For a long time, Jews were the arch enemy of the extreme right. But for some years now, there is no stopping the public displays of affection Filip Dewinter aims at them. However, they don’t leave a lasting impression amongst Jews who are familiar with their history. “I can’t deny there are some anti-Semites in our ranks,” says another prominent VB member.

Soon after the local elections of 2000, Belgisch Israëlitisch Weekblad (Belgian Israeli Weekly) received Filip Dewinter’s answer to an article they published earlier:

“Dear Sir, I read your article The Jewish community and the local elections of October 13, 2000, with astonishment and dismay. In it, you claim that at the heart of VB there are ‘fanatic Nazi-nostalgics, racists and anti-Semites, who dream of a return to the Third Reich’. Your weekly continues to cultivate some prejudices, lies and insinuations surrounding VB. Vlaams Blok is a democratic, right wing Flemish nationalist party which is in no way guilty of anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish pronouncements or writings.”

One has lost count of the amount of such letters Dewinter has written. For years now, the leader of VB in Antwerp has seized every opportunity to get himself in the good books of the circa 20,000 Jews that live in the city on the banks of the Scheldt. Even when Roeland Raes got himself in a difficult position by playing down the holocaust, Dewinter – worried about his chances to become mayor – reached out to the Jewish community.

What VB thinks officially about Jews is simple: nothing, because Jews do not pose any problems, they say. Only once did the party take the risk to include a statement on Jews in their party programme. It was in 1992, in an attempt to get rid of some supposed prejudices against Vlaams Blok – to do so, senator Jurgen Ceder wrote the pamphlet Ten prejudices against Vlaams Blok. Of its sixteen pages, less than half a page was used to deny the claim that VB was anti-Semitic, even though the party realised that even such a little reference may stir up emotions. “Anti-Semitism is not yet a widely spread prejudice against VB, but soon it may be,” could be heard.

In a re-issue of the pamphlet in 1999 the passage about Jews was quietly removed. The original statement was as follows: “Vlaams Blok has no problems with the presence of the Jewish community in Antwerp and the rest of Flanders. Our motivation behind that and the apparent paradox with our position on North-African foreigners prove once again that approach the problem of nationality with common sense rather than with a dogmatic ideology. The Jewish community causes no problems, is not involved in criminality, does not try to impose its own culture on ours and, as a community, it has been perfectly integrated in Flemish society for centuries.”

Auschwitz

This apparently friendly use of language does not give any reason for Nathan Ramet to start putting some trust in VB. “VB simply has an intolerant mentality. Their current position on Jews means that they will tolerate us just as long as we don’t disturb anyone. As if we should live in some kind of nature reserve. This statement contains the seeds for an anti-Jewish stance that will grow sooner or later.”

The 80-year old Ramet is the spirited curator of the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance which is housed in the Dossinkazerne in Mechelen. During the second World War 25,124 Jews departed from that place, crammed into livestock lorries, towards Auschwitz. Very few would return. Children, the elderly, the ill and most women were gassed shortly after their arrival. The others, mostly men, ended up in labour camps. A mere 1,207 of them survived the Nazi-horrors.

“I experienced anti-Semitism first hand,” says Ramet, who was one of the youngest survivors. The blood-and-territory nationalist thinking has been proved by WWII to be a murderous ideology. It makes me shiver to see a man like Dewinter suck up to the Jews of Antwerp. He is part of a group of intolerant, extreme right wing politicians that have links with ex-Nazis and with types such as Le Pen, who called gas chambers a detail in human history. I do not want to sit at the same table as these people.”

From ‘People and State’ to Vlaams Blok

Whatever happens, VB can never erase the history of which it is the direct descendant. However, it does try to do so, to try and defuse the accusations of anti-Semitism, when it writes that “the Jewish community has been perfectly integrated in Flemish society for centuries.” As if there never was a prosecution of Jewish people in the Low Countries. This prosecution was driven by Flemish Nazi-collaborators which today are still idolised by members of Vlaams Blok. 

When VB was founded, one of those collaborators was offered the prestigious position of editor of the party magazine. The dubious honour fell on Jan Brans (°1908 - + 1986), who used to be the editor of Volk en Staat (People and State), the newspaper of the collaborating party VNV (Vlaams Nationaal Verbond – Flemish National Union), in which he published numerous anti-Jewish articles. Brans, who was sentenced to death by default after the war, seemed to be the right person, at the age of 72, to lead the Vlaams Blok party paper. It was no coincidence that the only anti-Jewish text that ever appeared in the paper was written by the man himself.

When in 1980 Jews took part in an anti-racist demonstration march, Brans took it as “a brutal attempt to influence Belgian domestic affairs.” He felt the need to add that “xenophobia or anti-Semitism rooted in an instinctive dislike of people of different dispositions or with a different skin colour or body odour is, for us too, a phenomenon of primitive and inhuman racism.”

Amongst other ex-collaborators anti-Semitism was still very much present four decennia after a war they lost. Every month Between 1988 and 1991, Periodiek Contact, a publication of ex-Waffen-SS members, published extracts from The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, introduced in the magazine as “the programme (of the international Jewish community) to enslave the world.” In reality, the text was an anti-Jewish piece of fiction from 1901.

A visit to the Ku Klux Klan

Anti-Semitism does not limit itself however to the generation that got stuck in pre-war nationalism. After the war, small groups of far right youths picked up the dark matter where their fathers left it. Especially in the 1970s, anti-Semitism flourished again. That period was marked by the absence of a strong far right party that could channel racism away from the obscure fringes of society. Anyone could do just what they wanted, which lead to the re-emergence of the old demons from wherever they were hiding. In contrast with the situation today, the far right then did not try to hide their true ideologies.

In 1976, under the leadership of Xavier Buisseret – later to become an MP for Vlaams Blok – the VMO (Vlaamse Militantenorde – Flemish Order of Militants) sent its West-Flemish constituency leader Roger Spinnewijn to the USA to establish official contacts with the Ku Klux Klan. Talks concluded with a common resolution, which was published in the VMO-paper Alarm. Paragraph 8 included a notion of “cooperation against international Judaism”. In 1979, under Bert Eriksson, VMO even showed Jüde Süss to its members, which is a repulsive German propaganda movie ordered in 1940 by Joseph Goebbels, in which Jews are compared to rats. VMO militants also distributed stickers in that period with claims such as “Liberate Europe from the Jews”.

The magazine Haro in particular, edited by Xavier Buisseret, Roeland Raes and Siegfried Verbeke, was determined to keep digging up old ant-Jewish clichés. When Haro was criticised in 1978 because it spent too much time on so called ‘Jewish intrigues’, the editors responded as follows: “Haro came into existence with just one aim – deepening, renewing and promoting nationalism. Anything that stands in the way of nationalism shall be dealt with in a less than diplomatic way. If we were to keep any secrets because of simple opportunism, Haro would not have any reason to exist.”

Author of “A filthy Jew” becomes MP for Vlaams Blok

Even in places that are not exactly packed with those of the least mental capacity, such as the Nationalistic Student Union (NSV - Nationalistisch Studentenverbond), anti-Semitism was able to find new spokespeople. Legendary is the unofficial but infamous NSV song in which apart from “a moroccan, a niggerian, a foreign bogeyman” – the classic far right repertoire – “a filthy Jew” is also immortalised in lyric. The author of the song, which was printed in an internal NSV newsletter, was the NSV director of culture Pieter Huybrechts. These little escapades did not prevent Huybrechts from rising up the ranks in VB and from later becoming a member of parliament.

Out of pure shame the infamous NSV song was later prohibited, because even in extreme right circles there are limits on the amount of gore allowed. That not everyone was made up with the public anti-Semitism became apparent after a text which a certain Guy van Paep, chairman of the NSV in Antwerp, published in the NSV magazine Signaal in 1981: “Those who want to be respected by others, has to respect those others the way they are. Words such as nigger or filthy Jew are therefore anti-nationalistic, which can also be said of certain groupings.”

NSV had to deal much more often with anti-Jewish eruptions. Sometimes stronger, sometimes a bit less, as it goes with the changing membership of a student union. A sign of the times was a letter from 1983 by Gust Peeters, an ex-NSV member from Antwerp, to the NSV-paper Branding: “Ever since my first efforts for NSV-Antwerp I have been shocked by the primitive hate for Jews that certain members cherish as an ideal. This phenomenon is certainly not exclusive to NSV: it can also be seen in other nationalist associations, varying between antipathy and straightforward xenophobia. For most, this can also be applied to Moroccans, Algerians or Turks… it is not aimed just at the Jewish community.

Anti-Semites in Vlaams Blok? Certainly!

The rise of Vlaams Blok since the end of the 1980s puts a brake on the openly anti-Semitic thoughts of the far right. The party has never functioned as a megaphone for anti-Jewish propaganda, but offered a less suspicious racist alternative: instead of Jews, Turks and North Africans became the favoured targets. Some may have forgotten, but this was not yet the case twenty five years ago.

Then, anti-Semites could join and make a career in VB without any problems, as long as they didn’t bring the party into disrepute. What could be applied to the holocaust, can also be applied to VB’s stance on today’s Jews. Many Jews see this dubiousness as an obstacle.

It will not be music to Filip Dewinter’s ears, but the fact that there are anti-Semites in Vlaams Blok was confirmed to me personally by Roeland Raes. In an interview I held with the former VB deputy leader, Raes said: “I can not deny that there are anti-Semites among us, but I think their number is rather limited. Especially if they want to act on their words, they will not find a vehicle in VB.”

The Dutch journalist Rinke Van den Brink mentions a similar but anonymous confession from a source close to the party leadership in his 1999 book The young turks of Vlaams Blok. “Apart from a small circle of people in VB that are Nazis in hiding, there are no anti-Semitic sentiments in our party,” says the anonymous informant, who goes on to provide some names. “They’ve come out of VMO, NSV and Voorpost. That kind of environment. I’m talking about a small number of people in national political office: Buisseret, Raes, De Man, Lowie, Verreycken, and a few dozen board members, not even a hundred. There are a few amongst the academics that the party employs, people who carry out some rather important work for us, concerning our content. Amongst the grass roots there are more, but it’s still only a small group, maybe two hundred. In particular some older members of Sint-Maartensfonds (an organisation of Flemings who fought on the Eastern front for the Nazi-German army, ed) and some youngsters who look up to those guys.”

Would it be a coincidence that only Vlaams Blok has got those problems to deal with?

translated by Michael Wuytens