Free Speech Attacked at Brussels Conference

The annual National Conservativism conference in Brussels almost came to a complete halt on Tuesday when Mayor Emir Kir ordered police to shut down the event for “creating a public disturbance.”

The attack on free speech comes as Europe-wide elections scheduled for June are expected to take a sharp right turn.

Barricade: Police arrived two hours after the conference began and denied entrance to new attendees and speakers for several hours. Those already inside the meeting hall were permitted to continue while authorities developed a legal case against them. Hours later, Belgium’s highest court deemed Kir’s order illegal and the conference was able to continue.

Push back: British member of Parliament Suella Braverman described authorities as “the thought police” and called their interference an act to “undermine and denigrate what is free speech and free debate.”

Nigel Farage, a broadcaster and former British politician, said:

Cancel culture is saying: “I do not want to hear your opinion” …. It says that no other view is allowed, that anybody that holds it is, by definition, mad, bad, and dangerous. … This is what we’re up against. We’re up against a new form of evil ideology.

A new age: Adolf Hitler described this “evil ideology” as “a new age of magic interpretation … in terms of the will and not of intelligence.” We have entered into an age where you get to decide what is true, as long as it fits within a certain ideology. The attack on free speech is an attack against truth.

Learn more: Read “The Global War on Free Speech.”