Revealingly, while Belgium’s Press Ethics Council did not trust readers with Vance’s speech on the factual lack of freedom of speech in Europe, the Belgian courts had no issues with a magazine column that incited violence against Belgian Jews. On one hand, the public cannot be trusted with information that has not been chewed up and curated for them beforehand, including an unfiltered speech by Vance.

On the other hand, screeds inciting violence against Jews are perfectly acceptable, and all at once, out of the blue — poof! — suddenly the Belgian judicial system cares about “freedom of speech” if it is spoken by people whose votes are regarded as “necessary.”

In Europe, the ruling elites demand that whatever information cannot be censored, removed or kept from the masses — who need to be brainwashed at all costs — must first be “sanitized” by their propaganda machines in the ostensibly “free press,” then carefully airbrushed into “context” before the “masses” can be allowed to view it.

The European Commission, the EU’s unelected, untransparent, unaccountable executive arm, with Ursula von der Leyen at its helm, is now repackaging this informal brainwashing into a more organized system to ensure that any dissenting opinions are rooted out.

“Brussels aims to build a closed, vertically controlled information space where seeing the reality of our sinking continent becomes impossible—and arguing for change is turned into a thought crime. They think this will keep them in their seats, and they think the peoples of Europe won’t notice or care while their most elementary liberties are methodically taken away. They must be proven wrong.” — Rafael Pinto Borges, chairman of Nova Portugalidade, a Lisbon-based, conservative think tank, The European Conservative, March 6, 2026.

In Europe, recently, it was found that a news outlet that had published a speech by US Vice President J.D. Vance has now been accused of journalistic misconduct. In February 2025, Vance gave his now famous speech at the Munich Security Conference, in which he sharply criticized Europe’s heavy-handed censorship and its rapidly deteriorating democratic values. The next day, Belgian news website 21News published Vance’s speech in full, without commentary.

Nearly a year later, in February 2026, after anonymous complaints, Belgium’s press “ethics” body ruled that 21News had acted in breach of journalistic standards by publishing the speech without “context” or “correction” before publication, thereby risking that Vance’s message would “circulate without sufficient critical distance.”

Éric Dujardin, the director of 21News, in response, argued that publication does not equal endorsement and that “readers should be able to access primary sources without mandatory interpretation,” according to The European Conservative.

Revealingly, while Belgium’s Press Ethics Council did not trust readers with Vance’s speech on the factual lack of freedom of speech in Europe, the Belgian courts had no issues with a magazine column that incited violence against Belgian Jews.

In August 2024, the Belgian author Herman Brusselmans wrote in the weekly magazine Humo that Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza made him “become so enraged that I want to ram a pointed knife straight into the throat of every Jew I meet.”

The European Jewish Association, Belgium’s Jewish Information and Documentation Centre and the Belgian anti-discrimination organization Unia took legal action against Brusselmans, leading to criminal charges of incitement to murder, incitement to hatred and violence, and Holocaust denial. In March 2025, the Ghent Criminal Court acquitted Brusselmans on all charges. The judge wrote:

“The court recognises that certain members of the Jewish community could possibly take offence at phrases used in some columns, but stresses that the author’s expressing his opinion is protected by the right to freedom of expression…. He wished to express criticism in his well-known style, he wished to provoke, but he did not exceed the boundaries of what is punishable by law. The column does not show that he intended to incite hatred or violence against the Jewish community or to deny the Holocaust.”

Get it? On one hand, the public cannot be trusted with information that has not been chewed up and curated for them beforehand, including an unfiltered speech by Vance. On the other hand, screeds inciting violence against Jews are perfectly acceptable, and all at once, out of the blue — poof! — suddenly the Belgian judicial system cares about “freedom of speech” if it is spoken by people whose votes are regarded as “necessary.”

Israeli Ambassador to Belgium Idit Rosenzweig-Abu pointed out:

“What if someone said in Belgian press ‘I’m so angry I want to stick a knife in the neck of every Muslim I meet’?

“Herman Brusselmans did…

“But relax! it wasn’t about Muslims, it was just about Jews.

“In a country where Jews are attacked daily and 70% report fear for their lives. “

Belgium has plenty of company in “correcting” news outlets that report facts. In Sweden, the press watchdog, known as the Review Board, criticized Swedish state television for using the words “illegal migrants” in a news report about the protests against illegal migrants coming into the UK, some of whom had gone on to sexually assault British women and children. The television report even “contextualized” by calling the protesters “right-wing extremist groups,” but that was not enough. According to one report:

“The Review Board ruled that describing individuals as ‘illegal migrants’ was ‘both misleading in violation of the requirement for objectivity, and evaluative in violation of the requirement for impartiality.'”

Describing the protesters, many of them mothers fearing for their daughters’ safety, as “right-wing extremist groups,” however, did not violate the requirement for “impartiality.”

In Europe, the ruling elites demand that whatever information cannot be censored, removed or kept from the masses — who need to be brainwashed at all costs — must first be “sanitized” by their propaganda machines in the ostensibly “free press,” then carefully airbrushed into “context” before the “masses” can be allowed to view it.

The European Commission, the EU’s unelected, untransparent, unaccountable executive arm, with Ursula von der Leyen at its helm, is now repackaging this informal brainwashing into a more organized system to ensure that any dissenting opinions are rooted out. At the end of February, the Commission launched its “Center for Democratic Resilience,” which will ensure a forum where, among other “stakeholders”, media representatives will participate. It is part of the Commission’s broader, and chilling-sounding, “European Democracy Shield” initiative.

According to Michael McGrath, the EU Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection:

“[W]ith the European Democracy Shield we will step up our collective capacity to monitor and detect information manipulation and disinformation… to support the capacity of Member States and neighbouring countries to monitor, detect and coordinate responses to combat information manipulation and disinformation… also to ensure an online space where reliable, accurate, and impartial information thrives.

In other words, Europeans should expect their media to report even more in line with whatever the EU thinks is “acceptable.”

Also within the framework of the “European Democracy Shield,” the EU is ramping up “support to local media in the Creative Europe programme and introduc[ing] a new action under Horizon Europe to further support the digital transformation of the media industry.”

The EU has already “bought” a host of media outlets in Europe, literally paying them to publish pieces that further its own agendas. The EU appears to have spent as much as one billion euros during the past decade alone in the process, according to a 2025 report titled “Brussels’s media machine: European media funding and the shaping of public discourse,” published by the Hungary-based think tank MCC Brussels.

Framing the projects as “fighting disinformation” and “promoting European integration” the EU has been throwing taxpayer money, conservatively estimated at €80 million annually, to “media projects” — not including indirect funding, such as advertising contracts. The report also shows that the EU runs a highly sophisticated “EU media complex” through which it gets to shape media narratives about itself and its agendas.

According to Rafael Pinto Borges, founder and chairman of Nova Portugalidade, a Lisbon-based, conservative think tank:

“Brussels aims to build a closed, vertically controlled information space where seeing the reality of our sinking continent becomes impossible—and arguing for change is turned into a thought crime. They think this will keep them in their seats, and they think the peoples of Europe won’t notice or care while their most elementary liberties are methodically taken away. They must be proven wrong.”

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