Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2024

The far-right press between the wars- « une arme terrible maniée sans répit et sans pitié »? The case of the Rexist press as a catalyst for Belgian political agitation (1936–1940)

Résumé

This paper addresses the question of the political agitation set up by Rexism through its press in interwar Belgium, and its repercussions on the political life. The Rexist movement, led by Léon Degrelle, is a Belgian far-right political movement created in the second half of the 1930s. It developed a violent political discourse, initially against the political world and those it called ‘rotten’, through a powerful, multilingual (French, Dutch and German) and multi-scalar press. As the radicalization of its discourse and themes progressed, Rex developed an increasingly violent rhetoric aimed at destabilizing successive governments, as well as the movement’s so called enemies. This violent rhetoric was intended to lead to what the Rexists called the ‘Necessary Revolution’, enabling the movement to come to power by ousting the other parties, members of the various governments over the period. However, if this discourse created divisions in the press and the political world at the start of 1936 and 1937, we could soon observe a response from other newspapers and members of the body politic, and a constant questioning of this discourse, very quickly marginalizing Rex and its press, and leading to the ousting of one of the agitating elements of Belgian political life in the second half of the 1930s. Through key events such as the various elections (5 between 1936 and 1940), the strikes of 1936 or even the Martens case in 1938–1939, the Rexist press contributed to creating a form of agitation within Belgium, triggering increasingly in-depth debates. The aim is to understand the mechanisms used by the Rexist movement and its press to try to destabilize successive governments in the interwar period, and also to analyse the impact (or otherwise) of these discourses on the stability of Belgian political life, in the light of the rather turbulent European history of the second half of the 1930s, which influenced political discourse in Belgium. Finally, it is possible to analyse the responses of the various political parties and their presses to the violence and the Rex discourse, showing that agitation, if it exists for a while, quickly disappears and establishes a certain stability with regard to the extreme right and Rex.

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Dates et versions

hal-04778627 , version 1 (12-11-2024)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04778627 , version 1

Citer

Clément Ferrier. The far-right press between the wars- « une arme terrible maniée sans répit et sans pitié »? The case of the Rexist press as a catalyst for Belgian political agitation (1936–1940). Democratic Belgian discord? Diversity of political opinion in the press, Zentrum für Ostbelgische Geschichte; CAMIlle KBR- ULB, Oct 2024, Eupen, Belgium. ⟨hal-04778627⟩
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