Want to exercise freedom of speech? Not when European lawfare cuts your throat

It’s no secret that Europe has a serious problem with free speech. I have covered the topic multiple times, as there is unfortunately no end to the laundry list of free speech violations across the European Union. Made worse is the fact that these violations are effectively sanctioned by the rules governing the EU: Europe’s guarantees to America’s First Amendment has enough exceptions to the right to free speech as to effectively nullify its existence.

And those exceptions have been used repeatedly by progressives – sometimes elected officials, sometimes embedded in the state bureaucracy – across the continent to enforce their ideology on anyone who opposes them. Voters have not supported this: Sick of having progressivism shoved down their throats, they have taken to electing and increasing support for populists from the Baltic to the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and in between. But instead of listening, prosecutors are busy seeking to jail those who speak out.

This weaponisation of justice, known as lawfare, has been used on effectively anyone who defies progressive orthodoxy. Call a fat German politician fat? You’ll get investigated by the police. Cite statistics which show illegal migrants commit sex crimes at higher rates? You’ll be put on trial.

But two concurrent cases serve particularly to highlight the absurd level progressives are reaching – or, more so, stooping to – when trying to force their ideology in places it is unwanted. Both cases, stretching across the continent, involve current or former members of parliament.

The first concerns a former member of Belgium’s parliament, Dries Van Langenhove. Van Langenhove was elected as a member of Vlaams Belang, which is currently Belgium’s most popular political party in polling. As a leader of its youth wing, Van Langenhove ran a private chat in which members could discuss politics. In this chat group – which it must be underlined was private and invite-only – they shared “questionable memes, films, photomontages, and comments,” which reportedly included commentary which was offensive toward minorities. Prosecutors did not say that he himself shared these materials, just that he oversaw the group. One thing they did note that he said was this: “Some cultures are inferior.” After a series of absurd events – his legal team had to fight to get a judge removed who had liked tweets calling him a fascist – he was given a 12 month suspended sentence and banned from running for office for ten years.

Let’s put aside the Soviet-style formulation of “questionable memes,” which would be humorous if the situation was not so dire. Anyone who is under the age of 35 and has been in internet chats knows that “questionable” things are always posted. It is akin to an edgy comedian; dark jokes are just that: Dark jokes. If they had been harassing individuals, that would be one thing; but this was akin to, in the 21st century, making dark jokes with your friends in the privacy of your own home. Is such private commentary illegal? Apparently yes, in Belgium at least.

As for Van Langenhove’s statement of some cultures being inferior? He was simply stating something which was, until a few decades ago, a commonly held view in the West and is still, today, commonly held everywhere else. It is also a statement which is rather hard to argue with – are we really going to pretend that every culture is equal in terms of output? This is not to question the value of a person; we are all made in the eyes of God.

But God did not make all of our cultures, some of which are obviously inferior to others. After all, culture is value: Are we really going to pretend that all values are equal? Are the progressives who want to throw people in jail for sharing memes making fun of Pride Month going to say that a culture which executes people for being gay – as Afghanistan does – is equal? Conservatives would argue that the fruits of the Western tree reveal that our tree is valuable. Can all cultures say the same? And should it really be illegal to even question that or discuss it?

The second case in Europe rests in Finland. In reality, it is now three different cases. Päivi Räsänen, back in 2019, tweeted at the Church of Finland, asking why it was participating in Pride Month when, in a bible verse she also posted, Christianity holds that God made men and women. She had also wrote a pamphlet supportive of traditional marriage back in 2004.

For these two writings, she has been hounded in two hate speech trials, both of which she was acquitted for. Adding to the madness is the fact that she will be tried alongside a bishop who helped her to write the pamphlet in the mid-2000s.

This should be farcical: A man of the cloth and a member of parliament are being pursued relentlessly by prosecutors – who have lost both previous cases – for writing a pamphlet expressing their religious views over two decades ago, back when those views were absolutely the mainstream (Finland did not even have gay marriage until 2009). Progressives are now not just prosecuting speech in the current day, which is already unacceptable: They are even reaching back to punish people for saying things decades ago when they were perfectly acceptable to say.

Räsänen’s case will be heard this summer by Finland’s Supreme Court. If the court is anything like the previous two courts which heard her, she will be acquitted. But the threat of thousands of dollars of fines still sits over her head, a threat which should not even exist in the first place.

These are not idle concerns. It may sound comical that you can be arrested for calling an overweight German politician fat, but it’s reality: If I were writing from within the borders of Germany, I could genuinely be arrested for multiple statements in this piece.