“No more brother wars!”
The European and national past in the visual culture of Dutch Extreme Right Movements
Juliëtte Dekker, MSc Heritage and Memory Studies Graduate School of Humanities Master’s Thesis April 2018
Supervisor: dr. C. Vos Second reader: dr. T.M.C. van Kessel Table of contents
1. Introduction ...... 3 2. Theoretical framework ...... 6 2.1 Defining Dutch extreme right movements ...... 6 2.2 Heritage as identity ...... 8 2.3 Nationhood, nationalism and ethnicity ...... 11 2.4 European heritage ...... 15 3. Methodology: heritage as a discursive practice ...... 19 4. Setting the scene: the Dutch extreme right in the national and European context ...... 23 4.1 The European context ...... 23 4.2 Historical overview of the Dutch Extreme Right ...... 25 4.3 Today’s extreme right ...... 28 5. The European and national uses of the past in the visual culture of Dutch Extreme Right Movements ...... 30 5.1 European brotherhood and the WWII commemoration narrative ...... 31 5.2 The European ancestors ...... 35 5.3 WWII: The sacrifice for our national freedom ...... 40 5.4 National heroes and traditions...... 44 6. Discussion ...... 50 7. References ...... 54 Appendix ...... 60 1. Introduction of the Extreme Right Movements ...... 60 1.1 Voorpost ...... 60 1.2 Identitair Verzet ...... 60 1.3 Nederlandse Volks-Unie ...... 61 1.4 Pegida Nederland ...... 61 1.5 Studiegenootschap Erkenbrand ...... 62 1.6 Zwarte front / Defend Gouda ...... 62 2. List of images ...... 63
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1. Introduction
In 2014 the east German city of Dresden was stage to the weekly demonstrations by a far right group known as Pegida. The demonstrations concerned the refugee policy of the Merkel administration, which the protesters perceived as furthering an undesirable Islamisation of Germany. This critique was part of a wider discontent with the political establishment and the media (Dostal 2015: 523). The demonstrations can be seen to mark the rise of a new voice in European political debate. After Pegida’s success in Dresden, several local offshoots appeared in other cities throughout Germany and Europe, attracting many supporters who were previously not members of extremist organizations. Today, extreme right movements (ERMs) are becoming more active in every European country. As many perceive these demonstrations and protest actions either as a threat to the democratic order at large, or as an expression of their own feelings of discontent, such ERMs are often given much media coverage. Most people living today, then, have at least some idea of the rising popularity of the ideas propagated by ERMs. ERMs, by definition, operate outside the circumscribed domain of established political institutions: they represent standpoints at the extreme ends of the political spectrum and are therefore not representative of political sentiments of the majority. Yet it seems clear that the rise of ERMs cannot be seen separately from the rise of far-right political parties (FRPs) in European politics since the 1990s, parties that do participate in parliamentary politics. In several European countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, Finland, Hungary, France and the Netherlands, FRPs are either already a part of the government or rapidly growing in electoral success. These political parties are often motivated by a dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs in European politics and a worry about external cultural influences within the European borders, frequently xenophobic and Islamophobic in nature (Mudde 2016; Kaya 2016: 3). This has had a dual consequence for the structure of the European political debate. On the one hand, the rise of FRPs has, in a sense, ‘normalized’ views previously held only by a relatively small, extremist part of the European population. They have brought ideas that were previously considered ‘extremist’ to mainstream political debate (Kaya 2017; Eatwell 2004; Mudde 2016). On the other hand, the establishment of democratic FRPs in European politics has created a space more friendly to extremist political standpoints; ERMs, as a consequence, seem to be more legitimated to voice their opinions in public forums. This process of ‘normalization’ calls for a reflection of extreme right standpoints. When studying the extreme right, scholars have often focused on expressions of violence, racism, anti- Semitism and aggression by ERMs (Tierolf et al. 2017; Koopmans 1996; Lee 1997). While these expressions are important to understanding ERMs, the tendency to focus on the more ‘confrontational’ aspects of ERMs has led to an underappreciation of the ideals and values members
3 of ERMs consider worthy or desirable. One way to investigate what these are, is to study how ERMs relate to the past, to study their construction of heritage and memory. By studying those parts of the past these groups consider as important, we gain a better picture of the collective identity of these groups. Identity is inherently tied up with the past. Both on an individual and on a collective level, people always define themselves in relation to their history. This ‘present use of the past,’ as it is often described, is arguably the central theme of the field of heritage and memory studies (Harvey 2001: 320; Smith 2006). References to the past people can identify with—in the form of myths, traditions, monuments, legends or commemoration—are constitutive of group life. An example of this is the phenomenon of invented traditions which helps with nation building (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). Symbols, myths, legends and traditions help to establish a past narrative, biography or story of a group or a nation. Both in academic research and in public media, the extreme right is often associated with patriotism and nationalism. Naturally, these ideas are reflected in their approach to the past. Yet alongside such nationalist expressions of identity there appear many references to transnational, pan- European ideals. Organizationally, many ERMs are rooted in networks of the European extreme right. Examples of this are the local and national offshoots of the German Pegida movement and the national fractions of the European Generation Identity movement. The national ERMs have often close ties with their European counterparts and are exchanging many ideas and strategies. A sense of ‘Europeanness’ is reflected in the values that are expressed in the outward communication of ERMs. In the case of Pegida this becomes clear in the name, an abbreviation of Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West). Generation Identity defines itself as a ‘pan European Identitarian Movement sweeping Europe that originated in France’ (Generation Identity UK and Ireland 2018). Many patriotic ERMs, then, simultaneously value a collective ‘European’ identity and a distinctive national identity. In the ideology of ERMs there seems to be a connection between the focus on nationalism on the one hand, and the emphasis on a shared European identity on the other. Research on ERMs has, as of yet, given little attention to the European values of ERMs. To fill this empirical gap, this study investigates the relation between European and national expressions of identity in ERMs in the Netherlands. In order to study this connection, the research attends to the articulation of a national and a European past in the visual culture of Dutch ERMs. What kind of myths, expressions, traditions and symbols are used in the visual discourse of these kind of movements? Is there some sort of extreme right understanding of a European heritage? What is the connection between notions of ‘nationalist’ and ‘European’ identification in the use of past narratives in the visual culture of ERMs? The research question of this study is: How is the past used to articulate a European and national identity in the online visual communication material of Dutch extreme right movements over the last four years? To answer this question, the research conducts a semiotic discourse analysis of the visual communication
4 material published on the Facebook pages of the ERMs. This material is understood here as performative of a certain type of identity. By semiotically analyzing the principles underlying the varied references to European and national pasts in ERM visual culture, this research aims to work towards a more complete understanding of the extreme right ideology that is currently taking foothold throughout Europe, extending research focused on the purely confrontational, ethnic nationalist aspects of ERM ideology. For this purpose, the following section sets up a theoretical overview of conceptualizations of the relation between heritage and identity.
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2. Theoretical framework
The following section discusses various theoretical insights relating to the way in which ERMs use the past, starting with a question of definition: what is an ERM? Subsequently, several conceptualizations of the relation between heritage and identity will be discussed, both for the national and the European level.
2.1 Defining Dutch extreme right movements This study investigates how the past is used to articulate a sense of European and national identity by Dutch ERMs. But what is an ERM? What is extreme? Though many news media use the word ‘extreme right movements’ to describe the collective action of groups of individuals, giving a precise definition of what an ERM is not easy thing to do. Indeed, what counts as extreme is by definition dependent on that which is considered normal or mainstream. Trying to give such a definition is not a purely theoretical matter: Dutch government agencies—like for instance the Nationaal Coördinator Terrorisme Bestrijding en Veiligheid (NCTV) and the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD)—have been giving increasing attention to the rise of the extreme-right in the Netherlands. In reports written by these agencies, finding distinguishing characteristics of ERMs becomes a practical necessity of their investigations. In the investigation of ERMs in the Netherlands, the yearly report by the Verwey-Jonker Instituut on racism, anti-Semitism, extreme right-wing violence and discrimination in the Netherlands takes a prominent position. Commissioned by the Anne Frank Foundation (Tierolf et al. 2015), This report is also published on the website of the Dutch government and by the then minister of Social Affairs and Employment Asscher (2016) considers this research as leading in monitoring and the registration of violent incidents concerning right-wing extremism. In these reports, the institute makes use of the following definition proposed by Van Donselaar (Moors 2009) to demarcate their field of enquiry:
Extreme-right/right-radical political formations uphold a more or less articulated ideology characterized by (varieties of) orientation to ‘Sameness’,1 (varieties of) aversion to ‘Otherness’, of political opponents, and by authoritarian tendencies. Because extreme- right formations, as their public presence becomes more pronounced, arouse greater societal opposition potentially leading to conflict (and repressive counteraction), leaders
1 Following the translation chosen by Anne Frank Foundation in several of their publications, I have translated the Dutch pronoun ‘het eigene’ with ‘Sameness’. The Dutch ‘het eigene’, however, has a somewhat different connotation from ‘Sameness’. Whereas the former conveys a sense of being one’s own, of propriety so to speak, the latter more strongly focuses on the connotation of identity. The word ‘Sameness,’ however, is conventionally used as an antonym to ‘the Other’—a word widely used in English spoken academic discourse. I have for this reason chosen to follow this translation throughout the rest of the thesis.
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of such formations tend to either conceal or omit parts of their ideology. Since a formation may ideologically speaking have unclear boundaries, social genealogy (descent from one or more extreme-right formations) and ‘magnet function’ (attraction exerted on radical right extremists) may function as indicators aside from ideology.2
This definition focuses on the ideology of a formation and emphasizes the relation between ‘sameness’ and ‘otherness’ embedded in the ideas of ERMs. ‘Sameness’ may refer to the idea of a homogenous ethnicity with a unified cultural identity and a set of shared interests. In contrast, ‘Otherness’ signifies the large domain outside of the ‘we’ or the ‘sameness’ of the homogenous group. In some cases the notion of ‘the Other’ is based on racial or biological grounds, such as the ‘blacks’ and the ‘Jews’, while in other cases it implies groups defined on the basis of their nationality, ethnicity or religion, such as the ‘refugees’, ‘Muslims’, ‘Syrians’ and ‘foreigners’ (Wagenaar 2017: 35). In this case, ‘the Other’ is defined in terms of the ones who are not accepted as part of the community, group or nation. Defining ‘Otherness’ is always a process of negation, depending on the leading principles of the group. In the definition used in the report by Wagenaar a tension arising in much research on ERMs is reflected. The ideology propagated by ERMs is, owing to its extreme nature, often either controversial or prohibited. As a consequence, researchers of ERMs need to allow a degree of flexibility with regards to the definition they employ, as right-wing groups often shield off the more extreme elements in their ideology from the general public (Eatwell 2000: 4). The difficulty of defining ERMs is even more clearly exhibited when we take into account that Van Donselaar’s definition may well include other groups than ERMs, such as FRPs. The report of the Verwey-Jonker Instituut indeed regards political parties, such as the French Front National, the Austrian FPÖ, the Italian Lega Nord, the Flemish Bloc, and the Polish Congress of the New Right (KNP) as extreme right (Wagenaar 2015: 49). Yet, although ERMs and FRPs may show an overlap both in their potential member base and in parts of their ideology, they arguably differ in their degrees of public acceptance. What an ERM is, what counts as being extreme, is dependent on the political norms at work in a society under investigation. It is necessary to attend to the sometimes subtle but vital distinction between the far and- extreme-right political groups. Whereas the former is widely accepted as a part
2 My translation from: ‘Extreemrechtse/rechts-radicale formaties hebben een meer of minder uitgesproken ideologie die wordt gekenmerkt door (varianten van) oriëntatie op het ‘eigene’, (varianten van) afkeer van het ’vreemde’, van politieke tegenstanders, en door een hang naar het autoritaire. Doordat extreemrechtse formaties, naarmate zij meer in de openheid treden, maatschappelijke weerstanden oproepen die tot conflicten (en repressieve reacties) kunnen leiden, zijn de leiders van deze formaties geneigd delen van hun ideologie te verhullen dan wel achterwege te laten. Omdat een formatie in ideologisch opzicht vage contouren kan hebben, kunnen naast ideologie ook sociale genealogie (afstamming van één of meer eerdere extreemrechtse formaties) en de magneetfunctie (op radicale rechts-extremisten uitgeoefende aantrekkingskracht) als indicatoren dienen’ (Van Donselaar cited in Moors 2009).
7 of the democratic political arena, the latter is definitely outside the domain of what counts as normal or mainstream politics. In a later publication, Wagenaar (2017: 36) indeed seems to be aware of the need to distinguish modern FRPs focused on themes such as the Islam and immigration and movements inspired on classical national socialists (or Nazi) ideas, which are anti-Semitic and racist in nature. Van Donselaar (Moors 2009) made as well a distinction between the ‘classical extreme right’ and ‘new radical-right’, to distinguish today’s widely accepted FRPs, such as the PVV and Forum voor Democratie (FVD), from groups with their foundation in Nazism or Italian Fascism. Since the increase in popularity of FRPs in the Netherlands, more radical right-wing ideas are regarded as ‘acceptable’ and ‘mainstream’. ERMs and FRPs are constantly interacting: at times they move closer to each other, while at other times they dissociate from the other. What is sometimes described as the ‘swing to the right’ in European politics has created a climate in which ERMs have grown in popularity, with a larger group of people involved in extreme right demonstrations like those organized by Pegida. On the other hand, many topics belonging to ERMs, are currently used in, or some would say claimed by, the political discourse of FRPs. This may result in a smaller need of many people in society to support the marginal ERMs. For example, since 9/11 the public attitude towards Muslims changed markedly (Eatwell 2004: 2). Before 9/11 anti-Islam rhetoric was mainly reserved to marginal ERMs, while after it became topic of political discourse of relatively more mainstream FRPs. The position of ERMs in society is continuously reliant on its dynamic relation with the larger political environment in the Netherlands and Europe. It seems that many topics originally reserved to be the domain of the extreme right, are incorporated in the discourse of a larger group and, therefore, the thought of ERMs becomes more mainstream. Coming back to the question of defining ERMs, this research follows the definition of Van Donselaar (Moors 2009) which is also used in the rapport by the Verwey-Jonker Instituut and the Anne Frank Foundation. ERMs are understood as political movements that operate outside of the political arena, thereby distinguishing them from FRPs, which are positioned inside the field of parliamentary politics. In order to understand how the identity of ERMs is constructed by using the past in the visual culture, we have to take a look at how heritage is related to identity, nationalism and Europeanism. The next sections discuss how authors in the field of heritage studies have conceptualized the relation between identity and heritage.
2.2 Heritage as identity Among today’s heritage scholars there is no clear-cut definition of what heritage exactly is and what the scope of research is within the interdisciplinary field of heritage studies. Different definitions of heritage co-exist, but many heritage scholars agree on the ambiguity of the concept in both the its theoretical as its daily use (Harrison 2013; Lowenthal 1998). When you think about heritage, monumental buildings, churches and memorials quickly come to mind. Today forms of intangible
8 heritage, such as traditions, local practices and religion could also be included in this list. Why are some past practices, objects or events considered as more important than others? What values are expressed in specific heritage practices and how do these practices shape the ways in which people think and act? These are the questions central to the field of heritage studies. Despite disagreements about its definition, scholars concur on the fact that heritage is a kind of social activity. Walsh (1992), for instance, makes clear that heritage is a set of presently held attitudes towards the past. Harvey (2001: 320) indicates that “heritage has always been with us and has always been produced by people according to their contemporary concerns and experiences”. These authors stress the active, present-day construction of heritage. Unlike historians, heritage scholars are not primarily interested in describing historical occurrence practices, objects and events, but rather look at the social processes and social meaning of relating to the past instead. Tunbridge and Ashworth (1996: 6) also emphasize this approach and highlight that today’s users are deciding selectively which things of the past should be preserved for the future and what should be forgotten. In her book ‘Memorylands’ Macdonald has described today’s increasing attention to the preservation of the past as a collective memory complex (2013: 5). She adds that “it should be seen as shorthand for something like ‘the memory-heritage-identity complex’ for these are tightly interwoven” (Ibid.). The terms heritage and memory are often used interchangeably, since they both concern the present-day relation to the past. Traditionally, the connotation and framing of heritage was mostly concerned with material forms, where memory, in contrast was associated with individual psychological forms (Ibid.: 17). Today, with the discussion on intangible heritage, this distinction got further blurred. However, heritage often implies selectivity, as Macdonald puts it: “one of the most important accomplishments of heritage is to turn the past from something that is simply there, or has merely happened, into an arena from which selections can be made and values derived” (Ibid.: 18). For this particular reason, this study mainly uses the term ‘heritage’ when referring to the past, since many ERMs use the past in a selective and value-laden manner. With the notion of a ‘memory-heritage-identity complex’ Macdonald means to make clear that identity is intimately tied to expressions of the past. This happens in two interrelated ways. The choices made in relating to the past both reflect our presently held values, while at the same time strengthening currently held conceptions of ourselves. With respect to identity, then, the selection of heritage is both an active and a passive process. In reflections on the notion of identity, it is often possible to distinguish two broad ways of understanding the term. The difference between these approaches can be expressed by saying that we either have or create identity. On the one hand, there is what we may call the social-constructivist stance, which sees identity as being performed, constructed or enforced; on the other hand there is the ‘primordialist’ stance, which focuses on stable aspects of identity: identity as a stable given that affects how one thinks, behaves and makes choices. Both views of identity articulate a different relation between identity and agency. Whereas the former views identity as the result of agency, behavior or whatever one chooses to call it, the latter
9 understands identity as its source. These two categories are, naturally, ideal-typical. Most authors writing on identity will incorporate both static and dynamic understandings of identity. Two prominent authors promoting a constructivist conception of identity are Brubaker and Cooper (2000). These authors urge us to speak of what they call ‘identification’, using the concept identity. This idea is articulated in their influential work ‘Beyond “identity”’ in which they criticize the overuse and devaluation of the concept ‘identity’, its use often being unclear and imprecise. It is more fruitful to use identification instead, because it specifies the “agents who do the identifying” (Ibid.: 14) as well as emphasizes the fact that identification always happens in relation to a certain object one identifies with. While speaking of the heritage of the members of ERMs, it is more productive to speak about a group that can identify with those particular elements of the past, rather than to consider something as their heritage. While Brubaker’s and Cooper’s (2000) understanding may seem like a purely theoretical device, it has a definite advantage in empirically analyzing what ideas and values are expressed in ERM heritage. Socio-historical analyses of the extreme right have generally tended to focus on behaviors that violate dominant societal norms: acts of violence, racism, anti-Semitism, aggression and so forth (Tierolf et al. 2017; Koopmans 1996; Lee 1997). This has led researchers to focus on those expressions that confirm extant conceptions of the extreme right. Brubaker’s and Cooper’s focus on processes of identification, rather than expressions of static, entrenched identities is a way to more open, less normatively inspired understanding of the values held by members of ERMs. Taking a more constructivist stance towards the relation between heritage and identity, may allow for a complete understanding of extreme right ideology. . The work ‘Modernity and Self-Identity’ (1991) by Giddens has been of great influence in debates on identity in the last two decades. In this book, Giddens argues how self-identity has become reflexive in today’s highly developed global society, what he has called late modernity. In the post- traditional order of late modernity, both the self and institutions are characterized by reflexivity. The individual constructs a set of revisable biographical narratives in order to create and maintain a self- identity (Ibid.: 54). Giddens calls this ongoing narration process the reflexive project of the self (Ibid.: 32). In contrast to traditional societies, late modernity gives individuals the a relatively greater freedom in choosing who to be and what to do (Ibid:. 70). Where in more traditional ways of living life choices and a person’s identity are more destined and fixed, late modernity allows people to construct, revise and maintain their own personal life story. Giddens shows how the anonymous organizations that characterize today’s late modern societies replace the protecting framework of traditions and fixed communities of traditional societies (Ibid.: 33). Late modernity is regarded by larger degrees of uncertainty and insecurity (Ibid.: 142). Members of Dutch ERMs are constructing a kind of life story of themselves which is related to the national and European past to deal with various insecurities in present-day society. By narrating a clear story of their past, the members of ERMs maintain a self-identity.
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In today’s late modern society a person’s future is something of constant renegotiation, while the past is not a given thing. Increasing opportunities to establish a personal life story enables individuals to shape the future and to remember specific parts of the past (Giddens 1991: 72). For instance, in present-day society there is discussion what can be regarded as the national canon, the selection of the most important elements of a nation’s culture, a process unthinkable in medieval societies. Part of the reflexive project is that people are capable to come up with their own life story, in which the past and the future are more fluid. Giddens shows in his work how the autobiography of an individual is “a corrective intervention into the past, not merely a chronicle of elapsed events” (Ibid.). In this way, the past is reconstructed in favor of a coherent life trajectory for a person’s future plans. One could say that the notion of heritage indeed reflects a peculiarly modern, reflective way of relating to the past. The past is not something given by historical facts, but it is a process that is actively constructed by actors. In the case of ERMs, members are actively using the past in a coherent narrative to give meaning to the present world and their future plans. Particular past narratives are selected which symbolize their present-day values and identity. For different reasons, both Giddens and Brubaker and Cooper, then, point to the need to approach heritage for a largely constructivist understanding of identity. Whereas Brubaker and Cooper show that such an understanding may lead to a more complete understanding of identity, Giddens shows that a constructivist understanding of selfhood is more appropriate to the socio- economic conditions characteristic of contemporary societies. The visual culture of ERMs studies here must, then, be understood as an active process of identification, a process in which certain identities are created at the expense of others. Looking at the visual communication produced by ERMs we may see that the historical symbols that are chosen reflect certain principles of selection, certain values. In the next section a principle that underlies how people relate both to themselves and their past: the idea of nationalism.
2.3 Nationhood, nationalism and ethnicity The previous section demonstrated that heritage is inherently tied up with identity. We have seen that all the discussed authors conceptualize heritage as an active process of relating to the past in the present. In this section we discuss a specific form of this process, one which has been historically dominant in Europe. From the 18th century onwards, people have gradually come to understand themselves by using symbols expressive of belonging to a nation state. National symbols and ideas, such as the flag and the national anthem made it possible for individuals to feel that they are part of a people. With the help of these symbols it has become possible for people to understand themselves as Dutch, French or German, rather than belonging to this or that village or region. Having a shared heritage is indispensably connected with the existence of nationalism.
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What is nationalism? Similar to other abstract concepts used to describe social structures and ideologies, such as liberalism, democracy and religion, it is not easy to give a simple and general definition of nationalism. An influential attempt to sketch a framework in which nationalism might be understood is found in the work of Anderson (2006). In his main work Imagined Communities: on the origin and spread of nationalism Anderson suggests that the ability to ‘imagine’ oneself as part of a certain community is central to all societies. A specific type of imagination, Anderson argues, has been central to the rise of the nation-state: the imagination of a nation-state as a community that is both limited and sovereign (2006: 7). Nationalism is, in other words, a specific way of understanding yourself as part of a larger community. The central characteristics of this nationalist imagination are the idea that the nation has an unquestioned right to exist and is distinct from certain other nations. Naturally, heritage plays an important role in articulating and disseminating such an imagined community. Through symbolism that expresses the existence and distinction of a sovereign nation in relation to other nations, people learn what the specific characteristics of their community are and what nations count as ‘the Other’. Examples of this are the national flag and the national anthem who demarcate the borders of a national imagined community, from another national community. Another example is the imagined community of Nazi Germany, in which the ideology was defined primarily in relation to ‘Otherness’, the ones who were not accepted in society, such as the Jews, Roma’s, homosexuals, Slavs and communists (Evans 1996: 33). It is in and through such ‘Othering’ that the norms and ideals associated with a certain nation come to be articulated. Hobsbawm and Ranger have similarly stressed the fact that traditions that appear to be deeply embedded in national identity are often the product of ‘invention’. In a collection of essays under the title ‘The invention of tradition’, Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) explain how national symbols and traditions are constructed. They show that with the development of the modern nation state, many traditions are invented to guarantee a continuity with the past. Many traditions seem to be old, though they are often ‘newer’ than they appear to be. Modern nation states propagate an appropriate past with traditions that fits into their norms and values, which leads to the socialization of large communities (Ibid.: 1-2). An example of an invented tradition is the distinctive Highland culture of Scotland with its clothing custom with the kilt and musical tradition containing the Scottish bagpipe (Trevor-Roper 1983: 15). The musical tradition with the bagpipe is actually not as old as it appears to be, but it is actually based on a new myth: an invented tradition. According to Trevor-Roper the distinctive Scottish culture is based on the idea to distinguish themselves from the dominant English culture. In this way, the Scottish people get the feeling of collectiveness that is different from the English. With this idea, Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) implicate that the national identity, with its traditions, heritage and symbols, is actually an invention constructed over time. The invention of tradition thesis proved that people indeed use the past for their present purposes. Some might say that the references to past traditions, myths and stories by ERMs are manufactured or invented, while others would argue that all traditions are made up at some point in time. The use of particular symbols
12 and myths in the national narrative is a politicized process, with no real dichotomy between real and invented traditions. Imagining the national identity is an unstable process, constantly subject to change. Anderson’s (2006) thought on nationalism is criticized from different angles. A critique which is related to the topic discussed in this thesis, is formulated recently by Greenfeld (1999), an author who has written extensively on nationalism. Greenfeld criticizes Anderson’s notion of nationalism on two related grounds (Ibid.: 47-48). On the one hand, Anderson’s notion of nationalism is too broad: it is also applicable to other groups, such as the church or a city. On the other hand, Anderson’s concept is limited in describing the content of nationalist thought. Greenfeld shows that Anderson is mainly concerned with the act and conditions of imagining of a community, rather than describing what it is in itself. In addition to the earlier mentioned conditions that an imagined community should be limited and sovereign, Anderson focuses on the rise of printing as a form of mass communication in the capitalist production system. The Marxist focus on the economic conditions of cultural phenomena disrupt the attention of the characteristics of the content of specific nationalist ideas of a community (Ibid.: 47-48). Though, to summarize, Anderson’s framework correctly indicates the constitutive role imagination in the emergence of communities, such as ERMs, Greenfeld rightly points out that Anderson’s work leaves us wondering what specifically characterizes nationalism as a species of such imagination. What characterizes the content of nationalist ideas? When writing about nationalism a general distinction is often made between two poles of nationalism: civic vs. ethnic. On the one hand, civic nationalism is grounded on the idea that a person is part of a collective on the basis of a kind of rational decision. This ideal type is based on the idea of a common citizenship of the people in a nation, regardless of a person’s race, gender or language (Habermas 1994; Gellner 1983). We can trace this notion of nationalism back to the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, where the idea of autonomously ‘choosing’ to be part of a collective has been expressed through the notion of a social contract (Habermas 1994: 23). An example of this is the unification of the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish on civic grounds in the United Kingdom in the late 18th century. Values, such as liberty, equality and democracy are celebrated, rather than the ethnic sense of belonging. Civic nationalist heritage often emphasizes those ideals that give expression to this choice, such as the attachment to the constitution, the town hall and civic institutions. This type of nationalism is inclusive, universalist and liberal in nature, because the members of a nation are united on civic principles. An example of this is the opportunity of immigrants to become a full member of the nation when sharing the principle values and norms of society. ‘Others’ are those entities that fail to live up to these values and norms of rational civility. Because of this, civic nationalism is fundamentally open, as membership of the collective is not dependent on historically contingent characteristics like race or religion (Gellner 1983: 141).
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On the other hand, ethnic nationalism defines the nation in terms of a common ethnicity. A person is part of the collective on the basis of a common ancestry, shared heritage, common memory and collective religion (Smith 1986; 1992: 60). This type of nationalism has its roots in primordialism and German Romanticism highlighting the common roots, kinship, fraternity and inheritance as foundation for the nation (Jenkins and Sofos 1996: 15). Nationalities exists due to the existence of primordial entities, such as the biological and territorial basis for a people (Gryosby 1994: 168). An extreme example of this type of nationalism can be found in the Blut und Boden (blood and soil) ideology of Nazi Germany indicating the racial idealization of the unification of the national body with its natural settlement area. The ethnic identity of a person is understood as permanent and fixed. Such notions of nationality can also be found in present-day immigration procedures of many states, as part of the repatriation laws which give automatic citizenship to the Diaspora living abroad. Ethnic nationalism emphasizes pre-existing ethnic characteristics of the nation highlighting for instance, the founding myths and symbols of a nation (Smith 1986: 2). Therefore, it is impossible for a migrant to become a full member of the nation, because the migrant does not share the same ancestry, history and identity. The identity of a nation is continually reshaped and passed onto the next generation through history textbooks, folklore, customs, rituals, ceremonies, political myths and symbols (Smith 1992: 62). Ethnic nationalism is opposed to civic nationalism, because it is characterized as exclusive, particularist, illiberal and ascriptive. A form of ethnic nationalism is present in the various independence movements in Europe, such as the Catalans or the Basques who belief to have distinctively other ethnicity than the Spaniards (Smith 1986: 94). Thus, the ideology of a nation is often based on something that binds the collective identity together, varying from mental representations of communities to shared traditions, civic principles of liberty or a common ancestry, kinship and heritage. In empirically analysing national movements or nation states it is often impossible to distinguish between the ideal types of civic and ethnic nationalism. Processes of ethnic and civic nationalist identification often coincide or overlap to some extent, as Brubaker has recently argued (Brubaker 1999: 69). The shared elements of a group are often defined in opposition to another group, community or nation (Jenkins and Sofos 1996: 11; Nagel 1991: 85). A nation is frequently defined in terms of who is in and who is out and the definition of ‘the Other’ might function as a yardstick of self-definition (Evans 1996: 33-34). This process of negation demarcates the symbolic boundaries of belonging and ‘Otherness’, defining who is an insider and who is an outsider (Yuval-Davis et al. 2005: 528). Many symbols, traditions and myths are grounded on ideas of ethnicity, nationhood and Europeanness by Dutch ERMs. The next section investigates how notions of a European identity can be performed through the past.
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2.4 European heritage In the previous section we have seen that the basis of a nation can be defined on different grounds that can be divided into ethnic or civil, which overlap to a large extent in practice. The extreme right mostly defines the nation in terms of ethnicity. Apart from the national identity, many members of Dutch ERMs identify with Europe to some extent. For this thesis, it is important to question how conceptions of national identity may exist next to conceptions of the European identity. Where does the identification with the national stop and with the European starts? For instance, the perception of European heritage by members of ERMs varies to a large extent from the dominant political discourse of the European Union (EU). Different notions of what Europe is may exist side by side. A dominant way to define Europe is part of an Enlightenment narrative, portraying Europe as rational, secular, modern and civilized opposed to non-European parts of the world that are considered as irrational, tribal, traditional and barbaric. In this Enlightened vision, Europe is considered as a civil partnership between sovereign states (Pocock 2002: 70). In this narrative, the dominant vision of what European heritage is about is mainly centered around classical antiquity, Christianity and the Enlightenment (De Cesari 2012: 158; Sierp 2014: 105). The founding myths of Europe, such as the stories from the Greek mythology and the Enlightened idea of a European rational order, emphasize a break with the past to construct a new European order (Ibid.: 104). To legitimate Europe’s existence, definitions often focus on its ‘uniqueness’ (Macdonald 2013: 19). When defining what Europe is and what its borders are, it is always opposed to something what Europe is not (Smith 1992: 75). This ‘Othering’ of the non-European is a process which has taken place in the course of recent history. The integration of sovereign states into the EU raises many questions over the meaning of the European cultural identity and if it is more than just the sum total of the national identities. Smith rightly points out that there are several domains where specific European characteristics can be found, varying from linguistics, cultural geography and territorial symbolism, religious cleavages, a sense of the ‘outsider’, shared history, a political and legal tradition and shared heritages and symbols (1992: 68-70). Yet it is difficult to find a single shared characteristic between all national cultures. Some historical events and traditions have some European peoples more than others, while at other specific fields other communities were affected. There is, for instance, much linguistic overlap due to the shared Indo-European origin of most languages that are spoken in Europe today, but the language of the Fins and Hungarians are excluded from this family; Christianity plays a major role in the unification of Europe, but there is much disagreement between Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodoxy, Jewry and the legacy of Arab Islam. Smith shows that there is no single European tradition shared by all European peoples, but that all of them have contributed to some of these areas. For this reason, Smith introduces the concept of a ‘family of cultures’ which contains the idea of partial shared traditions, histories and heritages between the European peoples (Ibid.: 70). Smith stresses that shared traditions, symbols and myths are vital for the concept of the European identity, rather than defining Europe in rationalist terms of a shared scientific culture or a shared set of
15 economic interests. Yet, as he notes, the ultimate lack of cultural unity between the European ‘family of cultures’ presents “the New Europe’s true dilemma: a choice between unacceptable historical myths and memories on the one hand, and on the other a patchwork of memoryless scientific culture held together solely by political will and economic interest that are so often subject to change.” (Smith 1992: 74). The rapprochement of the EU member states in the 1990s meant a new chapter in the way people perceive Europe in relation to their national identity. How can a European identity exist next to the national identity? To capture both national identity as well as European identity, the EU promotes the motto of ‘United in Diversity’ since 2000 (EU 2000). This motto accentuates the distinctiveness of every nation, while simultaneously emphasizing the overarching themes binding the European nations together. With such a narrative the EU recognizes the value of every nation, celebrating the national culture, history and traditions. On the other hand, this narrative highlights the somewhat universal values of Europe, such as peace and prosperity, which are not bounded to national borders and to which the national identity could conform to. This makes it possible for nationalist identities to coincide with European unification without posing a threat to the sovereignty constitutive of nationalist imaginations (Chebel d’Appollonia 2002: 172). With the construction of the EU, many symbols have come into being, in a process similar to the construction of a nation state (Pagden 2002: 33). Examples of such symbols are the introduction of the European flag, a European anthem, a European passport, festive ‘European weeks’, the nomination of a European capital of culture and so on (Macdonald 2013: 35). An illustration of how European identity is actively constructed by the EU is the Museum of Europe project, which is called the House of European History. The creation of the museum is inspired on Nora’s (1989) influential idea of lieux de mémoire. Here, Nora argues that every memory needs a material place. In 2007, the first exhibition was entitled ‘It’s our history!’ which explores European History starting at the end of WWII by showing various overarching historical narratives binding Europe together. This exhibition is an example of an attempt to create a common European heritage (Macdonald 2013: 37). The content of the exhibition space is criticized by many. Aleida Assmann (2014: 550) states that the museum proved that it is difficult to construct a common European past that includes a supra-national identity shared by all member states. Instead of being a site of European history, the museum becomes a space in which “memory is still in the making” (Ibid.). The exhibition in the House of European History takes WWII as starting point of the collective history of Europe. This is exemplary for the way how WWII and the Holocaust are perceived as the founding myth of Europe. According to the dominant memory work of the EU, the war should be commemorated as a pan-European massacre which concerns all Europeans as victims equally (De Jong 2011: 378). The primary goal of European collaboration, in this context, is to maintain peace. In the first decades after the war, most memory work concerning WWII was focused on national trauma and bravery (Mälksoo 2009: 663). In the case of the Netherlands, the memory
16 culture focused on the national suffering the Nazi’s occupation causes, emphasizing narratives of brave resistance fighters. Certain themes were prominent in the patriotic national story with the purpose of creating a positive self-image of the country (Sierp 2014: 107-108). Continuous efforts have been made to create from the fragmented memories of Nazi aggression and occupation of the individual nations, one common European memory of WWII. Since the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII in 1995, the collective memory focused on the Holocaust as the crime against humanity. This shared memory of human-rights abuse legitimate the status of the EU as an apparatus to maintain peace in the European continent (Mälksoo 2009: 663). An example of this effort to legitimate the existence of the EU is the phrase “Never Again”. The common European memory of the Holocaust unites perpetrators, victims and bystanders into one narrative. Currently, the heritage of WWII and the Holocaust is institutionalized and functions as a yardstick to measure and evaluate other political conflicts (Sierp 2014: 111). The introduction of Europe Day and Holocaust Memorial Day as official commemoration days in Europe shows the instrumentalization of the Holocaust as a European collective memory. In 2000, the Stockholm Declaration declared that the Holocaust should become a common memory of humanity that should encompass the universal values of European civil society and human rights (Assmann 2014: 548). Assmann argues that with this declaration, the collective European memory of the Holocaust was carried beyond Europe’s borders and a transnational memory for all United Nations member states was born (Ibid.: 549). The influential work of Levy and Sznaider (2002: 88) also observes that the Holocaust memory is ‘deterritorialised’ and can be considered as a cosmopolitan memory, instead of a national or European. The collective memory focuses on the “moral story of good against evil” (Ibid.: 98) and is, thus, separated from its historical time and space. The Holocaust functions as some sort of common and universal memory of Europe. Characterizations of heritage and identity, such as symbols and language, might differ between groups and competitive heritages exist side to side. An example of a counter narrative to the European imagined community is the notion of Europe by neo-Nazis and SS-veterans. The SS- veterans position themselves as ‘European’ in the existing tradition of the EU (Hurd and Werther 2016: 429). The SS-veterans uphold the narrative that they believed in the idea of the voluntary integration of semi-autonomous nations into the ‘Greater Germanic Reich’ during WWII. The conception of Europe by the Waffen-SS differs from the notion of Hitler and many of his party members, whose expansionist ideology was based on nationalist grounds (Ibid.). In this way, the SS- leaders distinguished their ideology from the other Nazis, considering themselves the vanguards of the European unification of the Germanic countries. This gives the SS-veterans the potential to create a heroic counter-narrative and to reposition themselves as the voluntary protectors of the pan-European ideal against the threat of communism. In this narrative the collapse of the Soviet Union confirms that the battle of the Waffen-SS ‘for a Europe of fatherlands’ was successful in the end. The idea of a united European Community including the East European states had become reality. The SS-veterans
17 claim they fought for this pan-European ideal (Ibid.: 433). The approach to the past by the SS- veterans provides a counter narrative of WWII in European history. The SS-veterans organized commemoration practices, such as they erected memorials and held public marches (Hurd and Werther 2016: 443). Many neo-Nazis sympathize with the ideas of the SS-veterans and join their commemoration practices. Both the SS-veterans and the neo-Nazis consider themselves nationalists and emphasize the European foundation of their identity. According to Hurd and Werther, the memory work of the SS-veterans function as an inspiration for the transnational network of European neo-Nazis and they are keen on to continue the battle of the Waffen-SS for a ‘European’ racial elite (2016: 443-444). The memory work of SS-veterans and neo-Nazis give many Europeans with a different perspective on Europe a somewhat uncomfortable feeling. A great part of the collective European heritage has to deal with what Macdonald has called ‘undesirable heritage’ (2006: 9). The legacy of Nazi Germany is part of history that the majority of the Europeans prefer not to have. Many post-war dilemmas show the need to create a form of historical consciousness (Ibid.). There are different stories, interpretations and memories of the events during WWII and the Holocaust. Tunbridge and Ashworth (1996) have called this kind of uncomfortable heritage ‘dissonant heritage’. “Dissonance in heritage involves a discordance or a lack of agreement and consistency” (Ibid.: 21). When something is someone’s heritage, it is automatically not the heritage of someone’s else. This encompasses the heritage which is contested between groups. Different individuals and groups might give different meanings to a form of heritage. ERMs give a different meaning to the heritage of WWII than what the authoritative Holocaust discourse proposes. Dissonance in heritage is always related to the question ‘whose heritage?’ The process of contestation is a theme which is inherently related to the heritage and memory of the extreme right, because their ideas are opposed to the dominant voice of the Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD). This influential idea is proposed by Laurajane Smith (2006) who observes that the uses of heritage are always grounded in the power to legitimate or delegitimize one’s heritage. Where institutions such as the EU and UNESCO have the power, authority and resources to legitimate uses of the past as heritage, ERMs in contrast, find more difficulties in legitimating something as heritage. The way that EU perceives the legacy of the war is considered as an authority, while the memory work of the extreme right is perceived as less influential. Overall, the authoritative memory culture of the EU substitutes the national memory of WWII. The European project, embodied in the House of European History, offers new frameworks to commemorate national trauma’s against the yardstick of common Holocaust memory.
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3. Methodology: heritage as a discursive practice
Much work on heritage is focused on practical preservation and conservation. However, as we have seen earlier, heritage is deeply involved in all dimensions of social life, such as identity, nationalism and politics. To study those aspects of heritage it is important to take heritage into critical consideration, to ask questions about value and the selectiveness of heritage. Why are some past events memorialized and others forgotten? What values are expressed in practices of heritage and memory? How do these practices encourage certain patterns of thought and behaviour? One dominant approach to questioning the position of heritage within different historical, political and social settings, is to consider heritage as a discursive practice. By semiotically addressing heritage as a ‘text’ one could gain a better understanding of the function of heritage within society and how it relates to power. In today’s academic world, discourse is a widely used term and approach in many disciplines, varying from anthropology, gender studies, sociology, cultural studies and so on. The work of Foucault (1974) has greatly influenced the notion of discourse as it is currently employed in many academic fields. Foucault investigates how language, practices and objects in society are expressive of power relations. Through what he calls his ‘genealogical’ method, Foucault aims to trace the origin of contemporary forms of thought and behaviour through a detailed analysis of how historically situated practices, texts and objects express certain power relations. Foucault (1974) calls this the ‘history of the present’, an analysis of how notions of subjectivity and selfhood have been historically shaped (Ibid.: 121). This history, for Foucault, can be written by attending to the practices in which individual minds and bodies are categorized, divided, identified and named according to a given normative principle. Foucault calls the constellation of these individualizing practices ‘discursive formations’ (Ibid.: 31). Foucault analyses how certain discursive formations composed of language, practices and objects—psychological institutions, the prison system, science— have produced certain kinds of individuals (Ibid.: 44). Foucault’s work (1974) provides a powerful means to study the structures of contemporary social life. Heritage, then, may be considered as a peculiar kind of discursive practice productive of power. Many heritage scholars have argued that discourse is central in the formation of identity. Thus, Hall emphasises the discursiveness of heritage and explains it as “one of the ways in which the nation slowly constructs for itself a sort of collective social memory (2005: 5). Hall compares the story of the nation to the narrative of the individual and the family, in the way that individuals are gluing random incidents and outstanding events of one’s life to a single and coherent story. Nations use the same strategy in constructing a national narrative: memorable events and outstanding accomplishments are selected and canonized into a coherent national story. This process of ‘storying’ is what Hall calls tradition (Ibid). In his analysis of heritage practices, Hall criticizes the dominant narrative that
19 represents traditions, because it is only a part of the national story instead of the collective heritage and memory of the whole nation’s. He points to the power and dominance of the colonizer in the selection process of the nation’s heritage and tradition, since “it is always inflected by the power and authority of those who have colonized the past, whose versions of history matters” (Ibid: 6). He advocates for a revision and re-negotiation of the national story in order to deconstruct the existing power relations in social life. Following Foucault’s (1974) thought on discourse, many studies focus on unrevealing power relations which are set in language between the authority of the dominator and the obedience of the subordinator. A prominent approach in the study of language in social cultural contexts is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) which is grounded in Foucault’s understanding of discourse. According to Fairclough (2010) CDA is form of analysis that unravels how discursive practices, language and texts influence organizing structures in society. Discourse here refers to the way how people and institutions understand structures of the outside world (Wu and Hou 2015: 39). At the same time, discursive practices have effect on the production of knowledge, ideology and identity of people. In other words, discourse influences the way people act, feel, value, belief and interact (Gee 2005: 7). In this type of analysis, the main focus is on power relations in society and how power is articulated in language and practices. According to Fairclough, CDA “is not analysis of discourse ‘in itself’ as one might take it to be, but analysis of dialectical relations between discourse and other objects, elements or moments, as well as analysis of the “internal relations’ of discourse” (2010: 4, original italics). In this manner, CDA is not solely a textual analysis but it aims to discover how people organise social life and how these power structures are produced, maintained and reproduced over time. In heritage studies, among many other disciplines, CDA is a widely used approach because of the political and social nature of the field and the relevance of heritage as initiator of social change (Harrison 2010: 77). Wu and Hou (2015: 37) distinguish the notion of discourse in heritage studies on three levels: firstly, in the theoretical field, subsequently, as a method or methodology in heritage research and, lastly as cultural discourses of ‘heritage’ which might be considered as alternative explanations of heritage practices. A prominent voice in shaping discourse analysis in heritage studies is Smith (2006). She proposes to see heritage not as a concept for characterizing certain objects, traditions or sites, but rather as the process “that engages with acts of remembering that work to create ways to understand and engage with the present, and the sites themselves are cultural tools that can facilitate, but are not necessarily vital for, this process” (Ibid: 44). In other words, heritage is a discursive construction of the language that is used by us. In addition, Harvey (2001: 372) stresses the human action and agency that is present in heritage practices. For this particular reason, Harvey considers heritage as a verb that is concerned with the process of the legitimization of power of all different kinds of identities, such as the individual, the national, and the cultural. The AHD is dominant in legitimating what can be considered as heritage and what not (Smith 2006). AHD encourages a consensus approach to the past, without much space for diversity. Waterton, Smith and
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Campbell (2006) demonstrate how CDA is a useful method to study heritage semiotically and to develop an inclusive understanding of heritage practices which are not regarded as heritage according to the AHD. Both, Harvey (2001) and Smith (2006) emphasize the agency and the action of heritage practices. Heritage is not a static entity but is constructed every day again through discourse. As such, the analysis of language used to describe past events provides insight in how heritage, as well as social life in general, are constructed in a discursive manner. This study considers how people living in the present relate to the past. How is the past used to shape the present? More specifically, the research focuses on the meaning of the political discourse of ERMs in the Netherlands and how their visual language is related to notions of a national and European identity. Here, language is understood in the broad sense: as forms of expression that convey a particular meaning. ERMs use all kinds of visual images to construct and communicate their perception of the past in order to shape their present identity. When studying visual culture multiple layers of meaning of the identity of a group or a person can be identified (Schreiber 2017: 47). Using the method of CDA, this study analyzes semiotically the visual language used by ERMs on social media. Waterton et al. (2006: 342) demonstrate that the way how people talk, create and visualize the past matters for the meaning of heritage. Semiotic analysis focus on how signs and texts in the broad sense produce meaning and, thus, cultural identity. According to Fairclough (2010: 212) semiotic analysis is concerned with the way that texts, like visual language, relate to, produced by and interpreted by people. Fiske (1982: 43) distinguishes three fields of study in semiotic analysis, varying from the study of the sign in itself, the organization of signs into a code or system and the users of the sign. This study focus particularly on the analysis of the sign in itself, but takes the other two fields into consideration. In this study the visual language that is used in the online communication material of ERMs is considered as text from which meaning is produced. Poynter (2010: 108) indicates that in the case of semiotic research on the meaning of symbols and signs, it does not matter much if the research is conducted with online or offline material. Social media function frequently as platform for politically oriented communication (Mayr and Weller 2017: 5) and is, therefore, a fruitful platform to gather visual data of ERMs. Three ERMs are examined on the visual language that they use in their communication material. What is said is visible in the visual language of an image (Schreiber 2017: 41). What are the values expressed in the visual texts? Why are certain symbols, myths or historical events considered more important than others? The investigation aims to get more insight in the discourse of Dutch ERMs by analyzing the meaning that emerges from their visual language. The leading reports of the AIVD, the Verwey- Jonker Institute and the Anne Frank Foundation distinguish six ERMs in the Netherlands in 2017 (Tierolf et al. 2017: 37-41). These six movements are taken as starting point, from which three movements were chosen for the analysis undertaken in this study.3 The online visual communication
3 See appendix for a description of the movements and a further explanation of the selection.
21 material published on Facebook by Voorpost (Outpost), Identitair Verzet (Identitarian Resistance) and the Nederlandse Volks-Unie (Dutch People’s Union) are analyzed. The social media analysis focuses specifically on the images that were published on Facebook by the official account of the ERM over the last four years. Other types of social media, such as Twitter or Instagram are not taken into account, since the content posted on the different platforms is often almost entirely the same. Mayr and Weller (2017: 8) emphasize the importance to demarcate the most relevant platforms on social media, because of the endless opportunities. This specific medium is chosen, because the content on Facebook has a visual focus and fits to the means of this study. A social media website like Twitter, in contrast, has more a textual focus. Facebook is also the most used social media website in the Netherlands and is widely used among the members of Dutch ERMs. The analysis takes all the published images on Facebook by the ERMs into account. An image is included into the analysis when it has a reference to the past. The analysis starts with the first image published on Facebook, which was in 2014. There is no online data with a reference to the past publicly available from the period before 2014. Due to this practical constraint the analysis starts in 2014. The timeframe of the studied material consists all the images between 2014 and the end of January 2018. By conducting a discourse analysis of all the visual communication that these movements have produced online on Facebook, this research gets a comprehensive insight in the way ERMs are visually performing identity by using the past. The data collection focuses only on the visual material that is published by the official account of the ERM and which is accessible for everyone. Responses on these official Facebook posts or posts by individuals are not included in the analysis. The goal of this investigation is to gain a better understanding in the heritage and identity construction of the groups as a whole, instead of the individual views of their supporters. The analysis focuses on the official message these groups are spreading, and not on personal opinions of the members of these groups. For that reason, individual posts or reactions are out of the scope of this research.
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4. Setting the scene: the Dutch extreme right in the national and European context
This chapter introduces and contextualizes Dutch ERMs. When writing about Dutch ERMs, it is important to look at the European context as well. Many Dutch ERMs have close ties with European networks of right-wing extremism. The following section gives a short contextualization of the European extreme right. This is followed up by a historical overview of Dutch ERMs to understand how their organization and ideology have developed over time. The last section shows the increased attention that is given currently to ERMs.
4.1 The European context ERMs in the Netherlands cannot be seen separately from the European context in which they exist.. Many Dutch ERMs have close ties with European networks of the extreme right and are related to the European developments. These groups exchange ideas and strategies for future actions. The recent history of both the European as the Dutch extreme right started after WWII and the condemnation of war criminals. WWII reached a scope of terror, genocide and mass destruction unprecedented in human history. In 1945 the Allied Control Council dissolved the NSDAP which meant an end to the official Nazi ideology. After the war a process of ‘denazification’ started throughout Europe, which had as result that most of the people suspecting of committing war crimes were convicted and Nazi sympathizers had to distance themselves from Nazi and fascist ideology. Nazi symbols, such as the swastika’s became a symbol of hate and was prohibited in most West- European countries. After the accusations of the war perpetrators, Nazis and fascists maintained a low profile and operated mostly underground in neo-Nazi groups. Many former international Waffen-SS soldiers organized themselves in veteran associations around Europe to preserve a sense of comradeship and to keep the memory of the fallen soldiers alive (Hurd and Werther 2016: 420). These veteran associations actively engaged in memory work and produced an extreme right counter narrative that celebrated the Waffen-SS soldiers as heroic European volunteers who fought against communism in the war (Ibid.). In the following decades, extreme right parties were not represented in the parliamentary democracy. In many European countries, among which Austria and West Germany, National Socialist parties were defined as anti-constitutional by law. In the 1980s, youth cultures, such as the skinheads came up and created platforms on which white power and neo-Nazi ideology could flourish. Particularly music, bands and concerts formed a fertile basis for the growth of racism, hate and violence against migrants (Schedler 2014: 242). Skinheads often wore clothes and have tattoos with white power and neo-Nazi emblems, such as rune symbols and Celtic, Nordic and Germanic imagery. The 1990s were characterized by a rapid growth
23 of neo-Nazi and neo-fascist groups throughout Europe (Flecha 1999: 151), although the groups did not have a single or coherent ideology, but mixed various views, attitudes and opinions instead (Wodak and Khosravinik 2013: 1). In Germany, for instance, there was a tight network of neo-Nazi organizations. Several murders which specifically targeted migrants, led to the ban of the most important organizations. This resulted in the rise of an underground network of unstructured and locally based groups, which were called Freie Kameradschaften (free fellowships) or Freie Nationalisten (free nationalists) (Ibid.). Like this, networks between these groups could adhere their ideology easier, without judicial intervention. In every European country there were groups present with extreme right inspired ideology, although they all had their own organizational structure and strategies. In 1997 the EU organized the European Year Against Racism with one of their aims to create awareness to Holocaust denial. This can be considered as an indirect response to the increasing support to ERMs, by a wider European audience (Flecha 1991: 151). Besides the growth of neo-Nazi inspired groups in the 1990s who operated outside the democratic political arena, there was an increase in the circulation of ideas positioned on the far-right of the ideological spectrum within European politics. Starting in the late 1990s, many far right-wing political parties achieved notable electoral results in several countries in Europe. The Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (The Freedom Party Austria, FPÖ), Le Front National (The French National Front, FN), the Partij voor de Vrijheid (The Party for Freedom, PVV), Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AFD) and the British National Party (BNP) constituted some of the most prominent examples hereof. The so-called ‘swing to the right’ in European politics intensified roughly after the economic recession of 2008 and the refugee crisis in 2015 (Mudde 2016). Increasing securities due to mass-immigration and economic recessions resulted in the growth of FRPs. Distinctive of the present-day extreme right in Europe is its collective fear for the ‘Islamisation’ of Europe (Kaya 2016: 3). At the same time, we may see an increase in popularity of extreme right-wing ideas outside of the democratic political arena. In the last couple of years, most of the ERMs who operated mostly underground, have increased in popularity and followers. Throughout Europe several ERMs became increasingly visible, with the German Pegida, the Dutch-Flemish Voorpost (Outpost) and the English Defense League as some examples. Due to the often extensive media coverage of street demonstrations organized by movements such as these, many ERMs have captured the attention of a wider public. For example, on its heydays in 2015 protest marches by the German Pegida attracted 25.000 supporters, varying from neo-Nazi hooligans with Lonsdale sweatshirts to middle-class protestors (The Guardian 2015). Another recent example, is the successful crowd funding campaign ‘Defend Europe’ set up by the European Identitarian Movement. In less than three weeks, the group raised a notably amount to finance their operation to disrupt refugee rescue vessels in the Mediterranean sea (The Guardian 2017). The Netherlands is no exception to this trend and ERMs
24 have become more visible in the last decades. The next section introduces the historical position of ERMs in the Netherlands.
4.2 Historical overview of the Dutch Extreme Right When studying Dutch ERMs it is essential to look at the context in which those formations developed over time in order to understand how ERMs operate today. This section sketches the history of ERMs in the Netherlands. Similarly to most European countries, the history of ERMs in the Netherlands started roughly after the Second World War, when 100.000 Nazi collaborators went to trial and the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB) was banned. Nonetheless, the government did not succeed in preventing all attempts to establish new ERMs. In 1951, first efforts were made by former NSB members and political delinquents to establish ERMs. These initiatives were not successful and received much resistance in society (Anne Frank Stichting 2018a). In 1958, the Boerenpartij, the Farmers Party, was the first successful ERM representing the sentiment of dissatisfied farmers. Mudde (2000: 118) points to the fact that the Farmers Party had strong national-conservative sentiments aiming to protect Dutch culture. Not only farmers were attracted by their ideas, but a larger group of dissatisfied people supported the movement, among which many former NSB members and SS-soldiers (Nooi 1970: 416). The media pictured the parallels with the ultranationalist German NPD, which shortly after meant the end of the Farmers Party. Another prominent ERM (and which is still active today) is the Nederlandse Volks-Unie (NVU), an ethnic nationalist party which was dominant in the 1970’s. The main goal of the NVU was the founding of a Greater Dutch State in which the Netherlands and Flanders were united (Lucardie 2000: 2). The former members of the NSB founded the NVU with the key purpose to rehabilitate convicted war criminals. The NVU aspired to add as first article to the Dutch constitution that the ‘Germanic-Christian culture’ should maintain dominant. With the slogan “The Hague should remain white and safe” for the local elections, the party became known by the larger audience (Mudde 2000: 119). Classical neo-Nazi sentiments, were mixed with more modern ideas on migration (Ibid.). However, it remained a fringe party with only a few hundred members in its most successful period, and it never achieved an electoral breakthrough. Nonetheless, the party was influential in the sense that the extensive media attention encouraged a lively public debate on immigration and the integration of ethnic minority groups. Over the years, the NVU grew closer to the Nazi ideology when the leader Glimmerveen exposed his admiration for Hitler and the NSB-leader Mussert. By some party members, this open sympathy was too extreme, and they established more moderate extreme right parties, such as the Centrumpartij (Centre Party, CP) (De Witte and Klandermans 2010: 705). This was the first successful party of the so-called centre movement of Centrum Democrats (CD), promoting an anti-immigrant discourse, combining right-wing, left-wing and green political
25 standpoints in a single program (Mudde 2000: 120). The Centre Party rejected any association with neo-Nazi, fascist or racist sympathies (Ibid.). With the success of the Centrum Democrats (CD) a novel ideological discourse had been introduced in the Dutch public debate. Nationalism was the main ideology of the CD and it was promoted with the party slogan: “The Netherlands (in the first place) for the Dutch” (Mudde 2000: 131). The ideology of the CD was characterized by civic nationalism and they spoke in terms of the preservation of the Dutch population, rather than the Dutch ethnic community (Choenni 1993: 109). Mudde (2000: 132) shows how CD’s party program promoted the idea of ‘internal homogenization’, in which non-Dutch influences were resisted, and immigrants had the choice of either assimilation or repatriation. The CD accepted the multi-ethnic society, but were against the multicultural society. The CD was skeptic of processes of European integration in the EU, because they saw it as a threat for the Dutch sovereignty and culture (Ibid.: 133). However, the CD did uphold the idea of a larger European identity which exists next to the Dutch identity (Lucardie 2000: 3-4). In their openly xenophobic discourse, in particular the Islam was portrayed as an aggressive and expansionist religion. Mudde shows in his analysis how the CD proposed “the Islamic culture [as] juxtaposed to the European culture, which means that a Muslim cannot integrate in Dutch society without giving up his or her religion” (2000: 135). After many legal proceedings, internal disputes and financial problems the Centre Party was terminated in 1986. Subsequent to a reorganization in the same year, a similar party was founded: the Centrumpartij’86 (Centre Party’86, CP’86). The ideology and the party program of this party stood in the shadow of the former party, however, over the years the ideology became more extreme with more neo-Nazi sentiments. The tensions between the nationalist-socialist side of the party and the more popular-nationalist side of the CP’86 increased (Lucardie 2000: 4). The title of the party program of 1994 for the local elections was “Own people first!” (Mudde 2000: 148). The CP’86 aspired to reintroduce the former national anthem Wien Neerlands Bloed (Whose Dutch Blood)’ which was the official anthem between 1817 and 1933 (Ibid.: 149). The phrase Van vreemde smetten vrij (free of foreign blemishes) was considered, as racist and was replaced in 1898. The CP’86 believed that the old national anthem including the controversial sentence suits the Greater Dutch State, free from ethnic minorities (Lucardie 2000: 4). In this way, a symbol of the past was used for the purpose of identity construction. The CP’86 identified itself as ethnic nationalist, rather than a civic nationalist and according to them “country and ethnic community should be one” (Mudde 2000: 150). They referred to their own ethnic community with the term ‘true Dutchmen’ and in their ideology race was determined as the identity of the ethnic community (Ibid.). The Netherlands “should be an ethnically and racially pure, but democratic state” (Lucardie 2000: 4). Dutch people with an immigration background were not considered as part of the Dutch ethnic community and should be repatriated from the Netherlands (Mudde 2000: 150-151). However, subgroups such as the Frisians were part of the larger ethnic
26 community of the Netherlands and can live harmoniously together (Ibid.). The racism of the party was mostly implicit in nature, though the CP’86 did accentuated the failure of the multi-racial society and they rejected international capitalism (Lucardie 2000: 4). The CP’86 considered the European Community as imperialist and the party members were afraid that notions of Europeanness would be a threat for the distinctive elements of the Dutch national identity (Mudde 2000: 153). According to the CP’86 the ethnic communities in Europe had enough in common, such as their history and culture, to work together on economic and military matters, but the ethnic communities were different and should therefore, maintain their autonomy and individual identities on the level of the nation-state (Ibid.). Within the European Community there was the potential of the integration of migrants. Hence, this had the fundamental meaning that within the ‘white race’ of Europeans migration is possible, whereas non-white-foreigners are to a larger extent seen as a threat (Ibid.: 152). Mudde (2000: 161-162) identifies elements of anti-Semitism in the party ideology of the CP’86 and when they referred to Israel, they called it ‘the Jewish State’. The party was also conspiring against Jewish organizations because they believed that they aimed to control Western media and governments in order to construct a ‘Great Israeli Reich’, with the help of some European and American politicians. The show trial of the Treblinka camp guard Ivan Demjanjuk had according to the CP’86, the objective to “keep the memory to the ‘continuous story of the six million’ alive” (CN 1/92 cited in Mudde 2000: 162). Mudde suggests that these types of statements hinted to the denial of the Holocaust, and that the CP’86 was charging the ‘international Jewry’ to use the Holocaust to accomplish their own goals (Ibid.). The autonomous European nation states should cooperate on economic and military fields to defend itself against the threat of migration and imperialism of the (Jewish) power (Mudde 2000: 164). In 1998 the Supreme Court of the Netherlands banned the CP’86 because it promoted discrimination and the party endangered the public order (Lucardie 2000: 5). By the end of the nineties right-wing extremism hit the low point and became a marginal phenomenon with no representation in parliament (Lucardie 2000: 2). An ERM that received much attention during this period was the ‘Lonsdale youth’, in Dutch also known as the gabber culture, a subculture of skinheads with racist and extreme right-wing ideas, associated with the global White Power movement and hardcore scene (Donselaar 2005: 8). The Lonsdale youth was associated with many violent and racist incidents. Another prominent development of this period, was that many members of ERMs were attracted by the success of the charismatic Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and his political party Lijst Pim Fortuyn (Pim Fortuyn List, LPF). ERMs played almost no role in the foundation of the LPF and the PVV and it seemed that they were purposefully excluded to avoid any associations with neo-Nazism (Anne Frank Stichting 2018b). Both Fortuyn and Wilders had a strict selection during their recruiting process in order to prevent potential right-wing extremists from their party, and they distanced themselves from former ERMs, such as the Centre Democrats.
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It is against this background that we must understand currently active ERMs in the Netherlands. Right-wing extremism has always been a relatively weak phenomenon, because there is no significant ideological right-wing tradition in the Dutch parliamentary history (Voerman and Lucardie 1992: 35), nor a solid social base (Lucardie 2000: 8). In other European countries ERMs were relatively more successful and received wider support. In the following section we take a closer look on the present day developments of the Dutch extreme right.
4.3 Today’s extreme right The ideas of the Boerenpartij, NVU and the Centrum Democrats are the fundaments of today’s ERMs. Themes considered as important by them, such as migration, ethnic nationalism, the preservation of the Dutch identity and the notion of a strong Europe of sovereign states, are also important topics for the present-day ERMs. As noted, the late 1990s saw an increase of FRPs inside the European and the Dutch political arena (Kaya 2017: 2; Eatwell 2004: 1; Mudde 2016: 3) and ERMs outside parliamentary democracy. Although the impact has been relatively limited, there has been a steady stream of more or less violent incidents involving ERMs over the last decade, many of which were covered by Dutch news media at length (Tierolf et al. 2017). One example is the protest of Pegida Nederland against the construction of a mosque in the Dutch city Enschede in the fall of 2017. A Pegida member scornfully dressed himself up as a Christian priest and placed a wooden cross in the ground in front of the mosque, followed by a ‘consecration ceremony’ involving the blood of a pig (Newsweek 2017). It was not the first action in which Pegida Nederland made use of dead pigs or its remnants, because it is a provocation against the Muslim precepts. Another recent incident in 2017 that received much media coverage involves an action of two masked members of Identitair Verzet who climbed onto the roof of an Islamic school in Amsterdam draping down a banner saying: ‘who sows Islam will reap Sharia’ (de Volkskrant 2017).4 Most of the protest actions of the ERMs generally concentrate on themes concerning migration, integration and the preservation of Dutch culture, and focus specifically as a protest against the Islam. The increased attention for incidents involving ERMs is witnessed by the publication of numerous government reports addressing the growth and control of extreme right-wing ideas and terror in the last decades. The Nationaal Coördinator Terrorismebestrijding en Veiligheid (NCTV), the official counter-terrorism unit of the Dutch government, reports that the violent threat of right- wing terrorists has been growing in the Netherlands and Europe (DTN 46 2017: 2). In a letter to the House of Representatives by the then minister of Social Affairs and Employment, Lodewijk Asscher, it is noted that the increasing polarization around themes as Black Pete, the Islam and the refugee crisis function as catalysts of radicalisation processes of right-wing extremist (Asscher 2016: 2). The
4 My translation from: ‘Wie Islam zaait, zal Sharia oogsten’.
28 institutional attention of extreme right thought over the last decade is similarly shown by a 2010 publication by the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), which states that the real threat of right-wing extremists is relatively small. These institutional reports show the importance currently given to ERMs by Dutch political institutions, despite the relatively small amount of incidents. The increasing support to ERMs and their protest actions by a large part of the Dutch population are perceived as posing a real challenge to Dutch society. In order to gain a better understanding of the ideas of these groups, it is important to study what the meaning is of their expressions.
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5. The European and national uses of the past in the visual culture of Dutch Extreme Right Movements
This section semiotically analyzes the visual culture of ERMs and what traces of the past these groups use in their public visual communication material published on Facebook over the last four years. The visual culture of the NVU, Identitair Verzet and Voorpost are investigated on how notions of a national and European identity are performed. In the visual culture produced by ERMs it is possible to find a tension between two meanings of the word ‘us’, or what the rapport of the Verwey Jonker Institute and the Anne Frank Foundation called het eigene (translated as ‘sameness’) (Wagenaar 2017: 35). On the one hand this ‘us’ may mean ‘us Dutch people,’ a unique sovereign people entitled to its own national territory. On the other hand, ‘us’ may be used to refer to ‘us Europeans’, an ethnically or culturally defined people with characteristics that distinguishes it from non-European anthropological types. We both find references to a European past and identity, as to the national past and distinctively Dutch traditions. These uses of the past articulate the identity of ERMs: by choosing and communicating symbols both to insiders and outsiders, the ERMs create a sense of who is in and who is out and of what is respectable and what is not. The process of relating to the past is thus understood through its effects in the present. The analysis focuses on how identity is constructed by referring to past events and cultural traditions. In which ways do ERMs make use the past in the construction of their heritage, memory and identity? What are the most predominant themes and tropes that can be distinguished? To what kind of identity does the heritage created by ERMs give expression? In short, who is the ‘Same’ and who is ‘the Other’? This chapter investigates where for ERMs the notion of being Dutch stops, and where a sense of being European starts. Historical events, such as WWII, are used in various ways to perform both the European as the national identity and heritage. In the visual communication of ERMs a number of historical themes recur. The analysis starts with the European context and how notions of a European identity is performed by using the past. There is a discussion on how WWII is commemorated in the European setting. What is the meaning of the war for the formation of a common European identity? This is followed up by the examination of conceptions of European identity making through the various embodiments of the idea of a common European ancestry. Subsequently, the third and fourth section explores how national heritage and identity are performed through the visual culture of ERMs. WWII commemoration practices play a significant role in the formation of the Dutch identity. The theme of freedom has a prominent role in this narrative. The last section focuses on the patriotic narrative of ERMs.
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5.1 European brotherhood and the WWII commemoration narrative When studying the Facebook pages of Dutch ERMs it becomes clear that many posts are dedicated to themes and symbolism related to WWII in the European context. Every group commemorates WWII actively and the war plays a prominent role in their visual culture. The central question we want to answer in this is section is what WWII means for the ERMs under investigation and how it relates to notions of a European identity. The groups visualize WWII as part of their European identity in a number of ways: the imagery varies from photos of war commemoration practices, expressions of gratefulness for the sacrifice of the heroic soldiers and reflections on the war as a European tragedy. These kinds of images are sometimes mixed with comparisons to contemporary European states of affairs, such as the refugee crisis, migration issues and the terror threat. The following part discusses the narratives of ERMs related to the historical events during WWII and current commemoration practices in the European context. The WWII commemoration narrative is grounded in the idea of the European collectiveness in relation to the tragedy of the war. A central idea in this conception of European unity, is the notion of ‘brotherhood’. An example of this idea is demonstrated in the Facebook post of Identitair Verzet shown in image 1, which exhibits a commemoration wreath with a ribbon saying: “No more brother wars”.5 This phrase articulates a sentiment shared by the other analyzed ERMs in the Netherlands: the feeling that ethnic European people are connected through a shared brotherhood. This attitude towards the other European nations is central to the way ERMs perceive Europe. “No more brother wars” (Nie wieder Bruderkrieg) is a frequently used phrase in the neo-Nazi scene to refer to other European states as brother nations, thereby rejecting war between the nations who have the same European ancestry. The phrase embodies a kind of ethnic European consciousness, the idea that there is a sense of ethnic or cultural ‘sameness’ amongst the peoples of Europe. The familial metaphor of ‘brotherhood’ refers to the unconditional nature of this Image 1: Identitair Verzet (2016): relationship, while simultaneously allowing for a commemoration wreath at the Dutch National 6 Remembrance of the Dead. It reads: ‘No more distinctive national identity to be retained. This idea of a brother wars’, my translationg from “nooit meer broederoorlog”.
5 The description of the Facebook post reads: “Op 5 mei vierden wij de bevochten vrijheid in ons Nederland na gisteren de slachtoffers van oorlog herdacht te hebben. Op diverse plaatsen in Nederland namen activisten deel aan 4 mei herdenkingen waar bloemstukken werden neergelegd met een duidelijke boodschap: Nooit meer broederoorlog”. 6 Some of the more radical ERMs refer solely to the Aryan race or Germanic brother nations, while others have a broader meaning of what a brother nation might be and indicate, for instance, white people with European ancestors.
31 brotherly unity in diversity is visualized in the communication material of ERMs. Diversity signifies that every European nation has their own distinguishing culture, identity and heritage that should be safeguarded, while unity indicates the same descent of the European people. In this way the term ‘brotherhood’ allows ERMs to navigate between nationalist and European sentiments. ‘Brotherhood’ constitutes a peculiar metaphor for giving expression to a shared belonging to a certain group or collective. It would, for instance, be rather inappropriate to speak of one’s colleagues as ‘brothers’, and only the closest of friends describe themselves in this way. The notion of brotherhood—like those of the communist comradeship—carries with it certain specific connotations. The metaphor, as we have seen, carries with it a sense of strong, unconditional membership based on blood ties grounded in an ethnic and primordial notion of identity. A second connotation comes to the fore when we unity in diversity expressed by the concept of brotherhood with the EU motto mentioned earlier: ‘United in Diversity.’ A rather fundamental ideological difference is expressed in the use of the verb of ‘uniting.’ The verb implies the construction of a kind of unity, a kind of belonging that has been chosen. Brotherhood, in contrast, is in nature primordial: it implies a unity that is at the same time unconditional and pre-given, a unity embedded in an irreversible sameness. In the context of Dutch ERMs we see that this sameness is grounded either ethnically or culturally. In the visual culture of ERMs the narration of the idea of ‘brotherhood’ is grounded in the European WWII commemoration narrative. Besides the meaning of the phrase on the ribbon, the moment of laying the wreath is of importance as well. The photo shown in image 1 is posted a few days after the annual Remembrance Day, on which the Dutch victims of wartime are commemorated. Instead of honoring the victims of wartime, Identitair Verzet focuses on the brotherhood between the European nations. Both the message and the design of the wreath differs from the national wreath laying regulations of the National Committee 4 and 5 May. The protocol prescribes that the ribbon should have the colors red-white-blue of the Dutch flag. However, the wreath of Identitair Verzet follows their own color scheme, which is not a common thing to do on Remembrance Day. Likewise, the ERM does not follow the official procedure and regulations and in that way questions what should be remembered and what not. Instead of focusing on national remembering, ERMs focus in their commemoration practices on the European brotherhood. The leading WWII commemoration narrative of ERMs, stands in stark contrast to the dominant memory work in Europe dealing with the legacy of WWII. Where ERMs focuses on “no more brother wars”, the dominant Holocaust narrative in Europe centers on: “never again Auschwitz”. The dominant discourse addresses questions on guilt and responsibility, identifying the Holocaust as a ‘unique’ event, functioning as a moral yardstick from which future tragic events are measured and evaluated (Sierp 2014: 11; Assmann 2014: 552). The narrative of ‘no more brother wars’ is opposed to the notion of a globalized Holocaust memory as proposed by Levy and Sznaider (2002). The two authors put the idea forward that in present-day memory work, the Holocaust is disconnected from the actual event, and is considered as a universal symbol of human tragedy, war and political violence.
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Instead of emphasizing the tragedy of the Holocaust, ERMs mostly concentrate on the notion of brotherhood when addressing the legacy of WWII. For instance, Voorpost posted an image of two soldiers sharing a cigarette on Facebook, with the description: “Then against each other, now with each other. For the Europe of the peoples” (Image 2: Voorpost 2014). This can be incorporated in the narrative of ‘no more Image 2: Voorpost Europa (2014). brother wars’. In this image, all the European nations are considered as part of the ‘us’, while ‘the Other’ is the non-European. This image connects the notion of ‘sameness’ of the Europeans, with the sentiment of defense. In other words, in order to preserve Europe’s culture and identity, the Europeans have to defend the continent against external influences. In image 3, European soldiers during WWII are compared with Muslim and African refugees. Notable is the fact that the groups copy each other’s visual communication material. The image of Voorpost was published in 2015, while the NVU published practically the same image a year later, using a slightly different picture and word order. However, the point of the images is identical. The text of the image says: “European men during a war. Battling heroes! Africans and Muslims during a war. Fleeing cowards!” WWII soldiers are compared with today’s migrants from the Middle East and Africa. Where the European soldiers are considered as brave heroes who are not afraid to protect their family and their country, the African and Muslim refugees are seen as cowards, who leave their country behind unprotected. The NVU and Voorpost propagate the opinion that refugees are ‘happiness-seekers’7 who are not protecting their own country. According to the ERMs, mass- immigration destroys Europe and that they are the cause of the severe terror threat today. In neo-Nazi movements the phrase ‘no more brother wars’ is used in various frameworks. Dutch ERMs are mostly using it in the context of WWII, but there are as well references in their visual communication to WWI. For instance, Voorpost Europa posted the poem ‘In Flanders fields’ about the WWI and ERMs are making ceremonial visits to cemeteries and other historical places to commemorate the European victims of the war. In the international scene, this idea is also used against the background of local conflicts and civil wars.
7 In the Dutch public debate, the term happiness-seekers (gelukszoekers) is often used by anti-immigration parties to describe economic refugees. In this discourse, a distinction is being made between ‘real’ refugees and ‘happiness-seekers’.
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The notion of ‘brotherhood’ between the European people is an important theme in the visual communication of ERMs. Image 2 shows that the notion of ‘brotherhood’ is connected to the idea of defending Europe against external influences, in order to protect Europe’s culture, heritage and identity. One of the most characteristic elements of the European identity and the basis of the European brotherhood, is its supposed ‘freedom’. Europe’s freedom is not a given, but something the Europeans have had to fight for. WWII was a formative and influential event, when Europe gained its celebrated freedom. In the communication material of ERMs this is visualized in the way that they show their gratefulness to the sacrifice the soldiers made for the European people during WWII. The European brothers fought against each other to defend today’s free world in which Europe, and the Netherlands can flourish. Up to today, the Europeans have to fight for the freedom of their continent, according to narrative of ERMs. In the next section we will look deeper into the way the notion of freedom prefigures in the communication material of ERMs. The ‘fight for the European freedom’ is symbolized with the visualization of ‘heroic’ fighters and defenders of Europe.
Image 3: Left: Voorpost (2015). My translation of the text: “European men during a war. Battling Heroes! Africans and Muslims during a war. Fleeing cowards!” Right: NVU (2016). They add to this text: “Stop the refugee invasion! Close the borders now! (Refugee) shelter in own region!”
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5.2 The European ancestors In the section above we have seen how the notion of brotherhood serves a special function in the visual communication produced by Dutch ERMs. Saying that the different peoples of Europe are related to each other as brothers presents them as being at the same time unique and similar. It creates, in short, a form of unity that preserves difference. What is the basis of this unity? Why are the Europeans brothers? In the analyzed material we frequently find references to what ERMs consider to be the forefathers of Europe, the ancestors that cause the brothers to be in some sense the same. The ERMs emphasize the common ancestry shared by different European nations. Who are these forefathers? What immediately becomes clear is that the fathers of Europe are warriors: we see Spartan hoplites, Nordic Vikings and medieval knights being portrayed as the heroic defenders of contemporary Europe. These historical figures are part of Europe’s founding myth and represent the ancestors of Europe. The warriors symbolize both the common ancestry and the ‘European comradeship’. All the Dutch ERMs oppose the European Union, but support the idea of European cooperation as a means to protect Europe’s distinctive identity and freedom from external influences, such as American imperialism, globalization, mass-immigration and Islamisation. ERMs believe in European comradeship between ‘free’ European nations and the need to defend ‘their’ Europe against ‘the Other’. Here we see that the ‘warriors’ that are presented as Europe’s ancestors also serve to symbolically ‘protect’ Europe’s free way of life from external influences. The notion of common ancestry is based on the idea of ‘pureness’ of the European identity and its rich cultural traditions. In the visual communication, this European pride is often portrayed in relation to the theme: European defense. European pride and its defense are prominent themes in the narratives surrounding the ancestors of the brother nations. Image 4 is an example of how ERMs
Image 4: Voorpost Europa (2017: 2015: 2016). Facebook Timeline photo’s. European diversity.
35 propagate European pride by means of embracing Europe’s variety and promoting the idea that Europe has all the diversity it needs. In the description Voorpost (2017) states that they aim for a self- conscious Europe of free peoples, from the Atlantic Ocean till the Ural. This is also expressed in the Dutch ERMs support of European independence movements, such as the Bretons, Basques and Catalans, as they hold that all ethnicities should live in an autonomous nation-state. Voorpost propagates the idea of a strong Europe that protects the value of European freedom and preserves the national culture. This fits into the ‘Unity in Diversity’ narrative proposed with the notion of European ‘brotherhood’. In such an understanding, diversity is only reserved for the traditional national cultures of Europe, without space for the cultural traditions of relatively new European cultures of immigrants. Where the EU motto attempts to emphasize the ‘openness’ and ‘variety’ of diversity in the way that also the cultures of new Europeans can be incorporated, the ERMs consider the diversity of Europe only in its old and traditional understanding. Voorpost has posted various images with almost the same content, which is visible in image 4. Only Caucasian children and women from the different countries in Europe are portrayed, wearing traditional and pagan clothing. Women and children symbolize the diversity of the community in a passive manner. Like this, Voorpost portrays a one-dimensional narrative of Europe’s diversity, characterized by whiteness, blonde hair color and traditional clothing. The theme of European pride and defense is also visible in image 5, which reads: “Our way of life is not negotiable”. The caption of the second photo cites “#Zaventem” and was posted on the day that Brussels airport was targeted by a terrorist attack. It seems that Voorpost published this image as an act of defense to show the terrorists that Europe will not succumb to fear. Traditions central to the European way of life—cheese, wine, sausage and so forth—are strong enough to survive the threat of terror and mass-immigration. In this narrative ERMs show that they defend Europe, by showing the rich nationalist traditions of Europe. The ERMs mix the themes of European pride and defense in their visual culture.
Image 5: Voorpost Europa (2017: 2016). “Our way of life is not negotiable”.
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Image 6 looks similar to the flag of the European Union, but differs in displaying a Greek hoplite in the center. The sovereign European nations are united by a common ancestor: the ancient Greeks. The depiction of Greek civilization as the birthplace of Europe. Virtues seen to originate in ancient Greek thought, such as rationality and democracy, have played a vital role, first, in the Enlightenment, and have more recently been mobilized in the foundation of the European union. This connection between the ancient Greeks is indeed similarly in the use of their mythological narratives, like for instance the rape of Europa by Zeus. When referring to the ancient Greeks as the common ancestor of the Europeans, ERMs mostly emphasize the strength of the hoplites. This is particularly visible in image 7, where an army of Spartan hoplites symbolizes the battle for a ‘free’ Europe. With this image, Identitair Verzet expresses their gratitude for their Facebook likes to their supporters. The group feels supported to continue their battle to protect ‘our’ heritage and ‘our’ future. Identitair Verzet uses the lambda as their symbol, which is the same symbol which the Spartans used on their shields at the battle of Thermopylae against the Persians in 480BC. The reason that Identitair Verzet chose this as the movement’s symbol, is that the battle is sometimes taken as an example of the power of a patriotic army when defending their own native soil. Indeed, the battle of Thermopylae simultaneously gives expression to two of the central values of Identitair Verzet. Historically the Greeks fighting at Thermopylae are thought to be greatly outnumbered by their Persian enemies, with estimates of roughly 7000 Greeks fighting against 100.000 to 150.000 Persians (Cassin-Scott 1977: 11). The heroic Spartan victory in the face of an almost certain defeat gives expression to the masculine heroism in the fight of an ethnically and culturally European people being outnumbered by a wave of outsiders. As we read on the site, the Spartan hoplites are understood as “an example of the power of a patriotic army defending its native soil” (Generation Identity UK and Ireland 2018). At the same time, the historical Persian outsiders fighting against the Spartan hoplites easily lend themselves to being understood as ethnically and
Image 6: Voorpost (2017). “A united Image 7: Identitair Verzet (2017). “Our heritage, our future, our Europe of free peoples”. battle”.
37 culturally similar to the outsiders presently threatening European societies, as members of the Identitair Verzet movement indeed explicitly do. The lambda symbol is simultaneously understood to represent the contemporary situation in which Identitair Verzet finds itself. In the FAQ section on the English departments webpage, we read that the “top of the lambda stands for the metapolitical centre which we want to conquer and with the Identitarian movement as the spearhead” (Ibid). In another reading we see that the circle is seen as a shield symbolizing the movements defensive standpoint. Here we thus see quite clearly the way in which contemporary narratives are attached to and grounded in ancient symbols. We see heritage ‘in the making’. Though it could easily be overlooked, the pervasive presence of all kinds of warriors in the public communication material used by Dutch ERMs is significant. Aside from the above mentioned defense of European ‘native soil’ this imagery symbolizes, the images of masculine warriors articulate and diffuse a particular kind of role model or identity, a particular kind of ideal attitude for the masculine members of ERMs to aspire to. The masculine warrior is prepared to fight for his ideals in service of his country or for Europe at large, even against unsurmountable odds. The representation of brave warriors promote a specific kind of masculinity. The defense of Europe is the duty of men in order to protect the ones in need for protection: the women and children. Socio-cultural roles embedded in societies of the past in this way continue to serve as masculine role-models for people living today. Image 8 is another example of such European ancestors battling for a ‘free’ Europe. The depicted children, who are all boys, wear ancient Greek, Viking, knight, Scottish and other traditional costumes. The general meaning of this image is that people should support Voorpost in order to protect their children and to preserve Europe’s identity in the future. By pointing to the innocence of harmless children the message is strengthened, a theme we also see in image 4. Here we can recognize a resonance with embedded gender roles of men having to protect the vulnerable in society: women and children. Where men are mostly portrayed as heroic soldiers fighting for the European freedom, women are represented as innocent and harmless. It is not the responsibility of women to participate in their own defense. Instead, women symbolize the Image 8: Voorpost Europa (2016). diversity in society. This raises the question if their
38 task mainly concerns procreation? The theme of brother wars indicate that battles, soldiers, warriors and defense contain to the domain of men, rather than including women as well. The boys exhibited in image 8 are prepared for their future as brave defenders of Europe. In this way the imagery can be seen to promote a specific kind of gendered role distribution. The medieval knight is a widely used symbol for visualizing Europe’s common ancestry. Image 9 is a characteristic example in this kind: a medieval knight showing his strength against the Jihadist Islam. The ERMs portray the Islam as one of the main opponents of Christian Europe, throughout the history of Europe. The NVU tries to portray present-day conflicts as continuations of this ‘tradition’: the Christian knight is portrayed as a crusader against the Jihadist Islam. This image refers to the century old clash between European Christianity and the Islamic ‘Other’. Notable is the fact that, of all the material analyzed here, the symbolism of medieval knights and crusaders are the only ones in which the theme of Christianity played a role. ERMs mostly identify themselves with paganism, because they consider it as the ‘pure’ and ‘original’ European and Germanic religion, a religion system unaffected by Eastern influences and thus truly native to the European people. In image 10 the NVU uses the same text as in image 9, only the symbolism is different. Where image 9 refers to the European crusade against the Islam, image 10 portrays Europe as a Viking woman who is kicking a Muslim scholar portrayed as a pig out of Europe. Vikings are associated with strength and power. The Islam is portrayed as a swine. This is an animal considered to be impure in the Islam, and the image thus serves to defy Muslim orthodoxy. It seems that medieval
Image 9: NVU (2017). “Jihadist Islam! Banned Image 10: NVU (2015). “Jihadist Islam! Banned out of Europe! Pro a Europe of peoples and out of Europe! Pro a Europe of peoples and fatherlands!” fatherlands!”
39 knights and Vikings are used interchangeably to communicate the same message. Along Europe’s history, the threat of the Islam is often associated with the Ottoman empire and its leaders: the sultans. Voorpost refers to this with image 11, in which the current president of Turkey Erdoğan is portrayed as an Ottoman sultan, accompanied by the hashtag “StopSultanErdogan”. Again the historical reference to a Muslim force, here the Ottoman empire, reinforces the felt need to act in the present. Voorpost emphasizes the continuity of history: age-old conflicts are still today’s problems. The traces of the European past in the visual culture of ERMs focus mainly on the defense of the rich European culture against the Islamic invasion and other external forces. The European ancestors, the supposed ‘fathers and mothers’ of Europe, are based on references of paganism, Christianity and antiquity. Spartan hoplites, Vikings and medieval knights are used interchangeably as militant symbols of the European defense. These ancestors represent the foundation of the European brotherhood and are portrayed as the heroic defenders of the continent and the values it represents: a spirit of freedom and bravery. The warriors of the past can be said to function as role models to the members of the ERMs, rallying them for militant action against the enemies of European values. By using these past symbols a continuity between past and present events is Image 11: Voorpost Europa (2016): produced. The shared forefathers give the members a Demonstration. Keep Turkey out of Europe! #STOPSULTANERDOGAN sense of belonging with Europe taken as a whole, but simultaneously allow for the opportunity to maintain a distinctive national identity.
5.3 WWII: The sacrifice for our national freedom We have seen that European identity is based on the idea of a brotherhood between free European peoples and nations connected by a common ancestry: the notion of brotherhood allows nations to retain their own distinctive national identity. The foundation of the brotherhood between the European nations is expressed in their shared value of freedom. The following part explores how the national past is used in the visual culture of ERMs. The national WWII narrative focuses mainly on the sacrifice the war heroes made for our freedom today. Current influences of mass-immigration and the fear of terror attacks threatens the freedom and national identity. ERMs consider WWII as an event
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that played a major role in Dutch history and that contributed to the formation of national identity in which the value of freedom is one of its most important expressions. An important element of this narrative is the gratefulness for the Dutch soldiers who fought in WWII. Image 12 shows a commemoration wreath posted by Identitair Verzet with a ribbon saying: “Thank you for the sacrifice”. Similar to the wreath of image 1, this one is devoted to the national Remembrance Day to remember the victims of the war. Again the message and the design differs from the official wreath laying regulations. The focus on the sacrifice that the soldiers in WWII made during the war, is rather different from the dominant narrative around the commemoration the victims of the war. An expansion of this narrative is shown in other Facebook posts, in which ERMs compare the war situation with contemporary problems. For example, image 13 portrays a comparison between ‘heroic’ soldiers during WWII with the current severe terror threat. The first part of the comparison says: “They gave the sacrifice of their life for our freedom”. The text is written on an image of a military cemetery containing a WWII memorial plaque with four grave crosses in the back. The second part of the image says: “Not for a Netherlands under constant threat of terror” written on a picture of a train station with five heavily armed police officers. With this image Identitair Verzet criticizes the current conditions in the Netherlands. Currently, not enough is done to protect the Dutch people against the terror threat. By comparing this image with the other visual communication material of ERMs discussed in the former section, it becomes clear that they are targeting Muslim immigrants and refugees as the main cause for the increasing terror threat in both Europe, and the Netherlands.
Image 12: Identitair Verzet (2017). Commemoration wreath Image 13: Identitair Verzet (2017). “They gave the at the Dutch National Remembrance of the Dead. It reads: sacrifice of their life for our freedom. Not for a “Thank you for the sacrifice”. Netherlands under constant threat of terror”.
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The theme of ‘the sacrifice for our freedom’ is also apparent in image 14, a photo by Identitair Verzet of a monument which displays the last three sentences of a poem written by the Resistance hero Van Randwijk in Amsterdam which says: “A people bowing before tyrant will lose more than life and well-being, its light will also fade…” Van Randwijk was part of the underground resistance movement in Amsterdam contributing to the illegal magazine Vrij Nederland (Free Netherlands). The poem suggests that the resistance during the occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany, was not only about the political and economic crisis, but also about the cultural fight for a more just society, than before the war (Het Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei 2018). The group identifies itself with the ‘resistance hero’ in the way that he fought for a free Netherlands embracing the distinctive elements of Dutch culture. Van Randwijk, and other resistance fighters are seen as a typically Dutch and heroic patriots, by many ERMs. Identitair Verzet posted this photo on the Dutch Remembrance day in order to honor the resistance heroes of WWII. This way of commemorating is part of a larger narrative of idealizing Dutch culture and the protection of a ‘free’ Netherlands from the influence of external forces. Image 14 has a more nationalistic focus than the former images, which mostly support a European narrative. In this narrative the notion of European brother nations is opposed to national autonomy and heroic fighters. The Dutch resistance movement was anti-German in nature, and protected many Jews from deportation. At the same time, the resistance were, to some extent, patriots who fought for the freedom of their country, in Image 14: Identitair Verzet (2014). Monument to resistance order to liberate the Netherlands from the hero H.M. van Randwijk. The poem says: “A people bowing before tyrant will lose more than life and well- German occupation. Along these lines, the being, its light will also fade…” The monument is located at resistance movement is embraced by many an execution ground where 30 resistance fighters were shot. ERMs because it fits into the larger narrative of ‘defending the Netherlands’ and the worshipping of war heroes. The commemoration of WWII within the national framework corresponds with the work of Aleida Assmann on Holocaust memory. Assmann indicates that “national memories were mainly constructed around heroic deeds and heroic suffering […] they are highly selective and compose in such a way that they are identity-enhancing and self-celebrating” (2014: 553). The heroic memory of ERMs of soldiers and resistance fighters who fought for the freedom of the Netherlands is a highly selective way of addressing the legacy of WWII. Emphasizing heroic memory is an effective protective shield to remember parts of WWII which fits in the national story of ERMs.
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Another element of the ‘Dutch defense’ narrative is the discussion surrounding the meaning of Remembrance Day in the Netherlands. Identitair Verzet mingles itself in the current memory debate on the meaning of the fourth of May. The last few years, there is an increasing discussion about who should be commemorated. Image 15 Image 15: Identitair Verzet (2017). My translation of the text: “On the shows one of the most popular Facebook fourth of May we commemorate our victims (deaths) who are fallen in the Second World War. Our soldiers and resistance heroes, but also posts of Identitair Verzet.8 The image they who died of illness and starvation, they who were killed or gassed in the war years 1940-1945. This is the meaning of the fourth of May. says: “On the fourth of May we And nothing else!” commemorate our victims (deaths) who are fallen in the Second World War. Our soldiers and resistance heroes, but also they who died of illness and starvation, they who were killed or gassed in the war years 1940-1945. This is the meaning of the fourth of May. And nothing else!” (Identitair Verzet 2017). Officially, all the victims of wartime are remembered on the fourth of May. Originally, Remembrance Day mainly concentrated on WWII, but with the wars that came after, also the other victims of wartime are commemorated. In 2017, a week before Remembrance Day the organization announced that the victims of the refugee crisis would also be remembered. This led to a wave of critique by many organizations, especially Jewish and nationalist groups like the ERMs under investigation here. They were afraid that the meaning of Remembrance Day would be diluted when also other (non-Dutch) victims of wartime would be commemorated. These organizations suggest that it would be better if those victims are remembered on a different day, so as to ensure the special significance of WWII. They emphasize that no war had such great impact, and that for that reason the commemoration ceremony should not be generalized. Identitair Verzet underlines this idea and advocates that only the victims of WWII are remembered, instead of all the victims in wartime. In the narrative of the national past WWII played a significant role in highlighting the sacrifice the war heroes made for the freedom of the Netherlands. Where the European narrative regarding WWII emphasizes the unity of sovereign nation states in a European brotherhood, the national narrative concerning WWII stresses the commemoration of national war heroes. The national narrative focuses on the interpretation of commemoration practices. ERMs have frequently a different understanding of remembrance practices, then the official narrative of the Dutch state. ERMs focuses more on the glorification of war heroes and relate it to problems of today. The value of ‘freedom’ is
8 The Facebook received 602 likes and 1746 shares. Consulted on 13 January 2018.
43 prominent in this narrative. The following section takes a closer look how the national identity is constructed and on what it is built on.
5.4 National heroes and traditions The metaphor of the forefathers of Europe creates a sense of connectedness between the different European nations. Sharing the same ancestors creates an unconditional unity in history, while simultaneously offering the opportunity of difference. Thus, it is a form of brotherhood which unites the ‘free’ European nations. The value of ‘freedom’ is central in the national narrative of the formation of the Dutch identity and the commemoration of WWII. This narrative concentrates on the notion of a strong and autonomous Netherlands, with its own culture and distinctive identity. The analyzed communication material shows typical Dutch traditions, the worship of national heroes and propagates distinctive symbols.
Image 16: Voorpost (2015). “One people, one future!”.
Prominent in the visual culture focusing on national identity, is the idea of a ‘greater Netherlands’. All the ERMs strive to reunite the Netherlands with Flanders and the Dutch speaking parts of northern France into a united greater Netherlands called Dutchland (‘Dietsland’ in Dutch). In this context, the ERMs refer to the period when all the provinces of the Netherlands were united as one Republic, aiming for a revival of these times. Images 16 and 17 exhibit the wish to incorporate Flanders into the Netherlands, because the people living there all have the Dutch ethnicity. The ERMs emphasize that these regions have the same ethnicity, language, culture and traditions and consider this as the justification for the Image 17: NVU (2015). “Dutchland: formation of a nation-state. In this notion, ethnicity is the Flanders and the Netherlands one! One people, language and culture!”
44 foundation for a nation-state. This ethnic nationalist point of view, stands on the basis of the national narrative in the visual culture of ERMs. A relevant feature of image 16 is that the colors orange-white-blue are used in the background, instead of the official colors of the Dutch flag (red-white-blue). These are the flag colors of the Prinsenvlag (Prince’s Flag), a Dutch flag which was historically used by earlier Dutch regimes. All the ERMs aim for the reintroduction of the Prince’s Flag, because they consider it as typically Dutch and representative of a glorious era in Dutch history. The Prince’s Flag was used by prince William of Orange-Nassau in the Dutch Revolt during the late 16th century. In the centuries afterward, the use of the Prince’s flag and the present-day official flag alternated Image 18: The use of the Prince’s Flag on a propaganda poster in WWII. Mussert: fight for the in some periods, while the flags were used Dutch position in the new Europe. Join the battle. Join the National Socialist Movement’. Anton interchangeably in others. In 1937 the former queen Mussert was the leader of the Dutch NSB – the Dutch Nationalist Socialist Movement that Wilhelmina designates the red-white-blue as the official collaborated with the Nazis. The Dutch Prince’s Flag is positioned between the flags of Nazi- flag of the Netherlands, which it has been until today. Germany and the Italian Fascists. The queen selected the colors red-white-blue in order to distance herself and the country from the rising power of the NSB. The NSB party, under the leadership of Mussert, claimed the Prince’s Flag as their official flag, and used it to honor the Dutch monarchy. The propaganda poster displayed in image 18, portrays the Prince’s Flag between the flags of Nazi Germany and the Italian Fascists. With this, the NSB propagated that the Netherlands should fight for a position in the new Europe. After WWII, there was not much attention for the Prince’s Flag because of the negative association with the National Socialists. Nowadays, mostly groups who support the idea of
Image 19: Left: Voorpost (2017). Right: NVU (2016). Prince’s Flag.
45 a ‘Greater Netherlands’ or consider the Netherlands as part of ‘Greater Germany’ use the Prince’s Flag. Up to today, the use of the flag is highly controversial due to its negative associations with the National Socialists. Image 19 shows how Voorpost and the NVU use the Prince’s Flag. The Dutch ERMs consider the Prince’s Flag as the official flag of Dutchland, the greater Netherlands in which Flanders is incorporated. How does the Prince’s Flag give expression to the values held dear by ERMs and their members? What identity does it articulate? In the Prince’s Flag we see that two central themes are connected. On the one hand, the Prince’s Flag operates as a symbol for a conception of the relation between a people and a nation-state. The flag refers to a past in which the Dutch nation was based on then sameness of customs and language. In this way the flag gives expression to an ethnic nationalist political ideal which, as we will see later in this section, shapes much of the visual communication material produced by ERMs. At the same time, given its obviously controversial status, we can see the use of the Prince’s Flag as a form of resistance against a political establishment as represented by the red-white-and-blue flag, the ‘meta-political center’ we saw earlier. In this sense, the symbol serves as an act of proud resistance, and seems to mirror the ‘warrior identity’ we saw in the section above. The use of the symbol performs identity, it symbolically performs who they are and what they want. In image 19 both of these themes come back. The image shows a member of the NVU standing in front of a mill in a ‘typical’ Dutch landscape, holding a Prince’s flag. The image of the NVU reads: ‘We stand ready to serve the people, flag and state!’ On the one hand, this expresses an ethnic nationalist political ideal, while it combines this with a kind of belligerent use of words. In the visual culture analyzed here, there are many references to distinctively Dutch landscapes. Particularly, the mill is a characteristic feature of the landscape which is frequently portrayed by ERMs. An example of this is shown in image 20, which exhibits mills and tulip fields. The accompanying text reads: “the love of the fatherland is our law” in Latin. These images spread
Image 20: Identitair Verzet (2017: 2014). ‘The love of the fatherland is our law.’
46 feelings of pride and nationalism. It propagates characteristic features of Dutch culture with which the members can identify. These identifiable aspects of Dutch heritage retain feelings of ‘sameness’ and prescribe what can be regarded as typically Dutch and what not. Another theme where Dutch pride and nationalism are highly visible, is the worship of Dutch heroes, such as prince William of Orange, or sea hero Michiel de Ruyter. Most of the ERMs are active supporters of the monarchy because they consider it as typically Dutch and part of the unique history of the Netherlands. Image 21 portrays William of Orange, who is considered by the ERMs to be one of the founding fathers of the Netherlands. The Facebook post of Image 21: Voorpost (2016). Commemoration of William of Orange. Voorpost was published on the Birthday of William of Orange to remember his ‘heroic’ deeds. 9 The admiration for the Prince of Orange resulted in the use of the Prince’s Flag by the ERMs. Both, the Prince of Orange and the Prince’s Flag are considered by the ERMs as nationalist symbols part of the Dutch identity. Another Dutch hero frequently portrayed by the ERMs, is sea hero Michiel de Ruyter. He is a highly esteemed person in Dutch history, because of his successes as an admiral in the Anglo-Dutch Wars in the 17th century. Voorpost posted image 22 on Facebook, which portrays De Ruyter with the accompanying text: “hands off, of our heroes”. The image was published in 2015 as a response to the critiques of the film ‘Michiel de Ruyter’.10 This film focuses mainly on the successes of the hero in the sea battles in the Anglo-Dutch Wars. The film received much critique because of its rather one- dimensional glorification of the Admiral, with minor references to the role of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in colonialism and slavery. Image 21 is a response of the ERMs to the current debate on post-colonialism and iconoclasm, in which the position of De Ruyter is prominent topic of discussion. 11 There is much resistance against streets, monuments and buildings which are named after controversial historical figures. This heated debate is called the ‘new iconoclasm’. The caption reads: “After moaning about ‘Zwarte Piet’ (Black Pete), the crooked left extremists in the Netherlands
9 The caption says the day of posting is the birthday of Willem van Oranje, which is 483 years ago. We commemorate them with gratitude. 10 The name of the film ´Michiel de Ruyter´ is ´Admiral´ in the English version. 11 The caption reads: “Na het gezever over Zwarte Piet hebben labiele linksextremisten in Nederland een doel gevonden: onze zeeheld Michiel de Ruyter. Tegenwoordig wordt het geheel van cultuur, traditie en geschiedenis langs de meetlat van de slavernij gelegd. Zucht. Aan de weg-met-ons-mentaliteit doen wij niet mee. Integendeel. Dat er zo snel mogelijk een nieuwe Michiel de Ruyter op mag staan om ons te verdedigen tegen de bedreigingen van nu!”
47 found a new goal: our sea hero Michiel de Ruyter. Today the whole of culture, traditions and history are measured against the yardstick of slavery. Sigh. We will not play along with the gone-with-us- mentality. On the contrary. We hope a new hero like Michiel de Ruyter will soon rise to defend us against today’s threats!” (Voorpost 2015: my translation). This narrative actively contests current debates on post-colonialism, slavery and new iconoclasm. Here again, a heroic figure from the past functions as a warrior to defend current society. In this context, left extremists are presented as the threat to society, as they question the relation between the national past and colonialism. The ERMs are afraid for the degradation of national culture and loss of the Dutch freedom. Therefore, they play an active role in the discussion in order to defend Dutch traditions, heroes, freedom and identity. De Ruyter functions as a role model of the past, who should inspire people today. Prince William of Orange and De Ruyter are admired because they played a significant role in the construction of a unique national identity. These founding fathers should motivate people to exhibit a militant attitude
Image 22: Voorpost (2015). Dutch sea hero: Michiel de Ruyter. “Hands off, of our heroes”. today to defend ‘our’ freedom. In the caption of image 23, Voorpost refers to the discussion on Black Pete by saying “after the whining about ‘Zwarte Piet’ […]”. This figure of Black Pete is part of the annual feast of Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) in which he has the function of companion. In the folklorist tradition Black Pete is represented with blackface make-up, renaissance styled clothing and stereotypical black features like red lips, golden earrings and curly afro hair. The last couple of years, there is a heated discussion about whether the figure of Black Pete can be considered as part of Dutch colonial heritage, or not. Its supporters consider the figure as part of an innocent tradition for children, while the opponents categorize Black Pete as a blatant reference to Dutch slavery. All the ERMs mingle themselves in the polarized debate surrounding Black Pete and take an active and prominent position in the pro-Black Pete side. They consider the tradition as an important part of the Dutch cultural heritage, as is exhibited in image 23. Where the opponents of Black Pete aim for a more dynamic attitude towards heritage, allowing for traditions to change, the supporters of Black Pete protect the
48 tradition as it is today. The ERMs take up a more static position in current debates on intangible cultural heritage and deal with traditions and customs in a static way. Image 23 is an example of this and reads: “Save Black Pete! Our heritage, their future, our battle!” Both the discussion surrounding the role of De Ruyter in the slave trade and the appearance of Black Pete, show how the ERMs take position in these debates. To a certain degree, these groups are afraid that ‘their’ culture, heritage and identity are taken away by ‘the Other’. Who ‘the Other’ is, differs from time to time. Over and against the diverse perceived adversaries to Dutch culture, the need to fight or resist these changes—as symbolized by all kinds of (male) heroic warrior figures— remains fairly constant. Aside from this ‘warrior ethic,’ a second theme organizing the visual communication material exhibited by ERMs is the need for the nation state to be grounded in an ethnically and culturally unified people.
Image 23: Identitair Verzet (2017). “Save Black Pete! Our heritage, their future, our battle!”
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6. Discussion
When we look at the question of how the past has been taken up to articulate notions of a European and national identity in the visual culture of Dutch ERMs over the last four years, we see that ERMs put much emphasis on WWII, the idea of European ancestry and to national heroes. These uses of the past give shape to an idea of who they are today, to present-day identity. ‘Speech acts’ like the ones studied here are in this sense performative: they mean to create a certain kind of reality through their visual communication. The visual language constructs a self-identity for the members of the ERMs and is thus an important means for coming to an understanding of how they think, feel and act. We have seen that Dutch ERMs ground the idea of being European in a shared value of freedom, “a united Europe of free peoples” as Voorpost calls this (see image 6). At least metaphorically, ERMs aim to collaborate with the other European peoples on military grounds, in order to ‘defend Europe’ against the perceived threats confronting Europe. These threats are seen as threats because they endanger Europe’s freedom that defines European life. This is a freedom that needs to defended, as the frequent reference to heroic warriors of the past shows in the visual culture. These narratives of warriors are in some cases based on real historical figures and sometimes invented mythical figures. Either, ‘real’ or ‘invented’ these narratives help to symbolically construct some sort of collectivity among the European peoples. In the ERMs visual culture analyzed here we see that the heroism involved in fighting for the freedom of the people is at its most explicit in references to WWII. The way WWII is commemorated by the ERMs investigated here is representative of their ideology at large. There seems to arise a kind of conflict here. On the one hand, we see that on the European level WWII symbolizes a point at which the deep ethno-cultural bonds binding European nations together were damaged, with all the fatal implications. The visual communication material of Dutch ERMs thus strongly emphasizes the need for recognizing the fundamental brotherhood of the peoples of Europe. “Then against each other, now with each other”, image 2 reads. This need for cooperation, according to the material investigated here, arises in relation to the perceived threats to the existence of Europeans: Islamisation and mass- immigration. In the European context, the commemoration of WWII therefore performs a type of pan- European identity necessary for Europe’s defense against outside threats. At the same time, we see that WWII prominently prefigures in distinctively nationalist narratives. In their commemoration ERMs express their pride for the heroic Dutch soldiers and resistance heroes – Our heroes – who sacrificed themselves in fighting for the freedom of the Dutch nation. This freedom is presented as a valuable gift that must not be squandered by opening up our borders to the threat of Muslim terrorism: “They gave the sacrifice of their life for our freedom. Not for a Netherlands under constant threat of terror” (see image 13). Here, we see how the past is used to
50 stimulate a certain attitude in the present: WWII serves as a medium for associating the heroic gift of freedom to a need for vigilant resistance against the terrorist threat to our freedom. A certain tension may be found here. For ERMs WWII symbolizes the individual sovereignty and heroism of the Dutch people, while simultaneously reminding us of the fundamental unity and sameness of the European people as a collectivity. Though these two narratives on first sight might seem to be at odds with each other, we have seen that the familial metaphor of brotherhood succeeds in resolving this tension. The concept allows ERMs to navigate between nationalist and European sentiments, as it articulates a fundamental unity and a fundamental diversity simultaneously. It is precisely the primordial nature of this unity that distinguishes it from the authoritative discourse of unification reflected in the EU’s motto: “United in Diversity”. This motto reflects the idea that the EU is grounded in a type of rational or at least chosen unity, a type of unity associated with civic types of nationalism. In contrast, the emphasis on brotherhood reflects the deep primordial nature of the bond between European peoples. This suggests that the broad division between ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ varieties of nationalism, widely used in empirical research into nationalism, has its correlate on the supra- national scale of European cooperation. Further research would need to show the differences and similarities between both poles of imagination on the national and European level respectively. The primordial ethno-cultural bond between European people’s felt by ERMs clearly reveals itself in the heroic or mythical symbols they employ. In the visual communication material of ERMs we see crusaders, Vikings, Spartan Hoplites and medieval Knights defending Europe against the invasion of Ottoman sultans and Muslim pigs. These figures symbolize the common ancestry and shared history; they symbolize the forefathers of the brother nations of contemporary Europe. At the same time, this metaphor of brother and- fatherhood reflects another contemporary issue related to identity. The material analyzed here represents a rather sharp distribution in terms of gender. Whenever women appear in the visual communication of ERMs they are portrayed as vulnerable groups in need of protection. Women passively symbolize the diversity of the community, rather than participating in their own defense. Needless to say this defense is invariably the responsibility of the strong, masculine warriors that figure in the communication material. It is always a question of brothers, rather than sisters. What role do women have in this narrative? Is it their task solely to procreate? Though these questions cannot be answered in this investigation, the material analyzed here suggests a rather passive role for women, one that resonates with notions of gender that are increasingly being questioned today. If we compare the images semiotically, certain themes are more typical for the European images and others more for the national. In images relating to the Netherlands specifically, for instance, themes relating to post-colonial issues play a prominent role, while this theme is undiscussed in the European narrative. The heated debates surrounding figures such as Black Pete and Michiel de Ruyter show that ERMs find it difficult to deal with such reflexive perspectives on the past. They
51 consider it an attack on the typical Dutch traditions and are afraid of losing an important part of their past. When members of ERMs in the Netherlands are referring to the past in their visual communication this often happens in the name of a ‘we’: we should protect this tradition or we should honor this historical hero or commemorate our casualties on the 4th of May. The choices made in such processes reflect currently held values about what is important and what is not, thus expressing the identity of a certain group. The fear of potential loss of both tangible and intangible heritage motivates the ERMs to take an active position in managing heritage, for instance by organizing demonstrations and visual campaigns to preserve elements of the past that are important for them. The instances of social media communication are a part of this preoccupation with the past by ERMs. The discourse of brotherhood leads to a relation to WWII wholly different from the one that is widely accepted. Rather than presenting WWII as a tragedy with a meaning for humanity as a whole, as an affront to such universal values as peace, prosperity and human rights, ERMs perceive WWII as an assault on the pan-European ideal of Germanic brother nations, a notion sometimes referred to as ‘the Europe of the 100 flags’ or the ‘Europe of the fatherlands.’ Thus the reaction of ERMs to the tragic events of WWII is not primarily to say ‘never again!’; it is to say ‘nie wieder Bruderkrieg’, no more brother wars. Over the last fifteen years or so, it seems that far-right populism has become increasingly popular throughout Europe (Kaya 2017; Eatwell 2004; Mudde 2016). This development has, in part, originated in a growing discontent over the legitimacy of the project of the EU. One thing this has led to is that the question of defining what it means to be European has become more and more central, in public as well as in academic circles. The controversy over the House of European History amongst heritage scholars constitutes only one example of the difficulty of answering this question (Assmann 2014; Macdonald 2013; De Jong 2011). In contemporary debate over the future of Europe both ERMs and FRPs are often portrayed as being focused solely on defending their own nationally bound identity, rejecting the idea of a united Europe. This investigation shows that this is not the case. ERMs articulate their own idea of what it means to be European and why it is important for people to see themselves as such. Yet it is quite clear that for ERMs European identity is grounded on values wholly different from those the EU has found so difficult to articulate. The question of how to give a place to these values is a difficult but important question for the future of Europe. Anthony Smith (1992: 74) describes it as “the New Europe’s true dilemma: a choice between unacceptable historical myths and memories on the one hand, and on the other a memoryless scientific ‘culture’ held solely together by political will and economic interest.” Smith’s proposed way out of the dilemma—recognizing the existence of interlocking patterns of ethnic, religious and linguistic unity running through Europe—seems to be realized in the material analyzed here. Much like Smith’s notion of the family of cultures, the idea of ‘a Europe of brother nations’ seeks to create a sense of pan-European unity that truly allows for unity in diversity, thereby pointing a way out of the
52 dilemma. “The forging of a deep continental cultural identity to support political unification” in Smith’s words “may require an ideology of European cultural exclusiveness.” (Ibid.: 76). Both for Smith and for the ERMs, the way out of the dilemma facing Europe today may be paved at the expense of the exclusion of ‘Others’. Smith (1992) argues that a way out of this dilemma is to recognize the existence of interlocking patterns of cultural unity running through Europe, patterns running along the lines of linguistics, political and legal traditions, a shared sense of outsiders and religious cleavages. Interestingly, Smith uses a familial metaphor for sketching the ‘way out’ of this dilemma, inviting us to think of Europe as a ‘family of cultures’ (Ibid.: 70). But is Smith’s (1992) dilemma really the dilemma Europe is now facing? Smith is very much right that all collective life is made possible by imaginary constructs with which people may identify. This much is clear from the work of such authors like Anderson (2006), Hobsbawn and Ranger (1983). Yet to what extent is Smith legitimated in opposing myths, heritage and tradition to a universalist, memoryless scientific culture? Is there not something special about the ways of thinking, feeling and acting that took shape during what we now call the Enlightenment, ways of thinking and acting that crystallized in an entirely novel kind of socio-political organization based on a recognition of each person’s individual autonomy and rationality. While being ‘invented’ in their own right, such ideas and events like the French revolution, the Trias Politica or our speaking of a historical period as ‘the Enlightenment,’ proves that there may in fact be something like a European culture, a culture that is not as ‘memoryless’ as Smith would have us believe. We may, then, legitimately ask whether the unity expressed in the idea of ‘the Europe of brother nations’ is in fact a European unity, or whether the challenge lies in recognizing the cultural history already binding Europeans together. Perhaps this is the question truly facing Europe today.
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7. References
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https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/kamerstukken/2016/02/09/kamerbrief-met-reactie op-rapportage-racisme-antisemitisme-en-extreemrechts-geweld-in-nederland Donselaar van, Jaap. (2005). ‘Monitor racisme and extremisme. Cahier nr. 4. Het Lonsdalevraagstuk’. Anne Frank Stichting. Universiteit Leiden: Amsterdam. Via url: http://www.annefrank.org/ImageVaultFiles/id_11454/cf_21/lonsdale_webeditie.PDF Nationaal Coördinator Terrorismebestrijding en Veiligheid. (2017). ‘Dreigingsbeeld Terrorisme Nederland 46: November 2017’. Via URL: https://www.nctv.nl/binaries/DTN46%20Samenvatting_tcm31-289786.pdf [Accessed at December 12, 2017]. Tierolf, Bas., Hermens, Niels., Drost, Lisanne. Kapel van, Maaike., Wagenaar, Willem. (2015). Vierde rapportage racisme, antisemitisme, en extreemrechts geweld in Nederland. Incidenten, aangiftes, verdachten en afhandeling in 2015. Utrecht: Anne Frank Stichting and Verwey- Jonker Instituut. Tierolf, Bas., Kapel van, Maaike., Drost, Lisanne. (2017). Zesde rapportage racisme, antisemitisme en extreemrechts geweld in Nederland. Incidenten, aangiftes, verdachten en afhandeling in 2016. Utrecht: Anne Frank Stichting and Verwey-Jonker Instituut. Wagenaar, Willem. (2017). ‘Extreemrechtse formaties en extreemrechts geweld’. Zesde rapportage racisme, antisemitisme en extreemrechts geweld in Nederland. Incidenten, aangiftes, verdachten en afhandeling in 2016. Utrecht: Anne Frank Stichting and Verwey-Jonker Instituut. 35-50.
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Parool, het. (2018). ‘Buurt en bezoekers moskee geschrokken van onthoofde pop’. Via URL: https://www.parool.nl/amsterdam/buurt-en-bezoekers-moskee-geschrokken-van-onthoofde pop~a4559908/ [Accessed at February 12, 2018].
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Anne Frank Stichting (2018a). ‘Politieke delinquenten’. URL via: http://www.annefrank.org/nl/Educatie/monitor/Kronieken/Kroniek-extreemrechts/Oude- Kameraden/Politieke-delinquenten/ [Accessed at February 12, 2018]. Anne Frank Stichting (2018b). ‘Rechtsextremisme en de Fortuyn-revolte’. URL via: http://www.annefrank.org/nl/Educatie/monitor/Kronieken/Kroniek- extreemrechts/Extreemrechts-in-Nederland/De-Fortuyn-revolte/ [Accessed at February 12, 2018]. European Union (2000). ‘The EU motto’. Via URL: https://europa.eu/european-union/about eu/symbols/motto_en [Accessed at February 12, 2018]. Generation Identity United Kingdom and Ireland. (2018). ‘Frequently Asked Questions’. URL via: https://www.generation-identity.org.uk/faqs/ [Accessed at February 12, 2018]. Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei (2018). ‘Amsterdam, Van Randwijk-monument’. URL via: https://www.4en5mei.nl/oorlogsmonumenten/monumenten_zoeken/oorlogsmonument/1513 amsterdam%2C-%27van-randwijk-monument%27 [Accessed at February 12, 2018].
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Appendix
1. Introduction of the Extreme Right Movements
1.1 Voorpost The first analyzed ERM is the Flemish-Dutch Voorpost (Outpost) which is founded in 1976. Voorpost aims for the reunification of Flanders and the north of France as part of the Greater Netherlands, the so-called Dietsland (Dutchland). The group believes in the ‘one-people-one-state’ principle with an ethnical homogeneous population (Wagenaar 2017: 37-38). Therefore, Voorpost feels culturally connected with the white Afrikaners in South Africa, because they share the same language and ethnicity. The notion of ‘us’ concentrates on the cultural-ethnical and the lingual ‘sameness’ of the Dutch people. ‘Otherness’ is mostly defined in relation to immigration and in terms of defiance. Their protest concentrate mostly on the ‘threats’ for the Dutch identity, such as actions against mass- immigration, Islamisation, American imperialism, drugs, pedophiles and the adjustment of the look of Black Pete (Ibid.: 38). The Verwey-Jonker Instituut indicates that the ideology of Voorpost is a Flemish variation on the authentic Mussolini-fascism (Ibid.). The Dutch fraction of Voorpost has only fifteen active members and the amount of activities is small. Since this research focuses on Dutch ERMs, only the visual communication material of the Dutch fraction of Voorpost is taken into account.
1.2 Identitair Verzet The second ERM is Identitair Verzet (Identitair Verzet), a separation from the former group: Voorpost. In 2012, after a personal conflict (instead of ideological) a few members of Voorpost founded a new group. Therefore, Voorpost and Identitair Verzet share to a large extent the same ideas, ideology and values (which were mentioned in the former paragraph). The active core contains more or less of fifteen persons. During the top of the refugee crisis in 2015-2016 Identitair Verzet gained more support by youth activist who were protesting against the arrival of refugee shelters in their hometown, which decreases at the end of 2016. Despite the relative small size of the core of the group, the actions are successful and they receive much media attention (Wagenaar 2017: 37). An often used protest tactic is to occupy the roof of buildings who are in the media at that moment, such as when a new Islamic school or refugee shelter is opened. Certain actions causes much commotion in society. Identitair Verzet carries the same name and logo as the international network of Identitarian Movements, such as the Identitäre Bewegung in Germany and the Generation Identity in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The identitarian movement is considered to be part of the global alt-right movement with national fractions in the countries of Europe and North America. Their ideas can
60 mainly be describes as white nationalist and part of the counter-Jihad movement. However, the Dutch division is not mentioned as an official branch of the movement (Generation Identity UK and Ireland 2018).
1.3 Nederlandse Volks-Unie The third analyzed ERM is the Nederlandse Volks-Unie (Dutch People’s Union (NVU)), the only active ERM in the Netherlands who has the intention to participate in the Dutch elections. The NVU was founded in 1971 and in the first twenty years the NVU was open about their Nazi ideology. After many confrontations with justice, the public attitudes of the NVU attempts to remain within the margins of law. The Verwey-Jonker Instituut is acquainted with that the NVU still propagates Nazi and anti-Semitic ideas behind closed doors (Wagenaar 2017: 39). The NVU does not have good relations with other ERMs in the Netherlands, because the others do not want to be associated with the neo-Nazi orientation of the NVU (Ibid.). The ideology of the NVU focuses on the biological and racial characteristics in society, considering the white-race as superior to other races, among which the Jewish (Ibid.). The NVU concentrates to a larger extent on the Germanic brother nations in tradition of Hitler’s Third Reich, instead of the Dutch language area of Dutchland on which Identitair Verzet and Voorpost focus primarily.
1.4 Pegida Nederland The fourth examined ERM is protest group Pegida Nederland, which was founded in 2015 as a division from the German Pegida and can be categorized as an anti-Islam, far-right populist protest movement. In 2016, Pegida gained much support during their demonstrations against the Islamisation of Europe, because they believe that policy of the national government and the European Union has failed. Pegida feels strongly connected with the national identity and has the fear of losing it, due to the threat of mass-immigration. Pegida proliferates itself as an anti-Nazi group (which is also symbolized in their logo, in which a swastika is thrown away in a bin). Pegida has no clear ideological point of view, but is mostly characterized in the context of protest against mass-immigration and the Islamisation of Europe. In this way, ‘Otherness’ is defined in terms of ethnicity (Wagenaar 2017: 41). Pegida focuses in their visual communication primarily on the promotion of demonstrations and protest actions against the Islamisation of the Netherlands. There are not much references to the past in the announcements of these demonstrations. The analysis make evident that Pegida does not often refer to the past in their visual culture. The groups focuses on present-day problems primarily. It seems that Pegida uses the past less to perform their heritage. In comparison to the other ERMs, they do not use the past as often in the construction of their identity.
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1.5 Studiegenootschap Erkenbrand The fifth ERM which is active the Netherlands is Studiegenootschap Erkenbrand (Study association Erkenbrand) which was founded in the summer of 2016. Erkenbrand focuses mainly on propagating ideas that find their origins in the American Alt-Right-movement. For European perception, these ideas are extremely racist and anti-Semitic (Wagenaar 2017: 40). The ‘white’ race is threatened by mass-immigration, miscegenation, feminism and homosexuality. Erkenbrand believes that this is no coincidence, but there is a purposeful politics behind the demographic decline of the ‘white superior’ race. Erkenbrand’s ideas are also conservative in the cultural domain, such as their view on the position of women and homosexuality. Wagenaar indicates that Erkenbrand is a new type of movement in the Dutch extreme right, with mostly high educated youths as their supporters who were not active in other ERMs before. As a study association, Erkenbrand is active in the organization of events, such as lectures, discussion sessions and workshops in martial arts, but Erkenbrand does not organize protest actions. Since Erkenbrand is characterized as a study association, instead of a social movement, Erkenbrand is not included in the analysis of this research. The tactics and strategies of Erkenbrand differs highly from the other ERMs in the way that they are not protesting and that they do not make often use of the medium Facebook for their visual communication. Instead, the website of Erkenbrand functions as a platform and the articles, essays and podcasts that are published have the function to provoke discussion and share thoughts. The visual culture of Erkenbrand is more supportive, than leading. In this way, Erkenbrand is unique in its communication style and goals and is therefore outside of the scope of this research.
1.6 Zwarte front / Defend Gouda The last Dutch ERM that was distinguished by the Verwey-Jonker Instituut is Zwarte front / Defend Gouda (Black front / Defend Gouda). This ERM is since the second half of 2016 not active anymore and is in view of that excluded from the analysis of this research.
From the six distinguished ERMs that are active in the Netherlands by the Verwey-Jonker Instituut (2016), three are analyzed in this thesis. The visual culture of Pegida, Erkenbrand and Zwarte front / Defend Gouda are outside of the scope of this research. The institutional reports discussed previously focus mainly on the crimes, acts of racism and the possible threat of these ERMs, while there is less attention on how the identity of these movements are constructed. In the following analysis, this research points out that references to history and heritage play a vital role in the construction of identity of ERMs.
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2. List of images
Image 1: Identitair Verzet (2016). Website News Post. 8 May 2016. URL Via: http://www.idverzet.org/2016/05/08/nooit-meer-broederoorlog/#
Image 2: Voorpost Europa (2014). Facebook Timeline Photo. 25 December 2014. URL Via: https://www.facebook.com/VoorpostEuropa/photos/a.379968882054836.99306.317149551670103/82 6953544023032/?type=3andtheater
Image 3: Left: Voorpost (2015). Facebook Timeline Photo. 10 September 2015. URL via: https://www.facebook.com/Voorpost/photos/a.113467568741261.27320.111925772228774/90366764 3054579/?type=3andtheater
Right: NVU (2016). Facebook Timeline Photo. 21 September 2016. URL via: https://www.facebook.com/367264209963545/photos/a.462513830438582.100585.367264209963545 /1222818457741445/?type=3andtheater
Image 4 Left: Voorpost Europa (2017). Facebook Timeline Photo. 25 January 2017. https://www.facebook.com/VoorpostEuropa/photos/a.379968882054836.99306.317149551670103/13 10508609000854/?type=3andtheater
Centre: Voorpost Europa (2015). Facebook Timeline Photo. 8 March 2015. https://www.facebook.com/VoorpostEuropa/photos/a.379968882054836.99306.317149551670103/86 6443576740695/?type=3andtheater
Right: Voorpost Europa (2016). Facebook Timeline Photo. 14 August 2016. https://www.facebook.com/VoorpostEuropa/photos/a.379968882054836.99306.317149551670103/11 51928604858856/?type=3andtheater
Image 5: Left: Voorpost (2017). Facebook Timeline Photo. 1 January 2017. https://www.facebook.com/VoorpostEuropa/photos/a.379968882054836.99306.317149551670103/12 86785368039845/?type=3andtheater
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Right: Voorpost Europa (2016). Caption: #Zaventem. Facebook Timeline Photo. 22 March 2016. https://www.facebook.com/VoorpostEuropa/photos/a.379968882054836.99306.317149551670103/10 57384850979899/?type=3andtheater
Image 6: Voorpost (2017). Website photo. URL via: http://www.voorpost.org/kennismaking/onze-ideeen/
Image 7: Identitair Verzet (2017). Facebook Cover Photo. 23 August 2017. URL via: https://www.facebook.com/IdentitairVerzet/photos/a.460836757316242.102636.460261167373801/9 00758253324088/?type=3andtheater
Image 8: Voorpost Europa (2016). Facebook Timeline Photo. 28 January 2016. URL via: https://www.facebook.com/VoorpostEuropa/photos/a.379968882054836.99306.317149551670103/10 23692297682488/?type=3andtheater
Image 9: NVU (2017). Facebook Timeline Photo. 10 January 2017. URL via: https://www.facebook.com/367264209963545/photos/a.462513830438582.100585.367264209963545 /1331725616850728/?type=3andtheater
Image 10: NVU (2015). Facebook Timeline Photo. 13 January 2015. URL via: https://www.facebook.com/367264209963545/photos/a.462513830438582.100585.367264209963545 /872390732784221/?type=3andtheater
Image 11: Voorpost Europa (2016). Facebook Timeline Photo. 16 September 2016. URL via https://www.facebook.com/VoorpostEuropa/photos/a.379968882054836.99306.317149551670103/11 78247875560262/?type=3andtheater
Image 12: Identitair Verzet (2017). Facebook Profile Picture. 4 May 2017. My translation from Dutch: ‘Dank voor het offer’. URL via:
64 https://www.facebook.com/IdentitairVerzet/photos/a.460845493982035.102641.460261167373801/1 380166225383286/?type=3andtheater
Image 13: Identitair Verzet (2017). Facebook Timeline Post. 3 May 2017. URL via: https://www.facebook.com/IdentitairVerzet/photos/a.475697792496805.1073741825.4602611673738 01/1377964358936806/?type=3andtheater
Image 14: Identitair Verzet (2014). Facebook Cover Photo. 4 May 2014 (Remembrance Day). https://www.facebook.com/IdentitairVerzet/photos/a.460836757316242.102636.460261167373801/6 58979957501920/?type=3andtheater
Image 15: Identitair Verzet (2017). Facebook Timeline Post. 2 May 2017. https://www.facebook.com/IdentitairVerzet/photos/a.475697792496805.1073741825.4602611673738 01/1377783188954923/?type=3andtheater
Image 16: Voorpost (2015). Facebook Timeline Photo. 11 February 2015. URL via: https://www.facebook.com/Voorpost/photos/a.113467568741261.27320.111925772228774/79323242 4098102/?type=3andtheater
Image 17: NVU (2015). Facebook Timeline Photo. 3 March 2015. URL via: https://www.facebook.com/367264209963545/photos/a.462513830438582.100585.367264209963545 /896992510324043/?type=3andtheater
Image 18: Memory of the Netherlands (2018). War Posters 1940-1945 > Anti-Allied propaganda. URL via: http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl/en/geheugen/pages/collectie/Oorlogsaffiches+1940- 1945/Propaganda+voor+de+NSB
Image 19: Left: Voorpost (2017). Facebook Cover Photo. 21 January 2017 https://www.facebook.com/VoorpostEuropa/photos/a.355465424505182.95309.317149551670103/13 06110872773961/?type=3andtheater
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Right: NVU (2016). Facebook Timeline Photo. 19 February 2016. https://www.facebook.com/367264209963545/photos/a.462513830438582.100585.367264209963545 /1073314716025154/?type=3andtheater
Image 20: Left: Identitair Verzet (2017). ‘De liefde voor het vaderland (is) onze wet’. Facebook Cover Photo. 5 September 2017. URL Via: https://www.facebook.com/IdentitairVerzet/photos/a.460836757316242.102636.460261167373801/1 498466803553227/?type=3andtheater
Right: Identitair Verzet (2014). Facebook Profile Picture. 23 March 2014. URL via: https://www.facebook.com/IdentitairVerzet/photos/a.460845493982035.102641.460261167373801/6 39212822811967/?type=3andtheater
Image 21: Voorpost (2016). Facebook Timeline Photo. 24 April 2016. URL via: https://www.facebook.com/Voorpost/photos/a.113467568741261.27320.111925772228774/10340855 30012789/?type=3andtheater
Image 22: Voorpost (2015). Facebook Timeline Photo. 20 January 2015. Url Via: https://www.facebook.com/Voorpost/photos/a.113467568741261.27320.111925772228774/78049119 5372225/?type=3andtheater
Image 23: Identitair Verzet (2017). Facebook Coverfoto. 25 november 2017. URL via: https://www.facebook.com/IdentitairVerzet/photos/a.460836757316242.102636.460261167373801/1 571347236265183/?type=3andtheater
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