La Cuestión Flamenca

Foto © Ezequiel Scagnetti - Bélgica, Steenstrate 20 de Agosto del 2006 - Jean Simons, (58 años) originario de la provincia flamenca de Limburgo, es un manifestante separatista. Su camiseta dice BÉLGICA EXPLOTA (Belgie barst en Flamenco)

Sobre el hombre excelso y el hombre mediocre
En el año 1762, días más, días menos, Jean-Jacques Rousseau dijo en su Contrato Social: "El hombre ha nacido libre y en todas partes se halla encadenado.", prefigurando la revolución francesa y dibujando un nuevo mapa en el pensamiento político y filosófico.
244 años después, días más, días menos, el Alcalde del Ayuntamiento de Merchtem, Eddie de Block, prohibió a los niños de las 4 escuelas de esta comuna (vecina de la bilingüe - pero de mayoría francófona - Bruselas) de hablar francés o cualquier otro idioma que no sea el Flamenco. "Aquí vienen alumnos de Bruselas, de Marruecos, de Turquía... y nosotros estamos obligados a aceptarlos. Para que se integren tienen que hablar flamenco, incluso en el recreo", dijo el Alcalde liberal Eddie de Block, sin ponerse colorado.
A cada quién su lugar en la Historia de la Humanidad, digo yo.

En el año 2006, el periodísta italiano Alberto D'Argenzio nos explicó con elegancia y claridad las vicisitudes del separatismo flamenco en este artículo que publicó en La Repubblica delle Donne, dondé yo colaboré con mis fotos:

FLANDERS BLACK PORTRAIT
Alberto D' Argenzio, Bruxelles.

Belgie Barst, Belgium burst.
Then come the hymns and the endless fields of flags, the drums and the parades, the endless flow of beer and hot dogs. Many old people and many young students. A rush of anger and claims that comes from the right. Every end of August thousands of people gather in the countryside in the north of Brussels, on the battlefield of Ijzer for the Ijzerwake, the commemoration of the dead Flemish soldiers in the Great War, a ceremony that by now has become the day of the pride for the harder wing of the Flemish separatism. This pride grows without pause, wants to sweep away Belgium and the immigrants with it, guilty to bring in drugs, disorder and crime in order to receive in exchange the attendance of a paternalist administration. The Flemish extreme right does not hide the head, they keep it very high, strong of 15 years of uninterrupted electoral successes. Full successes, only mitigate from the last local elections of October in which the party stopped to increase votes in Antwerp, the cultural and economic capital of the region, but improved however in the placid and rich Flemish countryside.

Behind the few syllable Belgie Barst, behind the totem of a secession that sooner or later will probably come, a racist and pissed off galaxy hides, expression of a rich society that hardly cohabit, both with the Belgian federal State, and with the immigrants. But there is also the average man of the street tired with the squanders of an administration based on the welfare of political parties and trade unions. And in order to cement them all in an ideological strong mix that crush together catholic radicalism with ultra-liberalism, Flemish pride and refusal of the strange. And this galaxy moves following apparently two opposite strategies: there is a majority that goes for the independence and the homogeneity in the ballots and a minority that plays with guns and violence. There is who works within the system and who prefer to stay outside. In politics there is the Vlaams Belang and in the neo-nazi overthrow. And nobody of the two wants to speak about the other, nobody wants to mess with the other, but at the end they are two sides of the same coin: extreme right at the purest level. This coin makes fear to Belgium, for the truth more in the poll that with the guns. Nowadays, in the centre of united Europe it is much more difficult to stop the elections that the guns.

Thursdays 7th of September 2006, the police dismantle a hypothetical organization of Flemish neo-nazi infiltrated in the army. 11 military and 6 civilians are arrested, five barracks and 18 residences searched. At the end of the operation the police find with something like 200 guns, hundred munitions and also one handicraft bomb able to "blow up a car". A discreet arsenal for a small group called BBET, Bloed-Bodem-Eer-Trouw, Blood, Earth, Honour and Fidelity. The organization was born from the local section of the Blood and Honour, an international organization of the active neo-Nazism from United Kingdom until Hungary. The police is convinced that the group was preparing one or more "attacks with the aim to destabilize the base structures of the country", in practical to seed the chaos in sight of the elections.

That creates a case. The liberal Premier Guy Verhofstadt got outraged for the image of the country and of the army. The Ministry of Defence André Flahaut informs that the army will set itself up in the trial against the soldiers and Patrick Dewael, Minister of Home affairs, immediately speaks about the necessity for new laws in order to fight against the extremist organizations, practically proposes the interdiction of the neo-Nazi groups. The atmosphere is still overheated. The Flemish catholic daily newspaper De Standaard filters police information that this group, created by the soldier Thomas Boutsen in the barrack of Leopoldsburg, 80 kilometres east of Brussels, had targeted various politicians, both of left and right parties. There is also the name of Filip Dewinter, unquestioned leader of the Vlaams Belang. Evocative hypotheses, but that do not completely convince. In fact day after day doesn’t emerge any real prove of advanced state preparation attacks. It seems that the plans of the BBET were more verbal brags that real threats. The group was based in the bar Viking, in the centre of Leopoldsburg. Entrance forbidden to black and Turkish. Now it is closed for everybody because who managed it, Tamara, the former girlfriend of Boutens, is in jail as well. Jacques, military in Leopoldsburg, is placidly sprawled on the counter of Tropicana, the bar on the other side of the street. The superiors ordered him not to talk to anybody about it, but a couple of beers and the promise not to mention his name, and he forgets the orders : "Thomas is a friend of mine, he likes guns and then? Everyone has his own hobby ". A hobby with something like 200 between rifles and guns. Not bad when a AK47 costs 180,00 Euro in the black market and the average salary of a soldier is 1,250 Euro.
To own guns is not equivalent to be ready to use them. "the attacks must be planned, they need time, they can’t be improvised - explain Manuel Abramowicz, coordinator of Resistances, an observatory on the Belgian extreme right - and nothing seems to demonstrate that the group was soon ready to act ". We are far away from the disarticulated black plot in 1973 when a group of military was about to seize the Home Office Ministry Philippe Moureaux. Then, why such a rush? "Sure behind the police operation - Abramowicz continues - there is the administration intention to send a strong message before the local elections of 8th October. The bombs, not claimed from the right, would have created the chaos in favour of the Vlaams Belang, on the contrary the dismantling of the BBET aims to weak the VB, aims to show that does not exist only an Islamic terrorism but also an extreme right one".

Sunday 10th of September, Exhibitions Palace of Antwerp, cultural capital of the Flanders and worldwide of diamonds, second city of Belgium, second port and main community of orthodox Hebrew of Europe, receives the meeting of the Vlaams Belang. Loud Latin music, children chasing the carousels and adults the beers, in the stands they sell hot dogs and the video of Dewinter’s speeches. On the stage the best men of Belang to express words of security, social order, independence and total stop of immigration. Ovations. Until 1999 the party program was a manifesto of 70 points in which the main dish was the expulsion of all immigrates until the third generation and for those who wanted to stay the apartheid in schools and social services. Then the program has changed gradually to less warlike tones. The tones. "We want the complete stop of immigration - senator Karim Van Overmeire explains - we do not want Black, Lebanese, Moroccan islands. They must learn our language and be dressed like us". From the expulsion of all it has changed to the assimilation of a few.

"Dewinter speaks about Flanders homogenous, of a homogenous community - Abramowicz emphasizes - in the Germanic, racist and Nazi sense of the term. What are the differences between these theses and those of the neo-Nazi of the Blood and Honour who want the pure Flanders ". The analogies are not only ideological. "There are not institutional connections with the neo-Nazi, but the subversive extreme right and that parliament one, above all of young people, share spaces, they meet in the same places, in the same demonstrations". In substance some healthy proximity.
Erik Beyserkesk, a young and podgy shaved head 27 years old, denies of being a skinhead, then when you point out the Celtic cross hanging down his neck, he removes it hurriedly and puts it in the pocket. Chewing embarrassed: "we are not of Hitler’s followers, we just want the best for our people, the Flemish without immigrants". Ideology, empathy and strategy. "the subversive organizations as the BBET and Blood and Honour - Abramowicz explains - want to create the chaos because they know that this will favour institutional extreme right in the ballots, it will increase the votes for the Vlaams Belang. One is complementary to the other ".

The 8th October, in the silence of the polls, the Vlaams Belang still grows, increases the consents in the region but got also an unexpected stop in its stronghold of Antwerp. The party direction hoped to exceed the barrier of 40% of votes. On the contrary it remained stagnant to 33.5%, exactly in the middle between the previous 33% of communal elections in 2000 and 34% of the regional ones in 2004. For a party accustomed to grow for the past 15 years, the stall in the cultural and economic capital of the region appears like one half defeat.
Despite the stop in Antwerp, affected also by the unquestioned charisma of the socialist mayor Patrick Janssens, the Belang continues its race in the countryside, in the medium-small towns, like Boom, Ninove, Zandhoven, Alost, Malines, Roesalaere and Lierre where it became the first party. In Schoten, rich and calm north periphery of Antwerp, where you can feel the welfare, you can see old people and children cycling placid around, luxury cars parked in front of the detached houses, but not immigrants around. Here very few immigrants arrive, hardly 55 Moroccans and 4 Turks in a population that counts 33,000 citizens. In this soap opera scene, Vlaams Belang achieved the 37.4% the last 8th October, clear sign that is not only the difficult cohabitation to bring votes to the right.
Indeed, in this case the vote to the right seems to be a precautionary vote against the immigrants and the social insecurity. "It is not the vote of protest of the victims of the social-economic situation - Abramowicz explains - in Schoten they vote in order to vote against the victims of this social-economic situation. It is the revenge of the new rich people who do not want to be poor anymore. The second car syndrome: they have worked hard to buy it and now they do not want to lose it. They do not have any solidarity with those who has economic problems and with the administration that would protect them ".

The next year the Vlaams Belang will celebrate 30 years, and to celebrate it properly there will be the federal elections, then a year of pause and in 2009 the regional ones, the next crucial appointment for the Flemish extreme right. The goal, once again, is to grow taking advantage of the social tension, the crash between communities, the desire of independence of the Flanders. The stop of Antwerp, for the first time, gives the idea that the way of the extreme right can not be always , and only, so easy.
"We were in a black tunnel, a long tunnel where we could not see any light - comments Paul Goossens, political analyst and journalist - now we do know, after 15 years of unstoppable rise of the extreme right, that something can be made in order to stop it, that the end of the tunnel can be seen, or at least some light coming through".