Far-right soldier Jurgen Conings fled from his army unit on 18 May with weapons, threatening to attack the well-known Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst as well as a local mosque. Despite a large-scale search by the army and police, Conings was not found. Finally one month later, on 20 June, his body was found in a forest.
Support groups for Conings appeared on social media with tens of thousands of members. Physical actions brought fewer people together, but still numbered a few hundred. The far right party Vlaams Belang had to distance themselves officially, but did so vaguely and ambiguously enough so as not to offend its radical supporters. Moreover, it was then discovered — not entirely unexpectedly — that Conings had been a member of the Vlaams Belang at least in 2020.
Extreme right-wing military
This is not the first time that the public at large has found out that the army has a problem with right-wing extremism. At the beginning of this century, there was an organised ‘Blood&Honour’ group active in the army under the name of ’Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw’ (BBET, Blood, Soil, Honour and Allegiance). In 2006, 17 members of BBET were arrested, including its leader Tomas Boutens. Like several other BBET members, he was a soldier in the Leopoldsburg barracks. In 2014 Boutens was sentenced to five years in prison, one of which was suspended. As soon as he was released, Boutens continued his far-right activities.
Jurgen Conings was active in the same Leopoldsburg barracks and was in contact with Boutens. The latter claims they were together on a mission in Afghanistan in 2003. Conings was being followed by the security services. Philippe Boucké, top official of the military intelligence service ADIV, stated in the weekly magazine Knack on 24 February 2021: “In connection with the extreme right, the ADIV is closely following some thirty soldiers because of their sympathies for or clear ties with extreme right-wing groups.” Only one of those soldiers was also followed up by the OCAD (Organisation for the Coordination and Analysis of the Threat): Jurgen Conings. Despite the fact that he was known as a potential terrorist, Conings had access to dangerous weapons.
It is remarkable that within the army, still an important part of the state apparatus, there is a growing distrust in the system. This is a distorted expression of the undermining of the authority of capitalism. Earlier, in France, there was an open letter signed by ex-generals, warning of a civil war. In the US, the provocative attack on the Capitol early this year was undoubtedly not possible without some involvement of law enforcement agents. Each time, the reaction of the political and economic establishment has been relatively soft. And now too: Minister of Defence Ludivine Dedonder (PS) announced that 11 soldiers who are being watched by the intelligence services because of extreme-right sympathies will just no longer have access to arms depots and sensitive information. The lax approach to the extreme right in the army and the police means that it is only a matter of time before there are new cases.
On the offensive
After a temporary decline in activity lasting for about a decade after 2006, the Vlaams Belang (VB) launched a new offensive during and after the right-wing government of Charles Michel (2014–18). The decline of Vlaams Belang had been linked to the rise of the right-wing populist party N-VA. Even on the left, some thought that the Vlaams Belang had been written off and that the best answer to the extreme right was an ‘acceptable right-wing’. In an attempt to divert opposition to the anti-social policies of the Michel government, in which N-VA occupied key posts, N-VA increasingly used classic divide-and-rule rhetoric against refugees. The extreme right was able to significantly grow again on the basis of a growing discontent towards the anti-social policies of the N-VA and the fact that this party made racism even more mainstream.
The electoral progress of parties like Vlaams Belang gives self-confidence to all kinds of right-wing extremist groups, including those that are more in the fringe. The first ‘Blood&Honour’ group in Belgium, for example, was formed in 1994, in the aftermath of ’Black Sunday’, the first major electoral victory of what was then the Vlaams Blok in November 1991. The growth of the VB in the local elections of 2018, the parliamentary elections of 2019 and all the polls since then have given far-right groups extra energy.
One of them was ‘Vlaams Legioen’ (‘Flemish Legion’), a small group around Emmanuel Maris from Zutendaal in Limburg. For a while Maris was active in Voorpost, which is linked to the VB, but he set up his own organisation. ‘Vlaams Legioen’ organised training sessions, in which Conings is said to have been involved. Emmanuel Maris was arrested for involvement in an arson attack on a future asylum centre in Bilzen in late 2019. He became nationally known when he took part in the Vlaams Belang car caravan against the new Belgian government in September 2020 with his pickup truck bearing Nazi symbols. In May this year he was released and moved to Hungary. ‘Vlaams Legioen’ ceased to exist. There were active VB members in that group. One of them, Lode Dils, is a member of the local leadership of the Vlaams Belang in the village of Ham. When Maris posted a picture of the fire in Bilzen on his Facebook profile with the comment “The party can start, the bbq is on”, this was immediately liked and commented on by Dils.
The Vlaams Belang caravan on 27 September 2020 was the largest mobilisation of the extreme right in Belgium in a long time, with an estimated 10,000 people in attendance. The protest was against the new government. This method of action was copied from the Spanish Vox. The wider mobilisation is of course relative: trade union actions can bring out a many, many more people. Nevertheless, a mobilisation of 10,000 is larger than what Vlaams Belang can usually mobilise. It shows that the far right does not stop at ‘keyboard warfare’, even if social media are an ideal instrument for spreading hatred and frustration. The success of the car caravan increased the call to action from parts of the right-wing extremist base, including for more physical action and violence.
Vlaams Belang and the radical fringe
Is the Vlaams Belang in trouble because of a case of a right-wing extremist terrorist who clearly had at least sympathy for the party? Not necessarily. The most radical layers in and around the Vlaams Belang resolutely support Jurgen Conings. Vlaams Belang tries to keep a sufficient distance outwardly, but at the same time the party consciously surfs on the feeling of resistance against the system, a feeling that lives strongly in the support groups for Conings. Moreover, it can develop militants in those radical layers and use them to test how far the far right can go. After all, their aim is still to dominate the streets.
Vlaams Belang always tries to make use of more radical groups. When the student group ‘Schild & Vrienden’ was under fire for neo-Nazi propaganda, racism, sexism and incitement to violence, Vlaams Belang immediately catapulted its leader Dries Van Langenhove into parliament.
Today, Vlaams Belang is deliberately trying to take advantage of the Covid-fatigue among a large part of the population to present itself as an alternative to the establishment. Not that the VB advocates drastically increased public investment in health care and democratic control of a nationalised pharmaceutical sector in order to organise a planned production and distribution of both test material and vaccines on a large scale. The extreme right is not that much anti-system… On the contrary, it limits itself to attacking the messengers, such as the most well-known virologists, especially if they are known as anti-fascists, like Marc Van Ranst. VB’s distancing from Conings is formulated very carefully: “The establishment wants us to use violence and we must not fall into that trap,” declared MP Van Langenhove.
Vlaams Belang naturally combines verbal and careful opposition to the corona measures with racism. Recently, VB chairman Tom Van Grieken declared in an interview with the business newspaper De Tijd that “the Christian, the Flemish and if you want even the white must be a dominant factor in our society” (29 May). In a new book, ‘Achter het schild van extreemrechts’ (Behind the shield of the extreme right), authors Hind Fraihi and Bas Bogaerts explain how racism is used: “Attention is diverted away from class conflicts to alleged racial and ethnic enemies. It is a diversion to which a vulnerable underclass in our society is certainly susceptible. We were not insensitive to the fragility of that underclass.” Racism is used to hijack anti-system and even anti-capitalist sentiments and trace them back to mythological things like a ‘racial community’.
What should be the anti-fascist response?
There are no miracle solutions. The participation of the far-right in government is dangerous for the working class because it gives them more room to pursue their policies of hatred and division. In the absence of a strong response from the labour movement, they will not necessarily emerge weakened from participating in government. As long as the extreme right determines the agenda of the public debate, it can continue to score points. Supporting the political establishment to stop the far right is no solution either, as this approach does nothing to prevent the implementation of those policies that create the breeding ground on which the far right can grow.
Building stronger social struggles is the only way to enforce demands in the interest of the working class. It is also the only method to stop the far right. The electoral support for Vlaams Belang is mainly an expression of a justified distrust in the establishment, but also reflects how racist divisions can be provoked when the working class movement fails to provide a clear left alternative. By fighting together around social demands for jobs, housing and public services, we make clear who is responsible for the social problems of the majority of the population: not the refugees or the migrants, but the big shareholders and the super-rich. It is in this struggle that we can concretise and popularize the need for change, and establish a strong socialist alternative to the capitalist system that breeds these far right forces.
