On my way to a sunny park, I ended up on Dam Square on Sunday afternoon in a demonstration by Samen voor Nederland against the corona legislation. Because it seemed very good to me to be together with others for the Netherlands, I watched with interest for a while.
At the rear of the stage was a large bus with inscriptions from FVD and the image of its leader Thierry Baudet. In front of the stage stood a crowd of about 1,500 people, without exception very white colored and with remarkably few young people. They were equipped with banners, handkerchiefs, flags and balloons. From the podium they were half intelligibly shouted at by some speakers unknown to me.
One banner immediately caught my eye. It was worn by a man in his fifties, in jeans and sneakers. He stood in a group of five people, some of whom were women. His banner read in large letters:Let’s make the gallows great again.” It was not stated which gallows deserved reparation and for whom they were intended, but the back of the banner stated that “those who are obedient know least.”
It was known that in FVD circles there was nostalgia for ‘tribunals’, but did the gallows have to be set up again in the Netherlands? I watched for half an hour to see if the protester would be asked to remove the banner, but it didn’t.
In the meantime, the sun started to burn fiercely and I decided to visit that park after all, while the demonstrators started a march through Amsterdam. Four hours later I was back on Dam Square, now with only a few hundred demonstrators left. On stage, a woman chanted endlessly: “Wai zain Ne-der-land!”
At home I looked up some speeches from that afternoon on the internet. Samen voor Nederland calls itself “a partnership of several parties” that strives “to connect people to create solutions based on love, non-violence and freedom in this uncertain time”.
These are concepts that constantly crop up in the official texts of this club. You will not encounter the word gallows in it. All the more striking that on Sunday afternoon there were quite a few speakers who radiated everything except peacefulness, love and non-violence. FVD had delegated the MPs Gideon van Meijeren and Pepijn van Houwelingen. Van Meijeren put a clenched fist in the air and roared that “the fight would be started with those globalist traitors”. Van Houwelingen did not threaten ‘tribunals’ for once, but also felt that ‘the globalists have slowly but surely taken over our country’.
Afterwards, Van Houwelingen was eagerly interviewed by a submissive reporter from the right-wing channel Common Sense TV. The reporter: “We are proud of you.” Van Houwelingen: “Similarly. You are one of the few media, along with Unheard of News, Café Weltschmerz, Black Box and The Blue Tiger who really do journalism, you can be very proud of that.” The reporter: “Mr. Van Houwelingen, have a great day.” Van Houwelingen: “You too, keep it up, keep it up.”
Those are moments when you almost have to fear that Van Kooten and De Bie have lived in vain.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of September 7, 2022