Far-Right Vlaams Belang Surges in Flemish Polls, Leveraging Social Media Success

The secret of Tom Van Grieken is his hyperactivity on social networks; unbeatable on Facebook (more than 500,000 fans last week), far ahead of all other Belgian political leaders, reports rtbf.be. "It’s an interesting medium. We get direct feedback from people. We can know if the message is getting through or not," he said on the set of De Zevende dag (VRT) last Sunday, the same source adds, noting that the far-right party also owes its success, on the one hand, to the organization of a demonstration at the Heysel at the end of September, with nearly 10,000 people who denounced the De Croo government and, on the other hand, to the Marrakech Pact.

According to Liesbeth Van Impe, Bart De Wever and the N-VA bear a large part of the responsibility for the return of Vlaams Belang: "With the end of the Michel government and the Marrakech Pact, the president of the N-VA became nervous. There were social media campaigns where we saw that the anger of the citizens had returned." Journalist Jan Antonissen, author of the book De Ontfatsoenlijken, explains that this renewed interest of the voters is essentially based on inequality and identity. People no longer feel at home and betrayed by the traditional parties, he said.

But the realization of good intentions in 2024 for Van Grieken depends on allies and therefore the breaking of the cordon sanitaire principle. In addition, he will have to get rid of figures like Dries Van Langenhove, the founder of the Schild en Vrienden group, or Filip Dewinter, who make the party "unfrequentable," concludes rtbf.be.