Filip Dewinter

An extreme right-wing activist is sentenced to five years in prison in 2014 for planning the murder of Filip Dewinter, hoping to drag Belgium into the civil war.

Many Flemish nationalists collaborated during the war because they thought—and now it is clear that they were wrong—that this would help them achieve independence for Flanders. This is the whole story. The overwhelming majority were not Nazis. They collaborated in order to attain independence and because the Church called upon them to go out and fight the Communists—something that Western Europe continued to do for 50 years. Now, in 2005, it is easy to say: 'The collaboration was a mistake.' The collaboration did not help our country at all; we just became a vassal state of Germany. At the time, it was logical, because of the Church, because of communism. But this has no connection with Nazism.

In 2010, he participated in a conference in Israel organized by Likud on the fight against terrorism.

In 2006 he was quoted in Bye-bye Belgium, which was seen as a break of the cordon sanitaire by some Belgian politicians.

A December 2005 interview by Dewinter with the American Jewish newsweekly The Jewish Week included a question if "Jews should vote for a party that espouses xenophobia". Dewinter responded by saying: "Xenophobia is not the word I would use. If it absolutely must be a 'phobia,' let it be 'Islamophobia.'" This statement, as well as the Blok's condemnation for racism, have weighted heavily on the French-speaking Belgian Socialist Party as well as other francophone and Flemish parties for them to become part of an appeal against the Vlaams Belang at the Council of State, an appeal that tries to take away the government subsidy of the Vlaams Belang.

Philip Dewinter was the guest speaker for a gathering of the former SS-collaborators of Sint-Maartensfonds which took place on 1 December 2001. That evening, Philip Dewinter opened his speech with the words "My Honour is loyalty" which was the official motto of the German SS-soldiers during WW2.

In 1988, he also became a City councilman in Antwerp. When the Flemish Parliament and the Belgian Parliament got elected separately in 1995, he chose to be a member of the Flemish Parliament (which deals with a lot of regional matters). His hard statements on especially foreign migration provided for victories in the elections of 1999 and 2003 for the Flemish Parliament. Dewinter was, together with Gerolf Annemans, the author of the notorious '70-puntenplan' published in the beginning of the 1990s, a policy paper consisting of 70 articles.

On 6 November 1988, Filip Dewinter visited the Lommel German war cemetery where 40,000 bodies of Nazi Germany Wehrmacht soldiers of WW2 were buried. He and other members of his party, notably neo-Nazi Bert Eriksson, wanted to render respect and flower the graves of the 38 Flemish SS collaborators who fought for Nazi Germany and embraced fascist Nazi ideology. The Belgian police forces stopped the small rally and pushed them back; only holders of German citizenship were allowed to enter the cemetery. During a debate in 1992 at the University of Antwerp, Philip Dewinter mentioned some persons as his friends. Most of these persons were in the ranks of Nazis, anti Semites and other fascists like Bert Eriksson, Staf De Clercq or other men convicted for treason like Cyriel Verschaeve or August Borms.

Dewinter was already politically active during his high school years at the Sint-Franciscus-Xaverius instituut in Bruges. In 1978, as a 16-year-old, he founded the Flemish Student Action Group (Vlaamse Studenten Actie Groep), that later was transformed into the Nationalist Young Students League (Nationalistisch Jong Studenten Verbond). In that year he was briefly a member of the Flemish People's Party (Vlaamse Volkspartij). In September 1982, he moved to Antwerp, where he did not complete his first year (candidate) in political and social sciences at the University of Antwerp, and became a member of the Nationalist Student Society (Nationalistische Studentenvereniging), one of the ideological seminaries of the Vlaams Belang. In 1983, he became a member of the Flemish Block (Vlaams Blok). He completed a journalist degree at the Erasmus College (Erasmus Handelsschool) in 1985. In November 1987, he was elected member of the Belgian parliament, in which he formed a political faction with Gerolf Annemans (who, earlier that year, had succeeded to founder-Flemish Block president Karel Dillen). Under Dewinter's leadership, the parliamentary group continued to grow, notably in 1991, when the Flemish Block, from a small party, grew to about 12% of the voters. This growth has continued ever since, though it success is starting to decline due to the rise of other parties like e.g. Lijst Dedecker.

Philip Michel Frans "Filip" Dewinter (born 11 September 1962) is a Belgian politician. He is one of the leading members of Vlaams Belang, a right-wing Flemish nationalist and secessionist political party. Together with Hugo Coveliers of the VLOTT party, Dewinter formed a list cartel for the city elections of Antwerp on 8 October 2006.