by Robert Williams
- Revealingly, while Belgium’s Press Ethics Council did not trust readers with Vance’s speech on the factual lack of freedom of speech in Europe, the Belgian courts had no issues with a magazine column that incited violence against Belgian Jews.
- On one hand, the public cannot be trusted with information that has not been chewed up and curated for them beforehand, including an unfiltered speech by Vance. On the other hand, screeds inciting violence against Jews are perfectly acceptable, and all at once, out of the blue — poof! — suddenly the Belgian judicial system cares about “freedom of speech” if it is spoken by people whose votes are regarded as “necessary.”
- In Europe, the ruling elites demand that whatever information cannot be censored, removed or kept from the masses — who need to be brainwashed at all costs — must first be “sanitized” by their propaganda machines in the ostensibly “free press,” then carefully airbrushed into “context” before the “masses” can be allowed to view it.
- The European Commission, the EU’s unelected, untransparent, unaccountable executive arm, with Ursula von der Leyen at its helm, is now repackaging this informal brainwashing into a more organized system to ensure that any dissenting opinions are rooted out.
- “Brussels aims to build a closed, vertically controlled information space where seeing the reality of our sinking continent becomes impossible—and arguing for change is turned into a thought crime. They think this will keep them in their seats, and they think the peoples of Europe won’t notice or care while their most elementary liberties are methodically taken away. They must be proven wrong.” — Rafael Pinto Borges, chairman of Nova Portugalidade, a Lisbon-based, conservative think tank, The European Conservative, March 6, 2026.
Revealingly, while Belgium’s Press Ethics Council did not trust readers with J.D. Vance’s speech on the factual lack of freedom of speech in Europe, the Belgian courts had no issues with a magazine column by the author Herman Brusselmans that incited violence against Belgian Jews. Pictured: Brusselmans (L), with his lawyers Omar Souidi and Mounir Souidi, appears in Ghent Criminal Court on November 5, 2024, during his trial on charges of incitement to murder, incitement to hatred and violence, and Holocaust denial. (Photo by James Arthur Gekiere/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)
In Europe, recently, it was found that a news outlet that had published a speech by US Vice President J.D. Vance has now been accused of journalistic misconduct. In February 2025, Vance gave his now famous speech at the Munich Security Conference, in which he sharply criticized Europe’s heavy-handed censorship and its rapidly deteriorating democratic values. The next day, Belgian news website 21News published Vance’s speech in full, without commentary.
Nearly a year later, in February 2026, after anonymous complaints, Belgium’s press “ethics” body ruled that 21News had acted in breach of journalistic standards by publishing the speech without “context” or “correction” before publication, thereby risking that Vance’s message would “circulate without sufficient critical distance.”