Far-Right Party Spent Thousands to Amplify Brussels Riot Videos After World Cup Match

20,000 €. This is the tidy sum that the Vlaams Belang spent to make the videos of the riots that occurred after the Morocco-Belgium match at the 2022 World Cup go viral on Facebook. The first video posted on the social network on November 27 with the caption: "Shocking images of the riots currently in Brussels. Unacceptable. This immigrant scum must be hunted down, arrested and severely punished" cost him between 10,000 and 15,000 €. The video was viewed by more than a million people. In total, one million euros was spent by the far-right party on sponsored posts (290) on Facebook in 2022, reports rtbf.be.

What is the objective behind these high-cost sponsored posts? "It is a video that comes to confirm the worldview of the Vlaams Belang, that of the failure of immigration and a violence that comes from a youth of immigrant origin," analyzes Nicolas Baygert, doctor of information and communication sciences and researcher-teacher at IHECS, ULB and Sciences Po Paris. According to him, the party is using this video to impose its interpretation of the violence, by attacking the traditional parties since their comment indicates "when will the political parties understand that the multicultural society is a failure?"

"Finally, it is an attack on the media and journalists who are accused of not showing this violence or not interpreting it as the Vlaams Belang does." Except that the media have widely covered these acts of violence.