Annelotte Janse is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam, Germany. Her research focuses on the transnationalization and radicalization of the (non-)violent far right between 1945 and 1990 in Western Europe and beyond. She currently investigates the relationship between far-right (semi-)public events and movement mobilization.
- Annelotte Janse: Der „Reichsbürger“-Putsch: Das Werk von Fantasten? In: Thomas Weber/Philipp Ruch (Hg.), Wenn das Gestern anklopft: Weimar und die Wiederkehr der Geschichte, Freiburg 2025.
- Annelotte Janse: The Pursuit of “White Security”. Transnational Entanglements between West German and American Right-Wing Extremists, 1961-1980. PhD thesis, Utrecht University 2024. https://doi.org/10.33540/2302.
- Annelotte Janse: From Letters to Bombs. Transnational Ties of West German Right-Wing Extremists, 1972–1978, in: Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression 14/3 (2022), pp. 241-58. https://doi.org/10.1080/19434472.2021.1942133
More Than a “Fascist Disneyland”: The Yzer Pilgrimage and a Transnationalizing Western European Extreme Right (1960s-1980s)
The defeat of National Socialism in 1945 did not extinguish the European extreme right; instead, it re‑emerged and reorganized across national frontiers, including through highly public events. One such event was the annual IJzerbedevaart (Yzer Pilgrimage) in Diksmuide, Belgium. Originally a landmark of nationalist commemoration of the fallen Flemish soldiers of World War I, from the mid-1960s the IJzerbedevaart began to attract extreme-right sympathizers as well. These included members of the League of St. George, British Movement, Vlaamse Militanten Orde, CEDADE, and youth groups such as Viking Youth and Bund Heimattreuer Jugend. They converged on Diksmuide to chant battle songs, march in uniform, and, in the words of a contemporary observer, thereby transformed the town into a ‘fascist Disneyland’. Beyond nostalgic spectacle, the IJzerbedevaart also helped these extreme-right participants to ‘recharge their batteries in a carnivalesque atmosphere’.
While journalists and anti-fascist activists have reported on the clashes and controversies surrounding the event, its systematic role in consolidating a transnational extreme-right movement remains under-examined. This paper fills that gap by analyzing the IJzerbedevaart as a site of ideological performance and mobilization. It does so by addressing three sub-questions: 1) What led extreme right groups to Diksmuide? 2) How did their participation in the IJzerbedevaart change over time? 3) How did these groups report on their experiences afterwards? Drawing on correspondences and propaganda materials of Flemish, Dutch, German, British, Spanish, Scandinavian, and American actors, I unpack the meaning and significance of the annual get-together for the extreme right, gauging how the IJzerbedevaart facilitated the mobilization of and exchange within an increasingly transnationalizing extreme-right movement in Western Europe between the 1960s and 1980s.