The irresistible grace of Rutte IV
The Netherlands getting into the habit of being a nation under arrest
Between being the bearer of bad news & being Dutch, it used to be some challenge to decide which casts the greater pall. Nowadays, History has resolved the drama of morality & hard luck, they are one & the same, as you will learn from my second report from the future of Europe!
The Netherlands has just seen the formation of a new cabinet—or rather a continuation of the demissionary (a word I might have considered substituting for “lollipops” if I thought it made any difference) Rutte III cabinet1. The quitting doesn’t quit here, & life goes on lifelessly: Our country has been in lockdown for the holidays & beyond, a decision that was made nowhere else in Europe.
I ended my previous report, Death at the Dutch protests, with some predictions that have been borne out in the unfortunate meantime: The Dutch gov’t is putting caveats on the right to protest, the people are still protesting, & the police apparently are damned tired of it—let’s talk about last week’s protest, on January 2nd.
The protest in Museum Square in Amsterdam was very much a different story from the hooligan riots last month, where there were many underaged teenagers & soccer fans. The January 2nd protest was organized by “Samen voor NL “ (Together for the Netherlands), a prominent activist organization in the age of the plague, which I joined on one occasion, for one of their marches in the town of Utrecht. Here’s the summary of our activity in favor of nation, democracy, & our own freedom: We gathered in a park where the Forum for Democracy party was holding a rally for the occasion, we then looped around town, & soon enough came back for some awkward reggae music. It’s a small town.
I suppose there are really two languages available to the Dutch generations Boom-Z for describing political conflicts: World War II analogies & nostalgia for the hippie years. A bit of a somber picture, really—if the two had to face off, I daresay the jackboots would win. Often, these are images of state & society respectively, as when the mayor of Amsterdam2 recently prohibited the protest on the Museum Square, reminding ordinary people that their presence in public life is subject to authoritative decisions. As strange as the ordinary pretense that citizens will fearlessly confront authority to stand up for what’s right—unlike in the bad old Nazi occupation days—is the extraordinary legal reasoning apparently needed by authority to reduce people to house arrest: The gov’t prohibited this protest against draconic lockdown rules out of fear that the rules may be broken by the protesters, which would of course unleash a new plague. The Rutte gov’t, as you see, could teach Pharaoh a thing or two about crowd control…
The masquerade continued when organizers Together for the Netherlands declared that they were not going to have a protest, since that would be illegal, but instead they were all going to have coffee in Museum Square. Hot coffee would not melt the mayor’s heart, either—the prohibition continued. Then the Forum for Democracy party decided it was time to get more serious, to turn civic protest into political protest, so they announced that they were going to have an official rally on January 2nd.3 Surely, that would be much more difficult to prohibit, escalationist intrigues notwithstanding. No luck. Museum Square was officially deemed a safety hazard area, as announced by the large signs with flashing text that have become a staple for these kinds of protests. I will liberally translate: “If you walk here, we will beat you.” (See more video footage in this Twitter thread. The account put forward in this thread is confirmed by others present at the event.)
Now, the blow by blow, if you will: Protesters began gathering in Museum Square around noon. The police frisked as many people as they could. Heavy riot police presence, several vans & nearly 20 cavalrymen. You could say they came out of left field: the ME, the Dutch riot police had announced a strike the previous week.4 They were wheeled in from all over the country, since the protest had been prohibited by the mayor. Around 12:30 PM, the police started signaling the crowd to head down the Van Baerlestraat: “On orders of the mayor, you are to leave the square or we will use violence“. Van Baerlestraat is the only street that the police had not blocked off—a riot police barricade had already been set up by the intersection with the Paulus Potterstraat, to the right of the Stedelijk museum. The protesters were walking into a knuckle sandwich, soon to become cornered beef. At least 10,000 (I’ve heard estimates up to 40,000) participated in the protest. Slowly but surely, the massive crowd was moving down van Baerlestraat in compliance with police directions. Nevertheless, an emergency order was announced on by the mayor around 12:57 PM: The riot police in Museum Square was to clear the crowd, drive them down the van Baerlestraat. The Royal Marechaussee, the Dutch military police,5 were also present to keep the square off-limits to any others looking to gather & join the protest. Needless to say, such elaborate, official, police control of the public space is highly unusual, & indicative of the political climate. This video (facebook link), shot around 12:45 PM, mere minutes before the emergency order, shows both the charge of the riot police (later justified on account of “the protesters not leaving”) on an empty Museum Square & the arrival of the royal military police, setting up barricades. What a sight: The army is marching on the capital.
“Grim“, as Dutch media like to put it. “A cornered cat makes odd leaps“, so goes a Dutch saying. By that same token however, cats are no more predictable when they have you cornered. Protesters heading down the designated street (to repeat, all other possible exits were blocked off) were already being met with shields & batons. The police brought their fluffy mascot, too! There’s quite a bit of footage going around: Whether they’re throwing random people to the dogs or beating old men, it ain’t a good look for our boys in brown. Though not the most shocking, the one video in particular I think is damning is one where the police are clearly shown initiating a battle by attacking a vanguard of veterans, often present at protests to stand between the crowd & the police. Three veterans were arrested during these scuffles. Those jeans coming from behind riot police lines should give the reader pause—recall the undercover police, the “Romeos” from my Rotterdam report. The video shows a gang of masked men trying to start a fight and beat up civilians—their official purpose is to prevent riots. Why are they charging in? What were the police even doing lined up there if the (clearly planned) charge in Museum Square was supposed to lead the crowd down this street?
What saved the protesters was their immense number. This video shows protesters passing through the barricade & out of the mosh pit. The veterans managed to create a corridor for the others to pass through safely, & encouraged the protesters to put their hands up in a show of good will. A part of the crowd continued to the Westerpark to attend the Forum for Democracy rally.6 Interestingly, the police was making way so as to lead them exactly in that direction. Inexplicably, stacks of bricks were littered across the route without any ongoing construction in sight. I don’t recall having seen that in Utrecht, but I do see a lot of photos of such stacks being visible during protests. These pallets were soon obscured by groups of protesters wary of possible escalation. There were “Romeos” present in the Westerpark also, but the veterans were able to operate more effectively this time. No bricks, no sticks: Amsterdam had seen the last of its share of violence.
In the event, 30 or so protesters were arrested. I couldn’t tell you how many people were injured besides the four police officers our media keep invoking. It’s an inexplicable number, to say no more, against a violent mob of 10,000. “Some hundreds”, “2000”, “prohibited”, “officers injured”; different headlines spell out that the political aftermath is as predictable as it was in Rotterdam, albeit with much less to show for it. The contradictory statements are baffling: Only a few protesters showed up—the masses were rabid & violent—nothing to see here—it was so awful that maybe we should no longer have protests—let’s go on like nothing happened!
What seems to bother people less than the mayhem in Rotterdam is that a scandal-ridden cabinet7 identically reconstituted itself & is sending the army onto the streets. Nothing could stand as a clearer sign of what the Dutch, to say nothing of the rest of Europe, can get, & in some important sense are used to getting. Perhaps we really think that our authorities are entitled to use such force, & that we deserve to suffer it, too. The Calvinist Dutch are, of course, fated, & the massive turnout at this protest shows that we know it. There is a religious, if not sober sense of inevitability in our lives: The gov’t announces a lockdown which is to last about three weeks, discussions unfold in parliament about expanding Covid pass mandates, media propaganda tells the people that perhaps it is the only way, “case” numbers rise (when they don’t, they’re projected into the heavens by models), & sure enough, we’ve got no choice if we want to keep the shops & schools open.
How can it be that this way of going about things makes so much sense to so many of us? Clearly, we are given to blaming ourselves, as well as to looking to our rulers. If we trust in reason at all, we do so as in something that is the preserve of our rulers & their advisors. We stand in awe before the graphs. We anticipate the conferences as retribution for our failures. It is not a matter of policy. Our political language is increasingly in the passive voice, suggesting that enacting epidemic measures & thus completely overturning all civil order is something that just happens to us, & is perhaps bound to happen to us—we certainly cannot act. Yet even as it looms over us, we are to be saved from the virus. Our demissionary cabinet so loved us that it was their wish to decree it: The Dutch people are saved from death. Indeed, it turns out that nothing can get in the way of our salvation: No civil disobedience, no protests, no elections. Even as the Dutch find themselves in total depravity, we live under the irresistible grace of Rutte IV.
New elections after cabinet crisis really only have the status of a convention, which dates back only to the 1970s. You could say formation politics is more deeply ingrained in Dutch character than voting, suggesting that the governors are more important than the governed even when it comes to consent to the act of governing… I would argue that when a cabinet no longer can remain credible to its subjects, it is no longer legitimate. But we are treated to the absurdity of Rutte IV’s avowed “new culture of governance“ when it consists of the same people.
Mayor Femke Halsema launched her political career in the Green party as third candidate on the list, in the 1998 elections. She soon made a name for herself as proponent of looser migration policy. Her first prominent role was that of vice chair in Balkenende I. By 2003, she was the only candidate left on the list for the greens. In 2010, she received the Thorbecke prize for political eloquence, as well as an election as “Best candidate for Prime Minister“ by Intermediair, a Dutch website that is or was of some import among higher educated professionals. In 2018, she became mayor of Amsterdam, carrying on the noble work of turning Dutch cultural heritage into a narco paradise. She rightly prohibited the BLM protest last year, though she nobly showed up to participate in it. Now she achieves apotheosis by wielding the police power of the state against ordinary people!
Furthermore, there are new laws being passed that give the gov’t some leeway to prohibit legal persons. The Forum for Democracy party is one of the primary examples given to justify the introduction of such laws. As the great poet, our minister of health puts it: “Words have consequences“. The consequence is silence.
Several police unions had intended a strike for the riot police. One representative said that “flexibility had worn out“ among the police. There have been lots of protests & even some riots in the last two years. Riot officers in particular have to spend hours in a van to get to their destination. Police salaries are uninspiring; needless to say, these days, it’s especially ungrateful work.
Of course there’s more to it than crankiness. There are a lot of problems with the Dutch police, which is why there is an initiative called Police for Freedom coming from within the police, mostly from old-timers who have been watching the changes in police habits with worry. Increasingly, there is an unaccountability that makes this kind of violence possible, to say nothing of the “Romeos.”
An addition to military police during protests. There are a few instances of Marines being used as cleanup squads.
With regard to Forum for Democracy, I can also report that antifa threw a paint bomb at their office during the protest. Video footage shows the police are uninterested. Perhaps they mistook them for “Romeos…” Here are antifa also provoking Forum voters in the Westerpark. Nothing came of it. Indeed, you could say they got somewhat of an escort.
The proximate cause for the resignation of Rutte III is a tax affair. Some 26,000 people, mostly poor parents, were declared frauds over a number of years because they had applied for childcare benefits & forced to pay back sums of money they could ill afford; it took the better part of a decade for this to become a public scandal in 2019. To add insult to injury, CDA politician Pieter Omtzigt, who was asking questions about this affair in parliament, was revealed by a candid picture of a file to have been placed in a “position elsewhere.” The president lied blatantly about this all in Parliament as long as he could, & then simply said he had ‘misremembered’. These are the words of a man who knows it matters not. Sigrid Kaag of centrist party D(emocrats)66 had sworn not to form a cabinet with him for this reason, & then proceeded to do so anyway when the time came. “Here our ways part” spoke a woman who knew it mattered not. These same politicians will bring us a “new culture of governance” & the people know it matters not.
"…what we say as citizens has no importance whatsoever, since political actions will be decided in an indeterminate place. …If the process continues, we will soon leave behind the representative regime... This command will no longer be that of the State, which at least occupied an elevated place, but that of the rule, the rule of indeterminate origin. One does not know where the rule comes from, only that one must obey it." Pierre Manent, Metamorphoses of the City (2013), p. 12.
Right Said Fred: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMORdmG-jgA&ab_channel=RIGHTSAIDFREDUK