A Belgian court has sentenced an activist to one year in prison for running an organization that allegedly spreads “racist, hateful, Nazi and negationist speech.”

According to POLITICO, a judge said 30-year-old Dries Van Langenhove “revelled in Nazi ideas that cause much suffering.”

“Dries Van Langenhove, a political activist and leader of a Flemish-nationalist youth movement called Schild & Vrienden, was convicted of inciting violence and denying the Holocaust, the Ghent criminal court ruled Tuesday morning,” the outlet reports.

“Former Flemish parliamentarian Dries Van Langenhove has just been sentenced to 1 year IN PRISON because supposedly ‘racist memes’ were shared in a private group chat he was a part of,” Eva Vlaardingerbroek said.

“This is the absolute state of freedom of speech in Europe. They’re jailing patriotic dissidents. Next time they’ll do this to me, you or anyone who goes against the globalist regime. I’m seriously lost for words here. This is full blown tyranny and we should fight it with all our might,” she continued.

“Today I was sentenced to one year of effective prison sentence, 10 months of suspended prison sentence, €16,000 effective fine, €6,000 suspended fine, €10,000 in compensation and 10 years of loss of civil rights, which means I am no longer allowed to participate in politics,” Van Langenhove said Tuesday.

“However, a years-long investigation, on which the Justice Department wasted millions of euros of taxpayers’ money, shows that the S&V activists cannot be charged with anything other than some memes. Humor. Memes that I didn’t even post myself, by the way. S&V is therefore launching a crowdfunding campaign to help pay the fines of Dries and the other activists,” he continued.

“Someone else sent this meme in a group chat and you were given a prison sentence?” Elon Musk asked.

“Yes. Even though the judge (and the media) admitted that I never sent any of these memes, he argued that I should have done more to keep others from sending them and he labeled the memes ‘hatespeech’, which is a punishable offense in Belgium,” Van Langenhove answered.

“I founded @schildnvrienden, Belgium’s biggest and most influential political youth movement, in 2017. It was banned from Twitter some time later, without reason. We (allegedly) had FB group with 900 activists and a Discord chat with many hundreds of users and in one of the groups, someone said ‘post your edgiest meme’. The edgy memes mentioned above were posted to this thread. A thread in which I didn’t participate,” Van Langenhove continued. 

“Now, 7 years later, I am the leading nationalist activist in Belgium and the Netherlands and I am linked to the party that will win the coming elections in Belgium. The regime wants to shut us down so they are using memes that were posted by others 7 years ago to put me in prison,” he added.

From POLITICO:

The leader of Schild & Vrienden rose to fame as a political prodigy in the late 2010s, organizing far right-minded youngsters in online chat groups and through protests. A 2018 TV report by public broadcaster VRT showed that members of the group were exchanging racist and antisemitic messages in group chats, triggering a judicial investigation into the movement.

Van Langenhove ran for elected office in 2019 and sat in the country’s federal parliament from 2019-2023 as an independent member in the political group of Vlaams Belang, Flanders’ main far-right party that wields an anti-immigrant rhetoric and wants to turn Flanders into a fully independent, breakaway state.

According to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, Vlaams Belang is now the biggest political force in Belgium. Elections are due in June 2024. Van Langenhove left his seat in parliament in 2023 to focus on political activism.

The judgment also deprived Van Langenhove of certain civil rights for a period of 10 years, during which he won’t be able to serve in public office or run in elections. He will also have to pay a €16,000 fine and received a separate, 10 month suspended prison sentence.

 

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