Actually, they are taking to the streets because of nitrogen rules. But the protests by farmers in the Netherlands are also attracting right-wing extremists and lateral thinkers. And they’re up to something completely different.
The burnt-out warehouse of an online supermarket chain in the Dutch town of Almelo is the right backdrop for the reporter from the US program “War Room” of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to announce “World War III”. According to this alternative truth, the alleged front runs just behind the German border. Appropriately, photos of tanks were recently passed around on social networks, with which farmers and the government are said to have attacked each other in the Netherlands. Very martial. But none of that is true.
The demonstrations by Dutch farmers against planned nitrogen regulations are hyped up online as the start of a civil war. Radicals from the far right and the corona denial scene, which is currently able to mobilize far fewer people than it used to, are trying to catch up.
For right-wing extremists, the peasant protests symbolized the resistance of the “people” who opposed the “elite”, explains Pia Lamberty from the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS), which examines radicalization tendencies and conspiracy narratives on the Internet. “Such protests are an ideal projection surface for enemies of democracy,” says the CeMAS co-managing director of the German Press Agency (dpa).
For weeks there have been demonstrations in the Netherlands against the government’s planned environmental regulations. Farmers block highways with tractors, set hay bales on fire, and threaten politicians and their families. Increasingly, extremists are mingling with them. The police observe that the angry farmers are joined by conspiracy thinkers, anti-corona activists, right-wing extremists and other groups who act generally and diffusely against the state.
Calls for violence are increasing on relevant social media forums, such as “Bauern im Aufstand” (Boren in Opstand) on Telegram. There is talk of a “civil war”. Or: “Let The Hague burn”.
In Germany, too, organizations monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution want to jump on the protest march. “It could become a conflagration,” the small party Freie Sachsen exults on Telegram and is already enthusiastic about the fact that demonstrations by farmers are “linked to the ongoing protests against the government”. For Martin Sellner, head of the far-right Identitarian movement in Austria, they are part of a “large, anti-globalist, … patriotic resistance”.
“What we see a lot: that the protests are described as a symbol of an upheaval, i.e. a collapse of the system,” says Lamberty. The already tense situation is being heated up further on the internet in the hope that the hated system will finally collapse.
Hence the fabricated story that the government and farmers in the Netherlands used heavy military equipment. Corresponding videos were distributed on the Internet. But that’s a lie. The armored vehicles were used by the police during an exercise, the supposed farmers’ tank was just a restored model from World War II that was intended for a commemorative event – and had nothing to do with farmers. According to police investigations, the fire in the supermarket warehouse in Almelo also had nothing to do with the farmers’ protests.
“False content is repeatedly being disseminated through various channels at high rates,” says Lamberty. For example, disinformation is about creating chaos in order to undermine social cohesion.
The protests in the Netherlands are also attracting far-right reporters from the US, Canada and the UK. They report for obscure Internet platforms, YouTube channels or the right-wing US broadcaster Fox News. There it was claimed, for example, that the land should be taken away from the farmers in order to settle migrants. This radical media sees an international conspiracy behind the government’s plans. For them, the World Economic Forum in Davos is behind it.
Only the World Economic Forum has nothing to do with the peasant protests. But: In 2019, the highest court in the Netherlands determined that the nitrogen standards must be observed. By 2030, emissions nationwide are to be roughly halved. And that can mean the end of 30 percent of cattle farms.
In the opinion of the German Farmers’ Association (DBV), the situation cannot be transferred one-to-one to the Federal Republic. Nevertheless, here too some farmers show solidarity with their colleagues. In addition, there are also points of contention in Germany: for example, fertilizer requirements to avert the threat of EU fines due to groundwater being too heavily polluted with nitrate in many places.
Farmers have very specific concerns. “Right-wing extremists don’t really care about the real concerns and needs of farmers,” explains Lamberty. Rather, one’s own political agenda should be pushed.
The established farmers’ organizations in the Netherlands are not at all happy about these new supporters. The German association also defends itself against appropriation by “radicals, lateral thinkers and other crackpots”. “We distance ourselves from this free riding,” says the DBV. There is a risk that this would discredit farmers’ demands.
Dissent is an important part of democratic expression, says Lamberty. “It becomes difficult when one’s own protest becomes a projection surface for anti-democratic and inhuman attitudes.” This is probably one of the reasons why the DBV considers “maximum distancing” to the far right to be necessary.
