The perpetrator, or rather the victim, was a 17-year-old black boy, Jesse Washington. Convicted of murder and rape of a white woman, on May 15, 1916, he was dragged by a mob by a chain from the Waco, Texas, courthouse, paraded through the streets, beaten and stabbed, then chained to a tree, doused in oil and burned alive. Ten thousand residents had gathered around the courthouse for the festivities. They laughed and cheered as Jesse was tortured. Photos of the “barbecue”, with a satisfied crowd surrounding the charred corpse, were circulated as postcards.
It is an extreme example of overt vigilantism, but one that was not uncommon in the southern and western United States until the 1920s. The racial order violated by the young perpetrator had to be maintained – and that could not be left to the state. On the contrary, he got in the way – far away in Washington – with talk about equal rights. If she interfered at all, which was not always the case.
The Netherlands is not Texas – fortunately. And Texas in 2026 is no longer that Texas – thank God. But the escalating resistance to the arrival of asylum seekers, stirred up by national politicians, has ominous features of vigilantism and political violence.
Not even in waving the Dutch flag – after all, D66 leader Jetten also involved himself in that in order to become prime minister. Earlier in some other things. First of all: the desire to perpetuate a social order for one’s own people. There is a lot of complaining about the procedure and poor communication – but would things have turned out differently if the mayor of Loosdrecht had organized consultation evenings for months? You can doubt it.
And were they merely extremist activists there in Loosrecht? No more than in Texas. Rather, ‘ordinary citizens’ who see themselves as the measure of the social order and, out of fear or resentment, refuse to budge.
Then: the symbolic, almost ritualistic nature of the protests. Throwing the fireworks and setting arson. Fire fascinates just like violence, they have their own dynamics. The use of women and children as innocent earmarked victims of foreign threats. This was also the obsession in the American South: the rape of ‘our women and girls’ (and miscegenation).
You cannot continue to gloss over the unrest as the cry for help of a distressed population
That fetish of the endangered people, also cherished here for decades by political entrepreneurs and intellectual aspiring revolutionaries, actually stands in the way of a serious, workable solution to the asylum problem. This can only happen if the matter is removed from the atmosphere of vigilantism that is currently gaining the upper hand during the protests.
The fact that this nativist spirit has become effective over part of ‘the people’ is also due to failing authorities who overlooked the peat fire for too long. Enforcement is not a Dutch specialty. The state stood by and watched when left-wing radicals set fire to a hotel in 1986 where Janmaat and his associates were meeting. Or, more in line with current agitation, the Afrikaander riots in Rotterdam in 1972, when the windows were broken at boarding houses with Turkish guest workers (also then: because of our girls and women).
Now it is even worse: the arsonists are encouraged by a group of right-wing radical politicians from The Hague who, sometimes after years of being on the money, turn away from ‘those above us’ and join the ‘brave citizens’ in revolutionary enthusiasm. While the cabinet of ‘it is possible-Jetten’ is unable to show any attitude.
His cabinet is at a crossroads. You don’t have to explain away the ‘asylum crisis’, it is clear that the system has long since stalled and we urgently need to think outside the box. At the same time, you cannot reduce violence to an admittedly regrettable expression of legitimate popular anger. As if the whole of the Netherlands in Loosdrecht was frothing at the mouth to stop the fire brigade. On the contrary, it is high time that all other ‘concerned citizens’, including those in The Hague, stand loud and clear against agitation aimed at disrupting matters in the hope of a great, fiery upheaval.
