Order of Flemish Militants

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The Order of Flemish Militants (

In 1954 the VMO became associated with the Christian Flemish People's Union (Christelijke Vlaamse Volksunie, CVV) and the more formal alliance of the People's Union (Volksunie, VU) that followed this group that same year.^[2] The VMO soon took over much of the propaganda and stewarding work for the VU although relations between the two groups became increasingly strained as the VU moved further towards a centrist position and the VMO hardened its rightist attitudes.^[5] A formal schism between the two organisations was announced in October 1963.^[3]

On 14 June 1970, a trial against the VMO was initiated after violent clashes with supporters of the

The new VMO became associated with a series of attacks on immigrants, Walloons and leftists as well as the organisation of annual international neo-Nazi rallies at Diksmuide, where representatives of the League of Saint George and the National States' Rights Party were amongst those in attendance.^[9] These rallies had initially been for Flemish only but in the late 1960s the VMO began to invite other rightist groups to participate and they eventually became an important annual event in the international neo-Nazi calendar.^[10] VMO also cooperated with Finnish Pekka Siitoin's groups that were likewise associated with right-wing terrorism for bombing and burning down a communist printing press Kursiivi and sending letter bombs to political enemies.^{[11][12][13][14]}

Especially close to the League of Saint George, the two groups were part of a wider network that also included the Deutsche Bürgerinitiative in Germany, the NSDAP/AO in the United States and France's Fédération d'action nationale et européenne.^[15] The group also sought, albeit unsuccessfully, to forge links with Irish republican groups and to this end distributed leaflets in support of Bobby Sands during his 1981 hunger strike.^[16] However, in a subsequent volte-face the VMO threw its lot in with Ulster loyalism and attempted to link up with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). This came to nothing either however after the UVF rejected the VMO's request that they should target Jews, with the UVF a pro-Israeli group in opposition to the pro-Palestine stance of republicans.^[17]

In the seventies, VMO gained international attention by repatriating the corpses of former collaborators of World War Two to their homeland. In Austria, a VMO commando (Operation Brevier) claimed to have dug up the corpse of the priest

In 1981, 106 VMO members were sentenced by the

Despite this verdict, the VMO was considered to be active and operational until the late eighties, when several similar organizations were founded to replace the VMO. The two most successful of these VMO successors are the Odal Group and Voorpost.