Netherlands | The conspiratorial galaxy blows on the embers of riots

(The Hague) Why so much violence? In the Netherlands, the scene of two series of riots against health policy in less than a year, experts are worried about the influence exerted by a teeming conspiratorial galaxy on social networks, whose voice reaches as far as Parliament.

When the anti-health restrictions protest turned into riot in Rotterdam last week, paving the way for four nights of clashes in different cities across the country, Ricardo Pronk was there to broadcast the violence live.

This anti-vaccine activist ran a Facebook group with 10,000 subscribers. Recently deleted by the social network, the page relayed the call for this undeclared demonstration where the police ended up firing live ammunition, leaving five injured.

The fifty-year-old, who promotes both anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, according to which anti-COVID-19 sera are “weapons designed to kill”, as those of the QAnon movement, who would like “globalized elites” to commit ” pedo-satanist crimes ”, rejects any responsibility in these events qualified as“ orgy of violence ”by the mayor of Rotterdam.

“Violence is not the way to go, the best is to do things peacefully”, assures AFP this former IT technician currently unemployed, who had chosen for his Facebook group a banner calling on the Dutch to “be wake up before it’s too late, ”with a roaring lion amid the flames.

Conspiracy epidemic

The violence caused by the announcement in mid-November of partial confinement to fight against a resumption of the COVID-19 epidemic is reminiscent of those at the beginning of the year. Already in January, the introduction of a night curfew, a first since World War II, was followed by the worst riots the country has known in 40 years.

“The Netherlands is a unique case, it is the only country where anti-COVID-19 protests have repeatedly turned into riot this year,” remarks Ciáran O’Connor, analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think tank specializing in extremist counter-discourse.

Where Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who denounced the “scum” in January, now castigates “pure violence” perpetrated by “idiots”, Mr. O’Connor points to the impact of the growing conspiracy epidemic in the country -Low.

On Facebook, the 125 main Dutch groups disseminating false information about COVID-19 recorded a 63% growth in their subscribers in six months, bringing together 789,000 members in the country of 17 million people, according to a report. study published in May by ISD.

This motley galaxy “does not generally directly call for violence, but accepts it as part of the solution”, summarizes the expert. “The anti-vaccine and anti-COVID-19 movement organizes protests and creates a space that allows other actors to express their frustration in a violent way. ”

Dutch Trump

Frustrated young people, the hooligan movement, protesters embarked on by the crowd effect: the diversity of participants in the riot of November 19 in Rotterdam was widely underlined by the police and the prosecution. As well as the importance of social networks in its initial organization.

In June, the Dutch intelligence services had already explained that they feared that “the anti-government demonstrations serve as breeding ground for extremism”.

In a country where 85% of adults are vaccinated, the anti-ax movement “is clearly in the minority”, tempers Claes de Vreese, professor of political communication at the University of Amsterdam.

But unlike neighboring countries, its echo in public debate is “amplified by the fact that it has found a political ally in Parliament”, the far-right Forum for Democracy party, he observes.

Its populist leader, Thierry Baudet, has been supporting a coronasceptic speech for months and handling the controversy with an art that has earned him to be compared to former US President Donald Trump.

In March, one of his anti-vaccine tweets got him a warning from Twitter, which labeled his post as “misleading.” A first for a Dutch politician.

According to Mr. O’Connor of ISD, however, a lot of false information is not moderated in the Dutch language. Compared to the Anglo-Saxon world, “Twitter and Facebook do not have the same attention to protect their platforms from people who use them irresponsibly”, he regrets.