Content Warning: Nazi crimes, Anti-semitism, Far-right extreme violence

The municipality of Leuven was kind enough to send me a letter, informing me that a group of people will be gathering outside my house to protest. Apparently, they are very angry about the existence of immigrants in something they see as “their country”. I have run into this sort of mentality before, and it always baffled me. When I introduce myself, I say I am “from or of Athens”; in a sense, I belong to it more than it belongs to me. Despite belittling their nation to something that could be the sole property of a funny-hatted organisation, the demonstrators identified as “nationalists”. The municipality seemed worried that the situation might turn volatile — and rightly so. The student association organising this rally, the Nationalistische Studentenvereniging (NSV), has enjoyed a less than stellar reputation, having in the past been suspended from university life due to hate speech. NSV is affiliated with Vlaams Belang, which is itself a re-branding of the ultra-conservative Vlaams Blok. That party, apart from its own fondness for xenophobic and socially regressive attitudes, had also bolstered its ranks with members from the more explicitly neo-nazi Vlaamse Militanten Orde (VMO) after the latter’s dissolution. The people in this resulting political space identify with an ideology that is fundamentally at odds with a safe, tolerant society: it is, to its core, driven by a pathological need to designate and persecute “others”. Their ideology is one that should be rather unwelcome in Europe, considering the experience of most European countries with it. My own place of origin, Greece, has had its fair share of unpleasant history with the ideological ancestors of NSV and Vlaams Belang, whose salutes and rhetoric the latter often publicly imitates; my family’s home in Thessaly was among the thousands of homes burned to the ground by people who spoke and saluted like the NSV crowd.

In more recent years, a neo-Nazi political and criminal organisation called “Golden Dawn” carried out a series of attacks and murders in Greece during the 2010s. The total number of attacks carried out by them remains undetermined. In the 2020 trials, which resulted in prison sentences for six heads of the organisation, 32 major crimes were examined, including the murders of deliveryman Shahzad Luqman and activist hip-hop artist Pavlos Fyssas. In 2016, three years after the murder of Fyssas by members of the Golden Dawn, a delegation from Vlaams Belang, including former leading figure Filip Dewinter, held meetings with members of the neo-nazi criminal organisation¹. Filip Dewinter, for those unfamiliar, is a proponent of the racist conspiracy theory known as “the great replacement”, and the source of quotes such as: “the Jewish people must understand that not every [Nazi] collaborator was necessarily anti-Semitic”². This was said in defence of his party’s participation in ceremonies commemorating Staf De Clercq, a prominent collaborator who helped with the identification and expulsion of Jewish communities in Flanders during the Second World War. If you, for some reason, feel like it, I would urge you to google the terms “Vlaams Belang” & “controversy”, just to see what other examples you come up with. I mentioned these to show that this party, which is often referred to as “Flemish nationalist” or even “centre right”, has a rather pungent air of “fascism” about it.

The protest which took place in the streets of Leuven on the 26th of March, 2026, had as its central focus the issue of “remigration”, a term which is understood to be a form of ethnic cleansing via mass deportation: remigration advocates for forcefully uprooting people of immigrant origin, sometimes even native-born European citizens, and sending them “back” to presumed countries of origin, with no regard for their safety and livelihood³. The criteria for who is of immigrant origin are, for the proponents of remigration, based on race. A march with this agenda had somehow gotten permission to take place in the centre of Leuven, a community where international students and immigrants from all over the world live and work side by side. The letter from the municipality, which I read in a Google translation, said: “The police and the city are taking the necessary measures to ensure everything proceeds as safely, orderly, and smoothly as possible.” I sincerely doubted that: if the city has done all there is to do to ensure the safety of its many migrant inhabitants, then why are these violent xenophobes on my street?

I claim no expertise when writing any of this, for it is my belief that one does not need to be an expert to be concerned about keeping the place they live in safe. It is in no other capacity but that of a recipient of that letter that I write this piece. I was, of course, a bit disappointed. Throughout all my upbringing, “Europe” (a term which, in colloquial Greek usage, reaches only as far eastwards as Berlin) had been synonymous with progressivism, diversity and all those good democratic ideals we like to refer to by the name “European”. How could I reconcile this ideal Europe of my EU-sponsored education with the reality of a fascist rally taking place outside my door? Perhaps, I thought, this is not indicative of a lack of commitment to the ideals of tolerance, but of the exact opposite:

In Europe, ideological freedom is taken to such an extreme that the grace of tolerance is extended (somewhat naïvely), even to those who actively seek to undermine this tolerant society.

A few days later, however, a friend received a different kind of letter from the municipality, one which informed them of a possible violation of the garbage disposal sorting law. They were facing a fine of “up to €500” because of a relatively minor incident with the sorting of recyclables. This, to my still-adjusting mind, is more than half a month’s wages. What struck me, however, is not the sum itself, nor the astute observation that any law punishable by a fine is a law that disproportionately targets the less well-off citizens, nay indeed the odious overpricing of the brown restafval bags, which can be argued to carry a similar discriminatory element. Nor was I surprised by the law’s unkind equation of the confusion of a newcomer to the knowing offence of the experienced resident. No, all that unpleasantness is not overly striking; the fact, however, that such a penalty exists at all means that the framework is in place to enforce compliance with an ideology deemed crucial for the smooth operation of society.

It could be said that, in Belgium, it is illegal for one not to subscribe to a very specific, state-approved brand of environmentalism. This brand of thinking, that is often termed ‘personal’ or ‘individualistic’ environmentalism, has some tenets of its own, which, though not explicit, can be identified through the reality that its adoption by the state creates. Firstly, as it is defined in opposition to ‘political’ environmentalism, it moves the focus from large-scale change in the structures of society, production and ownership, to individual consumer habits and personal responsibility.

Nestlé can pollute and destroy to their heart’s content (or whatever the corporate equivalent is), and still be able to stock their products in a Colruyt; but the Belgian citizen must correctly sort their Nesquik bottles or face the hammer of justice.

Secondly, this brand of environmentalism seems to have a somewhat fractured understanding of the global ecosystem; environmental degradation is tolerable if outsourced to countries outside Europe. To offer an example, the Belgian state has enacted legislation to encourage the use of electric vehicles. Personal feelings about Teslas and their drivers aside, the batteries for those EVs require minerals such as cobalt and lithium, whose extraction is causing massive harm to the environment and communities in the Global South where they are mined. While undoubtedly the reduction of reliance on fossil fuel is a benefit to the environment overall, the disregard for the damage caused to communities deemed ‘far away’ or unimportant betrays a clear geographic bias which is latent in this form of environmentalism.

Though the specifics of that ideology can be debated, what is important is its designation as such. Crucially, the state feels it has a right to enforce it, involving itself in the ideological life of those under its jurisdiction through the use of legal instruments. And, though we may have our disagreements about the specific brand, there is merit to the idea that environmentalism should be enforced in the interest of the common good. But then, why is the same not the case for anti-fascism? The people profiting from sowing dissent in our communities, and those whose minds they have poisoned, are a significant threat to safety, stability, and liberty. This, at least, the police seemed to somewhat recognise, as during the day of the fascist show of strength, they issued warnings for vulnerable individuals to stay indoors and avoid travelling alone. And yet, it seems more important to control individual people’s recycling habits than to save our societies from crossing over into a place in which the ideals we proudly baptise “European”, including environmentalism, cannot survive. The society dreamt up by the people who gather to protest outside my house has no room for meekness; no place for those who care for the air they breathe and the ground they tread on; no “personal liberties” or “rule of law”.

Whether the responsibility of this decision rested on the mayor’s shoulders or whether his hand was forced by over-ranking authority, I do not know. Since the mayor is a member of Forward (a centre-left party), I doubt that he holds much sympathy for them. What is evident, in any case, is that those who represent us, the assigned protectors of these “European” virtues, are either unable or unwilling to help us safeguard them. They did, however, grant their permission for a counter-protest (which would officially not overlap with the protest it was countering). When the day came, though, my disappointment was alleviated; the counter-protest was massive in comparison to the little affair of the NSV. The sentiment of Leuven had been made clear, as it was chanted during the counter-protest: “Geen fascisten in onze stad” — no fascists in our city. The people of Flanders had unknowingly answered all my questions: in this place, much like anywhere else, the people take care of their trash by themselves.

1. VRT NWS, “Vlaams Belang Supremos Censured Following Golden Dawn Outing,” 21 November 2016, https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2016/11/21/vlaams_belang_supremoscensuredfollowinggoldendawnouting-1-2824252 ↩︎
2. Filip Dewinter, archived page, 16 October 2005, https://web.archive.org/web/20051016165306/http://www.filipdewinter.be/ ↩︎
3. Wikipedia, “Remigration,” last modified April 28, 2026, 19:54 (UTC), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remigration ↩︎

This piece was originally published in Issue 1 of the print edition of Ordinary Matters magazine.