Wim & Sam van Rooy: ‘Make the Netherlands and Flanders a confederation’
disasters
Wim van Rooy (75) is known as an author, Germanist and philosopher, but was also a radio and television producer. He also caused a furore in the Netherlands, including with his book published in 2015 What one does not speak about. Sam van Rooy (37) worked in road construction, was a cycling professional, is very active as a publicist, but is especially renowned as a Flemish representative and as a party leader of Vlaams Belang in the Antwerp city council.
For Van Rooy senior, 2022 will be dominated by catastrophes. “You see everything coming together: a monetary catastrophe, an immigration catastrophe, a nitrogen catastrophe. Politicians no longer have a positive, emancipating message. There seems to be a pandemic of fear. But fear should never be the existential foundation of a society.”
“We are mainly in a democratic crisis”, adds Van Rooy junior. “European policymakers have committed themselves to other international regulations over the decades. What do our political leaders say, for example when it comes to nitrogen? ‘We have to do that from the EU, otherwise we will be punished.’ That’s really their only story.”
Cordon
Since the 2019 elections, the immigration and Islam-critical Vlaams Belang has been the second party in the Flemish Parliament: after the conservative-liberal New Flemish Alliance of Prime Minister Jan Jambon and before the Christian Democrats, the liberals, the socialists and the green.
None of those parties wants to govern with Vlaams Belang. But despite date cordon sanitary his party wants solid influence, with Sam van Rooy. “The Vlaams Belang is a whip party. We interpret what the man and the woman in the street want. As a result, the traditional parties have shifted to the right. They feel that we are gaining momentum electorally – and that we are actually right.”