Part One: Dutch Squatters Accidentally Save The Country From Ruin

little bit sweaty um yep. Pronunciation was it was? Okay? Um? It should be almost strong? Okay strong? Yeah, okay. What is that podcast? It's uh yeah, so like you like you say, it's a radical podcast. It's a monthly and it combines basic radical leftist political concept and a more sort of like practical aspect about how do we organize and like my personal ideas about it. Sometimes I go like into like more philosophy esque stuff, but mostly it's

these these two two sides. Okay. We also have Sophie on the call, Sophie as our producer. How are you doing, Sophie? It just reminds me whenever I hear you know something not in the English language, how fucking ugly English is. Dutch words are so much cooler. English words are so basic there, it's like, you know, it's depressing, really but greener, I guess, yeah for sure. I mean, how do you say, how do you say? Cool people did cool stuff? And

Dutch cool? Way better, way better, way better. Um, but yeah, that's just my thought at the beginning of this episode. Way better. Alright, So changing the name of the podcast, Um, okay, So, so first of all, I think Sophie is wearing a black hoodie in honor of today's topic. Actually, I don't know if the's a hood might just be a black sweatshirt. There's definitely no hood, but it is and we have

alex on because today we are talking about rad Dutch stuff. Specifically, we're going to talk about some people who had a problem and they went out and solved that problem for themselves and for others, which is kind of the basis of being a cool person from my current point of view. And the problem that these particular folks were facing was

that people didn't have enough houses to sleep in. The solution was, well, there are some empty houses, so why don't we break into those houses and then sleep there. Because today we're going to talk about the Dutch squatters movement that peaked in the eighties but has gone on

for decades. They started out looking for shelter. They wounded up preventing real estate prospectors from kind of destroying half the buildings in the Netherlands, all while building the infrastructure that birthed a lot of the modern anti fascist movement, not just the Dutch anti fascist movement, it a lot of the it's like fascist movement in the West, Alex Have you ever heard of squatting? Yeah, so I have,

So I have. It's if you're any kind of radical or activists in the Netherlands, you you really can't get around it. Um all stable social centers that are available to the movement, or most of them have a history in squatting, like they're legalized squads or squads that have remained.

And like a lot of like you say, like infrastructure and activist groups are organized around squatted spaces or they meet there, they formed there, and like a lot of the networks of who've been active for a long time or who get active often they come in through squatting.

Squatting actions or projects that are related to the squatting movement. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's it's one of those things that I think that when people, especially from the United States, where I can only speak to people from the United States, when they start seeing squatting in Europe in general, but in the Netherlands in particular, it UM is often fairly inspirational,

and I try to be a somewhat inspirational podcast. This is why I'm really excited to talk about this topic, which I think actually sometimes annoys the Dutch squatters that Americans are like, you all are doing so great, and they're like, everything's actually really hard. Yeah I've heard this before. Yeah. Yeah.

Also people who come by, we're like smith and like, oh, there's all these these spaces and these things you can do, and then like even like people like move here, and then they're like, oh wait, it's actually it's actually not that great. It's not you don't actually have that much moon room to maneuver, right, Yeah, yeah, you know. I mean that's why it's not a happy, perfect utopian thing,

but it's still a really interesting thing. UM. And I will argue that this episode, this this idea starts where all things start with a bed, a table, and a chair, because in nineteen fourteen the Supreme Court of the Netherlands ruled that in order to prove that you live somewhere, all you need to prove that you are the occupant of a building as you need a bed, a table and a chair. If you live in a space, you know those three things, you are the occupant of that space,

not the owner, but the occupant. So in the nineteen thirties, during the Great Depression, tons of people in the Netherlands started moving into empty houses, um but as far as I can tell, didn't conceptualize of themselves as a movement. This wasn't the squatters movement. This was people squatting. In five after the expulsion of the Nazis, more people went

and did the same thing. Um. But most squatters in both of these times were kind of just either secretly occupying a place or they were moving in publicly but in order to force the owner's hand into renting to them. And both are super valid things to do, but neither are the sort of politicized squatting that we'll be talking about in a moment Like this is kind of just

any squatting, like squatting is of old times. People always squatted to some extent, but like, yeah, having like as this politicized movement quite new, Yeah, totally, and in the nineteen sixties and the Netherlands has started to change. So real estate speculation, or if you're feeling a bit less polite, you can call this house milking. Very simple concept. You buy up houses and then you leave them empty, waiting

for them to be worth more. Like when the economy approves, since there's fewer houses on the market, the housing prices go up and the houses you own are now worth more. Even more sinister than leaving these houses intentionally empty. When people need houses, you can leave the buildings to be neglected. And so that all these old historic houses and the Nevolands has beautiful old architecture. Um, all of these old

houses they fall into ruin. And as soon as they start falling into ruin, it's easier for the owners to get demolition permits to like knock them over and build cheap modern condos and ship like that. Um, So letting in houses fall into ruin is good business. And I would argue that this is a bad thing. Every part of what I just described, Yeah, it's it's interesting because

this this thing, it's still still very current um. Even if it's not for demolition, then it can be like we were going to renovate it, but to renovate it's going to take a while, so the occupants need to go away. Even if like their social rent social housing, um, then this letting things fall into disrepair can still be used now as a tactic to force the people out or to bully them out of the social housing and then renovate the space and then bring in buyers instead

or like more expensive rent. Yeah yeah, uh. And that's one of the things that's get kind of sad about like a lot of this stuff, is that this was a thing that did a lot of good um, but continues. All of the problems that the Dutch squatters were facing at this time are old things faced um all over the world. This is probably not gonna be too unfamiliar

to two people. In the US. Right now, we're having this huge wave of basically large companies buying up all the available houses um, and the housing market is kind of going wild right now, just as homelessness as starting to pick up again in the U S. And then it's actually interesting the numbers of on housed folks in the US isn't incredibly higher than fifteen years ago. Um, but the it's way more visible in a lot of ways, and a lot of the fights around it are being

a lot more politicized. Okay. So in the nineteen sixties in the Netherlands, housing speculation was all the rage of the capitalists and future friends of the pod the Provo movement, who were kind of a and tell me if I'm wrong about this, but I have the Provos is kind of a super political Dutch post hippie movement. Yeah that's sound sounds about right. They're often described as a as anarchists, but they're also closely related to uh to hippie, the

hippie movement. Yeah, okay, So they started doing some of the first politicized squatting in the Netherlands that I was able to find. They would start squatting buildings in order to fight against speculation, and squatting got its modern name at the time during that period kraken or cracking. So squatters got the name crackers, which is funny to an American audience. I have to do. Yeah, that's great. Um. So in in so I've been to squats where there's

banners like release the Kraken, like release the Kraken. Yeah, because it's you know, it's you have this big, big squid with like crawled and crowbars and bandanas and uh you know, free food and stuff. Yeah. And sometimes they make them out to draw them like really cuddly or really threatening. Yeah. It's also funny, is the word kraken

is in a way it's more menacing than squatting. The squatting is this sort of sitting on your on your heels, yeah, whereas kraken is like to crack something like a nutcracker or like a safe cracker. Um, which which connects to this like like the conservatives, liberal conservatives in the Netherlands, they always try to do this thing where they say trying to make squatting into this crime. Right, So there they have the slogans like kara it's in breka, Okay,

I'm squatting is burglary. Yeah, but but they say for that, right because it's like like it's on the same page as like safe cracking, house cracking. Yeah. Um, so it has it has some power in the world, but it's also like, yeah, in the crime area, no, and I like it and well, but one of the things I ran across is it claimed that the word is derived from old Dutch thieves can't. And if that's true, I like it because things that make the real world, like

dungeons and dragons make me happy. Um and dungeons dragons is going to come up a second time in the script. Just gonna leave that out there for everyone, so go ahead. Oh yeah, no, So the thieves scouts is a fun thing. There's a uh like the Amsterdam Dutch dialect actually has a lot of influence from this this thieves count, which is called bad Huns, which has like a lot of influence from um, yeah, just words from thievery, but also like Jewish Yiddish influences and stuff all mixed together in

a fairly sort of recognizable thing. And you have like Bahun's dictionaries that you can buy and like old books shops, and that's really cool. I want one. Even though I um lived in the Netherlands for a while and cannot pronounce Dutch to save my life. I think I pronounced it perfectly fine. The Dutch people around me don't think

I pronounced it perfectly fine. So the laws in the Netherlands were for a long time they were favorable a squatters, at least compared to some other countries like the US. In one they got even better. Some squatters in the Dutch city of Nimegan got run out of the house they were living in and the owner was like, the house wasn't empty, it was for sale. They came into my for sale house. The Supreme Court heard the case an appeal and was like, look, a house in use

means a house in use as a house. And this established the concept of domestic peace and Dutch law um, which is basically anyone entering a property needs permission from the current occupant, not the owner, but the occupant. So the person in the house with a bed, table and chair has domestic peace as the one who is allowed

to decide who comes and goes. So from this point on for a while, until we'll get to that legally, most squatters could only be evicted by court order, So the cops ostensibly can't just come in and arrestue for trespassing because you're the occupant. And this is all the

kind of the groundwork. People who have a problem, like I don't have anywhere to live can address that problem by saying, well, this this building is empty, and squads would still be evicted all the time, as owners would Basically it's not like Okay, you become the document and now it's your house and you get to stay there forever. Right, owners would decide suddenly that they actually wanted to do

something with the house. They you know, they were just like leave a house to be empty for ten years, and then squatters move in and they're like, wait, no, I have all these plans you know, and then they go prove that in court, unless they prove it in court then and people would get evicted and wake the sleeping and dragon because they just want to keep it lying around as like they're as they're like, uh, their savings basically and their growth intra invest and then people

live in there and it seems like, oh maybe you're losing it. Then it instantly awakes them. Still yeah, yeah, I just rewatched the Hobbit. So this is extra true. And so the first political squatters, the provo movement overall, and the people coming from that, they try to be non violent in terms of how they were building a squat movement. And then on November as a squad was being evicted. Squatters lined up three rows deep. They link their arms together and they shouted no violence, no violence

at the police. And you will be shocked to now, this will be absolutely no one has ever heard of this before. But the police didn't listen to them as they were chanting. Founded. Yeah, So the squiders all got the ship beat out of them, and non violence fell out of favor in the squatting movement. And that's when the squatting movement started to get ship done. Was when non violence fell out of favor. I remember an old photo.

It's a black and white photo of a of a house squat being defended, and so there's there's people lined up in front of it. They were like motorcycle helmets in there. They have a banner in front of them, or maybe it's hanging on the on the on the building. I don't rightly know. Um. And it says the under conte discussed meat overvelt theveta and food on it out, which means the other side does not discuss about violence. They pour it into law. They poured into law and

then they act on it. Right. Yeah. Yeah, some of the slogans that come out of the squad scene are really honestly, really amazing and really poetic. Um. And then so okay, right around this time, in the late seventies, the Dutch economy goes into this tail spin during the

worldwide energy crisis. And I haven't fully wrapped my head around the Dutch economic troubles, of I know that domestic natural gas production had been giving the Dutch and economic boom in the seventies, and that this had led to high wages in a strong welfare state. And I also know that neoliberal publications blame this for the crash. They're like, no one wants to work anymore because everyone gets such good welfare or whatever, which is once again not familiar

to any Americans listening to this right now. But it seems like the worldwide energy crisis is the reason that the Dutch economy went into a tail spinning. Do you know much about this? No? Not not quite? Okay, Yeah, it's um. I mean, I couldn't tell you what happened in the late seventies in the U s economy specifically, it is released to this. However, it happened unemployment surged up to seventeen percent by four which for context, for

some folks who are listening. This is higher than the huge spike we saw in the US in March and April with COVID, but it's lower than like the Great Depression, right with unemployment, though homelessness surged around nineteen eighty or so, there were fifty three thousand homeless people in a country of only fourteen million people. So that's about point three eight percent people were homeless. And in contrast, the US

is dealing with a ton of homelessness right now. It's fifty two thousand people out of three nine million to point one seven percent. It's less than half. The current major homelessness crisis that we're facing in the US is less than half of what the Dutch were facing in the late seventies early eighties. And while all this is happening, the real estate prospectors are like, well this rules like okay, well you know, let's just hold onto these houses and

drive up the prices even more. Um And I remember being told by squatters, and I can't source this. I remember being told by squatters that about a third of the houses in Amsterdam were empty for a while in the early eighties. Is that you have any idea, Well, very very very many. Definitely, Um, I don't I don't know the exact uh figure, but I know I know, and like currently like now that the squading movement has

gone or like it's not gone, like it's diminished. Um, you get like one third of the house being sold now is like to like a big investor. So it's basically trying to do the same thing again. But no, there was like huge emptiness of houses. Yeah, and when you have people who are motivated to do something about it, you have somewhat favorable laws, and you have tons of empty houses, and you have tons of people need houses,

you get the squatters movement. Uh. And it it didn't start as a political statement or resistance to anything, at least not as conceived of by most of its participant, but it carried a specific important political ideal, nonetheless, which is that you can just do things right, that you don't need to ask the state for permission, um, that you can solve your problems directly. And and it's because of this that it rejected the political assumptions of this.

It kind of rejected a lot of the political assumptions of the left that have been going on before that, and it took on a more anarchist character, and of course the provos that it came from also were you know, part of anarchist movement, and not in that all of the participants were anarchist, but that many of them were, and that the squads were intended as direct action rather than political action. One of the easiest examples to give of direct action. Also, Yeah, you want to explain, like

when when is it indirect? Well, if you're trying to influence someone to do something, and we as direct when you solve the problem yourself, like for instance, need a house, you get you use a house. Yeah, it's so simple. It's like one of the things as I was I was writing the script is over and over again and just run acros us this Like no, it's just really like it really just comes down to like that billion is empty and I'm cold, you know. Yeah yeah, yeah,

and it makes me really happy. But it's it's interesting. So I don't know too much about like the history, like I haven't studied the history specifically, but we get we get like stories from people who are active for longer um and for us, like for me, like squatting is like this ah sort of living tradition or like

long standing movement that's aside all the other movements. Um. But you but you can tell like the the origin of certain bits of like squatter culture in this like the this very direct like autonomous just solve this thing by yourself. It's very d I y culture way of doing things, like you instantly recognize it. Um. Also like among squads, like like the direct direct support, like I need to move something, I will use your bucke ask them, but it's like just assumed of course you're going to

need it. Um so oh so like sometimes it's like so so fast that you're that like they sort of assume that you know, you have their permission with some things. It's like, um oh, but you're doing this thing, so you you want my buck feets right? So I had it there, like I cleaned up a little because I thought you might want it. Yeah, for anyone who's listening to box feeds. Is a pickup a pickup truck bicycle where the bed of the pickup is in the front and it is entirely based on the fact that the

Netherlands is entirely flat. Because these things are gigantic and heavy and they rule. But I don't think they would work anywhere with hills. Well, I will say the canal bridges in Amsterdam are still yeah, a challenge. I've ever written a box feeds full of stuff over one of those before, Um yeah, I must do, must try, yeah, yeah,

and okay. And And that's actually one of the things that I found so interesting right is as I'm reading about this culture that developed in the early eighties and late seventies, my experience, for anyone who's listening, is about six months of living in squats in the Netherlands in like two and the culture that I'm reading about as I'm researching this is just the culture that I experienced while I was there, and it's you know, it had developed in a lot of ways that had you know,

certain practices felt more concrete by the time I was there. But it, like you're saying, it's this living practice that continues, and it's so interesting to me because it's, I don't know, whatever, it's interesting me for a lot of reasons. Uh So, the early movement quickly found the organizational structure that it um that it continued to have for a very long time. And it's an organizational structure kind of like what you're talking about. It's built on autonomy at every level, but

also organization at every level. Individual squatters are autonomous within their squad by and large, they live their individual lives autonomous but in coordination with their squad mates. The squats themselves are autonomous from, but in court nation with their neighborhood. And then most of the organization happens at the neighborhood level. Each neighborhood has its own like a squatters council essentially that meets to coordinate opening new squads and defending squads.

And they acted autonomously from anything that's happening in on a citywide or nationwide level. Yet individual cities and the entire country are capable of coordinating certain actions as necessary. And I think this rules. I think this is a really good model, um. And it the beauty and strength of the style made itself clear, UM that this worked really well. Obviously, there's all kinds of things that went wrong with it, and you know, we'll talk about some

of them later. But and it's it's it depends like once it's got going, like the fact of its of its density, that so many people were squatting meant that it it ah, it was able to get to a kind of critical mass that allows this thing to work where um like the neighborhood social centers and the neighborhood meetings they make sense once enough people in the neighborhood

are involved. So um, right, this is more you like, if there's if there's if squad is much thinner on the ground, then it's harder to coordinate in this very direct local way. Yeah. No, that that makes sense, and you probably have to work with larger groups depending on the the critical mass of it or whether you've reached the critical mass. Um And so you have so the way it would work. So you have these neighborhood focused squad groups and they start breaking into empty buildings and

helping people move in. And how this would happen. A group of people want a house, so that you're living group, they want a house. So either find a house on your own, or you go to the neighborhood squad assembly and you ask for leads. They case the house, whether it's the living group or other people. You case the house to prove it's truly unoccupied. You look up city records,

you may be carefully asked neighbors. You stick a toothpick or a match dick in the door and then like see if that falls, because if they opened the door, the match stick would fall to the ground. Um, you check on it every few days to see if it's still there. And if the building was empty, then they planned to move in. And in the laws were updated to say a building had to be empty for a year. So this part got a bit harder because you have to it became harder to prove that building has been

empty for a year. I know at least in one case that I was around four people have been tracking that building for a year, and as soon as it was empty for a year, it was like the day it was empty for a year, they moved in, actually breaking down the door. It's illegal, right, it's destruction of property unless you're the occupant of the house. This part always seemed very confusing to me. So it's like if you break in, you're in trouble if they catch you

breaking in. But if you break in and you get a bed, table and chair in there, then it's okay. It's it's very it's it's not unlike, um, what's it called, like green light? Green light? Red light? Totally yeah, as I've been standing here all the time. I don't know what you're talking. Yeah, it's moving me. Um. And so so breaking down entering, the breaking and entering stage has to be done very carefully, right because it's it's illegal. Um. But you know what else is illegal are the amazing

prices of our advertisers. Uh, with prices so low that they have to be criminal. I have to do an ad transition. Um. They pay a fine for every product you bye, yeah, they want you to get it so cheap, they'll just pay the cops off. Yeah, exactly. You the all of these advertisers have bribed the police. Here's a anths and we are back from those advertisers, and we're telling you how to break into buildings. So the way

to break into a building than it looks I know. Um, So you set up the neighborhood assembly, sets up the squad action. Kind of approves the squad action because it takes a lot of people to do this safely. And then dozens to hundreds of squatters congregate into some nearby location. Usually it's another squad or an apartment something like that.

Once you get the crowd together, you go out to the building and the neighborhood's breakers group, which is a specialized task usually not done by the living group, but like basically by professional locksmiths and ship Um. They'll have already cased the place, figure out how to break out, break down the door. They show up with crowbars, get

into these buildings incredibly fast. Um. Meanwhile, if the cops show up, which they often do because there's a large crowd congregated and the cops kind of know what's going on, sometimes the crowd keeps the cops at bay through various means, and I'm sure at various points this has been more and less militant, but a lot of it just literally means standing there so the cops can't get through you blocking the side of the breakers yeah ah, yes, so they can't see who's doing the actual yeah. Um. So

then the door is open and immediately rush in. A bed, table and chair usually shows up on one of the box feeds and as well as barricading materials. The door gets repaired or at least barricade in such a way that can be held shut. Um, and now the building is occupied. Note about the door. So I recently heard this that in in French squatting there's like a small variation where um, the breaking in part is of course

also illegal. Um, but so what they do there is they often they will just bring a new door and just that this has always been the real door, So this is being a replacement door. Show like, oh, it's all fine, it's nothing going on here, and yeah, it's the surreal nous. For me, I'm used to police being, um,

particularly aggressive people. Uh, the surreal nous is sometimes intense, where you know, it's the scuffle outside and then the door is broken open and then everything is inside, and then it's almost like someone's like time out, we're in and everyone's like oh okay, and then like everyone lets go of everyone else. And then um, you specifically invite two police officers to come inside the squad to come

look and see that it was in fact empty. And the part that makes the least sense from an American perspective is that there's a belief that the cops will tell the truth in court about what they saw when they went inside the squad. Um. Yeah, but like and to establish this kind of trust also is very strange because the movement has just gone from like okay, we will do peaceful tactics, no confrontation, peace, peace, peace, and then you have like more more militant struggle. And this

is like something that happens a lot. And then the next moment, okay, so we were settled, come have a look. See we fixed it all, um, and not only the trust between them, but also then like the attitude switch shift from like the police. It was like okay, like you said, like the time out and now we're doing this other thing. Now we're just seeing whether the right procedure has been followed. It's like the boys in blue

also enjoy hop scotch. And yeah, I gotta admit this is the part that I if anyone in the US feels like they want to start squatting, more power to you. But don't use the specific tactics necessarily. Um. They look different in different places for different reasons and including different times. Right, Like we'll talk about a little bit later. This is

no longer how you can do Dutch squatting. But okay, so now you have a house, um, and kind of in this simple mechanism of basically now you you move in, and now the real estate prospectors have to shift what they're doing and they as you're saying, wake the sleeping dragon. Um it. The squatters kind of in the early eighties started destroying the real estate speculation market and started forcing

property owners to keep buildings in use. And so is this social good for the squatters because they get to keep a house for a while, But it was also social good for Dutch society more broadly because it keeps borhoods from going derelict. And there's this tension where some of the squads like, we don't give a ship about what's good for touch society more broadly. Um, but still fucking interesting. Um. So this again, like this is all sort of like like a reformist branch of it, where

you say like, well, actually it's good. It's healthy for the for the housing market, and you can value that or not, but like, at least you can see that it's um at the very least, and you can use this also as an argument against people who are like saying like, oh, that's not okay. Um, you know, at least that can bring them in maybe that it is it is functional for that for that market. Um. Have you ever seen that video how wolves change rivers? You

ever seen that? So this story about like okay, you have your Semite park right, and there's uh and there's or like I think it's your Semiti park or some some big area and there's way too much like ah pis and they're some kind of heard some kind of herd animal um and there's no predator, so they go everywhere and they eat all the grass and they trample the ground, so the riverbeds get soft and the whole thing becomes like this big um swampy bog where not

much else can live or at least like specific other stuff. But it's not that biologically diverse. And they introduced wolves and the wolves I think, so it's not it's not bison, like it's deer. There's this big these herds of deer and the wolves. There's only a few of them. But what they do is they forced the deer ah to be careful about certain spaces because they know, like, oh, this is a this is an ambush spot. So if I stay there, they're gonna they're gonna get me. If

I stay here too long, they're gonna get me. So they get more picky, they get quick on their feet, They avoid certain areas, and those areas trees come back because the young trees they can grow up without being graced to death. Yeah, and then in the trees different new animals, species get reintroduced, birds and stuff. Um. And it was find this a nice, nice metaphor for it because it shows like, um, if you if you prod them, if you say like you can't just get everything you want,

then other things can blossom. Yeah, which is inating, but it also has this problematic side when you see like this reformist attitude towards squatting where people pretend like the I don't know, the helping to grow an art scene, like this is something that can be helped in this way through squatting, but it was never the point. And if you make that into the point, then it can be used against you as saying, but that's what it's about.

We've made a new art program. So yeah, yeah, now that we don't care that you still can't find housing if you're poor or whatever, and like, um yeah, because like the point of it is the direct action. If it has symbolic benefits or other benefits that come out

of it, that's not the Now that's interesting. And then so to start making this more concrete in the history of it on November one, in six adjacent seventeenth and eighteenth century buildings on a canal called Kaiser Rock got squatted, and the whole complex was called Groot Kaiser or Great Kaiser to distinguish it from Yeah, that one Kaiser. Uh, I'm gonna call it Great Kaiser throughout to distinguish it. So there's another. I think there's another squad called the

canal called the Little Kaiser. That's the best I could figure out, but I'm not entirely sure. Um, this is right, must must have been there so many. Yeah, this is right in the center of Amsterdam, and about fifty people were living in Great Kaiser. All of the squads were first and foremost living places, right, because that was the whole point, And this one in particular was more of a flophouse for squatters and travelers. People coming through would

would come stay here. Less than a year into the occupation, on October, the courts ordered the residents to leave, and they were given a month to get out. Most of them do most of them like all right, you got us, you know, time to go find another place to squad. But then the squatter movement of the city as a whole was like no, fuck it, We're going to move in. It's time to take a stand, it's time to fight eviction, and we're gonna make a symbol out of this place.

So squatters from around the city move in and they barricade the compound and they decided to actively defend it. And this was a bit contentious because some squatters were like, no, staying mobile and flexible as our strength, we shouldn't defend a single place. This isn't about symbols whatever, and other people are like, no, we need to show that we're strong,

right um. And some people, of course are like I will die to defend the Kaiser, which is really funny to type out, because um, you know, they mean something very different than most people say they will die to defend the Kaiser. So water beds were all the rage right in the Netherlands the early eighties. So people were throwing out their old mattresses and box springs left and right.

The squatters started grabbing all the box springs off the street and then weld them over the windows of the squads. And I have never seen more ingenuity and fortifications than I have seen from Dutch squatters. Um. And and I want to be clear when I say Dutch squatters, I'm I mean squatters in the Netherlands rather than people who

are necessarily like Dutch. Right, it was an international movement even at that time, and later, like there's this whole thing that's happened where there's like whitewashing of Dutch squatting culture because I think people realize that it like saved the city and is the reason there's art scenes and ship um, and so there's all of these like articles that are complete lives that are like in the beginning, all the squatters were good social minded Dutch who wanted

rental properties. But then the evil internationalist anarchists showed up from all of the other countries and they were made violent and destructive and it's sorry it was violent, destructive international anarchists who saved your art scene. Like yeah, well, so there's a few things like a lot of a lot of the radicals were not necessarily anarchists, like there were a lot of autonomous Marxists, etcetera. And more of the anarchists have remained, I think. Um, but it was

was very mixed, but also not super white at all. Well, so the area that had like the most squads in Amsterdam during around this time was the southeast southeast the bellmot Um and this was squaded by mostly people from from Surinam. When after like the uh in Surinam gained independence,

a lot of people were given the choice. People were giving the choice like where do you want to live in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and a lot of people from Surinam came here um h and a lot of them were denied social housing on the basis of racism um and so a lot of them started squatting in the bellmot which is like almost like a separate chapter of the squading movement that it gets rarely gets

talked about. Okay, no, yeah, that that is super interesting because yeah, everything I was reading at first would just be like and then the squatters did this, or even then then the Dutch squatters did this, and then it'll like kind of like as a throwaway line talk about people who weren't Dutch at all, you know. Um, so, yeah, it's histories are not always written, but the best way

while the while the still concert arguments often remain the same. Oh, it's the people who aren't really Dutch who come here and make the trouble while everyone who's really Dutch would never do this, would never yeah, because you're supposed to love your country and your Yeah, whereas there are plenty of Dutch people who hated their country who are doing

this too, you know. Yeah. So a month goes by, the month that the people at Great Kaiser are are there, and that the city doesn't fucking air move on the place. It is too well defended, and rumors start spreading about a huge police mobilization building up to evict it. Another month goes by and nothing. So the squatters are tired of waiting and they decided to go on the offensive. And what they declared d Day, a declaration of war on the city's politics. A hundred demonstrators from all over

the city attack city council with fireworks and smoke bombs. Um. The whole attack only takes fifteen minutes, and I think maybe everyone got away. I couldn't find anything about anyone getting arrested at this action. Um. But you know what else will get you arrested buying goods and service. Okay, Well, now let's do it different. Um. Okay, So we try to be on this show. We try to be sponsored only by very positive things. Um the our our longest

standing sponsors, the concept of the potato on any individual brand. Okay, so I'm wondering if you have any um specific positive thing that you would like to be sponsored by this show being being Dutch, I already love the potato, but I would like to tack on this this the concept of deep frying things. Okay, okay, oh, yes, that is a that is a great sponsor. So so so our podcast is sponsored by the concept of frying things food

specifically um and and and every everything else is wrong. Yeah, yeah, deep fry. Also, there's your your appliances like my deep fryar so good and deep fried bits of deep fryer. Ah. No, that that makes a lot of sense. Okay, we are back from those ads all about the different things that you can deep fry. Every service or ad that you just heard you could deep frying. Yeah, including the podcasters. If it was ads for podcasters, you could deep fry

the podcasters. H So at Great Kaiser they start stockpiling other things to deep fry, including rocks for throwing gas masks, fireworks, smoke bombs, and paint bombs. And if you're wondering how to make a paint bomb. In this style, you take a fist sized balloon, you dip it into wax, then you pull out the balloon. Then you fill the wax ball with paint, and you cap it off with more wax,

and then you have a paint bomb. The squatters set up a pirate radio station called the Free Kaiser, the voice of the Squatters movement, and eventually the bed springs over the windows get replaced with welded together steel planks all held together by construction poles um, which is like this. The construction poles were everywhere. I I love them. They're just extendable poles. That the Bows Temple. Yeah, the Bows

Temple and uh. One of the more ingenious things that the Great Kaiser Squatters did as they set up counter intelligence programs all over the city. They tracked the police people post themselves at police stations and at riot police training grounds, waiting to see if there was any sign of a raid on the squat. Hundreds of people waited

on standby. Um. Every squatter and squat supporter in the city was part of the Squat Alarm Phone Tree, which was basically like, if you are a squatter, you care about squats you're on this phone tree, and if something happens, if the alarm goes out, everyone who can be fucked to get out of bed, gets their shipped together, gets on a bike and goes over to where the alarm is. I've seen that. I've seen a poster of that in a in a squad recently, well not in a legalized

squad house, but um yes. So they had like the map of like going from like wherever is the main place you call to spread it, and then going into like the different areas, different branches, different groups. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was, Yeah, I was really impressed by the squat phone tree, which was still in place and in use twenty five years later after after this. Yeah, and the

was are all like house house phones like the landline. Um. So nowadays you will have like alarm signal groups or whatever, but back then it was like house of landless. Yeah. And so since Amsterdam, I don't know if you knew this, but Amsterdam has a lot of canals in it, um Venice of the North. Yeah, yeah, there's almost as many

canals as Venice. And it's like mostly known outside of Amsterdam first, like you know weed or whatever, but um, it canals very defining feature, and the center of the city is sort of a ring of canals, and so there's there's only so many bridges over the canals to get to the Great Kaiser. So what each neighborhood council did is take responsibility to block or barricade one of those bridges in whatever autonomous way that they saw fit good system as long as you don't have a bunch

of people you're expecting to flake. If you have a bunch of people you're expecting to flake, this is not a good system. But the eviction kept not coming. Later it was learned that the mayor kept calling it off because it was too risky, which makes sense. It was too risky. They would have gone really badly if they tried to evict the Great Kaiser. In Jay, you were in a demonstration of three thousand people marched past all while people on the roof waves squatter flags and Sophie,

do you know what the squatter flag looks like? I do not? Should I look it up? I mean like it's a flag with the squatter symbol on it. Do you know? The not to just put you on the spot, but have you seen the squatter symbol before. I've looked up what this looks like and uh is it? Is it like a lightning bolt end with an arrow on it? I like it? Yeah? Yeah, circle? Yeah? Um, so that's the squatter symbol. I was always really curious about where it came from, and this is where it comes Yeah,

what's the origin of that? Like it's so interesting, Okay, but it looks like it would be like a superhero's like every right on there. It's great. Nobody knows the origin of it, so there's getting embarrassed, like fun, I don't even know, but nobody knows. Yeah, he asked me. I was like, no, It's like, I'm just really excited about this part um because because I've I've wanted to know forever. I know so many people with the tattoo, like, right,

and what it is is that? Um? Okay? So yeah, it's a It's a circle with a sort of lightning boll tour end cutting through it that sticks out of the upper right with an arrow on the end on the extension out the arrow. Yeah. And I always got told it was nazis out, which is cool, but that's not what it originally was. And I'm like, that's cool but okay, yeah. Um, so in nine at the defense of the Great Kaiser Squad. Uh, it first got used and then it got quickly spread to Berlin and then

the rest of the world. And the first incarnation was on a support poster and it was a straight arrow through a circle. Um. And there are only guesses as to what it means, which is really frustrating because there's

a decent chance that whoever designed this is alive. This is only forty years ago, but it possibly the most common guess is that it comes from the American hobo symbol for keep going, which is but it could also have been derived from an older European rogue symbol, kind of from that like kind of thieves can't stuff we

were talking about. Um, there's an illustrated language that goes back to the medieval era, and those symbols had started to die out by the beginning of the twentieth century, but that they had a resurgence in the nineties because everyone was fucking poor and hobo symbols are cool and crime is cool sometimes. Um. Later it became a lightning bolt.

And again there's like all of these like I've read academic papers about people trying to figure out how it became a lightning bolt, and all this ship um my theory, which is not supported by anything but me saying it is my theory. Around this time, and this part is true. Around this time, the theory of action and the squater symbol embrace. The lightning strike is what they called it.

Instead of riots that would stick around and wait for the cops to come beat you up, all the squatters would target some specific building or whatever, show up in huge numbers, trash the place, and then funk off. And

not all the lightning strikes were directly physical. Some of the targeted attacks that they would call lightning strikes were like, um, pissing the real estate prospector's mail slot at his house, or send him bed bugs in the mail, or order expensive things in his name delivered to his house, like send him a funeral wreath I think for himself. Um. The other most likely origin is that probably some designer was like, this looks cool and then went with it.

It reminds me a bit of how like the anarchist cinema, like the circle A for anarchy is order, there's there's this, there's any like who who designed it? What? Some people said, Uh, Thomas Ibany is designed it UM and he recently wrote a book like anarchisms movement was quite nice UM. But he's known for denying that he did not that he UH in Paris during UH the uprising of May sixty eight. Yeah, so's he's famous for saying he didn't design it, while

other people disagree. I want I want the squatter symbol version of that. I want the guy to come out and say I didn't do it, but did you? So anyway, that's the squatters symbol. It's Great Kaiser too well defended for the police to attack. So in February eight the police start attacking the squatter movement, but not at the Great Kaiser. There's all these small skirmishes all over the country. There's arrest there's evictions of smaller squats. One such squad

was the Bondlestrat. Also in the center of Amsterdam. On on Leap Day February, the police evicted some squatters from their home. The squatters didn't want to be evicted, so a head on clash between protesters and police ensued, and there's like rocks versus batons and tear gas and it's the first really intense use of violence by the squatters.

I read later mainstream reports that claimed that the squatters used molotovs at this time, but I don't believe this is true because I have all of these I've read all these reports from squatters at the time about when they did decide to use molotovs about five years later, um as because of the violence against them had escalated. It was a very conscious decision. The violence that the squatters were using was always measured in a kind of

impressive way. Um And they won. They drove back the police, and they retook their house. They took the entire intersection, and they held it over the entire weekend. The military came in. It took a thousand cops and soldiers with a literal tank and like helicopters of snipers and ship screaming stopper will fucking shoot you. Before they lost on Monday.

Fifty cops were injured at that riot. I haven't found a record of the number of squatters who were injured because the report I found was from a mainstream perspective. I'm just I'm just want to make a UM, maybe it's gonna come up. There's at some point there's there's a building with like refrigerators on top and stuff getting to that, aren't you Huh Yeah, there's gonna be some refrigerators on top of some buildings at some point. Um. Yeah.

The Dutch squiders are like some home alone and genius ship, um, but like just just underlying. So they drove off uh a thousand police and military who arrived with armored vehicles, so that they lost. Once a thousand police came, they won all weekend and so the state had to go gather their forces and show up several days later, um, in order to drive them off. And during all of this, the Great Kaiser still being defended. It's no longer a house,

it's a fortress. The ground floor was barricaded so much that no natural light came in people. I think people defending this just like lost their goddamn minds and we're like this is it. I mean I would too write if I was in there, I'd be like, this is sucking it right. Um. People worked on the house all day. I think all night. People kept watch on the roof.

But at their six months under threat mark, they threw a party in the street and they had like bands play on boats and the canals outside or the canal outside. They drew up multiple lines of defense, one behind the other in case of attack, like all of this ship that like is like straight out of like How to Defend a Fortress books from Sucking eighteenth century writers and ship. And at this point their counterintelligence extends outside the city.

They have like centuries sucking everywhere looking for large movements of police. And in the midst of all of this, the Netherlands decides to crown a new queen. You might have heard of this, this woman. Have you heard of Queen Beatrix? Oh yes, yes, I have, actually surprising yeah yeah yeah, I'm such a loyalist. I still uh refused to acknowledge that the royal holiday it used to be Queen's Day has now become King's Day because her son take took the place. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah Queen's Day.

Yeah I know. Wow. So, um so that was still before yeah, while the Kaiser was still being being like under threat in the siege. Yeah yeah, because she, um, she gets core. She gets crowned on April thirt and so that's like six months more more than six months into the Great Kaiser Defense. Queen Beatrix, I learned was married to a literal Nazi named Prince Coys served in the Nazi army. It was like, as officer, Yeah, like no big deal. It's not like no, no, no, marry

the literal occupier of your country. Um, but that that's that's so, so, so terrible, Like the Netherlands says this weird sort of like progressive aura that it really doesn't deserve. And when you look at like the royal propaganda around

around this stuff, it's it's just it's just crazy. Like people pretend like Dutch resistance in Second World War was like uh, mostly like patriots and people who thought like, oh, these Nazis, they're being so weird and modern and we just want our regular Dutch values, which is of course not not true. Like these these were all radicals. There were communists and anarchists, etcetera, mhm um, and there were

like a few others. And then so like the longest running musical theater show in in the Netherlands is so that's for an Orangio Soldier of Orange, which is about this. Ah, it's like a royalist resistance fighter. Like if you look historically, he was someone who won once the war was over. Wanted to help Queen Beatrix's predecessor reinstate like an actual powerful, like near absolute monarch. Key, um, so new with all

someone like defending democracy against Nazism or something. No, no, but they they just wanted to pick a name of like an important resistance figure to celebrate that wasn't a radical, right, Yeah that I wish that's no, go ahead, Yeah that's just today. You also see all these these photos circulating of Queen Elizabeth doing like the the Nazi salute. So yeah, it's it really does run in the family, I suppose. Yeah. Wait were they related? All the queens and yeah this

all incest on it? Yeah? Um, I was gonna say it's incest everywhere. Yeah yeah. And I ran across all this like girl boss ship about Beatrix, you know, like well she managed to become queen despite the laws that say eldest sons get priority in secession. So it's just the fucking and he was watching House of the Dragon Game of Thrones. It's just that some fucking girl boss ship where like now I get to be queen, um but without the dragons. Yeah yeah it sucks really kind

of wigs. I know, I wouldn't put the wigs past, but not the silver down to your waist wigs, right, totally. Beatrix would totally rock rock like a wig if it was more like socially acceptable to change that and stuff,

because she's like in this like conservative base. But like she she has like so many different hats all the time that like so many full time working like developing new hat technology just for clean Beatrix, like like I cannot imagine that she would not love to have like wigs everywhere, and like it's fascinators and boches and yeah yeah yeah. So the squatters are like, all right, we have a new campaign which I'm gonna ask you to say the name of it because it rhymes in Dutch.

But the campaign is no house, no coronation. Yeah's famous slogan can voting came crowning, Um so English, come on, get it. Yeah. So no coronations, no crowning. Okay, no no living, no crowning. Yeah okay. And so it's like, look, if we don't have houses, you don't get to be fucking queen. You don't know housing, no crowsing from housing, no crowning. It's like almost rhymes yeah, okay, no housing, the crown okay, okay, And so they declared the whole

month to be a month of action. They're like an April, we're going to disrupt the monarchist spectacle and open as many houses as possible. Um, And what's gonna happen with it is where we're gonna leave it today, because we're gonna leave it on the eve of the coronation where probably, uh, I think nothing bad happened. I think that Queen Beatrix was like a truly kind and beneficent benefit, like a Disney queen. Um, that's how it went right, Alex. Kind hearted, yeah,

merciful sort of yeah. Yeah, she saved that Nazi. Yeah yeah, yeah, No, it's she's forgiving, so forgiving. It's great. Yeah, we love her. Well, you can find out what happens if you listen to part two on Wednesday, Alex, do you have anything you want to plug? I do? I do um so you can you can find you can find me on the website on the stronge dot red um. So if you know anybody who's Dutch or knows Dutch and can listen

to it Dutch language radical stuff. If you know, like a Dutch person who said, oh, there's only liberal stuff here or no, but Audion Lubach is really really radical organ is really really important. Now send them to on the stone into death. Also on Instagram. Um. But the real thing I would like to uh plug more importantly is the soon upcoming Anarchist Book Fair of Amsterdam, which will feature this year for the sixth year in a row.

And it's like grown to be like the biggest radical event of the year in the Netherlands despite the pandemic. And it's it's uh in the last weekend of October of October, so if you can make it there, if you're in the area, drop by. Its two days Saturday and Sunday. UM find information on Anarchist Book Fair Amsterdam dot black blogs dot org, or find them on Facebook and Insta with the same name you recommend. Yeah. I was gonna go and then I um got a dog.

Um yeah, but someday I we'll go and Margaret you have a book coming out, correct I do? Yeah? Direct? Did you is this the one that you ghost wrote for me? This is the one that my dog Anderson ghost right, you can find um the book we Won't be Here Tomorrow written by Anderson the Dog or me. Um, you can. I don't know I'm going with this joke. It's coming out from a k Press September, which is soon. Wow, it's really soon. It might even be in the past. No,

I think it will be in the future. If you listen to this one it first comes out, um, and then you can read all kinds of weird stories and if you you have to pre order it in order to get the little cool art piece that as Sandra, the cover artist drew for it. So that's a reason to pre order it. And we will talk to you all. Yeah, talks to you next time. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media, but more

podcasts and cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. M HM