Belgium's internal divisions reflect its disposition to radical nationalist politics. In Flanders, the far right has had a foothold for three decades and continues to grow. Conversely, it has been driven out of the French-speaking south by a broad social movement encompassing the media and politics.
It's sometimes called the "Le Pen effect": in 1984, the French public discovered Jean-Marie Le Pen on television. He was leader of the Front National, a far-right party that was already growing in popularity. The rise of his radical nationalism became unstoppable and would not be confined to France.
In Belgium, the tipping point came in the form of a resurgence of a pre-war fascist movement. The Vlaams Blok (Flemish Bloc, VB, which became the Vlaams Belang, “Flemish Interest”, in 2004) was a party founded in Dutch-speaking Flanders in 1978 by small factions of the wartime collaborationist movement. The VB subsequently became one of Europe’s most influential ultra-nationalist parties.
On the French-speaking side, Belgium's own Front National (FN) was a by-product of the "Le Pen effect", and captured much of the protest vote between 1988 and 2003. But the FN was riven by fratricidal infighting and proved unable to turn itself into a serious political party. Nonetheless, the FN's electoral scores approached those of the Flemish VB and indeed of the French FN. It had particular success in the Brussels municipalities of Anderlecht and Molenbeek, and in the province of Hainaut (whose population exceeds a million), and specifically in Charleroi.
Today, the VB is the leading Flemish party in both Flanders and the capital, and is the dominant force in Belgian right-wing populism. In French-speaking Wallonia, the FN had split into factions by 2007 but in 2016 reinvented itself as a new party called AGIR. This is currently the only coherent and effective Walloon nationalist party. Its ranks include two local councillors. The other representatives of the movement are active in microscopic groups of no more than five to ten activists.
Since 2021, a newcomer has come to the fore, albeit mainly online. Chez Nous ("At Home", CN) claims to be "the only patriotic party in Wallonia". Created from whole cloth, it has received loud support from the Flemish VB and Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National (though VB has conditioned this on CN staying out of Brussels, which is located in VB's Flemish region). Chez Nous is counting on a breakthrough at the regional and federal elections on 9 June 2024, which are happening alongside that of the European Parliament. To achieve this, the party has needed to make an electoral pact with AGIR, which will dominate the resultant list thanks to its presence on the ground, especially in Hainaut.
The next election will be decisive for the far right in Wallonia. Either it will scrape through with one or two elected representatives, or be consigned to the dustbin of history. How to explain this situation so oddly at variance with that in Flanders and the rest of Europe?
A tradition of antifascism
During its rise, the Francophone far right faced fierce opposition. In both the south and the north of Belgium, a tradition of antifascism dates back to the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1920s and 30s. Back then, workers' militias would fight the black-shirted militiamen in the streets. The far-right Rex party and the Flemish National League (VNV) had a notable success in the 1936 elections, but their good fortune was short-lived. Belgium's wartime resistance inflicted heavy defeats on the German occupiers and, at the Liberation, there were severe reprisals against the "collabos" of the right. Survivors were forced to operate discreetly under the watchful eye of the trade unions, community organisations and the cultural milieu.
In 1984, Jean-Marie Le Pen came to Brussels to help set up a local FN. In response, antifascists got organised across the country, with tens of thousands taking to the streets. The democratic parties set up a cordon sanitaire around far-right groups, making it difficult for them to grow.
The VB nevertheless slipped through the cracks, thanks in part to the Flemish Christian Democrats (CVP). In Brussels and Wallonia, the barrier against the far right was stronger than in Flanders. It was thanks to a united front, led mostly by the radical left in both politics and the trade unions.
Antifascist fronts sprang up all over the country, joining forces to halt the advance of the far right at the ballot box and in the public arena. In parallel, a legal battle was waged against it by other organisations such as the Mouvement Contre le Racisme, l'Antisémitisme et la Xénophobie (MRAX), the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme (Human Rights League, LDH) and the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (Unia). In parallel, the French-language press put up its own cordon sanitaire.
None of this prevented 175,732 Walloon and Brussels residents from electing the founding president of the Belgian FN, Daniel Féret, to the European Parliament.
In Flanders, the response to the far right began to gather pace in the 1970s. In Antwerp, a historic ulta-nationalist stronghold, activists created the Anti-Fascistisch Front (AFF) in 1974. The AFF organised counter-demonstrations to the parades of the Vlaamse Militanten Orde (Order of Flemish Militants, VMO), a neo-Nazi paramilitary group. In the years that followed, the AFF established a foothold in other Flemish towns. An antifascism-inflected strain of Flemish journalism took shape and took it upon itself, sometimes in concertation with the AFF, to inform Dutch-speaking readers of the dangers of the VB and its violent fringe.
A movement still going strong
Other organisations sprang up in Flanders, usually on the initiative of progressive intellectuals, academics and artists. As recently as 2014, for example, a citizens' movement called “Heart Over Hard” was formed to oppose the neoliberal austerity measures of the Flemish government of the time.
In Flanders, most of the organisations resisting the far right have concerted with the Dutch-speaking section of the Human Rights League. In 2004, together with Unia, the League brought charges of racist hatred against the three associations that make up the Vlaams Blok. To avoid being dissolved, the far-right party had to change its name to Vlaams Belang. Most of Belgium's antifascist groups, both Flemish and French-speaking, are still active in 2024. Many are members of Coordination Antifasciste de Belgique and the "8 May Coalition", which honours the anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
The eclipsing of Francophone Belgium's far right was made possible by the rise, unprecedented in Europe, of a far left. In 2014, two members of the Parti du Travail de Belgique (PTB) were elected to the federal parliament, followed by ten more in 2019. This June, the party – whose origins lie in Maoism – could win as many as twenty seats. For a section of the electorate, the PTB now represents a viable alternative to the government.
While antifascism might seem quaint today, the success of Belgian activism is a reminder that the far right is beatable when enough people take up the fight. At a time when nationalism seems to be on an unstoppable march across Europe, it might be worth remembering the struggles – and the victories – of the antifascists of the Kingdom of Belgium.
In cooperation with voxeurop.eu.
The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union.
