Posted on March 14, 2024

Belgium Should Be Ashamed

Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, March 14, 2024


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Dries Van Langenhove is one of the most impressive and important activists in our movement. And he has guts. Despite government persecution, financial penalties, threats from antifa, and furious media hatred, he gave a speech at the last American Renaissance conference called “This Is The Greatest Time to Be Alive.” He said our ancestors are watching us, and “I want to make my ancestors proud.” “I want to continue their legacy. I am, just like they were, prepared to give my life for our people and our future.”

Belgium has not killed him, but it is trying to steal his life. A Belgian court sentenced him to one year in prison for “spreading hate.” He must also pay a fine of more than $17,000. Most of the international media are pleased.

The “conservatives” at Fox News called the sentence a “major ruling in how the nation deals with extremism.”

Mr. Van Langenhove did not actually post the offensive memes, and none of these stories above reported what he had allegedly said.

He was simply in a group chat. “The activists of Shield & Friends can only be charged with some memes,” Mr. Van Langenhove said, “memes that I didn’t even post myself, by the way.” This was also seven years ago. Some people find memes and jokes offensive, but what kind of country imprisons people for jokes? A tyrannical one.

It was also a private group, so why do we even know about these jokes? A state media organization took it upon itself to infiltrate. This is just another example of the supposed “free press” serving as the vanguard of censorship. People then complained about what is now public, triggering an investigation. ” ‘The ridiculing of gas chambers, of incinerators, that was so over the top for me that I spontaneously lodged a complaint,’ said Henri Heimans, a former magistrate whose parents survived the Nazi death camps,” said Politico.

Nothing about this was spontaneous. These offensive ideas that supposedly harm the public would have remained completely unknown if an organization that is part of the state apparatus had not gone through a huge amount of trouble to reveal it. And now, members of the public can now demand “damages”! Judge Jan Van den Berghe said that “the file showed that he [Dries Van Langenhove] wants to undermine democratic society and replace it with a social model of white supremacy.” The “file” he’s referencing appears to refer to Mr. Van Langenhove’s other activities and not the private message group posts. If he had posted such rhetoric in the private group, he would have been charged for that.

Of course, if his views were truly harmful, far more people are seeing this now because of the case. Furthermore, some are likely to believe that a society in which acts like this are a crime should be undermined.

Mr. Van Langenhove has a GiveSendGo to raise enough money to pay these fines. I encourage everyone to donate.

He wrote:

Today I was sentenced to one year of effective prison sentence, 10 months of suspended prison sentence, €16,000 effective fine, €6,000 suspended fine, €10,000 in compensation and 10 years of loss of civil rights, which means I am no longer allowed to participate in politics. However, a years-long investigation, on which the Justice Department wasted millions of euros of taxpayers’ money, shows that the S&V [Shield and Friends] activists cannot be charged with anything other than memes.

“One of Belgium’s most prominent human rights organizations, the Human Rights League, was a party in the case,” said Politico. “Its lawyer said the ruling ‘counts as a clear signal.’ ” Of what? Of a self-proclaimed democracy that bans free speech? Of a so-called human rights organization that declares itself an enemy of the most fundamental human right? This is not “soft” tyranny; it’s tyranny.

One encouraging sign is that some conservatives seem to understand.

Vlaams Belang also denounced the verdict, with party leader Tom Van Grieken saying that it showed “Belgian justice is rotten to the core.” Mr. Van Langenhove is a former member.

Elon Musk also noticed the case.

Politico said Mr. Musk “appeared to row in behind a Belgian far-right leader convicted of inciting violence and denying the Holocaust on Tuesday.” No, Mr. Musk was stunned that a court in a supposedly free country could sentence a man to jail for being in a private chat group where someone else posted memes. All Americans should be. If journalists are offended by this, they are the problem.

As for the Washington Post, “Right wing extremism, racism, and antisemitism have been on the rise through much of Europe, and far-right political parties have made big inroads in many European Union nations over the last few years,” it concluded, implying it takes jail sentences to stop these scourges.

There will be EU elections in June. Let’s hope Europeans send their rulers a message, especially in Belgium, an artificial state that should, by rights, be cut in two. Perhaps in a year, we could see an independent Flemish Republic.

Please show your support for Dries Van Langenhove by donating to Mr. Van Langenhove or to Schild & Vrienden.

About Gregory Hood

View all posts by Gregory Hood
Mr. Hood is a staff writer for American Renaissance. He has been active in conservative groups in the US. You can follow him on Gab.