Part One: Dutch Squatters Accidentally Save The Country From Ruin

Margaret talks with Alex Beels, host of Onderstroom, about how a group of people who just wanted somewhere to sleep stopped real estate speculation from gutting the Netherlands.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to you. Cool People did Cool Stuff
the podcast I got bored of trying to find clever
ways to introduce about a month ago. I'm your host,
Margaret Kills, right, and every week I tell you about
some cool people who way to think work cool. Today,
my guest is Alex Biel's the host of Wonderstrom, radical
Dutch podcast. Alex, how are you doing? And how badly
did I pronounced the name of your podcast and or

(00:23):
your name? Hi? Lovely to be here. I'm great, A
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

(00:45):
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

(01:05):
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

(01:27):
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,

(01:49):
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

(02:10):
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

(02:32):
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

(02:55):
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

(03:21):
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

(03:43):
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

(04:03):
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.

(04:26):
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,

(04:48):
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

(05:08):
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.

(05:30):
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.

(05:51):
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

(06:11):
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

(06:33):
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

(06:54):
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

(07:18):
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

(07:40):
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

(08:02):
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,

(08:26):
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

(08:49):
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

(09:11):
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,

(09:31):
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

(09:52):
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

(10:12):
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

(10:36):
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

(10:58):
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

(11:23):
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

(11:46):
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

(12:09):
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

(12:31):
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

(12:53):
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

(13:15):
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,

(13:39):
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

(14:00):
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

(14:20):
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,

(14:42):
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

(15:05):
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

(15:26):
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

(15:48):
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

(16:09):
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

(16:31):
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,

(16:53):
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

(17:17):
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,

(17:38):
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,

(18:00):
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,

(18:22):
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

(18:43):
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

(19:05):
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

(19:28):
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

(19:49):
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

(20:12):
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

(20:33):
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,

(20:57):
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

(21:19):
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

(21:40):
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.

(22:02):
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.

(22:23):
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

(22:45):
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

(23:09):
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

(23:32):
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

(23:52):
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

(24:15):
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

(24:36):
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

(24:57):
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

(25:20):
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

(25:43):
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.

(26:05):
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

(26:25):
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

(26:46):
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

(27:07):
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

(27:27):
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

(27:51):
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

(28:12):
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

(28:35):
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

(28:55):
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.

(29:16):
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,

(29:37):
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

(29:57):
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

(30:19):
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

(30:41):
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

(31:04):
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,

(31:26):
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

(31:46):
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

(32:09):
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

(32:30):
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

(32:51):
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,

(33:14):
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,

(33:36):
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,

(33:58):
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,

(34:18):
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

(34:40):
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

(35:03):
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

(35:23):
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

(35:44):
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

(36:07):
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

(36:28):
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

(36:49):
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

(37:10):
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

(37:30):
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,

(37:54):
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

(38:17):
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,

(38:42):
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

(39:04):
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,

(39:31):
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.

(39:55):
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

(40:17):
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.

(40:38):
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

(41:01):
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

(41:21):
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,

(41:42):
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.

(42:03):
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

(42:25):
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

(42:46):
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,

(43:09):
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?

(43:30):
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

(43:50):
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,

(44:12):
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

(44:36):
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

(44:58):
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

(45:21):
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

(45:41):
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

(46:02):
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.

(46:23):
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,

(46:47):
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

(47:08):
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

(47:28):
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

(47:52):
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,

(48:13):
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,

(48:33):
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.

(48:56):
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,

(49:17):
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,

(49:40):
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.

(50:02):
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.

(50:27):
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

(50:51):
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

(51:15):
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

(51:36):
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.

(52:01):
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

(52:22):
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,

(52:49):
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

(53:10):
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,

(53:31):
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

(53:52):
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,

(54:13):
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

(54:34):
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

(54:55):
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,

(55:16):
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

(55:41):
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,

(56:07):
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

(56:29):
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

(56:50):
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.

(57:11):
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

(57:35):
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?

(57:59):
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,

(58:21):
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,

(58:44):
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.

(59:08):
M HM