QSome 4,500 people, according to the official figure of the Brussels police, marched through the streets of the capital on Sunday afternoon during a “social and anti-fascist” march organized by the anti-fascist coordination of Belgium (CAB).
Despite the rain, thousands of demonstrators – families, students, activists and elderly people alike – gathered at 1 p.m. at Mont des Arts. “The brown plague is back, don’t let yourself be contaminated”, “Never again”, displayed signs.
Around 1:30 p.m., the procession set off to the sound of drums and slogans towards Congress Square. “Many of us were shocked by the result of the elections of June 9, showing a breakthrough of the far-right on a European scale. We are therefore gathered today to unite against the far-right – whose project is profoundly unequal, racist and exclusionary,” underlined one of the spokespersons of the CAB, Sixtine Van Outryve.
To signify that the rise of the far-right “is not inevitable”, this is therefore the objective of this mobilization which aims to “tackle it by building a real, social, ecological alternative , and democratic – the only one capable of truly responding to the major challenges of today and tomorrow.”
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The coordination spokesperson points to a “disturbing” strategy of trivializing far-right speeches. “Faced with this normalization of racist and fascist remarks by our politicians, let us loudly recall the ‘never again’, which seemed so obvious at the end of the fascism regimes of the last century.”
The anti-fascist coordination of Belgium is a coalition bringing together around twenty social movements and organizations – such as the young FGTB, the Anti-fascist Front of Liège, the MOC Brussels, and the Mrax.
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