in the U.S. can expect more of the same in the near future under President Obama.
And remember - they started in the US with french fries!! Now they are going to tell us not only what we can eat, but think, speak, write……..so who won the cold war?
Frank Vanhecke (Belgium), Suzanne Winter (Austria), Nick Griffin and Mark Collett (UK) and Brigitte Bardot (France) warned their countrymen about the Islamic takeover of Europe.
Rather than being heeded they all ended up being arrested.
Our cousins in Europe might actually be as gutless as our fellow white Americans.
Another person I failed to list above. Let us not forget Bridget Bardot! She’s been fined thousands of dollars in France for “inciting racial hatred” i.e., critizing Muslim culture in France. You know, those nice “youths” who riot and torch cars for weeks on end.
The Marxists have done quite a number on Europe. The greatest disposession in the history of the world. Marxism is successful because it is always on offence.
This is why I like the BNP. These fine people are more than willing and able to defend their Nation against any and all opponents.
As many here know, the sale of firearms and ammo in all fifty states has escalated, since the election. The anti-Second Amendment crowd is calling gunowners “paranoid” and “racist”, because we want to be prepared for any eventuality. The anti-Second Amendment crowd told us that the “government would never take away your guns” - that was before Katrina. We never believed that Obama wouldn’t try to promulgate new gun-control schemes.
So it is with free speech. The more they claim they want “diversity”, the more they try to muzzle and silence free thinkers like Jared Taylor and Nick Griffin. They say they want free speech, but at the same time, they want to control the Internet - the most power communications tool known to humanity, since the invention of the Guttenberg press.
I’ve said from Day One that the European Union is as totalitarian as the old Soviet Union was. I felt like the lonliest voice crying out in the wilderness, but I didn’t care. Now, all my realizations have been borne out.
I do not recall, until recently, ever hearing about hate/race speech. Speech is speech. When is some speech better than others? I am aware of standards of public decency. It is politics, not speech that is the great divider. V
Of course, when muslims openly threaten to murder “dhimmis”,
Muslims don’t threaten “dhimmis.” Dhimmis are subservient non-Muslims under Islamic “protection.”
They’re after “kafirs” — unbelievers, usually either belligerent towards Islam or considered so.
I sure hope you are right Howard because I sure have a bad feeling about the coming administration . Hate crime legislation will nullify the first amendment and these leftwing Nazi’s preparing to take office are hankering for a witch hunt . Folks I don’t know about you but I’m uneasy about whats coming .
Remember that kid in Louisiana who has pled guilty to federal charges of racial intimidation or some such thing, because he had driven his truck past a group of Blacks with a noose hanging from the tailgate, something like that? The American secret police state is just offstage, waiting to enslave us all. It is what liberalism is all about.
2 points
1) the US has a vast system of race quotas in hiring and education that would be unimaginable anywhere in Europe.
I live in Germany, and there are none here that I know of.
2) In the US, you can be summarily fired from a teaching job for openly opposing AA - so much for the 1st amendment.
Howard…..with executive signing orders and other Bush Clinton ‘enhancements’ the constition has become irrelevant. After all if congress could abdicate its right to declare war, what’s to stop them from abdicating our right to free speech?
and remember it already is under assault - that kid who drove by the jena six marchers with an EXTENSION CORD tied as a noose - was threatened with 11 years in prison on fed hate crime charges…. Its only a matter of a few ninth circuit decisions to extent ‘hate crimes’ to saying you want to stop immigration or affirmative action.
and remember an entire generation has gone through systems where it is illegal to speak - like any uni . graduate.
For many years in the past, these same type of elites have always considered any group enemies of the state if they dared to offer legitimate rebuttal, with either proof or strong evidence, against the basic tenants of their concepts about people and policy, and incrementally they became more and more brutal in their attempts to silence them, until eventually they resorted to imprisonment, beatings, torture, and even murder.
Today, they are pursuing the same brutal methods, only, this time, their tenants are not only far-fetched, they are actually destructive to the survival of their countries, because the insistence is on introducing religious fanatics who hate them and their way of life, right along with blacks who are not capable of integrating into any advanced society and weigh it down so heavily with crime, chaos and ineptitude they are as an opposing army that is slowly destroying them, not on the battlefield, but from within. And the ludicrousness of it all is that they were invited into the country, and part of the new totalitarian thinking is that they will ensure the survival of their nation state, even though all proof reveals that they will destroy it.
We are witnessing history in the making. And it will be labelled by historians as an era when fools ruled with progressive brutality, while most of the masses stood idly by, intimidated ian witnessing the destruction of their native lands
When speaking of the European war on free speech, let’s not forget the likes of Ernst Zundel, Germar Rudolf, & Fredrick Töben.
It’s not called the EU(SSR) for nothing. Full of ‘ex-Marxists’ and Fabian Socialists (Communism in slow-motion) whose aims are oft-stated and there on the internet for all to see. The aim of these EU political elites is the destruction of nation-states through mass immigration leading to a soon-to-be-enlarged EU of the regions including the admission of 70m Muslim Turks, North Africans and parts of sub-Sahara Africa. By the way the last thing these traitors will remove is the name of the countries. The will allow the names of each nation-state to be continued to be used to fool the people into believing that nothing has changed while covertly passing laws that will submerge the shell of each destroyed nation-state further into the net of the EUSSR Mark II monster.
A post-democratic Communitarian socialist Third-Way (combining socialism and Capitalism) is the planned future for the coffee-colored serfs by the NWO/EU banking elite. Obama, a Communitarian, is there to bring forward the USA/Canada/Mexico part of the One-World government plan, (of course these corrupt liars are calling this political Union a ‘trade deal’) while Aussie Labour PM Kevin Rudd will do the same for Asia.
As it says above nationalist parties are set for large gains in next year’s June EU elections. The political elite are at last being rumbled as the nation-wreckers that they are but being neo-Marxists they of course have contingency plans in the shape of draconian laws of arrest in time of ‘civil emergencies’ and the new heavily-armed EU police force ready to beat up dissenting nationalists as they did the Flemish nationalists. There will be certainly be many outbreaks of dissent and arrests as the NWO tries to save its long worked for plan of world domination , but hopefully the rest of the slumbering people will at last awaken and sweep away the corrupt political elite into the garbage can of history.
I’ve said this before on another post; that is that I seriously doubt that America would come to the aid of a nationalistic movement in Europe.This is especially true now with the Marxist Obama as ‘ruler’ to use his spokesmouth’s terminology. It is more(than ever)likely that America will support, by means of a severe bombing, the oppressed minorities/refugees/blacks/browns/gypsies/Islamists in their struggle against any nationalist government that attempts to expel them. Of course they will be signing their own death warrant, but at least they can never be accused of aiding a government labelled Hitler2, as Fascists and or Nazis.
It will get worse, if true blue Americans do not stand up against them. I know! the big question is what can we do? Well we have alittle over a month to speak freely, for one. But we need to be researching ways to fight their attack of trying to block our words and thoughts. We cannot allow them to take our freedoms granted to us by our Constitution. They only can do it IF we let them. Under no circumstances can we let them do that. We need lawywers and more lawyers willing to volunteer time to enter lawsuits and represent us all that still believes in our freedoms. We cannot sit this one out folks! We must fight them legally in any manner we can. If we don’t, then we should hang our heads in shame.
Peter wrote: Islam is a religion not a race, how can “racism” be at issue in these cases?
Well Peter, according to the so-called holy traditions of the islamic system, a person is born a muslim and already so before the day of birth, in the womb. Only unbelievers stray from their natural state of being. Therefore people cannot choose their religion. Apostates are in fact people who act contrary to their nature.
Talking about the new Samizdat: let’s not forget Gregorius Nekschot, illustrator, who was arrested by Dutch police for cartoon drawings about Islam, multiculturalism and black criminals.
Remember Germar Rudolf, (mentioned in the March 2001 AR lead story) who tried to get asylum in the USA from the German authorities? The U.S. government deported him in November 2004 because it felt his asylum request from German government persecution was “frivolous.”
I hear a lot of predictable(and fully justified)grumbling about Marxists and such here, but that is only half the story. What notable Conservative has spoken out openly or forcefully against this horrifying thought-criminalization? Surely none of the grand “talk-radio” set dares take issue with this lunacy. While they moan and groan about “Fairness Doctrine” and such here, those in the great modern “democracies” of Europe, Canada, etc., who dare challenge certain hisorical orthodoxies or the wisdom of the multicult and what have you, risk fines, ostracism and, most ominously imprisonment! Where is the political right in America on this issue? For the most part, absolutely nowhere!
I seriously doubt that America would come to the aid of a nationalistic movement in Europe.This is especially true now with the Marxist Obama as ‘ruler’ to use his spokesmouth’s terminology. It is more (than ever) likely that America will support, by means of a severe bombing, the oppressed minorities/refugees/blacks/browns/gypsies/Islamists in their struggle against any nationalist government that attempts to expel them.
“As it says above nationalist parties are set for large gains in next year’s June EU elections.”
I understand this the way you are advocating voting in the EU parliament elections to achieve ‘change’? No, seriously, that’s insane. Voting isn’t going to change anything at all. Whoever you vote for, the Government Party always gets elected (if one’s vote matters at all).
In the EU’s case, voting legitimizes the existence of that very institution. The EU as an organization is so fundamentally flawed and rotten to the core, that nothing short of abolishing it will fix the problem. The European nations should just start seceding from the ‘Union’. The national leaders have been bribed by the lavish benefits offered by the bureaucracy, so it will take some time. Optimistically I would predict the EU will start collapsing in the next 20-30 years.
I’m so sick of this anti-free speech and anti-free market nonsense coming out of the EU, that I might just refer to it as the ‘bureacratic entity in Brussels’, or the ‘evil occupier entity’. It isn’t my Union, nor does it represent me in any way.
On a sidebar note, a hockey player for the Calgary Flames was SUSPENDED INDEFINETLY for referring to his ex-girlfriend Elissa Cuthbert as “sloppy seconds”. The press made it sound like he called her a whore.
Thought I’d move a post, with slight changes, to another article over to this one, since it seems relevant.
————————————————————————————————
Why doesn’t, what I refer to as, The Liberal-Left-Neocon Leviathan, showcase their love of Democracy and Freedom of Speech by hosting a Debate on the subject?
Or, a series of debates dedicated to, above all else, the open and civil exchange of ideas on the matter of Race in America?
It’s a trick question of course.
Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Civility, Ideas.
These things have nothing at all to do with The Leviathan because the Leviathan wants nothing to do with them.
Just as Peter Brimelow has suggested answering the accusation of Racist with Traitor, I would suggest, and actually have been for some time, that we also answer their accusations by questioning their psychological health.
The basic position is that The Liberal-Left-Neocon Leviathan (of which the SPLC is merely on Branch or Division) is filled to the rim with Psychopaths and Sociopaths.
I am European and the new thing about all this is the following – the shackles are tightened – some years ago the political caste mostly considered it sufficient if leftist thugs “took care” of those who dared to speak their mind while having divergent thoughts.
The absurd thing is that when you speak to some of the leftists, they are absolutely convinced that we have full freedom of speech – when I ask, so why do you have to go to jail for saying certain things – they respond. “Well, that’s something different – that’s Nazi/racist. Of course you can’t say that.”
sancta simplicitas!
With their kind of logic your amendment would be no help. Just remember Orwell’s “doublethink”.
