Brussels likes to present itself as the calm, administrative heart of Europe—an urbane capital of diplomacy, multilateralism, and bureaucratic certainty.
However, beneath the gloss of EU institutions and ministerial convoys lies a city wrestling with fractures far more profound than its official image allows. As Hamas consolidates its grip on Gaza once more, Europe’s political centre finds itself facing a quieter, more insidious danger: the potential revival of extremist ideology on its own doorstep.
The concern is not that militant groups could replicate their organisational structures within Brussels, it is that their narratives—renewed, emboldened, and digitally exported—might find receptive audiences amid the city’s increasingly polarised populations. And if Europe’s leaders fail to grasp this risk, the continent’s symbolic capital could again become one of its most vulnerable targets.
A city still living with unresolved trauma
Brussels knows the cost of extremist contagion more intimately than most. The 2016 attacks on Zaventem Airport and Maalbeek station by Islamists, among the darkest days in modern Belgian history, left scars that the city has never fully addressed. The networks responsible did not appear overnight; they grew in the shadows of institutional confusion, competing police jurisdictions, and chronic social fragmentation.
Today, eight years later, some of those weaknesses remain uncomfortably present. This is what alarms European security officials as Hamas reasserts influence in Gaza. Not because Brussels harbours militant organisations—it does not—but because the ideological aftershocks of events abroad have historically echoed loudest here.
The battlefield is digital, not territorial
Brussels’s greatest risk is not that a foreign group could establish itself physically within the city’s diverse districts. The danger is that extremist ideology—circulated through encrypted channels, social media feeds, and foreign influencers—could take root among individuals already searching for identity, belonging, or confrontation.
Belgium’s intelligence services have long warned of “digital radicalisation pipelines” that bypass traditional surveillance structures. These pipelines can cultivate sympathies, grievances, and, in extreme cases, violent intentions without the need for physical meetings or formal networks.
The endurance of Hamas in Gaza, despite intense military pressure, may now provide a potent symbolic narrative, indeed inspiration: the idea of a small, defiant movement surviving against overwhelming odds. For those already immersed in extremist online spaces, such narratives can harden attitudes, justify hostility, or inspire imitative actions.
And Hamas already has a presence in Brussels, let us be in no doubt about that.
A vulnerable political landscape
Brussels embodies Europe’s political fragmentation more than any other capital. Belgian politics is a mosaic of linguistic divisions, federal layers, community-based authorities, and competing competencies. This institutional labyrinth often slows decision-making, dilutes accountability, and hinders coordinated security strategies.
In a city where local, regional, federal, and European authorities overlap—sometimes with conflicting mandates—extremist actors need only exploit gaps, not entire systems. This is a vulnerability Hamas’s online propagandists understand. They do not require operational capacity in Belgium; they require ambiguity and hesitation.
The result is a climate where ideological extremism can simmer without immediate detection, especially when masked as political activism or framed within the permissive boundaries of free expression.
Protests, symbolism, and the mainstreaming of militant narratives
Brussels has in recent months witnessed some of Europe’s largest demonstrations related to the conflict in Gaza. While the vast majority of participants marched peacefully, some rallies revealed worrying undercurrents: banners glorifying militant groups, slogans endorsing violence, and imagery that blurred the line between political solidarity and extremist propaganda.
This is not a reflection on communities; it is a reflection on narratives—and how effectively foreign militant organisations can insert their messaging into European public spaces. For Brussels, a city where symbolic politics shapes reality, such messaging carries disproportionate weight.
The danger is not mobilisation en masse. It is the normalisation of rhetoric once confined to extremist spaces.
A city of opportunity—and fragility
Brussels remains one of Europe’s most diverse urban centres, a feature that is both its strength and its vulnerability. The city’s social challenges—economic inequality, youth disaffection, and identity fragmentation—create openings that online extremists eagerly exploit.
Counter-terrorism analysts stress that these vulnerabilities do not reflect failings of any particular community. Rather, they reflect policy failures: years of underinvestment in integration, policing stretched thin across jurisdictions, and a chronic reluctance to confront ideological extremism until it erupts into violence.
This reluctance persists today. Belgian political leaders, wary of inflaming tensions, often steer away from discussing ideological radicalisation unless forced to do so. Meanwhile, extremist propagandists rarely display such restraint.
Europe’s capital cannot afford complacency
Brussels is not merely another city; it is the logistical, political, and symbolic centre of the European Union. An ideological threat here is magnified by proximity to EU institutions, NATO headquarters, and a diplomatic corps representing nearly every nation on earth.
Any resurgence of extremist sentiment—however marginal—carries outsized implications. Even isolated incidents can undermine confidence, embolden foreign actors, and destabilise the perception of European unity.
And this is why the revival of Hamas in Gaza, however geographically distant, cannot be dismissed. Ideology, not geography, defines modern extremist dynamics. The echoes of foreign conflicts can cross borders with ease, and Brussels’s political centrality makes it uniquely exposed to these echoes.
A warning Europe must take seriously
If Europe refuses to confront the ideological implications of Hamas’s survival, it risks repeating the mistakes of a decade ago. The next threat may not come from organised cross-border networks but from individuals inspired by a renewed sense of militant triumphalism.
The unsettling truth is this: the ideological resurgence of militant groups abroad may manifest not in the Middle East, but in Europe’s own capital—in the overlooked corners of Brussels where disillusionment festers and online narratives find fertile ground.
The danger does not lie in its communities. The danger lies in its complacency. And unless Europe fully grasps the stakes, Brussels—its beating political heart—may again find itself standing on the fault line.
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