Filip Dewinter is a husband and father of three, a Flemish nationalist, a leading member of Vlaams Belang, and one of Belgium’s most well-known politicians. Having been at the vanguard of dissident politics in Europe for three decades, Dewinter has, inevitably, made power enemies on all sides. Globalist politicians and regime journalists have repeatedly endeavored to drag his name through the mud, while neo-Nazis and Islamic extremists have plotted—and in some cases actually attempted—to take his life.
This week, Mr. Dewinter sat down with The European Conservative to discuss his lengthy political career, the ideological foundation of his party Vlaams Belang, and the failure of populism, among other things.
You’ve been in politics for three decades now. You’ve never shied away from controversy and you’ve consistently raised issues that the majority of conservative European politicians won’t touch. How come you have taken this route and what kind of backlash have you received?
I think it’s the duty of a politician to be controversial if they truly want to make a difference. And if I had wanted to be a servant of the powers that be, I would have become a civil servant or something like that. For me, it has always been more interesting to be an opposition politician than a minister or a mayor or whatever because you have more freedom to speak your mind—and you also have the possibility to speak out about the topics that are really important.
For example, topics like immigration, the rise of crime, and the deterioration of the welfare state. These issues have always been the closest to my heart. And yes, it’s not always easy to speak out about these sensitive topics because once you do, the left-liberal media immediately brands you as racist, fascist, or whatever ad hominem attack that’s in vogue at the time. Whoever talks about politically incorrect topics is immediately branded as the bad guy. Regardless of what they call us, however, we continue to speak up about what topics we view to be most important.
Our party, Vlaams Belang, has been raising these important issues for decades now and we’ve witnessed a significant change in public opinion. And that’s our goal, of course, that’s what it’s all about—to win the battle of ideas and hopefully change public opinion. To win the democratic battle of ideas, however, it takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day. It takes time and a lot of time sometimes. But this was always my motivation when I entered politics and still is today.
Speaking of winning the battle of ideas, Vlaams Belang is currently the most popular party in Flanders, isn’t it?
Yes, right now Vlaams Belang is currently polling in first place, between 25% and 30%. That said, we still have some months—seven or eight—to go until the election. It is obvious, however, that our ideas are becoming mainstream. Our opponents, the old, mainstream parties, along with mainstream media, say that our ideas are extreme, provocative, and so on but maybe it is they who’ve become extreme and we are the mainstream now. After all, how can a party be considered extreme or radical when, out of all the other parties, it enjoys the most public support? It’s worth noting that this phenomenon isn’t only happening in Flanders but in many other countries across Europe.
Can you explain what other actions have been taken against you and your party?
We have had various legal procedures initiated against us, convictions, and smear campaigns. Of course, there are also lies and slander. I know all about it. It’s not always easy. But that’s part of the game. If you can’t stand the heat, don’t come into the kitchen.
But it becomes a little bit complicated when they threaten you physically. That’s what happened a few years ago. Well, I had a lot of incidents of violence during meetings, election campaigns, and so on. That’s also part of the game. But when real violence occurs, then it changes your life completely. After I wrote the book: Inshallah, the Islamization of Europe, the Taliban put a price on my head.
And how much was the price?
I don’t know. I’ve never been aware of the price. I hope it was high though. Nevertheless, when people want to kill you, it usually means that at that moment you are over the target.
There have been several assassination attempts against you, haven’t there?
So yeah, they put a price on my head and issued a fatwa against me and then it started. Since then there have been several assassination plots against me, and there is no shortage of radical Muslims who not only are more than willing to take the bait and go for the money, but who are also motivated by their ideology.
And one of those times, they tried to kill me when I was on holiday. I wasn’t at home. I was at the coast in my summer apartment, but my family was at home. My son-in-law, my daughter who was pregnant; eight months pregnant. So, yes, this guy who was completely masked, armed with a gun, and had a camera strapped to his arm, came to my home looking to kill me. My son-in-law came out of the house and he threatened my oldest daughter—who was pregnant—with a gun. This all happened in front of my home. My neighbor saw what was happening and she called the police but the assailant managed to run away before they arrived. There had been a car waiting for him—that sort of thing. It was well organized. Afterward, it was clear that they had been surveilling my home for several days or weeks, and they had come to know my daily schedule.
And so after that, I was placed on state police protection for about a year. At the beginning, you think you are the President of the United States with two or three armored cars, with bodyguards, with surveillance, with cameras, and that sort of thing. And well, there is still surveillance, and there are still some security measures that I can’t talk about because otherwise, it wouldn’t be as effective anymore, of course.
But that’s what happens and it’s still there, the threat is still there. I’m still under surveillance, not in the same way I was four or five years ago, but yes, the threat is still there. So not only is my life in danger—that I don’t mind;I’ve made my peace with the risks—but as I said before, if you can’t stand the heat, don’t go into the kitchen. However, for my family, it can be very difficult. I have three daughters, one of them was under protection also. I also have grandchildren, so yes, this is a risky business, but we deal with it.
Wasn’t there a neo-Nazi plot against you as well?
Yes, that’s right. Some extreme right-wing Nazi guys wanted to kill me so they could provoke some kind of a sort of civil war in our country. First, they would kill me, blame radical Muslims, and then they would kill the leader of the radical Muslims. So there would be sort of a civil war. It was a crazy plot and those guys were eventually arrested.
You’ve written about a dozen books at this point. Your latest book is called Omvolking, de grote vervanging (The Great Replacement). Why did you feel it necessary to write about this topic?
The Great Replacement, yes. I thought it was necessary to write this book because I don’t think the greatest danger to our democracy and to our civilization is tyranny, no, it’s mass immigration. If you really look at the situation at hand, the quality of life, the overburden on our welfare state, the rise of crime, and the quality of our education system, these issues are inextricably linked to immigration. And therefore, I think that mass immigration, and of course also the ideology that pushes for mass immigration, is a great threat. If mass immigration continues at its current levels for much longer it will be the end of our European civilization. Demographically, Europeans will cease to be politically, culturally, and economically relevant.
It’s quite strange. We no longer believe in our own identity and the primacy of our culture, of our values, of our way of life, of our civilization. The same thing happened to the Greek and Roman civilizations. If you can’t or refuse to believe in yourself, it is over and out, and that’s what’s happening now.
We’re often told diversity is our greatest strength. No, it’s our greatest weakness, and that’s why we should get rid of it. Anyway, the reason for writing this book is to show that this population exchange, replacement, demographic transition, whatever you want to call it, is really happening. Yes, there are many different names for it but they all refer to the same phenomenon. And no, it’s not just a theory, it’s a fact. One need not look any further than the demographic data at hand. Anyone who has their eyes open can see this process taking place.
It first begins in the cities, afterward in the surrounding areas, suburbs, etc, and then everywhere. And so, mass immigration in combination with demographic decline is provoking this Great Replacement. And that’s what this book is all about.
And in the book you don’t only diagnose the problem but you also present potential solutions, don’t you?
Of course, the book also presents an alternative to the continued population replacement. And it’s not as difficult as some people think. As Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said, we have to close our borders and not let them in anymore and kick out those who don’t want to integrate, who are illegal aliens, who are not welcome anymore, and that’s about it. Of course, you have to elaborate on this idea in order to implement real-world policies but it’s already being done in countries like Hungary and Poland, and perhaps to a lesser degree in other places like Italy. Right-wing parties are on the rise almost everywhere across Europe and they are already in charge in some of those governments. We are on the right path and things are changing for the better. We just need to keep the course and keep pushing.
Are you an admirer of the French Nouvelle Droit and its thinkers, such as Alain de Benoist?
From the start of my political engagement when I was a youngster at university, I always admired Alain de Benoist. His books, certainly his magnum opus, Vue du Droit, is I think the most important political book I’ve read in my life. He, like I do, believes in the theories concerning cultural hegemony put forward by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. So yes, first you have to take over the culture before you can change anything at the political level. It’s quite logical that first, you have to influence the minds, beliefs, and culture of ordinary people before you begin to change anything in politics. This is exactly what left-wing and certainly the communist Marxist parties—along with their auxiliaries—did during the 1950s and 1960s.
Yes, they’ve been very successful.
And they are still on top when it comes to the cultural sector. Both the cultural and political elite are, to the core, left-wing. They control the mainstream press, they are in charge of the arts, they are the journalists, and they are by and large the writers. Right-wing people, generally, don’t have time for that. They have to work, they have to create, invest, raise families, and so on and so on. That’s the difference between left-wing people and right-wing people. And that’s why right-wing people seem not to be as interested in politics and cultural matters.
We see many so-called right-wing populists popping up all over Europe, some of whom gain significant traction electorally, but very few actually get into power. Why do you think that is?
Well, most of them have no ideology. There is mainly just rage and frustration. They know what they stand against but generally, they are not quite sure what they stand for, so this is a problem. Often, the people who support these so-called populist parties are coming from different directions. Some of them are socialists, some are liberals, some are nothing at all, they don’t have any ideology, and some are right-wing identitarians. As a result, a lot of these new populist parties which are now on the rise throughout Europe do not have enough of an ideological background to be successful and to last more than one or two election cycles.
This is what’s happening in Holland, right? With every election, you have a new party. You have the anti-immigration party, the farmers party, and then you have the party that’s against the COVID measures. These are the pop-up populist parties and they are kind of a false opposition. You have to be careful about this. The old, mainstream parties quite like these pop-up populist parties because they are not a threat to the system and to the old parties. I think they see them as a useful tool to act as a pressure release valve for the frustration of the people. Sure, they may get fewer votes, but they remain in charge. And so, you have to make it quite clear to everywhere that these pop-up, populist parties and right-wing, identitarian movements in Europe are two completely different things. This is why I support Wilders in Holland and others like his Freedom Party.
Do you think this is the primary aspect that differentiates your party, which has had a lot of staying power, from some of the other, newer parties that people, namely the mainstream press, might refer to as populist as well?
Yes, we have an identitarian ideology. We are a Flemish nationalist party. We know why we are doing this, and it all comes out of an ideology that is clearly defined. So, we should not be called populists. Sure, the mainstream press is doing that, they call us populist, but we are not a populist party. We have been in business for 40 years and we know perfectly well what it’s all about, why we are doing this, and what is at stake.
I know you’re friends with Renaud Camus, the thinker who coined the term The Great Replacement. What do you have to say to people who contend he’s not a man of the Right?
Ah, yes, my good friend Renaud Camus, who was a left-wing writer during the 1970s. He was shocked by his experiences in Paris and now he writes about the Great Replacement. I think his ideas are very important for the right-wing identitarian movement. As for those who do not consider him to be on the Right, I guess that depends on your definition of what it means to be on the Right. For me, Conservatism is not supposed to be against change or progress but means to endeavor to preserve the good. And that preservation of the good means the preservation of our identity, preservation of our way of life, preservation of our traditions, and preservation of our civilization. That’s real conservatism.
The leftists and communists, on the other hand, would like to throw out the good in an effort to achieve perfection. For me, though, good is the nearest we can come to perfect because we are human. So, we shouldn’t throw away everything that’s good—our society, family, traditional values, our way of life, our culture, and so on, in pursuit of some abstract idea of perfection.
So for me, there’s no doubt Camus is on the Right since he wants to preserve our way of life, he wants to preserve our civilization, and he is warning people that the biggest, most pressing threat to these things is the Great Replacement. He’s warning people that not only are the various nations of Europe being replaced but that wider European civilization is also being replaced. If you don’t have a civilization or culture, what is there to conserve?
The Flemish nation has a strong Catholic identity. To what extent, if any, does Christianity inform your politics?
I’m a cultural Christian. You can’t deny that Christianity is a part, a very important part, of our Western and European civilization. For me, there are three or four cornerstones of our civilization. Our civilization is derived from Greek and Roman civilization, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution’s ideas of democracy and equality, and there is, of course, Christianity. So, yes, I am a cultural Christian but does that mean I support the institution of the Catholic Church? That is something else entirely. I think that the Catholic Church has become very left-wing, very anti-Christian, anti-European, pro-diversity, pro-multiculturalism, pro-open borders, etc. It seems to me that they think they need modernism and so-called progress to survive as an institution. I have that impression. For the Catholic Church, the institution itself seems to me to be more important than Christianity. That’s why I call myself a Christian, a cultural Christian, not a Catholic.
Readers interested in learning more about the work of Renaud Camus may read essays by Anthony Daniels here, Pierre-Marie Sève here, and Rod Dreher’s birthday tribute to Camus here. We hope to raise awareness of his works, nearly all written in French, in the lead-up to the worldwide premier of the publication of the first English-language collection of essays by Camus, Enemy of the Disaster, released on October 15th in the United States and to be released on October 17th in Europe and the rest of the world.
