The person with the Orange-White-Blue is holding a Prinsenvlag, which was used by Nazi’s during WW2. The person in front is Robert-Jan Koelewaard, a known neonazi who has Nazi tattoos all over his body.
Thank you, Dutch police.
For context: XR was protesting against endless fossil fuel subsidies given out by the government. They did so by blocking a highway (which was announced) and by having all sorts of people join the protest. They played music, kids were playing everywhere, singing songs, being peaceful.
The farmers are protesting laws that will limit them in their nitrogen output, meaning lots of farmers have to stop farming (or close their mega factory like stables with animals used for meat, which we don’t need in The Netherlands anyway). The laws will take place because with current nitrogen output, building of new houses has been delayed and our nature areas are starting to grow monocultures of plants, destroying entire ecosystems. The farmers are backed by big agricultural companies and far right parties, of course.
The farmers were not allowed to protest with vehicles like they did the last few times. But they broke through a police blockade and entered the area with heavy trucks. Police did nothing, whereas the police force at XR’s protest just arrested hundreds of people.
XR reaction: “We need to be even nicer to them and even more peaceful”
I’m a bit split on this. What we see now is that they manage to attract lots of new people with their actions. And these people get radicalized at their actions as well, with one person being quoted this weekend: ‘Next time I will get myself arrested as well’. I’m afraid if they’d directly become more agressive, that they will lose their momentum. They grew from a 1000 person protest to over 3000 in a few weeks.
I’m all for revolution but unfortunately no left wing group is in a powerful enough position. And we need more people on our side. We don’t have to be nice against the capitalists but we may need to be nicer to the many people that are currently on the fence.
This is the same problem revolutionaries always had, torn between peacefulness not getting anything done, and getting their movment forcefully broken by government repression and also not getting anything done. I think bolsheviks get it correct with splitting the activity to legal and illegal branches with second part being in the conspiration. And note that even in the liberal countries they was still need for conspiration.
I think this was one of the main reasons of treason of II internationale, the intelligentsia at the core of their movement got too comfortable living as the opposition so when the govt put knife in the table and made them choose, they of course chosen their warm publicist beds. Same before at various points like 1848 or when Germany had antisocialst bills enacted.
Good point, it’s better than nothing
After all we do need mass support and environmentalism might be the issue that finally brings people back to material reality and divorce them from idealism
At the same time we know that some radicalised people will always adopt a theoretically revolutionary stance while being de facto counter revolutionary (color revolution shit) so I also fear that orgs like XR might push people towards more radical rejection of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
