The Belgian National Front and the Question of Power
The Belgian National Front and the question of power Pascal DELWIT Over the last twenty years several extreme right parties and right-wing populist parties have made a breakthrough in their national political system: the National Front in France, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria, the Progress Party in Norway, the Danish People’s Party, the Slovak National Party, the Social Movement-National Alliance and Northern League in Italy, the Republikaner Party in Germany, the Pim Fortuyn List in the Netherlands, etc. This (re)emergence has attracted the attention of the scientific community and numerous studies have been devoted recently to this new political phenomenon. What is the situation in Belgium? In Belgian and international scientific literature, the treatment devoted to the extreme right is important, but refers almost exclusively to a single political party: the Vlaams Belang, the former Vlaams Blok (Van Craen & Swyngedouw, 2002; Ivaldi & Swyngedouw, 2001; Swyngedouw, 2000; Spruyt, 1995; Billiet & De Witte, 1995), one of the most powerful extreme right groupings in Europe. On the other hand, the main French-speaking party of the extreme right is far less well-known and has been studied and analyzed far less frequently (Delwit, De Waele & Rea, 1998; Delwit, 2000; Faniel, 2000; Rea, 1997). This lack of knowledge about the Belgian National Front (FN) cannot be explained simply by its electoral and political marginality. A brief examination of its electoral results reveals in fact that the FN was and is in a position to achieve significant scores in the polls. At the last federal elections (2003), the National Front obtained more than 5% of the votes in Wallonia.
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