On the accusations by people from the CNT-AIT Belgique against our union initiative

The document, which is attached in full to this post, was authored by Jeroen from CNT-AIT Belgique with the help of Pieter Vanderwee and Johannes De Corte. Jeroen identifies himself in the document as a syndicalist and anarchist who has been active for almost 40 years, but we were unable to find even a single labour conflict he participated in. Pieter Vanderwee and Johannes De Corte, for their part, make no secret of their work with the police and NATO in so-called "anti-extremism" efforts. Pieter, for example, promotes so-called "anti-extremism" operations by Europol 1 and asks people to contact police with information on anarchist groups 2 while Johannes also makes no secret of his NATO affiliation. 3 It is quite revealing that the authors of this document don't even attempt to hide this.

How we got here

CNT-b organizes in the Belgian railways and several developments over the past couple of years have led to us arriving at this point. In January 2024, alarmed by the rising radicalism among railway workers, a regulation was passed where railway workers in operational functions have to submit to a State Security screening to basically prove their loyalty to the State. This screening is a procedure where the workers are required to sign away their privacy rights to allow State Security to verify that they don't hold beliefs considered inconsistent with the current political-economic system. A refusal to submit to this screening results in immediate dismissal. CNT-b and the railway union METISP came out in strong opposition to this regulation, with METISP filing a legal procedure with the courts against this regulation, which was largely unsuccessful.4

Almost immediately after this regulation had come into force one of the document's authors, Johannes, started doxxing several of our members and sympathizers trying to paint them as "Putin's 5th column" for their anti-war positions and criticism of the war propaganda of our government, in an attempt at getting them fired under this new regulation.5 These attempts have so far been unsuccessful. Both CNT-b and METISP have continued to be subject to a campaign at trying to paint our respective members as "extremists" or "Putinists" or "terrorist sympathizers" in similar attempts at getting them fired under this new regulation, but these attempts have also so far been unsuccessful.

A year later, starting in February 2025, tensions erupted in the railways over proposed government legislation significantly increasing the pension age. Multiple week-long strikes were held by worker-led unions and initiatives outside the institutional framework. A few weeks into this campaign the Minister of Mobility, Jean-Luc Crucke, erupted in a Senate session demanding union groups outside of the institutional framework to "stop blocking an entire country" and promising to employ special measures to counter this strike movement.6 Some of the union leaderships accepted this demand and cancelled their planned strike actions to engage in the institutional social dialogue instead, with only CNT-b and METISP continuing to argue for and organize further worker-led direct strike action. This resulted in an even more intensified campaign against the CNT-b and METISP, with the latter even having its right to file strike notices de facto revoked by executive decision.7

It is at this point that we arrive at the current document being circulated among the IWA-AIT sections and beyond, representing the latest step in the State's effort to disrupt and undermine radical syndicalist initiatives in the railways. We will now turn our attention to the actual contents of the document which we will dissect as an interesting educational exercise on how such disruption campaigns are actually done. In the interest of brevity we will not address literally every baseless accusation that is being made but focus on the more educational ones.

The railway strike of 2016

A lot of ado is made about the railway strike of 2016 and CNT-b's involvement in it, which is rather curious since the document's authors did not participate in this strike and had nothing to do with it and, through their claims, demonstrate their abject lack of knowledge of even the most basic facts of this strike. In the morning of 25 May 2016 a wildcat strike broke out in some of the railway workplaces which quickly spread throughout the country during the rest of the day, resulting in railway traffic pretty much having come to a halt by the evening. The strike would continue for about 2 weeks before ultimately failing. The document's authors have the following to say about this strike and our involvement in it.

This [the strike explicitly calling for the fall of the government] is typical for the mythomaniac delusions Tim spreads. There was nothing even close to 'overthrowing the government... It's of an absurdity beyond words...

If these people had ever bothered to pick up a pamphlet from the union groups at the start of the strike they would have easily seen that it explicitly calls for a strike "au finish" meaning "to the fall of the government."8 The goal of this claim is to try to deradicalize the events that took place, writing radical labour conflicts out of history in an attempt to stop workers from taking inspiration from them in the future, pretending that people were on strike for no apparent goal and that it would be only "delusional mythomaniacs" who'd claim the goal of the strike was the fall of the government. One only needs to ask oneself: Who would be better suited to say what the goal of this strike was, the people spreading the pamphlets from the largest union group in the railways explicitly calling for a strike "au finish" or some self-proclaimed "syndicalist anarchists" who had no involvement whatsoever in the strike?

Regarding the use of sabotage as a method by some of the workers during this strike and CNT-b's open support for this method, the document's authors have the following to say.

CNT-b didn't exist yet {...} The 'new laws' against this wildcat strike tactics was the expected and inevitable outcome of being so public about advocating those tactics. The sabotage was done by CNT-b, not the other way around.

It is curious how a union can supposedly not exist while at the same time be responsible for anti-strike regulations because of its support for sabotage as a method. Here, of course, the document's authors again display their abject lack of knowledge about this strike. The anti-strike regulation in question, which includes fines and other administrative sanctions for workers going on strike without approval, was first used on 29 May 2016 with the support of the president of the ACOD union.9 The use of sabotage as a method in this strike and CNT-b's support for this tactic didn't occur until 2 days later in the night of 31 May 2016.10 How the former can be the outcome of the latter when it happened 2 days earlier is anyone's guess. It was, in fact, the introduction of this anti-strike regulation which heated up the situation to the point where the workers started using sabotage. The goal of this claim is to switch cause and effect, trying to blame the striking workers themselves and CNT-b in particular for anti-strike regulations, with the aim of putting the State out of the wind for its introduction of anti-strike regulations while at the same time trying to disrupt and undermine the union initiatives which openly supported the workers' response to this regulation.

Regarding one of our members being pushed into medical retirement as a result of this strike, the document's authors have the following to say.

Tim states that he pas 'forced into early retirement' because of his actions but in fact he was ill long before he ever did anything and wanted to be medically retired, was paid handsomly under existing regulations and has now a secure income at his 40-45 years old

After the strike Tim was given a choice: Either his statutory right to a fixed workplace would be revoked or he had to take early medical retirement. Revoking the right to a fixed workplace would mean that management could make him perform shifts in any part of the country on any day as they saw fit, so one day you have to do a shift in Oostende, the next day a shift in Hasselt, then a shift in Antwerp, and so on. Having been advised by a union representative that management was intending to do exactly that in retalation for him having refused to submit to a return-to-work order by the official union apparatus - a few workers had refused this order and remained on strike for another week or so until the "legal loophole" that allowed for this was closed - he wisely chose medical retirement. And as anyone who gets disability payment can attest, there is nothing "paid handsomely" about it. The goal of this claim is to put the railway management out of the wind for its manoeuvres against those who had refused to submit to a return-to-work order by the end of this strike, while at the same time claiming that people on disability are "paid handsomely" to drum up support for government plans to slash social security.

Attacks against the anti-war movement and anti-militarist conferences

The document then contains a section with attacks against the anti-war movement and anti-militarist conferences, mostly written by Johannes De Corte in an attempt to paint critics of the government's war drive and propaganda as Kremlin propagandists. It starts with a rambling attack on the anti-militarist conference on 15 November last year organized by a communist group and the largest anti-war NGO called Vrede VZW. The spokesperson of Vrede VZW, Ludo De Brabander, is accused of being a secret nazbol Putin supporter through guilt-by-association two steps removed. In particular it is claimed that he was once part of a debate panel which included another person, who in turn once had a debate with a Putin supporter. People familiar with the screeds of Alexander Reid-Ross will instantly recognize this kind of writing. The goal of this claim is to undermine any effective resistance to the government's war effort by painting the people engaged in anti-war groups as secret supporters of the "enemy country." That these campaigns come at the same time as the goverment is trying to use legal measures to shut down groups like Vrede VZW11 can hardly be considered a coincidence. Journalists with a critical attitude towards the current war propaganda such as Johan Depoortere are similarly attacked in this section.

In this section it is then further claimed that our own member Peter Terryn is supposedly a friend of the fascist Kris Roman. The evidence that is presented for this claim is that Kris Roman follows Peter Terryn on Facebook. Not only do people have no control over who follows them on social media, and this of course does not mean that they are "friends" or even know each other, but Peter has over 10.000 followers on Facebook. So presumably the document's authors should be commended for plowing through such a huge list to find some fascist in there somewhere. The goal of this claim is similarly to try to paint opponents of the government's war drive - Peter himself openly promotes the "No war between peoples, no peace between classes" position - as secret Putinists. Something which is even more ridiculous in this case as Peter has organized multiple demonstrations against Putin and his policies throughout the years.

This section then further claims that another of our members, Tim Declercq, has written Facebook posts with "conspiracy theories and inventions" that Solidarity Collectives was promoting people who were members of far-right militia groups in Ukraine. As the case happens to be, Tim himself has already linked to those Facebook posts in question in the first comment under another article on LibCom12 and anyone can easily verify for themselves that Petrovichev was indeed a member of the OUN and Samoylenko was indeed a deputy commander in the Right Sector's DUK. The goal of this claim is to cast doubt on easily verifiable information about this in an attempt at suppressing this information from becoming more widely known.

Lastly the document's authors make the following interesting claim.

Peter Terryn, known police provocateur who uses young or naive people like Tim (who has severe autism spectrum) to take risks and take the fall when things go wrong

A claim that is presented with zero evidence to back it up. Claiming that activists and movement people work with police is a common tactic known as bad-jacketing. That this claim is made in a document compiled with the help of people like Pieter Vanderwee and Johannes De Corte, who don't even hide their work with police and NATO, is extremely telling.

• 1https://ibb.co/QF9dvLXy
• 2https://ibb.co/rGN9H9tf
• 3https://ibb.co/jkvD3WgX
• 4https://metisp.be/le-journal-des-cheminots-1/screning-s-cirit.html
• 5https://www.zombak.net/identified/rascists/Terryn_Peter_001/Terryn_Peter_001.html
  https://www.zombak.net/identified/rascists/Peeters_Wouter_001/Peeters_Wouter_001.html
  https://www.zombak.net/identified/rascists/Puystjens_Franky_001/Puystjens_Franky_001.html
• 6https://newsmonkey.be/minister-jean-luc-crucke-kleine-spoorbonden/
• 7https://www.7sur7.be/belgique/hr-rail-tente-de-faire-taire-un-syndicat-percu-comme-perturbateur-preavis-de-greve-refuse-bras-de-fer-engage~a083478f/
• 8https://ibb.co/j9VrTnN1
• 9https://www.standaard.be/economie/boetes-dat-moet-dan-maar/41922339.html
• 10https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2016/06/01/verschillende_sabotageactiesophetspoorinwallonie-1-2671280/
• 11https://vrede.be/nl/nieuws/zes-geviseerde-sociaal-culturele-organisaties-stappen-naar-raad-van-state-tegen-beslissing
• 12https://libcom.org/article/collaboration-pro-war-anarchists-far-right-masks-are-or-fail-anti-authoritarian-resistance