Anti-fascist groups to protest against far-right movements this Saturday in Brussels

Many anti-far-right organisations including Stand Up, Agir pour la Paix, Antifascist Action Belgium and Blokbuster, will stage a protest at 14.00 this Saturday (3 October) at Brussels-Central station.

The 14 associations supporting the event headlined ‘The extreme-right is criminal’, are angry that authorisation was given for the Flemish nationalist, right-wing Vlaams Belang party’s demonstration against the Vivaldi government on 27 September on the Flemish side of the Heysel plateau in Grimbergen.

Vivaldi stands for the colours of the four seasons (as in the composer’s famous work): orange for the Flemish Christian-Democrats (CD&V), blue for the Liberals (MR and Open Vld), red for the Socialists (PS and spa) and the greens (Ecolo and Green).

“Just as many social movements are seeing their right to freedom of expression limited or stopped altogether and the anti-racism march at Ostend [Oostende tegen racisme] was banned the same day, Vlaams-Belang was given the right to spread their nauseating ideas very near the capital,” the event’s Facebook page says.

Vlaams Belang, called the Vlaams Blok until 2004, was protesting under the “Not my government” banner. Demanding more elections, the group said the Vivaldi’s seven-party coalition was not Flemish enough. Some 5,000 cars from all over Flanders drove to the Grimbergen ‘C’ car park, draped with the yellow and black Vlaams Belang flags. “Flanders will not tolerate left-wing and anti-fascist politicians,” it wrote online.  

For its part, this Saturday’s demonstration’s organisers compare the Flemish party to Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn, that they see “as a neo-fascist faction as well as a political party”.

Moreover, Golden Dawn is a neo-Nazi criminal organisation, the groups say, “in its full sense, with a hierarchical structure and military training. Its members have been following orders.” They want justice to be given on 7 October, saying Golden Dawn is guilty of murdering anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, the immigrant Sahzad Lukman and of many cases of torture and aggressions against migrants, the lesbian and gay (LGBTQI) community and anti-fascists.

The ‘L’extrême-droite est criminelle! Extreemrecht is crimineel’ demonstration, scheduled to last until 16.00, is therefore not only against Vlaams Belang, but also to support anti-fascist groups, particularly in Greece. “In a suit or in a brown shirt, in French, Dutch or in Greek, in Belgium or in Greece, the extreme right is criminal,” the organisations say.

Brussels-Capital-Ixelles police have been in contact with several groups that will take part in the demonstration and will be there on the day.