Defending the indefensible

Paul Belien, Pamela Geller Oshry and assorted bloggers involved are trying desperately to shed Vlaams Belang and other participants of Bigotpalooza of their fascist pasts. Here's a reminder of what Vlaams Belang and their leaders support and the people they admire. No matter how they spin their new found philo-semitism they are rooted in their fascist past and surprisingly unwilling to exorcise it.

'A true idealist' is the title of a page-size interview with Bert van Boghout (1916-2003) in the VB magazine of march 1990. More correct would have been 'A true national-socialist' because Van Boghout was not just a collaborator: kreisleiter of the National-Socialist Movement in Flanders, active in the antisemite 'Volksverwering' who strove for a pure Arian Flanders by, among other things, publishing lists of Jews and freemasons, a Waffen SS volunteer at the east front, convicted to a life sentence after the war, later one of the founders of the Vlaams Blok and a distributor, until late in the 1980's through the Were Di bookservice, of German nazi literature and "historic-documentary long play records" such as 'Das Vaterland ruft' and the very pedagogic 'Wie gewinne ich eine Wahl?', with speeches of Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler at the election congress of the NSDA in 1938. The author of the tribute in the VB party magazine: Filip Dewinter.

[...]

About Staf De Clercq (1884-1942), the much hated (by the Flemish people) leader of the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (VNV), who collaborated enthousiasticly with the nazis, Dewinter says in Haaretz: "He is one of the historic leaders of the party. This is part of the history of the Flemish nationalist movement and it is impossible to deny this. We are the descendants of this movement."

This is the same Filip Dewinter who is speaking at Bigotpalooza and Pammycakes and other racist cranks are trying to defend.

In this regard we congratulate Charles Johnson for his, albeit belated, stand against these bigots.

UPDATE: Charles has more on Vlaams Belang and the Swedish neo-Nazis. Again, no matter how much LGFW criticises Charles for fostering bigotry and hatred on his site he has to be applauded for his stance on this issue.