In the scope of a day, the far-right Flemish party Vlaams Belang put forward and then retracted a convicted Holocaust denier's candidacy in the upcoming municipal elections on 13 October.
Roland Raes, the co-founder of Vlaams Belang's previous version Vlaams Blok, was listed as the party's 27th candidate for the local elections in Aalter, East Flanders on Wednesday. The party retracted his name following the public outcry against nominating a convicted Holocaust denier from 2010.
Vlaams Blok was banned on 9 November 2004 for breaching Belgium's anti-racism laws, with the party dissolving and then reforming as Vlaams Belang a few days after the ruling. Raes is a famous Holocaust denier, having written articles and books which peddled his views. He even claimed that Anne Frank's diary was fake and that he can't believe that six million Jews were murdered.
"He was given a symbolic place, out of respect, because he remains one of the founders of Vlaams Blok," a party spokesperson told the Belgian De Standaard newspaper. "He has been living here with his wife in a nursing home for a few months and offered to be on our list himself."
Raes' name has since been retracted although it remains on the Aalter list on Vlaams Belang's website. "I wanted to leave the past behind me," he stated in a press release. "I made statements 23 years ago that I no longer stand behind today. I hoped that I could leave this chapter behind me, but apparently that is not the case."
Raes was charged following his Holocaust denial in 2010 following an interview in which he questioned several known facts about the Holocaust. "The persecution and deportation [of Jews] was systematic. But whether it was planned that they would all die during the war is another matter," Raes said in the 2001 interview, adding that the number of deaths was "constantly disputed" and that he "dared to doubt" the number of people who had died in gas chambers.
Raes' appearance on the local election list has reinforced the Belgian belief that Vlaams Belang is too extremist to govern with. Ahead of elections on 9 June, there were concerns that the Flemish right-wing party N-VA would consider them as possible coalition partners. "By putting convicted Holocaust denier Roland Raes on a list, Vlaams Belang has once again shown its true face," N-VA MP Michael Freilich posted on social media.
In Belgium, it has been illegal to publicly deny the Holocaust and other Nazi war crimes since 1995. In March, former Vlaams Belang MP Dries Van Langenhove was convicted for negationism, and the party's other links to Nazi ideology have been well documented by Belgian media.