Elections 2024: Mock newspaper warns of the dangers of far right in Brussels and Wallonia
On Monday, the Centre for Secular Action (CAL) will distribute a fake newspaper in Wallonia and Brussels to draw attention to the dangers of the far right in the run-up to the 2024 elections, the organisation announced in a press release.
Called Vraiment (Really), the French-language paper will contain a series of articles presenting the speeches, projects and "liberticidal" decisions of the far-right party Juste Nous (Just Us), which recently came to power in the imaginary country of Dystonia.
"It must be said that this fiction is not so far removed from reality," CAL says. "Each article is based on a real political situation currently being observed in a European country or elsewhere in the world. In other words, it doesn't take much to go from the improbable to the real."
"Each article is based on a real political situation in Europe or elsewhere in the world. It doesn't take much to go from the improbable to the real"
The awareness-raising campaign is part of CAL's wider Extremism, Our Prison campaign, which aims to "encourage reflection, analysis and debate on all forms of extremism, whether political, left-wing, right-wing or religious", it explains.
Upcoming elections
In 2024, Belgium will hold elections at all levels of government: European, federal, regional and local. According to opinion polls in recent months, the far right - particularly in Flanders, but increasingly in French-speaking Belgium too - appears to be on course for major electoral gains.
With this "newspaper", CAL wants "to make everyone aware that the elections are approaching and that the far right is making worrying gains throughout Europe, including in our country", the organisation's president, Véronique De Keyser, told public broadcaster RTBF.
"The forecasts even show that the leading party in Belgium could be a Flemish party that we consider to be far right," she said, referring to Vlaams Belang. This newspaper is "a kind of educational tool that's a bit playful", she explains, adding that the aim is not to point fingers or castigate voters and potential voters of the far right.
© PHOTO CHRISTIAN MANG / AFP
Related news
