I’m not sure if anyone who normally reads my blog is particularly interested in this, but I needed to get up to speed on the situation in Belgium. Consider these my notes, written up.Things are going badly, not just in Holland, but also in Belgium.

On Nov 9, Vlaams Blok — Flanders’ socially conservative, nationalist and xenophobic party — lost an appeal in Belgium’s highest court against a ruling that had declared three of its non-profit associations (the “Nationalist Training Institute,” the “Nationalist Broadcasting Foundation,” and “Flemish Concentration” — no, really) in violation of Belgium’s anti-racism law. This made two things possible:

• Vlaams Blok leaders, party members and business affiliates would from now on be indictable if they collaborated with these associations, which were the de facto organizing committees of the Vlaams Blok.
• Flemish lawmakers could use the ruling to initiate a process to deny Vlaams Blok party-political broadcasting slots on public television and an annual €2 million state subsidy — its portion of the funding granted to all political parties with representatives in both chambers of parliament.

To avoid all this, Vlaams Blok dissolved itself last Sunday, Nov 14, and then immediately reconstituted as Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), with the same leaders, members and manifesto but additionally with a clean slate.

Vlaams Blok could have been stripped of the trappings of partyhood via a piece of legislation [Dutch] enacted in 1999 specifically for the purpose of reining in this partyThis funding is determined in part by the number of votes a party received in the last election: You get €123,950 if you get at least one representative in each of the two chambers of parliament, plus €1.24 per vote cast in your favor. In the case of the Vlaams Blok, this funding amounted to about half of its €4 million total income.: It makes state funding conditional on there being a clause in a party’s program that promises to uphold the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms — and then to actually do so. Vlaams Blok had added such a clause to its program in order to continue receiving state funding, even as its leaders made quite clear in subsequent statements that they considered individual rights to be subordinate to the collective morality of the Flemish nation — as defined by themLast week one party leader expressed the opinion that Muslim women who continue to wear the headscarf should be expatriated, according to NRC Handelsblad [Dutch, Subscription req’d.] Vlaams Belang’s group-rights perspective is also hinted at in their new party program, which is virtually indistinguishable from the old Vlaams Blok one [PDF, Dutch].. The ruling could thus have furnished easy proof that the party was not practicing what it had been coerced to preach in its program for the sake of continued access to funding.

All this might sound like good news. It is not. I’ve got several observations cum policy recommendations for the Belgian political establishment:

1. The cordon sanitaire against Vlaams Blok/Belang doesn’t work. Scrap it.
The cordon sanitaire — the agreement between Belgium’s other political parties to quarantine Vlaams Blok — has not led to a wilting of support for that party. On the contrary, it hands them the protest vote on a platter. The cordon allows the party to portray itself as a victim of political bullying by the establishment parties (which is true), and as the victim of an undemocratic process (which is false — parties can make any alliance they choose). As noble in intent as the cordon may be, Vlaams Blok has used it to great effect to energize its base and attract new discontents.

But there is another process at work: The cordon allows the Blok/Belang to make unconstested claims on large tracts of the political landscape that have been voluntarily vacated by the other parties. Social conservatism, Flemish nationalism and xenophobia are the three political poles now occupied exclusively by Vlaams BelangBlok/Belang is now the largest party in Flanders, with 27% of voting intentions, according to an Oct 2004 poll..

Although these ideologies are often held synchronously, you only need to subscribe to one in order to become a Vlaams Belang voter. The solution, then, from a systemic perspective, is for other parties to quit quarantining and start competing. There is, for example, room for a political party that is socially conservative (regarding abortion and family policies, say) but not xenophobic; or a party that is separatist on economic grounds alone and socially liberal (and not xenophobic). Let xenophobia be the only policy at which Vlaams Belang excels. For all the rest, offer alternatives.

2. Legislative maneuvers against Vlaams Blok/Belang don’t work. Stop all state funding of political parties.
It was also a tactical misstep to link party funding to the presence of the human rights clause in party manifestos. In doing so, Belgium’s political establishment effectively forced Vlaams Blok to look more appealing to voters who sympathize with xenophobic policies but who don’t think of themselves as racist. Vlaams Blok/Belang is now able to point at its party program with a smirk and say “look, we uphold the convention on human rights, it says so right here, how can you call us racists?”

By putting an acceptable face on Vlaams Belang — by helping them into their sheep’s clothing — the party’s pool of potential voters has in fact become much larger. Stop this linkage, then — allow Vlaams Belang to show its true colorsSome lawmakers agree with me. The chairman of the Flemish parliament, SP.A’s (previously the Socialist Party) Norbert De Batselier, said [Dutch, subscription req’d.] he himself preferred battling Vlaams Blok with political arguments, rather than through triggering this legislation..

I do understand that to the majority of Belgians and all immigrants, the idea of their tax euros funding the activities of a political party that rejects universal human rights is distasteful. The solution, however, is not to try to decide through legislation what the limit of acceptable, fundable political debate is, but instead to stop state funding of political parties outright. Privatize political parties. Scrap the rules that limit private funding to €125 per person, and let corporations donate. Frank Vanhecke, the leader of Vlaams Belang, says he would welcome this. I doubt his corporate contributions would be much to boast about.

There is a further unintended consequence of this linkage of the human rights clause and funding: It insulates against schisms. The hardliners in the party, who would never agree on paper to observe universal human rights, have nowhere else to go, so the party stays unified.

There is some evidence [Dutch] of factional tensions [Dutch, subscription req’d.] in Vlaams Belang, and we should encourage these. Some want to scrap the “unrealistic” aspects of the party program, such as the forced repatriation of children of immigrants, born in Belgium, who “fail to adapt.” Currently, there is no opportunity for such factional infighting to result in splits, because the hardliners have no legal recourse to a party that can embody their views. We should encourage them, by not penalizing their ideology financially.

3. Judicial maneuvers against Vlaams Blok/belang don’t work. Decriminalize hate speech.
It’s naive to think that outlawing a party makes its supporters go away. Outlawing hate speech addresses symptoms, not causes — it is equivalent to plastering a band-aid over a gaping wound. The 1 million Vlaams Blok voters have just turned into 1 million Vlaams Belang voters, with leaders that are a little bit more careful about what they say in public. If it is that easy to circumvent such censure, then the court ruling was a useless piece of judicial maneuvering.

I have previously taken a dim view of criminalizing any speech short of an incitement to violence or a credible threat of physical harm (with the usual exceptions for certain kinds of lies, like fraud, perjury and libel). Hate speech needs to be protected because otherwise you drive underground precisely those beliefs that are in most need of being engaged by society. You cannot legislate away beliefs. Let xenophobes say what they really mean, and then explain to the electorate why these ideas are anathema to the very idea of a modern liberal democracy.

The outlawing of Vlaams Blok was driven by a fear of what might happen should their political program ever become government policy. I think we have less to fear than many imagine. Belgium is beholden to European law and international law, and it is almost impossible to extract Flanders from this web of rights and obligations. A determined Flemish nationalist government could do it, by playing the sovereignty trump card, but only at the expense of every multinational company leaving, and the Flemish economy would not survive this. Betray the human rights of law abiding immigrants, or make new laws that forbid non-western modes of behavior that are perfectly legal today (such as wearing a headscarf, or language tests only for immigrants from outside of the EU, but not for Americans and Australians), and you will get the European Court of Human Rights on your back. This whole EU project wasn’t such a bad idea after all, was it?

4. Reclaim the intellectual debate.
Vlaams Blok has been allowed to define the parameters of the political debate for too long. Nobody seems to be questioning their premise that the interests of Christian citizens and Muslim immigrants are a zero-sum game. But this debate should not be cast in us-vs-them terminology — that’s the wrong cleavage to draw battle lines around. Instead, the debate should be reframed in the language of liberty. The freest societies are those that maximize the opportunities for consensual behavior, with tolerance as a guiding light. Vlaams Belang is proposing to veer in the exact opposite direction. Here is the most innocuous version of their proposal, from their manifesto:

It must be made clear to aliens and immigrants in Flanders that they are expected to comply with our laws, and also to adapt to our values and morality, to our habits and to important traditional principles of European civilization, such as the separation of church and state, democracy, freedom of speech and the equal status of men and women. (my italics)

This excerpt is trivially nonsensical in that the laws as they stand already uphold the separation of church and state, democracy, etc… and additionally prohibit stealing, revenge killings, female genital mutilation, terrorism and incitements to violence — all the favorite things Vlaams Belang accuses immigrants of doing with impunity.

The excerpt’s most telling part is the notion that abiding by existing laws is not sufficient — that there should exist additional constraints on behaviour that limit it to western norms (“our values and morality”). The only way, of course, that behavior can be compelled is through laws, so what Vlaams Belang is saying is that it wants to make new laws, laws that constrict consensual behavior in ways that target non-westerners. Vlaams Belang member of parliament Jürgen Verstrepen spells it out for us:

“Not all immigrants need to turn back, just those who do not adapt,” notes [journalist] Van de Velden. “That they abide by the law no longer seems to suffice.” Indeed. It doesn’t suffice. Not for us, and we find ourselves, as far as we are concerned, in the company of government parties in France, Germany and the Netherlands. They too say clearly that immigrants need to adapt and subscribe to our values and norms.“Niet alle migranten moeten terugkeren, maar alleen zij die zich niet aanpassen,” noteert Van de Velden. “Dat ze zich aan de wet houden, lijkt niet meer te volstaan.” Inderdaad. Dat volstaat niet. Niet voor ons, en wij bevinden ons wat dat betreft trouwens in het onverdachte gezelschap van regeringspartijen in Frankrijk, Duitsland en Nederland. Ook zij zeggen nu luidop dat allochtonen zich moeten aanpassen en onze waarden en normen moeten onderschrijven.

The reason Vlaams Blok has been able to define the parameters of the debate is that we have never engaged them — calling them racist doesn’t count, even if it is true. We need to put aside the assumptions and motivations that fuel their arguments, and engage the arguments on their merits. And we need to do this by pointing out that Vlaams Blok aims to reduce the freedoms enjoyed by society as a whole through the targeting of the freedoms of those who belong to minority cultures.

We also need to restore the balance of the blame for the breakdown in ethnic relations in Belgium. Belgium’s immigrants (and those in France and the Netherlands) are not any different in disposition or naturally more violent than the immigrants that moved to the UK, Sweden or the US, where ethnic relations are a lot healthier. I don’t believe Belgians have been particularly welcoming to their immigrants, and that government policy has reflected this. If, as a result, immigrants have shut themselves off from mainstream culture, or view it with disdain, then we need to learn something from London and New York: Multiculturalism is a two-way process, and it is best achieved through cultural laissez-faire-ism. It is when immigrants feel themselves to be on an equal footing that they open themselves up to assimilation; it should be clear to anyone (and I suspect it is to Vlaams Belang) that ultimatums and non-negotiable demands have the opposite effect.

Multiculturalism is what Vlaams Belang fights against, because they are nationalists. We need to make the case for multiculturalism: Point out that the world’s most creative societies gain their vitality from the mixing of ethnicities and cultures, that Antwerp grew great to the extent that it embraced its minorities, and that the alternative is stagnation. I suspect not many creative people vote for Vlaams Belang for precisely this reason.

The only risk with this tack? That Flemish people actually do prefer cultural homogeneity over individual rights. If that happens, then I am all for making sure that the price of this preference is felt in full, economically. It’s worth noting, however, that over two thirds of the Flemish electorate did not vote for Vlaams Blok at the last elections, and I presume this is because they see the fundamental issues at stake.