The European Union is the ultimate passive aggressive nanny state, and now they’ve made something a crime that they deliberately do not define in precise terms; it’s Orwell’s 1984, except Big Brother is your dull-eyed pedantic cousin: EU agrees to penalties for racism and xenophobia.

LUXEMBOURG (AFP) - The European Union on Thursday made inciting racism and xenophobia crimes throughout its 27 member states in a landmark decision tempered by caveats to appease free speech concerns.

The new deal specifies one- to three-year prison terms be available for incitement to violence or hatred “against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin”.

That could include the sending of “tracts, pictures or other material.”

The deal, reached by EU justice ministers in Luxembourg, display’s “Europe’s ”common moral values", EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini told reporters.

In a twisted way, this ludicrous deal stems from a good impulse that itself stems from a huge, deserved sense of guilt: to combat Holocaust denial. But you can be absolutely certain that the first groups to take advantage of these new legal powers will be the highly aggressive Islamists—who are often the same people who deny the Holocaust, and at the same time wish for a new, improved one.

Yes, it’s Orwell Day at LGF. The old crank is spinning like an Iranian centrifuge.