The revolt of the racist millionaires
Turns out that in the Dutch town of Albergen, fascism is an ideology of the rich bourgeois too.
White people march with upside down Dutch flags to protest against asylum seekers being housed in their town. (still from video)
Because most of the Dutch media can’t add up or subtract even simple numbers, let’s connect some of the dots for them regarding the massive wave of xenophobia and racism that currently engulfs the country after the government, in hot water because of a self-inflicted refugee housing crisis, decided that 300 refugees would be temporarily housed in a former hotel in the town of Albergen.
When that decision became known, hundreds of people gathered in front of the hotel with racist banners and even more racist language. Neo-fascist politicians like Joost Eerdmans flocked to the scene to rile up the anti-immigrant sentiments. The government, or so their narrative went, had ambushed the poor people of otherwise peaceful Albergen. The mayor, Wilmien Haverkamp, confirmed that. She had not been consulted! This would not stand!
Albergen slegs vir blankes
The truth is of course very different. The Dutch authorities have for almost a year now asked, pushed, cajoled, bribed and begged municipalities to do more to house refugees. Decades of neoliberal policies have caused a massive shortage of (affordable) housing in the Netherlands, and the fascist parties exploit that situation to blame migrants and refugees of color.
So, who is behind the protests?
The protesters themselves, as well as most of the slavish media, would have you believe that this is spontaneous resistance by ordinary people in a small town who don’t like being overrun by strangers.
Gold coast
A closer look, however, suggests something different.
Albergen belongs to the municipality of Tubbergen, and Tubbergen is the gold coast of the Twente region: it’s the municipality with the highest number of millionaires, and even more rich people. Quite a bit of them live near, you guessed it, the hotel that will house refugees.
Local media have extensively portrayed one John de Vries as some local hero who loves his community and drove 24 hours straight from Portugal to rescue it from aliens. He lives practically next to the hotel in a house/office from where he runs a wholesale business in outdoor sports and hunting supplies.
Political shell games
De Vries is a politician for the local Keerpunt22 party. What the media don’t tell you that this party is mostly like a local offshoot of the Forum voor Democratie (FvD), the fascists who occupy eight seats in national parliament. The extreme right is very good at playing the shell-party game, with splits, mergers, local splinter groups, new players and so on. But look a bit further and you’ll find Keerpunt22 representative Stijn Hesselink. Hesselink is not just a member of the municipal council in millionaire town Tubbergen, but he also sits on the provincial council for Overijssel Conservatieven, an offshoot of the FvD. At the same time he is a member of JA21, the fascist party that immediately dispatched Joost Eerdmans to rally the crowd.
Joost Eerdmans, leader of the rightwing extremist party JA21 which has three seats in parliament, addresses the crowd in front of the now infamous hotel in Albergen. (video still from Twitter)
So, again, these are fascists and racists constantly rebranding themselves but never changing their toxic merchandise. Hesselink caused outrage with racist remarks more than once. FvD is openly antisemitic and supports the Russian war in Ukraine.
Rightwing extremists have embraced every opportunity at sowing hatred, racism en fact-free fury over the last years, from immigration to covid vaccinations. Most recently they seem to have merged with the farmers protests against measures to stop climate change. While farmers claim that they “only” want to protect their livelihoods, the putrid smell of white supremacy wafts from all their protests, and the usual extremist suspects — from FvD leader Thierry Baudet to propaganda meister Wierd Duk — have embraced the cause as if it were Dutch culture and a human right to cause excessive nitrogen emissions when you are white and Dutch.
Farmers, fascists and drooling reporters
In Albergen, this merger between the extreme right and the farmers has become more evident than ever. Protesters walking in a silent march carried upside down Dutch flags — a symbol that was recently appropriated by the farmers — supplied by “the organization”.
“We knew that we had 600 flags on sticks of one meter each,” said organizer Hennie de Haan on radio station Twente FM to an admiring interviewer, “and we quickly ran out of them.”
“It was all so well organized, I was really impressed. And non-violent!”, the drooling reporter responded.
So who’s Hennie de Haan, then?
According to her LinkedIn profile, she runs her own consultancy business, is a member of the arbitration commission for unfair agricultural trade practices, and she was the chairman of the Dutch association of poultry farmers, among other things.
She is also a supporter of the violent rightwing extremist Farmers Defence Force (who operate as thugs for big agro), openly supporting their actions and giving presentations at their meetings. And she lives in… you know already.
Racist wave
So there you have it. Where the media and organizers want to portray the protests in Albergen as “ordinary people” resisting a government decision, the reality is that it’s yet another slimy racist outpour organized by a cabal of fascist politicians and their local allies, extreme right farmers movements supported by big agro and a bunch of racist rich people in Tubbergen.
Let me, for contrast and sanity, remind you all of the heroic mayor of Palermo, Leoluca Orlando, who used to welcome refugees at the dock when they disembarked and say: “Welcome. The worst is over. You are citizens of Palermo now.”