Twitter thread by Detgrim
@detgrim
via @threadreaderapp
Oct 17th 2019, 40 tweets, 14 min read Bookmark Save as PDF My Authors Thread about the recent farmer protests in the NL
>Parliament flooded with tractors
>Doors rammed
>Army deployed
>Angry politicians
This has had little to no traction outside the Dutch sphere, so Ive decided to make an English thread detailing the events on the 3 major protests
DAY 1 – OCTOBER 1
This day had been in the books of farmers for a while, but little attention was paid to it by the media. Most normies, including me, didn’t know a large scale protest was coming until a morning traffic record was already broken.
Tractors on all highways.
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DAY 1
People woke up greeted with over 1200km of traffic
The average amount is 6km.
Note they weren’t blocking the highways, they were just on their way to parliament, on their tractors.
Despite initial confusion, I met nobody that day that was particularly mad at the farmers
DAY 1
Not much was told about their motivation in the media.
The farmers gave harsh climate change and environmental protection laws as their primary goal, also complaining about being treated as lower class scum by media elites.
The media ran with the latter.
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DAY 1
The goal was the Malieveld, a field near parliament. The government originally said only a few tractors were allowed on the field, which was later changed to 75.
They had fences and security in place to regulate this.
DAY 1
The deal with local law enforcement was that the farmers would park their tractors away from the city centre and be taken with busses to the field.
Already a compromise, but the deal wasn’t even met. Understandably angry, they decided to not honour their part either.
DAY 1
So some of the farmers found a breach in the back and rammed through two lines of fences to get on the field anyways.
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DAY 1
Others decided to go for a ride on the beach, as that was apparently near the spot they were supposed to gather for the busses.
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DAY 1
A little more than just the 75 ‘allowed’ tractors ended up on the Malieveld.
DAY 1
Several politicians ended up visiting to hold speeches about their opinions. Some of these planned and on a stage, some of them among the farmers
DAY 1
The pretty-much-but-unofficial-immigrants-party leader came around and got bood and heckled until he left.
DAY 1
Not much was agreed upon. Most leftists stuck to their policies. Most centrist and ‘right wing’ parties released statements supporting the farmers, but they were loose words and the strict environmental laws weren’t changed.
A new protest on the 16th was already planned.
DAY 2 – 14 october (~2 weeks later)
Inbetween the first day and 14 october various smaller scale protests happened, but on the 14th the farmers again went out in larger numbers.
This time the goal was occupying the provincial houses, in an attempt to repeal the laws.
DAY 2
Soon after the farmers arrived, the provincial house of Friesland announced they would repeal the controversial nitrogen agreements. That’s 1 province down.
DAY 2
The other provinces didn’t budge as quickly, and it often was a hassle arriving to the provincial houses. Even with all the commotion, nothing really violent was happening.
DAY 2
Several of the less urban provinces quickly budged and repealed the environmental laws. The very diverse and urbanite provinces refused co-operation altogether.
One of the most farmer-rich provinces was keeping out however. Groningen (top right) would not give a response.
DAY 2
The farmers made a quick ultimatum. Let us in the provincial house to discuss this, or we’re going in ourselves.
They went in themselves.
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DAY 2
That didn’t last long. They had police set up in there.
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DAY 2
Groningen kept the nitrogen measures and didn’t discuss anything. In the end half the provinces did repeal the laws, so it could be called a succesful day for the farmers.
DAY 3 – 16 october
Yesterday there was another large scale protest near parliament. This one was announced well in advance and most people knew about it.
Farmers from the islands left before midnight already.
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DAY 3
Once again, once morning came, the entire grid was clogged with tractors. Despite it likely attracting more protestors than the last, the grid handled it better. People were expecting it
DAY 3
In fact, people around the country came to watch the farmers drive by and cheered them on.
DAY 3
Construction workers saluted them with their cranes, commuters honked their horns on their way to work, they have an approval rating above 80%.
Compare this to non-grassroots Extinction Rebellion, which gets broken up by the public if they block a road for half a minute. DAY 3
The state deployed the police and the army to block off major roads leading into the Hague.
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DAY 3
Important parts of the city
Like fast food chains, apparently
DAY 3
One major connection was blocked off, leading to a flooding of the road with tractors.
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DAY 3
The excessive reaction of the police and government was out of place. Nothing really violent had happened aside from various fences being run over.
Here’s a farmer spraying cops and journalists.
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DAY 3
Truckers helped block the roads for the farmers so they could get where they wanted to go.
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DAY 3
The message this day was the same. Repeal the strict laws against farmers, and respect the farmer. A very apolitical message it would seem.
Still, the divide was clear. Left wing politicians like Green Party leader Jesse Klaver were not liked.
DAY 3
Meanwhile the ‘right wing’ politicians were quite popular
DAY 3
Once again the farmers rammed on the Malieveld. It was clear that the people were behind them except left wing urbanites. No real change was made that day, but a lot of sympathy was shown and gained.
Here’s the farmer youth force on patrol
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CONCLUSION
While the protests themselves were quite meaningless in their origin, nitrogen pollution laws, the catalyst here is the big divide between the more urban and more rural parts of the Netherlands.
They are two completely different ways of life, it seems. Even I, who grew up in a decently sized town (10k>) was completely culture shocked once I started interacting with Randstad urbanites. The ways I communicated at home are vastly different to what urbanites are used to. Much more American and ‘proper’. Keep in mind the Netherlands is basically one giant city. I lived 2.5 hours by car from Amsterdam. Americans probably wonder if that isn’t just still Amsterdam. In my town and region it was normal to openly mention race, and a lot of jokes were based on it. In general it was pretty clear what the consensus was on race, homosexuality, and Americanisation. It was assumed you agreed with the rest. In the cities, this is completely the other way around. It’s common to hear native Dutch girls throw English sentences into their conversation, or even converse in mostly English. Their politics are as Americanised as they are.
I can’t communicate with a lot of urban youth. I can only imagine the situation in other European countries. I’ve heard in Germany and Austria the taboos reach even into the countryside, but I wouldn’t be surprised of similar situations in Scandinavia. This feeds into the popularity of the protests.
The nitrogen laws were actually brutally strict once you do look into them, but that’s not why people were cheering farmers on, at all.
“Respect for farmers” is maybe a part of it, but I doubt it’s much of it. I interpret the popularity of the farmers protest as essentially the vast majority of the Netherlands cheering on the ‘rural’ way of life.
An outlook on life that isn’t straight from a California campus. I definitely notice the type of people excited about the protests are the type of people I could talk to without having to watch my words. Wether they’re urban or not.
On the side of the people cheering, this was much more cultural than it was about nitrogen.
Well look, nitrogen pollution in the water supply isn’t a climate issue… it is a serious pollution issue with human health impacts…
eutrophication of waterways and algal growth, blue baby syndrome in infants…
There’s no doubt Dutch waterways are suffering from levels of nitrogen above the limits…
https://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/nutrient_pollution_in_Dutch_streams_is_falling_402na2_en.pdf
This really isn’t something Dutch farmers can ignore, is it?
That document is from 5 February 2015.
It can be ignored.
The water from the dutch streams is for the biggest part comming froim the river Rhine and Meuse River, it is water from Germany, Switserland, Austria, France, Belgium and only a
small part from the Netherlands. Why should Dutch farmers be responsible for this?
You probably won’t read much in the MSM about the French protests that still go on every weekend, or the 9 killed by the police in those protests and hundreds injured.
The MSM do not want to talk about European problems.
Farmers can starve the cities. Don’t the urbanites get this?
Farmers are Atlas holding up civilization. If Atlas shrugs, no civilization.
“Farmers can starve the cities. Don’t the urbanites get this?”
No. They think food just appears on supermarket shelves.
Strange ! We did not see anything about these magnificent Dutch farmers protests at the french TV. Isn’t it because french TV is in the hands of green activists ?
Thank you detgrim, it’s very good to have more background on these events and to spread the knowledge to a wider audience.
I was looking at this issue yesterday, and to find anything more about it than I had previously seen here at WUWT, I had to google Dutch language web sites and re-activate my very rusty Dutch. It was a most worthwhile exercise however, and some of you might like to take a look at the essay I wrote as a result, here:
https://misesuk.org/2019/10/20/ik-sta-achter-de-boeren/
I can’t be absolutely certain about this, but the issue would seem to be bound up with the “national emissions ceilings” directives being imposed by the EU. These cover emissions of a lot more things than just ammonia and nitrogen oxides. These ceilings are completely arbitrary, and no politician in a so-called democracy has ever had any right to agree to any such things without the consent of the people. In Holland, it seems, these matters are addressed at the provincial level, which explains why changes in national government don’t seem to make much, if any, difference. But it’s cheering to see that the farmers have so much support from the general population.
I may be being unduly optimistic, but I hope this protest may prove to be something of a turning point. No-one with a realistic view of the world is going to support any measure that unfairly harms the farmers, because we know where our food comes from! So this could turn out to be the issue, over which the real working people of Europe join forces against the politicians, bureaucrats and luvvies that have been pushing the green agenda for the last 30+ years.
Once again, thank you detgrim for a fine article.
The culprit seems to be RIVM (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment).
Poor measurements, poor models with uncertainties up to 70% are being scrutinized by farmer associations.
RIVM stated that they have year on year model output to give a robust trend. The up to 70% uncertainties make robustness a laughter.
Denmark and Germany have much better regulations.
Hearings by the Dutch Parliament (Tweede Kamer, ~ the House of Representatives in the US and ~House of Commons in the UK) shows an utter innocense aka stupidity of most of the “chosen ones”.
Remember, farmers, you are not alone. Brexit was followed quickly by President Trump, Gilets, Jaunes, Salvini. This is a transatlantic revolt against the “globalists”.
Only a 4-power aliance of the USA, Russia, China and India can actually deliver on this.
Which of course is why the blatant ongoing coup against Trump, the ouster of Salvini, the sabotage of Brexit, and state brutality against the Gilets Jaunes.
The immanent financial crash is driving these globalists completely nuts. They know full well this time around Glass-Steagall, banking separation, is Trump’s card. Bank of England chief Mark Carney is in full flight forward with the Green Finance Initiative, GFI.
Not a peep about Holland, nor even the IMF warnings on German TV, just next door.
As regards Holland, this “rural-urbanite” thing is not knew – remember William of Orange (the silent) who invaded England with untold slaughter? England became in 1688 with “the Glorious Revolution” officially an oligarchy of the Venetian model which had based itself in Amsterdam. To this day the Anglo-Dutch model of liberal finance, Venetian, has become a globalist derivative pestilence, with the City of London and WallStreet centers, and is about to implode.
What you are saying really makes sense. It ties it all together.
Love the lines of tractors on the field.
Anywhere else and there would have been chaos. But in Holland, they came, they protested, and all the tractors were lined up in neat rows. Well, we cannot have chaos, can we…..!!
Ralph
Next marching on the EU!
Brussels is next door of The Netherlands.
But the great urbanist squeeze will continue. Ignorant whims with no cost tend to persist.
Politicians always forget one thing: people need to live with the crap they decide over our heads and they isolate themselves because they know what a reaction would be. No political party really fights for the little people but those people make up the majority of any democratic country. It’s not surprising that the day of reckoning will come. There will be more like this, it will be bigger, it will happen in all countries that are run by the green extremists, and one day it will turn real ugly. Dutch farmers are a civilized, well behaved and restrained bunch. Not everyone is. Green extremism is setting us on fire. That’s what they want.
Meanwhile: most major construction work has been postponed due to “nitrogen”.
Farmers Make Way for Labourers as Construction Sector Talks of Protests
https://www.thehagueonline.com/news/2019/10/21/farmers-make-way-for-labourers-as-construction-sector-talks-of-protests
Great post. A few XR idiots protest in the UK and its all over our media , Holland gets shut down by thousands of farmers and not a peep.
Great post, Detgrim.
Sadly, your urbanites are not getting a correct view of Americans.
All of the American leftist media are very anti-Trump, Anti-conservatives, anti-rural, anti-Constitution and anti-Bill of rights.
The view painted by them and the BBC are as different, if not more, than you are from your city dwellers.
Try theconservativetreehouse.com; another wordpress site for a decent conservative blog like WUWT.
Or try http://www.thegatewaypundit.com for news source that publishes far more than leftist progressive sites ever will.
Thank you, Detgrim. I live in rural America and empathize greatly with your conclusion.
Tractor design sure has stalled and solidified around a very homogenized style. Like a fleet of Model T’s.
Form follows function. Existence precedes essence.
IF the Left wins total control of any place they would refuse any compromise and enforce all the horrible laws they want. If it came to the point where farmers were no longer able to provide food in sufficient quantity they would then go on to blame the ‘selfish’ farmers and perhaps nationalize the farms. And that is the start of the short walk to massive famine, most of which in modern times were political in their roots and serving of some faction’s total self interest.
Fortunately the Left does not have total control in the Netherlands nor anywhere else in Western Europe. A Venezuela situation becomes unlikely, while the provinces where the Left runs things will have its farmers disadvantaged and unable to be as productive as those in the areas where repeal took place.
Sadly, leftist voters and governments do not often pay attention to the outcome of their experiments in disastrous governing and run blithely along until they figuratively run out of track and go off the rails to the total train wreck (cf Venezuela).
Google translate:
“Thousands of farmers protest against German agricultural policy. Minister of Agriculture Klöckner wants to help them financially, while Environment Minister Schulze demands more protection for insects.”
In German:
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/demos-mit-traktoren-bauern-protestieren-gegen-agrarplaene-16445145.html
Just saw on German RTLTWEI News that tractors federal wide are on demonstration against being bullied and the federal politics.
Where could they have gotten this idea from?
“Compare this to non-grassroots Extinction Rebellion, which gets broken up by the public if they block a road for half a minute. ”
Three cheers for the Dutch public! If we tried that in UK we’d be arrested before the XR crusties.
“Compare this to non-grassroots Extinction Rebellion, which gets broken up by the public if they block a road for half a minute. ”
Three cheers for the Dutch public! If we tried that in UK we’d be arrested first, before the XR exhibitionists.
This was really interesting, thanks for posting.
Hi all,
Jus a few remarks from the Netherlands.
As always it’s a bit more complicated than stated above.
Currently as a European country we have an issue with complying to the European standards on NH3/NOx emissions and deposition.
On the one hand we want to preserve the (cultivated) nature spots in our country and on the other hand we have to produce our food and go about our other business.
We did a little business with the European government on that.
To comply with the NH3/NOx deposit levels the Dutch government invented a system to compensate for the growing business by compensating that with preserving and cultivation of nature. It was a theoretical system with a computer model and should be validated in daily practice.
The measurements and the validation raised some questions.
We are preserving cultivated nature which can only survive with very low fertilising
So you can’t deposit very much.
As one of the stakeholders the farmers got their budget for the emissions.
In the meantime the courts ruled that the N2 system didn’t meet its objectives.
So we got a full stop in our economy on new projects in construction, farming, and many other sectors.
The Dutch government has to come up with a new system to handle this and accommodate new projects.
In the meantime the Dutch provinces thought that by taking away the unused emission budget of the farmers, they could get other projects going again for the time being.
That’s were the farmers got in action and mounted their tractors. First to the Dutch government in The Hague and second to the provinces that wanted to take their unused emission rights. Some provinces got back on their decisions, some did not.
Yes, there is lot of sympathy for the farmers. We have to come up with a well balanced emission scheme which suits all sectors, including preserving nature. Perhaps a bit less nature and a bit more clustered spots.
On the other hand there is a severe discussion over the contribution of the sectors.
When the ministry of infrastructure states that the farmers contribute in the emissions by 45% and the aviation by only 0,1%, it doesn’t smell good.
So it’s only the beginning of a new and hopefully better and fair regulation.
We are not there yet.
Just to set the record straight.
There was some damage to the doors of the province house in Groningen and to the field at the Hague. The farmers are going to compensate for those losses.
“As always it’s a bit more complicated than stated above.”
Of course, but the bottom line is: man seems not to be part of nature.
That is the political reality in the European Union.
Way to go farmers ! Enough is enough .
i would love to see the white supremacists in the Extinction Rebellion
try to stop a farmers march .
Tractor vs couch potato . Not going to end well .
The politicians better wake up . The earth has a fever con-job is over
despite what Greta Handlers say .
Hug a farmer they know the truth .