Yet more evidence that the term ‘hate speech’ is fast becoming a euphemism for any form of lawful discourse that progressives happen not to like for purely ideological reasons – as reported by Thomas O’Reilly for the European Conservative, the European Parliament is investigating a Flemish MEP for hate speech after he referred to EU asylum policy as a form of “organised replacement” at a plenary debate.
This is the fourth such investigation the parliamentary authorities have opened in relation to utterances proffered in the Chamber by Right-wing MEPs in the past year.
Tom Vandendriessche of Vlaams Belang, who has represented the Flemish separatists since 2019, made the comments at a Strasbourg debate marking the start of the Belgian presidency of the European Council earlier this week.
In reference to the hotly debated EU Migration Pact, Vandendriessche declared that the purpose of the pact and most EU policy on the matter was to “attract more migration”, in response to comments made by Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson on the need for Europe to accept additional migrants from the Global South.
“She wants to bring an additional one million migrants to Europe, on top of the many millions we already have,” Vandendriessche went on to say in Dutch, saying that this is the very definition of replacement migration.
Despite the function of the debate being to encourage ‘debate’ (the clue, if you look carefully, is in the descriptor), outraged progressive MEPs subsequently protested to the Maltese President of the Parliament, Roberta Metsola, who in turn swiftly announced that she would launch an investigation into Vandendriessche’s words and examine if they broke Parliament’s rules of conduct.
If found guilty by Parliamentary authorities of using hate speech, the Flemish MEP could face a fine or even suspension of his voting rights under the Parliament’s Rule of Procedure.
Commenting on the investigation, Mr. Vandendriessche told the European Conservative: “This EU is increasingly becoming an EUSSR where the opposition is persecuted for telling the truth.”
Last year, a trio of Left-wing female MEPs demanded an urgent investigation into three Right-wing colleagues, alleging that during a debate on women’s rights in the Chamber, they committed ‘hate speech’ when describing transgender women as the “biggest threat to women”, and positing a link between a rise in violence against women across Europe and what they said was the growing influence of Islam.
At the time, President Metsola quickly confirmed that parliamentary authorities would “look into it”.
EU Matrix, a leading Brussels-based analytical research agency, has predicted Left-wing parties risk losing seats across Europe to the Right in 2024, making a Right-wing majority in the EU Parliament a distinct possibility.
The anticipated rightward swing reflects a broader trend across national elections in Europe, where voters in countries such as Italy, Finland and Greece have increasingly elevated more Conservative and hard-Right parties.
Dr. Frederick Attenborough is the Communications Officer of the Free Speech Union.
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Excellent article Paul, thank you.
Some say that Ai Weiwei is the greatest living artist but, like Andy Warhol before him, he has a large team of assistants who produce much of his output. Consequently, his critics claim that he has had minimal input into the much of the work that bears his name. This is wrong-think, IMO. The question one needs to ask is: would the work have been created without him? The answer is no, so he deserves the credit he receives. He simply couldn’t produce the volume of work that he does without help, so it’s perfectly acceptable to employ skilled technicians to execute much of it for him. After all, Henry Moore didn’t cast his own bronzes and, even, Michelangelo didn’t paint every brushstroke on the Sistine ceiling! As an all round artist (with particular emphasis on 3D work) Ai Weiwei is certainly one of the greats, IMO. But he’s no contender for the title of greatest living painter which, arguably, belongs to Gerhard Richter.
Read the book ‘Hidden Hand’ about the insidious spread of CCP ideas within the west, incl the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’.
The CCP and WEF seem to have much in common.
I visited south Madagascar back in 2018, before the World went totalitarian, and you could see where they are operating because the roads were modern with seeped humps etc.
But these governments are taken in by money, not looking at the long term impact of CCP investment.
Ai Weiwei. An homage? Today? Incredible. Have the SPI-B Goebbelsian nudge unit joined the Daily Sceptic?
Why today?
Oh I know. We are encouraged to think of horrible regimes in which people can be beaten up by police and prison guards. The CCP, chums of the ghastly Russians, the hideous encroaching hordes. The Beasts from the East. Let’s focus on our tyrannical enemies, let’s get this Orwellian never ending war started.
Au contraire, as actual sceptics will know. President Turdeau and his sorry ilk, the tinpot leaders of NZ, Oz, in fact most of the west have acted just as badly, as appallingly, as illegally. Worse, arguably.
This latest little dramatic skirmish is to distract the waking populations of the West in a bloody, pantomimic sideshow, diarised by Putin and the West to start the very day the Covid theatre closes following less than stellar reviews. What next? Sanctions of course that will impoverish us, weaken us, open us up to ID, digital currency, camps, God knows what else.
The kleptocrats of Russia are as nothing to the kleptocrats of global mafia banksters, are as nothing to the Pharma Cartels that have virtually strangled honest science to death and killed millions. Reading Robert F Kennedy’s book on Fauci is a must.
Don’t give me Ai Weiwei. Don’t point at the East and demonise them. Let’s clean our own stables of the foul ordure of decades. Nation states are hardly the point any more.
That this article is rushed and dubious can be seen in this tiny extract:
and then soon after to the deserts of Xinjiang, in north-western China close to the Borth Korean border.
Orwellian use of East and West here.
Hear, hear!
Not much point in ‘hearing’ whataboutery gibberish.
Sorry to disagree Rick, OPP is merely pointing out the rank hypocrisy in Western leaders’ rush to demonise Putin considering what they’ve inflicted on us for the last two years. I’m concerned that the new sideshow will conveniently subsume and sideline any chance of ‘outing’ the covid scam.
It would just be like Poland in 1945, one tyranny replaces the other.
That’s a definition of whataboutery. And it again – mysteriously – blames everybody and his dog for our experiences since 2020 except the guy who started it all and whose innovative health policies, like arrest without trial at a moments notice and for no particular reason, are still globally promoted by the WHO.
I don’t disagree with a lot that has been said but Putin has been a tyrant and a bully for much longer than two years, allowing no opposition, sending terrorists to other countries to murder people who disagree with him, controlling the media, amassing massive amounts of wealth at the expense of the ordinary people, totally corrupt he makes our government look like amateurs.
I think that was just a genuine slip – or two – Heilongjiang is close to the North Korean border, not Xinjiang, obviously. And neither are particularly close to Borth, which would certainly be a useful place to send exiles in the winter season.
Here’s something I found about Borth.
Borth Community Hall Childrens Playground.
Playground is open. Please read the Covid19 notices to comply with safely regulations for playground.
Thank you
We can all make typos.
I agree but didn’t he criticise the west on the BBC….he made the point that we are in danger of that in the west “The System”.
Leave the man alone.
Sorry, but marble sex toys and toilet rolls are not art. Just a vainglorious celebration of life style accessoires of the mask-wearing classes they prefer over art as it doesn’t suggest there could be something more important than their everyman-lives.
Those aren’t the only things he’s done and art is in the eye of the beholder.
The idea that everything is in the eye of the beholder is in the eye of the beholder.
Why is Cambridge full of fearful, masked people? I know a Cambridge mathematician who is convinced that without the Covid vaccines, our civilisation would have collapsed in the face of a virus with an IFR of 0.4%. But he is, of course, a rabid leftie – proving that you can be clever and still have no common sense whatsoever.
I don’t know this man but I like him. Who would not live in Portugal if they could. It is a stunning environment in so many ways.
Julian Assange has sufferred greatly and still is for telling the truth. Keep a perspective please.