At talk show On 1 they have Caroline van der Plas on speed dial and Van der Plas always answers. Monday evening the well-spoken BBB foreman was there again, because on Sunday ‘her’ farmers had received support from ‘unexpected quarters’: from Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen. Dutch farmers, Trump had said, offered “bold resistance to climate tyranny” and “the climate crisis hoax.”
‘Happy with it?’, presenter Welmoed Sijtsma asked. Oh, happy with it, said Van der Plas, ‘these people feel called to support the Dutch farmers’. But wasn’t there a worldwide movement of ‘eh… spicy right?’, which is behind the farmers, asked presenter Jort Kelder. ‘Spicy right?’, Van der Plas asked in a pretty spicy tone, because yes: what is spicy right again? Van der Plas is constantly being asked to distance herself, she already said it a few weeks ago in the House of Representatives: she is ready to distance herself. A possible conclusion of the viewer is that you are quite close to that from which you do not distance yourself.
Van der Plas thought it politically unwise to as Minister of Education Robbert Dijkgraaf did per tweet, to say that you did not like Trump’s support, because suppose Trump became president again. ‘They speak out for what is going on with the farmers, that has nothing to do with their political positions.’
According to Tom van ‘t Eind, political reporter at RenzeTrump’s support was actually a political tool: “He’s using it to shape his own fight against climate change and Joe Biden.” Dutch farmers are encapsulated by anti-democratic forces worldwide, Michael Persson wrote in this newspaper yesterday, and their struggles fit neatly into old far-right conspiracy theories. Fixed ingredients: a ‘working class’ and an ‘elite’ who would like to expropriate their land for the ‘Great Reset’.
That was also presented in On 1, with the now well-known fragment of Fox News in which the Dutch, radical right-wing opinion maker Eva Vlaardingerbroek said that the nitrogen story was ‘made up to accommodate migrants’. Did Van der Plas want to distance himself from the ‘specific ideas’ and the ‘bigger plan’ that Vlaardingerbroek was talking about, Sijtsma asked. Well, she left that at Vlaardingerbroek.
Van der Plas did say that agricultural land is necessary for housing, ‘but to say that farmers are being chased away to give the land to refugees, that is simply too short-sighted’. Recently wrote Van der Plas (@lientje1967) by the way on Twitter: ‘So it’s not about nature. It’s about buying cheap agricultural land for houses for those millions of people who still have to be crammed into NL.’ That remained unspoken.
After that, an excellent conversation was held about a possible new nitrogen debate and the rule of law of the nitrogen measures. But the fact that the words ‘far right’ and ‘conspiracy theory’ were avoided gives the uneasy feeling that On 1 is afraid to distance himself from a certain group of viewers.