During its Tuesday evening newscast, RTBF broadcast a report regarding Belgians regarding to travel to Ukraine to join the international legion. In the report, a 51-year-old man from Flémalle is questioned regarding his motivations and apprehensions before his departure.
But images, shot in the room where the man was preparing his business, challenged many viewers. The man indeed proudly displayed a poster with the logo of the Walloon Free Corps, a direct reference to the Walloon Legion, the Walloon branch of the Waffen SS during the Second World War.
Criticized for the choice of this speaker, accused of not having enough information, RTBF and Marianne Klaric (the journalist who produced the report) were taken to task on Twitter. Many Internet users demanded explanations, denouncing a “deep unease”.
Back to the faux pas on the JT
A controversy that quickly grew on social networks. So much so that RTBF decided to respond to it in its news this Wednesday evening, the day following the broadcast of the criticized sequence. Nathalie Maleux, the presenter of the JT, returned to the controversy. “This poster is very clear,” admitted Nathalie Maleux. “We lacked perspective yesterday,” she admits, before the broadcast of a report retracing the history of the Walloon Legion, a “dark page” in Belgian history.
The journalist behind the report also spoke on Twitter, assuring that the man was more of a “repentant zozo skin”. “That takes nothing away from the discomfort, I understand. But it should not be concluded from this that the RTBF is advocating an extreme right ideology. We must calm down and stop suing us on the web”, she added. Marianne Klaric also invited people “howling with wolves” to “come to work in an editorial office at the moment”, implying that the workload was heavy and the task complicated.
As some Internet users have pointed out, the man had also been interviewed by the newspaper Le Soir on the same subject.
If the man had told the journalist that he was not affiliated with the far right, his social media would paint an intriguing picture. The man shared several posts inviting Internet users to join the “Belgian Free Corps Makhno, free fighters engaged in the International Legion for the Territorial Defense of Ukraine“. Several publications also refer to the skinhead movement as well as to several groups advocating “national anarchism” in which he is very active. This political movement seeks to reconcile anarchist positions, such as the rejection of capitalism and the State, with nationalism, and in some cases even with “racial separatism”.
