I do understand fear of losing what you have. I generally try to stand behind the people who have those kinds of fears, but my support is conditional, and among the conditions are recognizing that your neighbours are probably just as scared as you are. Any “Flemish interest” that is different from the interests of the people who have to live with Flanders is simply a scam. I’m pretty sure it’s not my interests they have in mind.

For a long time, the strategy against the VB has been to do nothing, address none of the reasons why so many people are scared of losing what they have, and hope the problem would go away. This has not been working. Letting them into government would make Belgium a visibly worse off place. I suppose there’s always confronting Belgians with their prejudices - there was an entire chapter in my Dutch curriculum about prejudices and dealing with them, maybe Flemings need the same training - but somehow telling Flemings that they all share the blame probably won’t earn anyone votes. Somehow, the idea that their favourite scapegoats have nothing to do with their problems is a message that doesn’t ever sink in.

I’m beginning to think there might be something to calls to end mandatory voting. I’ll bet a lot of the VB voters would just as soon stay home.

But instead, Flemings are going to talk about gun control. Dewinter has already beaten a hasty retreat from the VB’s earlier calls to reduce gun controls. In the States, I always used to respond to both pro- and anti-gun arguments with “Guns don’t kill people; Americans kill people. Mandatory licensing for Americans now!” Racism is not white trash with guns; racism is systemic oppression. Racism is when you can’t get into a nightclub in Antwerp on a Friday night because your skin is too dark and then when you go to a mosque, people suspect you of being a terrorist.

De Morgen quoted an elderly Antwerpenaar in its Sunday edition, saying that the refugees coming to Belgium now are not doing anything different than what she did fleeing the Luftwaffe in 1940. So, I have a little hope.

Sorry to sound so bitter. It’s just that there are a lot of moments lately when I want to take this entire country and slap it upside the head. Usually it’s just in traffic, or when Belgians have to line up for something. If there is a people less capable of organizing a queue, I am hard pressed to think of who they could be. Or sometimes, when I have to deal with the Belastingsdienst who still won’t acknowledge that I live in Brussels and should damn well be able to use French forms.

But lately, it’s been whenever I buy a newspaper. I guess it’s the price of finally getting involved in local affairs.

Better: This explains “partly” why VB is popular with “a number of people” in the middle-class segment of the population.

VB does present itself as a law-and-order party and as a party defending family values. I do not know where they stand on the death penalty, they do not mention it in their party programme.

One of their raisons d’être is an independent Flanders. Even when they have been focussing on immigration in the past couple of years, it has never been off their political agenda and I have a feeling separatism is fast becoming one of their major campaign issues again.

It is important to know they are more than just a “racist party”. They present themselves as the true defenders of Flemish interests. Financially, culturally, socially and politically. At least, in their campaigns and official publications. That is why Verhofstadt is playing a dangerous game by blaming them for the Van Themsche murders. Most people I have spoken to do NOT blame VB and if Verhofstadt is seen as playing a cynical game of strategy, that might very well play into the hands of VB.

If you blame them, make sure you are on target and have clean hands yourself. I am not at all an apologist for VB, but I have seen the demonisation strategy backfire before. And do not forget VB has been in the opposition their entire history, they are battle-hardened and know to press the correct buttons (like any political party) at the right moments.

Today there was a Belgian professor on French tv who said the average profile of a VB-voter is solidly middle-class and consists of people who are afraid to lose what they have. This explains, for example, why VB is popular with people who want an independent Flanders (ie no longer subsidising Wallony). It is not just about racism.

A question that is a bit more rhetorical: For any commenters here not inclined to see a connection between the VB and these murders, what do they think (or did they think at the time) of connections between Italy’s communists and the Red Brigades? Or between the left wing of the German SPD and the Rote Armee Fraktion?

I note, with irony, how crimes committed by immigrants are subject to collective responsibility for the far right, while crimes by white people are purely a matter of persona responsibility.