Why Belgium Isn't A Real Country

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You can find the script and all the sources here:

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twitter: @ArthurVijg123
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About the video:

I've seen a lot of videos covering Belgium, more specifically the divides between Flanders and Wallonia, but I always feel like they haven't done justice to the relationship between the Walloons and Flemmings.

Usually, it doesn't touch upon Catholicism, the more concrete policy decisions, the underlying history, etc., etc. So, hopefully you'll enjoy this video, which also tries its hardest to give this political situation the respect it deserves.

About us:

We are a team of Europeans trying to create a European media platform.

Feedback is extremely useful, and it's incredibly important to understand that we are by no means the arbiters of truth: we can be wrong, and we will be wrong.

Also, there is a large difference between fake narratives and fake facts. Although we will try to stay as close to the truth in presenting objective facts (i.e there are 27 EU commissioners not 10), it is much more difficult to stay close to the truth when it comes to important narratives.

What the team decides is 'news' can shift the attention to a certain set of facts that may be true but may not be as important for other people, and this is where bias can easily come to fruition.

We ask the viewers to be aware of our bias and realize that, just like them, we are an imperfect team pushed by our own moral convictions and beliefs.

Music:

Title: Blue Wednesday, tender spring - Exhale
Artist: Blue Wednesday

Dreamer by Hazy

Chapters:

00:00 | Intro
00:56 | Belgian Federal State
01:30 | Communities vs Regions
02:18 | The Divides Are Real
03:21 | Belgian History
05:18 | European Divides
06:06 | Outro

[hoogyoutube]

The title is click bait; I do not think Belgium is not a nation, and I’m not at all qualified to make that judgment:

Source Document, Corrections, Notes:


Please, if you disagree with this video strongly, send me an article that I can post on our website:

www.romuluseurope.eu

Corrections:

I said "divided by virtue of language and culture alone" while referencing the split between political parties in Belgium as though that's, like, shocking. This was kind of stupid because I mean, come on, culture and language pretty much is the entire story when it comes to political divides.

I said New Lueven is built 15km away, but that's wrong. It's built around 30km away.

I said PS is almost exclusively Wallonian; no, that's wrong, PS is exclusively Wallonian.

Notes:

Let me know what you think about the pacing and whether you think it's too fast. My target demographic, if I'm doing my job right, is a group of people that have English as their second language. It is incredibly important for me that they can follow, so let me know if it was too fast.

Also, I did not touch enough upon German intervention in World War 2, which deserves a video in itself.

Subtitles will be up within the day.

Also, thumbnails and titles are entirely based on generating clicks and are nothing more. I’m sorry about that, but I recommend looking up something called ‘legitbait’ to understand my thought process.

[juicy_potato]

As a Belgian, I would describe the Flemish/Waloon history as if Disney wanted to remake the English/Irish troubles. Same struggles, just with less violence and more chocolate.

[numericbin]

Our country is impossibly complicated. Realistically, it can't continue like that for long without major structural reforms.
On the other hand, the population is going along just fine, the beer seems to do its job in bringing us together

[krealyesitisbeta]

All divided into sections, like a Belgian waffle.

[KOTAAOMEE]

Honestly as a wallon, I feel that if we didn't have the language barrier everything would be much simpler, I just have no idea why learning both french and flemish isn't mandatory in school.
But again, Divide ut regnes as they say...

[bluedevil]

Interesting video, but there are a few errors in it:
1) There is a national party: the extreme left party PVDA/PTB.
2) Flanders was not 'historically poor'. For centuries it was one of the richest and most urbanized regions in Europe. In the 19th century, however, Flanders went through a period of economic decline and famine.
3)
Before WW1, a "Flemish independence movement" simply did not exist. The Flemish movement of the 19th century was exclusively aimed at equal treatment of the Dutch language in Belgium. Only under the influence of the German "Flamenpolitik" in both world wars did part of the Flemish movement become radically anti-Belgium.

[sniffthecactusduh]

I think you painted a pretty bleak picture of the country that threw parties after breaking the world record for longest government-less nation. Belgium might be complicated, but it is also stable and prosperous. In my experience, the people who think we will fall apart soon are the ones who haven’t lived here. I’m happy to live in Belgium!

[ParmaShadow]

The only time we ever feel a sense of national 'pride' and identity in being Belgian is when the World Cup or the Euros are on. Otherwise, most people just revert to their linguistic community identities.

[StFrancisEnjoyer]

I'd love to see a comparison between Belgium and Switzerland on how this two countries deal with their diversity of languages

[mrobama]

Feel like this channel is going to explode in popularity soon - very high production value and interesting topics

[TheBastardo]

They say already 191 years that ' soon ' we will split. But here we are, still together. Belgium is like a dysfunctional family, where the mother 'Flanders' had to emancipate herself from her husband "Wallonia". "Wallonia" on the other hand lost all his money on a bad investment and is now depending on the ones oh soo poor mother "Flanders" who was able to grow and prosper with her successful business. They almost had a divorce, but in the end they decided to stay together for the children ' Brussels and the German Community'. The house called 'Belgium' has been divided up, they all are living apart together. Mother Flanders is constantly robbing it in the face to her old dominating husband, 'Wallonia 'that she is running the show now and often is a bit ' bitchy' to him. She had some love affairs with her neighbor and cousin 'the Netherlands' but in the end it did not felt right. Wallonia on the other hand is trying to get back on his feet, he is driving now a taxi at night. He has finally accepted his faith, he is poor but happy. The kids, Brussels and the German part are doing pretty well actually and are becoming young adults now. Maybe when the midlife crisis of both has come to an end, maybe the love will prosper ones again.... or maybe not. But remember that a divorce always makes everybody poor.

[wannes]

As a belgian, Imma tell you that people often seem to overestimate the 'difficulties' in balancing and the problems etc. Our history has been a rollercoaster one might say, but nowadays most people get along just fine.

[ezrafriesner]

I partly grew up in Belgium, and honestly I’m not sure most Belgians mind enough for anything big to happen, as long as things work people don’t really care

[meneither]

Funny how that doesn't apply to Switzerland despite it being somehow even more divided.

[julesb]

From my experience, the cultural difference between the Netherlands and Flanders is larger than the difference between Wallonia and Flanders. The low countries were united under the Duchy of Burgundy somewhere in the 1400s. The Netherlands adopted Protestantism and rebelled against Spanish rule in the 1600s. Since then Belgium and the Netherlands were split with a few short exceptions.

The division between Flanders and Wallonia is based on Ideologie and Language, not on Culture. In Wallonia people generally vote for more Left-leaning parties and They don't really have a real right-wing. In Flanders, people vote For right-wing parties that do not have a French-speaking equivalent These parties are also pro-independence.

Another thing is that the dialects that you find in modern-day Flanders are a lot different from standard Dutch. Dutch got adopted as the standard language in the modern-day Flanders by the Flemish movement long after the Belgian revolution. For example, my Home City of Aalst is named "Oilsjt" in the local dialect which also includes a lot of French vocabulary. I do not think that someone from Amsterdam would be able to understand that. Wallonia also had its distinct dialect which I think is more uniform but it is basically extinct.


The name Flanders comes from the Dutchy of Flanders witch is are basically the modern-day provides of East- and West-Flanders who make up the eastern part of modern-day Flanders (But also a small part of France and the City of Tournai in Wallonia).

[jstr]

« Wallonia, like Southern European countries, is more reliant on industry than northern Europe »
Seriously?! The Netherlands and Germany are way more industrialised than say Spain, Portugal or Greece. We aren’t in the 1980’s anymore, we’re everyone thought the less dépendant on industry you are the better. Nowadays everyone recognizes a solid industrial base is absolutely necessary (it explains why countries such as US, UK and France have huge commercial deficit, because they closed down so much of there industry, unlike Japan, Korea, Taiwan or Germany)

[tyberfen]

I think Belgium is a microcosm of what Challenges a united or federalized europe would have to face. Correct me if I'm wrong, but at least those tensions seem to stay peacefull (unlike certain other parts in europe)

[pauls.]

people who've never come to Belgium like making informative videos using info they read on wikipedia or in books written by pale political scientists who stay in an office at the ULB/VUB, but the population and mentalities aren't as divided as it may seem from simply looking at stats or dry political analyses. I'm a walloon but went to boarding school in Flanders for a while. Even though in budgeting there are endless disagreements between our politicians, in terms of culture I feel Flemings are much closer to us than anyone else, and I didn't even know other countries considered us to be particularly divided until I went abroad for my masters degree. This will likely change though as walloons no longer have to learn flemish in school which I find absurd, and will limit the number of wallons who will work in Flanders. also, commenting so the algorithm boosts your channel

[tanguylaloy]

It is also interesting to look at belgium trough the prism of common values belgians have.
It seems that there's a general unicity of the values carried by belgian people, wether they are flemish or waloonians ; values that they don't sare with dutch people nor with french people.
The common values of the belgian people can make them a little bit more united than they seem

[mattc]

Your comment about random houses in the middle of nowhere makes so much sense now. As someone who regularly drives through Flanders, I've often found myself driving late at night and noticing completely isolated houses shining in the dark, barely set back from rural roads. They're often quite old but clearly modern and quite expensive on the inside, which is especially easy to tell with the seemingly common pattern of fitting them with large, costly, single-pane windows, allowing outsiders to see their pricey kitchens and décor. They're often about 10-15 minutes outside of small villages and towns, and while you'd assume they might be farmhouses, they never really give that impression. They don't look set up to be agricultural estates. It's like someone took a suburban house, albeit a very old one, and just transported it into countryside. While this isn't too uncommon in my native UK, there has always been something about it that has made me curious, and now I know why.