LOVE for the Antifascists protesting FVD in Amsterdam
After feeling tired and drained yesterday and being disappointed about the fact that fascist pigs were allowed to have their show/concert/ trump like election campaign (?) in Weesterpark and that it was happening despite our attempts to disturb it, it seemed important to me write a small peace of appreciation to the people that showed up. - Especially since there is a lot of hate and disrespect recently on indymedia.
Living in the Netherlands for quite some time now, and having spend a lot of time in Amsterdam I was genuinely hoping for more people to show up, since there are a lot of people claiming to live/ appropriating the antifascist or radical left subculture. However, I do not want to spend too much time criticizing these lazy liberals but focus on positive critique to those who showed up. Neither do I want to go into detail about the antisemitic, conspiracy theory, racist, islamophobic politics of the FvD with its crazy populist, fascist leader.
Having lived in different European cities where I never experienced a far right demonstration were the radical/ liberal left was outnumbered by fascists it appears to be crucial to appreciate this bravery of the counter demo.
Especially, considering the fact that the counter demo itself did not appear to be very radical (lot of radical looking people got arrested in advance btw). Still, the cops were obviously there to protect the 1000-1500 (?) fascist from the evil "antifa" which according to observations were around 50-100 people. That became clear when the escort of the police left the group right after the exit of weesterpark were fascist appeared to provoke the antifascist and eventually attacked a group. From what we saw the antifascist didn't let the fascist provoke them and gave a response that was radical considering that a great amount of fascist were surrounding the group. The police just looked away although being 50 meters away how the FvD hooligans attempted to violently attack the demo. That clarified the police position in this conflict (to no surprise to us btw)
Further, during the counter demo the police tried to push the antifascist demo out of the park. Yet, people resisted the sticks and violent behaviour of the cops and ensured that the demo did not get pushed away even further.
The ridiculous amount of cops were a clear repression attempt of left wing activism and ought to be interpreted as such in the aftermath of this demo, potentially addressing the Green-Left mayor Halsema; although her understanding of human rights and what it means to be left-wing mayor has become clear over the past years.
Yet, people showed up, it is much easier to go to a demo like this in Berlin, Barcelona, Brussels, Bordeaux or Paris. For this reason alone, the people who showed up under these unequal circumstances deserve a lot of respect that despite police repression and neo-fascist and hooligans attacking the demo we stood together and will hopefully do so in the future. The rise of this party will unfortunately not stop here and we need to counter it and mobilise against it.
Strong in Antifascist Solidarity