Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that Belgian blogger Paul Belien (about whom I have posted before) has once again been visited by the police. He's holding firm:

Apparently someone in Ghent has lodged a complaint against this website. I am not allowed to know who this person is, but I am requested to come to the police station to be interrogated. I told the officer that I refuse to justify my writings for anonymous complaints. “I am not living in the Soviet Union,” I told him (though I fear I am).

As a matter of principle I will not go to the police station. I defend the freedom of the press, which implies the right of journalists not to be questioned by the authorities about articles and opinions that they write or edit. I told the officer that if the police wants to question me they will have to arrest me.

This is another reminder that free speech is endangered, and that despite its designation as a "universal right," it mainly seems to be enjoyed in the United States. (Where, tragically, we take it for granted.)

Mr. Belien's fear that the European Union is headed in the direction of Sovietization appears to be quite legitimate. In addition to his abuse by Belgian authorities, he cites former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who sees clear evidence that the European Union is modeled along Soviet lines:

. . .the original idea was to have what they called a convergency, whereby the Soviet Union would mellow somewhat and become more social-democratic, while Western Europe would become social-democratic and socialist. Then there will be convergency. The structures have to fit each other. This is why the structures of the European Union were initially built with the purpose of fitting into the Soviet structure. This is why they are so similar in functioning and in structure.

It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similary, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organisation which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU. When you look at the type of EU corruption, it is exactly the Soviet type of corruption, going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top.

If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union. Of course, it is a milder version of the Soviet Union. Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that it has a Gulag. It has no KGB – not yet – but I am very carefully watching such structures as Europol for example. That really worries me a lot because this organisation will probably have powers bigger than those of the KGB. They will have diplomatic immunity. Can you imagine a KGB with diplomatic immunity? They will have to police us on 32 kinds of crimes – two of which are particularly worrying, one is called racism, another is called xenophobia.

Look at Denmark which voted against the Maastricht treaty twice. Look at Ireland [which voted against the Nice treaty]. Look at many other countries, they are under enormous pressure. It is almost blackmail. Switzerland was forced to vote five times in a referendum. All five times they have rejected it, but who knows what will happen the sixth time, the seventh time. It is always the same thing. It is a trick for idiots. The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting. Why stop? Let us continue voting. The European Union is what Americans would call a shotgun marriage.

(As to the Sovietization theory, this makes me want to read up on Angleton again.)

There is a constant pattern of free speech being under relentless attack in Europe. Criminalizing impossible-to-define ideas like racism leads inexorably to criminalizing even more undefinable ideas. Like "Islamophobia":

On 31 January 2006 the British House of Commons narrowly defeated – with just 283 votes against 282 – New Labour’s Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, intended to prohibit speech or artistic expressions deemed insulting by religious communities. This was a narrow yet historic victory for freedom of expression, as well as a victory for Parliament against a despotic-minded Government. Liberal-Democratic spokesman Evan Harris commented: “The Government just failed to understand that they can’t take liberties with freedom of expression.”

On the occasion of the House of Commons vote, familiar maxims on liberty were aptly invoked in various debates, e.g. against the British Government’s plea that the bill was “necessary” to make multicultural coexistence possible (an argument invoked by governments across Europe to impose similar censorship laws). William Pitt the Younger was quoted:

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom; it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

In France and other European countries, the mere utterance of opinions critical of homosexuality is a crime:

Stating that “homosexual behaviour endangers the survival of humanity” and that “heterosexuality is morally superior to homosexuality” can cost you dearly in France. Exactly these opinions, expressed by the French politician Christian Vanneste last year, led to him being sentenced on Tuesday to payment of a heavy fine.

A court in Lille [Rijsel in Dutch], in the French northern province of Flanders (adjacent to the Belgian Dutch-speaking region of Flanders), ruled that Mr Vanneste has to pay a fine of 3,000 euro plus 3,000 euro in damages to each of the three gay organisations that had taken him to court. The politician, a member of the French National Assembly for the governing UMP, also has to pay for the verdict to be published in the leftist Parisian newspaper Le Monde, the regional Lille daily La Voix du Nord, and the weekly magazine L’Express.

Les Flamands Roses (The Pink Flemings), a gay activist group from the North of France, applauded the verdict, saying that freedom of speech does not allow “incitement to homophobic hatred.” Mr Vanneste had been taken to court because of what he had said in a recorded discussion with activists of the ‘Pink Flemings.’

That's a complete outrage. Unless, of course, you think Ann Coulter should be imprisoned for what she says.

Don't laugh. In Europe, she would be.

Under laws like this, not only are individuals subject to punishment for what is protected free speech in the United States, but entire political parties (like Belgium's Vlaams Blok) can be banned

What caused this party to be banned? Advocacy of Nazism? Hardly. According to the London Telegraph, among the tracts was a leaflet against female circumcision, written by a Turkish woman:

The lawsuit against the Vlaams Blok was brought by a rights watchdog controlled by the prime minister's office.

The high court upheld an earlier ruling that party branches had violated race laws by distributing 16 leaflets in the late 1990s deemed to be incitement against immigrants. The party attacked the ruling as a breach of free speech since much of the material consisted of official statistics.

One of the tracts, denouncing female circumcision in Islamic countries, was written by a Turkish-born woman member of the Vlaams Blok but the court ruled that the arguments were intended to foment anti-Muslim feeling.

According to this web site, the text of the Belgian law being used against Paul Belian (confirmed here) would criminalize almost any opinion someone or some group found "offensive." I've cobbled together what is quoted as the 1981 law and the 2003 supplement:

Punishment with imprisonment for one month to one year and a fine of fifty francs to one thousand francs or with either of these, is applied to:

[...]

2 whoever incites to discrimination, segregation, hatred or violence against a person, a society or the members thereof, on the grounds of his gender, so-called race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, sexual preference, marital status, birth, wealth, age, religion or philosophy, present or future state of health, handicap or physical characteristic of these members or some of them;

3 whoever publicizes his intention to discrimination, hatred or violence against a person on the grounds of his gender, so-called race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, sexual preference, marital status, birth, wealth, age, religion or philosophy, present or future state of health, handicap or physical characteristic of these members or some of them;

Sometimes the whole world seems to be going insane.

(I guess that means I'm not alone. Small comfort that!)