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Politics rebel against the Aalst Carnival: “A calamitous image of Belgium”

Thehe Belgian carnival of Aalst persists and signs: accused of anti-Semitism, which has earned him being struck out of UNESCO’s intangible heritage, this festive parade decided to “laugh at everything” and showed new caricatures on Sunday Orthodox Jews. A choice that has not failed to make many politicians react.

Stereotypes

Representations of the Jewish community at the Aalst carnival “damage our values ​​and the reputation of our country,” Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès said in a statement on Sunday.

Sophie Wilmès pins the carnival of Aalst: “It is a damage to the reputation of Belgium”

In a press release a little later, the president of the Prime Minister’s party gave his own reaction. The MR “has always been Charlie”, first postulates the text sent by Georges-Louis Bouchez. Although the “vast majority of floats” of the Sunday procession “were entirely in the spirit of a carnival, one of them was not intended for humor but crystallized all of the anti-Semitic references: Jews assimilated to ants or SS, dictating their law to international organizations like Unesco thanks to their financial power, all punctuated by hooked noses, “deplores the liberal party, which considers that” revive “thus “The anti-Semitic and discriminating stereotypes” that led to genocide is not “funny”.

Tunes from Nazi Germany

Défi speaks for its part of a certain number of tanks with distinctly anti-Semitic hints. “A certain number of images from Aalst seem to be mistaken there for the images of the carnivals which took place in Nazi Germany from 1933″, abounds the amaranth party, which denounces what now looks like ” a real determination ”on the part of the carnival, given the controversy already aroused last year. According to Défi, there was indeed a spread through the “hate speech” carnival, which should be punished.

Many Socialists have also denounced the cartoons. The president of the Brussels PS has also shared a hateful message he received for criticizing the carnival.

Philippe Close, mayor of Brussels, castigated via Twitter an “obstinacy in error” on the part of certain carnivalists, who “turns into ridiculous and insulting”. “It gives a calamitous image of Belgium and Flanders. The humor of some remains incomprehensible, “he adds, judging that it is” time “for Unia to do its job. The same call to the inter-federal center for equal opportunities is also made by Défi.

Ecolo co-chair Rajae Maouane also decided to speak on Twitter to denounce racist expressions during the Aalst Carnival, which are not just anti-Semites, as she points out.

Can we laugh at everything?

Jan Jambon (N-VA), who had previously ruled that the Jewish cartoons of the past year should not have been used in the context of the Aalst carnival, repeated Sunday at the microphone of VTM that he is not for censorship. He made a call to “also laugh at others after this year.”

The burgomaster of Aalst Christoph D’Haese (N-VA) sees no problem with the representations of Jews who were visible during his city’s carnival on Sunday. According to him, they cannot be described as anti-Semites. Céline Fremault (CDH) is far from agreeing with this vision of things.

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