Why is it that the danger of an extreme right-wing takeover of power is systematically underestimated? For example, VOKA managing director Hans Maertens stated in 2019, following the elections of that year, that a government with Vlaams Belang should be possible. He called a government’s program more important than who is in it. He was promptly served at his beck and call: N-VA chairman De Wever spent two months negotiating with Vlaams Belang regarding the formation of a Flemish government.
The next elections will not be until next year, but speculation has been going on for months regarding a possible coalition between N-VA and Vlaams Belang. The most disturbing thing regarding all these attempts to bury the cordon sanitaire is the stubborn refusal to learn lessons from history.
Again and once more they refuse to look at the similarities and parallels with the 1930s. Every reductio ad Hitlerum is met with a shrug or even contempt. That goes very far: it Diary 1933, the danger of the extreme right by Dirk Verhofstadt, in which the similarities between then and now are irrefutably demonstrated with scientific accuracy, is dismissed by some as superfluous or anachronistic. Nevertheless, it was Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi who said, “It happened, so it can happen once more.” It is no coincidence that Verhofstadt took this statement as the motto for his book.
Of course, history never repeats itself in the same way. Today there are no SS or SA troops marching through the streets. It has almost become a cliché: today’s fascists walk around in a suit and tie. That does not alter the fact that the similarities that Verhofstadt has traced are hallucinatory. And the mistakes that brought Hitler to power are being made once more.
For example, the plea of the VOKA gentleman to “take the Interest into the bath” is exactly the same as that of German industrialists in 1933 in connection with the National Socialists.
Four years ago Bart De Wever made the same mistake as the conservative German politician Von Papen, who thought he might bring Hitler down by making him chancellor. The opposite was true. In a few months, Hitler killed democracy.
But a new takeover of power by the extreme right is not a law of nature. We can still prevent it, at least in Flanders. That is why we must maintain the cordon sanitaire at all costs. We realize too little that we owe a lot to the cordon. Because the extreme right does not participate in the administration of any municipality, no schools were “cleansed” of left-wing teachers, no books that disliked the extreme right were removed from libraries, and tensions were not boiled down to violent conflicts. We must therefore cherish the cordon and never lose sight of the fact that its sole raison d’être is the racism of the Vlaams Blok/Belang.
But that has to be made clear to the voter. Vooruit chairman Conner Rousseau let in The appointment on Friday no room for any misunderstanding: his party will never ever co-rule with the Interest. Nods of approval on all benches. But Rousseau did not say why he excludes the Interest. No one asked him regarding it either. Like that’s obvious. That’s not it. So say, over and over once more, that you want nothing to do with a party that calls fellow human beings rats (‘Leftist rats roll your mats’). Rats was also the name the Nazis gave to the Jews. After all, according to them, Jews were thieves and profiteers, just as the Interest speaks today regarding non-European foreigners.
Don’t stop repeating that you want nothing to do with a party that will ‘present’ real or supposed ‘left’ teachers once in power. Who does see a ‘Moroccan problem’ in football and New Year’s riots, but does not condemn arson in an asylum seekers center. With a party that describes the media with the Nazi term ‘lying press’ and frightens the population with the Nazi term ‘population’. With a party that flatbreads with mass murderer Assad and regretfully suppresses its admiration for Putin.
The media is also ready for self-criticism. Their attitude towards the extreme right is far too cautious and tolerant. I’m not saying, but Stefan Hertmans in his latest book Shifts.
Because, according to him, this media attitude has “directly led to the strengthening of the extreme right, which invariably wins in television debates through populist slogans, appeals to gut feelings, outright lies and the political undermining of a fair debate”. (page 129)
If anyone is wondering why I have always refused to interview a Vlaams Blokker live: this is the answer.