As predicted, the far-right Belgian Vlaams Blok party, declared racist and effectively banned last week, has dissolved and reformed itself as Vlaams Belang, a mainstream conservative party pushing for the independence of Flanders. There’s more at Majority Rights:
Although it is of course terrible to say so, the recent political murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh has, along with the judicial murder of Vlaams Blok, given a boost to the debate about freedom in Belgium. We all understand that you are free to speak and think or you are not. A partial freedom is not freedom at all, and neither is a freedom that is limited by politico-judiciary chicanery. In Flanders we say you become “mouth dead”.
People abroad don’t always understand why the Blok was so successful, all the more because of the hatchet job that was so skilfully performed on its reputation. In the free encyclopedia Wikipedia it is written-off as a racist and would-be antisemitic party. This is black propaganda, equivalent to claiming that Israelis make seder with the blood of Arab children. It is a sad fact of human nature that when such stories are retailed there are always some who will believe them.
So what is the real nature of Flemish nationalism? Well, read the Party Manifesto (below). If ever it was what the Belgian government claims it to have been, this is now a respectable and modern European conservative party. It is free-market oriented and possessed of many ethical concerns. Moreover, the personnel and the Party meetings are very convincing and enthusiastic. Being serious about power has become a political cliché in Britain. But the men and women who gathered to inaugurate Vlaams Belang are exactly that.
For leftist and French-speaking Wallonia, this seriousness is their worst nightmare. Brussels will be filled with busy groups of Walloon elite trying to find the means to stop the Flemish a second time.
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