We ignore extremists at our own peril.

last updated 8 January 2015

Belgium

Diederick Legrain

Belgium is doing its best to ignore the xenophobic far right, said Diederick Legrain in Brussels’ La Libre Belgique. We ostracize the extremists, those who want “Flanders for the Flemish” or “Francophone Belgium for the Francophones.” The press doesn’t seek interviews with them. When they do well in elections, as they did last fall, sweeping 20 percent of the vote in Flanders, mainstream politicians denounce the results as “shameful.” We have erected a gigantic cordon sanitaire around the supporters of the extreme right, “around their elected representatives, their candidates, their voters and sympathizers, and even their ideas, should we ever ask them their ideas.” Yet the more we ignore the far right, the more it grows. Stopping our ears and singing “la-la-la” has not made it go away. That doesn’t mean the racists are gaining followers because they are correct. But it does mean “the mainstream parties are somehow failing us.”