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Posted on 11/07/2004 5:25:34 PM PST by MegaSilver
An attempt will be made this week to ban Europe's most successful far-right nationalist party, Belgium's Vlaams Blok.
A quarter of voters in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of Belgium, support its policies for independence from Belgium and repatriation of many immigrants, especially Muslim ones.
It is now the biggest party in Flanders, kept out of power only by an agreement among all the mainstream parties to exclude it from any coalition government.
But tomorrow Belgium's highest court is expected to rule that the party is racist. The ruling will mean that the Vlaams Blok will have to disband. But it won't go away. Indeed, many observers believe it will bounce back even stronger under a new name but with the same policies.
The Vlaams Blok has prospered while almost all of Europe's other far-right parties have seen their support drop.
In France, Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front, made a spectacular breakthrough to the final round of the presidential election in 2002. But since then his star has waned.
In Austria, Joerg Haider found himself in the spotlight with his positive remarks about Hitler. His Freedom Party did so well in national elections in 1999 that it became a member of the coalition government.
But that experience tamed the party. Mr Haider himself is much reduced in stature and his ministers have become part of Austria's political mainstream.
The party founded in the Netherlands by anti-immigration Pim Fortuyn, collapsed after his murder and survived only a few months in government.
Political analyst Stefaan Walgraeve, of Antwerp University, says it is precisely the Vlaams Blok pariah status, kept out of government, that increases its popularity. The difference, compared with other countries, is that this party is seen as fighting the establishment. By always being kept in opposition it can claim to be the only party fighting for ordinary people against the political elite.
But the party has also moved to soften its image and become respectable. Party leader Filip Dewinter says the Vlaams Blok's ultimate goal is to defend the Flemish identity - by securing independence from Belgium, and by keeping out immigrants. He is unashamed about singling out Muslim immigrants and denies that this leaves him open to accusations of racism.
"Not at all. I think we should recognise that cultures are different and not all cultures are equal. When I see Muslim culture I think that our culture is superior. Our values, our way of life are superior and we have to say so," Mr Dewinter says.
Last month in Schoten, a suburb of Antwerp, 100 party activists gathered. Among the cheese-and-wine tables was Marie-Rose Morel who, with her beauty queen looks, epitomises the new-look Vlaams Blok. At 32, she is the party's youngest MP.
The expected court ruling will oblige the Vlaams Blok to disband and reconstitute itself under a new name, perhaps the Flemish People Party. Analysts here believe the move will increase its status as the underdog of Belgian politics and persuade even more to vote for it.
Some people call this bigotry. But this is a nasty world, and sometimes you have to show a few teeth if you want to survive. In the case of Muslim immigration, if something is not done very quickly it may well devolve into just that.
Awake to all the mystery of human character, interested in those complex psychological impulses which associationist theories cannot account for, Burke implicitly rejected Locke's tabula rasa concept as inadequate to explain the individuation of character and imaginative powers which distinguish man from the animals. Human beings, said Burke, participate in the accumulated experience of their innumerable ancestors; very little is totally forgotten. Only a small part of this knowledge, however, is formalized in literature and deliberate instruction; the greater part remains embedded in instinct, common custom, prejudice, and ancient usage. Ignore this enormous bulk of racial knowledge, or tinker impudently with it, and man is left awfully afloat in a sea of emotions and ambitions, with only the scanty stock of formal learning and the puny resources of individual reason to sustain him. Often men may not realize the meaning of their immemorial prejudices and customs - indeed, even the most intelligent of men cannot hope to understand all the secrets of traditional morals and social arrangements; but we may be sure that Providence, acting through the medium of human trial and error, has developed every hoary habit for some important purpose. The greatest of prudence is required when man must accommodate this inherited mass of opinion to the exigencies of new times. For prejudice is not bigotry or superstition, although prejudice sometimes may degenerate into these. Prejudice is prejudgment, the answer with which intuition and ancestral consensus of opinion supply a man when he lacks either time or knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason. (The Conservative Mind, p. 38)
It is indeed scary when courts can start banning political parties because their views are too far right.
This is a good example of what the left gets away with all over the world. All someone has to do is shout "racist" or "bigot" when confronting those who wish to organize to preserve their ethnic identity and everything they stand for.....but of course, they give free reign to Islamic extremists under the guise of multiculturalism. This story speaks volumes of what the European and American left is doing to destroy its civilization.
In "banning" these right wingers the Left might as well put a gun to their own heads.
What on earth do they thing the result is going to be?
This is NOT new. The Supreme Courts have been overstepping their bounds too many times. Time to reign THEM in.
It is at least as accurate to say that the Roman culture disintegrated and fall apart from within. IOW, it ceased to be superior and was therefore replaced by more vigorous, although initially much less civilized, cultures. Unless we bounce back, we are heading down the same path.
In no small part because Rome did not recognize the Gothic and Germanic hoards for the threat they posed until it was too late.
Unless we bounce back, we are heading down the same path.
Agreed. Unless the U.S. wakes up and sees Mexico for the enemy country it is, and Europe sees Islam for the threat that it is, we are finished.
What on earth do they thing the result is going to be?
Leftists were never the smartest ilk on the planet to begin with. As a university student, my appraisal of the left is that it is by and large highly educated but utterly unintelligent. The Unabomber referred to them as "oversocialized" and expressed his view that oversocialization was one of the cruelest things to inflict upon a human being.
I suspect the reason why this particular party has succeeded and others have waned is because of their severe criticism of islam. I don't care for these alternate parties BUT the liberals' answer to problems isn't appealing at all.
I beg to differ. The Empire fell largely because its own people lost the willingness to fight for it. The coloni and serfs of the late Empire (by that time the vast majority of the population) quite rightly felt that as individuals they had very little to lose and potentially much to gain from a barbarian invasion.
Middle Ages civilization, born of the fusion of classical and barbarian cultures, was much freer and more creative than that of the late Empire, which had collapsed into a bureaucratic caste-ridden wannabee totalitarianism.
Just noticed that you were quoting stormfront.org as if if were an authority.
LOL
It is an authority... on pseudoscience.
Banning a political party?
How is it exactly that Europeans think they can criticize American elections?
If this ever happens in America to either party, I hope that we would all join together, rightwingers and leftwingers, and beat the bums out of their robes.
Holtz
JeffersonRepublic.com
Whenever I see stories about Europe I consult my English immigrant friends. They are leftists, and think it's kosher to ban this party, because they fear they are closet nazis. Any opposition to immigration in Europe is labelled Nazi by the socialist establishment. We aren't too far away from that now here in America. Regarding Haider, I read the transcript which was cited as proof he "praised Hitler." What he did was make a negative reference to the liberals' economic policies being similar to those of National Socialist Germany. But only liberals can play the Nazi card in Europe. That's all, and so now he has a reputation as a "Nazi."
Enough already.
>"Not at all. I think we should recognise that cultures are different and not all cultures are equal. When I see Muslim culture I think that our culture is superior. Our values, our way of life are superior and we have to say so," Mr Dewinter says.>
Where's the vice and virtue police when you need them? The song ebony and ivory says "We all know that people are the same wherever you go." What's the matter with this guy? Doesn't he know that cultures like these are America's strength? We would crash and fall if we didn't bring people like this to America to replenish, enliven and "spice up" our drab, depressing, violent, unstable country.
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