Babette De Naeyer (PhD candidate, Pompeu Fabra University)
Introduction
Remember the Schild & Vrienden (S&V) case we discussed last year? In March 2024, a Belgian First Instance Court convicted six prominent members of the far-right youth movement S&V to (suspended) prison terms and substantial fines. The group’s leader and former MP for the far-right Vlaams Belang party, Dries Van Langenhove, received a one-year prison sentence, a €16,000 fine, and a ten-year ban on exercising political rights.
These convictions followed a documentary by the current affairs program Pano that exposed the “secret inner workings” of S&V by publishing thousands of sexist, revisionist, and racist memes and posts from private Facebook and Discord groups. Van Langenhove and his co-defendants argued that “sharing some jokes should be allowed”. The Court dismissed this defense, stating that the so-called “humor” was “deliberately and systematically employed to make racism accessible and light-hearted” [para. 13.2].
One year later, the Ghent Court of Appeal revisited the case. This blog post explores the appellate court’s reasoning through the lens of ForHum’s toolkit What’s in a Joke? Assessing Humor in Free Speech Jurisprudence.
Legal Reasoning in the S&V Appeal
The outcome of the appeal mirrored that of the first instance court: all defendants were convicted on all charges. However, the appellate judgment provided a more expansive and improved legal reasoning.
The court once again rejected the argument that the memes were merely “tasteless humor” or a way to “vent frustrations in a closed group”. Unlike the first instance court, the appellate judges explicitly addressed the limits of free expression, emphasizing that the court was not “punishing an opinion” [para. 7.5].
As per usual, the duties and responsibilities inherent to freedom of expression as a fundamental right were stressed. However, in cases involving (allegedly) humorous material such as memes, the boundary between lawful and unlawful speech is often blurry, due to humor’s high reliance on exaggeration and provocation. When assessing the necessity and proportionality of a potential restriction on humorous expression, as argued in the ForHum toolkit and in a later contribution by Godioli & Young (2025), it is particularly important for courts to consider a broad range of contextual factors.
Context and Co-text
And the Court of Appeal did precisely that. In particular, it focused extensively on what the toolkit – building on previous humor scholarship – called co-textual cues, namely the “verbal or non-verbal hints surrounding the humorous expression and guiding its interpretation” (Godioli et al. 2025, p. 36). By looking at the communication around the disputed memes, the Court found multiple indicators that the defendants’ aim was not innocent joking, but ideological persuasion and mobilization. For instance, Van Langenhove wrote: “Memes are a means, not an end in themselves. Don’t lose sight of that,” and: “It starts with memes, it ends with a Flemish Empire from the North Sea to Katanga [= a former Belgian Congo province].” His laptop also featured the logo of a fictional “Bureau of Memetic Warfare.” Another user noted: “We [right-wing youth] use memes to funnel our politically incorrect ideas to the general public (read: normies). The red pill is sweet and must be administered in small doses” [para. 5.2.4].
The Court also highlighted discussions about “prepping” among S&V members. Van Langenhove advised joining shooting clubs and emphasized physical conditioning. He also offered illegal pepper spray for sale on S&V’s social platforms. Files retrieved from confiscated computers contained extremist content such as lectures and podcasts comparing Black people to animals and blaming them for societal decay (“Send them all back,” “A white world,” “Racial fitness and survival”) [para. 8.3].
According to the appellate judges, taken together, these individual actions demonstrated the intent to spread an overarching ideology rooted in white supremacy and hatred towards minorities. These court findings support broader academic research on how far-right groups weaponize humor to normalize hate speech (Pérez 2022, Fielitz & Thurston 2019). After all, some of the co-textual evidence analysed in the appellate ruling clearly resonates with the well-known recommendations issued almost ten years ago by Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, in his Normie’s Guide to the Alt-Right: “While racial slurs are allowed/recommended, not every reference to non-white should not be a slur and their use should be based on the tone of the article. Generally, when using racial slurs, it should come across as half-joking – like a racist joke that everyone laughs at because it‘s true. This follows the generally light tone of the site. It should not come across as genuine raging vitriol. That is a turnoff to the overwhelming majority of people” (as cited in May & Feldman 2019).
The ForHum toolkit – in light of the UN’s Rabat Plan of Action – also emphasizes the importance of considering the extent of dissemination as part of a thorough contextual analysis. In other words: how widely was the harmful content shared? In this case, the memes were posted in private Facebook and Discord groups, which had 750 and 163 members, respectively. The Court found this constituted wide dissemination, enough to impact public discourse.
Proportionality of Penalties
The appellate court strongly condemned the defendants’ conduct and the deceptive nature of S&V’s public image: “All defendants contributed to intolerance and hostility in our society, showing utter contempt for the fundamental rights and freedoms of others” [para. 10.2]. Despite the serious nature of the offenses, the Court reduced the penalties. Given that nearly six years had passed since the offenses, the Court chose to reduce fines and eliminated or suspended the prison terms. This aligns with ECtHR guidance that criminal penalties – especially prison – should be used as a last resort in speech cases (see for example Perinçek v. Switzerland, 2015, and Stern Taulats and Roura Capellera v. Spain, 2018).
A particularly notable element of the first instance ruling was the additional punishment imposed on Van Langenhove: a ten-year disqualification from voting and holding office. This was eliminated on appeal due to a technicality in Belgian law, which requires that multiple offenses with unified intent be punished under the heaviest applicable sanction: in this case, a violation of the Weapons Law, whose possible punishment does not include political disqualification.
What About the Speaker’s Status?
Strikingly, neither court mentioned Van Langenhove’s status as a political figure. According to ECtHR case law, the speaker’s public role is highly relevant when evaluating the limits of permissible speech. While political speech merits strong protection, politicians and candidates also bear heightened responsibility not to incite hatred, as their messages reach broad audiences (see Sanchez v. France, para. 150). As stressed in the ForHum toolkit (Godioli et al., p. 35), the power imbalance between speaker and target is especially prominent when a high-profile politician’s speech targets minorities – see for example, Féret v. Belgium and Le Pen v. France (2017), or on a national level, the Dutch Wilders case (2016).
So why did both courts ignore this context? Perhaps because Van Langenhove was not yet an elected official when the offenses occurred. Ironically, it was precisely the Pano exposé that unveiled S&V’s activities that catapulted him into political fame. While this sequence may explain the courts’ silence, it could have been worthwhile to acknowledge the speaker’s political status. The first court’s disqualification ruling did so implicitly, but explicit recognition would have helped place the case in the broader context of far-right politicians using humor to launder extremist rhetoric.
Conclusion
The S&V saga isn’t over yet: Van Langenhove called the appellate decision “a dark day for free speech” and has announced plans to appeal to the Court of Cassation. Meanwhile, a crowdfunding campaign titled “Free Dries” has raised over €100,000 to cover legal costs, a dramatic increase from the €35,000 raised after the first judgment. This suggests that while courts have taken a firm stance, a motivated segment of the public either sees the case as an illegitimate attack on ‘laughs’ or is already neck-deep in the irony-poisoned worldview that S&V represents. In my first blog post on this topic, I posed an open question: “Is this the most effective way to combat the rise of populism – or will exemplary convictions only push like-minded voters further into the arms of far-right parties like Vlaams Belang?” It appears that question still stands. At the same time, digital humor cases are evolving rapidly. Take, for instance, the Acid case, which I also discussed in my previous post. The influencer was convicted for revealing the identity of Reuzegom members involved in a fatal hazing, using his signature flashy, satirical video style. Acid is again under investigation for publicly exposing a convicted rapist who did not receive punishment because the young man showed great promise. These developments highlight how critical it is to establish well-reasoned jurisprudence on humor in the digital age – precedents that make it clear what can be considered “just for laughs” and what is indeed leading to “irony poisoning”.