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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6194512/
Folks are naive to lap up that Wallonians were snow white in WWII.
Hollyweird has a strong pull on this score imo.
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Introduction
Ordinary people do not think about history as historians (Klein, 2013). Indeed, they make sense out of it by making up new narratives that are not necessarily factually trustworthy and use them “to appraise the present and act on it” (p. 26). Belgians are no exception and for example, as suggested by Gotovitch and Kesteloot (2002), they have a binary vision of their involvement during World War II, where Flemings are perceived as mainly engaged in collaboration whereas Walloons bravely resisted (Benvindo & Peeters, 2009). Of course, historical reality is much more nuanced.
Since the end of WWII, diverging historical representations have heavily weighted on relations between the North and the South of the country. Indeed, “since the second half of the fifties, Belgium cultivates a double memory of the war and its inheritance, and in particular the inheritance of collaboration anchors as a parasite in the Belgian national conflict” (Van Doorslaer, 2006, pp. 482–483). This, in turn, fuels the existing tensions between the two linguistic communities, which has consequently resulted in a difficulty to unify as citizens of a same country (Gotovitch & Kesteloot, 2002). Subsequently, Flanders and Wallonia have grown apart, resulting, among other things, in distinct political priorities. For example, some Flemish political parties have, for decades, requested that the amnesty for former collaborators be examined and discussed at the Belgian parliament. Amnesty pertains to the granting of a general pardon for past (political) offenses, to a group of persons as a whole. According to Verdussen and Degrave (2007, p. 346), the amnesty is a “collective measure that removes the infringement character of some criminally reprehensible facts […] It is a matter of bringing the offense into the oblivion of the social group”. Notably, all French-speaking parties have opposed this idea of amnesty for former collaborators, and in 2011, the Walloon parliament unanimously voted a resolution to support “the duty to remember” and to oppose “any general law of amnesty”.
Some political actors do not hesitate to exploit historical facts or, more precisely, the representation of these facts to gain voters’ appreciation. This allegation can be illustrated by the fact that during the federal elections, the French-speaking side often emphasised the association between Flanders and Nazism. For example, Olivier Maingain (leader of the FDF, a French-speaking party) described the refusal of the Flemish regional government to nominate French-speaking Mayors of Flemish councils as “a reminder of the Occupation”. On the Dutch-speaking side, Bart De Wever (leader of the N-VA, a Flemish party) denounced “the Walloon myth” according to which resistance was mainly the fact of Walloons, while Flemings were largely engaged in collaboration: “It’s better anyway to shed light on the past of a society without masking the reality than judging from a misplaced moral superiority, and based on collective ignorance” (Le Soir, 2010). However, in May 2015, in front of the Jewish community, he stated that “Collaboration was a terrible mistake at all levels” (Le Soir, 2015).
Folks are naive to lap up that Wallonians were snow white in WWII.
Hollyweird has a strong pull on this score imo.
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