The Amsterdam riots and how Dutch leaders failed us

The profound moral failure at the top

Rioters in Amsterdam / de Groene Amsterdammer

Wherever you are in the world, you probably heard about the riots and unrest in Amsterdam last week. What actually happened here was far more complicated than the international press conveyed. The world’s news cycle has moved on, but here in the Netherlands, the social and political fallout has been disastrous. The situation got so serious that the government almost collapsed.   

Under different leadership, the riots could have been a moment of unity. Instead, our leaders pitted groups of Dutch people against each other. They twisted the events to fit their anti-immigration agenda, because they’re programmed to blame every problem we have on immigration, even when it doesn’t make any sense. 

To round out this hypocrisy, they defended the actions of violent foreign football hooligans over their own citizens. Whatever you think about that, it’s typically very bad politics for leaders to side with foreign nationals over the citizens who elected them.  

But Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof was appointed, not elected. This complicated political arrangement was set up to keep the controversial far-right PVV party leader Geert Wilders from becoming prime minister—an election outcome the rest of the coalition parties couldn’t stomach. 

When Schoof was appointed, it seemed to me that our political leaders universally thought this was a good compromise. A nice, reasonable idea. But it was a stupid idea, as I wrote at the time. Schoof failed so spectacularly last week because he is a civil servant completely ill-equipped to handle a crisis. Personally, my disappointment over the mess of this situation is tempered by how acutely predictable it all was. 

Before I get into the consequences, here’s what happened: 

Last Wednesday, the Maccabi Tel Aviv football team arrived in Amsterdam ahead of Thursday’s Europa league match against Ajax. Twenty six hundred Maccabi supports came along. These hooligans tore down Palestinian flags hanging outside homes, threatened regular people, and vandalized taxis. In the middle of the city center of Amsterdam they chanted: “Let the IDF win, fuck the Arabs” and: “Why is school out in Gaza? Because there are no children left there.” 

Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool has a good analysis of why it might’ve happened this way here: 

The week of the match it quickly became clear that there was more than just match tension among the Maccabi supporters. Israeli football fans in Amsterdam encountered political expressions that did not correspond with what they were used to at home.

Palestinian flags are hanging in many places, Amsterdammers walk around with images of watermelons on their clothes or keffiyeh scarves around their necks, showing their support for the Palestinians.

The supporters are not happy about this and they are showing it. For example, dozens of Maccabi supporters gathered Wednesday night in front of Villa Mokum, a squat on the Rokin where several Palestinian flags are hanging. Videos show them throwing stones at the windows, climbing the building and tearing off the flags.

A little context that wasn’t covered in the international press: hardcore Ajax fans, known as the F-side, identify as “Super Jews.” I wrote in detail about this phenomenon last year, but basically it has to do with the huge Jewish following Ajax had before the war. 

This quirk actually went well during the game, as the NRC reported: 

Ajax fans who adorn themselves with Jews as a nickname get along well with fans from the Jewish state. Amsterdam puts on the song ‘Where do Jews come from?’ The F-side sings, the stadium responds (‘Israel far away from here’). ‘Israel’ is met with loud applause from the away end and the Maccabi fans remain cheerful—even though they will lose 5-0—and even chant along in Dutch (“Ajax Jews, super Jews”).

This sportsmanship did not translate off the field. After the game, fights broke out all over the city. Once the night was over 62 people had been arrested: 49 people who live in the Netherlands, 10 Israelis. There were fourteen hit-and-run attacks, where attackers on scooters and in cars targeted and chased down Israelis. 

The unrest continued for a week. The Friday after the match, the mayor of Amsterdam banned protests for six days. Restricting our right to assemble is always a controversial move, and it only seemed to make things worse. On Friday and Saturday, there were several more anti-Semitic attacks and the burning of a Palestinian flag. On Monday, a tram caught fire during more riots. Riot police beat pedestrians, journalists, tourists; the defiant mayor refused to call it police violence.

On Wednesday, pro-Palestine demonstrators gathered on Dam Square despite a ban on protests. At the time, it looked like that protest ended peacefully. The next day it was reported that protesters boarded vans, thinking they were being arrested. Instead, they were brought out to the Western Docklands, a remote industrial estate, where they were chased and beaten by police. 

In such a complicated, chaotic time, a country needs leadership. Instead, leaders of the biggest parties in the country used the opportunity to push their own agendas. Things really went off the rails at an emergency parliamentary debate last Wednesday. Geert Wilders called for attackers holding dual Moroccan-Dutch passports to be stripped of their Dutch citizenships. Caroline van Der Plas of the farmer’s BBB party called for the censorship of Cestmocro (“mocro” is slang for Moroccan), a popular Instagram news account. Leaders of the center-right VVD and CDA parties blamed the attacks on “failed integration,” which is a coded way for them to say Moroccans. 

Answering persecution with more persecution, or discrimination with more discrimination, is a political and moral failure. And the opportunistic hypocrisy of it all, that our leaders would manipulate terrible events instigated by foreign citizens in the Netherlands to perpetuate the argument that Dutch people of a “migration background” have somehow failed to become Dutch enough, when many of these people have been born and raised here, is disgusting. 

The promise underlying the appointment of a non-partisan prime minister like Schoof was the fantasy that he would rise above politics. Lead with a clean rationality. It’s very Dutch to believe this would work, also very Soviet. But of course the real world doesn’t work the way that technocrats think it does, and Schoof used this opportunity to divide us further. He doubled-down on the failed integration line: before anyone was arrested, before he could have known who was responsible, he blamed immigrants. “Young people with a migration background were overrepresented,” he said. “We have an integration problem. These perpetrators are completely morally degenerate.”

We can’t know whether he believes this stuff personally, or feels a duty to be a mouthpiece for Wilders, because Schoof has no political track record to evaluate.

This absence of conviction created a vacuum, and shitty politics filled the empty space.

If you do want to see someone with conviction, watch this impassioned speech to parliament from Stephan van Baarle, leader of the small, left-wing party DENK.

And you would think that this parliament would say... these Maccabi thugs with values that are in complete opposition to what the Netherlands stands for, there is no place for it. We will stand next to all the Dutch people who are being terrorized in their own city. But it was silent. Silent in parliament, silent in the cabinet.

Last week, Secretary of State Nora Achahbar, a former judge of Moroccan descent, resigned on Friday over racist comments made at a cabinet meeting on Monday. Members of Wilders’ PVV party allegedly said: “Fucking Moroccans.” And: “Anti-Semitism is deeply ingrained in the DNA of Muslims.”

Her resignation led to a cabinet crisis in an already-fragile coalition. But by the end of the day last Friday, they decided to continue to govern (if you can call it that), and the cabinet stands. 

I don’t know why. They have failed to lead the country on every dimension, and all of the reporting suggests the members barely tolerate each other. Maybe that’s good news. When this cabinet falls, and it seems unlikely that it can last much longer, it might be an opportunity for a real leader to emerge. 

The way these riots and will shape the Netherlands in the years to come remains to be seen. Specifically, the names of attackers will eventually be released, if any of these names are Arab it’s going to be ugly. Holding law enforcement to account for all the police brutality will also be an uphill battle, even though so much of it was caught on tape. 

More broadly, how will the divisions sown by our leaders play out on the ground? What happens when people start looking at Moroccans differently because our prime minister used his platform to tell us they’re all degenerates? Hopefully nothing. Hopefully the moral failures of our leaders don’t reach the rest of us—real people, with real convictions.

(I’m gonna write about movies next week.)

Update, Monday 18 November, 18:50:

On the news program Nieuwsuur, Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema apologized for her use of the word “pogroms” to describe what happened the night of the riots. Her language that night helped to set the tone for what happened as ethnic violence, rather than the much more complicated situation I described above.

I’m highlighting this here because Halsema’s comments represent the exact the kind of moral leadership I’ve argued for in this post. We can only hope all the others will backtrack and reflect so thoughtfully.

You can see a video of her comments with English subtitles here.

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🔥 Hot Linkjes

Society

• Cycling is more popular than ever. A report attributed this to the increased costs of driving and public transport, and the popularity of ebikes. I Am Expat.

Politics 

• Politico covered the cracks in the Dutch governing coalition in more detail.

• On December 9, Dutch police will start carrying out “extra checks” at the borders with Germany and Belgium. No clarity on what that actually means. Dutch News.

Business

• In a major setback to climate activists, a Dutch appeals court overturned a 2021 ruling requiring Shell to reduce emissions 45 percent by 2030. New York Times.

Arts & Books & Design

• You can now watch HBO Max via Amazon Prime in the Netherlands. That includes The White Lotus Season 3 in early 2025! The Hollywood Reporter.

Sport

• Dutch speed skating Olympic silver medalist Jutta Leerdam attended her boyfriend’s boxing match. Sports Illustrated.

Crime

• Cold case detectives have deployed a life-size hologram in the hunt killer of a sex worker in Amsterdam in 2009. Guardian.

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🥳 Leuke Dingetjes

You can now order sex toys, condoms, and lube in Groningen and the Hague on Thuisbezorgd. They should really add Amsterdam ASAP. Make love not war. ☮️

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📺 Kijk/Lees/Luister List

What I enjoyed watching, reading, and listening to this week.

TV / Movies

• I weaseled my way into a special screening of The Brutalist in Los Angeles, and it’s a stone cold masterpiece. It will be released on 6 February 2025 in the Netherlands, so mark your calendars, because you must see it in the theater. It was shot on Vista Vision, a type of film that hasn’t been used since the 1960’s, and looks incredible.

• Strange Darling is an excellent non-chronological horror movie where nothing is at it seems at first. It’s good fun trying to figure out what’s going on.

Music / Podcasts

• I’m starting to hate algorithmic playlists. I miss radio, and radio DJs, and a sense of communal listening. On a hunt for something more human than Spotify, I discovered Bandcamp Weekly, a radio show with a real DJ (!) who spins all different kinds of music from all over the world.

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*all typos in this post are on purpose