Painting woke tigers on the wall

One of the pleasures of Belgian politics, at least compared to British politics in recent years, is its focus on actual issues rather than nonsensical culture wars. So it has been with a terrible feeling of familiarity that I have watched centre-right parties in Flanders and Wallonie go on the attack against “wokeism”.

The Centre Jean Gol (MR, francophone liberal tradition) and Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever (NVA, Flemish nationalists) have both published on the subject, and to promote them, MR leader George-Louis Bouchez and De Wever himself have been interviewed in what feels like every media format and publication in the country.

1000 Brussels is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Anyone who has followed the debate in the US or UK will not need me to tell them that wokeism is a paper tiger, a scare story to justify socially reactionary politics. The term is not meaningless in itself, but it is relevant in the context of the US and academia, not day to day politics in Europe.

The definition isn’t important, really, because the term is not used as a serious contribution to the debate, but as mere name calling. Those with longer memories, like me, will be experiencing it as a speed run of the “political correctness” wars of the 1980s.

Like that period, the narrative is fuelled by media-friendly edge cases and outliers, accelerated by social media today. Behind the noise and outrage, social change continues at its usual tectonic pace. In a country where Brussels’ Cinquantenaire/Jubelpark still hosts a monument to heroic Belgians liberating the Congo from Arab slave traders, it’s hard to make the case that we are being drowned in a wave of racial sensitivity.

The political strategy is clear. In Wallonie, no populist or right-wing party has ever seen success, and GLB seems very keen on going vote-hunting in that political space. In Flanders, where there is a surfeit of populism, the far right Vlaams Belang is capturing voters that Bart De Wever would like to have. Rather than going all in and backing the frankly racist conspiracy “omvolking” theories (Great Replacement, in US terminology), De Wever has chosen the lite version as the best way to stop social conservatives from drifting further to the right hand end of the political spectrum.

As anyone who has watched US or UK politics will know, the risk is not that it stems the flow, but that it increases it, and comparatively mainstream voices using the terminology validate the messages of the hard right. “You are definitely under attack, but it’s not as bad as the far right say it is” is not going to be the winning argument for the centre-right.

More generally, the culture war turn on the right both north and south is a bet that votes can be gained by nothing more than making people scared and angry. More depressing still is the implicit declaration that you have nothing more attractive to offer on the social, economic or policy spectrum - that you want voters to vote for you not out of self interest but out of fear.

In Belgium, we have compulsory voting, so firing up the voter base and seeking differential turnout doesn't work. But in that system the game is moving votes across parties, and it feels to me that culture war thinking will only boost the extremes not the centre - and worse, takes the focus off things that might make a concrete difference to people’s lives, and build trust that politics can make a difference.

Democratic disenchantment cannot be solved unless politics is seen as a way of creating a better society, and making that a collective task. That isn’t to say that the personal driver for politicians mustn’t be power or ambition, or even a right-wing and individualist political philosophy - but democracy won’t work unless it is an competition where success comes from delivering positive change. To go down the cultural path shows you have nothing to offer, and more broadly that democratic politics doesn’t either.

The true virus of woke attacks the brain of politics, turning discussions that should be about a better life and a better community into name-calling, scaremongering and bile. I hope that the other parties in Belgium will stand up, not to argue for wokism, or to argue for something in the middle, but to laugh at it - and to put the focus on what Belgian citizens and the future of our country really need.

1000 Brussels is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.