Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to you. Cool People did Cool Stuff
Speaker 1: the podcast I got bored of trying to find clever
Speaker 1: ways to introduce about a month ago. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Margaret Kills, right, and every week I tell you about
Speaker 1: some cool people who way to think work cool. Today,
Speaker 1: my guest is Alex Biel's the host of Wonderstrom, radical
Speaker 1: Dutch podcast. Alex, how are you doing? And how badly
Speaker 1: did I pronounced the name of your podcast and or
Speaker 1: your name? Hi? Lovely to be here. I'm great, A
Speaker 1: little bit sweaty um yep. Pronunciation was it was? Okay? Um?
Speaker 1: It should be almost strong? Okay strong? Yeah, okay. What
Speaker 1: is that podcast? It's uh yeah, so like you like
Speaker 1: you say, it's a radical podcast. It's a monthly and
Speaker 1: it combines basic radical leftist political concept and a more
Speaker 1: sort of like practical aspect about how do we organize
Speaker 1: and like my personal ideas about it. Sometimes I go
Speaker 1: like into like more philosophy esque stuff, but mostly it's
Speaker 1: these these two two sides. Okay. We also have Sophie
Speaker 1: on the call, Sophie as our producer. How are you doing, Sophie?
Speaker 1: It just reminds me whenever I hear you know something
Speaker 1: not in the English language, how fucking ugly English is.
Speaker 1: Dutch words are so much cooler. English words are so
Speaker 1: basic there, it's like, you know, it's depressing, really but greener,
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah for sure. I mean, how do you say,
Speaker 1: how do you say? Cool people did cool stuff? And
Speaker 1: Dutch cool? Way better, way better, way better. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just my thought at the beginning of this episode.
Speaker 1: Way better. Alright, So changing the name of the podcast, Um, okay, So,
Speaker 1: so first of all, I think Sophie is wearing a
Speaker 1: black hoodie in honor of today's topic. Actually, I don't
Speaker 1: know if the's a hood might just be a black sweatshirt.
Speaker 1: There's definitely no hood, but it is and we have
Speaker 1: alex on because today we are talking about rad Dutch stuff. Specifically,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about some people who had a
Speaker 1: problem and they went out and solved that problem for
Speaker 1: themselves and for others, which is kind of the basis
Speaker 1: of being a cool person from my current point of view.
Speaker 1: And the problem that these particular folks were facing was
Speaker 1: that people didn't have enough houses to sleep in. The
Speaker 1: solution was, well, there are some empty houses, so why
Speaker 1: don't we break into those houses and then sleep there.
Speaker 1: Because today we're going to talk about the Dutch squatters
Speaker 1: movement that peaked in the eighties but has gone on
Speaker 1: for decades. They started out looking for shelter. They wounded
Speaker 1: up preventing real estate prospectors from kind of destroying half
Speaker 1: the buildings in the Netherlands, all while building the infrastructure
Speaker 1: that birthed a lot of the modern anti fascist movement,
Speaker 1: not just the Dutch anti fascist movement, it a lot
Speaker 1: of the it's like fascist movement in the West, Alex
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of squatting? Yeah, so I have,
Speaker 1: So I have. It's if you're any kind of radical
Speaker 1: or activists in the Netherlands, you you really can't get
Speaker 1: around it. Um all stable social centers that are available
Speaker 1: to the movement, or most of them have a history
Speaker 1: in squatting, like they're legalized squads or squads that have remained.
Speaker 1: And like a lot of like you say, like infrastructure
Speaker 1: and activist groups are organized around squatted spaces or they
Speaker 1: meet there, they formed there, and like a lot of
Speaker 1: the networks of who've been active for a long time
Speaker 1: or who get active often they come in through squatting.
Speaker 1: Squatting actions or projects that are related to the squatting movement. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's one of those things that I think
Speaker 1: that when people, especially from the United States, where I
Speaker 1: can only speak to people from the United States, when
Speaker 1: they start seeing squatting in Europe in general, but in
Speaker 1: the Netherlands in particular, it UM is often fairly inspirational,
Speaker 1: and I try to be a somewhat inspirational podcast. This
Speaker 1: is why I'm really excited to talk about this topic,
Speaker 1: which I think actually sometimes annoys the Dutch squatters that
Speaker 1: Americans are like, you all are doing so great, and
Speaker 1: they're like, everything's actually really hard. Yeah I've heard this before. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also people who come by, we're like smith and like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's all these these spaces and these things you can do,
Speaker 1: and then like even like people like move here, and
Speaker 1: then they're like, oh wait, it's actually it's actually not
Speaker 1: that great. It's not you don't actually have that much
Speaker 1: moon room to maneuver, right, Yeah, yeah, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean that's why it's not a happy, perfect utopian thing,
Speaker 1: but it's still a really interesting thing. UM. And I
Speaker 1: will argue that this episode, this this idea starts where
Speaker 1: all things start with a bed, a table, and a chair,
Speaker 1: because in nineteen fourteen the Supreme Court of the Netherlands
Speaker 1: ruled that in order to prove that you live somewhere,
Speaker 1: all you need to prove that you are the occupant
Speaker 1: of a building as you need a bed, a table
Speaker 1: and a chair. If you live in a space, you
Speaker 1: know those three things, you are the occupant of that space,
Speaker 1: not the owner, but the occupant. So in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: during the Great Depression, tons of people in the Netherlands
Speaker 1: started moving into empty houses, um but as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, didn't conceptualize of themselves as a movement.
Speaker 1: This wasn't the squatters movement. This was people squatting. In
Speaker 1: five after the expulsion of the Nazis, more people went
Speaker 1: and did the same thing. Um. But most squatters in
Speaker 1: both of these times were kind of just either secretly
Speaker 1: occupying a place or they were moving in publicly but
Speaker 1: in order to force the owner's hand into renting to them.
Speaker 1: And both are super valid things to do, but neither
Speaker 1: are the sort of politicized squatting that we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about in a moment Like this is kind of just
Speaker 1: any squatting, like squatting is of old times. People always
Speaker 1: squatted to some extent, but like, yeah, having like as
Speaker 1: this politicized movement quite new, Yeah, totally, and in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and the Netherlands has started to change. So
Speaker 1: real estate speculation, or if you're feeling a bit less polite,
Speaker 1: you can call this house milking. Very simple concept. You
Speaker 1: buy up houses and then you leave them empty, waiting
Speaker 1: for them to be worth more. Like when the economy approves,
Speaker 1: since there's fewer houses on the market, the housing prices
Speaker 1: go up and the houses you own are now worth more.
Speaker 1: Even more sinister than leaving these houses intentionally empty. When
Speaker 1: people need houses, you can leave the buildings to be neglected.
Speaker 1: And so that all these old historic houses and the
Speaker 1: Nevolands has beautiful old architecture. Um, all of these old
Speaker 1: houses they fall into ruin. And as soon as they
Speaker 1: start falling into ruin, it's easier for the owners to
Speaker 1: get demolition permits to like knock them over and build
Speaker 1: cheap modern condos and ship like that. Um, So letting
Speaker 1: in houses fall into ruin is good business. And I
Speaker 1: would argue that this is a bad thing. Every part
Speaker 1: of what I just described, Yeah, it's it's interesting because
Speaker 1: this this thing, it's still still very current um. Even
Speaker 1: if it's not for demolition, then it can be like
Speaker 1: we were going to renovate it, but to renovate it's
Speaker 1: going to take a while, so the occupants need to
Speaker 1: go away. Even if like their social rent social housing, um,
Speaker 1: then this letting things fall into disrepair can still be
Speaker 1: used now as a tactic to force the people out
Speaker 1: or to bully them out of the social housing and
Speaker 1: then renovate the space and then bring in buyers instead
Speaker 1: or like more expensive rent. Yeah yeah, uh. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that's get kind of sad about
Speaker 1: like a lot of this stuff, is that this was
Speaker 1: a thing that did a lot of good um, but continues.
Speaker 1: All of the problems that the Dutch squatters were facing
Speaker 1: at this time are old things faced um all over
Speaker 1: the world. This is probably not gonna be too unfamiliar
Speaker 1: to two people. In the US. Right now, we're having
Speaker 1: this huge wave of basically large companies buying up all
Speaker 1: the available houses um, and the housing market is kind
Speaker 1: of going wild right now, just as homelessness as starting
Speaker 1: to pick up again in the U S. And then
Speaker 1: it's actually interesting the numbers of on housed folks in
Speaker 1: the US isn't incredibly higher than fifteen years ago. Um,
Speaker 1: but the it's way more visible in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the fights around it are being
Speaker 1: a lot more politicized. Okay. So in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands, housing speculation was all the rage of
Speaker 1: the capitalists and future friends of the pod the Provo movement,
Speaker 1: who were kind of a and tell me if I'm
Speaker 1: wrong about this, but I have the Provos is kind
Speaker 1: of a super political Dutch post hippie movement. Yeah that's
Speaker 1: sound sounds about right. They're often described as a as anarchists,
Speaker 1: but they're also closely related to uh to hippie, the
Speaker 1: hippie movement. Yeah, okay, So they started doing some of
Speaker 1: the first politicized squatting in the Netherlands that I was
Speaker 1: able to find. They would start squatting buildings in order
Speaker 1: to fight against speculation, and squatting got its modern name
Speaker 1: at the time during that period kraken or cracking. So
Speaker 1: squatters got the name crackers, which is funny to an
Speaker 1: American audience. I have to do. Yeah, that's great. Um.
Speaker 1: So in in so I've been to squats where there's
Speaker 1: banners like release the Kraken, like release the Kraken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's you know, it's you have this big, big
Speaker 1: squid with like crawled and crowbars and bandanas and uh
Speaker 1: you know, free food and stuff. Yeah. And sometimes they
Speaker 1: make them out to draw them like really cuddly or
Speaker 1: really threatening. Yeah. It's also funny, is the word kraken
Speaker 1: is in a way it's more menacing than squatting. The
Speaker 1: squatting is this sort of sitting on your on your heels, yeah,
Speaker 1: whereas kraken is like to crack something like a nutcracker
Speaker 1: or like a safe cracker. Um, which which connects to
Speaker 1: this like like the conservatives, liberal conservatives in the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: they always try to do this thing where they say
Speaker 1: trying to make squatting into this crime. Right, So there
Speaker 1: they have the slogans like kara it's in breka, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm squatting is burglary. Yeah, but but they say for that,
Speaker 1: right because it's like like it's on the same page
Speaker 1: as like safe cracking, house cracking. Yeah. Um, so it
Speaker 1: has it has some power in the world, but it's
Speaker 1: also like, yeah, in the crime area, no, and I
Speaker 1: like it and well, but one of the things I
Speaker 1: ran across is it claimed that the word is derived
Speaker 1: from old Dutch thieves can't. And if that's true, I
Speaker 1: like it because things that make the real world, like
Speaker 1: dungeons and dragons make me happy. Um and dungeons dragons
Speaker 1: is going to come up a second time in the script.
Speaker 1: Just gonna leave that out there for everyone, so go ahead.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, So the thieves scouts is a fun thing.
Speaker 1: There's a uh like the Amsterdam Dutch dialect actually has
Speaker 1: a lot of influence from this this thieves count, which
Speaker 1: is called bad Huns, which has like a lot of
Speaker 1: influence from um, yeah, just words from thievery, but also
Speaker 1: like Jewish Yiddish influences and stuff all mixed together in
Speaker 1: a fairly sort of recognizable thing. And you have like
Speaker 1: Bahun's dictionaries that you can buy and like old books shops,
Speaker 1: and that's really cool. I want one. Even though I
Speaker 1: um lived in the Netherlands for a while and cannot
Speaker 1: pronounce Dutch to save my life. I think I pronounced
Speaker 1: it perfectly fine. The Dutch people around me don't think
Speaker 1: I pronounced it perfectly fine. So the laws in the
Speaker 1: Netherlands were for a long time they were favorable a squatters,
Speaker 1: at least compared to some other countries like the US.
Speaker 1: In one they got even better. Some squatters in the
Speaker 1: Dutch city of Nimegan got run out of the house
Speaker 1: they were living in and the owner was like, the
Speaker 1: house wasn't empty, it was for sale. They came into
Speaker 1: my for sale house. The Supreme Court heard the case
Speaker 1: an appeal and was like, look, a house in use
Speaker 1: means a house in use as a house. And this
Speaker 1: established the concept of domestic peace and Dutch law um,
Speaker 1: which is basically anyone entering a property needs permission from
Speaker 1: the current occupant, not the owner, but the occupant. So
Speaker 1: the person in the house with a bed, table and
Speaker 1: chair has domestic peace as the one who is allowed
Speaker 1: to decide who comes and goes. So from this point
Speaker 1: on for a while, until we'll get to that legally,
Speaker 1: most squatters could only be evicted by court order, So
Speaker 1: the cops ostensibly can't just come in and arrestue for
Speaker 1: trespassing because you're the occupant. And this is all the
Speaker 1: kind of the groundwork. People who have a problem, like
Speaker 1: I don't have anywhere to live can address that problem
Speaker 1: by saying, well, this this building is empty, and squads
Speaker 1: would still be evicted all the time, as owners would
Speaker 1: Basically it's not like Okay, you become the document and
Speaker 1: now it's your house and you get to stay there forever. Right,
Speaker 1: owners would decide suddenly that they actually wanted to do
Speaker 1: something with the house. They you know, they were just
Speaker 1: like leave a house to be empty for ten years,
Speaker 1: and then squatters move in and they're like, wait, no,
Speaker 1: I have all these plans you know, and then they
Speaker 1: go prove that in court, unless they prove it in
Speaker 1: court then and people would get evicted and wake the
Speaker 1: sleeping and dragon because they just want to keep it
Speaker 1: lying around as like they're as they're like, uh, their
Speaker 1: savings basically and their growth intra invest and then people
Speaker 1: live in there and it seems like, oh maybe you're
Speaker 1: losing it. Then it instantly awakes them. Still yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just rewatched the Hobbit. So this is extra true.
Speaker 1: And so the first political squatters, the provo movement overall,
Speaker 1: and the people coming from that, they try to be
Speaker 1: non violent in terms of how they were building a
Speaker 1: squat movement. And then on November as a squad was
Speaker 1: being evicted. Squatters lined up three rows deep. They link
Speaker 1: their arms together and they shouted no violence, no violence
Speaker 1: at the police. And you will be shocked to now,
Speaker 1: this will be absolutely no one has ever heard of
Speaker 1: this before. But the police didn't listen to them as
Speaker 1: they were chanting. Founded. Yeah, So the squiders all got
Speaker 1: the ship beat out of them, and non violence fell
Speaker 1: out of favor in the squatting movement. And that's when
Speaker 1: the squatting movement started to get ship done. Was when
Speaker 1: non violence fell out of favor. I remember an old photo.
Speaker 1: It's a black and white photo of a of a
Speaker 1: house squat being defended, and so there's there's people lined
Speaker 1: up in front of it. They were like motorcycle helmets
Speaker 1: in there. They have a banner in front of them,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's hanging on the on the on the building.
Speaker 1: I don't rightly know. Um. And it says the under
Speaker 1: conte discussed meat overvelt theveta and food on it out,
Speaker 1: which means the other side does not discuss about violence.
Speaker 1: They pour it into law. They poured into law and
Speaker 1: then they act on it. Right. Yeah. Yeah, some of
Speaker 1: the slogans that come out of the squad scene are
Speaker 1: really honestly, really amazing and really poetic. Um. And then
Speaker 1: so okay, right around this time, in the late seventies,
Speaker 1: the Dutch economy goes into this tail spin during the
Speaker 1: worldwide energy crisis. And I haven't fully wrapped my head
Speaker 1: around the Dutch economic troubles, of I know that domestic
Speaker 1: natural gas production had been giving the Dutch and economic
Speaker 1: boom in the seventies, and that this had led to
Speaker 1: high wages in a strong welfare state. And I also
Speaker 1: know that neoliberal publications blame this for the crash. They're like,
Speaker 1: no one wants to work anymore because everyone gets such
Speaker 1: good welfare or whatever, which is once again not familiar
Speaker 1: to any Americans listening to this right now. But it
Speaker 1: seems like the worldwide energy crisis is the reason that
Speaker 1: the Dutch economy went into a tail spinning. Do you
Speaker 1: know much about this? No? Not not quite? Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um. I mean, I couldn't tell you what happened
Speaker 1: in the late seventies in the U s economy specifically,
Speaker 1: it is released to this. However, it happened unemployment surged
Speaker 1: up to seventeen percent by four which for context, for
Speaker 1: some folks who are listening. This is higher than the
Speaker 1: huge spike we saw in the US in March and
Speaker 1: April with COVID, but it's lower than like the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: right with unemployment, though homelessness surged around nineteen eighty or so,
Speaker 1: there were fifty three thousand homeless people in a country
Speaker 1: of only fourteen million people. So that's about point three
Speaker 1: eight percent people were homeless. And in contrast, the US
Speaker 1: is dealing with a ton of homelessness right now. It's
Speaker 1: fifty two thousand people out of three nine million to
Speaker 1: point one seven percent. It's less than half. The current
Speaker 1: major homelessness crisis that we're facing in the US is
Speaker 1: less than half of what the Dutch were facing in
Speaker 1: the late seventies early eighties. And while all this is happening,
Speaker 1: the real estate prospectors are like, well this rules like okay,
Speaker 1: well you know, let's just hold onto these houses and
Speaker 1: drive up the prices even more. Um And I remember
Speaker 1: being told by squatters, and I can't source this. I
Speaker 1: remember being told by squatters that about a third of
Speaker 1: the houses in Amsterdam were empty for a while in
Speaker 1: the early eighties. Is that you have any idea, Well,
Speaker 1: very very very many. Definitely, Um, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know the exact uh figure, but I know I know,
Speaker 1: and like currently like now that the squading movement has
Speaker 1: gone or like it's not gone, like it's diminished. Um,
Speaker 1: you get like one third of the house being sold
Speaker 1: now is like to like a big investor. So it's
Speaker 1: basically trying to do the same thing again. But no,
Speaker 1: there was like huge emptiness of houses. Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: you have people who are motivated to do something about it,
Speaker 1: you have somewhat favorable laws, and you have tons of
Speaker 1: empty houses, and you have tons of people need houses,
Speaker 1: you get the squatters movement. Uh. And it it didn't
Speaker 1: start as a political statement or resistance to anything, at
Speaker 1: least not as conceived of by most of its participant,
Speaker 1: but it carried a specific important political ideal, nonetheless, which
Speaker 1: is that you can just do things right, that you
Speaker 1: don't need to ask the state for permission, um, that
Speaker 1: you can solve your problems directly. And and it's because
Speaker 1: of this that it rejected the political assumptions of this.
Speaker 1: It kind of rejected a lot of the political assumptions
Speaker 1: of the left that have been going on before that,
Speaker 1: and it took on a more anarchist character, and of
Speaker 1: course the provos that it came from also were you know,
Speaker 1: part of anarchist movement, and not in that all of
Speaker 1: the participants were anarchist, but that many of them were,
Speaker 1: and that the squads were intended as direct action rather
Speaker 1: than political action. One of the easiest examples to give
Speaker 1: of direct action. Also, Yeah, you want to explain, like
Speaker 1: when when is it indirect? Well, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: influence someone to do something, and we as direct when
Speaker 1: you solve the problem yourself, like for instance, need a house,
Speaker 1: you get you use a house. Yeah, it's so simple.
Speaker 1: It's like one of the things as I was I
Speaker 1: was writing the script is over and over again and
Speaker 1: just run acros us this Like no, it's just really
Speaker 1: like it really just comes down to like that billion
Speaker 1: is empty and I'm cold, you know. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it makes me really happy. But it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: So I don't know too much about like the history,
Speaker 1: like I haven't studied the history specifically, but we get
Speaker 1: we get like stories from people who are active for
Speaker 1: longer um and for us, like for me, like squatting
Speaker 1: is like this ah sort of living tradition or like
Speaker 1: long standing movement that's aside all the other movements. Um.
Speaker 1: But you but you can tell like the the origin
Speaker 1: of certain bits of like squatter culture in this like
Speaker 1: the this very direct like autonomous just solve this thing
Speaker 1: by yourself. It's very d I y culture way of
Speaker 1: doing things, like you instantly recognize it. Um. Also like
Speaker 1: among squads, like like the direct direct support, like I
Speaker 1: need to move something, I will use your bucke ask them,
Speaker 1: but it's like just assumed of course you're going to
Speaker 1: need it. Um so oh so like sometimes it's like
Speaker 1: so so fast that you're that like they sort of
Speaker 1: assume that you know, you have their permission with some things.
Speaker 1: It's like, um oh, but you're doing this thing, so
Speaker 1: you you want my buck feets right? So I had
Speaker 1: it there, like I cleaned up a little because I
Speaker 1: thought you might want it. Yeah, for anyone who's listening
Speaker 1: to box feeds. Is a pickup a pickup truck bicycle
Speaker 1: where the bed of the pickup is in the front
Speaker 1: and it is entirely based on the fact that the
Speaker 1: Netherlands is entirely flat. Because these things are gigantic and
Speaker 1: heavy and they rule. But I don't think they would
Speaker 1: work anywhere with hills. Well, I will say the canal
Speaker 1: bridges in Amsterdam are still yeah, a challenge. I've ever
Speaker 1: written a box feeds full of stuff over one of
Speaker 1: those before, Um yeah, I must do, must try, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and okay. And And that's actually one of the things
Speaker 1: that I found so interesting right is as I'm reading
Speaker 1: about this culture that developed in the early eighties and
Speaker 1: late seventies, my experience, for anyone who's listening, is about
Speaker 1: six months of living in squats in the Netherlands in
Speaker 1: like two and the culture that I'm reading about as
Speaker 1: I'm researching this is just the culture that I experienced
Speaker 1: while I was there, and it's you know, it had
Speaker 1: developed in a lot of ways that had you know,
Speaker 1: certain practices felt more concrete by the time I was there.
Speaker 1: But it, like you're saying, it's this living practice that continues,
Speaker 1: and it's so interesting to me because it's, I don't know, whatever,
Speaker 1: it's interesting me for a lot of reasons. Uh So,
Speaker 1: the early movement quickly found the organizational structure that it
Speaker 1: um that it continued to have for a very long time.
Speaker 1: And it's an organizational structure kind of like what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. It's built on autonomy at every level, but
Speaker 1: also organization at every level. Individual squatters are autonomous within
Speaker 1: their squad by and large, they live their individual lives
Speaker 1: autonomous but in coordination with their squad mates. The squats
Speaker 1: themselves are autonomous from, but in court nation with their neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And then most of the organization happens at the neighborhood level.
Speaker 1: Each neighborhood has its own like a squatters council essentially
Speaker 1: that meets to coordinate opening new squads and defending squads.
Speaker 1: And they acted autonomously from anything that's happening in on
Speaker 1: a citywide or nationwide level. Yet individual cities and the
Speaker 1: entire country are capable of coordinating certain actions as necessary.
Speaker 1: And I think this rules. I think this is a
Speaker 1: really good model, um. And it the beauty and strength
Speaker 1: of the style made itself clear, UM that this worked
Speaker 1: really well. Obviously, there's all kinds of things that went
Speaker 1: wrong with it, and you know, we'll talk about some
Speaker 1: of them later. But and it's it's it depends like
Speaker 1: once it's got going, like the fact of its of
Speaker 1: its density, that so many people were squatting meant that
Speaker 1: it it ah, it was able to get to a
Speaker 1: kind of critical mass that allows this thing to work
Speaker 1: where um like the neighborhood social centers and the neighborhood
Speaker 1: meetings they make sense once enough people in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: are involved. So um, right, this is more you like,
Speaker 1: if there's if there's if squad is much thinner on
Speaker 1: the ground, then it's harder to coordinate in this very
Speaker 1: direct local way. Yeah. No, that that makes sense, and
Speaker 1: you probably have to work with larger groups depending on
Speaker 1: the the critical mass of it or whether you've reached
Speaker 1: the critical mass. Um And so you have so the
Speaker 1: way it would work. So you have these neighborhood focused
Speaker 1: squad groups and they start breaking into empty buildings and
Speaker 1: helping people move in. And how this would happen. A
Speaker 1: group of people want a house, so that you're living group,
Speaker 1: they want a house. So either find a house on
Speaker 1: your own, or you go to the neighborhood squad assembly
Speaker 1: and you ask for leads. They case the house, whether
Speaker 1: it's the living group or other people. You case the
Speaker 1: house to prove it's truly unoccupied. You look up city records,
Speaker 1: you may be carefully asked neighbors. You stick a toothpick
Speaker 1: or a match dick in the door and then like
Speaker 1: see if that falls, because if they opened the door,
Speaker 1: the match stick would fall to the ground. Um, you
Speaker 1: check on it every few days to see if it's
Speaker 1: still there. And if the building was empty, then they
Speaker 1: planned to move in. And in the laws were updated
Speaker 1: to say a building had to be empty for a year.
Speaker 1: So this part got a bit harder because you have
Speaker 1: to it became harder to prove that building has been
Speaker 1: empty for a year. I know at least in one
Speaker 1: case that I was around four people have been tracking
Speaker 1: that building for a year, and as soon as it
Speaker 1: was empty for a year, it was like the day
Speaker 1: it was empty for a year, they moved in, actually
Speaker 1: breaking down the door. It's illegal, right, it's destruction of
Speaker 1: property unless you're the occupant of the house. This part
Speaker 1: always seemed very confusing to me. So it's like if
Speaker 1: you break in, you're in trouble if they catch you
Speaker 1: breaking in. But if you break in and you get
Speaker 1: a bed, table and chair in there, then it's okay.
Speaker 1: It's it's very it's it's not unlike, um, what's it called,
Speaker 1: like green light? Green light? Red light? Totally yeah, as
Speaker 1: I've been standing here all the time. I don't know
Speaker 1: what you're talking. Yeah, it's moving me. Um. And so
Speaker 1: so breaking down entering, the breaking and entering stage has
Speaker 1: to be done very carefully, right because it's it's illegal. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know what else is illegal are the amazing
Speaker 1: prices of our advertisers. Uh, with prices so low that
Speaker 1: they have to be criminal. I have to do an
Speaker 1: ad transition. Um. They pay a fine for every product
Speaker 1: you bye, yeah, they want you to get it so cheap,
Speaker 1: they'll just pay the cops off. Yeah, exactly. You the
Speaker 1: all of these advertisers have bribed the police. Here's a
Speaker 1: anths and we are back from those advertisers, and we're
Speaker 1: telling you how to break into buildings. So the way
Speaker 1: to break into a building than it looks I know. Um,
Speaker 1: So you set up the neighborhood assembly, sets up the
Speaker 1: squad action. Kind of approves the squad action because it
Speaker 1: takes a lot of people to do this safely. And
Speaker 1: then dozens to hundreds of squatters congregate into some nearby location.
Speaker 1: Usually it's another squad or an apartment something like that.
Speaker 1: Once you get the crowd together, you go out to
Speaker 1: the building and the neighborhood's breakers group, which is a
Speaker 1: specialized task usually not done by the living group, but
Speaker 1: like basically by professional locksmiths and ship Um. They'll have
Speaker 1: already cased the place, figure out how to break out,
Speaker 1: break down the door. They show up with crowbars, get
Speaker 1: into these buildings incredibly fast. Um. Meanwhile, if the cops
Speaker 1: show up, which they often do because there's a large
Speaker 1: crowd congregated and the cops kind of know what's going on,
Speaker 1: sometimes the crowd keeps the cops at bay through various means,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure at various points this has been more
Speaker 1: and less militant, but a lot of it just literally
Speaker 1: means standing there so the cops can't get through you
Speaker 1: blocking the side of the breakers yeah ah, yes, so
Speaker 1: they can't see who's doing the actual yeah. Um. So
Speaker 1: then the door is open and immediately rush in. A bed,
Speaker 1: table and chair usually shows up on one of the
Speaker 1: box feeds and as well as barricading materials. The door
Speaker 1: gets repaired or at least barricade in such a way
Speaker 1: that can be held shut. Um, and now the building
Speaker 1: is occupied. Note about the door. So I recently heard
Speaker 1: this that in in French squatting there's like a small
Speaker 1: variation where um, the breaking in part is of course
Speaker 1: also illegal. Um, but so what they do there is
Speaker 1: they often they will just bring a new door and
Speaker 1: just that this has always been the real door, So
Speaker 1: this is being a replacement door. Show like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: all fine, it's nothing going on here, and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the surreal nous. For me, I'm used to police being, um,
Speaker 1: particularly aggressive people. Uh, the surreal nous is sometimes intense,
Speaker 1: where you know, it's the scuffle outside and then the
Speaker 1: door is broken open and then everything is inside, and
Speaker 1: then it's almost like someone's like time out, we're in
Speaker 1: and everyone's like oh okay, and then like everyone lets
Speaker 1: go of everyone else. And then um, you specifically invite
Speaker 1: two police officers to come inside the squad to come
Speaker 1: look and see that it was in fact empty. And
Speaker 1: the part that makes the least sense from an American
Speaker 1: perspective is that there's a belief that the cops will
Speaker 1: tell the truth in court about what they saw when
Speaker 1: they went inside the squad. Um. Yeah, but like and
Speaker 1: to establish this kind of trust also is very strange
Speaker 1: because the movement has just gone from like okay, we
Speaker 1: will do peaceful tactics, no confrontation, peace, peace, peace, and
Speaker 1: then you have like more more militant struggle. And this
Speaker 1: is like something that happens a lot. And then the
Speaker 1: next moment, okay, so we were settled, come have a look.
Speaker 1: See we fixed it all, um, and not only the
Speaker 1: trust between them, but also then like the attitude switch
Speaker 1: shift from like the police. It was like okay, like
Speaker 1: you said, like the time out and now we're doing
Speaker 1: this other thing. Now we're just seeing whether the right
Speaker 1: procedure has been followed. It's like the boys in blue
Speaker 1: also enjoy hop scotch. And yeah, I gotta admit this
Speaker 1: is the part that I if anyone in the US
Speaker 1: feels like they want to start squatting, more power to you.
Speaker 1: But don't use the specific tactics necessarily. Um. They look
Speaker 1: different in different places for different reasons and including different times. Right,
Speaker 1: Like we'll talk about a little bit later. This is
Speaker 1: no longer how you can do Dutch squatting. But okay,
Speaker 1: so now you have a house, um, and kind of
Speaker 1: in this simple mechanism of basically now you you move in,
Speaker 1: and now the real estate prospectors have to shift what
Speaker 1: they're doing and they as you're saying, wake the sleeping dragon.
Speaker 1: Um it. The squatters kind of in the early eighties
Speaker 1: started destroying the real estate speculation market and started forcing
Speaker 1: property owners to keep buildings in use. And so is
Speaker 1: this social good for the squatters because they get to
Speaker 1: keep a house for a while, But it was also
Speaker 1: social good for Dutch society more broadly because it keeps
Speaker 1: borhoods from going derelict. And there's this tension where some
Speaker 1: of the squads like, we don't give a ship about
Speaker 1: what's good for touch society more broadly. Um, but still
Speaker 1: fucking interesting. Um. So this again, like this is all
Speaker 1: sort of like like a reformist branch of it, where
Speaker 1: you say like, well, actually it's good. It's healthy for
Speaker 1: the for the housing market, and you can value that
Speaker 1: or not, but like, at least you can see that
Speaker 1: it's um at the very least, and you can use
Speaker 1: this also as an argument against people who are like
Speaker 1: saying like, oh, that's not okay. Um, you know, at
Speaker 1: least that can bring them in maybe that it is
Speaker 1: it is functional for that for that market. Um. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen that video how wolves change rivers? You
Speaker 1: ever seen that? So this story about like okay, you
Speaker 1: have your Semite park right, and there's uh and there's
Speaker 1: or like I think it's your Semiti park or some
Speaker 1: some big area and there's way too much like ah
Speaker 1: pis and they're some kind of heard some kind of
Speaker 1: herd animal um and there's no predator, so they go
Speaker 1: everywhere and they eat all the grass and they trample
Speaker 1: the ground, so the riverbeds get soft and the whole
Speaker 1: thing becomes like this big um swampy bog where not
Speaker 1: much else can live or at least like specific other stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's not that biologically diverse. And they introduced wolves
Speaker 1: and the wolves I think, so it's not it's not bison,
Speaker 1: like it's deer. There's this big these herds of deer
Speaker 1: and the wolves. There's only a few of them. But
Speaker 1: what they do is they forced the deer ah to
Speaker 1: be careful about certain spaces because they know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a this is an ambush spot. So if
Speaker 1: I stay there, they're gonna they're gonna get me. If
Speaker 1: I stay here too long, they're gonna get me. So
Speaker 1: they get more picky, they get quick on their feet,
Speaker 1: They avoid certain areas, and those areas trees come back
Speaker 1: because the young trees they can grow up without being
Speaker 1: graced to death. Yeah, and then in the trees different
Speaker 1: new animals, species get reintroduced, birds and stuff. Um. And
Speaker 1: it was find this a nice, nice metaphor for it
Speaker 1: because it shows like, um, if you if you prod them,
Speaker 1: if you say like you can't just get everything you want,
Speaker 1: then other things can blossom. Yeah, which is inating, but
Speaker 1: it also has this problematic side when you see like
Speaker 1: this reformist attitude towards squatting where people pretend like the
Speaker 1: I don't know, the helping to grow an art scene,
Speaker 1: like this is something that can be helped in this
Speaker 1: way through squatting, but it was never the point. And
Speaker 1: if you make that into the point, then it can
Speaker 1: be used against you as saying, but that's what it's about.
Speaker 1: We've made a new art program. So yeah, yeah, now
Speaker 1: that we don't care that you still can't find housing
Speaker 1: if you're poor or whatever, and like, um yeah, because
Speaker 1: like the point of it is the direct action. If
Speaker 1: it has symbolic benefits or other benefits that come out
Speaker 1: of it, that's not the Now that's interesting. And then
Speaker 1: so to start making this more concrete in the history
Speaker 1: of it on November one, in six adjacent seventeenth and
Speaker 1: eighteenth century buildings on a canal called Kaiser Rock got squatted,
Speaker 1: and the whole complex was called Groot Kaiser or Great
Speaker 1: Kaiser to distinguish it from Yeah, that one Kaiser. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call it Great Kaiser throughout to distinguish it.
Speaker 1: So there's another. I think there's another squad called the
Speaker 1: canal called the Little Kaiser. That's the best I could
Speaker 1: figure out, but I'm not entirely sure. Um, this is right,
Speaker 1: must must have been there so many. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: right in the center of Amsterdam, and about fifty people
Speaker 1: were living in Great Kaiser. All of the squads were
Speaker 1: first and foremost living places, right, because that was the
Speaker 1: whole point, And this one in particular was more of
Speaker 1: a flophouse for squatters and travelers. People coming through would
Speaker 1: would come stay here. Less than a year into the occupation,
Speaker 1: on October, the courts ordered the residents to leave, and
Speaker 1: they were given a month to get out. Most of
Speaker 1: them do most of them like all right, you got us,
Speaker 1: you know, time to go find another place to squad.
Speaker 1: But then the squatter movement of the city as a
Speaker 1: whole was like no, fuck it, We're going to move in.
Speaker 1: It's time to take a stand, it's time to fight eviction,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna make a symbol out of this place.
Speaker 1: So squatters from around the city move in and they
Speaker 1: barricade the compound and they decided to actively defend it.
Speaker 1: And this was a bit contentious because some squatters were like, no,
Speaker 1: staying mobile and flexible as our strength, we shouldn't defend
Speaker 1: a single place. This isn't about symbols whatever, and other
Speaker 1: people are like, no, we need to show that we're strong,
Speaker 1: right um. And some people, of course are like I
Speaker 1: will die to defend the Kaiser, which is really funny
Speaker 1: to type out, because um, you know, they mean something
Speaker 1: very different than most people say they will die to
Speaker 1: defend the Kaiser. So water beds were all the rage
Speaker 1: right in the Netherlands the early eighties. So people were
Speaker 1: throwing out their old mattresses and box springs left and right.
Speaker 1: The squatters started grabbing all the box springs off the
Speaker 1: street and then weld them over the windows of the squads.
Speaker 1: And I have never seen more ingenuity and fortifications than
Speaker 1: I have seen from Dutch squatters. Um. And and I
Speaker 1: want to be clear when I say Dutch squatters, I'm
Speaker 1: I mean squatters in the Netherlands rather than people who
Speaker 1: are necessarily like Dutch. Right, it was an international movement
Speaker 1: even at that time, and later, like there's this whole
Speaker 1: thing that's happened where there's like whitewashing of Dutch squatting
Speaker 1: culture because I think people realize that it like saved
Speaker 1: the city and is the reason there's art scenes and
Speaker 1: ship um, and so there's all of these like articles
Speaker 1: that are complete lives that are like in the beginning,
Speaker 1: all the squatters were good social minded Dutch who wanted
Speaker 1: rental properties. But then the evil internationalist anarchists showed up
Speaker 1: from all of the other countries and they were made
Speaker 1: violent and destructive and it's sorry it was violent, destructive
Speaker 1: international anarchists who saved your art scene. Like yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so there's a few things like a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of the radicals were not necessarily anarchists, like there
Speaker 1: were a lot of autonomous Marxists, etcetera. And more of
Speaker 1: the anarchists have remained, I think. Um, but it was
Speaker 1: was very mixed, but also not super white at all. Well,
Speaker 1: so the area that had like the most squads in
Speaker 1: Amsterdam during around this time was the southeast southeast the
Speaker 1: bellmot Um and this was squaded by mostly people from
Speaker 1: from Surinam. When after like the uh in Surinam gained independence,
Speaker 1: a lot of people were given the choice. People were
Speaker 1: giving the choice like where do you want to live
Speaker 1: in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people from Surinam came here um h and a lot
Speaker 1: of them were denied social housing on the basis of
Speaker 1: racism um and so a lot of them started squatting
Speaker 1: in the bellmot which is like almost like a separate
Speaker 1: chapter of the squading movement that it gets rarely gets
Speaker 1: talked about. Okay, no, yeah, that that is super interesting
Speaker 1: because yeah, everything I was reading at first would just
Speaker 1: be like and then the squatters did this, or even
Speaker 1: then then the Dutch squatters did this, and then it'll
Speaker 1: like kind of like as a throwaway line talk about
Speaker 1: people who weren't Dutch at all, you know. Um, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's histories are not always written, but the best way
Speaker 1: while the while the still concert arguments often remain the same. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's the people who aren't really Dutch who come here
Speaker 1: and make the trouble while everyone who's really Dutch would
Speaker 1: never do this, would never yeah, because you're supposed to
Speaker 1: love your country and your Yeah, whereas there are plenty
Speaker 1: of Dutch people who hated their country who are doing
Speaker 1: this too, you know. Yeah. So a month goes by,
Speaker 1: the month that the people at Great Kaiser are are there,
Speaker 1: and that the city doesn't fucking air move on the place.
Speaker 1: It is too well defended, and rumors start spreading about
Speaker 1: a huge police mobilization building up to evict it. Another
Speaker 1: month goes by and nothing. So the squatters are tired
Speaker 1: of waiting and they decided to go on the offensive.
Speaker 1: And what they declared d Day, a declaration of war
Speaker 1: on the city's politics. A hundred demonstrators from all over
Speaker 1: the city attack city council with fireworks and smoke bombs. Um.
Speaker 1: The whole attack only takes fifteen minutes, and I think
Speaker 1: maybe everyone got away. I couldn't find anything about anyone
Speaker 1: getting arrested at this action. Um. But you know what
Speaker 1: else will get you arrested buying goods and service. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: now let's do it different. Um. Okay, So we try
Speaker 1: to be on this show. We try to be sponsored
Speaker 1: only by very positive things. Um the our our longest
Speaker 1: standing sponsors, the concept of the potato on any individual brand. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm wondering if you have any um specific positive
Speaker 1: thing that you would like to be sponsored by this
Speaker 1: show being being Dutch, I already love the potato, but
Speaker 1: I would like to tack on this this the concept
Speaker 1: of deep frying things. Okay, okay, oh, yes, that is
Speaker 1: a that is a great sponsor. So so so our
Speaker 1: podcast is sponsored by the concept of frying things food
Speaker 1: specifically um and and and every everything else is wrong. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: deep fry. Also, there's your your appliances like my deep
Speaker 1: fryar so good and deep fried bits of deep fryer. Ah. No,
Speaker 1: that that makes a lot of sense. Okay, we are
Speaker 1: back from those ads all about the different things that
Speaker 1: you can deep fry. Every service or ad that you
Speaker 1: just heard you could deep frying. Yeah, including the podcasters.
Speaker 1: If it was ads for podcasters, you could deep fry
Speaker 1: the podcasters. H So at Great Kaiser they start stockpiling
Speaker 1: other things to deep fry, including rocks for throwing gas masks, fireworks,
Speaker 1: smoke bombs, and paint bombs. And if you're wondering how
Speaker 1: to make a paint bomb. In this style, you take
Speaker 1: a fist sized balloon, you dip it into wax, then
Speaker 1: you pull out the balloon. Then you fill the wax
Speaker 1: ball with paint, and you cap it off with more wax,
Speaker 1: and then you have a paint bomb. The squatters set
Speaker 1: up a pirate radio station called the Free Kaiser, the
Speaker 1: voice of the Squatters movement, and eventually the bed springs
Speaker 1: over the windows get replaced with welded together steel planks
Speaker 1: all held together by construction poles um, which is like this.
Speaker 1: The construction poles were everywhere. I I love them. They're
Speaker 1: just extendable poles. That the Bows Temple. Yeah, the Bows
Speaker 1: Temple and uh. One of the more ingenious things that
Speaker 1: the Great Kaiser Squatters did as they set up counter
Speaker 1: intelligence programs all over the city. They tracked the police
Speaker 1: people post themselves at police stations and at riot police
Speaker 1: training grounds, waiting to see if there was any sign
Speaker 1: of a raid on the squat. Hundreds of people waited
Speaker 1: on standby. Um. Every squatter and squat supporter in the
Speaker 1: city was part of the Squat Alarm Phone Tree, which
Speaker 1: was basically like, if you are a squatter, you care
Speaker 1: about squats you're on this phone tree, and if something happens,
Speaker 1: if the alarm goes out, everyone who can be fucked
Speaker 1: to get out of bed, gets their shipped together, gets
Speaker 1: on a bike and goes over to where the alarm is.
Speaker 1: I've seen that. I've seen a poster of that in
Speaker 1: a in a squad recently, well not in a legalized
Speaker 1: squad house, but um yes. So they had like the
Speaker 1: map of like going from like wherever is the main
Speaker 1: place you call to spread it, and then going into
Speaker 1: like the different areas, different branches, different groups. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was, Yeah, I was really impressed by the squat
Speaker 1: phone tree, which was still in place and in use
Speaker 1: twenty five years later after after this. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: was are all like house house phones like the landline. Um.
Speaker 1: So nowadays you will have like alarm signal groups or whatever,
Speaker 1: but back then it was like house of landless. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so since Amsterdam, I don't know if you knew this,
Speaker 1: but Amsterdam has a lot of canals in it, um
Speaker 1: Venice of the North. Yeah, yeah, there's almost as many
Speaker 1: canals as Venice. And it's like mostly known outside of
Speaker 1: Amsterdam first, like you know weed or whatever, but um,
Speaker 1: it canals very defining feature, and the center of the
Speaker 1: city is sort of a ring of canals, and so
Speaker 1: there's there's only so many bridges over the canals to
Speaker 1: get to the Great Kaiser. So what each neighborhood council
Speaker 1: did is take responsibility to block or barricade one of
Speaker 1: those bridges in whatever autonomous way that they saw fit
Speaker 1: good system as long as you don't have a bunch
Speaker 1: of people you're expecting to flake. If you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of people you're expecting to flake, this is not
Speaker 1: a good system. But the eviction kept not coming. Later
Speaker 1: it was learned that the mayor kept calling it off
Speaker 1: because it was too risky, which makes sense. It was
Speaker 1: too risky. They would have gone really badly if they
Speaker 1: tried to evict the Great Kaiser. In Jay, you were
Speaker 1: in a demonstration of three thousand people marched past all
Speaker 1: while people on the roof waves squatter flags and Sophie,
Speaker 1: do you know what the squatter flag looks like? I
Speaker 1: do not? Should I look it up? I mean like
Speaker 1: it's a flag with the squatter symbol on it. Do
Speaker 1: you know? The not to just put you on the spot,
Speaker 1: but have you seen the squatter symbol before. I've looked
Speaker 1: up what this looks like and uh is it? Is
Speaker 1: it like a lightning bolt end with an arrow on it?
Speaker 1: I like it? Yeah? Yeah, circle? Yeah? Um, so that's
Speaker 1: the squatter symbol. I was always really curious about where
Speaker 1: it came from, and this is where it comes Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the origin of that? Like it's so interesting, Okay,
Speaker 1: but it looks like it would be like a superhero's
Speaker 1: like every right on there. It's great. Nobody knows the
Speaker 1: origin of it, so there's getting embarrassed, like fun, I
Speaker 1: don't even know, but nobody knows. Yeah, he asked me.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, It's like, I'm just really excited
Speaker 1: about this part um because because I've I've wanted to
Speaker 1: know forever. I know so many people with the tattoo, like, right,
Speaker 1: and what it is is that? Um? Okay? So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a It's a circle with a sort of lightning
Speaker 1: boll tour end cutting through it that sticks out of
Speaker 1: the upper right with an arrow on the end on
Speaker 1: the extension out the arrow. Yeah. And I always got
Speaker 1: told it was nazis out, which is cool, but that's
Speaker 1: not what it originally was. And I'm like, that's cool
Speaker 1: but okay, yeah. Um, so in nine at the defense
Speaker 1: of the Great Kaiser Squad. Uh, it first got used
Speaker 1: and then it got quickly spread to Berlin and then
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. And the first incarnation was
Speaker 1: on a support poster and it was a straight arrow
Speaker 1: through a circle. Um. And there are only guesses as
Speaker 1: to what it means, which is really frustrating because there's
Speaker 1: a decent chance that whoever designed this is alive. This
Speaker 1: is only forty years ago, but it possibly the most
Speaker 1: common guess is that it comes from the American hobo
Speaker 1: symbol for keep going, which is but it could also
Speaker 1: have been derived from an older European rogue symbol, kind
Speaker 1: of from that like kind of thieves can't stuff we
Speaker 1: were talking about. Um, there's an illustrated language that goes
Speaker 1: back to the medieval era, and those symbols had started
Speaker 1: to die out by the beginning of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: but that they had a resurgence in the nineties because
Speaker 1: everyone was fucking poor and hobo symbols are cool and
Speaker 1: crime is cool sometimes. Um. Later it became a lightning bolt.
Speaker 1: And again there's like all of these like I've read
Speaker 1: academic papers about people trying to figure out how it
Speaker 1: became a lightning bolt, and all this ship um my theory,
Speaker 1: which is not supported by anything but me saying it
Speaker 1: is my theory. Around this time, and this part is true.
Speaker 1: Around this time, the theory of action and the squater
Speaker 1: symbol embrace. The lightning strike is what they called it.
Speaker 1: Instead of riots that would stick around and wait for
Speaker 1: the cops to come beat you up, all the squatters
Speaker 1: would target some specific building or whatever, show up in
Speaker 1: huge numbers, trash the place, and then funk off. And
Speaker 1: not all the lightning strikes were directly physical. Some of
Speaker 1: the targeted attacks that they would call lightning strikes were like, um,
Speaker 1: pissing the real estate prospector's mail slot at his house,
Speaker 1: or send him bed bugs in the mail, or order
Speaker 1: expensive things in his name delivered to his house, like
Speaker 1: send him a funeral wreath I think for himself. Um.
Speaker 1: The other most likely origin is that probably some designer
Speaker 1: was like, this looks cool and then went with it.
Speaker 1: It reminds me a bit of how like the anarchist cinema,
Speaker 1: like the circle A for anarchy is order, there's there's this,
Speaker 1: there's any like who who designed it? What? Some people said, Uh,
Speaker 1: Thomas Ibany is designed it UM and he recently wrote
Speaker 1: a book like anarchisms movement was quite nice UM. But
Speaker 1: he's known for denying that he did not that he
Speaker 1: UH in Paris during UH the uprising of May sixty eight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so's he's famous for saying he didn't design it, while
Speaker 1: other people disagree. I want I want the squatter symbol
Speaker 1: version of that. I want the guy to come out
Speaker 1: and say I didn't do it, but did you? So anyway,
Speaker 1: that's the squatters symbol. It's Great Kaiser too well defended
Speaker 1: for the police to attack. So in February eight the
Speaker 1: police start attacking the squatter movement, but not at the
Speaker 1: Great Kaiser. There's all these small skirmishes all over the country.
Speaker 1: There's arrest there's evictions of smaller squats. One such squad
Speaker 1: was the Bondlestrat. Also in the center of Amsterdam. On
Speaker 1: on Leap Day February, the police evicted some squatters from
Speaker 1: their home. The squatters didn't want to be evicted, so
Speaker 1: a head on clash between protesters and police ensued, and
Speaker 1: there's like rocks versus batons and tear gas and it's
Speaker 1: the first really intense use of violence by the squatters.
Speaker 1: I read later mainstream reports that claimed that the squatters
Speaker 1: used molotovs at this time, but I don't believe this
Speaker 1: is true because I have all of these I've read
Speaker 1: all these reports from squatters at the time about when
Speaker 1: they did decide to use molotovs about five years later,
Speaker 1: um as because of the violence against them had escalated.
Speaker 1: It was a very conscious decision. The violence that the
Speaker 1: squatters were using was always measured in a kind of
Speaker 1: impressive way. Um And they won. They drove back the police,
Speaker 1: and they retook their house. They took the entire intersection,
Speaker 1: and they held it over the entire weekend. The military
Speaker 1: came in. It took a thousand cops and soldiers with
Speaker 1: a literal tank and like helicopters of snipers and ship
Speaker 1: screaming stopper will fucking shoot you. Before they lost on Monday.
Speaker 1: Fifty cops were injured at that riot. I haven't found
Speaker 1: a record of the number of squatters who were injured
Speaker 1: because the report I found was from a mainstream perspective.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just want to make a UM, maybe
Speaker 1: it's gonna come up. There's at some point there's there's
Speaker 1: a building with like refrigerators on top and stuff getting
Speaker 1: to that, aren't you Huh Yeah, there's gonna be some
Speaker 1: refrigerators on top of some buildings at some point. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Dutch squiders are like some home alone and genius ship, um,
Speaker 1: but like just just underlying. So they drove off uh
Speaker 1: a thousand police and military who arrived with armored vehicles,
Speaker 1: so that they lost. Once a thousand police came, they
Speaker 1: won all weekend and so the state had to go
Speaker 1: gather their forces and show up several days later, um,
Speaker 1: in order to drive them off. And during all of this,
Speaker 1: the Great Kaiser still being defended. It's no longer a house,
Speaker 1: it's a fortress. The ground floor was barricaded so much
Speaker 1: that no natural light came in people. I think people
Speaker 1: defending this just like lost their goddamn minds and we're
Speaker 1: like this is it. I mean I would too write
Speaker 1: if I was in there, I'd be like, this is
Speaker 1: sucking it right. Um. People worked on the house all day.
Speaker 1: I think all night. People kept watch on the roof.
Speaker 1: But at their six months under threat mark, they threw
Speaker 1: a party in the street and they had like bands
Speaker 1: play on boats and the canals outside or the canal outside.
Speaker 1: They drew up multiple lines of defense, one behind the
Speaker 1: other in case of attack, like all of this ship
Speaker 1: that like is like straight out of like How to
Speaker 1: Defend a Fortress books from Sucking eighteenth century writers and ship.
Speaker 1: And at this point their counterintelligence extends outside the city.
Speaker 1: They have like centuries sucking everywhere looking for large movements
Speaker 1: of police. And in the midst of all of this,
Speaker 1: the Netherlands decides to crown a new queen. You might
Speaker 1: have heard of this, this woman. Have you heard of
Speaker 1: Queen Beatrix? Oh yes, yes, I have, actually surprising yeah
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, I'm such a loyalist. I still uh refused
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that the royal holiday it used to be
Speaker 1: Queen's Day has now become King's Day because her son
Speaker 1: take took the place. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah Queen's Day.
Speaker 1: Yeah I know. Wow. So, um so that was still
Speaker 1: before yeah, while the Kaiser was still being being like
Speaker 1: under threat in the siege. Yeah yeah, because she, um,
Speaker 1: she gets core. She gets crowned on April thirt and
Speaker 1: so that's like six months more more than six months
Speaker 1: into the Great Kaiser Defense. Queen Beatrix, I learned was
Speaker 1: married to a literal Nazi named Prince Coys served in
Speaker 1: the Nazi army. It was like, as officer, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: no big deal. It's not like no, no, no, marry
Speaker 1: the literal occupier of your country. Um, but that that's
Speaker 1: that's so, so, so terrible, Like the Netherlands says this
Speaker 1: weird sort of like progressive aura that it really doesn't deserve.
Speaker 1: And when you look at like the royal propaganda around
Speaker 1: around this stuff, it's it's just it's just crazy. Like
Speaker 1: people pretend like Dutch resistance in Second World War was
Speaker 1: like uh, mostly like patriots and people who thought like, oh,
Speaker 1: these Nazis, they're being so weird and modern and we
Speaker 1: just want our regular Dutch values, which is of course
Speaker 1: not not true. Like these these were all radicals. There
Speaker 1: were communists and anarchists, etcetera, mhm um, and there were
Speaker 1: like a few others. And then so like the longest
Speaker 1: running musical theater show in in the Netherlands is so
Speaker 1: that's for an Orangio Soldier of Orange, which is about this. Ah,
Speaker 1: it's like a royalist resistance fighter. Like if you look historically,
Speaker 1: he was someone who won once the war was over.
Speaker 1: Wanted to help Queen Beatrix's predecessor reinstate like an actual powerful,
Speaker 1: like near absolute monarch. Key, um, so new with all
Speaker 1: someone like defending democracy against Nazism or something. No, no,
Speaker 1: but they they just wanted to pick a name of
Speaker 1: like an important resistance figure to celebrate that wasn't a radical, right,
Speaker 1: Yeah that I wish that's no, go ahead, Yeah that's
Speaker 1: just today. You also see all these these photos circulating
Speaker 1: of Queen Elizabeth doing like the the Nazi salute. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it really does run in the family, I suppose. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wait were they related? All the queens and yeah this
Speaker 1: all incest on it? Yeah? Um, I was gonna say
Speaker 1: it's incest everywhere. Yeah yeah. And I ran across all
Speaker 1: this like girl boss ship about Beatrix, you know, like
Speaker 1: well she managed to become queen despite the laws that
Speaker 1: say eldest sons get priority in secession. So it's just
Speaker 1: the fucking and he was watching House of the Dragon
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones. It's just that some fucking girl boss
Speaker 1: ship where like now I get to be queen, um
Speaker 1: but without the dragons. Yeah yeah it sucks really kind
Speaker 1: of wigs. I know, I wouldn't put the wigs past,
Speaker 1: but not the silver down to your waist wigs, right, totally.
Speaker 1: Beatrix would totally rock rock like a wig if it
Speaker 1: was more like socially acceptable to change that and stuff,
Speaker 1: because she's like in this like conservative base. But like
Speaker 1: she she has like so many different hats all the
Speaker 1: time that like so many full time working like developing
Speaker 1: new hat technology just for clean Beatrix, like like I
Speaker 1: cannot imagine that she would not love to have like
Speaker 1: wigs everywhere, and like it's fascinators and boches and yeah
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. So the squatters are like, all right, we
Speaker 1: have a new campaign which I'm gonna ask you to
Speaker 1: say the name of it because it rhymes in Dutch.
Speaker 1: But the campaign is no house, no coronation. Yeah's famous
Speaker 1: slogan can voting came crowning, Um so English, come on,
Speaker 1: get it. Yeah. So no coronations, no crowning. Okay, no
Speaker 1: no living, no crowning. Yeah okay. And so it's like, look,
Speaker 1: if we don't have houses, you don't get to be
Speaker 1: fucking queen. You don't know housing, no crowsing from housing,
Speaker 1: no crowning. It's like almost rhymes yeah, okay, no housing,
Speaker 1: the crown okay, okay, And so they declared the whole
Speaker 1: month to be a month of action. They're like an April,
Speaker 1: we're going to disrupt the monarchist spectacle and open as
Speaker 1: many houses as possible. Um, And what's gonna happen with
Speaker 1: it is where we're gonna leave it today, because we're
Speaker 1: gonna leave it on the eve of the coronation where probably, uh,
Speaker 1: I think nothing bad happened. I think that Queen Beatrix
Speaker 1: was like a truly kind and beneficent benefit, like a
Speaker 1: Disney queen. Um, that's how it went right, Alex. Kind hearted, yeah,
Speaker 1: merciful sort of yeah. Yeah, she saved that Nazi. Yeah yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's she's forgiving, so forgiving. It's great. Yeah, we love her. Well,
Speaker 1: you can find out what happens if you listen to
Speaker 1: part two on Wednesday, Alex, do you have anything you
Speaker 1: want to plug? I do? I do um so you
Speaker 1: can you can find you can find me on the
Speaker 1: website on the stronge dot red um. So if you
Speaker 1: know anybody who's Dutch or knows Dutch and can listen
Speaker 1: to it Dutch language radical stuff. If you know, like
Speaker 1: a Dutch person who said, oh, there's only liberal stuff
Speaker 1: here or no, but Audion Lubach is really really radical
Speaker 1: organ is really really important. Now send them to on
Speaker 1: the stone into death. Also on Instagram. Um. But the
Speaker 1: real thing I would like to uh plug more importantly
Speaker 1: is the soon upcoming Anarchist Book Fair of Amsterdam, which
Speaker 1: will feature this year for the sixth year in a row.
Speaker 1: And it's like grown to be like the biggest radical
Speaker 1: event of the year in the Netherlands despite the pandemic.
Speaker 1: And it's it's uh in the last weekend of October
Speaker 1: of October, so if you can make it there, if
Speaker 1: you're in the area, drop by. Its two days Saturday
Speaker 1: and Sunday. UM find information on Anarchist Book Fair Amsterdam
Speaker 1: dot black blogs dot org, or find them on Facebook
Speaker 1: and Insta with the same name you recommend. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was gonna go and then I um got a dog.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, but someday I we'll go and Margaret you
Speaker 1: have a book coming out, correct I do? Yeah? Direct?
Speaker 1: Did you is this the one that you ghost wrote
Speaker 1: for me? This is the one that my dog Anderson
Speaker 1: ghost right, you can find um the book we Won't
Speaker 1: be Here Tomorrow written by Anderson the Dog or me. Um,
Speaker 1: you can. I don't know I'm going with this joke.
Speaker 1: It's coming out from a k Press September, which is soon. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's really soon. It might even be in the past. No,
Speaker 1: I think it will be in the future. If you
Speaker 1: listen to this one it first comes out, um, and
Speaker 1: then you can read all kinds of weird stories and
Speaker 1: if you you have to pre order it in order
Speaker 1: to get the little cool art piece that as Sandra,
Speaker 1: the cover artist drew for it. So that's a reason
Speaker 1: to pre order it. And we will talk to you all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: talks to you next time. Cool People Who Did Cool
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media, but more
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