Conservatives Meet in Brussels Amid Drama and Intimidation

This year’s National Conservatism (NatCon) conference saw a level of intimidation and bullying that some of the participants compared to oppression during the communist era. Despite police serving a notice to shut down the conference on the Brussels mayor’s orders, speakers went on to deliver their presentations until the end.

Organizers were forced to change the venue twice due to threats from Antifa anarchist extremists and bullying from Brussels’ mayor. Finally, a venue owned by a businessman of Tunisian origin, agreed to host the event at the last minute. Far-left extremist groups have announced a protest against the conference for later on Tuesday amid heavy armed police presence. Wednesday’s session, during which Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is scheduled to speak, is still hanging in the balance.

Event organizer Yoram Hazony, chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, said in his introductory remarks that Brussels’ mayor was trying to stop the conference, which he interpreted as a pre-election stunt from the socialist mayor. “Our adversaries find us so frightening, that they cannot allow us to speak. So frightening is the idea of national conservatism.

We do not know whether we are going to win this time, but what we know is that we are going to win. We will win because we are asking for democracy and decency. This will triumph over craziness that is trying to pass today as democracy.

Lets make the world safer for democracy,” said Professor Hazony.

In his speech, Polish conservative MEP Ryszard Legutko spoke about the term “ever closer union” found in the EU’s charter. The concept points towards the growth of supranational institutions that are increasingly taking away powers and competences from nation-states. This is how “ever closer union” is being interpreted today by the ruling elite in Brussels, who take it as a green light to assume more and more power. However, the idea that the EU institutions can be closer to European citizens than elected national institutions offends human intelligence, pointed out the Polish MEP. Since the European Union continues to shift powers from Member States and from national institutions, the drive towards an ever closer union is simply side stepping and violating existing rules, said Legutko.

He continued by saying that the EU institutions have only been able to increase their power so rapidly, because the governments of France and Germany have allowed this to happen to their own benefit. Ordinary European citizens have not endorsed this power grab though. Acquisition of power by the EU is inevitably accompanied by the restriction of sovereignty of smaller nations, especially of those in Eastern Europe. The EU institutions can, as a result of concentrating power, bully and punish smaller EU members, which have no power to respond in kind. This is a version of colonialism, said Prof. Legutko.

This is internal colonialism in the name of progress,” he added. The colonizers reside in the bureaucratic structures of Brussels, but they are challenged by the current national conservative push-back and sooner or later they will be forced to leave in shame,

Legutko concluded.

Kinga Gál, MEP for the Hungarian government party Fidesz, reacted to the ongoing arguments between the organizers and police officers in front of the venue, saying that these scenes have given her “deja vu” from her youth in communism. The so called “defenders of democracy” are trying to cancel this event, because they cannot stand any opinion different from theirs, she stressed.

What is happening in the EU institutions is that Marxist practices are finding a breeding ground there, she continued. They struggle to maintain their woke ideology, and the means to succeed in this is is through “cancel culture.” The mainstream European political circles therefore want to exert political pressure on those defending national sovereignty.

She remarked that the EU had passed some 15 resolutions against Hungary, there are attempts to prevent Hungary from assuming EU presidency, to take away their voting rights in the EU, and a number of other means of political blackmail. “They want to tell us what positions we should take in longterm matters, like the war or migrations. We refuse to bend for federalist ideas and to give up national sovereignty,” said Gál.

Liberals cannot accept the fact that a successful counter example to their model exists,”

she added.

Conservative ideas put in to practice can lead to success, Gál continued. Their opponents fear democracy, despise people, and do not believe that ordinary people can make the right decisions. Instead of trusting people, they make systems and institutions to decide on their behalf. At the same time, the EU is not learning from their own mistakes and are still forcing ideas that have proved to be harmful, because the elites in Brussels are detached from the reality of life. But there is a great need to get back to reality. Any institution ignoring the cultural identity of Member States is doomed to fail, Gál continued.

A new era is knocking on Europe. People want genuinely democratic societies instead of open societies,”

she added. But EU institutions might not want to accept this. They curb Member States’ sovereignty, giving increasing powers to Brussels. There is a clear attempt to create a European super state, but Hungary rejects this idea, because this would deprive Member States from representing their own national interest. As an example, Gál mentioned the recently adopted European Migration Pact that was pushed through in the European Parliament through qualified majority, neglecting the voices of Member States. But there is a need to respect the diversity of opinion and listen to people, she emphasized.

 

Featured Image: Hungary Today