Party of New Forces (Belgium)

Parti des forces nouvelles (PFN) or Party of New Forces was a Belgian far-right political party active in Wallonia. Although they share a name it is not directly connected to the Party of New Forces in France.

Emergence

The PFN first emerged in 1975 under the name Forces Nouvelles, initially operating as a coalition of like-minded extremists rather than a political party.^[1] Early members of the group had come from the Front de la Jeunesse.^[2] Its early years were dominated by internal struggles, resulting in the group doing little publicly between 1975 and 1980 due to this strife.^[3]

In 1979 the group was instrumental in the formation of Eurodroite, an alliance of European far-right political parties that also included the Italian Social Movement (MSI), the French PFN and Fuerza Nueva amongst others.^[4]

Ideology

Ideologically the party tended towards the neo-fascist^[2] or neo-Nazi^[5] end of the far-right and sought early contact with the MSI.^[2] It celebrated the heritage of Rexism and shared with it contempt for parliamentary democracy and support for corporatism in economics.^[2] The group also adopted a strongly anti-American strain to its discourse.^[2] Whilst anti-immigration has been at the centre of its appeal the PFN has also focused on anti-Semitism and has been active in promoting Holocaust denial.^[1] It's anti-immigrant rhetoric frequent included calls to biological racism.^[2] Repatriation of immigrants was a central part of their position.^[6] The group has also campaigned vigorously against abortion.^[1]

Elections

The group contested the 1989 regional elections but failed to attract much support, capturing only 1.1% of the vote in Brussels.^[1] The PFN spent much of the 1980s competing with the Front National for votes and tended to come off worse. Thus in Brussels in 1985 the PFN won 0.7% of the vote to the FN's 0.5% (the FN having been formed only that year) but by the 1988 municipal elections this had shifted to 0.5% for the FN to 0.9% for the FN whilst by 1991 the FN had won seats in the Chamber of Representatives.^[7] Nonetheless it did manage to gain pockets of local support, with its vote rising as high as 15% in some districts.^[2]

Decline

The PFN supported the use of publicity stunts in order to raise its profile and took a stand at the Brussels International Book Fair where its stock of Holocaust denial material attracted police attention. A scuffle broke out when the police attempted to remove the stall, with the incident widely covered in the Belgian press.^[2] The incident however exacerbated internal divisions and in 1989 Willy Freson and the Liege group of the PFN split to form their own movement, Agir.^[2] Robert Destrouder, a member of the PFN secretariat, also switched over to this new group.^[2]

After 1989 the PFN continued to decline, with many party members switching allegiance to the FN thereafter.^[8] Having been seriously weakened by these splits and having failed to make any headway in the elections it contested the PFN formally dissolved in 1991.^[2] Following its disappearance some members joined the Walloon Regional Front, a short-lived group that was itself absorbed by the FN in 1993 whilst others went into a new group, Renouveau Nationaliste (formed in 1993), a group closely associated with the French and European Nationalist Party.^[9]

References