Strommen: Stormfronters and Symbols
The next installment of Øyvind Strømmen’s deconstruction of the distorted, misleading, and false claims about the Belgian Vlaams Belang party floated by Brussels Journal, Gates of Vienna, and the Center for Vigilant Freedom: The “refutations” - one by one: 4. Stormfronters and symbols.
Strømmen is able to get much deeper into these matters than I could, because he speaks and reads the various European languages in which most of the sources are written. And yes, he’s not on the “right wing” himself, and has some views on other issues with which I disagree, but on this matter he is absolutely crushing the apologists—and the revelations in his post confirm, in devastating, factual detail, that we were right on target with our objections to the Vlaams Belang.
In this post I will discuss two different topics - links (as in internet links) and symbols. Neither of these topics are the most interesting in connection with Vlaams Belang or with other Eurofascist parties.
Some people see the references to racist symbolism as a smear against Filip Dewinter and his party. As I have noted before, it is not necessary to point to internet links or to the usage of symbols to “smear” Vlaams Belang; nor is it necessary to make guesses about why Dewinter keeps a Celtic Cross in his bookshelf. The interesting part about this whole discussion is not a symbol in a bookshelf, but rather the kind of distortions the Brussels Journal, Gates of Vienna and others have delivered as excuses.
When it comes to smearing, Vlaams Belang is fully capable of smearing itself, since they have both feet solidly placed in the tarry substance of fascism.
In fact, they have been busy smearing themselves since the party was founded - as Vlaams Nationale Partij - in the 1970s. They have smeared themselves through their close ties with the violent private militia VMO, and through their ties with groups such as Voorpost, through their connections to Holocaust revisionists. They have smeared themselves through their racist political viewpoints, through their support of the apartheid regime, through their extreme nationalism. They have smeared themselves by travelling to Lommel to honour fallen Flemish SS soldiers.
