Paul Beliën
Paul Beliën is a Flemish Belgian political operative, writer, and former journalist and founder of the right-wing blog The Brussels Journal.
Beliën has a Master of Laws with specialisations in European and social security law from the University of Ghent, and a Ph.D. in international studies from the University of Buckingham. He has been vice president of the International Free Press Society, a senior editor at the Hudson Institute, director of the Middle East Forum's Islamist Watch, and a writer for the Gatestone Institute. More recently, he was the chief of staff for Geert Wilders.
He is an advocate of Flemish independence, free trade and is an opponent of abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality. He is an Americophile, and has been actively opposed to Muslim immigration to Europe as part of the counter-jihad movement.
Career
Early career until 2005
Beliën worked as a journalist for Gazet van Antwerpen from 1982, until he was fired in 1990 for leaking a story about King Baudouin's opposition to legalised abortion in The Wall Street Journal. He was one of the nine founders of the party Flemish Liberals and Democrats">Flanders">Flemish Liberals and Democrats in 1992, but soon left the party due to the party moving towards the left under the influence of Guy Verhofstadt. In 1993 he contributed to the book Visions of Europe alongside Margaret Thatcher among others.He co-founded the Brussels-based Centre for the New Europe in 1993, a neoliberal euroskeptic think tank with attention to social conservative issues affiliated with the Bruges Group, together with lawyer Fernand Keuleneer, after having founded the magazine Nucleus together in 1990. Beliën served as research director for the think tank until 2000, but his politics shifted more rightwards towards secessionist and nationalist positions from the end of the decade.
From 2000 to 2005, when his wife Alexandra Colen served as a member of parliament, Beliën and Colen published a secessionist quarterly journal together entitled Secessie: Kwartaalblad voor de Studie van Separatisme en Directe Democratie.
''The Brussels Journal'' (2005–10)
In 2005, Beliën founded The Brussels Journal, an anti-Islamist, euroskeptic, pro-American blog, which was run by the Society for the Advancement of Freedom in Europe, a Swiss non-profit organisation. In 2006 it was one of the few websites that republished the Jyllands-Posten [Muhammad cartoons controversy|Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons], which attracted some two million unique visitors to the site.Beliën also compared Muslims to predators, and called for Belgium to decriminalise the possession of self-defense weapons in an article titled "Give us Weapons!" in 2006. The article caused a media storm, and led him to receive a letter from the Centre for [Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism] for "incitement to violence", ordering him to remove the post from the site or face prosecution. The conservative newspaper The Washington Times wrote that free speech was under attack in Belgium for the events.
In 2007, Beliën used his contacts with the Vlaams Belang party to take part in hosting the international counter-jihad conference in Brussels, which brought together at least seventy organisations and individuals for two days of speeches and networking opportunities.
Beliën served as editor-in-chief of The Brussels Journal from 2005 to 2010.