A gathering of conservatives in the southern Belgian city of Mons came under attack on Saturday afternoon in an organised assault by left-wing militants, with one youth leader suffering head injuries after being set upon by approximately fifteen ‘antifascists.’
Members of the conservative Libéraux Démocrates party were assaulted shortly after a political meeting in the historically left-wing Francophone city near the Grands Prés shopping district. Party literature was also stolen and masked activists took pictures of attendees’ car registrations.
The attack occurred after the meeting, while activists were travelling for food with party president Tony Kacikowsky, who was assaulted by a gang of 15 in what observers described as having the appearance of a coordinated effort.
The leader of the party’s youth wing, Minacapelli Enzo, told The European Conservative how he and his colleagues immediately alerted the authorities when they became aware of the attack on Kacikowsky. He linked the assault to the involvement of many of Libéraux Démocrates’ activists with Éric Zemmour and the national-conservative Reconquête party in France. Enzo said:
The thing that revolts me the most is the city’s support for the antifascists: it has officially declared itself an antifascist city. I learned that they had not come for the party, but exclusively for my skin, as I am responsible for Génération Zemmour in Benelux.
Libéraux Démocrates is a relatively new party, founded in 2019 to represent right-wing Wallonians in the notoriously socialist region.
In a statement, the party’s secretary, Nadine Carepel, outlined that she expected more attacks in the lead-up to June’s European and Belgian elections, and complained about how the extreme Left legitimised violence against the party and its president.
A former mining town of 100,000 people, Mons is regarded as one of Belgium’s most left-leaning cities, with local socialist parties uniting to push for an official policy of not platforming the Right in 2021.
No antifascist group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks, with the matter now being examined by Wallonian authorities. Unlike Flanders, the more conservative northern region of Belgium, Wallonia is politically synonymous with left-wing politics, with Libéraux Démocrates part of a new generation of conservative and nationalist groups hoping to challenge this regional consensus.
