It is market day in Deurne. Beside the church, behind the row of pubs on the high street, under two dilapidated tower blocks, shoppers bustle around the sausage stand, the ground coffee stall, Morocco Dried Fruit and Nuts and Waffles of Flanders.
Jan van Wesembeeck, a 39-year-old engineer, watches activists in the yellow and blue of his party work the crowds and smiles broadly. ”We speak with the authentic voice of the people. We say out loudly and proudly what they are thinking, and we’ll be in power soon.”
Van Wesembeeck’s party is Vlaams Belang (‘Flemish Interest’), one of Europe’s most successful and newest far-right parties. He and his fellow activists hope that elections today will give them control of Antwerp, Belgium’s second largest city with a budget of â,¬1-billion and, more broadly in the country, a bridgehead into real power at a national level. Judging by the warmth of their reception in Deurne, a working-class suburb on the outskirts, van Wesembeeck’s hopes may be fulfilled.
”This will be the breakthrough,” he says. ”We are not skinheads, we are not extremists, we are just honest, working Flemish people like the people we represent. It’s time we had our say.”
Vlaams Belang’s Flemish nationalism, with its calls for strict measures against immigrants and immigration, its barely disguised xenophobia and its strong rhetoric on security — as well as its slick organisation — have brought it from the extreme fringe of local politics to its mainstream in just over a decade. Six years ago, VB won 22 out of 55 seats in the city, with 35% of the votes cast and has been kept from power only by a fragile coalition of all the other parties combined.
Filip Dewinter, VB’s leader, believes that his party is the product of pan-European trends that is seeing radical groups forcing their way into the democratic mainstream. Speaking in the party’s office in central Antwerp, he talked of ”a wave of support that is rising and that will going on rising”. He told the Observer: ”There is an explosive cocktail of factors. There is unemployment, immigration, a sense of insecurity… and traditional parties have no response.”
Dewinter happily recognised his party’s links to other European hard-right groups — calling France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen ”the grandfather of the European nationalist right”, praising Danish far-right leaders and talking of tactical lessons that could be learnt from the recent success of Switzerland’s SVP. He also admitted that VB is a renamed version of Vlaams Blok, a party dissolved after being condemned for inciting racial hatred by a Belgian court two years ago. ”The style and the propaganda have changed, but we are the same party underneath,” he said.
Dewinter denied alleged links to neo-Nazi groups. However, opponents allege that the party has shadowy connections to violent far-right cells, such as the network of extremist militants armed with homemade bombs uncovered in the Belgian army recently. Many claim that the rhetoric of VB is a key factor in the rise in racist violence seen in the country of 11-million people in recent years. A young Belgian who opened fire on immigrants in Antwerp in May, killing two, was the son of a VB activist and the nephew of a VB member of Parliament. ”There are mad people everywhere,” said Dewinter with a shrug.
Two of VB’s main themes are immigration and Flemish nationalism. Though Antwerp is a cosmopolitan city with people from 140 nations, and especially large Jewish, Turkish and Moroccan communities which live together without serious problems, there has been little contact between ethnic groups. A recent study by the University of Leuven found that Belgian under-16s were as racist, if not more so, than their elders. ”There are areas in Antwerp where local people don’t feel at home any longer,” said Dewinter.
But the VB package is more varied than straight xenophobia. Ellen Samym, a 26-year-old adminstrator handing out VB leaflets in Deurne, said it was the Flemish nationalist theme that attracted her. Tensions between Walloon French-speakers in Belgium and the Flemish-speaking Flamands have been exacerbated by rapid economic growth in the Flemish parts and a growing social gap between the dynamic north and a poorer south. ”We pay too much tax that goes to the Walloons,” said Samym. ”We should be independent and then we could give the money to our own people.” For Dewinter, independence for Flanders is logical, not necessarily for economic reasons. ”They are of Latin genes, we are from Nordic racial stock,” he said.
The historical resentments expressed by Samym are a key element of all the new European right-wing parties, according to Professor Marc Hooghe, a Belgian political scientist. ”There is a general sense of being threatened and, as ever, people turn to the age-old scapegoat, foreigners and immigrants.”
Yet there are many in Antwerp who oppose VB. Last weekend a series of concerts ”for tolerance” brought tens of thousands into the streets. ”It made me proud to be from this city again,” said Marc, a 34-year-old waiter. ”Of course, we have problems like any major European city and some are linked to immigration. But there are better ways to deal with them than with hate and fear.”
The rise of Europe’s new far right
Austria Extreme right campaigning on anti-immigration ticket won more than 15%of the vote in elections this month.
Denmark Led by controversial woman Pia Kjaersgaard, the ultra-right Danish People’s party swept into Parliament as the third-largest party in 2001 with 12% of the vote. It is more popular than ever, having received a major boost from the Muhammad cartoon controversy.
Switzerland The Swiss People’s party takes an anti-immigrant line but its leader, Christoph Blocher, insists he is not racist. Elections in 1999 and 2003 made the party the largest single political force, with 27% of votes cast. Last month a referendum backed Blocher’s tough new laws on asylum seekers and immigrants.
France A persistent presence since 1972, the National Front and its ageing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen broke through at the 2002 presidential elections with six million votes. The FN, and other extreme right-wing parties, are predicted to do well in next year’s election.
UK The racist British National Party, led by Nick Griffin, scored its best poll in May’s local elections, with three council seats in Burnley, Lancashire. Because of the electoral system, the party is unlikely to gain MPs. Griffin wants to pay non-whites to return to their countries of ethnic origin and to withdraw Britain from EU. – Guardian Unlimited Â