Léon Degrelle and the Future of "Rex" by Robert Brasillach

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Léon Degrelle and the Future of "Rex" by Robert Brasillach

The French who went to Belgium shortly after the elections of 1936 did not discover without surprise, drawn in white on the very pavement of the roads, in black on the houses, large inscriptions which alternately gave: "Vote Rex," or announced: "Rex will win. "Every hundred yards on the roads of Flanders as in the beautiful forests of the Ardennes, these fateful words flamed; or else there appeared ingenious posters, brightly coloured, or immense photographs of a vigorous young man. These were the last witnesses of this electoral campaign, so rough and so surprising, which was to bring to the Belgian Chamber, out of two hundred deputies, twenty-one members of a new party, unknown a year ago, the famous Rexist party.

Since the holidays, after two months of apparent silence, France has been surprised to learn of the break in the Franco-Belgian alliance, and at the same time of the union of the Rexists with the Flemish nationalist party, which had been considered until now to be Francophobic at first, and hostile to the idea of a Belgian community at second.

On 25 October 1936, a rexist meeting banned by the government was described in advance as a kind of march on Brussels, similar to the march on Rome or Munich. A meeting of Léon Degrelle was banned in Paris. In short,everything brought attention back to this party. After Italy, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, Spain, will Belgium be fascist? Are we going to see liberalism and nineteenth century ideas die on our doorstep, in a land of liberal tradition? Everywhere, with a tinge of anxiety, people are asking themselves: who is Rex? what does he want?

Paperback, 96 pp