Conservative political parties across Europe should begin contingency planning for the inevitable time in the near future when right-wing platforms are the victims of mass censorship by an increasingly desperate liberal establishment, Vlaams Belang MEP Gerolf Annemans told Remix News.
Globally, we expect that we have to seek alternatives. That’s why we now organize visiting homes on a very large scale. We are shifting toward means that give us the opportunity to reach the electorate even if we are cut off on social media. We have new means to talk to the people. People want to hear us. So, the people are open to hear and to listen to us and we adapt to the situation. We expect social media to be shut down for normal political communication,
– Mr Annemans warned, as highlighted by the international V4NA news agency. Vlaams Belang is a Flemish nationalist party that proposes independence for the region of Flanders from the rest of Belgium. It has had considerable success on social media in recent years, particularly on Facebook where it has amassed 620,000 followers, helping the party push its core messages and propel itself to the top of the polls in the region. Furthermore, the party is the most popular party with young people, and a key element of that popularity is the party’s efforts on TikTok and Facebook, including substantial monetary investments into the platforms.
Mr Annemans emphasized that a major crackdown was coming against those across the European Union whose views deviate from the typical left-wing mainstream and that conservative parties need to find workarounds, including face-to-face meetings with the public. In fact, the Flemish MEP, who is also the current president of the European grouping Identity and Democracy (ID), believes that radical measures to suppress conservative mouthpieces are just around the corner.
We invest where we can and we use the means that we have, but of course that cannot rely [on social media] for more than a few years because we see what the European Union is doing with the Digital Services Act,
– he said. The Digital Services Act is the European Union’s attempt to regulate social media, placing requirements on digital platforms to monitor content and remove that deemed to fall short of being “socially desirable.” Annemans accused the European Commission of giving Thierry Breton, the French commissioner leading the social media crackdown, “the means that are part of a Soviet dictatorship model to intervene with the political communications of opponents.
One beacon of hope for the future of social media has been US billionaire Elon Musk’s acquisition of X, formerly known as Twitter, but Mr Annemans says he is skeptical that the platform can stay immune from the rising tide of regulation and censorship.
It isn’t just social media where conservatives are being suppressed, and attempts to ban the National Conservatism conference in Brussels – where an order by the local mayor to shut down the event was only overturned by judicial intervention – is a typical example of the censorship of political opponents.
I, sadly enough, have to tell you that this is a usual occurrence for Vlaams Belang. We have existed for almost 40 years and have always had trouble when organizing meetings in Brussels or in the region of Brussels.They thought they could treat the conference like they usually do with us and label the conservatives attending as fascists and racists, but they didn’t realise that they would become world news within a few hours. As soon as they saw that, they got phone calls from even the Belgian prime minister himself and had to pull the brakes,
– the MEP recalled, adding that he believes that his own party will continue to grow in popularity among the indigenous Belgian population the more the country experiences radical demographic change.
Asked whether it was accurate that 62 percent of Brussels' population is comprised of non-EU nationals, Mr Annemans replied: “No doubt. What we see is the radicalisation of the Muslim population which changes the city's cultural image." The Western civilisation is being reduced by the day to a non-existent part of Brussels' cultural environment, he said.
Cover photo: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen addresses the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on the approaching occasion of the 20th anniversary of the EU's enlargement in 2004 (Photo: MTI/EPA/Ronald Wittek)
