Party of New Forces (French:Parti des forces nouvelles,pronounced[paʁtidefɔʁsnuvɛl],PFN) was aBelgianfar-right political party active inWallonia. Although they share a name it is not directly connected to theParty of New Forces inFrance.
The PFN first emerged in 1975 under the nameForces Nouvelles, initially operating as a coalition of like-minded extremists rather than a political party.[1] Early members of the group had come from theFront de la Jeunesse.[2] Its early years were dominated by internal struggles, resulting in the group doing little publicly between 1975 and 1980 due to this strife.[3]
In 1979 the group was instrumental in the formation ofEurodroite, an alliance of European far-right political parties that also included theItalian Social Movement (MSI), the French PFN andFuerza Nueva amongst others.[4]
Ideologically the party tended towards theneo-fascist[2] orneo-Nazi[5] end of the far-right and sought early contact with the MSI.[2] It celebrated the heritage ofRexism and shared with it contempt for parliamentary democracy and support forcorporatism in economics.[2] The group also adopted a stronglyanti-American strain to its discourse.[2] Whilstanti-immigration has been at the centre of its appeal the PFN has also focused onanti-Semitism and has been active in promotingHolocaust denial.[1] Its anti-immigrant rhetoric frequent included calls tobiological racism.[2]Repatriation of immigrants was a central part of their position.[6] The group has also campaigned vigorously againstabortion.[1]
The group contested the1989 regional elections but failed to attract much support, capturing only 1.1% of the vote inBrussels.[1] The PFN spent much of the 1980s competing with theFront National for votes and tended to come off worse. Thus in Brussels in1985 the PFN won 0.7% of the vote to the FN's 0.5% (the FN having been formed only that year) but by the 1988 municipal elections this had shifted to 0.5% for the FN to 0.9% for the FN whilst by1991 the FN had won seats in theChamber of Representatives.[7] Nonetheless, it did manage to gain pockets of local support, with its vote rising as high as 15% in some districts.[2]
The PFN supported the use of publicity stunts in order to raise its profile and took a stand at the Brussels International Book Fair where its stock of Holocaust denial material attracted police attention. A scuffle broke out when the police attempted to remove the stall, with the incident widely covered in the Belgian press.[2] The incident however exacerbated internal divisions and in 1989 Willy Freson and theLiège group of the PFN split to form their own movement,Agir.[2] Robert Destrouder, a member of the PFN secretariat, also switched over to this new group.[2]
After 1989 the PFN continued to decline, with many party members switching allegiance to the FN thereafter.[8] Having been seriously weakened by these splits and having failed to make any headway in the elections it contested the PFN formally dissolved in 1991.[2] Following its disappearance some members joined the Walloon Regional Front, a short-lived group that was itself absorbed by the FN in 1993 whilst others went into a new group,Renouveau Nationaliste (formed in 1993), a group closely associated with theFrench and European Nationalist Party.[9]
