Verbeke became a public figure in 1977 when, together with the later Vlaams Blok ideologist and senator Roeland Raes, he founded the Flemish denial magazine Haro.
During this period, he also was a member of the Vlaamse Militanten Orde (Flemish Militants Order), an organisation that became notorious for its attacks on immigrants, Walloons, and socialists.
In 1993, a Belgian court sentenced Verbeke to a one-year suspended prison term for distributing pamphlets belittling the Holocaust.
In 2000, Verbeke was ordered to abstain from distributing a brochure co-authored with professor of literature Robert Faurisson that attempted to challenge the authenticity of the Diary of Anne Frank.
[citation needed] In 2004, he volunteered to be exposed to Zyklon B, the poison used in the gas chambers, as an application for the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge of the James Randi Educational Foundation.