Every Friday morning, ministers walk past a hedge of journalists at the Ministry of General Affairs. They are asked about their files – the topics usually vary widely. This Friday morning, many of the ministers mainly spoke about one topic: violence.
Violence against police, against ambulance workers, against journalists, against local politicians. Violence during protests against asylum seeker centers and during municipal elections. And above all, it was about the violence of the night before, when an attack was committed on the D66 party office in The Hague.
An explosive was pushed through the letterbox and went off. In one room next to it, a lecture from the youth department Young Democrats (JD) took place, with former top diplomat Karel van Oosterom as speaker. “We heard something being thrown inside,” said one person present NRC. His name is known to the editors and will not be mentioned for security reasons. “I looked to my right and then I saw something like fireworks going off.” After the explosion, those present had barricaded the front door and exited via an escape route. No one was injured.
That could easily have turned out differently, said D66 faction leader Jan Paternotte on Friday afternoon, in front of the damaged office door: “They were about to leave. It is a small miracle that no one was injured. If the attack had been committed a few minutes later, many people would have been in the hall. And then many people would now be in the hospital.”
All that is known about the perpetrator is that he is a 37-year-old man of no fixed abode. His motive is not clear. But the ministers make it clear one by one that they see the attack as an attack on politics.
VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz – who has been under strict security for years because she is a target of organized crime – said: “This is intended to silence people.” If that succeeds, “our democracy will simply be destroyed.”
Almost every week we see somewhere that some people think they can make their point through violence and intimidation
The attack is “the ax to the root of democracy,” said Minister of Justice David van Weel (VVD). Minister of the Interior Pieter Heerma (CDA) said: “An attack on a party office of a political party is actually always an attack on democracy.”
According to Prime Minister Rob Jetten (D66), the attack is not an isolated incident: all that violence comes from the same barrel, he said at his weekly press conference in Nieuwspoort: “I actually want to broaden it. Almost every week we see somewhere in the country that some people think they can make their point with violence and intimidation.”
Asylum demonstrations
The most noticeable are asylum demonstrations that get out of hand. For example in Loosdrecht where rioters have often clashed with the police recently.
But asylum is only a small piece. According to the Dutch Association for Councilors (NVvR) a third of council members are threatened, a doubling since 2022. And that’s not just about asylum: a man was recently convicted who wrote on Facebook that it was the Amersfoort D66 councilor Tyas Bijlholt “would look good” if he had a “bullet hole in the forehead.” Bijlholt is about parking policy.
Another example: the CNV trade union concluded in 2024 that 31 percent of care providers come into contact with physical violence, and 71 percent with verbal abuse and threats. And according to PersVeilig, the number of reports of violence or threats against journalists has increased from 121 to 262 cases per year since 2020.
The AIVD devoted a chapter to “anti-institutional extremism” in its 2025 annual report. The agency wrote: “This broad evil-elite narrative resonates within all levels of the population. A very small part of its followers poses a violent threat. They target people who allegedly represent this elite.”
Whether all these issues are connected, as Jetten believes? “I fear so,” says special professor of Polarization & Resilience Hans Boutellier of the Vrije Universiteit. “We must conclude that in the 21ste century increasingly see enemy-driven political relations.” It translates into growing “outright systemic hatred,” says Boutellier. Sometimes it focuses on politicians and other times on firefighters or paramedics during New Year’s Eve.
According to him, this seems to be due to “a technocratic system that people feel has little to do with them.” D66 – which is labeled cosmopolitan, suburban and highly educated – is seen by some as a “representative” of that system, “regardless of whether there is anything in it”.
Malieveld riots
In recent years, D66 has been the target of violence more often. During the Malieveld riots last September, the D66 party office was attacked by demonstrators waving Prinsenflags (an NSB symbol) and chanting far-right slogans. People tried to push a burning garbage container inside.
The difference between then and now, says Prime Minister Jetten, is that this fireworks bomb attack was very specifically aimed at the party office. At the time, outgoing VVD ministers Eelco Heinen (Finance) and Foort van Oosten (Justice) refused to call the violence ‘political’. This was despite the fact that the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security Van Oosten had explicitly advised against doing so, revealed NRC.
Former party leader Sigrid Kaag faced an extreme number of threats, online and physical. The low point: in 2022, a conspiracy theorist appeared in front of her home with a burning torch. The threat of violence, and how her family suffered from it, was the primary reason she left politics in 2023.
Kaag’s daughters had in an interview with College Tour said that they were afraid that their mother would meet the same fate as former D66 leader Els Borst. Kaag, who was shown the images on the broadcast, burst into tears.
Borst, Minister of Health at the turn of the century, was murdered in her garage in Bilthoven in 2014 by a confused man. In court he stated that he had killed Borst because she was involved in the development of Dutch euthanasia legislation. Everyone who walks into the D66 corridor in the House of Representatives is briefly reminded of her by a life-size cardboard cut-out of Borst looking into the corridor.
