Cool Zone Media.
Hello and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're a weekly reminder that sometimes people do things about the bad things. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest today is Molly Conger.
I'm Mollie any Thanks for having me on.
Yeah, I wrote down as your bio rather than looking at what your bio is elsewhere. The famed socialist dog mom of Twitter, an investigator of far right extremism, and a city council of ficionado, as well as the reason that I now know I don't know how to spell aficionado.
Yeah. That about covers it.
Excellent. Well, I'll have to do the rest of the introductions as if other people matter. I mean, Hi, Sophie. Wow, that's the meanest I've ever done that. I'm sorry, I see I feel bad. There's no going back.
That's usually much warmer.
I demand a compliment.
Sophie is great. I'll take it. Sophie has good interior design, but I can't tell you about it. Dear listener.
Ah, my plants are doing really, it's really.
I was about to mention the plants.
We're doing really well right now, really thriving. They feel, they feel alive, and well, which is better than I do.
Also, Sophie has helped my skincare game.
I'm super excited to be the podcast idiot, which is a title that I bade up for the person who receives the information. It's, you know, it's big shoes to fill. I've looked up to a lot of podcast idiots in the industry and I'm excited to try it.
I believe in you.
Molly said that in one of our cool Zone meetings and I was like, does anybody want to be the podcast idiot? And I go at cool Zone Media, we call that the Sophie.
Well, I know I want. I wanted to hint about the topic, but I did not receive one, so I'm going I'm going in full idiot.
We only we only give hints when it's like sketchy enough that we have to be That's what I told him. I was like, if I'm about to talk about someone who's like currently under investigation as like a terrorist, I usually have to be like, hey, uh is this okay? You know, but none of these people are also not currently under investigation for terrorism? Is our audio engineer at danel Hi danel Hi danel We can't move forward until everyone says hid to Daniel unsure.
I love Danel. Daniel's giving me a lot of help in my new podcasting journey, so I really appreciate Daniel.
He's the best excellent. Our theme music was written for us by unwoman, so I know it was going to have you one. And then I was like, what who do I Who am I going to talk about? And I thought about it and I thought about it and I stare at it my bookshelf, and then I realized, there are these people that have you ever heard of the Provos of Amsterdam? These are not the provos of Ireland.
Oh no, the provos of Ireland. Yes, the Provos of Amsterdam.
No, entirely different. Etymology came before the Provos of Ireland and not provo utah. I also not provo utah.
And not provolone cheese.
Okay, I'm ready, yeah, entirely offer anymology than all of those things. There's a remarkable amount of provo that one could at a lodge. Okay. Have you ever heard of the kabouter?
No? Okay, I'm ready to learn.
Excellent. What have I told you that? During the late sixties and early seventies, while countercultural movements all over the West were kicking off, right. We've talked about a lot of them on this show. The Dutch had a version. Everywhere had a version of this. The Dutch had a few versions of it, and they had their own unique spin on things. The counterculture of the Netherlands centered around a group of pranksters and Arco pacifists and ANARCO city council members.
Hell yeah, so.
I got really excited to bring you on for this one.
I'm doing the system from inside.
Yeah, we'll talk about it. I'll be curious your take on this. And they built a thriving and politically engaged counterculture. They brought organic food into the cities. They started the squatting movement in the modern sense that redefined Dutch life for generations and brought a lot of attention to the housing crisis. They demanded human accessible RBIT infrastructure, and they scared the shit out of the monarchy. And they called
themselves gnomes. That's adorable because cabuter is a word for gnome. Did they have like the little pointy hats? They didn't wear them, but the ones that they use as their symbol absolutely did. Actually, the pointy hat comes from the Cabouter gnome. It comes from the Dutch gnome. The book Gnome, like the illustrated book that all the western gnome stuff comes from, was originally called Cabalter in the original Dutch.
I'm going to choose to believe that all the old people in town who have like a little lawn gnome are sort of secretly signaling their interest in Dutch counterculture.
I think that they are, and I think that you can and just expect that they will respond favorably if you act well. Actually, this group of countercultures really nice to old people. That was one of my favorite parts. But we're going to get to that. That's coming. So we're going to talk about the Provos and we're going to talk about the Caboulters, two distinct groups that are not actually incredibly distinct, but they are at different times.
And because it's this show, I might talk about the Netherlands. The Netherlands the first time I decided to move to Netherlands twenty years ago, and my grandfather looked at me with a wink and he said, ah, because of the lady in the picture windows, which was a reference to the famed legalized sex work of the Netherlens where youcy, Grandpa. Yeah, it was actually the sketchiest thing my Grandpa's ever said
the name. My uncle looked at me and made a little like toke gesture, you know, holding his fingers up to his lips, a reference to the decriminalized weed that the country is also famous for. However, my friends knew I was actually moving there the legal squatting that the country was only famous for in pretty much my social circle. But I was a squatter, So the Netherlands was famous
to me. Like my friends who had lived there before would come back with these like wild stories about you know, these huge squad actions and fighting back the cops and all the fun crazy stuff. And I was like twenty one, so I was like, this is where I'm going. Have you ever been to the Netherlands, you know much about it?
I have not. I've been to Germany, but I didn't get much further than that. That's okay, Honestly, when you said they were fighting back against the monarchy, I forgot they had that. I forgot we were still doing that.
So no, that's on my short list of contexts I'm about to I was to say about the Netherlands. The things that are worth knowing about the Netherlands for this story. One, it is the most densely populated country in Europe that isn't like an island or a specific city state, you know, because Europe has a lot of like countries that are a city.
Monica back in the city, yeah, like.
And Style, Yeah, those are Yeah, those are more densely populated than Netlands. But as far as like normal ass countries go, no offense if you're listening to this in one of those city states. Actually, I think city states are cool.
Whatever.
It's okay to offend the people of Monaco, Okay. Yeah, it's just a casino, isn't it.
I know even less of it. You could tell me almost anything about Monaco and I would believe you. Second thing to know about the Netherlands it's a monarchy. Still still still doing that. Yeah. I had this moment once I was I was there ten years ago or something, and I was like hanging out with my friends and I'm like in this square and there's this giant picture of the Queen Beatrix, who's in this story actually, and I like look, and I'm like, God, sometimes I forget
that y'all are a monarchy. It's embarrassing. And then my friend's like, yeah, you're a police state and I.
Was like, okay, we'll get a ass then, sure right, fair enough, fair enough.
So it's a monarchy. It's also a colonial power in it or you know, had a large empire at some point. It's kind of the also ran of the Western European empires. But and then fourth, I lived there for like seven or eight months, and I spent a lot of time trying to learn Dutch and or just pronounced Dutch words, and I was a colossal failure at both. And I'm going to continue my streak here.
So no, it just looks like somebody was trying to type in German but they got blackout drunk and someone hit them in the hand with a mallet and all of their fingers are broken.
I know.
But the pronunciation is so much more fun than German, Like German is like everything sounds like I'm gonna murder you and everyone that you've ever met, and everything in
Dutch sounds very nice, like yeah, yeah. So the Netherlands has long been a place that prides itself on religious tolerance compared to other places in Europe, a lot of people fleeing persecution while up there, which including like whenever, the Protestants and the Catholics, and I mean it's obviously not perfect, right, but there's it's been a thing for a while, which means that had a lot of Jews
lived there. Then the Nazis occupied it in World War Two and the Dutch resistance kicked in, and it was one of the countries it had a very different style of resistance to the occupation than a lot of other countries. It was one of the most resistant countries. We did a whole episode about the gay art movement there that burned the Nazi records and forged ideas and blu shit up. If people want to go listen to the Gay Resistance to Nazis episode.
Hell yeah.
But and over a million people were involved on some level in aiding like Jews escape the Holocaust. However, they were not incredibly remarkably successful at this, despite the large scale of it. One of the reasons for that is that the Dutch resistance movement was less violent than many other resistance movements. This is going to come up. This shapes the culture of what we're going to talk about as for why the Dutch resistance culture was less violent.
I was like, Oh, it's because the Dutch are all pacifist. Because I'm the people I'm going to talk about today, I fairly pascifist. Right, so far I found when I look up why the Dutch resistance movement was a less violent movement overall. One of the reasons, according to one of the participants, was that the Dutch head of firearms registry, and so when the Nazis took charge, they got the firearms registry and they went door to door and took everyone's guns away.
Oh god, Alex Jones was right in the past.
So one of the things that comes up when I read all of this is that like all of these things that like right wing militias are afraid of here are true for the left and are not true for the right. You know or have been in various places and times, right, Like.
The guy you look up to actually did do that thing you're afraid of.
Yeah, exactly, like overall the right wing collapse, Well, there are a lot of Dutch monarchists who have actually fought in the resistance too. Was there was right wing resistance to fascist occupation in some places although overall, but no, whatever, I'm not trying to give too much credit.
Resistant Hitler in the name of the King, Like you know you.
Got the spirit, yeah, exactly, like you know the right answer. Yeah, yeah, you have this like kind of you get a little bit of this like patriotic like don't fuck with our Jews, And I'm like, you know what, it could be as patriotic as you want, as long as the core messages we will shoot the people who are trying to kill the Jewish people. That's fine anyway. The Nazis collectively punished the Dutch people, which I'm sure I have no bearing on.
More than a million people were directly involved in supporting this resistance. Right, so, the Nazis cut off food from November nineteen forty four to May nineteen forty five, more than twenty thousand Dutch people starve to death. This is called the Hunger Winter. Victually elderly men starved to death. During this period. Four point five million people were affected by this starvation. They were living off of like six hundred calories a day, which is a third of what
you need if you're not doing much. An entire generation of children born or living at the time suffered lifelong ailments, and this is going to be when we talk about these peaceful hippies in this modern consumer culture. This is what they were born from, this is what their childhoods were. Audrey Hepburn grew up in the occupied Netherlands and actually supported the resistance by when she was like a teenager, by performing ballet to raise money to support the resistance,
which is fucking cool. Her time in the hunger winter left her with lifelong ailments like anemia. So in case anyone wants to think about what's happening in Palestine right now, I leave the comparison to you about what mass starvation does to an entire generation, including the people who survive. So the war ends, like in most of the West, you've got this very conservative couple of decades after this
enormous hardship and poverty. Then you get like consumerism and rising wages of the nineteen fifties, and then you get the sixties. The sixties hit the Netherlands, and that's what
we're gonna talk about today. Counterculture, all that stuff. When I first started doing this podcast, I was like, oh God, I'm gonna end up having to do all of these different sixties counterculture movements, and I was like kind of like eh, And then the more I read about them, I'm like, oh, no, there's like they're all different, they're all cool, some of them suck whatever, They're all interesting, you know.
No, but the children of you know, the people who are coming of age in the sixties in the Netherlands had such a different childhood experience than you know, American hippies coming of age after not surviving an occupation.
No, totally, And like a lot of the people who are going to be talking about today, a lot of them grew up either hiding Jews in their house, being the Jews who are hidden in house. There's a lot of like Jewish orphans who are raised by non Jewish families because for reasons that become clear. No, it is.
It's a very interesting thing. But you also compare with like the Netherlands is the colonial core and it is a primarily white country, and so there are some people of color who are coming from basically from the colonies.
Right where are the Netherlands called like Southeast Asia, like Sri Lanka, Indonesia.
Parts of Southeast Asia, parts of the northeast South America and South South Africa like but like South Africa before the British took it. I'm not actually as I need to learn more about the Boer Wars and all that stuff that happened, because a lot of the origins of modern fascism grow up in South Africa and Rhodesia and shit, you know, yeah.
It just keeps coming up. It just won't die.
Yeah, I wish it would, like you lost the war, get over? Oh right. I I've lived in the American South anyway because of the fact that the Netherlands colonial core, like a lot of the sixties culture in the US is, especially the radical culture is in relation to the civil rights movement, is in relation to the wild amount of racism and the fact that you know, it is a colonized space, right, And so I actually think that some of the anarcho pacifism, the pacifist part of that that's
going to come up. I actually think that that's a relation to the way that power works in their country, as compared to like the United States, where people of color fighting for their rights largely distanced themselves from pacifism by the end of the late sixties, at least in terms of the larger social movements. Anyway, the first subculture in the Netherlands to shatter this post war tranquility was called the Nosom. They were the Dutch greasers, and so
it's cool. Was like, half of who we're going to be talking about instead of it's hippies, is greasers.
So it's like sharks and jets, yeah basically, but like with no mats.
Yeah, yeah, just imagine everyone in a nomat. No one, no one's actually wear a nomat, but you should imagine them all in no mats. They came in on the scene in the mid fifties fifty nineteen fifty five is when they get their name. They year or two before that they started doing their thing. They wore jeans, and they wore leather jackets, and they listened to rock and roll I think I and they drove around them. They listen to Western pop music and they drove around the
mopeds and shit. And their name comes from another cool thing about Dutch history, thieves. Can't you ever played like dungeons and dragons or any of that shit.
No, I'm a sore winner and a sore losers. I don't really like games.
Oh okay, well, see I don't like competitive games, and that's actually why I like tabletop role playing games. But anyway, thieves can't is this other language that thieves use, And generally speaking, the word thieves can't comes from the British version of this. The version of it that's in the Netherlands is called a bahu barhuns, the guttural h that no one. I actually gave up trying to learn Dutch because I would try to learn the difference between these
things and no one could understand. There's anyway whatever me.
So it's just like crime code.
Yeah, it's the language of the criminal underworld, and it it has some like older like late medieval, early modern kind of origins, but it's especially about eighteen fifty to nineteen fifty and kind of the mafia like kind of criminal underworld. But some of uso, the more cool criminal underworld, criminals, vagabonds and traveling salespeople spoke it in the seventeenth century and a lot of it comes from Yiddish, which is cool, and I feel like it's just slowly making its way
into cool people bingo and that makes me happy. So the nosem it gets translated as a greaser and it or it gets translated as beatnik. They had another cool name, which they actually had before Nose them. They were the dikers. All right, I'm in I know. Imagine getting to wear a black leather jacket and ride around on a moped with your friends, often multiple people per moped. And because the diker, you.
Know, they're known for their dikes.
Yeah, I mean in this case, it's because the dikers hung around some of the areas of Amsterdam with dykes, like new and Dyke. They were like, everyone's like subculture name here is just like whatever part of Amsterdam they hung out in. So it was like instead of sharks and jets, it's like those fucking LDEs of pliners. Actually we're going to talk about the light suppliers.
It's like Bowery Boys or whatever. You know, it's like whatever part of town.
Totally, Oh Bowery Boys is are good. That is the way to Yeah. A journalist gave them the name Nozom in nineteen fifty five and they were like, yeah, fuck it, whatever that sounds cool. Yeah, we're like crime whatever, we don't care. And the ones who hung out in near Lde's applying were the artsy ones, and so they were
the Pliners. In nineteen sixty five, an academic noting the provocative behavior of all these youth cultures, started calling them provos and so unlike the provisional IRA, which gets the provos, which gets its name from provisional, in this case they get their name from a provocative and the provos are like, yeah, fuck, yeah, we're provos. We're into it, like whatever it was meant as a pejorative, but they didn't care. And this is
four years before the provisional IRA. I don't know why I'm so into like mate pointing out that this is the original provos, But here I am.
The hipsters of being provos.
Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. They're completely unrelated, but it makes it hard for me.
A different number of rifles.
Absolutely, very different number of rifles. Yes, they don't have songs like my little ArmaLite. They have songs about like we are cuckoo birds and the owls are up above us.
Yeah, it's a whole different provo vibe.
It is. It is, although if you put the two together and anyway, and there's a couple of these provos who are very important to our story. One of them is named Hoberry Asper Rutfeld and he is not gonna look good to audience for some specific reasons. The Netherlands has had a bunch of colonies, right, and one of those from a good long time ago is South Africa, and so a lot of Dutch people would like go
visit South Africa, right. And so when he was a kid, I think Cobert went to South Africa and he got super into it. He became obsessed with African magic.
Oh good.
Yeah, and he was a pliner. He was one of the artsy weirdos of this growing Provos subculture. He was also a total wingnut who was not afraid to do weird shit. And so we started the big political thing at this time. This is before they really got like politics politics. They were just against consumer culture. They were like, we don't like this stuff, this consumer culture that we're being sold. And he had one primary target. And whenever you look up this man, he has referred to as
a anti smoking activist. That is his single issue.
He was early on the scene with that one.
Absolutely, it is really fascinating to me. Smoking is big corporations and consumerism trying to kill you. He argued. He is right, he's against it. I don't disagree. He also smoked constantly, so he.
Knew what he was up against. You know, he's getting to know, getting to know the enemy.
He referred to it as being a witness to the darkness.
This is like where half of Madmen got their inspiration. So they basically did like the entire thing about doing ads for the tobacco industry while all chain smoking. And then they had like the like the like, uh, don't smoke. People come and they were smoking during the meeting.
Yeah, but no, Now I think that's that's perfect. I'm putting that in my back pocket now, and anytime anyone calls me out on my my own personal hypocrisy or my vices, I'll say, no, I'm I'm bearing witness to the darkness.
There you go, just like we are about to bear witness to our own darkness. And perhaps seventy years from now, a historian, we'll say. And then there was cool Zone media who said they were against capitalism, and yet the advertisements like these ones and we're back. And so this guy Hobert, he goes around vandalizing cigarette posters with a
big K, which stands for conquer cancer. And he went to jail for a couple months for his graffiti against cancer right, and then when he gets out, he gets a rich sponsor for his Oh this is where I should have done it. Oh well whatever, he has a rich sponsor for his campaign, and so he opens the anti smoke temple and then his anti smoke temple burns down and I think he did it, and I can't find more information about that, and it annoys me.
It was He's Reichschnock fire.
It. Yeah, I almost had you on it. At some point, I'm going to do an episode about how the Reichstag fire was lit by someone who was very earnestly anti fascist, and just to have a conversation about how complicated certain actions can be. But that's not what we're talking about today.
So there was starting these culture of happenings, which were big public events that the artsy greasers, now starting to move towards hippies, would just show up at and do weird shit, and he kind of wound up kicking that off. He had these anti smoking beans that involved an awful lot of him smoking. There's this statue of a little girl on the spou the it's the name of a
square in Amsterdam. And I used to walk by it every day, and one day an older punk anarchist who was the first person to tell me about the provos and the cabalter. And I'll get to the caboutry later. This statue is called the Little Darling, and it is meant to represent the playful, indefatigable I don't pronounce that word spirit of the Dutch youth. But it was donated to the city by a tobacco company. So as soon as Colbert finds that out, he's like, this is where
I'm going. This is the center of it all, and it's kind of perfect right. It's the like playful, youthful spirit of the city. And he goes. And that's the whole point of these movements I'm going to talk about, is that they prided themselves on the what's called the ludic spirit, the playful spirit that they brought into things. However, his particular method won't look good. Almost every history of
this leaves a very important part out. I bet you're gonna be a figure out which part they leave out. Every week, Robert shows up in costume to perform ceremonies and rant against the evils of tobacco.
Cutran love blackface? Was he in blackface?
He wasn't blackface? You win?
You haven't seen that episode of Atlanta with Donald Glover talking about just just watch it, just watch it. Fuck?
I have. I've seen the first season of Atlanta, but I don't remember.
This was in like one of the later seasons and they're they're like they're in Europe and then and then they go to Amsterdam.
Oh yeah, yeah, no, I would remember.
Think they still do their little like Santa's little blackface friend. Yeah, Christmas parades.
Yeah, that's what we're talking about.
Yeah, yeah, nice.
So in Dutch tradition there's center clause Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas. He's the patron saint of Amsterdam and of sailors and beggars. That's pretty cool. In Dutch form, Santa Claus has an assistant, zvart Pete Black Pete.
Little black Peter.
Yeah. So Robert puts on blackface every week and goes to rant against consumer culture. He ranted against the asphalt jungle of refrigerators and electric egg beaters. And we've talked some about the Western European traditional blackface and memory on this show about how like in different places does and doesn't have roots and racial stereotypes, but how everyone with any kind of conscience has moved away from it because.
I think there is some argument, at least from the Dutch, that Schwartzapeter is not in blackface, that he's covered in soot, right, But he's like, it's chick.
That's what they've moved to.
That's what they claim. I don't know, yah did real history there.
But he also wears a curly wig and has bright red lips.
That's not great.
The best I've been able to figure out is that overall, the Western European tradition of mummery doesn't quite come from racial stereotypes but plays into them badly. But zvart Pete seems to be coming from racial stereotypes more completely. And this is a as you pointed out, there's a big culture war thing in the Netherlands right now, and so people are talking about sooty Pete these days.
I think, you know, if he's doing the smoking thing, you can lean into the soot, but it doesn't sound like absolutely doing.
Yeah, and then it's like, I don't know what this man's thought he was doing. As relates to this, I don't know whether he's like, oh as Art Pete's totally unrelated, but I'm also obsessed with African magic. You know, is not looking good. But yeah, so these days more and more people do soot splotched face instead and the very distinctly not blackface, and that is good. Cobert did this ceremony every week for a year and it became kind of his thing, and people would join in and get entranced.
Apparently he was like fairly good at doing these like kind of wild ceremonies, and the magic kind of worked. Other pliners started doing happenings too, and it sort of spread throughout the city. There's only a little bit of politics in any of this, a general we don't like consumer society. And then they found a political idea that
spoke to them, anarchism. There were these young anarchists. The one who gets named by history is ruvn Dan, who edited a bunch of papers like The Free and eventually Provo. He and the others were going to these happenings and he wrote up a pamphlet and he showed up with the Weird Ritual with a pamphlet and it read Provo feels it must make a choice desperate revolt or cowering defeat.
Provo encourages rebellion wherever it can. Provo knows it must ultimately be the loser, but it cannot miss the chance to thoroughly provoke this society once more. Provo wants to renew anarchism and bring it to the young. And the people were like, yeah, cool, we're in. We didn't like the USSR thing, we don't like the capitalism. This is fucking great. How do we talk, like, how do we merge our weird ass art happenings with your anarchism? And
so they started a magazine called Provo. It described itself as a monthly sheet for anarchist provos, beatnix pliners, scissor grinders, jailbirds, simple simon stylites, magicians, pacifists, potato chip chaps, Charlatan's philosophers, germ carriers, grand masters of the Queen's horse happeners, vegetarian syndicalss santi clauses, kindergarten teachers, agitators, pyromaniac's assistant assistants, scratchers
and syphilitics, secret police and other riff raff. Provo is something against capitalism, communism, fascism, bureaucracy, militarism, professionalism, dogmatism, and authoritarianism.
They've invented several new kinds of guys.
They have so many kinds of guys. You have so many options when you join the provos.
I mean, potato chip chap sounds good.
I know, I know. Simple Steiman stylites is like a Christian mysticism thing that I had to look up. It's like a guy who sat on top of a pillar because he didn't like talking to people and he wanted to live in a sthetic life.
Yeah, hermit herban on a big poll.
Yeah, herbit pull Hermit cave is.
Better, I think, but stylite works too.
I clearly would go for a mountain in West Virginia. That is where I would actually go to be a hermit. I cannot make any other claim that.
You chose your choice.
Yeah, clearly decision.
It's too late for you to be a scissor grinder.
I know, although I kind of want to be, but that's a unrelated more of a s effect. So anyway, so they're tying together weird passivism, Christian mysticism, anarchism in the counterculture, the provos. You will be shocked to know this was not hierarchical or a membership organization. It was an open movement. The magazine had several thousand subscribers and supporters who sometimes showed up, and then a core of more like one hundred people who were always there at
the provo happenings. And they were anarchists, but they were too anarchists for most of anarchism. They considered the old school anarchists, communists and socialists and their class struggle obsession as irrelevant at a post war society. Basically, the betrayal of the Russian Revolution by the Bolsheviks had thrown off the proletarian momentum, as had consumer society and the rise of fascism. Quote, the proletariat of the West has submitted
to its political leadership and TV. It has merged with the old bourgeoisie into one large gray rabble of addicted concers.
Yeah. They kind of got ar ass there, I know.
Right, And so they wrote a bunch of really interesting I don't read much theory on this show, but they wrote a bunch of interesting theory about this. And the part that I like for this story is that they coined the term provotariat, which is quote, the provotariat is characterized by detachment from the manufacturing process through a psychological protest against manufactured social attitudes. They pushed for the provotariat of the developed world to join with the hungry proletariat
of the developing world and have a worldwide revolution. Basically, they invented Adbusters about thirty years before Adbusters. I don't even know if Adbusters are still around or if it's so.
I mean, he started out, you know, defacing ads, so it makes sense. Yeah, he's staying true to his roots. Yeah.
So they also weren't against participation in municipal electoral politics, and this becomes a defining part of their politics. The local Marxists hated the provos because the Provos rejected the USSR as much as they rejected capitalism. Some things never change. Oh absolutely no, this is like they were like, the anti tanky is brilliant. I just like read this and I'm like, yeah, time flat circle, I get it.
You know, like these guys would have been posting the weirdest fucking memes.
Absolutely, these absolutely would be mean people. Right now. There was this official student union movement, the SVB and it was like all proper. I think it was Marcus Lennis Maoist and it was like materialist, and it had doll meetings and leaflets, and the SVB called students young intellectual workers who deserved a scholarly salary, and the provos instead went to the students and were like, you know, the provo tariot, and the students were like, yeah, that sounds way more fun.
Like your guys are having happenings.
I know, y'all are fucking too, like because they are a weird, you know, crazy counterculture. The provos held the only authority that could be respected was the authority built on trust. If leaders weren't worthy of the trust of those that they led, they should stepped down. So they weren't traditional anarchists even at the start, you know, they honestly, like I bet you these people would take like one look at the Zapatistas and like the Rochavin movement and
been like that's our fucking jam, you know. But theory wasn't really their thing. Their thing was these happenings. And their thing was also offering and trying out specific solutions to specific problems. Well, and I'll talk about those in a minute. They became active in a number of social struggles. They became active in the protests against the Vietnam War. The Dutch backed the US in that war, but never actually sent any troops, and my inference is that the
large protest movement was part of that decision. They were by and large committed pacifists. They were anti militarists, but also focused their tactics and strategy around non violently provoking violent reactions from the state to show the violence inherent in the system.
This had.
It's a dark road, I know. It's also the kind of road where I'm like, I mean, I guess people have tried in the US, but I'm like, I think people know about the violence inheran the system here.
I mean there. Yeah, there are plenty of protest movements now in the US whose whole goal is like, look, how awful it is that the state is repressing us like this. It's like, yeah, I know, now I're in jail.
Yeah. When it's a surprise because you're like happy Dutch culture, then it's interesting. I don't know whatever. I'm not trying to people who are doing shit. I'm pro people doing shit. I'm not trying to they tysically.
Send troops to Vietnam, Like what is sort of the state of the Netherlands in the sixties, right, like had they fully demilitarized after the war? Likel do they at what point do their colonies wind down? I should know this, but.
No, and I only know some of this. I know that they lost Indonesia when Japan became the colonial rulers of Indonesia in the mid nineteen forties during World War Two, and that was like a big one. So a lot of the pro votariats grew up in Indonesia, and I actually cannot I get the feeling that the author of most of the text is a little bit like race blind and wouldn't tell me whether or not someone from Indonesia was Indonesian or was like a white person who
lived there in a colonial sense. I get the impression both of those things are true. Also, the Dutch absolutely had a military, and I think a lot of their stuff was against conscription. I ended up like halfway down a rabbit hole of figuring out exactly when they did and didn't have conscription, but it kept changing year to year, and so I didn't finish that rabbit hole.
Yeah.
I just feel like the Netherlands was completely left out of my public school education, So I don't know what they were doing.
No, absolutely, I mean, like I thought it was called Holland, you know. And the other big thing that they were against is the other thing that we had both forgotten was true about them. They really didn't like the monarchy. And then Netherlands still has one of those, Princess Beatrix. Later, Queen Beatrix got married in nineteen sixty six, and so the provos declared that the wedding day would be the day of anarchy.
Oh hell yes.
Yeah. Their goal was to disrupt the royal wedding and to draw attention to authoritary government by provoking a reaction so that people could see the iron fist within the velvet glove. Okay, and it it makes sense when you have all this pageantry around, like look, here's our beautiful you know, like here's the tradition of monarchy.
So this big royal wedding was sort of in the early days of things like this being televised internationally, so this was an opportunity for them to get a lot of attention.
Yep. And specifically the fact those television cameras. Yeah, it was a big fucking deal. Because also I think that overall the Netherlands got TV a little bit later. Like I've read about this in a couple other countries. We're just like TV is like around and invented, but it doesn't really filter out as quickly as it does in like the United States. But it's by this point a thing, right, And so what they decided to do was mostly they spread rumors about what they were going to do rather
than doing these things. They spread rumors that they were going to broadcast the sound of machine gun from speakers on the roof of a nearby building. That's really smart, I know. And specifically they said this is what we're going to do, not not we're going to have machine guns, but we are going to make the noise of machine guns, you know. They also said you can tell they're getting
into being hippies. They said they're going to dose the police horses with acid or just the entire municipal water supply.
What would LSD do to we all horse That's a good question.
I don't know, it'd be bad. Don't maliciously dose anyone. Be hippies. You were wrong about the whole. In the US, the East Coast and West Coast drug scene had a massive divide about whether or not is if a good way to like turn people on to the revolution by dosing them without asking them?
Did that too?
Yeah?
I know, right? And it was the West Coast hippies who were like, not, it's cool to do that. And then it was the East Coast like proto punks, like this group up against the Wall, motherfucker, who were sort of black leather jacket hippies. They were the ones who were like, you can't fucking take that choice away from people. Fuck you, And I like that. Have you seen the Skeletor meme where it's like Skeletor Who's like, let me
see if I can do this right? Hippies are bad people pretending to be good people, and punks are good people pretending to be bad people. That's how I feel about that divide. Is not how I feel about the Netherlands. These are good hippies. I'm talking about buy and large. But they claim that they're going to do it to provoke a reaction. But that's so.
Smart as you don't even have to really do anything because the cops are just thrown into confusion.
Yeah.
Absolutely, I'm sure some.
Of them reacted as a they've been dosed regardless.
Oh my god, you're probably right.
The first Ventanyl scare, they all died, the company, just laying in the streets, hyperventilating, tearing off their.
Clothes, much like, are we sponsored by Ventyl? No? No, well whatever, we're sponsored by and were back. The other thing that they actually did do and that they said they were going to do and then did do, is throw orange paint bombs and like smoke bombs and shit. It's the color of their monarchy, right, yes, exactly. The ruling dynasty is the house of Orange Nassau. Oh and what they ended up having was kind of a classic nineteen sixty six protest. Lots of people showed up and
cops beat everyone up. Smoke bombs obscured the royal carriage from being seen by the TVs, and so they absolutely fucked up the royal wedding as a media spectacle as a result of I think this action, I think got it. Both the mayor and the chief of police end up stepping down and that was.
Like, that's an international humiliation. Yeah, couldn't control your hippies.
Yeah, and so when it was just good old fashioned racist happenings at the spou, the cops let people do things. But now that they're the Provos, the cops come and fuck that up. And so every week the Provos show up and have these happenings, and every week the cops come and fuck with it. And this starts polarizing Dutch society pretty hard. It wins over a huge chunk of people towards their cause, but thirty seven percent of the
Dutch population believe the Provos belonged in prison. Yeah. There was also this working class youth gang tension here we get in the real sharks versus jets between the Provos and this group called the CS the Central Station youth who are more like I would use this word googles, but no one knows what I mean. And I say that they were like the street kids. They were like runaways and little Dutch crrousspunks. Yeah, they were the proto
Dutch crusspunks. And they hung out at Central Station and occasionally the Provos and the CS kids would fight, occasionally they would make alliances. At one point, the CS kids burned down the provo's houseboat. But in proper Hollywood fashion, the two groups joined up together when they had a common enemy. And this is where I would put this would be an important scene in the movie if I
were making this. There was a right wing youth culture called the military, like the actual military, the actual military.
H okay, yea yea yeah, yeah. I was to say, is that like like a cool right wing street gang they just called themselves. No, it's like the actual moment.
No, yeah, like, yeah, they actually have some courage, unlike the right wing in the United States that needs to just pretend like they're in a military. Anyway. So these sailors, these they were called the yanchas, the little Yawns. They wanted to rid Central Station of the long haired workshy scum. That was like the words that they would us. It's
like long hair. There was like magazines and shit like fight for your right to have a long hair as a boy and like and they were workshy, which is true, fuck work whatever.
They weren't.
They weren't shy about it.
Yeah, totally. They were willing to throw it out about it. Actually, So a crew of one hundred marines and sailors maybe it actually just sailors and it's just a way that got translated. They try to drive the CS kids out of Central Station, and the provos show up and they all threw down together and they drive the military guys out.
So these anarcho pacifists who won't fight cops but are like, well, we're gonna fight these fucking right wing people who are beating up our friends, only we can pick on the little kid gang exactly. We'll fight them, not you. This did not recruit the CS kids to like join the movement, but it's still fucking cool. And so they them being active in the streets was cool. But it's like that's kind of par for the course for being a sixties
you know, primarily youth movement. Right. What really makes them stand out are their proposals and actions for a better world. They called them their White Plans. They picked white because it's a symbol of pacifism. Okay, once again, I'm going to say a bunch of names of plans that don't translate well into English.
So it just doesn't have a great flavor in English. But I get it, I get it.
No, Yeah, especially once we started talking about the white children and the white women, it's going to go it's going to look bad. I've read the claim that they
basically created the modern environmental movement. That is not really true, but certainly in the Netherlands they were among the first to openly talk about and take seriously the idea of pollution, and they were a heavy part of invigorating an environmental movement world in the West, the actual roots of the modern environmental movement are more nebulous and a little bit less Western.
Well, I guess one sea level rise was a concept people understood. It was very fucking real for the Netherlands. Yeah, totally, They're not going to be there anymore.
Yeah, I've read some at least one. Whenever you read like a climate fiction book, that's like at a macro level, it's like and then the Netherlands has to figure out how to you know, because right, oh yeah, I forgot to say, context wise, most of the Netherlands is below sea level.
It's the Miami of Europe.
Yeah. And so one of their core arguments of the provos, and one of their big things they're fighting for forever is they want a car free downtown Amsterdam. They're like bikes and people, yes, cars No. Their most famous innovation out of this is the white bicycle program. They declared that the city should close to cars and that twenty thousand white bicycles should be left around the city for anyone to use, ride it for a while, then leave it where you're done when you're done, for the next
person to use. Decades later, the all devouring maw of capitalism has taken this idea and sold it back to people as the city bike and scooter plans and even like rideshare cars actually come directly like you can trace the lineage from the anarcho pacifist Christianness Christmas.
They made it so ugly, they made it so early.
What have they done to my boy?
They ma sacred me boy?
Yeah, that's it, okay, Yeah, So the provos are credit as the originator is the modern bike and car share system. But it was supposed to be free, and they started the program by just doing it, just putting a bike out. Yeah, they just gathered in public and painted bikes white and then passed out leaflets explaining the whole concept. The leaflet red and classic provo form daily sacrifices are made for that newest authority that the crowd have submitted themselves to
the car equals authority. Suffocating carbon monoxide is its incense, Its image has ruined thousandfold streets and canals.
God, I feel like you could do this right now. Absolutely, this it feels so it feels very modern.
Absolutely. I kept running across over and over again with these folks that I'm like, Oh, they're ahead of their time. I mean, if they hadn't been ahead of their time, if they just succeeded, we'd be in a much better situation in the end. Almost every version I've read, when people talk about the White Bikes program, they're like, oh, like they kind of just got stolen or thrown in the canal, you know, like, ah, tragedy of the commons.
Right, cops stole most of the white bikes, shocking. It was illegal to leave bikes unlocked in the Netherlands at that point. And if this isn't the most cop brain shit in the world, I'd better steal your bike so that you don't leave it around for someone to steal. They're preventing crime by doing it themselves. Exactly why they do most of the drug trafficking, Yeah.
Exactly, except that one drug that if they get anywhere near sponsor of the Why am I being an edgeler today?
All right?
Anyway, the founder of this plan is this guy named lud Schimmelpennok, and he's from a lefty Catholic family. In the end, like a lot of the provos and later cabouters, he stayed involved in local government after all of this stuff is over, and basically still I think he's alive, spends his days trying to alleviate traffic problems. In the Netherlands, the bikes weren't the only solution to the car problem. They had another program, the name of which does not translate. Well,
it's called the white body program. Okay again, you know whatever. Anyway, anyone who's killed by a car, their outline would be chalked onto the street and then the silhouette would be carved out and forever filled with white mortar.
Is this I mean, maybe this has like an entirely separate origin. But in the US, when a cyclist is killed by a car, they lead like a ghost bike. Are these things related?
Yep?
Fascinating.
I spent a while down that particular rabbit hole. That program, the ghost bike program, started in two thousand and three in Saint Louis and I am not the only one who has traced its history back to the Provos.
Fascinating.
Yeah, and that same bike culture of like early two thousand and three, like counterculture, was very aware of the White Bike Program. I heard about the White Bike program many more, way more often than I ever heard about the Provos themselves. They also fought for this thing that happens now in urban development. They fought for play streets, the idea of just taking streets and turning them into permanent public space the way that they conceive it of them.
They would have like free machines, like I think it's like washing machines and shit, as well as phones and such for anyone who didn't have things at such things at home, like the phone, would have like a really really long extension cord, you know, so that you could like come out to the street, grab the phone. If you need to go talk, you go talk, and then bring it back, you know, so that anyone who doesn't
have these things at home can use it. By the late sixties, the government actually started this is one of the ones they kind of won, and the government started kind of working with them and allowing this to happen. In more places, and I still know anarchists who are involved in making this kind of thing happen. Today. A friend of mine got a play street under that name, a playstreet for her neighborhood in Queens.
Oh, it's incredible. So they closed the street off to cars and.
Now it's a public space.
Beautiful. There was a little bit of movement on that I think during the pandemic, right like where they were moving like cafe space and what used to be a street for cars. But I don't think it really stuck anywhere.
In the US. Yeah, I feel like I still see that sometimes in cities, but I don't know. I don't go into cities enough to really be sure. I like them, I'm not anti them. Okay. One of my favorite programs of THEIRS, this one did not take off. It's called their White Chicken Plan. Chicken is slang for cop. It's like comparable to pigs. When I was there, we mostly called them klotzac, which means ball sack, but at the time it was chicken the first Dutch words I learned.
So the White Chicken program basically cops, instead of driving around locking people up, should bicycle around with pockets full of sandwiches and fruit to give out to the needy. So true. Yeah, and I would just argue this didn't take off. I've read a more moderate slash progressive position that this actually did have a fairly large influence on the way that policing was conceived of in the Netherlands as cops as social workers. But it didn't stop cops
from going around doing bad stuff. So I feel like in some ways that's the problem with most attempts to reform the police.
Yeah, that's I mean, it would be nice if you just made a separate group of guys who did that, rather than trying to get the cops to do something, because that's just confusing for them. Like I wouldn't take a snack from a cop.
You know, rewires their brain. And Yeah. Then they had their white chimney plan, which was to paint all of the chimneys of major polluters white so everyone knew what they were doing to the world, like a name and shame kind of thing.
I'm with that.
Yeah, No, I I like basically all their plans, like, not all of them are perfect. They were anti monogamy, but I don't believe they had a white orgy plan. Fortunately, on feminism. They were pretty nineteen sixties about it, which is to say they were active engage in the fight
for women's rights all the while doing a sexism. One of their things was the promotion of the provo sexual, which was basically that hot provo ladies should seduce people into their movement and or just like seduce bad people to like like go seduce the cops.
Not not fuxcating, but like they're doing like flirty fishing for anarchism.
Yeah, okay, if people decided that's what they want to do, I have no problem inherently with that. You know. Then you get into the ones that really don't translate. Well, I'll just whatever made my point. They had the White Women Plan. One provo Irene Vonden went Vittering wrote up a white plan for providing sex and contraceptive education for women and girls. White plan is the name of these plans, right, they'd write it up, and so basically it was like sex,
adding contraception, contraceptive education for women and girls. That's what we need. And then they had their White Children Plan, which was collective nurseries and education along anners lines. Five couples with children would pool child bearing and babysitting duties. So basically like every parent of the ten parents would take a week looking after all the kids in the nursery so that everyone had more time to do things besides just raising kids. But the kids always had an
attentive caregiver. Very it takes a village to raise a child, and it was cool. It only works if none of the ten parents have a regular job, and they they hoped that neighbors would like send their kids to go and get looked after by the anarchist nurseries, and the neighbors weren't doing it. They were on the cutting edge of abolition of the family. Yeah, they had a white house plan, which was that empty homes should be refurnished for housing, and offices in city center should be turned
into housing. No houses should be demolished until everyone is housed. So they would always have their like this is what society should do. And then here's like, well, we're going to do directly, you know. And what they did directly was kind of start the squatter movement. They broke into empty buildings and fixed them up with plumbing and electrical so that families could move in and live for free.
There was this very major housing crisis for decades in the Netherlands following the war, and this was one of their ways of addressing that directly.
Was it was there a lot of like physical destruction in the Netherlands during the war, Like did they lose a lot of housing stock to war damage?
I you know, it's funny and if people want to know more about it beyond what my memory can summon up. I did an episode about the No No No about the Dutch squatting movement with with actually a Dutch squad wh runs a podcast they can go back and listen to. I know that some cities like Rotterdam were completely leveled and rebuilt after the war. I believe Amsterdam was not damaged as badly. And I think that again, think that the housing shortage was more caused by housing speculation.
Okay, did they have their own post war baby boom, but it wasn't by like I don't know, in America we invented the suburbs at this point.
Yeah, well, in this case, it's like houses that were empty when the economy is bad, it's like cheaper to not let them out to anyone to rent and just like hold on to them and wait for the economy to get better, and they're also doing a lot of like urban development, like the Amsterdam developed as a city that was had a residential core and then it became more of a commercial core. But then there's like people who are trying to live there, and then there's not enough housing.
So they fixed that.
Yeah, and actually I mean to the point where eventually the Netherlands legalized squatting because even the government had to admit it was a social good. Until I think it was twenty eleven, when capitalism succeeded it.
There was a lot of like empty commercial real estate in someone else's country.
Yeah, I would never tell any I would actively tell people that squatting is a very good social thing to do. And if you do it in a if you build it up as a movement, you can defend each other and you can do things like not have squatting be a way of expecting people to live in squalor, but instead live very well. I lived in a squatted I lived in a squatted mansion owned by a mafia boss. That's beautiful because if you're if you leave a building.
For when squatting was legal in the Netherlands, if the building was empty for a year, and you didn't have proof that you were in the process of renovating into some purpose. People could legally break in and live there and so peop So this this mafia dude was in jail, so he wasn't doing anything with his fucking mansion. It was a row home, but it was this mansion of
a house right in downtown. So squatters moved in and lived there, and every now and then mafia guys would come and be like, hey, you should really move out of here. But like the squatters in the Netherlands were like, no, we're good, fucking bring it because they're fucking tough ast shit and they were not pacifist. But time I was there, anyway, that's beside the point. The pacifist they called what they were doing the gentle revolution or sweet revolution or smart evolution,
and it was pretty fucking cool. They got into some trouble at the very beginning. The first issue of Provo had been made by all these like very I come from anarchy specifically, so it had like obsolete bomb recipes from nineteen ten in the first issue, and it got confiscated and they would get arrested for all kinds of shit, though, and I feel like these show the character of the movement.
The one woman Coast Shook Coaster was arrested for giving out dried currents while preaching charity, which I believe is a specific Bible reference that I is above my head. Another guy, Hans Tunman, he got himself sentenced to a few months in prison from muttering imagine over and over again. And I can't figure out how. I don't know what happened. I don't know, and I'm so annoyed. Maybe he like went up to cops and just came saying it over.
I don't know, and maybe he was being menacing about it.
Yeah. He wrote a book about his time in jail, which, if I had more time in my life and I had found a translation of Full Time Provo, the book he wrote in jail, than I probably would have been able to figure out what he was arrested for. It sold well enough that it bought him a riverboat. I believe this is the one that the CS kids burned down.
Well, not his jail memoir riverboat.
I know, but I think they had a bunch of riverboats by the end, so I'm not sure they believed in municipal autonomy. They believe that city decision making should be done at the lowest possible level with neighborhood councils and then a larger municipal council only as like the way that government happens in society. And so since they believed in neighborhood in municipal councils, these anarchists started running
for city government. This took ideological reconciling, but not a ton as they put it, they were ideologically they were not ideologically committed. They were ideologically inspired, which like I'm not saying one way or the other about what tactics makes sense, but that has a better way to look at ideology. Their campaign motto was vote provo, have fun, yeah, yeah, sure and sweet yeah. They put together a slate of twelve candidates, and the night before the election, Provo twelve
was painted all over the city. They got thirteen thousand votes, which was enough to put one of their candidates onto the Amsterdam Municipal Council, the bigger city council. It was way less than they'd hoped. When you live in a bubble and everyone you know support to you think everyone else does two but the voting age at the time. According to the history book I read, the voting age was twenty three, but according to every internet source I found,
the voting age was twenty one. The voting age was not eighteen at the time, and that's a pretty good turnout.
None of those child gangs could even vote for them, exactly.
Entering politics wound up divisive. The one guy they elected started getting shipped from his friends who were mad at him for like getting too big for his breeches. And meanwhile everyone else in the council just opposed him at every turn. This, this poor fucking guy just catching it from all sides. Yeah, he leaves after a few months, but the seats are not by candidate, the seats are by party.
So they can just fill his seat.
So another provo steps in, and then a third, and then a fourth, and people started complaining about the divide between street provos and intellectual provos. Meanwhile, provos spread across Western Europe, mostly to various Dutch cities, but also to Belgium, West Germany and Sweden. In November nineteen sixty six, they held an international provo festival. Beforehand, they did a mass washing of each other's feet in a reference to basically
like Christ the anarchist socialist. There's a Super Bowl ad about this shit. So they are very Christian in their foundation. They are clearly influenced by Christian theology and let in
Christian pacifism. One of the problems that I run across again and again in history is that when people write histories of leftist movements, they are atheists who write these histories, And I have a hard time finding the way what religion meant to the participants, because that's such an interesting movements question, right that, you know, because like you were saying, these these sort of political movements are often sort of removed from that context.
But it sounds like these people were, i mean, I don't know their own words, like very inspired by the actual advice that Christ gave them. Right that they were absolutely making sure that everyone had a home and was fed and was cared for. And yes, you know, the least among us.
I absolutely believe that meant a lot to at least many of them, if not most of them.
I mean, you're not washing feet for for shits and giggles, that's not a.
Bit, that's no, this is like we are an arco Christians. That is what they're That is what they're signifying, or at least a lot of them are Jews, right, but like they are like specifically being like this is not a materialist an atheist movement. There's actually in the later one, there's going to be this thing where the atheists like kind of like bargin with Fedoras and are like Reddit told me that you're not allowed to believe in God, and they basically like got run out, and like I
find it so fascinating. There are these two big alternative magazines for youth culture at the time. One's called hit Week and one's called a Loha, and they both promote long hair. These are the magazines that are like advice about how to make your teachers let you have long hair and stuff, you know, and they're all about sex education and they're all about anarchism. The provos are writing these popular magazines by the end, including that anarchist on
city council. He's writing articles about anarchism and also what's going on in local government from his position in the council that is now in the magazine is like all the rocks. Yeah, and this culture is spreading too. And then they all quit. Teenth of May nineteen sixty seven, they publicly announced the abolition of Provo. After two years of being Provos. They decided that it had lost its character, spontaneity, it was gaining public support, and its ideas continued to
influence everything in Dutch culture. At this point, there's clergymen, artists and some politicians. We're speaking about the wonders of the provos, but there's also like a tourist bus that will drive people to see and argue with the real provos. And it had become too predictable and it had lost its spirit. So they abolished themselves. They still had a city council seat and so they continued to fill that and continue to do that work. But once they were abolished, they kept going.
Of course they didn't.
And then they became nomes. And we're going to talk about them as gnomes on Wednesday.
Oh, I can't wait to hear about the gnomes.
I know, this is one of my Usually the cliffhangers, like and then they're literally hanging from a cliff and the bombs about to go off or whatever. The fun but I'm pretty excited about And then they all turned into nomes. But Before we get to that, we should talk about you, and we should talk about the stuff that you do. Is there any new podcasts that people can hear you on or is there any other work you want to draw attention to.
Yeah, I guess this is coming out soon, right, so I'm having that two weeks from now, a brief stint. Right now, I'm guest hosting on It could happen here, so about once a week. You can check me out over there. You can always find me on Twitter at socialist dog Mom. We don't have any anarchist city council members, but I do cover our city council. Ill that's it for me.
Hell yeah, I want to plug that. Cool Zone Media has a new podcast and hold on. It's called Better Offline. I spent like two hours listening to it today. I should know the name of it. It's good. It's a tech podcast. But it's a tech podcast that's called better Offline, which helps you understand where it's coming from. Sophie, what do you got to plug?
Uh? Cool Zone Media on the social medies? Oh yeah, if you have a pet pet it.
Yeah, there's not that many nouns where the verb. Actually there's probably a lot never mind, see you Wednesday.
Hey cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.