Anti-Semitic/Racist Floats in Belgian Carnival

Hat tip Vlad Tepes

Carnival season celebrations in several European countries can be very fun and entertaining. I have noted in recent years how Germans and Italians have come up with some ingenious floats that display political satire, whether directed at Trump, Merkel, Obama, or whomever. On Sunday, in the Belgian town of Aalst, two floats that appeared together have drawn outrage from the Jewish community in Belgium and elsewhere including the US.  The two floats show characters made up like Orthodox Jews containing several old anti-Jewish themes. I have watched the display in question as well as the following display which shows blackface caricatures (which are particularly considered offensive in the US because of the history of blackface as a part of stage entertainment during the early 20th century). All of the above strike me as being offensive to Jews and blacks respectively. Below is a report on the issue from The Independent.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/antisemitism-belgium-carnival-jewish-aalst-money-a8809736.html

It is important to note that Aalst is in the Flemish-speaking portion of Belgium. The accompanying music is in Flemish as are the words of the reporter doing the narration. Flemish is a variant of the Dutch language, which I have been studying for several years. I first learned to read Dutch when I was researching a book I wote on the history of the Papiamentu language of the Dutch Antilles islands of Curacao, Aruba and Bonaire. During the past year or so, I have been making a concerted effort to achieve fluency in Dutch. (I am not there yet.) While many consider what the Flemish people speak (Vlaams) to be Dutch, there are difference in accent and some vocabulary, so I would consider myself better in understanding Dutch as opposed to Flemish.

That is a bit of a digression in order to state that in listening to the music and the narration, I could hear references to Jews, Israel and Palestine in the song, but without understanding the actual context. Similarly, I could not make out any meaningful comment from the announcer about the floats.

I referred this to my Dutch language partner in the Netherlands, with whom I speak weekly for an hour exchanging English and Dutch conversation. I will simply cut and paste what he told me this morning via Skype.

“Hi Gary, I just watched the video. Although it’s a little hard to understand, I could understand parts of it. They sing Jews are usually dressed in black but a pink Jew is much cooler.  (Probably meant as a joke or sort of provocation because some Jews are anti LGBT) And they say something like Palestina is our home where we belong. I haven’t heard something real anti semitic. We don’t have carnival where I live in the north, only in Belgium and in the southern parts of the Netherlands. I know that they usually make caricatures out of all kind of groups and joke about things that are in the news or happening in the world.

It was a bit of a stigmatizing display indeed. It’s not very helpful in these days where anti semitism gets worse every day.” 

Below (courtesy of Vlad Tepes) is the entire stream of the parade over a 7 hour period. The Jewish floats arrive around the 3:23:30 mark. (Three hours, twenty-three minutes and thirty seconds.) As a whole, the event, the (other) floats, and the music are quite entertaining and humorous. However, the visuals of the above-referenced floats pertaining to Jews and blacks are troubling.