Collaboration and Incivisme

The Walloon-dominated state used the word "incivisme" after the war as synonymous with collaboration, thereby implying that any attempt during the war to seize the opportunity of Belgium's defeat to pry more autonomy and linguistic rights from the reluctant hands of the Belgian state was an act of collaboration.

This, of course, is a bold distortion of history.

The Flems had no reason to remain loyal to the Belgian state since it had been forced upon them in 1830 by French-speaking revolutionaries and the ill-advised intervention of the British crown.

Shall I remind the readers that Dutch didn't gain official recognition in Belgium until 1967 even though it had always been the country's majority language?

Attempts by Flemings to secede from Belgium during the WW2 had nothing to do with love of Nazism and everything to do with the weakening of the discredited French-speaking Belgian state's authority.

The Walloons' long and disgraceful history is one of antisemitism, nationalism and socialism, whereas their more free-market capitalist Flemish neighbors have been known for times out of mind to hold their Jewish communities in high esteem. The Flemings' cultural affinities with National-Socialism have always been thin, while the Walloons accepted the victories of Hitler with enthusiasm and collaborated so convincingly that Hitler chose not to partition Belgium and refused to give full independence to the Flemings even though that would have been the logical thing for him to do since the Flemings speak a Germanic language and the Walloons a Latin-based tongue. No, the Nazis did preserve the entire state structures of Belgium, and it is no exaggeration to say that Hitler cajoled Belgium's French-speaking community, to the delight of Leopold III, the French-speaking monarch of German heritage.