Dries Van Langenhove was the far right party's golden boy until a journalist ended up joining him for 6 months and made a scathing report on him back in 2018 which caused him to be prosecuted under anti-racism laws. He basically was radicalizing Belgian youth through Discord and other social media
The English wiki on him hasn't been updated yet, so I'll link that along with a translated part that's now on the Dutch wiki. Felt like it was a thing I should share here with what's been going on in the US the past few years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dries_Van_Langenhove
What follows is from the link above.
In 2017, Van Langenhove set up a youth movement called Schild & Vrienden [nl] which shared right-wing memes and participated in political demonstrations. An investigation by Belgian TV show Pano and journalist Tim Verheyden [nl] found that members of the group were sharing racist, antisemitic and sexist content and memes on secret Facebook and Discord groups. In these groups, Verheyden also encountered posts promoting violence as well as references to Nazi Germany.[12] The group was also investigated under potential breaches of the 1981 anti-racism law.[13] As a result of the investigation Van Langenhove, who denied involvement in sharing content in any of the groups, was temporarily suspended as a student by the university of Ghent.[3]
November 25, 2020, the judicial investigation was concluded by investigating judge Annemie Serlippens and communicated to the public prosecutor's office. The public prosecutor's office then asked the Chamber of Representatives to refer Van Langenhove to the criminal court. On 21 January 2021 the public prosecutor's office asked parliament to lift the parliamentary immunity of Van Langenhove due to an investigation into breaching of the anti-racism law, the Belgian Holocaust denial law and weapon law.[14] Van Langenhoven and eight other core members of Schild en Vrienden were to appear in the Ghent court on 25 April 2022.[15] However, Van Langenhove submitted a request of recusal against Serlippens citing political bias that she had previously liked and retweeted a poem on Twitter referring to him and former immigration minister Theo Francken as "rancid" and "fascist." Serlippens subsequently withdrew from the judicial investigation as a result and a new investigating judge was appointed.[16]
A fresh appeal made by Van Langenhove to investigate political impartiality in the trial was refused by the new judge and the Court of appeal.
In September 2021, Van Langenhove's lawyer requested that certain investigative actions against him be annulled on grounds of bias and breach of privacy.[17] In 2023, the trial against Van Langenhove and Schild & Vrienden was scheduled for September.[18]
The following is from the Dutch wiki. Didn't feel like translating myself, so I just ran it through Google Translate.
On March 12, 2024, Van Langenhove was sentenced to one year of effective imprisonment for violations of racism and discrimination legislation and ten months of suspended imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons. He also received effective fines of 16,000 euros and 8,000 euros. In addition, he was deprived of his political rights for ten years. Since Van Langenhove will appeal, the criminal court's sentence is suspended pending the appeal trial