For those here who don't know much about Flanders.
Posted on 04/26/2004 3:43:57 PM PDT by swilhelm73
The Prime Minister makes much of the “scare stories” and “myths” which opponents of further deepening of the EU supposedly propagate. They are based, apparently, on paranoia, and are products of not-so-latent xenophobia.
Well here’s a very scary story which is not speculation but fact. This week democracy — the right to vote for the party you wish to support — ended inside one EU member state.
On Wednesday, the Belgian judiciary banned a political party from operating in Belgium. The reason? The country’s political establishment dislikes its views. The party it banned is not some obscure fringe organisation but one which has 18 MPs in the 150-seat Belgian parliament, many local councillors and two MEPs. The opinion polls were predicting that it could win the most Belgian votes at the European and local elections in June.
The banned party is Vlaams Blok (VB). The Court of Appeal in Ghent — notorious for its left-liberal bias — deemed it to be an “undemocratic and racist” organisation because of its policy that immigrants should be given only two choices: “to assimilate or to return home”.
Maybe such a policy is indeed racist; maybe it isn’t. The VB itself, which has much in common with the Fortuyn List in the Netherlands, has been accused of this. But in a democracy, surely, that is a decision which voters should make, not judges. But the VB’s racism was merely an excuse. The real reason why the Belgian authorities have been bent on banning the VB for years has nothing to do with racism and the rights of immigrants. It is that the party advocates secession from Belgium and the establishment of a Republic of Flanders. Worse still, as Belgium’s only conservative party it upsets the country’s cosy political applecart. The Belgian Establishment has responded not by defeating it in argument but by banning it.
After Wednesday’s ruling, it is now illegal to distribute VB publications and its politicians are barred from state radio and television. The party is appealing against the ruling, but the Belgian judiciary’s predisposition to do the bidding of the political class means that the appeal has almost no chance of succeeding. When the ban is confirmed, the VB will be proclaimed a criminal organisation and disbanded, unable to exist, let alone to field candidates and argue its case.
I hold no brief for the VB; were I to have a vote in Flanders, I would not vote for it. But that is not the point. What happened in Ghent on Wednesday is a frightening but classic demonstration of the political mindset which lies behind the EU’s “ever-closer union”: if you do not sign up to certain beliefs then your politics are, by definition, beyond the pale and thus illegitimate.
The ruling was merely the latest in a series of attempts to destroy the VB because of the threat it posed to the Belgian status quo. In 1999, “undemocratic and racist” parties were banned from receiving state funding (private donations of more than 125 euros are illegal in Belgium). This decision was immediately followed by an action against the VB on those grounds. When a Flemish judge refused to issue a judgment, arguing that these were matters for the electorate rather than the courts, the head of the Centre for Equal Opportunities, the quango which had brought the case, said that he would continue appealing until he had found a judge who would find against the VB. This week one emerged: Alain Smetrijns, who happens also to be the chairman of the Lions Club in Ghent, a francophone pro-Belgian group.
Belgium is in many ways a mini-EU: an artificial state created (much like Europe’s three former such states, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) as a result of political ideology rather than any sense of national unity, and held together by a political class which is prepared to subvert democracy to achieve its ends. Add to that a judiciary which, far from being independent of the political establishment, is an important part of the problem, and you have a recipe for what took place in Ghent this week: democracy, Belgian-style, in which you may vote only for a party whose views are approved by the elites.
The actions may be specific to Belgium, but the lesson is of wider import. The EU is in the process of becoming just such an artificial state. The fate of the Vlaams Blok shows that worries about the future of democracy are not scare stories. They are real dangers and they are with us today.
UPDATE: Yesterday (Friday), the Flemish state television authorities decided to impose only a partial ban on VB politicians, pending the verdict of the Supreme Court. The Francophone Belgian TV authorities have, however, banned the VB completely.
And to be technically correct, it's not the VB itself which has been banned but its constituent parts. In Belgium, parties have no corporate existence but are rather comprised of a series of groups and organisations. It is those groups which have been labelled racist and undemocratic. As a consequence, anyone who has dealings with them is guilty by association. When the Supreme Court upholds the ban and the VB's constituent bodies are declared criminal organisations then people who have any association with them will themselves be criminals.
Gotta love these politically correct scum. In the name of anti-fascism they are going to have to enact fascism.
This is a completely typical liberal attitude, throughout the world, not just in Europe or Belgium.
Blair might want to add this little bit of perspective to his diddybag as he ponders his support of the vote on adaptation of the EU "Constitution" for GB.
For those here who don't know much about Flanders.
Let me be perfectly blunt. Belgium is a monarchy, comprising perhaps the richest part of medieval Burgundy and the Northernmost part of ancient Gaul. It represents basically two separate ethnicities, Flemish and French. The Monarchy, of course, has a responsibility to preserve the unique character of each of those peoples, and hopefully, they can respect each other. But these issues are for the Belgians to work out.
My only reason for stopping to comment, is that the politically correct madness, which would make people apologize for wanting to preserve their identity as a people--in this case, the Flemish identity--is destroying the West. It is undermining the moral fibre of all our peoples. Why? Because it is in seeking to emulate the best of one's forebears, that most people are motivated to live for values more important than the whim of the moment. Forcing people to no longer honor and seek to preserve their pasts into the future--to maintain what is unique about their respective cultures--is to destroy any possible appreciation of the generation spanning importance of their own conduct. In turning out "Citizens Of The World," the Left is turning out people who do not have the slightest concept of what it takes to make an ongoing community, of any sort, really work.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
What the Leftist fail to realize is; If they and the islamists do succeed in destroying Western Civilization, the islamists will then turn on the leftists like rabid dogs.
Or at least with its European iteration.
I wonder if there's anything that would prevent the VB from re-organizing under another name.
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