Fear of crime as a political weapon: explaining the rise of extreme right politics in the Flemish countryside

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the recent success of extreme right politicians in the Flemish countryside. Because the Vlaams Belang, the dominant extreme right-wing party in Flanders, plays to racist attitudes and everyday fears, we study the interrelations between the rise of the extreme right, racism and a spatialized and racialized culture of fear. Based on a multi-level analysis of spatial variations of racism and a qualitative analysis of focus group interviews on fear of crime, we suggest that a rural or suburban vote for the extreme right Vlaams Belang has to be understood as a protest vote against the racialization and the insecurity of the central cities and as an anticipatory vote that has to stop the imagined infection of the ‘white’ and ‘safe’ countryside with urban ‘diseases’ like crime and foreigners.