The problem is that Europe isn’t really the US in terms of free speech and if you don’t follow the party line like the fellow above things might not work out so well for you.
That is what one Dutch yoga teacher discovered when he tweeted about Moderate Muslim reactions to the Brussels attacks.
“How are you supposed to continue teaching in your class if muslim children are applauding [the attacks]? #attacks #Zaventem”
This was rewarded with a visit from a literally PC PC Plod.
“3 [Dutch] police officers on my front door because of my tweet this morning. Asking to not do it again. #Brussels #attacks #Zaventem”
Apparently, this is not a singular case but standing government policy, according to a Breitbart report from two months ago.
Mark Jongeneel, a small business owner in the Dutch city of Sliedrecht, tweeted: “The college of Sliedrecht has a proposal to receive 250 refugees in the coming 2 years. What a bad plan! #letusresist”
Mr. Jongeneel then got a visit to his mother’s house, and subsequently his place of work, from police who wanted to warn him over his comments.
Speaking to DW.com, he described the events: “I asked them what the problem was and they said ‘your tweets.’
“They asked me to be careful about my Twitter behaviour, because if there are riots, then I’m responsible.”
“You tweet a lot,” said the police, explaining: “We have orders to ask you to watch your tone. Your tweets may seem seditious”.
Then again, the Netherlands gets a score of 99/100 on freedom from Freedom House.
As you might have noticed Freedom House has “freedom” in its name and it’s American, so it must know all about freedom unlike some cretinous propagandist like myself.
I mean only Sweden “White Pixelation” Yes is higher with a full 100/100 and we all know that the Nordic Model is the very apex of human social and political development.
Europe is hopeless. Rotten to the core. It’s time for the US (and maybe Russia) to start preparing for the waves of European refugees fleeing their lands, an absolute inevitability with current trends in place for another decade.
I notice that the UK rates 95/100.
This in a country where police officers visited the home of a woman who had voiced opposition to gay marriage on a radio programme, and one Stephen Birrell was jailed for eight months in for tweeting rudely about the Roman Catholic “Pope”.
Europe is more than just the Netherlands alone & even there, it seems, it were only a few cases. Not to defend this behaviour of the police (it’s intimidation, nonetheless), but it also was according to the police just a visit to get to know the tweeter & his intentions. Feels differently for the one who gets the visit, but this is accordingly criticized in NL media.
Your link here doesn’t lead to what your pic shows, but to a similar complaint by a Dutch pupil.
Here:
http://www.nrc.nl/next/2016/01/20/u-twittert-wel-heel-veel-zei-de-politie-1578392
is a kind of overview of such cases.
In there is also an explanation of what is OK in NL:
“„Het is een subtiele grens die je gemakkelijk overschrijdt”, zegt hoogleraar strafrecht Nico Kwakman, verbonden aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. „Je mag zeggen: ‘Ik vind de islam een achterhaalde godsdienst.’ Dat is een mening. Maar als je verder gaat en zegt: ‘Moslims zijn niet goed en moeten opnieuw worden opgevoed’, overschrijd je een grens.” Het hangt er ook van af wie de opmerking op welk moment maakt.”
Not really European standard, AFAIK, since it is pretty obvious that the migrants need to be re-educated. & this is mostly quite openly discussed.
I don’t understand how countries with obvious limitations on free speech such as broad hate speech laws, can get a score of 100%. Well, perhaps if the laws are not used. I know the Danish law is commonly and increasing used. So far, 100% of cases has involved cases where someone says something rude about non-Danes (the prosecutor’s office makes a list of cases public, I could not find a case where someone was punished for saying anything against Danes).
Don’t worry, there is nothing to “understand”. Freedom House is a neocon-run outfit, whose sole purpose is not to inform, but to misinform. All of its ratings, rankings, and “opinions” are concocted to manufacture reality that doesn’t exist.
it is a good working team: concerned police officers, violent Antifa and murderous Islamist sharia-enforcers (see Pim Fortuyn)
Anatoly, as you suggest, the disturbing thing about the multicultural EU is its suppression not only of individual free speech but of opposition political parties. To better understand this, let’s take a trip through a very short history of the EU:
By the end of 1945, Europe had experienced massive carnage in two world wars as a result of what many of its leaders concluded was extreme nationalism. The culprit was nationalism; the solution was the end of nationalism. To achieve this, Europe created two new institutions — NATO and the European Economic Community (the precursor of the EU).
As has often been quoted, the purpose of NATO was to “keep the Russians out and Germany down.” It still pursues this agenda. The purpose of the EEC was to create a multicultural supra institution that would blend the historic European nations into a cultural “stew” via free trade and open borders. The political purpose was to ensure that no historical European national entity would ever again be in a position to birth another Hitler or another holocaust.
Hence, to voice anything suggesting nationalism is a dagger in the heart of the ideology that spawned the EU. Any individuals or groups voicing nationalist sentiments are by definition neo-Nazis led by “Hitleresque” caricatures. They must be suppressed … nipped in the bud.
Ironically, this same ideology of extreme multiculturalism has morphed into a dagger that is now poised at the heart of the EU itself. Recall that until recently, many Europeans saw the EU extending to the Balkans, Asia Minor, and even North Africa. The EU was a model for regional and world peace. The promise: If people can live and trade together (meaning open borders), perhaps they will not butcher each other. The promise has advocates beyond Europe. This is what TPP, TTIP, and TISA are all about — a new world order of regional, multicultural trade associations modeled on the EU.
In this light, the massive immigration to Europe from North Africa, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa was always part of the plan … part of the new world order. After 1,400 years of hostility, it promised peace between the Christians and Muslims just as it had between Germans and French and Christians and Jews.
But utopian visions are always suspect. They typically do not account for reality. Like the utopian Third Reich, they quickly turn into dystopian nightmares. Europe is on the cusp of another dystopian nightmare with it open invitation for massive immigration from peoples that, at best, live in cultures that are alien to and incompatible with European liberalism.
Reality bites: As events unfold, the vision of a multicultural Europe can only survive in a police state that suppresses any expression of individual or collective nationalism. It can only get worse … multiculturalism taken to its reductio ad absurdum or nationalism, as self-defense, reclaiming historical Europe for the Europeans.
liar
The EU is trying to destroy the individual European nations – divide and rule.
The ideology is that if we educate them enough and are nice enough to them, but MUCH more importantly, we blast them with enough MTV, so to speak, they’ll become secular liberals like us. After all, we were successful in getting rid of the Christians – what can be so hard about the Muslims. Yes, we’ll have collateral damage for some years, but in a decade or two, we’ll look back and realize what a true and successful ideology we had.
I am not a prophet and I don’t know if this will work, but as an Orthodox Christian, secular liberalism and Islam are equally anathema to me.
My theory about freedom of speech in the US is that the powers that be can afford it because Americans are already so heterogenous, so divided by race and ethnicity. The subconscious logic is probably “if they’re never going to unite for a revolt, let them talk. What’s the harm?”
Divide and rule is less effective in homogenous societies.
So as Euro countries become less and less homogenous, their elites will probably be able to afford more free speech.
Please, stop using this name “EU” all the time!!!!
EU, EU, EU, EU, EU…
There are “DENMARK”, “NETHERLANDS” AND OTHERS TOO…
GREAT MAJORITY OF EU SUPPORTERS ARE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.
A better world with zombie leftoids is all that elitz desire.
They are so domesticated as naive and selfish Childs. You don’t need the use of force to shut up the kindergarten leftoids.
Leftoids on average seems unable to manufactured their own minimal coherent reality map.
Virtual reality is soon…
My brother is reading a book or seeing a tv series, science “fiction’ about a dystopian future (as always) where the menace will be completely dependent to the virtual reality, like “to study in the school they just need use their virtual reality glasses”. In the true they are living in trailer-buildings.
The line about NATO was that it was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.
I don’t see any way in which it is pursuing that last objective, or has done since at least 1990. [Arguably before- the West Germans were neither threatening anyone nor in a position to do so in the Cold War position of central Europe – but at least then the joke made some kind of sense.]
I don’t think I really agree with this argument.
The US is becoming less supportive of free speech at the same time as diversity is increasing, though so far only on the social as opposed to legislative level. (Though OTOH you can legitimately argue that some types of speech was effectively verboten during the Cold War such as expressing Communist sympathies. Incidentally, this reinforces a point that I think @strana_mechty made on Twitter: Contra the standard NRx position, Communism in Russia didn’t propel but retarded the advance of progressivism in the West by 20-30 years).
My impression is that the free speech situation in Europe in terms of unPC speech on race/nationalism is becoming worse rather than better (though I admit that this might simply be because such cases are multiplying plus the exposure effect of alternate/Internet media). The response to it is becoming disconcertingly centralized aka the infamous Mutti-Zucky discussion; joined to today’s electronic surveillance and social/reputation networks, the potential scenarios arising out of this in 10-20 years have the potential to be truly dystopian. Diversity is of course increasing right now.
The same way as terrorists get the title of “freedom fighters”, “rebels” and “militants”. The concept is absolutely the same .
Also, the third part, to keep the Americans in.
“OTOH you can legitimately argue that some types of speech was effectively verboten during the Cold War such as expressing Communist sympathies. ”
Communist sympathies can be openly expressed, because they don’t matter. That is a cardinal rule of contemporary American society ie., You have the freedom to do anything you like, provided it is inconsequential.
Comments:
1) Obviously any of these ratings organizations must be closely scrutinized as to their methodology and political positions. It’s fine if they have some twisted methodology that makes a censorship- and surveillance-driven society like the UK seem “free” but they should at least disclose it.
2) As an American of substantial Scandinavian ancestry, I’m shocked and embarrassed about what’s happening in Sweden. At least Denmark and Norway have somewhat more common sense, but I’ve almost resigned myself to the notion that Nordic countries are a genetic dead end, due to their pathological altruism being incompatible with globalization.
3) Regarding the First Amendment, clearly it cannot last in a heterogeneous society, and it will be eviscerated by the usual judicial (((suspects))), whom I might add promoted the First Amendment throughout the 20th century.
They absolutely explain their methodology. Bunch of questions, composite scores. On their website –
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2016/methodology.
There are certainly questions such as
“Is the government or occupying power deliberately changing the ethnic composition of a country or territory so as to destroy a culture or tip the political balance in favor of another group? (–4 to 0 points)”
and
“Do users of personal online communications—including private e-mail, text messages, or personal blogs/social-media platform with a limited following—face legal penalties, harassment, or violence from the government or powerful nonstate actors in retaliation for critical remarks?”
in there. They may not loom as large as some would wish though (absolutely quite small in the overall composition of the survey), and the the analysts they use ask may not respond to them the way that some would wish, either. Perhaps a better measure would be rigged so that the overwhelmingly all important question of whether a community police support officer has a “friendly” chat with you about going HAM on twitter looms very large in the question of freedom, and bullshit that obviously no one cares about like “Are law enforcement officials free from the influence of nonstate actors, including organized crime, powerful commercial interests, or other groups?” is given much less weighting…
All of Freedom House’s “explanations” are pointless, judging by the results produced. Any seasoned political hack can “explain” anything into meaning the exact opposite of what it would ordinarily mean.
Europeans are indigenous peoples with several thousand years of continuous habitation of the continent and therefore have a widely recognized right to resist invasion. They need to stand and fight and soon. Our quota immigration system will need an overhaul before Europeans could decamp in size to the USA. Sadly, that is not likely at this juncture.
Americans are stuck with our low-skilled, low-iq citizens, many of whom have arrived post-1965 . . . Europe can still avoid being overrun/diluted, but things need to change fast. But I’d take Mexicans over Black/North African Muslims all day long, that is where Europe’s neighborhood really hurts its prospects.
Andros,
I don’t see how Europe can avoid being overrun. European women are barren and hedonistic. European men are soft and easily intimidated. There is not even a hint of resistance, beyond some occasional petty hooliganism.
Native European people are already in steep decline – Germans alone are dying out (meaning net decrease) at 300 000 per year. Italians – 200 000. Spaniards – 150 000. Native Britons – 100 000 (with another 200 000 heading for Australia, Canada and NZ). And so on. Eastern Europe’s population will halve in just 60 years, and it will have to start importing vast numbers of aliens soon (financial system can’t function in any country where population is disappearing so fast).
Not ONE European country is demographically self-sufficient. And “demography is destiny”, as they say.
Make no mistake, the present mini-uproar about the ongoing Islamic conquest of Europe is not because Muslims are coming. They were coming before, and they’ll keep on coming to compensate for European childlessness. What happened was simply that too many came too fast, and the frog ( European people) which sat in a steadily heating pan unaware that it was being boiled to death, got scolded as the temperature had suddenly increased too quickly – and jumped out.
So now Euros will return Muslim “refugees” back to Turkey, place them in comfy camps, where they will be processed and then allowed into Europe with full legal documents.
There is no stopping it.