This article was originally published in Danish on November 20, 2018.

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It is rightly emphasized that freedom of expression – and with it freedom of information – is fundamental to democracy. Without freedom of expression, there is no democracy.

Now it is not new that this freedom is being trampled underfoot; Germany, Austria and France, for example, have done this effectively and systematically for many years, and Denmark has also contributed to the undermining of democracy with section 266b¹ of the Danish Penal Code.

Now, however, the European Court of Human Rights itself has approved the abolition of freedom of expression. An Austrian has been convicted of calling Muhammad a pedophile because, according to tradition, the “prophet” married a six-year-old girl and consummated the marriage when the girl was nine years old, and according to the Court of Human Rights, this conviction was perfectly acceptable because “you cannot use your freedom of expression if it hurts the religious feelings of others”.

We’ll leave that for a moment. It takes us back to the Dark Ages. So you accept that people’s primitive superstitions are more important than democratic debate. Criticism of religion is then impossible, as it will necessarily hurt someone’s feelings. However, we would doubt that the feelings of Christians are covered by this prohibition. It’s probably okay to hurt them. There is another reason why it is not allowed to hurt Muslims. If you criticize Muhammad, you endanger religious peace, i.e. you risk Muslim riots. The lesson of this is that violence pays. There are lessons to be learned from that!

However, you can also learn that you can only have peace and freedom in an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society with a common set of values! Of course, Denmark must immediately leave the European Convention on Human Rights and the Council of Europe, a completely superfluous organization that only serves to line the pockets of political pampers and officials.

As for the judges of the European Court of Human Rights, who usually prevent Denmark from getting rid of criminal foreigners, there are no trees tall enough to hang them from on the day of judgment!

Povl H. Riis-Knudsen

Translated by means of AI

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1. Section 266 b of the Danish Penal Code, popularly known as the racism section or the discrimination section. The clause is often maliciously used by the system to crack down on the free speech of patriots. ↩︎