Posted on 03/26/2022 2:56:18 AM PDT by jerod
The European Parliament, the second-largest elected assembly in the world, is not like any other parliament
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently addressed the European Union Parliament and warned of growing threats to democracy, he received an angry backlash from some elected members who accused him of responding to the recent anti-vaccine mandate convoy protest like a dictator.
The public rebukes by a handful of far-right, populist and anti-vaccine members of the European Parliament claiming Trudeau violated civil rights in response to the protest that occupied Ottawa for almost a month went viral on social media.
Trudeau's Liberal government invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in history in February, giving police and other authorities extraordinary powers to disrupt the protest.
Most of the European Parliament members in attendance for Trudeau's speech in Brussels, the Belgian capital, were seen giving the prime minister a standing ovation. The assembly's public galleries were full for the speech.
After Trudeau's address, some of the 705 elected members of the assembly who hail from the 27 countries in the European Union were invited to respond to Trudeau's remarks. Most MEPs were welcoming but a handful used the opportunity to attack the prime minister.
The European Union Parliament has a history of making news when outspoken members make controversial remarks. Some of those members represent parties that oppose the existence of the EU itself.
CBC News takes a look at what was said, who said it and how the European Parliament is vastly different from parliaments elsewhere in the democratic world.
What did MEPs say about Trudeau?
Describing Trudeau as someone who "tramples" fundamental human rights and freedoms, Independent Croatian MEP Mislav Kolakušić said Canada once stood for civil rights but now seems more like a "dictatorship of the worst kind."
"Under your quasi-liberal boot in recent months," Kolakušić said, "we watched how you trample women with horses, how you block the bank accounts of single parents so that they can't even pay their children's education and medicine, that they can't pay utilities, mortgages for their homes."
Ontario's police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, launched an investigation on Feb. 20 after a 49-year-old woman reported being seriously injured by a Toronto Police Service officer on a horse as police were clearing out people who had occupied Ottawa's downtown core.
"Mr. Trudeau, you are a disgrace for any democracy," said German MEP Christine Anderson, the political spokesperson for the ID parliamentary group in the European Parliament through her party Alternative for Germany.
Anderson went on to accuse Trudeau of civil rights violations during the trucker convoy protest, calling him a dictator who treats citizens as "terrorists."
Another Alternative for Germany MEP, Bernhard Zimniok, accused Trudeau of "trampling on democratic rights" by cracking down on people for protesting "disproportionate" public health measures.
Who are the MEPs who accused Trudeau of being a dictator?
Mislav Kolakušić, whose speech in the assembly went viral on his Twitter feed, is a failed Croatian presidential candidate and is not affiliated with any political party in the European Parliament. He has aligned himself with anti-vaccine voices inside and outside of the assembly.
Reuters reported earlier this year that Kolakušić had accused French President Emmanuel Macron of "murdering citizens" through vaccine mandates and that he claimed "tens of thousands of" Europeans had died from vaccine side-effects during the pandemic.
Reuters said Europe's drug regulator pushed back against that claim, describing it as "incorrect" and a "misrepresentation of data."
Kolakušić was also one of six MEPs censured by the European Parliament for refusing to present an EU Digital COVID certificate to enter the assembly. Anderson was another of the MPs punished in that incident.
Both Anderson and Zimniok are members of the political party Alternative for Germany, described by the BBC as a far-right political party that employs rhetoric "tinged with Nazi overtones."
A German court ruled recently that the party is "a suspected threat to democracy" after an administrative court in Cologne found that there are "sufficient indications of anti-constitutional goals within the AfD."
Alternative for Germany is one of the national parties that fall under the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament. With 63 members from 10 countries, it is the fifth-largest group in the assembly.
Identity and Democracy is made up of domestic political parties opposed to the EU. They hold far-right positions on issues like immigration, EU membership and social welfare. The ID group includes France's Rassemblement National party, which was founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien criticized Trudeau a few months ago... The next day there were stories produced by the CBC criticizing Chrétien using government information from archive files that the CBC was obviously fed with by the Prime Minister's office... Trudeau and the CBC (his personal propaganda machine) have no couth.
The CBC can pretend all they want but those who spoke out were just the people who said what many others were thinking.
Conservatives again demand an end to all federal COVID-19 restrictions Social Sharing
There are some Canadian businesses that I would love to patronize in person (won't do mail order, too many issues), but can't get in while the unvaxxed are banned.
Indigenous elder, in a walker, trampled by Trudeau’s thugs during the peaceful freedom convoy protest .. ~Candice “Candy” Sero.. a full-blood Mohawk woman lives in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory in Hastings County, Ontario..
https://thepostmillennial.com/woman-trampled-freedom-protest-indigenous-elder
Romanian Member of European Parliament (MEP) Cristian Terheș savaged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the European Parliament in Brussels this weekend for cracking down on peaceful freedom convoy protesters in Ottawa.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4049611/posts
The public rebukes by a handful of far-right, populist and anti-vaccine members of the European Parliament claiming Trudeau violated civil rights in response to the protest that occupied Ottawa for almost a month went viral on social media.
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We need to make the world safe for liberal democracies such as Canada; the very model of a liberal democracy, where opponents are crushed, their bank accounts seized, and their dogs threatened with death. That’s real liberal democracy.
This is typical CBC tripe...
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Not only typical CBC tripe but it’s also the typical tactic….
All the LSM in Canada have done their best to pretend the Brandeau thing in the European Parliament never happened and they went to extraordinary links to not report on it. The problem for them is that everyone knows about it from alternative sources… the National Post was in the same boat the other day when their first reports of Brandeau’s trip to the European Parliament made no reference to the strips that were torn off him there. After realizing how stupid they were looking, NP finally reported on ‘the rest of the story’.
The CBC of course is a similar boat where they now forced to report on something that they hoped would be kept buried. However, the fact they are forced to do it doesn’t mean that they now aren’t going to try their darndest to shape it… look at what CBC actually said….
- Instead of ‘peaceful truckers’, they were an ‘anti-vaccine mandate convoy’.
- Instead of being rebuked by some ‘thoughtful European parliamentarians’, these particular ones were ‘far-right, populist and anti-vaccine members’….
- And instead of just saying that a ‘legitimate protest was described by the speakers’, it makes the statement that ‘the members of the European Parliament claimed Trudeau violated civil rights in response to the protest that occupied Ottawa for almost a month’.
- Then the Ottawa event gets downplayed because it was ‘just the first time in history to invoke the Emergencies Act’ and then add justification by basically saying it was necessary to ‘disrupt the protest’.
- Then it goes on to delve into ‘who these people are who made these accusations’… and that they are members of ‘far-right political party that employs rhetoric “tinged with Nazi overtones” who is a “a suspected threat to democracy”. Sure… if all fails, play the Nazi card.
It’s just the typical tactic that the Liberal-supporting CBC has become famous for.
When the political pendulum has swung all the way to the left, as it has now, those in the center are considered “far right” and smeared with that broad brush by the left to discredit what they say. But one should focus on what is said, not as much as who said it.
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