The language border

Systematic discrimination of working-class people by the French-speaking elite had led to great social inequality. The freedom of language in Belgium was used by the government as the right to use French, as Dutch was not regarded as a proper language. Flemish people who did not speak French – the majority of people in Belgium – were treated as second-class citizens.

The most extreme way to belittle people is to use language as intellectual warfare. Flemish people spoke only Dutch, which kept them from being able to understand their rights under the rule of law and raise their social status, as education too was only in French.