Good morning,
Last Saturday’s riots in the Netherlands were clearly far-right — a masked man giving a Hitler salute next to a burning police car leaves scant room for interpretation.
Interestingly, the protest, organised by a Gen Z Christian nationalist influencer, was against Dutch asylum policy, designed and enforced by the most right-wing government in decades and proudly presented as ‘the strictest asylum policy ever’.
Some three thousand protesters gathered in the Hague and half of them went on a little rampage, in the process wounding police officers and journalists, trying to burn down the centre-left liberal’s party headquarters and blockading a major highway, while waving fascist flags and chanting ‘sieg heil’.
Caretaker finance minister Heinen, on a talk show the next morning, said “nothing to do with politics”. Caretaker justice minister van Oosten (despite being advised by counterterrorism to call out the extreme right nature) said: “not political violence.”
Both are members of the supposedly centre-right VVD (Renew), and later in the week, admitted they should have acknowledged the extreme right character of the riot.
Yesterday, however, the parliamentary debate on the riots turned into an almost farcical balancing act, with parties on the right caught in a ‘who can wink the hardest while wagging their finger’ contest.
From centre-right VVD to hard-right Freedom Party, all tried to look tough enough to reject chaos, yet sympathetic enough not to lose voters who silently agree with the rioters’ stated grievances.
An election must be coming up. Oh wait, there is.
More interestingly, the VVD has ruled out governing with the Freedom Party’s Wilders, but this debate shows they’re also auditioning for his voters.
This is how the far-right gains ground. As political scientist Cas Mudde has argued, it’s rarely a solo conquest; it advances when conservatives and centrists normalise its grievances while claiming to stand above its methods.
With a national election looming, the Dutch right is in open chaos — factions fighting one another but still unwilling to draw a hard, moral line. If Saturday’s riots are treated as mere hooliganism by even mainstream parties, and their rage is wink-wink co-opted rather than confronted, the far right won’t need to break through the door. The door will already be open.
— Alejandro Tauber, publisher
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