Key facts
- Founder
- Léon Degrelle
- Founded
- 2 November 1935 ( 1935-11-02 )
- Dissolved
- 30 March 1945 ( 1945-03-30 )
- Split from
- Catholic Party
- Newspaper
- Le Pays Réel
- Paramilitary wing
- Formations de Combat
- Ideology
- Belgian fascism
- Political position
- Far-right
- Religion
- Roman Catholicism
- Colours
- Red Black
- Anthem
- Vers l'avenir , ( literal translation</span>"}]]}'>lit. ' Towards the future ' )
via Wikipedia infobox
~16 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Rexist Party, 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').
The highest electoral achievement of the Rexist Party was 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 Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (Flemish for 'Flemish National Union') (VNV) in Flanders. By the war's end, Rex was widely discredited and banned following the liberation.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Rex Popular Front” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.