Why Belgium? Why Brussels? What’s the Cultural Connection between European Terrorism and Belgium?
Yes, terorrist attacks are the result of many factors, but, as with all human events, culture is often the invisible driver under the surface that provides the critical mass needed to bring the differing factors together into one act, at one place, at a certain time. While there are many political, social and even personal psychological explanations that make the headlines trying to make sense of the recent attack, a cultural perspective— specifically, an understanding of how the complicated factors of terrorism interplay with certain unique aspects of Belgian culture — can provide an insight into the question, not of “why terrorism?”, but “Why Belgium? Why Brussels? Why now?” A sociological perspective might yield a response something along the lines of, “terrorist acts are by definition designed to be random, the better to spread desired fear and withdrawal, so there is no special meaning in the fact that the recent attack was in Belgium or Brussels”; a political perspective might explain the logic of attacking the symbol of European political unity (and, from the terrorist’s perspective, continued western colonialism and exploitation of the Islamic world), therefore making Brussels, the home of the EU, a natural target; a social policy perspective might highlight the fact that tens of thousands of Muslim immigrants have been living marginalized lives among basically Christian populations in Belgium, implying a certain inevitability to a terrorist event, although tens of thousands of Muslims live as less than equals with among Christians in other parts of Europe, and this event did not happen there….it happened in Belgium. So political and social policy discussions have not on their own been able to answer the question of “Why Belgium?”, and for that, we need to take the “cultural perspective”, a perspective that is often overlooked, and often does not make — although it always explains — the headlines.
Specifically, I am speaking about the uniquely Belgian cultural need for “accommodation”. The country runs — or doesn’t- on accommodation; Belgian politics is all about the requirement, more than in most other countries, for accommodation; its successes are often minimized, and its failures are always emphasized, by the media, as well as people on the street. The average Belgian knows that unless everything that happens in Belgium is put through the filter of “accommodation”, nothing happens; worse, Belgium runs the risk of falling apart.
The roots of this cultural phenomenon run deep in the history of the country: essentially, and with apologies for the necessary oversimplification of a complicated history, Belgium was a country founded several hundred years ago as a “buffer state” between the Protestant Dutch lands to the north and the Catholic French to the south, who, at the time, were killing each other with great abandon. However, southern Belgium was — and still is — mainly French Catholic (Walloons, as the northern Flemish speakers call it, or Valons, as the local French Catholics refer to themselves), and northern Belgium was — and still is — mainly Flemish-speaking Dutch Protestant (Flanders, according to the northerners, or Flamandes, as the southern Valons would say), and these two groups still do not get along, although their lack of cooperation is expressed, at least today, with a significantly lower level of bloodletting than in the distant past.
Differences between these two groups are expressed today through the almost predictable resistance both sides show to each other around anything requiring mutual cooperation and collaboration. There is, in fact, an almost allergic reaction to anything one side does by the other: if a Valons says “white”, it insures that the Flemish response will be “black”, and vice versa. You can imagine the political and social impasses this makes. Early on in the country’s history, it became clear that unless a practice of “accommodation” to the inevitably different perspectives of Valons and Flemish were adopted, a federal government would be impossible, and the country would fall apart. It has almost happened, many times, and in reality, only now hangs together by a tenuous thread of “accommodation”.
The practice of accommodation, however, is tedious: every detail is cross-examined, every action is analyzed for its hidden intents, every plan is painfully deconstructed and reconstructed, and nothing is taken on face value. Everything is questioned, and everything must be negotiated. Over the years a kind of social relativism set in, whereby it became a cultural fact of life that in order to move the stone even a millimeter toward one side or the other, there needed to be a millimeter of accommodation in the other direction, or else nothing would happen. The result was a cultural system that reflected this central cultural phenomenon of “accommodation”, revealed through bureaucratic and sclerotic politics, byzantine complex social policies, and skeptical, suspicious daily human interactions between people. There was always “the other” in Belgium, to be feared, shunned, kept away from; to be minimized, marginalized, and, if necessary, diminished in some way, sometimes brutally. And the development of social and political initiatives that attempted to accommodate to these realities, to actively mediate against them, precisely because of their relentless impact.
This is the cultural context of modern Belgium, the country that is the symbolic heart of European unity (it is no accident that Brussels was made the “capital” of the EU, as it stands, almost literally, on the cultural faultline that runs through the heart of the country, between the Valons and Flemish), where tens of thousands of Muslims are socially and economically marginalized in a small geography, and where the cultural phenomenon of “accommodation” has paralyzed any robust and productive response to the resulting tinderbox in a world of terrorist ambitions. In a different cultural context, the elements may all be flammable, but combustion can be averted. In Belgium, the result has been explosive. And the match is culture.
