The case of Soetkin Collier

One of the most known folkbands in Belgium is Urban Trad. At the end of 2002, there was a small misunderstanding in this group. The leading vocalist, Soetkin Collier (picture), was accused of being in connection with ultra-Right Flemish groups, although this was mostly a thing of the past, when she was still singing in the (nowadays much into ecofolk) band Laïs. Still, Collier kept connections with her very nationalist parents. Collier could not perform at the very prestigious Eurovision Contest. Therefore, Urban Trad acted with another female vocalist who was born in Spain. The group became second in the Song Contest, representing “the French-speaking community” in Belgium.

National-anarchism in the United Kingdom and Belgium

The most known national-anarchist group is based in Great Britain. Le Cercle de la rose noire is a United Kingdom-based national-anarchist group.




The president of Le Cercle de la rose noire is the musician Troy Southgate and its web presence is the online journal Synthesis. According to Wikipedia, Southgate and other national-anarchists “have been on the editorial board of the journal Alternative Green for three issues”.
Alternative Green is (unfortunately) often called a Green Anarchist journal, and is much connected to the writings of the neo-primitivist Richard Hunt, who has also worked together with people of the 'New' Right in Belgium. In Belgium, the ideas of Hunt have inspired the people of the “neither Left nor Right” journal Vrijbuiter, in which national-anarchism has been embraced a lot. The group of Vrijbuiter is much into ecofolk, and very active near the city of Antwerp to preserve the village Doel from disappearing (a disappearance planned in the near future, due to the expansion of the Antwerp harbor).
According to Wikipedia, Hunt is “the editor of various environmentalist magazines, such as Green Anarchist and Alternative Green. He was widely criticised in the anarchist community for his support of nationalism, and consequent support of the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq, leading to him setting up his own Alternative Green magazine. Hunt has contributed to The English Alternative, the journal of Troy Southgate's National Revolutionary Faction.”

Synthesis is an irregularly-published “intellectual and cultural journal devoted to Anarchy”, "the appreciation and understanding of the Esoteric nature of Life and Culture”, and anti-humanism.
Its aim mainly is to explore key figures of the Right, such as Ernst Juenger or Julius Evola, but it also wants to explore key figures of the Left (like Mikhail Bakunin and Sergei Nechayev) or the neither Left nor Right (like Friedrich Nietzsche).

The Belgian nation and "identity politics"

One of the worst nationalist groups in Belgium is called Nation. The members of it sometimes work together with Flemish Nazis, ecofascists and other members of the far Right. They generally are explicitly opposed to globalisation and the Nato. The Belgian identity is very important for them.

The Right is also successful in the south of Belgium

The Right is on the rise in Belgium. At first only in Flanders, but now also in the south of the country. The ultra-nationalist Front National de Belgique (Belgian National Front) can easily obtain 5 or 10% of the votes in the French-speaking part of Belgium (I refer here to the mother tongue). The party is won for a Belgian national unity. Some of its members are also explicitly against globalisation. The active defenders of right-wing liberalism and catholicism are even more successful. Taken together, all these parts of the Right in the French-speaking part of Belgium are not only won for a Belgian national unity, they also have the support of a French-speaking electoral majority.


The symbol of the Front National de Belgique : flames in the national colours of Belgium

ZNet, "communalism" and the libertarian Left

Are the people of the libertarian Left positive about communalism then? Do many of them understand that authentic communalism is a thing of the Left? Not really. ZNet will never be really positive about communalism for example. In French many people of the libertarian Left will start referring to something they will call communalisme libertaire, while rejecting the project of municipalisme libertaire. And when ZNet refers to communalism, it will almost never point to social ecology and the libertarian Left. It will just start publishing things about problems in India a lot. Like this...

Hanif Lakdawala (2005):

Muslim groups generally think that the only sort of communalism that has to be fought is Hindu communalism, but this is wrong since Muslim communalism is also a threat. In fact, it is more of a threat to Muslims themselves than to others. We should stop this habit that we have of blaming others alone for our plight and do some serious introspection and admit that we, too, have had our share of responsibility for the communal problem. Hindu and Muslim communalism, as I said, feed on each other, so both need to be combated. Hence, intra-Muslim dialogue on the issue of Muslim communalism is very necessary. There is an urgent need for internal reforms and democratisation within the Muslim community, be it on the issue of leadership, women or the poor. We need progressive interpretations of the Quran on issues such as women or inter-community and inter-faith relations.

ZNet will be positive about anarchism though, it will never point to the danger of national-anarchism for example. And it wil not easily criticize anarcho-syndicalism or other forms of anarchism. But ofcourse, it doesn't like individualistic anarchism or anarcho-capitalism very much.

The 'New' Right and symbols

People of the Far Right have tried to recuperate symbols for years and years. Nazis already tried to recuperate the symbol/name of socialism. In Flanders the Far Right does nothing else than trying to recuperate symbols of the Left. Famous examples : the celebrations of the 1st of May...

The 'New' Right and "communalism"

Ayub Khan (2003):
“In the past decade Belgian scholar Koenraad Elst has emerged as the most prominent advocate of Sangh Parivar in the West. His vociferous defence of the Hindu right is equally matched by his rabid attacks on Islam.”


Koenraad Elst is one of the most important ideologues of the 'New' Right in Europe. He has often been accused of islamophobic writings, and his writings have formed an important inspiration for the, in the north of Belgium, electorally very successful far Right.





Elst, according to Wikipedia, lives near Antwerp. In the city of Antwerp the far Right sometimes obtains more than one third of the votes. Elst has graduated in Philosophy, Chinese Studies and Indo-Iranian Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven.
During a stay at the Benares Hindu University, he (in his own words) “discovered” India's “communal problem” and wrote his first book about “the budding Ayodhya conflict”. While establishing himself as a columnist for a number of Belgian and Indian papers, he frequently returned to India to study “various aspects of its ethno-religio-political configuration” and interviewed Hindu and other leaders and thinkers. His research on the ideological developments within “Hindu revivalism” earned him his Ph.D. in the Belgian university city of Leuven in 1998.
Elst has also edited a book on Sita Ram Goel, a writer who passed away at his residence in Delhi at the end of 2003. He often courted the label of “Hindu communalist”. Koenraad Elst, the ardent supporter of paganism then invited eighteen contributors to write on Goel and what he stood for. Some of the contributions were testimonial or biographical, but others dealt with the ideological controversies that Goel initiated and thrived on.


The book?
India's Only Communalist : In Commemoration of Sita Ram Goel/edited by Koenraad Elst. New Delhi, Voice of India, 2005, vii, 353 p., $25. ISBN 81-85990-78-6.





The title of this book was a tongue-in-the-cheek response to the fact that Goel called himself a communalist. According to Elst, Goel was one of India's most important thinkers in the post-independence era. “His writings are central to the recent Hindu awakening in the country that is now growing rapidly to world prominence. While his Guru and colleague, Ram Swarup, laid the spiritual and philosophical basis for the movement, the detailed analysis and in-depth articulation was supplied by Mr. Goel. The current generation of Hindu writers owes a lot to him for charting a clear course for them to follow. As this movement develops, his work is bound to become yet more significant.” (Koenraad Elst, 2005)
According to Elst the man “sometimes made his task of gaining support for his views unnecessarily difficult by his way of expressing dissent, e.g. by openly courting the label 'Hindu Communalist', which clashed with some people's excessive sensitivity to his candid language. Happily, there are now winds of change and the ideas he propounded are proving their worth. It is time that the people of India, the media in particular, gave him his due.”
The book that Elst edited was in Goel's honour. Elst, 2005 : “It contains 18 contributions written independently of one another. Some are purely testimonial or biographical, others set out to continue his work by taking on historical or ideological controversies.”

The ecofascist network

Janet Biehl (1995):

Ecology is warped for mystical-nationalist ends by a whole series of neofascist groups and parties. Indeed, so multifarious are the ecofascist parties that have arisen, and so much do their memberships overlap, that they form what antifascist researcher Volkmar Wölk calls an "ecofascist network." Their programmatic literature often combines ecology and nationalism in ways that are designed to appeal to people who do not consider themselves fascists, while at the same time they ideologically support neo-Nazi street-fighting skinheads who commit acts of violence against foreigners.

If you do not know much about ecofascism, read this book from Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier about it. It was published by AK Press in 1995.

Ecofascism in Belgium

One of the worst Flemish nationalist groups is Groen Rechts (Green Right). They like advocating animal rights, are inspired by deep ecologists, a neo-primitivist called Richard Hunt and Nazism, and they have a militant group that likes to go to demonstrations of the Far Right. Their main symbol is the celtic cross.

The dark past of Earth First!

Murray Bookchin (1988):

Let's face it: There is a major dispute in the ecology and Green movements, today. It is a dispute between social ecology and "deep ecology" -- the first, a body of ideas that asks that we deal with human beings primarily as social beings who differ profoundly as to their status as poor and rich, women and men, black and white, gays and "straights," oppressed and oppressor; the second, that sees human beings as a mere "species" -- as mammals and, to some people like the "Earth First!" leaders, as "vicious" creatures -- who are subject almost entirely to the "forces of nature" and are essentially interchangeable with lemmings, grizzly bears (a favorite species!), or, for that matter, with insects, bacteria, and viruses.

"Earth First!" means exactly what it says and what "deep ecology" implies -- the "earth" comes before people, indeed, people (to the periodical's editor, David Foreman) are superfluous, perhaps even harmful, and certainly dispensable. "Natural law" tends to supplant social factors. Thus: is there a famine in Ethiopia? If so, argues Foreman to an admiring Devall in a notorious interview, nature should be permitted to "take its course" and the Ethiopian should be left to starve. Are Latins (and, one may add, Indians) crossing the Rio Grande? Then they should be stopped or removed, contends Foreman, because they are burdening "our" resources.