FARAGE SPEARHEADS LATEST "KREMLIN" POLARISATION OP IN BRUSSELS

Apparently just really really shit at choosing conference venues

Right now there is a big brouhaha on the Kremlin-bot-adjacent part of the media (i.e.Twitter and wider social media) about "the delicate flower" of free speech being crushed in Brussels. 

This comes after something called the "National Conservatism Conference" was "shut down" by police on the orders of "The Mayor" of Brussels. The event was to feature speakers including Nigel Farage, Viktor Orban, Suella Braverman and other gammon-rousing figures.

Here is the Brussels Times reporting the facts:

"The mayor has issued a police order that the conference cannot take place on the territory of Saint-Josse. The organisation of the venue owner have officially been informed that the event cannot continue," a spokesperson for the Brussels North police zone told The Brussels Times [...] They are closing down the event "gradually," meaning people are not being ordered to leave but those who exit the building are not allowed back in again [...]

"I have issued an order from the mayor banning the National Conservatism Conference in the interest of public safety," Kir said on social media around noon on Tuesday. "In Etterbeek, Brussels City and Saint-Josse, the far right is not welcome."

There are also unconfirmed reports that Belgian laws against homophobia are being used as a justification for the police action, which, if true, is interesting, as this part of Brussels is heavily Muslim.  

While there is still some confusion over just what is going on and the legal details of the case, there are several key facts that are already clear. These suggest that this event is simply an attempt to get "banned" in order to gain publicity and stoke racial animosity and feelings of alienation and victimisation of all sides, aided by online bot armies. In other words, it has all the hallmarks of a typical Kremlin op. 

Let's look at these key facts:

Firstly the organisers of  this supposedly "right-wing," "anti-immigrant" event decided specifically to hold it in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode. This is one of 19 municipalities of Brussels, and a rather small one. It has a population of around 23,000. Here it is on a map of central Brussels. 

But why this precise location rather than somewhere else in this city of over a million people? Well, one reason is because two previous venues fell through after anonymous threats, but this makes the choice of the third venue even more astounding. Because Saint-Josse is an overwhelmingly Muslim area, being a high-crime neighbourhood of mainly Turks and Moroccans. In fact the mayor is a Turk, who was kicked out of the Belgian Socialist party for being an Armenian Holocaust denier and for links to the Turkish far-right. 

Just this fact should be enough to tell you that the main purpose of holding the so-called "National Conservatism Conference" here was to provoke some sort of response -- either a riot or a bureaucratic clamp down -- that could then be spun to claim victimisation and play up the racial and cultural divisions in Europe. As for the "anonymous threats" that led to the first two venues citing "security concerns," something as simple as that could easily be arranged by Russia's FSB.

The Mayor was already on the map for being a reactionary authoritarian type who could be counted on to use any powers in his hands to interfere with the conference, creating the perfect conditions for a polarisation shit storm. The last thing the organisers had in mind was to hold an actual conference to discuss serious ways of tackling Europe's demographic crisis.

With the UK holding an election sometime this year, it is vital for Farage to keep pulling stunts like this in order to keep eating into the Tory vote, with the goal of pushing it not just into defeat but into oblivion.

Regardless of what one thinks about the Conservative Party, destroying it is undoubtedly one of the main Kremlin goals in the destabilisation of the UK. This is the agenda that Farage appears to be pursuing here.