Who's the fascist now?

Time is short again, after my sputtering in the comments to the previous post, so I'll make this announcement for our weekly Thursday night meeting brief. We meet every week in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 7-9pm, even when the library itself is closed due to the strike. If you have come to realize that only ordinary, non-expert, free and independent persons like yourself can renew the Canadian national covenant (that no one in the established elite is allowed to tackle the task) and you want to talk about it because we need to do it, you can find us in front of Blenz Coffee. Look for a blue scarf or an Israeli or Canadian flag (our signs for free nationhood).

What do I want to talk about this week? What does our commitment to building a new Canadian covenant, in defense of our freedom democratically to rule ourselves, require us to defend in the way of other nations' freedoms, as part of a multinational compact against post-national, democratically unaccountable, international elites? You may have heard of what happened in Brussels this week. A bunch of people - characterized by the liberal media as "right wing extremists" (which in their biased terminology is the counterpart to "left wing activists") - came together to protest the Islamization of Europe ("so-called" according to the MSM). The demonstrators were fewer than expected, since the Mayor of Brussels banned the event in the name of maintaining the peace (he was scared some of the local Muslims would stand up and fight, or that his own political position as a socialist who grabs power by scapegoating the West and "racist" nationalists would be jeopardized). And those who showed up were simply there to show up, to say we have a right to criticize Islam in Europe - they weren't doing much else. But that didn't stop the constabulary from roughing up and arresting a large number of them, targeting especially leading figures in the Flemish separatist Vlaams Belang party.

Now I know there is a lot of debate about whether Vlaams Belang, Belgium's largest (of several) political party, is a racist, neo-Nazi (i.e. left-wing) party. In my cursory understanding it isn't. But that's really not germane to my point right now. Flemish, or Dutch, is a close linguistic cousin of English; and Belgium is one of the most Western, wealthy and advanced countries in the world. In other words, in some sense, on some level, these are our kind of people, fighting for national independence from multinational Belgium and the post-national EU. And our kind of people cannot, it seems, be any longer allowed to protest things like mass third-world immigration; the incompatibility of Islam - as it is widely practiced in Europe today - with Western freedoms and laws; and increasingly authoritarian, "multiculturalist" bureaucratic regimes like the EU establishment in Brussels. The Belgian police seemed to feel they had a moral license to rough up these politically objectionable people simply for who they were (since they were not doing anything besides being on the streets). It seems to me, our kind of country - Belgium - is turning into a fascist police state. The question I want to raise at Covenant Zone is what can we do in the struggle to guarantee the freedom of all nations in this world? Is there some kind of boycott Belgium movement to organize?

Anyway, you can get all the details on this story at blogs like The Brussels Journal and Gates of Vienna. Here are links to specific posts (but each blog has had several in the last two days):
Gates of Vienna: It’s Come to This
; Capital of the EUSSR 2: Belgian Police Grabs Flemings by the Balls | The Brussels Journal:

reporter Goedele Devroy told a colleague [video here, in Dutch] that she was amazed by the brutality of the police against the peaceful demonstrators “who just stood there.” She added: “This is strange because, when I rang the police this morning, they said that they would tolerate the demonstration if the demonstrators would not use violence and if they just remained put and would not try to march.”

It looks like a deliberate trap was set up for the demonstrators, who were gathered at Schuman Plaza. Riot police units from Liege in Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium, maltreated the demonstrators, many of them from Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, in an excessively violent way, picking out the VB leaders for the worst treatment. This picture shows how Frank Vanhecke, the VB party leader and a member of the European Parliament, was held tight by police officers while one of them pinches him in the balls. As they did so they shouted abuse such as “Sale Flamingant” (Dirty Flemish-secessionist).

Vanhecke’s hands were tied behind his back, as our video shootage shows, and he was shoved into a police bus. There the beatings continued. Yesterday evening, after releasing the VB leader, the Brussels authorities announced that they will press charges against Vanhecke for assaulting the driver of the police bus.

Filip Dewinter, the group leader of the VB in the Flemish Regional Parliament, was also beaten up. The police dragged him away as he was talking to journalists, a few yards from the demonstration. Last Monday, Dewinter, a member of the Flemish Parliament, called upon that institution to declare the independence of Flanders from Wallonia. Also beaten up, probably for the same reason, was Luk Van Nieuwenhuysen, another VB politician and a Deputy Speaker of the Flemish Parliament. Mr Van Nieuwenhuysen escaped from the beatings in the police bus by pulling open the emergency exit and fleeing.

The Walloon officers also maltreated Mario Borghezio, an Italian member of the European Parliament. The Italian government has formally complained to the Belgian government about his arrest, protesting against the violation of his parliamentary immunity by the Belgians. Franco Frattini, the (Italian) European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, is angry, too. He told the Belgian authorities demonstrations should only be banned when they are violent or glorify Nazism.

Yesterday, the Neo Nazis, which the Brussels authorities had said were coming to Brussels to join the anti-Islamization demonstration, were nowhere to be seen. This is hardly surprising. For Neo Nazis the Jews, not the Muslims, are the enemy.