What future does a country and a continent have when they send people to prison for telling the truth? In February 2024, Dries van Langenhove delivered a lecture at the Catholic University of Leuven on the consequences of mass migration. The judge admitted that everything he said was factually true, but that the result nevertheless had an “us-versus-them effect”, and that is something the authorities cannot tolerate. He is to be sent to prison.
It is not the first time that Van Langenhove has been convicted for his speech.
A very sad message.
I have just been convicted for the second time for “hate speech”, and it is only due to a technicality that I could not immediately be sent to prison – much to the judge’s frustration.
In an ironic twist, it is actually thanks to my previous prison sentence (for memes in a private group chat) that I remain free – at least in the physical sense.
Call me naïve, but I did not think they would go this far, given that this precedent criminalises many of the arguments used by even the most moderate politicians who are critical of mass migration.
In February 2024, I delivered a lecture at the Catholic University of Leuven in which I linked mass migration to crime and a deterioration in our quality of life. Every single point I made was 100 per cent true and based on scientific evidence.
Cynically, even the judge who convicted me admits this by writing in the judgment: “Although all of Van Langenhove’s statements are based on scientific evidence and statistics, this has no bearing on the criminal intent. Van Langenhove is not charged with spreading false information. He is charged with presenting facts in a manner that incites hatred against persons on the basis of one or more of the protected criteria in the Anti-Racism Act.”
That is a lot of words simply to say that he wants to send me to prison for telling the truth.
Even the regime media write: “It made no difference to the court that Van Langenhove cited scientific sources. The judge argued that Van Langenhove’s principal message was that a large proportion of society’s problems, such as insecurity, housing shortages and declining educational standards, are caused by mass migration.”
You may think that the regime media are being sympathetic towards me in the first sentence, but in reality they are warning people: If you challenge our narrative, and even if you tell the truth, we will crush you by every means available.
Neither the public prosecutor nor the judge presented a single real argument explaining how or against whom I was supposed to have incited hatred. So even if I were to accept their insane, dystopian law, I still have not violated it.
The only argument they advance is that I created a “hostile us-versus-them atmosphere” regarding migrants. But even this foolish argument (which is not even a criminal offence) is untrue. For me, the deadly disease is self-hatred, and one of its worst symptoms is replacement migration. My enemy is therefore NOT the migrants themselves, but those who orchestrate mass migration.
Unfortunately, in Belgium one does not need evidence, and “vibes” are enough to send someone to prison.
Given that I have another trial in September, and that I have a dozen active criminal investigations for hate speech, time is running out for me. I have already paid more than €420,000 in legal fees, and there is no end in sight. I have been engaged in an intense war of attrition for eight years and must now regroup to ensure that I can still prevail.
If you would like to help me, you can do so via the links below. If you can assist in other ways, please contact me by direct message.
If you live in a country that still has freedom of speech, never allow them to touch it, no matter how noble their motives may sound, because this is where it leads.
Van Langenhove was the leader of a group called Schild & Vrienden. In private meme chats, some individuals made tasteless “jokes” about Jews, and although Van Langenhove himself was not responsible for them, he was held accountable as the group’s leader. These memes were exposed when a journalist infiltrated the group and revealed them.
Grok comments:
The connection to “Holocaust denial” is indirect and secondary – based on his leadership of a group in which others posted grotesque antisemitic memes, combined with his encouragement of dark and provocative content. It is not a matter of Van Langenhove publicly denying the gas chambers or the number of dead in speeches or writings.
This judgment reflects Europe’s strict approach to “militant democracy” (where preventing extremism is prioritised over maximum freedom of speech), but critics rightly describe it as selective enforcement and as having a chilling effect on dissident politics. Whether you regard it as justified protection against resurgent antisemitism or authoritarian overreach depends on your view of the limits of free speech.
The case remains controversial, with appeals ongoing or concluded as of 2026.
The term “militant democracy” is a neologism. It remains to be seen whether its new practitioners will acknowledge it, but it is not an inappropriate one.