When Dead Parties Use Antisemitism as a Defibrillator

There are political parties that evolve. And there are those that collapse so completely that only shock therapy remains.

Gwendolyn Rutten—former minister, former party leader, once the face of Flemish liberalism—now seems to preside over something closer to a political afterlife than a living movement. The party she led was not just another formation. It was a pillar. It stood for free markets, individual responsibility, and a clear ideological backbone. It was also, for years, a party in which many Flemish Jews placed their trust—some even standing on its lists, contributing to its success.

That party is now reborn under a new name: ANDERS. Different. The name is accurate, if unintentionally so. Because what remains today is unrecognizable.

The shift is not a nuance. It is a rupture. A party once anchored in liberal economics has drifted leftward in search of oxygen, abandoning the very principles that defined it. When ideology evaporates, strategy replaces it. And when strategy fails, provocation enters the room.

In a crowded left-wing landscape, where competition is fierce and attention spans are short, one currency always circulates efficiently: outrage. And in parts of Europe, antisemitic undertones—subtle or otherwise—have proven to be a disturbingly reliable tool.

Rutten’s recent rhetoric around the Eurovision Song Contest fits uncomfortably into that pattern. Suggesting boycott, invoking narratives about money and influence tied to Jewish-linked entities—this is not clumsy phrasing. It is calibrated provocation. It taps into old reflexes, old suspicions, old prejudices that Europe should have buried long ago.

Let’s be precise: criticism of events, sponsors, or governments is legitimate. But when the framing leans on insinuations about “who controls” and “who pays,” it stops being critique and starts echoing something far older—and far darker.

This is not reinvention. It is resuscitation by defibrillator—high voltage, high risk, and rarely sustainable.

Because here lies the paradox: in trying to compete with parties further to the left, by adopting sharper and more aggressive rhetoric, you don’t gain credibility—you lose identity. You don’t revive a movement—you hollow it out.

And worse, you normalize a language that should remain politically toxic.

Europe has seen this before. When mainstream actors begin flirting with narratives once confined to the fringes, the boundaries shift. What was once unthinkable becomes debatable. What was debatable becomes acceptable.

Rutten may have succeeded in one objective: getting back into the headlines. But attention is not legitimacy. Noise is not revival.

If this is the strategy to bring a “dead” party back to life, it is a dangerous one. Because defibrillators do not create life—they only attempt to restore it. And when there is nothing left to restore, all that remains is the shock.

Europe does not need political undead—movements animated not by principles, but by opportunism and resentment.

Some things, once buried, are better left undisturbed.