MEPs Condemn Antifa Intimidation Campaign Against Brussels Think Tank

Several members of the European Parliament expressed their outrage over the recent vandalism and smear campaign carried out by far-left activists, aimed to intimidate conference venues across the EU capital into refusing to cooperate with the conservative think tank MCC Brussels, in the future.

The vandalism took place last week and was even documented and published online by ‘Vigilance Cordon Sanitaire,’ the Antifa group responsible for the stunt. The activists plastered the walls of ten venues across Brussels with hateful messages targeting the owners themselves, saying “Here we welcome the far-right #MCC.”

The targeted businesses include some of the most illustrious and popular conference venues in Brussels, such as the Stanhope Hotel, NH Berlaymont, Martin’s, Renaissance Hotel, Sofitel, and even the Press Club and the historic Solvay Library.

The goal is clear: intimidate these venues into closing their doors to MCC Brussels in the future. None have given in so far, the europeanconservative.com learned from the think tank, but several have notified them that they will have to charge extra as “insurance” against future vandalism going forward.

This guerrilla tactic to curtail the freedom of expression—especially in a city where political pluralism was virtually non-existent before MCC Brussels arrived a few years ago—is “totalitarian and deeply anti-democratic,” said Luxembourgish MEP Fernand Kartheiser (ADR/ECR).

MCC Brussels plays “a vital role in fostering intellectual diversity and facilitating open, critical debate,” Flemish MEP Tom Vandendriessche (Vlaams Belang/PfE) said, adding that without the think tank, voices challenging the EU’s mainstream consensus would lose one of their only platforms for “democratic debate in Brussels’ increasingly hostile environment.”

Vandendriessche speaks from experience: the city being his home turf, he and his party have been subjected to endless harassment from local Antifa groups. His party headquarters were also attacked by an angry mob last November, presumably the same ‘protesters’ who attempted to shut down RN leader Jordan Bardella’s book launch a few hours earlier. As the Vlaams Belang leader underlined:

The recent attacks and smear campaigns against MCC Brussels are a worrying sign that freedom of expression is no longer guaranteed in Brussels, the very city that claims to symbolize European democracy. Attempts to silence dissenting views through intimidation and defamation must be unequivocally condemned. 

Austrian MEP Elisabeth Dieringer, also a regular speaker at MCC events, strongly rejected the “far-right” label for the think tank and its guests. After all, her Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) is the largest in the country, with an unequivocal democratic mandate to represent the interests of its voters.

“This may be a thorn in the side of some people—but in a democracy, they have to be able to live with it,” Dieringer pointed out. “But anyone who decides to put pressure on venues attacks the central values of our democracy: freedom of expression and discourse.”

Spanish MEP Jorge Buxadé (VOX/PfE), a former lawyer and university professor, went even further and equated the intimidation campaign to the ideological intimidation in Soviet Russia:

The campaign of targeting and persecution of businesses … recalls the worst images of political persecution in Stalin’s Russia. MCC is an organisation that promotes educational excellence, freedom of thought and expression, and the defense of Europe’s true values, which are precisely the opposite of the sovietism of its defamers. … In the face of hatred, lies, and finger-pointing, I raise, as MCC does, the banner of truth and freedom.

This is not the first time MCC Brussels has had to face this political repression. The most notable case was last year’s NatCon Brussels—Europe’s largest conservative conference co-hosted by MCC—which was dropped by two venues after they received threats of violence from Antifa, and then was nearly shut down by armed police sent by a leftist Brussels mayor—an action that earned the condemnation of even the Belgian prime minister. 

Another time, a Brussels bookstore canceled the launch of MCC Director Frank Furedi’s new book, allegedly after being contacted by left-wing journalists, and then argued—ironically enough—that it couldn’t host the book launch because of a commitment to being “an inclusive space.”

This latest campaign, however, represents a new low even for Brussels. It’s worth noting that it was likely part of a larger, coordinated smear campaign against MCC, as the timing of the Antifa stunt coincided with an article published by the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), an NGO bankrolled by Soros’ Open Society Foundations. 

The organization’s hit piece claimed that MCC—which made a name for itself by exposing the EU institutions’ infamous lack of transparency, especially in terms of NGO financing—was under investigation for failing to disclose its own 2024 financial records in the EU Transparency Register.

John O’Brien, MCC Brussels’s Head of Communications, was quick to set the record straight. He pointed out that by Belgian law, the deadline is in August 2025, and that the think tank has always operated in accordance with all legal obligations.

According to the think tank’s director, Frank Furedi, this coordinated smear campaign shows that its work exposing the lack of transparency and anti-democratic practices in the heart of the European Union has not gone unnoticed by the mainstream EU elite:

Our work has hit a raw nerve which is why we are now confronted with a campaign of slander designed to call our integrity into question. It is not an accident that this attack, led by a Soros-funded NGO, coincides with a scurrilous attempt by the local Antifa to prevent us from conducting our work in public. The real issue here is not our commitment to transparency but the underhanded assault on our freedom to play a full role in public life.