First demonstration by new fascist party

Searchlight, April 2004

The fascist Nationale Alliantie (NA) announced its first demonstration, at the beginning of February, in support of a demand for the release of the Cees Gardien, who is in jail awaiting his trial for killing Yapcup Yuruyucu, a Turkish immigrant alleged to have robbed the garage firm owned by Gardien who is wheelchair-bound and an invalid.

Though the march, in The Hague on 21 February, was advertised on many right-wing web fora, only 25 fascists turned up on the day.

Jan Teijn

The NA is a split from the New National Party (NNP), which has partly moved into yet another right-wing extremist outfit, NieuwRechts, and which still has, partly, retained an independent existence. Recently, there have been defections by high-ranking NNP members to the NA whose leader is Jan Teijn, a veteran extremist.

Teijn kicked off his fascist career in the Centrum Democraten in Rotterdam and then went over to CP'86, where he was a member of a national socialist faction and, in the end, got himself elected for the NNP in the city's council in the Feijenoord district, a seat he still holds.

When Teijn is not busy with party politics and factioneering, he is marching in support of the SS in Belgium or is touting nazi paraphernalia or hate music on his website.

Ton Hoogduin

The NA demonstration represented a strange cross-section of the Dutch fascist scene, with people from the board of the NNJ, the NNP's youth wing, together with the leader of the Jonge Fortuynisten in the Hague region, the youth section of the right-wing populist List Pim Fortuyn. In charge of security at the demonstration was the NA's own security chief, Ton Hoogduin, the former bodyguard of late Centrum Democrat leader Hans Janmaat. Hoogduin achieved notoriety as a football hooligan of ADO Den Haag and once hurled a nail bomb on a crowded stadium terrace.

Peter van Egmond and Wim Beaux, who defected to the NA some weeks ago and now form, together with Ton Steemers, the leadership of the NA's North Netherlands region, carried one of the two banners. These three racists have between them also a lengthy political history.

The demonstration ended after 30 minutes with a speech by Teijn, who raged at Anti-Fascist Action because it had dared to attempt - unsuccessfully - to prevent the demonstration by sending an open letter, exposing the fascists behind this march and calling for it to be banned, to the city council and mayor.

Shortly before the demonstration ended, Michael Krick, a notorious nazi from Germany but living in the Netherlands, dropped by to take a look. The oft-convicted Krick, currently active in Eite Homan's Aktiefront Nationaler Socialisten, was extradited to Germany for possessing hate music and displaying nazi symbols at a demonstration, but was released last year.

The NA's future will probably be no different from other breakaway factions. It is already quarrelling with almost everybody in sight and seems to have attracted some activists who are infamous for causing factional strife in other parties.

The NA is not alone in cobbling together strange marches in The Hague. On 23 January, a 40-strong ragbag of right-wing extremists took part in a march, organised by JongRechts, the youth organisation of NieuwRechts, under the slogan "Less violence, more order".

From the right to the left: Jong-Rechts chairman Koen Berghuis, former CD-parliamentarian Wim Elsthout, NieuwRechts chairman Michiel Smit, Antonia Viljac (deputy-chairwoman NieuwRechts), and joint-organizers Peter Reedijk and Bert Wienk (alias John Sturges). Behind Wienk are walking Paul Peters and Alwin Kerkhof from the NNP.

This march, like the NA's parade a month later, used law and order slogans in a bid to exploit feelings of unease amongst white people following the shooting of Hans van Wieren, a teacher at the Delta school in The Hague, by a young Turkish boy, identified only as Murat D.

By Jeroen Bosch of Alert! and Antifa-Net in Utrecht