Frida Ghitis
When riots erupted across the Netherlands last weekend against a new coronavirus lockdown, the scenes of mayhem triggered a cascade of emotions. “My city is crying, and so am I,” said John Jorritsma, the mayor of Eindhoven, the country’s fifth-largest city, contemplating the damage from all the violence. But the sentiment was not just sadness. Furious, and perhaps a bit frightened, Jorritsma called the rioters “the scum of the Earth” and warned that the country could be “on our way to civil war.”The protests in nearly a dozen Dutch cities erupted under the banner of rejecting stricter measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, including a curfew—from 9 p.m. to 4:30 a.m.—imposed by the government in an effort to protect the country from the more contagious and perhaps deadlier U.K. variant of the coronavirus. The pandemic has left more than 13,700 people dead in the Netherlands, and led to about a million confirmed infections.
A closer look at last weekend’s turmoil, however, suggests that it was triggered by something more than a spontaneous explosion of pandemic frustration. While exasperation with the extended COVID-related hardships is genuine, the violence that tore across the Netherlands is evidence that political players with their own agendas are exploiting this crisis. Right-wing politicians and, more alarmingly, extreme far-right organizations are both taking advantage of the pandemic and the Dutch government’s ongoing efforts to control the spread of the virus to disrupt the country’s democratic system, grow their ranks of supporters and hone their skills at sparking violence.
The Dutch protests started last Saturday, as the deadline for the curfew approached, and continued into Monday. Gangs of youngsters started attacking police, throwing ignited fireworks, stones and even knives. In the city of Enschede, rock-throwing rioters smashed hospital windows. In Urk, they torched a coronavirus testing site. Across the country, including in Amsterdam, they engaged in pitched clashes with police, while looting and destroying shops. Police arrested hundreds of people. The mayhem spun so far out of control that authorities had to call in the military police to help put it down.
The Netherlands had not experienced this kind of street violence in four decades. The question is why it occurred now.
The Dutch government’s response to the coronavirus has, in fact, been milder than many others in Europe—one of the reasons why the country has one of the highest infection rates in the world. With the number of cases spiking and hospitals already filling up last fall, a poll back in October showed that two-thirds of the Dutch, in fact, wanted the government to tighten restrictions.
The government did, enacting the first curfew since World War II. By then, though, right-wing politicians had long been criticizing the pandemic restrictions, as they have in the United States and elsewhere in Europe and around the world, hoping to boost their standing among citizens skeptical of the virus and chafing under public health guidelines.
Other, more fringe groups in the Netherlands also complained. A man named Willem Engel started an organization called “Virus Madness,” later renamed “Virus Truth,” which, among other absurd ideas, has argued that the coronavirus does not spread through close contact and advocates more hugging instead.
But the most disturbing critics of Dutch coronavirus measures—and the real instigators of the recent violence—are extreme far-right groups such as Pegida, an anti-immigrant organization that started in Germany and has spread to other European countries, including the Netherlands. Pegida, the German acronym for “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West,” has enjoyed tacit support from Moscow, with its message and events boosted by Russian media. Ruptly, a Berlin-based video outfit that is owned by RT, the Kremlin-backed news network, routinely livestreams Pegida events, in keeping with President Vladimir Putin’s own tactical exploitation of the pandemic, part of his ongoing campaign against liberal democracy in the West.
While exasperation with COVID is genuine, the violence in the Netherlands is evidence that political players with their own agendas are exploiting this crisis.
Early in the pandemic, the European Union’s foreign policy arm, the European External Action Service, concluded in a report that Russia, through both its state media and other pro-Kremlin outlets, was deploying “a significant disinformation campaign” about the coronavirus, in order “to aggravate the public health crisis in Western countries.” Russia’s tactics and goals are familiar, the EU warned, “in line with the Kremlin’s broader strategy of attempting to subvert European societies.”
This disinformation dovetailed neatly with the goals of extreme, far-right groups such as Pegida and other less extreme right-wingers across the continent. In Germany, anti-lockdown protests have reportedly been spearheaded by “militant neo-Nazis.” During a large rally against coronavirus measures last summer, far-right protesters in Berlin tried to enter the Reichstag, the German parliament—an assault that brings to mind the events of Jan. 6 in Washington.
These groups are weaponizing dissatisfaction and anger over pandemic restrictions, steering demonstrations toward violence. Is that what just happened in the Netherlands?
The Dutch protests were organized mostly across social media platforms, such as Telegram, Snapchat and others. Pegida was one of the groups calling on the Dutch to turn out, but it wasn’t the only one. The crowds looked familiar to those who have watched football hooligans go on rampages after matches. In fact, Dutch officials and other observers called many of the rioters just that: “hooligans.”
The crowds were whipped up by misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric from familiar, more mainstream right-wing figures, such as Geert Wilders and Thierry Baudet. The younger Baudet, trying to recover from a catastrophic crisis in the party he created, has seized on the pandemic to try to rebuild his political career. Bullhorn in hand, he tried to rile up supporters during a rally against coronavirus restrictions back in October.
But while these right-wing politicians are seeking to boost their political prospects, extremists have something else and more dangerous in mind: channeling popular frustrations over the pandemic to build up their ranks, incite violence and disrupt the social order. It’s a perfect witches’ brew, with football hooligans bursting with unspent anger and energy; populist politicians raising the pressure; anxious business owners worried about their futures; and libertarians, conspiracy theorists and assorted contrarians all wanting to push back against the government.
Perhaps many of the people out protesting were just there to show their unhappiness with the new coronavirus curfew, but they were also tools in the hands of others. Right-wing leaders inflamed passions and bored youths got to let out some steam, while political extremists, hoping to shake up and undermine the system, blended into the crowd, turning the protests into an explosion of violence. There’s no chance the Netherlands will have a civil war any time in the foreseeable future. But the rioters did manage to give the country a reason to cry, worry and be angry. Everyone took notice.
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