Responding to a coordinated effort to cancel this week’s National Conservatism conference in Brussels, event organisers MCC Brussels presented a new “free speech declaration,” aiming to rally supporters across the political spectrum and force the Belgian authorities to live up to their “democratic and constitutional responsibilities.”
Free speech forces rallied Thursday in the EU capital, with MCC Brussels hosting a meeting to introduce a free speech declaration and gather support for both an honest intellectual debate and legal responses to future attempts at silencing free speech and cancelling gatherings for ideological reasons.
The declaration, still in its draft phase, was presented by MCC Brussels director Frank Füredi and head of policy, Jacob Reynolds, alongside Flemish senator Bob De Brabandere. Its stated goal is to cultivate a “network of democracy-supporting venues that will not cave in to political pressure” and to
support all those whose democratic rights are threatened by censorship, vague invocations of safety concerns, threats, and smear attacks—from whatever political backgrounds.
Pointing out that “everybody” claims to be a supporter of free speech, Füredi said,
when you listen carefully, what they are really saying is, “I believe in free speech—but…”
It is, the MCC director said, what comes after that “but” that is really important, because it qualifies what limitations people put on their approval of free speech: “not for people like you, not for people like them, not for people who are using hate speech, not for people who are too conservative…”
Füredi also referenced Thomas Hobbes “freedom-security exchange”—where people voluntarily give up freedoms in exchange for the protection of the state. This, he said, has been the justification for every dictatorship in the last 200 years.
If authorities take away our freedom to use our voice, Furedi said, we are not citizens—but subjects.
Füredi was particularly scathing of the failure of European governments to live up to their rhetorical commitment to free speech. He said the NatCon cancellation attempts were “a trial run” for what he expects to become a wider campaign against the Hungarian EU Council Presidency beginning in July,.
Füredi was joined by Senator De Brabandere (Vlaams Belang), who told the assembled audience it was positive that “Belgium and Brussels ridiculed themselves for all the world to see,” adding that he and his party would likely pursue the matter further in the courts and in the Belgian Parliament.
Senator De Brabandere continued by pointing out that it is important to note that mayors connected to all three major Belgian parties had tried to stop the NatCon conference from occurring and predicted that a “political landslide” is coming shortly in the impending Belgian and EU elections.
While recognizing the Belgian court’s late-night decision that overruled a mayor’s attempt at shutting down the NatCon conference as a win, Füredi said “The fight is only just beginning. … We cannot rely on one judge who happens to decide in our favour,” he said:
If the future of freedom relies on one individual, that freedom is in trouble.
