Rexist Party
The Rex Popular Front (French: Front populaire de Rex), or simply Rex, was a far-right Catholic authoritarian and corporatist political party active in Belgium from 1935 until 1945. The party was founded by a journalist, Léon Degrelle, It advocated Belgian unitarism and royalism. Initially, the party ran in both Flanders and Wallonia, but it never achieved much success outside Wallonia and Brussels. Its name was derived from the Roman Catholic journal and publishing company Christus Rex (Latin for Christ the King).
Rex Popular Front Front populaire de Rex | |
|---|---|
| Founder | Léon Degrelle |
| Founded | 2 November 1935 |
| Dissolved | 30 March 1945 |
| Split from | Catholic Party |
| Headquarters | Brussels, Belgium |
| Newspaper | Le Pays Réel |
| Paramilitary wing | Formations de Combat |
| Ideology | Belgian nationalism Political Catholicism Authoritarian conservatism Corporate statism Fascism (from 1937) Nazism (from 1940) |
| Political position | Far-right |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
| Political alliance | VNV (1936–1937) |
| Colours | Red Black |
| Anthem | Vers l'Avenir transl. "Towards the future" |
| Party flag | |
The highest electoral achievement of the Rexist Party was its gaining of 21 out of 202 deputies (with 11.4% of the vote) and twelve senators in the 1936 election. Never a mass movement, it was on the decline by 1938. During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II, Rex was the most significant collaborationist group in French-speaking Belgium, paralleled by the Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond (VNV) in Flanders. By the war's end, Rex was widely discredited and banned following the liberation.
Initially modelled on Italian Fascism and Spanish Falangism, it later drew closer to German Nazism. The Party espoused a "right-wing revolution" and the dominance of the Catholic Church in Belgium, but its ideology came to be vigorously opposed by the leader of the Belgian Church Cardinal van Roey, who called Rexism a "danger to the church and the country".