Here is an earlier interview from December 2005 with Filip Dewinter that provides some clarity on positions that are often presented askew in leftwing blogs: Some background first from the Militant Islam Monitor….and then the interview with Dewinter:

Leader of Vlaams Belang interviewed in New York based magazine Jewish Week.

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Q: There are those who fear that first you will go after the Moroccans and
then the Jews. How do you respond?
A: This is ridiculous. You could say the same about president Bush or Tony
Blair: “First they are going after radical Islam, then they will go after
the Jews.” As if Judaïsm were an extension of Islam. In our view, Judaïsm
and Islam are absolute not two of the same kind. On the contrary, they are
foes. One has to choose sides. Which side are you on in the “war on terror”?
The side of western democracy and western civilization, with its
Judeo-Christian roots, or the side of radical Islam? The side of
Great-Britain, America and Israel, or the side of Iran, Sudan and the
Taliban?

Q: There are those who say Jews should not be voting for a party that
espouses xenophobia. Your reaction?
A: “Xenophobia” is not the word a would use. If it absolutely must be a
“phobia” let it be “islamophobia”. Yes, we’re afraid of Islam. The
islamisation of Europe is a frightening thing. Even distinguished Jewish
scholars as Bat Ye’or and Bernard Lewis warned for this. If this historical
process continues, the Jews will be the first victims. Europe will became as
dangerous for them as Egypt or Algeria. So, I return your question. Should
Jews vote for a party that wants to stop the spread of Islam in Europe?

Q: Last year your former party was banned by the Supreme Court for racism.
People say that you have just changed the name of your party, that little
else has been changed and that many of the same people are in it. Is that
true?
A: Yes, that is true. We have not changed so much since our conviction.
Indeed, we were convicted. But the conviction was a sham. It was a political
process, aimed at curtailing an opposition party. In the United States,
judges are independent. Even the president himself could not influence a
judge, let alone the Supreme Court. But in Belgium the judiciary is a tool
in the hands of the government. All judges are appointed by the three
political parties that govern the country since World War I. Some judges are
strong enough to shrug off the political pressure, but that’s exceptional.
The separation of powers is just fiction. The laws used in this conviction
were specially concocted to eliminate our party. In the United States, we
would have been acquitted under the First Amendment protecting free speech.
Stephan Pollard, one of Tony Blair’s Jewish advisors wrote a very good
column about this juridical sham: “I’ve seen the future, it’s scary and it’s
Belgium.” In the Cour the Cassation the judiciary discovered the dossier
with the indictment had disappeared. Not just one document, but the whole
indictment. Hundreds of pages. They had lost it. In a constitutional state,
the conviction should have been reversed for matters of procedure. In
Belgium, there was no problem. This conviction proves another thing: the
plaintiffs had gone over all our publications with a fine-tooth comb: each
article in our party magazine, each political flyer, each book, each essay,
looking for forbidden opinions. They accused us of inciting hatred towards
Muslims, Arabs, Turks. Of course, these accusations were unfair. But even
such biased opponents couldn’t find a single word that could be interpreted
as anti-Semitic. A so-called neo nazi-party that in twenty years never
utters one bad word against Jews. Is that possible? Yes, we are
right-wingers. Just as Ariel Sharon, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher
are right-wingers. But this doesn’t mean they - or we - are anti-Semites.

Q: It is said that your party was founded by Nazi collaborators and
Holocaust deniers and that it still attracts Holocaust deniers. What is your
reaction to them in your party and the fact that it was founded by Nazi
collaborators?
A: Do we attract Holocaust deniers or nazi’s? Well, sometimes a decent women
attracts evil men, not because of her own deeds, but because her good name
has been blackened by slander. This is our problem too: all Belgium
governments have depicted us as nazi’s in their propaganda. Of course some
people believe this propaganda. And of course some youths with nazi
sympathies think we are their allies. But we are not. They are not welcome.
Such propaganda can be self fulfilling. There are some very small nazi
groups in Belgium, but they hate us. They say we are the accomplices of
international jewry and that we betrayed nationalism in return for jewish
money, that we kowtow for international Zionism, and so on. You certainly
know that kind of slander.

Our party was founded in 1978. It originated from the Volksunie. This was a
respectable party: in 1978 it took part in a Belgium government coalition.
Would our mainstream parties (social democrats and Christian democrats) make
coalitions with a party founded by Nazi collaborators? Many political
heavyweights in the liberal party and the Christian democrats began their
careers in the Volksunie. Not one of our “founding fathers” has collaborated
with nazism. Our founder, Karel Dillen was just seventeen when WWII ended.
He had not collaborated. As a political party, we have clean hands.

It’s is true however, that before WWII, all political movements in Belgium -
including the Flemish patriotic movement - have made fatal mistakes in
dealing with nazism. But before the war, before the truth about the shoah
became clearly visible, this was a mistake many people made. Before the war,
Flemish nationalism was politically divided. There were two parties, the VNV
and the Verdinaso. In hindsight, it’s easy to see that they made many
mistakes. Their most fatal mistake was their inability to discern the ugly,
totalitarian face of national-socialism. Another shameful weakness was their
indulgence towards the omnipresent anti-Semitism of the interbellum. This
was not the murderous, hateful anti-Semitisme of Goebbels and Hitler, but is
was bad enough. It was not typical for the Flemish movement either. That
low-level anti-Semitism was omnipresent. In France it was even worse. All
political parties in Belgium were more or less infected. Even the royal
family, even the socialists, even many of the resistance movements who
fought the German occupation. They were no Eichmans, but they didn’t like
the Jews.
We are not glorifying the VNV or the Verdinaso. But we can’t deny history.
They were our historical ancestors. Not our fathers, but still our
grandfathers. That doesn’t mean we will repeat their mistakes. When the
Germans invaded Belgium in May 1940, the Verdinaso leadership asked all
party members to volunteer in the Belgium army, and to fight the invaders
tooth and nail. Those men are our political ancestors too. Yes, it’s true
the VNV leadership collaborated with the Germans. But it’s also true the
Verdinaso leadership didn’t. The first truth is often used to discredit us.
The second truth is almost forgotten.
We can’t change the past. We can’t deny the dark spots in our history. But
we are not prisoners of that history. This bitter experience has been a
sobering lesson. We will never ever again believe the false promises of
totalitarism. One could only wish the left-wingers had learned that lesson
too.

In 2002, the Democratic Party celebrated the hundred-year old Strom Thurmond
and Trent Lott came under fire for having made some positive remarks about
Thurmonds political views. An evil interpretation could be that the
Democratic Party hasn’t changed a bit, that it’s still secretly supporting
segregation, and the Jim Crow-laws. Every American knows such allegations
are nonsense. Every American knows the Democratic Party has tremendously
changed since Strom Thurmond’s days. But that’s just the way mr. Marinower,
the left-wingers and the Muslims are making stupid allegations about us,
using seventy-year-old quotations to “proof” we are racists, anti-Semites or
even national-socialists. For this people, everyone who’s not a left-winger
is a fascist or a national-socialist. In their perverted view of history,
there’s no distinction between Eichman, president Bush, general Schwartzkopf
and Ariel Sharon. All damned nazi’s. Haven’t you Americans experienced the
same thing? Haven’t the Israeli’s experienced the same thing? The Democratic
Party in the South has changed. Well, the Flemish movement has changed too.
Even more so. The Democratic Party still exists. The old Flemish political
parties that became entangled in collaboration in WWII have ceased to exist.
Their Strom Thurmonds are dead. We are not even their political children. We
are their grandchildren at most. But for mr. Marinower, that makes no
difference. This is as stupid as identifying the Democratic Party with Strom
Thurmond.

Q: Mr. Marinower compares your party to the Ku Klux Klan and says your party’s
quest for votes based on protecting the Jews is comparable to the KKK
defending the Jews in America.
A: In the past the KKK was responsible for the killing of Afro-Americans,
and for inciting hatred towards Jews and even roman-catholics. If such
people would pretend to be “protecting” their former victims, this would be
in stark contradiction with their deeds and words in the past. No one would
believe this, and with good reason. Blood is thicker than water, and deeds
are stronger than words. If the deeds contradict the words, believe the
deeds, don’t believe the words. You can apply this to Arafat, the PLO, the
Palestinian Autority or the KKK. Look at their terrible deeds. But we haven’t
such a criminal record. We have never written anti-Semitic texts. You may
examine all our publications since the day our party was founded. You won’t
find any attacks against Jews or Judaism. On the contrary. Very often we
were the only political group defending Israel, both in publications and in
parliament.

Q: Your party proposed naming a street in Antwerp for one of the worst nazi
collaborators. Who was that and why do it?
A: It was not “my party” that took this initiative. It was a personal,
individual initiative of one of our local councillors. He withdrew his
proposal when he came to the conclusion that it was too provocative.

Q: You are said to have on your desk two pictures in which you are shaking
hands with Le Pen and Haider. Why display those two photos? What does it say
about you that you have selected those two pictures to highlight on your
desk?
A: Such photo’s exist of course. But they are not on display in my office.
We have contacts with Haiders en Le Pens parties. On issues as immigration,
we even have common ground. But we don’t like Haiders kowtowing for
dictators as Saddam Hoessein or Khadaffi. We don’t like Le Pens typically
French views of centralisation, we don’t like his anti-Americanism and we
absolutely don’t like his anti-Jewish provocations. Just as almost all
French politicians, he has this disastrous illusion that it’s France’s
destiny to have a special, privileged relation with the Islamic world. This
explains the French’s biased political position against Israel. This
explains their alliance with Saddam Hoessein, their support of Khomeiny when
he was preparing to topple the shah. Le Pen shares this views, and we don’t
like that at all. He is not the monster the leftists say he is. But I am not
identifying with him. We are certainly no holocaust deniers. In Belgian
parliament we supported the law who punishes holocaust denial. Recently we
even published an article in our party magazine about Raoul Wallenberg, who
saved ten of thousands of Hungarian Jews. In our party magazine, we
repeatedly denounced arsons against synagogues and violence and racist
insults against Jewish people, even when most of the mainstream press kept
silent about this, because the perpetrators were Muslim youths. That’s an
indication too: our party is very strong in Antwerp. We have more than 100
000 voters there. There were many attacks against Jews in Antwerp: a car
bomb, a grenade attack on a school bus with Jewish children, some murders
and attempted murders, and many, many cases of harassing, insult and
intimidation. But the perpetrators were invariably Muslim youths or foreign
Muslim terrorists. In thirty years, not one of our militants ever committed
even one anti-Semitic act. These are not empty words. These are facts. You
can check them. Ask the Jews in Antwerp. This is at least a strong
indication that we are no anti-Semites. Mr. Marinower says we are evil guys,
just pretending to be decent right-wingers. People can play a misleading
role for some years. But is it possible that tens of thousands of people
play a misleading role for almost thirty years?

Q:You referred during a debate with Claude Marinower to Ariel Sharon and
said he was Mr. Marinower’s prime minister. He is not Israeli, why call him
Mr. Marinower’s prime minister?
A: I admit I was wrong. This was a slip of the tongue. I said “your prime
minister”. I should have said “Israel’s prime minister”. This hasn’t any
political relevance. Of course I know the difference between “Jews” and
“Israeli’s”. I will defend both of them: the Jews in the Diaspora in Europe,
and the Jews in Israel. Both are under siege. Both have the same enemy:
militant islam, with it’s anti-Semitic core.

A: Mr. Marinower says he will follow you wherever you go and tell people who
you really are. Your reaction?
Q: Well, he has the right to do so. Of course he will not tell who I really
am. He will depict me as a anti-Semite and a notorious nazi. Mr. Marinower
views are distorted by hate. But he directs his hate towards the wrong
people. The Jews have enough real enemies. Mr. Marinower would better fight
the real anti-Semites. Now he’s spending all his energy in a war against an
imaginary foe. He could use some of that energy to fight Israel’s enemies in
his own party. Vincent Van Quickenborne, now secretary of state for mr.
Marinower’s VLD, a few years ago had a friendly encounter with sheik Yassin,
the Hamas chief. Van Quickenborne wished the sheik “good luck”. Good luck in
killing more Israeli children? Mr. Marinower never protested, at least not
in public. And a VLD-senator said about the Israeli “occupation” of Samaria
and Judea: “If a new holocaust would occur, the Jews have to blame it on
themselves.” Could Mr. Marinower clean up his own house first?

A: What do you think of Europe’s pro-Palestinian tilt?
Q: It frightens me. Europe pays lip service to the great principles of human
rights, democracy, and rule of law. Israel is the only democracy in that
part of the world, the only constitutional state. It’s the only nation that
respect the freedom of religion, even for the Arab Muslim within it’s
borders. Every decent person, every dedicated democrat should defend Israel
tooth and nail. But the Europeans do the opposite. They betray all their
principles. The European politicians are kowtowing for the Arab dictators,
for leaders of rogue states, for terrorists. The European Union subsidizes
the Palestinian Authority with billions of euros and big chunks of that
money are directly transferred to terrorist groups. And it’s not the
Palestinians alone. If the European Union had had his way, Saddam Hoessein
and maybe even the Taliban would still be in power. The European Union
repeats the mistakes Chamberlain and Daladier made in dealing with Hitler:
they permanently try to appease dictators. They don’t use that damned word
“appeasement” but that’s the bottom line of their politics towards radical
Islam. Appeasement towards Iran. Appeasement towards Hamas, Hezbollah and
the Al Aqsa Brigades. And finally appeasement towards the rise of Islam in
Europe itself.