The New York Young Republican Club has twice now decried the inhuman treatment of Dries Van Langenhove by the Belgian authorities. Two times is, apparently, not enough. Until their countries are truly and properly free, we will continue our noble crusade to liberate the oppressed people of Europe. Today’s court ruling in Van Langenhove’s show trial cements the reality that the Brussels regime and its allies are tyrannical, oppressive, and illegitimate. Tyrants have been felled for less; revolutions have begun over smaller trifles.
In the latest turn of this case, a Belgian court of appeals condemned former MP Dries Van Langenhove to a year in prison for so-called “hate speech” that, shockingly, even the prosecution admits were not his own words. Van Langenhove is the founder of the Schild & Vrienden youth movement, which is the largest of its kind in Belgium. S&V trains young Flemish patriots to love, serve, and protect their country, much as our Club does in New York. The Machiavellian tyrants in the Brussels Regime could not suffer such patriotism and resolved to scatter S&V’s ashes to the winds. Van Langenhove was ultimately convicted not because justice demanded it, but because Europe could not tolerate dissidents within their regime.
In a private Discord server, a minor-aged member of S&V asked his friends for “the edgiest memes.” These were duly shared; the youths never expected that evil men would use these memes to plot their leader’s downfall. But years later, when Belgian authorities recruited a left-wing journalist to illegally hack S&V’s server, these memes surfaced. Neo-Soviet thugs drove battering rams through the front doors of Dries and his friends and dragged him off to prison. There, Dries was told he would be left to rot unless he “willingly” signed a gag order that waived his right to freely defend himself in public.
Allegedly because of these memes, Van Langenhove was convicted of “hate speech” by a judge who called him “rancid” and a “fascist” on her personal social media. Today, an appeals court upheld that conviction – despite the fact that Van Langenhove did not condone the memes and was not even aware of their existence until jackbooted thugs busted through his front door. The court handed down a suspended sentence of one year in prison and a fine of over one thousand euros. In some respects, the suspended sentence is worse than the year of actual jail time. By dangling jail over his head like the Sword of Damocles, Van Langenhove will live in a continuous state of blackmail. If he continues to oppose the post-liberal European agenda, as man of his integrity must do, they will destroy him. Though he is not currently behind bars, Van Langenhove is not free.
It is obvious from the case that Van Langenhove was persecuted not for those puerile memes, but because he dared to oppose the Brussels agenda. This chilling verdict sends a message to millions of freedom-loving Flems: your patriotism is illegal. If you mock the Brussels agenda, you are not engaging in free speech: you are committing a “hate crime.” If you oppose mass migration, you’re a racist. If you are appalled at the current state of post-liberal Europe, you are a dangerous bigot, a Nazi sympathizer, and probably have a portrait of the Führer in your living room. If you dissent in any way, the full fury of the Brussels Regime will be unleashed on you and your family.
Despite the best efforts of the American left, the New York Young Republican Club is grateful that America retains its First Amendment right to free speech. Americans should recognize that, but for the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, political dissidence would be as illegal here as it is in Belgium. We stand in unbroken solidarity with Dries Van Langenhove and the free people of Flanders, and we are proud to assert their rights when few others will. Because they continue to deny the civil and political rights of the Flemish People, we declare the Brussels Regime illegitimate, null, and void. The Flemish must continue to organize until Dries Van Langenhove is free.
Free Dries!