The Hypocrisy of Brussels’ Louts
“Democracy” and “liberalism” are phantoms in Europe.
The EU Politburo recently voted to pursue sanctions against Hungary for a variety of largely unspecified infractions. This is the second time in the last three years the EU has moved to sanction Hungary. No one knows what is truly motivating these buffoons. Some believe it is partly about Hungary’s restrictive immigration policies under Prime Minister, Viktor Orban. Even if your own people demand, in election after election, that you do something to secure the border, only “neo-fascists” would actually carry out the people’s will, according to the West’s supposed democratic representatives. More likely however, it is about a purportedly anti-LGBT [speech-restricting] law recently passed in Hungary. Media reports published shortly after the passing of that law show top EU officials were incensed and thirsty for blood. That law is an oft-cited example of Hungary’s alleged “democratic backsliding”, and is the subject of this essay.
Hungary’s accusers often claim Orban’s domestic policies constitute an affront to EU rules on “civil rights” and “democracy”, and also to the Union’s purported “norms” and “values”. The squishier the terms the easier to convict of course. We see a whole lot of this domestically here in America. Our criminal laws have gotten unbelievably vague, broad, imprecise, & squishy over the last few decades, such that today the legal authorities in this country can go after almost anyone they choose whenever they choose, which I should note is one of the cornerstones of tyranny.
Anyhow, what are these EU values exactly? Well, no one knows for sure, but a belief in the sanctity of free speech surely isn’t one of them! So, that can’t possibly be the cause of the outrage. So-called “hate speech” codes are ubiquitous in supposedly free, democratic Western nations. Those restrictions are at least as illiberal and anti-democratic as Hungary’s new law, except hate speech laws are much, much broader in scope. Virtually anything that offends the fragile sensibilities of our bigoted, Cultural Marxist overlords is “hate speech” today.
In America, where you technically can’t be arrested for employing hate speech, at least not directly (our vast criminal codes make it more than possible for one to be arrested indirectly for speech or political affiliation), you can nevertheless still be crushed by corporate America, purged from social media, or fired from your job, and you will be if you adopt any of about a thousand now-verboten viewpoints. Needless to say, speaking isn’t free in a nation if you can’t feed your family after doing it. Ours is not a cultural environment at all conducive to intellectual growth and free, unbridled inquiry.
Hungary’s so-called “anti-LGBT” law is quite narrow anyhow. It prohibits the portrayal or promotion of homosexuality and transgenderism to those under age 18. The law specifically applies to the public school setting and kids TV programming. It prohibits the use of such arguments or topics only with children, not absolutely. So again, as far as censorship goes, the law is pretty narrow. I don’t support it, but it is narrow. It is also far more morally defensible than the “hate speech” codes that pervade the Western World.
Indeed, one could credibly, even persuasively argue, that “hate speech” is vital, perhaps the most vital of all speech. “Hate speech” (a largely nonsensical, fundamentally Marxist, perfectly illegitimate intellectual concept) is exactly the type of speech that makes people question their beliefs, that makes them uncomfortable, that makes them think in other words. That is exactly why hate speech must be defended with the utmost vigor. You don’t need speech protections for ideas most everyone already accepts! If free speech does not entail the right to dissent, particularly from beloved orthodoxies, it is meaningless and valueless, an empty right basically, a bridge to nowhere. Free speech without that is really slave speech., to be frank.
On the other hand, there is absolutely nothing sane or sensible about celebrating or normalizing transgenderism, least of all amongst young people. Gender dysphoria is really little more than a glorified delusion. How could it not be delusional for someone to believe they are a member of a sex they simply are not a member of? And why would anyone or anything want to normalize or valorize delusions? Confusing young minds with such toxic twaddle is sick, genuinely sick. One could even argue that the blitz of pro-transgender propaganda that has flooded the Western World’s airwaves over the last decade or so begot a transgender hysteria of sorts. A whole lot of young people in Western nations are going to be permanently damaged, some of them by potent pharmaceuticals, as a result of this media-driven transgender craze.
To be frank, Hungary is not wrong that the subject of transgenderism does not have any place in high school or middle school education other than perhaps as a paragraph-long description of the phenomenon. Basically, “yeah, this is a thing”. It should stop there. What else would you want to tell teenagers? That it’s normal or hip to lop off your genitalia? Thus, a law restricting the teaching of anything beyond that regarding transgenderism (not homosexuality mind you) is absolutely a measure I could support, and such a law would not get into the weeds of deciding who is promoting or encouraging what.
That is after all one of the main concerns with many speech restrictions. I mean, what constitutes promotion of homosexuality? Let’s say you simply point out that homosexual behavior has been observed and documented in over 450 animal species. That’s a fact. Of biology. Ok, but is that promotion? Is it portrayal?
The irony of the EU attempting to sanction Hungary is too rich to truly enjoy. I still remember when Youtuber Count Dankula was arrested for teaching his dog to do the Nazi salute with his paw. He was arrested for that. But he wasn’t arrested in Hungary, he was arrested, and charged mind you, in Great Britain. It is kind of weird that Hungary may be sanctioned in large part for passing a very narrowly crafted speech restriction bill when “serious”, “free”, “liberal” countries like Great Britain are arresting people over obvious jokes. Hungary can’t even hold a candle to that kind of totalitarian inanity.
Mind you, the EU “is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.” At least that is what these bloviating bureaucrats write about themselves. These aren’t erudite or honest people. After all, the most vulnerable “minorities” of all, political/ideological minorities (read: dissidents) are not protected at all under the EU’s laws. For example, if you don’t think the sexes are exactly equal in every conceivable respect, or that race is merely skin deep, or that transgenderism should be normalized amongst teens and pre-teens, not only aren’t you protected by the law, Western European governments will actively persecute you. And there is nothing more illiberal or anti-democratic than persecuting dissidents. Nothing. Both liberalism and democracy are predicated on the right and the ability of people to debate and analyze issues, and to decide their personal and national trajectories thereby, without fear of violence, imprisonment, or persecution.
It is impossible for liberalism or democracy to survive, let alone thrive, if ordinary people can’t say or think anything remotely offensive. Verily, many of the political left’s protected/pet minority groups, which hate speech codes purport to protect, seem to be offended by most everything nowadays. You can’t so much as speak any sense without offending these thin-skinned babies and their oligarch handlers. So-called “hate speech” codes are not remotely consistent with freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, or any people being or remaining a free people. They just aren’t.
The EU’s hostility toward Hungary is ultimately rooted in simple bigotry. The EU isn’t against totalitarian speech codes. It is all for totalitarian speech codes. What the EU is against is any action, word, thought, or anything else, that is heretical, that violates the core tenets of wokeshevism.
In sum, whatever the norms and values of the EU are, they are not worthy of respect or replication. They are the norms and values of mindless fanatics. Western governments are governments which allow the refuse of humanity to overrun their own territory by the millions, and then arrest their own citizens when they have the gall to point out the stunning ineptitude and abject corruption of those very governments. That isn’t sort of tyrannical, it’s brazenly tyrannical. Those same Western governments and members of the EU openly defend and promote the silencing of their own citizens with the utmost ardor and regularity, on a broad array of content, making even jokes potentially indictable offenses. Yet these same regimes would fain punish foreign nations when those nations pass narrowly tailored speech restrictions meant to protect the health and well-being of children. Those are the EU’s norms and values, folks, and Hungary is right to flout them. They are garbage, and in the long-run they will ensure the demise of European democracy and whatever liberalism is still extant on the continent that spawned the tradition.
