Quote Originally Posted by Fenring
More often then not I sympathize with the Flemish when these issues pop up.

But since I'm a fascist Dutch, that shouldn't surprise anyone.
I usually side with the Walloons mainly because I detest Flemish chauvinism. But it is not a foolball match and I switch sides according to subject.

The journo has an interesting point, in that he points out the essentially suburban mentality of Flanders, which is also a recurrent theme in its modern literature. Flanders was an industrial late-comer (heavy industry took off there only in 1960's) and the Christian Democrats followed a careful policy of locating industry in the countryside and tying workers to the villages and rural culture, including Roman Catholic tradition, to prevent the rise of a dominant trade union movement and socialist party. Hence most of Flanders is tinged with a provincialism that is both charming and worth preserving as well as occasionally xenophobic and intellectually suffocating.

With regard to the latter: the so-called 'Flemish culture policy' of successive Flemish ministers has been an exercise in petty chauvinism and essentially harmless but still abhorrent idiocy unrivalled in Western Europe. To Dutch-language members I can recommend Zwarte Gedachten, a collection of highly critical essays by philosopher Dieter Lesage who was involved in this policy for a time and highlights the sloppy thinking and murky emotionalism behind this policy.

But fascism and ethnic cleansing?? Nah, the author is far out of line there. Given the complex problems with which it is confronted I would say that the degree of tolerance in Brussels, the ethnic 'hotbed' of the nation, is exemplary. And Belgium is a superb country in so many ways that even those dumb Belgians wouldn't want to break it up...