{"id":505873,"date":"2026-05-27T22:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T22:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/505873\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T22:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T22:15:10","slug":"activist-convicted-for-statements-judges-acknowledge-may-be-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/505873\/","title":{"rendered":"Activist convicted for statements judges acknowledge may be true"},"content":{"rendered":"

Belgian nationalist activist, Dries Van Langenhove, has been convicted of \u201chate speech\u201d for comments he made during a guest speaker appearance at the KU Leuven University in Flanders, to which he was invited to make a speech on \u201cregenerative agriculture\u201d.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The former MP, who is due to speak at the Remigration Conference in Portugal this weekend,\u00a0was found guilty of one count of \u201cincitement to hatred or violence against a group on grounds of nationality, so-called race, skin colour, origin or ethnic descent\u201d, and one count of \u201cdissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or racial hatred\u201d contrary to Belgium\u2019s anti racism laws.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was also acquitted in relation to a similar gender ideology-related charge for which he received a fine of \u20ac4,000.<\/p>\n

Van Langenhove (32) quoted the judge\u2019s remarks, saying: \u201cEven if all of the statements made by Van Langenhove are based on scientific evidence and statistics, it makes no difference to the criminal intent. Van Langenhove is not charged with spreading false information. He is charged with presenting facts in a way that incites hatred against persons on the grounds of one or more of the protected criteria in the Anti-Racism Law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth the public prosecutor and the judge did not present a single real argument as to how or against whom I would have incited hatred. So even if I would accept their crazy, dystopic law, I still did not break it,\u201d he wrote on X.<\/p>\n

Responding to the ruling, he wrote, \u201cThe only argument they present is that I created a \u2018hostile atmosphere of us versus them\u2019 in regards to migrants. But even this silly argument (which is not even a punishable offence) is not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, the deadly disease is self-hatred, and one of its worst symptoms is replacement migration. My enemy is thus NOT the migrants themselves but those orchestrating the mass migration. Sadly, in Belgium, evidence is not needed and \u2018vibes\u2019 are enough to put someone in jail,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During his remarks, made in 2024, Van Langenhove made references to disparities in academic and economic achievement between black people and those of native European origin, as well as referring to the concept of \u2018gender\u2019 as being a product of the controversial Prof. John Money<\/a>, whom\u00a0he stated was a \u201cpaedophile\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that in nature, there is no such thing as gender. We have two sexes. We have no genders, let alone that we could have 72 genders. Gender is a word that was invented by Dr John Money, himself, of course, a paedophile, who invented the word to be able to disconnect gender from sex,\u201d he said, during the court hearing, quoting from the speech which was the subject of the prosecution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also said that Afghan asylum seekers had a high propensity of lying about their age to pass themselves off as minors and that mass migration had contributed to crime numbers and housing shortages.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During his speech, he referred to unequal outcomes for certain groups, saying, \u201cFor the sake of clarity, those people are equal. Those people are equal before the law. But people are therefore not equal. Nature is not equal; there is nothing equal in nature, and people are natural beings, so people are therefore also not equal. However, equal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judges stated that while freedom of speech has some protections under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Belgian Constitution, his remarks had crossed the threshold into criminality.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor an act to be punishable, it is not necessary for the defendant to have openly incited others to commit specific acts of hatred or violence\u2026 It is sufficient that others are incited to adopt a general attitude of intolerance or aversion towards the targeted group of persons,\u201d the court said.<\/p>\n

It was also found that he intentionally incited hatred and found his overall message attributed societal issues to certain groups and promoted the concept of hierarchical structures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Van Langenhove hit back, saying that his remarks were based on academic research from institutions and research papers such as the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, the British Institute for Race Relations, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons, and a study on the overrepresentation of Roma women in the Spanish female prison population.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The former Vlaams Belang member has been embroiled in numerous court cases related to freedom of speech and expression, including being convicted of hate speech related to memes sent into a group chat of the youth movement Schild & Vrienden.<\/p>\n

The prosecution for which Van Lagenhove argued that the memes were not exclusively sent by him and were \u201cdark humour\u201d resulted in the criminal court of Ghent originally sentencing him to one year in prison, a \u20ac16,000 fine, and a 10-year ban from political office; however, an appeal removed the custodial element of the judgment to a suspended prison sentence with the original fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belgian nationalist activist, Dries Van Langenhove, has been convicted of \u201chate speech\u201d for comments he made during a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[219617,9,10,219618,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-505873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-belgium-anti-racism-law","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-dries-van-langenhove","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116648851853278123","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}