‘Ridiculous own goal’: Brussels mayor gives
Europe’s hard-right a free hit before EU election
Conservative conference-goers emerge from NatCon after
two days of defending free speech, attacking ‘Bolshewokism’ and watching Nigel
Farage do Donald Trump impressions.
Local commune mayor Emir Kir’s attempt to stop the
conference by arguing it represented a danger to the public — a move ultimately
quashed by a Belgian court — backfired. |
APRIL 18,
2024 4:00 AM CET
BY EDDY WAX
BRUSSELS —
Europe’s nationalists came to Brussels to pick a fight with the EU superstate
only to end up fighting a local mayor.
In all
likelihood, a meeting of Europe’s hard-right featuring Nigel Farage and Viktor
Orbán as its keynote speakers wouldn’t have garnered much global attention.
But
attempts by three local politicians to shut down the National Conservatism
Conference triggered international outcry, handing the European Union
arch-critics more ammunition than they could have dreamed of two months before
the European election.
Local mayor
Emir Kir’s attempt to stop the conference by arguing it represented a danger to
the public — a move ultimately quashed by a Belgian court — backfired. Rather,
it emboldened a growing right-wing caucus that stands to gain seats and
influence in coming months, not least of which in Belgium, where Flemish
nationalist separatists Vlaams Belang are projected to become the largest
Belgian party in the European Parliament and win the country’s national
election in June.
Right-wing
bloggers such as Matt Goodwin filmed themselves declaring they had been trapped
in a “Brussels bunker.”
Leaders
around Europe, some of them right-wing, seized on the events as the ultimate
proof of what they’ve been arguing all along: That Brussels is biased against
them and overreaching into their spheres of power at home.
(Even if,
in this case, the Brussels that caused problems was not a faceless EU
superstate governing 400 million people but, rather, a mayor with jurisdiction
over some 27,000.)
Right-wing leaders around Europe seized on the events
as the ultimate proof of what they’ve been arguing all along: That Brussels is
biased against them and overreaching into their spheres of power at home. |
U.K. Prime
Minister Rishi Sunak and his nationalist counterpart in Italy, Giorgia Meloni,
also spoke out against the attempted shutdown of the conference.
Liberal
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo, who has said his government’s task
was to fight the far-right taking power, described the mayor’s move as
unconstitutional. Belgian Liberal Member of the European Parliament Guy
Verhofstadt, who clashed with Farage frequently over Brexit, called the move a
“ridiculous own goal.”
Israel’s
Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli, from the hard-right governing
Likud party, compared what he described as the tyrannical woke agenda as
another kind of totalitarianism, sitting alongside jihadist terror.
“They are
hiding behind so-called liberal values but the nature of this movement is
anti-liberal,” he told POLITICO.
Captive audience
Over two
days, the conference buzzed with phrases such as “nihilistic atheism,” the
“globalist socialist agenda,” “gender ideology,” “Bolshewokeism,” and “activist
judges in Strasbourg,” which flew from the stage around the cramped space.
Farage,
closely tailed by a security detail, raged against the U.K.’s new smoking ban,
performed a few Donald Trump impressions, and on Wednesday stood in the wings
chuckling along admiringly as Orbán explained why Central Europe is
historically suspicious of supranational political structures.
“Mr. Orbán
got a new subject for his campaign: Freedom. The city here was very stupid,”
Attila K. Molnar, the director of the National University of Public Service in
Budapest, said.
On social
media, Farage also blasted the mayor on Wednesday afternoon.
“Who are
you? I’ve never heard of you. No one in Brussels has ever heard of you!”
Farage, who has 1.8 million followers on X, wrote to Kir, who has under 5,000.
Viktor Orbán spoke through a patchy microphone in a
Q&A with Hazony, mournfully reflecting that it was increasingly difficult
to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ these days because temptation in the
modern world is higher than ever. |
Molnar was
in the audience for Orbán’s speech on Wednesday, which the Hungarian leader
used to speak about the danger that Muslim “civilization” poses to Europe’s
“Christian” character. He proudly boasted about having no migrants in his
country and put forth what even he called a “conspiracy theory”: that other
countries want non-Christian migrants so they can vote for left-wing parties.
‘Mr. Ben’
In the end,
the practical impact on the conference’s program was nearly nil. The only
high-profile speaker who was barred entry by a police cordon set up Tuesday
outside the venue, French far-right firebrand Éric Zemmour, spoke the following
day.
But it
mattered not.
As soon as
the left-leaning Mayor Kir dispatched police Tuesday to shut the conference
down because, an officer said, of antifa protest fears, the narrative that
lefty cancel culture was impinging the right to free speech was unleashed. When
the antifa counterprotest did transpire, it was an unthreatening affair.
After two
other venues, Concert Noble and the luxury Sofitel hotel, fell through after
being put under political pressure, organizers set their sights on the
Claridge, a light-starved 90-year-old hall in one the poorest districts of
Brussels. The venue’s sticky carpets play host to all manner of events from Bar
Mitzvahs and charity gigs to Togolese music concerts.
Its
59-year-old Belgo-Tunisian owner Lassaad Ben Yaghlane was the unexpected hero
of the right-wing gathering, getting the nickname “Mr. Ben” for insisting the
event had the right to go ahead “with respect.”
With Vlaams
Belang topping polls, Mr. Ben questioned the point of imposing a firewall
against far-right parties in Belgium, where far-right parties get no coverage
in French-speaking media.
Vlaams
Belang Member of Belgian Parliament Dominiek Lootens said, “This is not good
for the image of Brussels in the whole of Europe.”
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