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This article was published over 3 years ago

Dutch Riots

Trumpism on Clogs?

The Netherlands have suffered three days of rioting, affecting mainly the poorer neighborhoods

Wednesday, 27 January 2021 21:14 (UTC)
Reporters from Socialistisch Alternatief
ISA in Netherlands
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The riots in the Netherlands in recent days have affected mainly the poorer neighborhoods and their inhabitants. Retailers have seen their small businesses going up in flames or their stocks ending up in the hands of looters. This may mean some retailers will decide to leave these areas, which will only worsen the already barely habitable situation in those regions. The majority of the population are understandably disgusted by the riots. But it is not enough to condemn them, we must also understand their cause.

Although the Netherlands is a country not often associated with revolt, these riots had been a long time coming. The last straw has been the introduction of the 3-week curfew by the caretaker Dutch government, after the People’s Party Mark Rutte was forced to resign after a scandal. The measure itself has broad support, based on understanding the needs to bring down the infection rate, particularly as the British variant is expected to strike the Netherlands around the middle of February. If this was to happen, by mid-March the epidemic could run out of control and by April, the hospitals would be overwhelmed, according to the National Institute for Health and Environment.

After years of the privatisation of public services, including healthcare, by the Conservatives, Liberals and Social Democrats alike, trust in the ruling elite is at an all-time low. For decades in the Netherlands, the unions have been orientated towards deals with the bosses, expressed in the class-collaborationist ‘polder model’. Social democracy has played a terrible role in applying austerity and even the Socialist Party over the past two decades has ditched its interpretation of ‘Marxism’, repressed those within the party who opposed this, and embraced a class-collaborationist position.

At the same time, there has been scandal after scandal revealing how the rich are helping themselves, while persecuting the poor. This has enabled right-wing propaganda to gain a dominant role in the protests. The agricultural multinationals have seized on and organised protests by poorer farmers over restrictions on their use of fertilisers imposed on them by the government.

There are two right wing populist parties: the PVV of Wilders is inclined to support the COVID-measures, and the Forum voor Democratie is opposing them. “Trumpism on clogs” so to say. Forum for Democracy made large gains in the provincial elections in 2019, but has since lost ground in favour of the PVV. While small right wing groups played a role in organising earlier protests, the present riots, mainly organised on social media, involve a mixed bag of right wing extremists, ‘freedom fighters’ and frustrated youth, locked out of schools, jobs and houses and confronting a common enemy, the state.

The breeding ground for the riots has been the grim situation that youth face in many areas and poorer neighbourhoods. 30% of the Dutch labour force works in precarious jobs, the highest level in the European Union. In the present situation they can only find low-paying jobs with little job security, if they can find any at all. Education in the Netherlands is expensive and of low quality, even in the universities. The housing shortage is severe and rents are unaffordable. Only the more highly educated youth are able to buy a home, often having to combine their incomes as partners in order to do so.

Youth have had to accept that they will get no help from the government at all to solve their problems. And there is blatant discrimination against people from different backgrounds. The government was forced to step down from office on January 17th because of a scandal in childcare benefits.

People who need childcare are entitled to tax benefits. They are paid in the form of an advance. You have to substantiate the costs later. The Dutch tax authorities have conducted a veritable witch-hunt of parents, who were selected on the basis of double nationality, living in certain areas etc. The system worked in such a way that if you submitted data with minor mistakes, you would have to pay back the whole amount, tens of thousands of Euros in many cases.

Many people were ruined. Families split under the pressure. People were forced to move and were kicked out of accommodation. All parties have been involved in this, as has the tax revenue service, ministries, judges and parliament, while the media has ignored what was going on for more than ten years. The scandal was exposed thanks to the individual efforts of two parliamentarians, one from the Christian Democratic and the other from the Socialist Party.

Instead of being helped by the state, workers, especially young workers, just get blue envelopes from the tax office, while the scandal around child benefits made clear that ordinary people are being witch-hunted without any justification.

Covid-19 has came on top on that and exposed the disastrous results of years of neo-liberal austerity. The government has failed to supply sufficient PPE as it relied on the goodwill of private firms.

This is now being repeated with the vaccines, as there has been no serious plan for mass vaccination developed. This is because, on the one hand, private companies are unwilling to guarantee delivery at a reasonable time, and to a lesser extent because there is some distrust especially amongst youth against privately developed vaccines. In this context, young people are increasingly feeling that it is always the same ones who are asked to make sacrifices.

And now even some of the limited liberties that young people have in order to at least amuse themselves have been taken away. When café's and concerts were closed, young workers sought an outlet in parties under viaducts, gathering in parks, abandoned factories etc. under the refuge of winter darkness. The curfew took that away.

The riots do not come as a surprise. They have been building in the countryside, fishing villages and cities for years. Sadly, rioting offers no perspective. It is a revolt, but a blind one.

The riots have now continued for three days, increasing support for the government and for the police. Government ministers are tumbling over each other in their condemnation of the riots, describing the “madness” of the events. Among particularly stupid acts that have taken place have been the stoning of a hospital in Enschede and the burning of a COVID test centre in the fishing village, Urk. Bewildered health workers were unable to leave the hospital when their shift ended...

If union leaders and the left parties were to lay the blame where it really lies, with big Pharma, the market and the profit system, this energy could be developed in a positive struggle to further the interests of working-class families. Unfortunately, union leaders and left parties are completely invisible; the only union leaders who have come forward are from the police union. Most parties support the government in maintaining the curfew, the only exception being some fringe right wing parties.

Now the ruling Liberal Party is set to increase its majority in the elections in March. The whole situation is increasing public support for more repressive measures, although there is obviously a big difference between the peaceful afternoon protest in Amsterdam, which was unlawfully repressed and the calls for “riots against the government” after curfew in several cities, which quickly run out of hand and ended in looting, arson and plunder.

This dangerous mix of frustrated youth and the extreme right has to be countered. Only struggle and organisation pay off. The unions and the left parties are unable to connect to new layers on the basis of their class collaborationist policies. What is needed is to organise those layers, of welfare recipients, of workers, of trade unionists around fighting demands, such as a minimum wage of 14 Euro, for real jobs instead of applying for “help”, a decent wage for self-employed persons, the abolition of all precarious contracts, affordable housing and the renationalisation of all public services; starting with healthcare and big pharma; public transport, real estate and financial institutions to be able to use all of these resources to offer a real way out of the day to day problems. We need public ownership, democratic planning and public control, not private profit. We need a real socialist party and fighting unions. Time to build a socialist alternative.

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Trumpism on Clogs? (27 Jan 2021)

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