When COVID-19 riots rocked the Netherlands for the second time in a year, Ricardo Pronk was there to livestream it all to his followers on social media.
The 50-year-old anti-vaccination activist administered a Facebook group with 10,000 followers, which had shared a call for a demonstration in the port city of Rotterdam on Nov. 19 that later turned violent.
The group, which was recently removed by Facebook, is part of a network of conspiracy theorists and COVID-19-deniers on social media that reached as far as the Dutch parliament, whose influence has sparked concern among experts.
Photo: EPA-EFE
For Pronk, vaccines “are weapons made to kill.”
He also embraces the QAnon conspiracy group’s narrative about “satanic child abuse” by a “globalized elite.”
Yet the unemployed former computer technician, who chose a banner for the group with a lion against a backdrop of flames, rejects any responsibility for the unrest in the Netherlands.
Five people were shot when police opened fire in Rotterdam, and riots spread around the country for the next three days.
“Violence is not the best way, of course not. The best is to do things peacefully,” he said.
In January, during the Netherlands’ worst riots in 40 years over a curfew, and during last week’s unrest, social media were used not only to organize protests, but also to spread disinformation.
“What is unique about the Netherlands is that we have repeatedly seen COVID protests turn into riots just this year,” said Ciaran O’Connor, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London, which specializes in countering radicalism.
While Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has branded rioters “scum” and “idiots,” O’Connor pointed the finger at the epidemic of conspiracy theories on the Internet in the Netherlands.
On Facebook alone, the top 125 groups disseminating false information about COVID-19 saw a 63 percent rise in followers in six months, comprising 789,000 members in the country of 17 million people, an Institute for Strategic Dialogue study said.
Telegram groups during this month’s riots were filled with plans for demonstrations, calls for riots, along with messages targeting Muslims, Jews and gay people.
The social media groups “usually don’t call for violence, but they may accept it as part of the solution,” O’Connor said. “The anti-vax and anti-COVID movement is creating a space allowing for other forces to engage and express their frustration in a violent way.”
Authorities in the Netherlands blamed the riots on a variety of culprits, ranging from frustrated young people to soccer hooligans and genuine coronavirus protesters — but they also underlined the importance of social media in organizing them.
In June, Dutch intelligence services said they feared that anti-government demonstrations “are a breeding ground for extremism.”
In a country where 85 percent of adults are vaccinated, the anti-vax movement “is a clear minority group,” said Claes de Vreese, a professor of political communication at the University of Amsterdam.
However, unlike in neighboring countries, “their voice has been strongly amplified by the fact that they have found a political ally in parliament,” namely the Forum for Democracy party.
The leader of the far-right party, Thierry Baudet, has largely dropped his anti-immigration rhetoric to adopt a strong anti-vaccination stance and to promote conspiracy theories.
Baudet has been dubbed the Dutch Donald Trump and one of his tweets was labeled misleading by Twitter ahead of elections in March, a first for a Dutch politician.
One of the party’s lawmakers was recently reprimanded for threatening a fellow lawmaker in parliament with a “tribunal” if the Forum came to power, because of his support for the government’s policies.
O’Connor said that some material was slipping under the radar of social media giants because it was in Dutch.
“Compared to the US or the UK, Twitter or Facebook don’t have the same focus on gatekeeping their platforms against people who use them irresponsibly,” he said.
SECRET AGREEMENT: China is paying for construction at Ream Naval Base, where dredging would be needed if larger military ships were to dock there, AMTI said Dredgers have been spotted off Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, where China is funding construction work and deeper port facilities would be necessary for the docking of larger military ships, a US think tank said on Friday. The US, which has sought to push back against Beijing’s extensive territorial claims and military expansion in the South China Sea, reiterated its “serious concerns” about China’s construction and military presence at Ream. “These developments threaten US and partner interests, regional security and Cambodia’s sovereignty,” a US Department of State spokesperson said. The report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank said the
France is to relax some COVID-19 restrictions from early next month in a bet that an outbreak of the Omicron variant of SARS-COV-2 would recede thanks to faster inoculations and plans to shut the unvaccinated out of most social activities. The French government is to lift the obligation to work from home at least three days a week from Feb. 2, French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Thursday. It would also remove a requirement to wear a mask outdoors, and scrap attendance limits for sports arenas and cultural venues, Castex said. Infections with the Delta variant are “clearly receding,” while the
RED LINE: The US and its allies would not accept if ‘any’ Russian troops cross into Ukraine, the state secretary said, clarifying Biden’s remarks about a ‘minor incursion’ The US and its allies on Thursday warned Moscow of grave consequences if “any” of the tens of thousands of troops massed on the border were to cross into Ukraine. Following talks in Berlin with Germany, France and the UK, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Russia “cannot match” Western powers’ resoluteness. Allowing Russia to breach Ukraine’s territorial integrity would “drag us all back to a much more dangerous and unstable time, when this continent, and this city, were divided in two ... with the threat of all-out war hanging over everyone’s heads,” he told reporters. In a show of that
Tania Sibree late last year quit her well-paid job as a financial services lawyer in Hong Kong and returned to Australia rather than live a moment longer with the territory’s strict COVID-19 restrictions. Sibree, who said she had enjoyed the previous five years in Hong Kong, is one of hundreds — possibly thousands — of foreign expatriate professionals who have left or are planning to leave, threatening to dent the territory’s standing as one of the world’s financial hubs. “The hotel quarantine made it just so tough for people to travel and that was the big incentive to being in Hong Kong,
RSS