A nationalist activist and former Belgian MP has vowed to appeal to the country’s highest court after a judge refused to overturn his one-year prison sentence for supposedly offensive private chat group memes that he didn’t even post.
Dries Van Langenhove, 31, was first charged in 2019 with violating laws against racism and historical revisionism after left-wing journalists claimed to have exposed “racist” messages posted in a chat group of the Flemish nationalist group he founded, Schild & Vrienden.
In March last year Van Langenhove, who was an independent member of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives from 2019 to 2023, was sentenced to 12 months’ jail for the memes and fined €16,000.
The right-wing activist also had his civil rights suspended for 10 years, making him ineligible to be re-elected to parliament, and immediately appealed the verdict.
Guilty. 12 months in jail. Madness.
— Dries Van Langenhove (@DVanLangenhove) June 20, 2025
Van Langenhove appeared in the Ghent Court of Appeal on Friday where a judge again found him guilty, but suspended his sentence and reduced his fine to €1,600 after finding that the case had exceeded a reasonable time limit, and overturned the civil rights suspension, The Brussels Times reported.
“Guilty. 12 months in jail. Madness,” Van Langenhove wrote on X, and said immediately after the verdict that he would appeal to the Supreme Court, and, if necessary, to the European Court of Justice.
“The court has never wanted to listen to me, not even here. This is a black day for justice, for democracy, Belgium and Europe in general. But we are not giving up the fight,” he said.
He later wrote in a separate post on X: “The irony is that I have been fighting against mass migration for well over a decade now, and it has gotten me a prison sentence. But this prison sentence is suspended most likely because the prisons in Belgium are literally full of (illegal) migrants.
“The regime’s strategy is probably also to weaken public outrage by giving me a suspended sentence. Most people don’t realise that the end result of such a sentence is the same. One politically incorrect tweet can now put me in jail.
“One meme sent by someone else in a groupchat I am in, can turn the suspended sentence into an effective one. This suspended sentence is the gravest form of censorship they could pursue and an effective way to kill activism.”
I just received the written verdict. It's very long so it will take time to analyse everything, but the 12 month prison sentence appears to be a suspended sentence.
The irony is that I have been fighting against mass migration for well over a decade now, and it has gotten me a… pic.twitter.com/8aeAxzXsLz
— Dries Van Langenhove (@DVanLangenhove) June 20, 2025
Van Langenhove has raised almost €100,000 for his legal defence on GiveSendGo.
“As a nationalist and conservative activist, Dries Van Langenhove leads the charge against mass migration and woke degeneracy from our Brussels HQ,” the fundraiser says.
“Our success has provoked the Brussels regime to threaten Dries with jail and ruinous fines to suppress our freedom of speech.”
Header image: Left, right, Dries Van Langenhove (X).
