On Soft Cancelling

Should disgusting, vile toxic racists be allowed free speech?

I spoke at the National Conservative event last May in London. There was a lot of media excitement around, a couple of protesters inside and outside the ubiquitous Steve Bray and his crew playing Benny Hill music and lambasting the Conservative Party (unaware that the people within the hall loathed the party even more than they did).

But successful though that event was, it hasn’t caused nearly as much of a stir as this week’s NatCon conference in Brussels, which yesterday saw delegates kept inside the conference hall as the authorities tried to stop the event.

Because of a supposed threat of public disorder, the conference was effectively blocked just before Nigel Farage was due to give his speech at 11 in the morning. The police told the hosts they would turn off the electricity if they didn’t close and gave organisers 15 minutes to read and sign a three-page document ordering its closure. But police officers sent to shut down the event ‘got scared’ when they were surrounded by television cameras, according to organiser Yoram Hazony, and they instead told attendees that if they left they would not be allowed back in.

It was only being held at the Claridge event centre after two previous venues had been pressured into cancelling. The conference was originally booked for the Concert Noble but moved after pressure from the Socialist Brussels mayor Philippe Close, and the Sofitel hotel then cancelled after similar pressure from the Liberal mayor of the municipality of Etterbeek.

So it settled on Claridge, in the municipality of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, but the mayor there, Emir Kir, said he would ‘immediately take measures to ban’ the event. This was to ‘guarantee public safety’, because of threats from left-wing activists who said they would break it up and ‘hate speech is never justified by freedom of speech.’

Kir also objected to the views of the attendees, stating that ‘Among these personalities there are several particularly from the right-conservative, religious right and European extreme right’ and adding ‘The far right is not welcome.’

In his report Kir declared that the event was ‘likely to cause a disturbance of the public peace due to its provocative and discriminatory nature; that, in fact, some of the personalities concerned, some of whom reputed to be traditionalists, homophobes and disrespectful of human rights and minorities; we can also cite an author of controversial works on political Islam’, by which he presumably meant Frenchman Éric Zemmour.

The organisers won the right to hold the event today, and the ensuring drama felt like a big win for NatCon, confirming all their worst views about the modern Left. In the New Statesman, Freddie Hayward observed that ‘The event is being held on the same road as the European Commission’s competition authority. The symbolism is undeniable. The actions of the police and the mayor will lead to far greater coverage of the conference than it would otherwise have received. It is also a testament to the conference’s argument that even at the heart of Europe free speech is under threat – a point the attendees are poised to make.’

It couldn’t have worked out better for Farage, who told reporters that ‘This is what we are up against. We are up against an evil ideology. We are up against a new form of communism. This is like the old Soviet Union. No alternative view allowed.’ Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán, who is speaking today, compared the actions to those of the communist authorities in Hungary in 1988: ‘We didn’t give up then and we will not give up this time either!’