by Jared Taylor, Special to AR News, Dec. 3, 2008
Americans of a certaingeneration remember Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky, and VladimirBukovsky—Soviet-era dissidents who faced criminal charges simply forspeaking out against a tyrannical system. We admired them for theircourage and scorned the cowards who muzzled them.
Today in Europe, in part of what we jokingly call “the Free World,”there still are dissidents who are persecuted and even jailed forspeaking out. They, however, get none of the admiration the Soviets gotand most Americans don’t even know their names. That is because ourrulers and elites support freedom of speech only when they agree withit, not on principle. They don’t care or even notice if Europeansbehave as brutally as the Soviets did, so long as their targets are“racists” and “xenophobes.”
Consider only the most recent victims of political persecution:Frank Vanhecke and Suzanne Winter. Mr. Vanhecke is a member of theEuropean Parliament and former president of the Vlaams Belang (VB), aparty that lawfully and peacefully campaigns for Flemish independencefrom Belgium and an end to Islamic immigration. In 2005, the local VBpublication in the Flemish town of Sint-Niklaas published a 130-wordarticle claiming that Muslims were vandalizing town graves and thatIslam was “a culture that has no respect for the dead or for thesymbols of a different faith.” The vandals were later identified as Belgians, and the VBpublication immediately issued a correction, but the authorities stillpronounced the article “racist.” Mr. Vanhecke did not write thearticle, nor did he see it before it was published, but the Socialistmayor of Sint-Niklass brought charges of “racism” against him becausehe was then head of the party.
Belgian authorities leapt at the chance to prosecute Mr. Vanheckebut were prevented by his immunity as a member of the EuropeanParliament. The Belgian justice minister therefore lobbied theEuro-parliament to strip him of immunity, which it did in anoverwhelming vote on November 18. Mr. Vanhecke can now be tried, andfaces up to two years in prison if he is found guilty of “racism.” Hecould also be stripped of civil rights for five years, during whichtime he would be barred from holding elective office. This would be agreat victory for the Belgian establishment; Mr. Vanhecke was to be thelead candidate on the VB list for Euro-parliament elections in June, inwhich nationalist parties across the continent are expected to makesolid gains.
This prosecution is openly political. Aside from the absurdity ofmaking it a crime to criticize Muslims, Belgian law requires that ifthe author of an offending text is known, he must be charged first—aneditor or supervisor can be charged only if the author is not known orhas already been found guilty. The name of the author is known, but theBelgian establishment is not interested in him; it wants the formerhead of a party it hates. It is, of course, only continuing the brutalprocedures is perfected in November 2004 when it managed to ban theentire Flemish party through trumped up charges of “racism.” Belgium, in other words, is behaving in ways that would have made Leonid Brezhnev proud—and America looks the other way.
Austria has also decided to put a dissident politician through thesame tyrannical procedure. Suzanne Winter is a member of parliament forthe Austrian Freedom Party, one of Europe’s most dynamic nationalistparties, formerly led by the charismatic Joerg Haider. During acampaign for city council in Graz last January, she said that Islam was“a totalitarian system of domination that should be cast back to itsbirthplace on the other side of the Mediterranean,” that Mohammed hadwritten the Koran during a series of “epileptic fits,” and that bytoday’s standards he was a child molester because he married asix-year-old. The president of the Islamic Communities of Austria, AnasSchakfeh, warned that Miss Winter had stirred up a “wrathful mood”among Muslims and that he could not rule out violence. Indeed, MissWinter had to hire bodyguards when a threatening video appeared onYouTube.
Needless to say, Miss Winter won her city council election, and onthe strength of her growing popularity took a seat in the Austrianparliament in legislative elections in September. (If you were asubscriber to AR you would know all about these important elections—seethe first page of last month’s issue here.)This was clearly a woman who had to be stopped. On November 26, underpressure from prosecutors, Austrian legislators voted to lift immunityso she could be charged with incitement, degradation of religioussymbols, and religious agitation.
Miss Winter met the vote with her head held high. She welcomed atrial, she said, because “only through the considerations of anindependent court can clarification be obtained on this issue.” Shedenounced the charges against her as “political hatred by confused,self-proclaimed thought-guards,” and said that such a prosecution couldtake place only under a “dictatorship of conscience.” She faces up totwo years in prison if convicted.
Again, the American establishment is silent, and its silence speaksvolumes. What does it tell us about what our own dissidents may expectfrom a notoriously leftist new president and a solidly DemocraticCongress? **
** The US system therefore needs to be overwhelmed with lucid, dedicated dissidents. — Ed.