If you want to know what postliberalism and the end of democratic self-government look like, a mayor in Brussels just gave us a glimpse.
On Tuesday, Belgian police surrounded and temporarily shut down the National Conservatism Conference on an order issued by Emir Kir, the mayor of the district where the conference was being held. The order, said the mayor, was “to guarantee public safety.”
Mayor Kir has a capacious view of public safety. His shutdown order declared that NatCon’s “vision is not only ethically conservative (e.g. hostility to the legalisation of abortion, same-sex unions, etc.) but also focused on the defense of ‘national sovereignty’, which implies, amongst other things, a ‘Eurosceptic’ attitude.” Some of the speakers, the order went on, “are reputed to be traditionalists,” and the conference must be banned “to avoid foreseeable attacks on public order and peace.”
But of course, the invocation of “public safety” was a fig leaf to cover the mayor’s naked authoritarianism in a country where freedom of speech and assembly is supposed to be enshrined in the 1830 Belgian constitution, as the country’s prime minister noted on X after the incident.
What happened at the Claridge today is unacceptable. Municipal autonomy is a cornerstone of our democracy but can never overrule the Belgian constitution guaranteeing the freedom of speech and peaceful assembly since 1830. Banning political meetings is unconstitutional.Full stop.
— Alexander De Croo 🇧🇪🇪🇺 (@alexanderdecroo) April 16, 2024
There was, of course, no disturbance and no threat to public safety.
