Is free speech dead in Europe? Just this week in Belgium, police stormed a gathering of conservatives, attempting to overtake the event on the grounds of “public safety” and stopping “a public disturbance.”
The National Conservatism Conference, or “NatCon,” planned to host a conference for European conservative thought leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and United Kingdom politician Nigel Farage. But those plans quickly changed as Brussels’s socialist Mayor Philippe Close reportedly pressured various venues to drop NatCon, while Mayor Emir Kir of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, where the event was ultimately held, told Politico he would “immediately take measures to ban” the conference. Kir worked with police to shut down the conference on Tuesday.
