Werewolves in the Netherlands

Searchlight, september 2003

Nazis are trying to step up their intelligence gathering against their 'enemies' in the Netherlands. The first signs of this development emerged about 18 months ago with the Internet appearance of a shabby website bearing the title Weerwolf Nederland.

The site, publishing data on "the enemies of National Socialism", was an initiative of the notorious Aktiefront Nationale Socialisten (ANS), one of the Netherlands' oldest extremist organizations, proclaimed that its aim "is to inform political soldiers about their enemies" and boasts that "Weerwolf Netherlands is a part of the World Wide Anti-Antifa".

For many years, the ANS has been under the under the command of veteran nazi Eite Homan and his disciples see themselves as "revolutionary national socialists" and define their enemies as migrants, Jews, anti-fascists and representatives of the state whom they dub "system slaves".

During its short existence, Weerwolf has not really become a serious medium of nazi communication but that does not make its the development any less striking. In the period immediately after its launch, the website was filled with often inaccurate information about police officers and anti-fascists from all over Europe and a long list with Jewish organizations in the Netherlands.

Since those early days, however, the site has developed and begun to focus more on the Netherlands, listing the names of political opponents, featuring pages with pictures of alleged enemies and ending with a few pages of political propaganda.

Almost 90% of Weerwolf's list of political years-old register of the addresses and telephone numbers of members of the Dutch Parliament.

Another example of the nazis' stupid and paranoia at a demonstration of the Nederlandse Volks Unie (NVU) in Rotterdam. Also among the photographs, are those of a Dutch National Broadcasting reporter and the host of a children's TV program on television.

Of course, one can hope that representatives of the indeed enemies of National Socialism and Homan and the ANS are more than capable of drawing that conclusion, but the questions are whether the inclusion of some of those photographed was intentional and whether the innocent are being set up for attack.

Since the NVU's demonstration flop in Apeldoorn on 8 March, the Weerwolf site has become even more sinister. On the day, police penned in the NVU's travelling mob of louts at a petrol station for several hours. During this time, a lot of people were walking around the scene and photos of them later appeared on the Weerwolf site under the title "Leftists and undercover agents". Strangely, among the gallery of facial shots was one of an NVU activist who had clearly been pointed out by his idiotic playmates as a "slave of the system". Also there and mistakenly identified, as an employee of the regional secret service in Rotterdam was a cameraman from Dutch TV.

Some months ago, Weerwolf launched a new project, called "Jews in the Netherlands". On this page, according to Weerwolf, there are numerous photos of well known Dutch, from who they think are Jews. This hate material has aroused a lot of media attention and demands from the Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) that Weerwolf's authors should be criminally investigated and prosecuted in the Netherlands as well in the USA where the site is physically located. CIDI, it should be noted, has been targeted by Weerwolf before, complete with calls to eradicate it "to the bone".

Weerwolf's aim is to threaten not only its usual opponents but also, bizarrely, potential sympathizers of the NVU and the ANS, a fact shown by the publication of photographs from a demonstration in support of the war against Iraq by the Nieuw Rechts party. Weerwolf declares, "There will be no cooperation with Jews and we can never be in favor of an imperialistic America" and Bas de Man, one of Weerwolf's photographer's comments on the demonstration: "There were a lot of people from the NVU and the NNP there. They have to be hanged from the highest tree, if you ask me."

For many traditional right-wing extremists, Weerwolf's public embrace of Islamic movements like Hezbollah and Hamas is very hard to understand, given the general anti-immigrant hatred promoted by the NVU, but the nazis are so enthusiastic to link themselves to these organizations that at the end of last year they praised a Palestinian suicidal bomber as a heroine on the site.

The key people behind Weerwolf are, besides Homan, the photographer Johan van Enk who has been active, mainly in the now outlawed CP'86, since the early 1990s. Van Enk is present at almost every extreme right-wing demonstration and public activity in the Netherlands as well as having been an attendee at the IJzerbedevaart in Diksmuide and at a Rudolf Hess march in Denmark.

Worryingly, he also turned up at a anti-war demonstration in Amsterdam and tried to take pictures of the marchers but was recognized and physically removed from the demonstration.

Another Weerwolf photographer is the nazi skinhead Dave Blom who also had a career in CP'86 and was more recently a singer with the hate music bands Landstorm and Brigade M. Blom got his two minutes of fame when he damaged and spray painted a Jewish cemetery in the The Hague at the end of 1999.

One of Blom's pals, the above-mentioned de Man, is also a keen Weerwolf photograph. De Man is active in the Dutch skinhead scene and was formerly involved in the nazi Gabber outfit Stormfront Nederland.

Finally, yet another of the Nazis' photographers is NVU member Patrick de Bruin who used to active in the NNP. De Bruin was responsible for the photos of opponents at an NVU demonstration in Apeldoorn on 17 May.

The issue now is: what can be done against Weerwolf?

At present, two cases have been filed against the website, one concerning Weerwolf's call "to eradicate CIDI" and the other centred on the website's theft of copyright photographs for its "Jews in the Netherlands" pages.

This latter move might work. The server Weerwolf is run from a nazi provider in the United States and propaganda on the site cannot be prosecuted, unless it is clear who is responsible for publishing it. The provider also has protection under the American constitution's free speech First Amendment but the provider is, nevertheless, legally responsible for copyright abuses via their server and thus an action over copyright violations might get a more positive result.

By Jeroen Bosch of Alert! in Utrecht