2023-08-19 18:48:04
In Flanders, the police call for calm following the dissemination of videos of violence on social networks. We see young people who are beaten and humiliated. This kind of videos are multiplying, including on this side of the linguistic border.
In one of them, we see a group of teenagers attacking a young man. They are threatening and force him to kiss their feet before beating him. The attack, voluntarily filmed and published on social networks, was widely broadcast, until it was politically taken over by the Flemish far right.
This phenomenon is not new, but, according to Bruno Humbeeck, educational psychologist and professor at UMons, it is intensifying: “It goes beyond happy slapping. Happy slapping implies the intention to harm someone specific. Now, we are in an almost random violence, with aggressions against unknown people, intended to show that we have a form of power that allows us to dare everything.”
The perpetrators, usually young, expose themselves to prosecution for harassment or degrading behavior. “You have to take screenshots and always file a complaint. You have to get out of the feeling of powerlessness and get the aggressor out of the feeling of impunity.”
In Flanders, some videos broadcast on the Telegram network have turned against the perpetrators of the attacks who are now the subject of a hunt.
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