Order of Flemish Militants - The New VMO

The New VMO

Numerous members of the disbanded VMO did not support Maes' decision and reconstituted the VMO on 12 June 1971 as "Vlaamse Militanten Orde", referring to the "Dinaso Militanten Orde". Several Flemish extremists, radicals, neo-fascists and racists could be detected among the founding members, including the white supremacist Bert Eriksson, who emerged as leader of the new group. It undertook drilling exercises and paramilitary "fieldgames" and also co-operated with similar militia groups such as the Wehrsportsgruppe, exchanging members for drilling exercises. When the far right Vlaams Blok was established in 1979 several VMO members also took out membership of that party. Chief among these was Xavier Buisseret, who served as propaganda chief of the Vlaams Blok, having previously held high office in the VMO.

The new VMO became associated with a series of attacks on immigrants, Walloons and leftists as well as the organisation of annual international neo-Nazi rallies at Diksmuide, where representatives of the League of Saint George and the National States' Rights Party were amongst those in attendance. These rallies had initially been for Flemish only but in the late 1960s the VMO began to invite other rightist groups to participate and they eventually became an important annual event in the international neo-Nazi calendar.

Especially close to the League of Saint George, the two groups were part of a wider network that also included the Deutsche Bürgerinitiative in Germany, the NSDAP/AO in the USA and France's Fédération d'action nationale et européenne. The group also sought, albeit unsuccessfully, to forge links with Irish republican groups and to this end distributed leaflets in support of Bobby Sands during his 1981 hunger strike. However in a subsequent volte-face the VMO threw its lot in with Ulster loyalism and attempted to link up with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). This came to nothing either however after the UVF rejected the VMO's request that they should target Jews, with the UVF a pro-Israeli group in opposition to the pro-Palestine stance of republicans.

In the seventies, VMO gained international attention by repatriating the corpses of former collaborators of WW2 to their homeland. In Austria, a VMO commando (Operation Brevier) claimed to have dug up the corpse of the priest Cyriel Verschaeve, a leading figure of the collaboration, and buried it again in Flemish soil. The dead bodies of Staf De Clercq, the former leader of the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (Operation Delta), and Anton Mussert, the former Dutch NSB leader (Operation Wolfsangel), were also dug up and reburied in Flanders.