The squatters' movement, for me as an outsider, formed an intense yet chaotic united front of people among whom no disparities existed. This uniform solidarity was more than just a trompe-l'oeil-effect caused by the equalizing visual overkill which an intently riotous mass or an enthusiastic horde rocking by creates. It always had to do with the fact that they actually looked the same.

The clothing of the movement looked sexless (thus “masculine”), dirty and ripped. There were hard patches and nasty stains on it, PLO shawls, thick mountain shoes and motorcycle jackets went with it, and it was complemented by a strong-smelling blend of gasoline, sweat and beer traces. Except for the short, black, real leather jackets, the squatters' dress did not distinguish itself from the big-city street fashion of drug addicts and alcoholics. Just as the outfit of wandering junkies and drunks, through falling and getting up from obstacles like the gutter, acquires just that extra touch whereby it differs from the by-the-kilo fashion of the welfare-case lumpenvolk, so the squatters' clothing acquired its antisocial aura simply by going out squatting. Whichever parts the brought-from-home basis collection was assembled out of, through DIY, pulling, pushing, lugging and the squatters' slapstick and art, it was unavoidably transformed into a complete squat wardrobe.

Squat dress resembled the work clothes of miners, chimney sweeps and tanker cleaners. It looked at least as rough and filthy, only it couldn't be traded in after work for a designer sweat suit. Because the movement was against social power strategies, like the division between the boss' time and free time. There were no fixed working hours, or something like that.

Squat dress also borrowed something from survival equipment. It too was all-purpose clothing, could stand a skirmish, was designed for every atmospheric fluctuation and was non-seasonal. While the survival uniform actually sets out to be able to stand a confrontation with the elements of wild nature, squatters' dress was intended to withstand the material dialogue with the elements of big city power culture in a reasonable way. During the disinterested staking of one's own body and the throwing of household articles, the displacement of furniture from the street and the lighting up of homemade projects, the heavily falling-to-pieces and many-layered squatters' clothing offered direct protection against the city's obtrusive powers.

Although squat dress was from the street and afforded one an identity, it did not become a fashion. It differed in this way from punk attire and the working-class look. Because the last two made up a part of squat dress, we can talk of some scene formation inside the movement. Thus the self-conscious corduroy jacket of the public park service could become an anti-society garment. Fashion is that which can be bought in clothing stores. Where fashion always socializes, squat dress was not available in stores, and was thus antisocial. It hung nowhere, lay nowhere, but sat in garbage cans. It demonstrated besides a maximum of bourgeois impropriety, and this free of charge at the cost of the taxpayers' community. Squat dress was more than action clothing; it was itself an action.

If squat dress wasn't social, what was it? With its dark looks it brought to mind the national-socialist fashion hues. Nevertheless, the movement attached no value to its dress and, as I see it, dissociated from it in cases of panic, while the fascist suit is a strictly personal, symbol-plastered parade costume from which separation is psychologically difficult.

ADILKNO's Movement Teachings makes no attempt to legitimatize crowd spectacles after the fact by giving them a social twist. Neither is it a history book, though it's chock full of bizarre and absurd anecdotes; it is above all a textbook in which the concepts of mass and movement are set against each other chapter by chapter according to the method of applied casuistry. The Teachings are thus prevented from turning into social therapy. This is also how they have escaped being theoretical acrobatics. The theory, the Movement Teachings, is radically raked away and swept together in the opening and closing chapters. What remains of theory in the chapters in between is the manner in which certain events are or are not described, and the connections between the different descriptions. Through this “absence” of theory the engrossing stories which thus arise achieve a remarkable clarity. At the same time the Movement Teachings are distinguished by a swift pace. They produce a racket bringing to mind the bells and whistles of the squatters' acid house parties, while in contrast the new social theory prefers the silence of the funeral chamber. The smoke which the Movement Teachings (like any good theory) expel smells not of incense, myrrh and gold dust, but of tear gas, tires and mattresses. The smoke of the movement is not a cloud masking its shortcomings, but a signal that something's going on. And we are there.

Ulrum, January 1990

The movement of 1980 appeared at the historical moment when the media had been introduced and accepted and were stepping into their phase of total hegemony. Without being aware of it, this movement flourished outside the reach of the media. For the construction of its structures it did not need the media. Its appeal could, moreover, not be expressed by any organ of the press. Literally everything which is said and written about it misses the mark. The "injustices, insinuations and pure lies" that have been spread about the squatters' movement over the years were intended to summon it to pronounce a truth about itself. That it ultimately complied, however, actually proves nothing. Once something extra-medial is exposed to the media, it begins to become something else.

Characteristic of the post-World War II free west is the disappearance of the crowd, which lives in the street and can suddenly form itself into an entity that can actively perform. From the beginnings of the modern city, crowds of people had hung around in streets everywhere. They were alternately stirred up or kept in check through the use of them as bearers of that which is socially imaginary, whether in the form of revolutionary or as bit player. This danger of the mass as fascist horde or communist proletariat is now being banished by the democratic community through the universal introduction of the media which were developed in the war: automobile traffic and television. Since the 1950s the collective fantasy has been weaned from the historic question within the city's ambiance and focused on mass traffic on the freeways outside the city, where every individual can live out his longings toward space. The crowds of people in the street are being conditioned not to see themselves as a group with the potential for independent action.

The pedestrians have become part of a stream of traffic which may not stand still, must keep circulating. The individual moves as a singular part in this stream. The other becomes a hindrance instead of a potential ally: meetings no longer take place in the street. The ideal of free circulation gets allotted a vector besides, in the form of automobility. Regulated traffic gives the stream a direction. This offers the individual traffic participant the security of being part of a collective project: the conquering of space, freedom of movement without obstacle. When one has taken one's place in the cabin, the other users of the road lose their reality as people who are capable of anything. They are absorbed into the only remaining reality, that of traffic as continuous movement. In both cases, on foot and in the vehicle, the crowd no longer perceives itself as a crowd, but as a medium for transport from a to b.

The free flow of information on television transforms reality one step further. With the introduction of the picture tube the vanished real crowd of street- and highway-users is replaced by the imaginary crowd of the fellow viewers. In order to function the television must evoke an imaginary reality on two levels. On the one hand, it asks the viewers to suppose a reality behind the screen; on the other, one is required to see oneself as part of an audience that is tuned in in every living room. In the imaginary crowd the other is thought up, while with the real crowd the other is swept along.

When the movement of '68 rediscovered the crowd as a potential revolutionary subject, it assumed that this crowd still existed. It had to establish that, insofar as formation of a crowd can still be spoken of, it appears only in the forms of "merge" signs and viewer ratings. This imaginary crowd was designated a consumer society, against which it subsequently went to battle with consciousness-altering substances, from mentality-affectors to terrorist bombings. In addition it turned on the TV for a phenomenon that dated from the age of the newspaper: the action, performed with an eye to the press hounds, which must turn into a media event.

Yet in the 60s the real crowd also came to the surface of history a few times. There are moments at which a crowd, whether of laborers or chance passers-by, without premeditated council becomes overwhelmed by a desire. This desire manifests itself by establishing that people are waiting for something. When the sign is given, we know what for: the event which is brought about by the crowd in order to get rid of its desire at one time. This event can be prepared for or thought out, but distinguishes itself, following an initiating action, by a chain
reaction which exceeds all original intentions. First the event is induced, and it subsequently takes things over from the actors. The usual tree diagram of cause and effect is then abruptly replaced by a causality carousel of incidents and stories in which cause and effect turn out to be interchangeable. The event thus acquires a fatal character: it will happen this way, and not otherwise; it is one-time, local, ecstatic. During the event a compression of time occurs; it takes on an intensity whereby past and future fade into insignificance. It appears as the intrusion of the present on the plodding advance of history. It is an unexpected return of an earlier reality, which is thus experienced as primeval reality. The wholesale chaos during a street riot is experienced by the crowd as an elementary reality, which, independent of the progression of the civilization process or the state of the technological culture, proves indestructibly current.

During such an event, the meeting takes place between the strangers who populate the city. The crowd, which as a stream of traffic had become invisible to itself, recognizes itself anew and reacts as such: it rediscovers its reality in a concrete form. The individuals who, according to Canetti, overcome their fear of touch in the crowd, meet each other as bodies and embrace that experience at once. And this while in the daily order the other was merely an image, a collection of advertising messages regarding lifestyle, status, sexuality, subculture. The accumulation of characteristics everyone makes of himself loses its disciplining impact on the spot. The meeting is an event without closer acquaintance. People just bump into each other and the energy released by this collision gives direction to the further course of events. Others whose existence you had never suspected declare themselves, unasked, in solidarity with your actions, and add through their extreme normality one more scoop on top of the oddity of the whole situation. However exceptional the damage caused in the stories that make the rounds later, the concrete incidents are shorter-lived than the ultimate surprise at how in the world this could have happened. The chain reaction has surpassed every initiating action. The amazement over this can be hardened into a nostalgic attitude, which demands that the events of the good old days, having become inconceivable, will not happen again. But it can also be transformed into the radiance of the promise that the adventure can be relived, that the same event can be staged more times, from beginning to end, but by us ourselves.

The audio-visual media are traffic vehicles like any other. They, like train, auto and plane, produce moving images of an outside world with which we can make no direct contact. The users of the road and the TV screen, closed up in a comfortable cabin or salon, are plugged into the accelerated images with such force that it presents itself to them as a unique, individual viewing experience. Seated on the throne from which they can survey the world, their image of the world is divided into fragments by the constantly changing camera angle. It takes a thorough education to convince them that there are more participants in this traffic who must be taken into account. Reality only returns in the event of a catastrophe: a collision, interference or a blackout. For the rest, everything is imaginary, on the tube or through the windshield, not untrue or unreal, but autonomous. In the TV image the real crowd has not disappeared, but has been reduced to an audience which is shown as scenery for the media spectacle, in order to enhance its realistic effect. If that audience is left out, due to flood or fire, then it will spontaneously show up a day after the event to claim its right to exist in the capacity of tourists of disaster.

The media hunt for the event, which is experienced by a real crowd, to bring it into a scenario on which the crowd itself has no grip: the media event. The reality factor of the original event here appears as the amusement factor of the spectacle, which has no other purpose than to keep the viewers tuned in. The media event is directed news, and can always take a different course than was anticipated, independently of the cameras present. It can be repeated infinitely, in slow motion if necessary. It is global, can be received worldwide; it has no exclusive bond with the place where it happened, does not know the local experience. There is no chain reaction of incidents which branch out in all directions to ultimately spin around. In the media event a flow of items is set into motion, everything gradually rolls together into one single image which will function as a symbol. Whereas the event acquires an ecstatic character, the aura of the media event stays limited to the broadcast itself. It does not compress time, but strives for a permanent timeliness. Insofar as it leads to anything, it leads to the subsequent media spectacles. What's attractive is that it's fully without consequences for the viewers, "risky but comfortable." It derives its impact not from the attack of the present on the rest of time, but from its instantaneous omnipresence, the guarantee that it's receivable worldwide and really being watched. Without viewers there is no media event; the imaginary crowd of the people at home lends the festive character to what would otherwise have just been news. Without this mediumistic extra the viewer immediately gets the feeling of being tuned to the wrong channel.

The media create the space in which the imaginary crowd is called into being. While everyone's individually busy with his own media consumption, the media carry out the ideology of contact. They offer information about the world as shown by them, without strings concoction instead of connection. The media are not out to communicate, but to alienate. They are in capable of making from the most mundane incident a strange spectacle, by conjuring the item's place into a location. But when the audience turns its back on such a media event and starts waving at the camera, this is censored with an instantaneous change of camera angle, because interaction with the media disturbs the reality effect. The contact brought about by the media is by definition mediatized, and thus never more than an introduction, a flood of data. In the media we can get introduced to everything and everyone, but meeting them is not included. The meeting, after all, only feeds off the information exchange; it takes place itself on another level, in the shadow of communication. The meeting is data-free; that gives it its unthinkable quality. It is collision, disturbance of the everyday existence, destruction of nostalgia and promises; it happens, all at once, instantly. "This meeting will not be televised."

The material passed on to the movement teachings concerns squatting in the Netherlands during the last twelve years or so. Characteristic of it was that it stubbornly tried to withdraw itself from the decade of which it undesiredly and unavoidably was a part. The miracle of the movement squatters was that they, on the threshold of the media era, successfully indulged in an extra-medial reality and kept the memory of it alive, in a time when that level of reality was supposed to have long since disappeared.

Squatting was originally nothing more than breaking open a door. Moving into living space without the required permits was considered a fairly normal thing to do. It was done in connection with family or neighbors and caused little stir because it had been happening since the 1960s, and according to some even as early as 1945. No one got excited, except the future residents of the house. No police or mass-journalism stepped in. Everything usually quieted down again quickly.

When things changed in the late 1970s, in that people began to squat without direct relations in or with the neighborhood, that too remained hardly sensational. Though sometimes fifty buildings slated for demolition were broken into in a few months and newly refurbished for inhabitation, the press still couldn't get excited about it. It had little interest in the squatters, and ditto the other way around. Insofar as squatters in a neighborhood engaged in publicity, it consisted of self-copied information and posters. Squatting stood for nothing; it did not present itself as a social protest begging for attention. It was not a resistance, fight or reaction, but the beginning of something new: the insight that, apart from the political belief in rules, concrete problems can be solved practically. This shock released a true craving for the event, under the motto "from the one comes the other."

Talking over the squat, its preparation and execution, the hookup of the telephone for the alarm network, the collective home repair jobs, keeping police or landlords out of the way - that was all part of such an event: a slow, unsurveyable, gradually accelerating series of meetings with people about whom you found out nothing else except that they would show up in the event it was necessary. These unexpected convergences released the energy with which the craving for the event was transformed into actions. The meeting gave the assurance that you could do almost anything: "Happy Go Lucky Squatting." When you'd let things go fully to hell, you could always phone up for the protection offered by the other from the shit you'd brought on yourself. The aura you had collectively conjured up around yourselves produced the triumphant feeling of being able to survive an event. This aura consisted of the potential crowd of the fellow squatters, the sum total of all those ready and willing, who appeared on certain exclusive occasions as a real crowd at the door waiting for trouble.

In the riot the slow progression of the squatting event in a neighborhood runs at an accelerated pace. The chain of incidents at the beginning of the open-air play had to be brought about piece by piece in order to keep things going, but when the chain reaction gets underway, time is compressed to a series of fragments of maximal intensity. This moment arose when the potential crowd of squatters appeared in the street for a demonstration or a (re)squat and there spontaneously turned into an open crowd to which every bystander could find a connection. The riot also took the media authorities by surprise; they could only come running in after the fact, and this drove the rioters away. This riot is sovereign, because it is not performed for the eye of the media, it strives after no propagandist goals, is not aimed against bosses or the state, but shrieks over the street for its own sake and ultimately leaves its participants behind in the freedom of surprise and the shiver of panic. Afterwards you watch the TV news and the papers are studied for their the pretty pictures. The reports and commentaries were not skipped over, but were written in a language which simply had nothing to do with it. "Hardening," "alienation of progressive people," "future of the constitutional state," "marginalization." No debate got going with the well-meaning "leftist press," either, because it continued to see the "squatters' revolt" through the lenses of its own past. Thus the event, withdrawn from the eye by the cloud of media, is recorded in pictures and stories that will do service for years to come. This was how the original actions entered the imaginary stage.

In the vacuum between event and picture-story the feeling of movement arises. This shared perception balances on the border between an extra-medial, untransferable experience and the realization that this outrageous occurrence, too, will unavoidably be registered in the journalistic exposes. It is the feeling that something is set into motion, without being clear what that thing is and what direction it's taking. It is uncertainty about the range of the experiences, about the extent of the damage caused in the bourgeois consciousness. But a painful apprehension goes along with it, that you have become a movement, that the growth of the open crowd has been called to a halt, its extent becoming measurable for police and opinion pollers. This course of history was countered by planning the next demonstrations, by creating the circumstances in which the chain reaction can get going once more, through the readiness to be carried away by a chain of events which will go in unforeseen directions. Coming events get anti-medial characteristics this way. They will try as hard as they can to withdraw from the film-eye, or won't be able to care less about it at the moment supr·ä·me. Cameras become associated with police spies and evidence, and because of that are required to be cut from the action.

But the longing to see the real crowd grow again can also be a reason to direct the focus towards the imaginary crowd. The latter was at the time designated "the public opinion," which could not be repelled with overly rough images. Otherwise "the sympathisers" would stay home or even turn "against us." This attentiveness to keeping hold of the approval of the real supposed population shifted as it went to concern for the interest of the snapshot - and gossipmongers themselves. They too had slowly but surely become old acquaintances. At the same time the notion of a public opinion began to become vague. The term coincided unnoticed with what until then had been called "the press" and would ultimately become "the media" as such. The media do not so much consist of a collection of press contacts, but form rather the unconscious knowledge that the image- and sound-carriers are only tuned in in the case that the events are staged sufficiently media-genically. Through this the media become a bloc, a notion in singular. The media is the realization that everything is registered, but that only a few fragments will become items.

From out of the feeling of movement, one was in the first instance suspicious about the swift introduction of the title "squatters' movement" in the media, in analogy with workers, students, women and the environment. There was a fear that you would be required to use the term to give direction, scope and substance to your own screwing around, while it had only just begun. In the beginning it was obvious that this term suggesting one body was an imaginary quantity, the senselessness of which was most sharply proven by the allegation that you could join it. It was also clear that "the squat movement" had to be a closed subculture, intended to scare others away, and thus ultimately part of the press campaign for the "criminalization of squatters." When you felt forced to speak Newsspeak, you were inclined to pointedly avoid the word; you preferred to sign as, for example, "the assembled Amsterdam squat groups" which were aimed "At All Amsterdam People." People who spoke "in the name of the squat movement" or about "the squatters' movement" fell flat on their faces. Terms of this sort were only used ironically.

But it is unavoidable that eventually a certain pattern is discovered in one's own behaviors. They not only act on each other, but interfere as well. Knowledge concerning police methods and the mentality of news-gatherers plays as important a role in this as the neighborhood experiences, riot experiences, knowledge of the outlay of the city and organizational structures. Once this sort of pattern is discovered, a frame of reference arises in which future "axions" are evaluated a priori on their feasibility and the degree of hassle you bring down on yourself with it. Slowly but surely your own activities are thus given a goal, and the diffuse whole inside which you operate is given a substance, which crystallizes into a code of behavior. In scarcely a year's time the squatters had acquired a service record for which, if
no compression of time had taken place, in a manner of speaking should have taken years of busting ass. All those elements counted together gradually became, in the inside language too, equated with "the squat movement." This is aimed at the conservation of the codes of behavior and prevents them from someday disappearing. The squat movement comes into being when squatters are no longer overcome by a desire for events, but choose to "go on." That becomes the goal.

In the Netherlands of the 1980s, the picture the press has of its own end products becomes an integral part of the information offered. The theory of relativity finds general acceptance in the media: reality changes through observation. The media no longer see themselves as a mirror of reality or as the truth behind public opinion. Press personalities, who with all their technical prostheses put themselves on the screen ever more professionally, use the media to make it clear to the public that news is a product. We can see and hear every day that the media, like other consumer goods, are manufactured according to the industrial/creative process. The worth of the product is evaluated according to its speed, uniqueness, aesthetic and apocalyptic qualities - in short, its topicality - and proven through its viewer ratings - its amusement value. If an event wants to appear in the media, it must meet these requirements.

The squatters who got caught up in a series of events, spectacular or not, had experienced them firsthand and knew that everything depicted about them in the media was a fraud - and that there was a method to the madness. The list of demands the media were imposing on themselves was intuitively felt to be the standards "registrations" had to meet in order to become news. With those rules there was a game to be played; for example, making authority and order look jerky. The media itself too, after all, handled these things as attack-weapons. And the media caste loved to be considered so important. The real crowd, which had once raised hell in the street, became an imaginary factor to be taken into account in politics, media and squat bar. The coming-out of the media occurred in interplay with the activists' entrance into media-reality. By notifying the press agencies in advance about forthcoming events, it was guaranteed that the reporters too would be on location on time. They demanded in return that mediumistic pictures could be shot. The code of correct squatters' behavior, which after the compressed time of the first events became the notion of "the squatters' movement," began to coincide with the code for correct media performance.

The made-to-fit-the-media incident is the action. This is presented for an imaginary audience watching over the shoulders of the press agents. While a riot takes over the space it races through, an action is a small explosion in the emptiness of normality. If the medial gleam is absent, then it quickly becomes a painfully embarrassing display. It must be said emphatically, however, that this does not mean that the actions were "soft." To be able to continue penetrating the overfed medial consciousness of the viewers at home, the activists found that their deeds had to become more and more direct and concrete, or give the appearance of being such. The "hard action" became the trademark of the squat movement; its effectiveness could be measured against the conquered media-minutes. The free publicity for their own style of action had the unavoidable spin-off that, for example, squatting became a tourist attraction that appeared in the world press, municipal propaganda and travel brochures.

A remarkable distance gradually arose between everyday squatting and the media event for which the action provided the pictures. Even if you'd been involved the whole day, at home for dinner you were outside once more. You yourself were then part of the imaginary mass at whom your heavy action was aimed. The medial space was elsewhere, somewhere you went, on your bicycle. If people felt part of "the squat movement," it became, through the creation of the image which it called down upon itself, imaginary itself.

This was the moment at which the dropouts showed up and gave in radically to the desire to definitively disappear from the stage. A second group was made up of those who wanted to go on, who figured they were able to assume a new form by changing the existing structures and using them for something else. To that end, under the motto "squatting is more than just living," a diverse collection of action themes was launched, which was supposed to give chance solidarities an institutional frame. This was also directed against the tendency, inherent to the "squat movement" concept, of seeing itself as an old-style revolutionary bloc. Ever since the beginning there had been a black helmet brigade which felt it had joined battle with the municipal social democracy. They used buildings and stray figures as instruments for this higher goal, which they never allowed others to bring up for discussion. Finally, another group was busy, outside the course of events, throwing up new structures as before by starting up squat discussion hours in new neighborhoods, moving into buildings, having actions. Gradually the structure of buildings and neighborhoods proved to be transformed by this into a collection of scenes which attracted and repelled each other. When this was finally designated "the movement," the same mechanism of introduction and refusal, acceptance and takeover, occurred as with the "squat movement" concept. The movement, once on its way, could no longer be stopped.

The movement is the memory of the event. It is not the sum of adventures and groups, but an image, reflection or interpretation of the preceding, for the movers themselves as well as outsiders. This creation of an image is by definition mediatized, whether it takes place in "inside" or "bourgeois" historical writing; that group which is carried along in the events and meets each other there knows that the media reports sheer nonsense about it. Those who, for whatever legitimate reason, show up too late and have to be satisfied by the pictures and stories can all too easily take them to be true. While the first group of squatters was overcome by the events, the latecomers claimed that they were organized by the first group. The context of the legends would have been the result of the political ideology, which was left over in "the movement" as a sort of residue of the events. This remnant would have been the source out of which the preceding had appeared.

The second and following generations of squatters came across as a collection of self-made lawbreakers who were in the middle of the scene-forming phase. The squat movement had already long been an imaginary crowd which people still thought they could join up with, while it had already transformed itself into a "movement," which was concerned with very different things. Within the old guard there had long been no talk of a real crowd or a compression of time. The actions which were done scene-by-scene no longer relied on mutual interaction; even on nights with an enormous accumulation of private initiatives they did not begin to strengthen each other, but continued in their parallel existences, just like the scenes. At the most they produced surprise a day later over the fact that there turned out to be more people with the same shadowy hobby. People sought interaction with the media, not with each other. The real crowd that could increase just like that had become something unknown and creepy, a memory which was brought up again as the discussion over "broadening," in which nostalgia had to be sublimated to the desire for movement. Solidarity, which had once swept over you just like the event, now suddenly had to be artificially induced through taking action themes upon which everyone agreed anyway (fascism, racism, sexism). New initiatives get no further than a remix of good acquaintances and old contacts.

If the movement is the memory of an adventure, the scene is the memory of a meeting. This is ascribed afterwards to a shared lifestyle, and the scene becomes the plateau for the spectacular staging of it. Through the use of the word "movement," a larger context and a historic continuity are suggested, which legitimatize and block the behavioral codes of the scene. As lifestyle pur sang, however, it would not need the past; it could shine in the ecstatic experience of its manifestation. But the movement scene cannot see itself apart from the squatting past, because it faces the dilemma that the squat movement has never wanted to trace its own end, or stage it. The scene no longer succeeds in shamelessly turning the present upside down; the dead weight of history makes it insensitive to the prevailing circumstances of the now. The scene is still waiting for the meeting and the event. In order to keep alive the memory and its promise, they still, after laborious reunion discussions and months of preparations, sometimes take part in "medium-sized actions" in connection with organizations. When an event takes place, it overtakes the scenes like a natural disaster. Such a catastrophic riot is actually still unleashed only by absolute beginners who are enthusiastically willing to fetch and carry materials for some totally unknown purpose.

The media does not know metamorphosis. It constructs and distributes mass-produced identities and requires everyone who comes into contact with it to show his or her papers. It challenges its users from series to quiz show to look at themselves on the screen. It has replaced the classic model, in which every individual could be socially placed on the basis of work and sex, with the identities market, where you can be anything you want, as long as you're something and let it show. Activists figured out over time that you couldn't stay permanently current, but that you could get back into the media, as long as you presented yourself time after time under another name and organizational form. Being elusive for press and police was achieved through playing off the media norm of name and intention against itself. Thus it also became less and less lucrative to appear as the squat movement, however staunchly loyal you remained to it in your own circle. This desire to become imaginary resulted in a knowledge of media-machinations, which became second nature, an automatism in which the action only exists once it's been an item. The entry into medial space, to the neglect of the extra-medial, resulted in the forgetting of the possibility of metamorphosis, which was accepted without a thought by the squatters in the early days. One can consciously and at will switch over from one identity to the other. But metamorphosis has nothing to do with desire or consciousness, with choosing from myriad options. The transformation is possible when one enters the emptiness at the right moment in order to appear elsewhere as something different, without it being established what. The medium of the metamorphosis is the body, the matter itself, and not only its image, or identity. Thus the individual changes into, for example, a crowd-person through breaking with the fear of touch, through a sudden acknowledgement and appreciation of his own and others' bodies, through wiping out the will and the personal biography. The desire for change is not enough for a transformation; once underway the process acquires its own tempo, takes a turn and carries you along. The metamorphosis short-circuits with reality and thus maximizes its intensity. The meeting during the event is the moment of the turn. By accepting the succession of images and identities in the media as some kind of reality, the activist segment of the nation lost the potential to disappear from the stage and lose itself in the process of unforeseeable transformations.

The movement teachings tackle this puzzle of appearances and disappearances in extra-medial reality. Movement teachings are a way of seeing as well as a book, and present delayed insights without asking themselves what good it might do. They are not out to dig up all the stories. There has already been so much written about some events. But their selection is not a judgment of quality. In the material which they have thankfully been granted, the movement teachings seek the moments at which the patterns manifest themselves. The rest is history.

Out of the anonymity of the city an address has appeared. At once the nameless building loses its inconspicuousness; the vacancy inside is recognized. And the decision is made. We're going to squat.

Then the heroes appear. They've already part of the other reality, to which we are still en route. They give us a hand as we cross. Their matter-of-fact D-I-Y attitude can be more closely read about in the guide, available at the squatters' consultation hour. We've been waiting for this for years.

The group, ready to step inside the shadow-reality once squatting, saw these figures appear in the form of the handymen. Every neighborhood had a few. They knew how to break open a door, install gas, water and electricity, barricade a building, what you had to say to a ranting muscleman or the lady next door, or what to do in case of club-waving flat hats. They brought out stories of unbelievably wild events from times long past. They had know-how, tools. They knew what could be done. The heroes didn't see squatting as a protest action, but taught you that a building should only be squatted for immediate use. After a few days they vanished again.

Sometimes nothing more happened after that; squatting ended in domesticity, lease, residence permit. But for the same money it could become a treacherous journey that cut straight through the curriculum vitae. Radical naivete, just do it, aggressive innocence, the future to the winds, topical indignation, not a care for the law, disbelief in their violence...Only like this could you really start exploring the space outside the existing order, whether of free will by placing yourself on the emergency phone tree, or “alarm list,” and being at the neighborhood meeting, or under pressure of circumstances: a gang of thugs sent by a property owner, court action, or a sudden en masse visit by squatters from your street.

In the middle of the city, amid the concrete shapes of the daily tedium, you stepped into a space of unlimited possibilities. The point was not to create something new, but to use the old to depart for somewhere else:

“Oscar, Wouter, Bear and I knew each other from the Stuttel Bar, where we spent the evening when we had nothing better to do. We were all looking for a place to live and squatting seemed like fun. Oscar had seen an empty house in the Spuistraat. That was nearby, so after an evening in the Stuttel we went to have a look. We looked at the corner building after I'd kicked in the door and were enthusiastic about the space. The next day we got hold of some mattresses and blankets. We slept in the building next door, which we'd also found empty when we entered this house on the roof via the window and gutter.

After further exploration over the roof, the four of us found out we had a gigantic complex at our disposal, with all kinds of weird-looking rooms where here and there the lights were still on. We intended to keep it among friends, so that you'd always meet people in the building who you knew and who had the same attitude - I mean we four thought living was something subordinate; that you have fun is much more important. We picked out the best rooms and bombarded the NRC into a general gaming den.”

The former NRC Handelsblad building, now legalized, rent-paying and renovated, is still a landmark, and an empty section of it was re-squatted in 1991 after sitting empty for too long.

That was the squat experience: that behind a kicked-open door an incredibly large complex could be found, with here and there “the lights still on.” Even stronger, it was the only thing the assembled squatters had in common. Squatting formed not a historical mission, but an extra-historic space with as fourth dimension the play. It offered sensory sensations. Entry into it was of a violence which could only be conjured up through a fixed series of actions.

It began with waiting for the address of an advance meeting point, the tools which were rounded up, the arrangements and instructions. The small crew which will break the building open leaves, then the rest, who feel that they stick out like sore thumbs on the way to the building. The din of a break-in with crowbar and hammer resounds through the street and puts you even more on show. Then the moment of the running, a spurt of 50 or 100 meters which, necessary or not, you always make: the door was the sucking-point through which you're pulled across the border into the other space. The violence against the door was the transgression of the law which gives life its fixed form. This primal violence came out of the fact that the door was suddenly no longer a symbolic division, but a concrete object. The daily reality and the other reality came into contact with each other in the door.

The first thing done after the squat was to repair the door, put in your own lock; a prefab cardboard renovation door was immediately replaced by its massive, solid wood predecessor. This replacement of the door was a consequence of the fact that breaking open the door was the only prosecutable action, but it was also the confirmation of the building's being put into use. The key to the new lock made the house, which initially had only been broken into, into your own home.

The door was in short not only part of a rite of passage, but also of the protection of your own existence. Even if the space to be squatted was full of drafty holes, if the window was open, the door was the magic point around which the squat proper organized itself. While the house often remained minimally furnished for weeks, the door was equipped with the most elaborate accessories, from builders' props to armorplate. Even if the building was legalized, a strict door ritual might be observed for years after. The door, which in open society was declared trash, was rediscovered, and even when squatters went breaking through walls and tearing down portals, they stayed friendly with the door. It did multifunctional service as tabletop, bed, back wall, barricade material, shield, or was put away for a while in the meantime.

Everyone places the beginning and end of “the squat movement” somewhere else. This is because everyone stepped into the collective space at a different place. For one this happened with the breaking open of the door to his or her own flat, for the other while wandering around in the immeasurable emptinesses of the complexes which were squatted city-wide. Every squatter can point to the place where she or he personally crossed the threshold and stepped inside a collective space. Something happened which was qualitatively different from “standing up for your housing rights” or “resistance against the repression of the state,” something other too than the unleashing of the rage built up over the years over speculation and failing policy.

The space was not opened as the result of objective social circumstances. If the house got symbolic value, that happened almost by accident, in the course of the squat itself and not beforehand. It took the residents by surprise, left them wondering astonished how they could get out of it again. The longing for space can no better be explained with psychological drives; there is no reason why people who seek a community experience should exactly squat. Even as squatters sought the security of a self-designed life, it was continually disturbed by incidents from outside, from compulsory housemates to eviction notice. S/he who takes justice into her/his own hands lives as no other. But that's part of the pleasant side of the collective space; it is also an exemption from the prospect of having to lead one existence of your own. How the space was left, days or years later, is mostly more diffuse: a trip to Africa, a rental house in Huizen, going off to study, a solidarity, an overdose...Some drift further in other circuits, from Alpine meadows to cyberspace. Others just stayed. No one who has been inside the space can ever leave again; at night in your dreams you go back.

During squatting property rights were gradually forgotten, and the state monopoly on violence ignored. But simultaneously the “Western Civilized Shame” was parasitized, without anyone worrying too much about principles and ideals. “Being consistent is dead tedious.” There were materials enough; sleeping Holland was just switching over to the double waterbed with wooden frame, and the street was full of handy narrow bedsprings that could be tightly screwed into the window frame with rawls (size 7). The inner city streets were folkloristically surfaced besides, so that workmen's huts and other toolboxes were everywhere waiting to be used. Salary came from social services, telephone lines via the neighbors, energy from cut-open and later overturned electric company meters, information from the land registry and GDH archive, houses could be found everywhere, the tools streamed in via urban renewal and mail order, barricade material came from a building site, the delicatessen from the proletarian shop, liquor from behind falling glass, tiles from the doorstep, and police in case of a thug threat...The handymen taught besides that you could also just request telephone or electricity under a false name or someone else's. There was no talk of illegality; the existing rules and possibilities were just craftily used.

“Their legal order” was unable to captivate anyone much. You had “your” attorneys for that, who tried to arouse interest for their employ with slogans like “Justice is whoever can lie the best.” The squat groups became engrossed in the development of their own pro deo system. Attacks on it were paired with righteous indignation and justifiable rage: “I accuse the speculators, the city, the police and Justice all at once of: Blackmail, Swindling, Evasion of Housing Distribution Laws, Disturbing the Domestic Peace, Falsification of Documents, Attempted Manslaughter, Violation of Human Rights, Sexism, Adultery, Deception of the Public, Sedition, Undermining the Legal System, Inflicting Grave Personal Injury, the Destruction of Human Happiness, Perjury and Corruption. How dare a prosecutor subpoena us?” Your own game could flourish through a gay innocence towards the malice of the outside world. “What are they doing? They can't do that!”

Inside the space of squatting there was no talk of historical development; as it wandered it only cropped up in more and more places, to the strangest out-of-the-way corners of the city. After entry came the surprise that there were so many more people in the same place, just as crazy as you, just as radical, just as amateurish. Surprise over the cool pragmatism with which the most burning urge for action was carried out.

The space was to be found literally in and outside the “dominant system.” “The city is ours,” because it's assimilated into an inside topology with secret beacons: houses, cafes, leaders of the packs, bicycle routes, streets and bridges, symbols, signals, posters, style of dress and coiffure. The smell of clammy leather jackets and showerless houses, cat piss, plastic bags with car mirrors, ripped-loose traffic signs, meetings, demos, “manis,” advance meeting points, alarm lists and gangs of thugs, incomprehensible and long-winded phone calls, first names and alarm entry numbers. A spiderweb of back gardens, landings, coffee and drinking sessions, joints and trips, flyers, stolen books, press lists, radio and TV break-ins, helmets and clubs, breaking tiles, vans and wagon-bikes, posts and visits to the neighbors. But also the pathetic state of the TV news, of city council members and concerned critics (“They still don't understand.”). The swiftness with which you changed from student to rioter, from rioter to passerby, from passerby to brick-thrower and then braggart, nurse or lover.

It was the space of the continual metamorphosis. The forms assumed could be classic (and thus be parasitized) or different and never before seen (and thus experimental): someone who because of his “Labor Party face” managed to get inside a committee meeting went afterward to go find Breeze blocks; today's heavy was tomorrow's super nerd. Standing there plastering, all thumbs, throw on a raincoat to go to a riot. Everyone unexpectedly turned out to be able to do or be anything, especially what or who you had never been. Your own life was made into fiction and instantly converted again into reality. You could assume any appearance without deriving an identity from it.

This was the freedom in which people who barely knew each other flung themselves into actions based on a blind mutual trust: tough, vague, friendly, disturbing, disturbed. It didn't matter that there were no plans for the middle distance; the journey counted, the expanding space of your own life rhythm - where it was going wasn't even of later concern (no future). An explosion, caused by the savory consumption of the here and now.

Historic conditions? Causes? Result? Just yell. “No one had a house and that was really mean!” Unused spaces were, through a small forgetfulness in the law, there for the using, without the owner being able to start anything with the law in hand against the anonymous users. Fortunate too was that owners and city planners, through their naive belief in property rights and authority, let their houses endlessly sit vacant, even when plenty had already been squatted: “Homes for the homeless!”

The first group, mostly students who grouped around the handymen, had originally taken a look around in leftist circles, but these turned out to speak a language you couldn't do anything with. Analyses of society, self-realization, future planning, changing the world and yourself, strategic debates, marching through institutions or lecture notes, social responsibility, conscious security, relationship discussions, ideals, big stories: it had become unbearable...

They couldn't find the energy anymore to wait any longer for the change in the other's mentality and the fruits of working on yourself. “The crisis of Marxism is not ours.” The taboo on the immediate realization of the democratized desires had created a discussion culture around emancipation and integration. University council work had become the training ground for the meeting culture in the institutions of the future. When you refused to march on any longer on this prescribed route, it was a question of logic that political business as a whole was written off. The aversion against the left, of whom something was still expected, became as great as that against the right, which you wanted nothing to do with anyway. The terms began to lose their meaning.

The handymen had another view of things. The ex-democrats among them saw from their political viewpoint the squat wave as an opposition to the vacancy law, which had to be averted or changed. That was their trip. A second group, unconscious Leninists, brought the banner down from the attic: “The worst of all are the rightists disguised as leftists. They're worse than the rest - avoid them like the plague.” That slogan too fell outside the space experience of the fresh squatters; every political current was, when push came to shove, part of “their” parliamentary democracy. Making social conflicts manageable wasn't our problem. No one dreamed of revolution or strove for the general good. One's own housing problem was much simpler to solve.

The term “politics” had been denied its monopoly on the public sphere by feminist criticism and since then penetrated to the most intimate places. Everything quickly became political and the word thereby lost its action-inspiring charm. The squat contribution to the waning political culture limited itself to screaming, smoke bombs, stolen documents and scale models set ablaze. The “primacy of politics” would be replaced by the robust term “power,” but by that time the squatters had already abandoned the intellectual atmosphere in order to explore, in place of French theory, their own space.

The idea of politics as goal-oriented action, as feasibility research, was also held at a distance. Social opponents were not addressed; there was no realistic ideal over which to negotiate. “Parking garages = war.” This anarchism born of practice fused with that narcissism that belongs to everyone who takes a place that cannot be found inside society. Without realizing it, the inalienable right to one's own local experience was discovered. This anarchism, a combination of rage, self-pity and being right (“They can tear down our house, but not our ideals”) turned out to be the fuel with which local space travel could be driven.

Squatting's appeal was that it offered no alternative, no view of a better world that had to legitimatize and argue itself. No one spoke for anyone. “We won't leave” was not a demand but an announcement. No consensus, no compromise, no discussion. Anyone could step into the noncommittal atmosphere to do their thing. You lived amid the remnants and ruins of an order that had become alien in one fell swoop. It was no accident that preference went to ramshackle houses, scrap autos, war-era leather jackets, furniture found on the street. Everything that had been cast off and thus ended up outside the traffic of society existed, as it were, by definition in the “outside system” to which the squats granted shelter. And everything which defined itself within respectable efficiency stood outside it.

No one thought in strategies, principles. Abstract theoretical terms were taboo. The ideas were not words but things: steel planking, rocks, actions. “They” were thought of in terms of interiors to dismantle, destroyable riot vans, outposts and whatever else came along. There was also no ideology. The question was how? and never why? “We've begun already to live how it's good, and let their laws disturb us as little as possible. And we fight against injustice. And that they don't like! It's okay to talk in the meantime. But living by the old Dutch saying, "Not words but deeds!" isn't allowed.”

It all had an expressionlessness that worked well with the neighbors. The need to tell the world what it was all about for you was not felt. This silence concealed no secret, there were no spokespeople, simply because there was nothing to state. It was limited to a flyer for the neighbors containing some hard info about the speculator and an invitation to come drink a cup of coffee. No paper culture, in which insiders' discussions were held, historic roots exposed and nice stories collected, took off. The experience was too fragile to capture in a consistent argument.

The land registry, the Chamber of Commerce, the files on the neighbors and the municipal archive were worked through to dig up the history of the building. There were always connections with mala fide real estate agents, dubious mortgage banks, martial arts academies, empty corporations, post office boxes on Aruba, underhanded arrangements with the city, laundered heroin money, weapons traffic. These were described in detail in the neighborhood papers and exercised a great fascination on squatters, while outsiders usually couldn't make heads or tails of it. The disconcerting stories the neighbors told about pre-war rent strikers, people in hiding during the war, divorces, cases of suicide and isolation, cults and illegal pensions remained reserved for internal use. The building became a case where the blues of oral history converged with globe-spanning conspiracies, adding a nice touch to the adventure you'd ended up smack in the middle of.

The space that was hereby created was the space of the experiment. Since unity had already been unmasked as a dictatorial conference trick for ironing over differences, the unity that was experienced during the action gained the mystical explosiveness of spontaneity. It was brought about with little trouble, but was observed with surprise or taken for granted. If the phenomenon appeared, if the meeting with the space-mates came into being, the experiment had been successful.

Prerequisite for any meeting is the distance between the individuals. Those who are permanently close to each other never run into each other. A secret rule for the organization of squatting was this absence of unity and identity, or even of regular contact. The different squat groups were at a distance from each other in their own neighborhood; squats were universes where the residents did what they felt like, without landlord, neighbors or fellow squatters having anything to say about it. You had geranium owners, teachers, dykes, “vague-os”, art-makers, punx, English, Zealanders, people from IJmuiden. There was a collected mess of neighborhood groups who organised themselves at their own discretion depending on the characteristics of the developed area. It wasn't the vacancy that produced squatting; the vacancy only became visible if you looked at it, and then you discovered more and more of it, a habit you can never again break, just like fleetingly peeking into dumpsters full of household articles or building material. It was pure chance which neighborhood you ended up in; after the squat it was inconceivable how a building could have stood vacant for five years. Why no one had plunged into this adventure before now remained a mystery. Some neighborhoods were never squatted; it would be years before anyone hit on the idea to move into factories in the harbor district.

As far as an identity came into being, it developed apace, contingent on the interaction with the constructed surroundings. Breaking open a boarded-up block slated for demolition for a cooperative leads to a completely different squat group than the appropriation of majestic houses in an elegant area, or squatting second-rate condominiums one by one. Peaceful living on a street where nary a riot police clearance happened led to unheard-of heavy or chaotic behavior at city-wide actions, but just as easily to total disinterest in them. Residents of beautiful canal houses were sometimes sooner inclined to negotiate with city officials than those who were camping in sagging jerry-rigs, but the reverse could just as well happen: being aware that you stood to lose a lot led then to a fundamental attitude. Characteristic was that someone who was nicely at home in one neighborhood was promptly way off target at neighborhood meetings elsewhere.

Inside differences between neighborhoods were stimulating so long as the unfamiliarity with each other was taken into account. If your own neighborhood was no longer invigorating, you could always move to another one and cross over from one identity to the other. Many a squat neighborhood arose besides when infighting in one of the disorganised squats in one neighborhood forced a number of residents to go live a street further. Precisely that distance between the insiders made it possible to drag out the craziest things in confrontations. Motivation and discipline are not necessary if no one asks you what business you have somewhere. As long as you don't know each other you may and can be anything. Anonymity among insiders prevents the forming of rigid scenes and social control. Everyone is welcome who knows the code.

That code consisted not of a secret password but a certain sort of casualness. A recognition which opened doors that for others stayed shut. Reporters who offered speed as entrance fee were requested to come back with gold. But if you rang the bell of a heavily barricaded building and quickly said hello, you were let in right away. At action meetings you said which neighborhood you came from and then it was okay. There was no fear of spies. A group can protect its secret, and at the same time grow by leaps and bounds, by shaping its own normality which is open to everyone but leaves those with the wrong normality mercilessly out in the cold.

The big events which squatting was always equated with played themselves out at a remarkable distance from the individual squatters and neighborhoods. In squat space two levels could be distinguished: that of the neighborhood you yourself had ended up in through squatting, and alongside that, the city-wide level, which was where you ended up when squatting a large building or during a heavy riot, a mass outburst of hate or rage against the riot police as a symbol of the whole collection of authority figures. Someone who rioted along with the rest one morning could afterwards simply remain an office manager, just as squatting did not have to lead to losing yourself in shared space: it could always end afterwards. But it could also be an initiation into space travel, provided that afterward a material, less fleeting basis for crossing the border was found in the form of phone alarm list or squatted house. The other way around, the city-wide riots all too often meant departure from your own neighborhood, or even its complete disintegration. Adventurous exploration in squat space was then advanced on a city-wide scale or further left for what it was. The organization of the city-wide spectacles had to be set up incident-by-incident and was determined by the location of the building and the characteristics of the shell. The production was in the hands of the “individual residents,” and whoever happened to come along. The performance itself could then be spontanteously taken over by the police, passersby or whoever else responded to the alarm. Squat space at its most expansive transformed the city into a circus, with bumbling cops, smoke production, running fires, scanner reports over the radio, tailings, drawn pistols, contagious skirmishes, boarded-up shop windows, broken-up streets and overturned site huts. Post-production facilities, like the arrestee support group, were courtesy of the city. From beginning to end the spectacle in no way resembled your own street. If you went after the riot in the city to squat a flat in your own neighborhood and the neighbors griped about “that senseless destruction,” the answer was that you had nothing to do with it, even if you'd been going around smashing in windowpanes for hours and brought back the model airplane from a travel agency as a trophy.

Such a pronouncement had a high truth content: you are where you are. Self-awareness was connected to the place where you found yourself, instead of to your “own” identity or the image the outside world has of you. The responsibility for your own actions was not derivative in the “change the world, begin with yourself” style; “think globally, act locally” does not do justice to the uniqueness of the events that are happening specifically to you in this place. The only necessary alertness consists, when you happen to be present in the place where something is about to happen, of your actually doing it, whether it's a frontal attack on the riot police, the freeing of arrestees or a conversation with passersby. This is not heroism or action of the will; you're only tuning in to the event and the place, in order to become part of squat space. That also determined the character of the legends that were told afterwards; it was not machismo which underlay this, but surprise that it had been us who had gone through this. That caused the chatter. “Did you expect this?”

The vacancy that housing seekers said they were fighting against was cherished by no one more than squatters. Squatters were artists because they moved into the empty space to play in it and on no account to “furnish” it. They transformed their own house into the rectum of the welfare state. As if by itself the house accumulated a collection of uncertain objects to which asylum was given. The house turned out to be a magnet for objects, where things were valued for their peculiarity, instead of being consumed. When it was squatted the house first had to be emptied, so it could then be propped full of junk that you found on the street yourself. Wooden ironing boards, ovens, sinks, a car door, flasher lights, bedsprings, fluorescent tube lights, mannequins, collapsed couches, bicycle halves, chests, amputated furniture, cabinets, TV sets, depth gauges, iron buckets, a leaden elevator motor...On the way to the squat collection was already in progress, because “the more junk, the less easily there can be a clearance.”

The rubbish was not recycled out of thriftiness, but for an indefinite time afforded peace outside social circulation, after which it was given back to the street. Since the things did not impose on anyone to be used, they posed no threat to the present emptiness. Just like the residents, they had, released from every social usefulness, enough in themselves. Insofar as there was talk here of culture, it was one of non-aesthetics. There was no urge to package oneself for display. Gray, disarming, uninteresting, not out for expression, difference or transmission of group codes, uninterested too, vacant, without fantasy, vague, inoffensive, asexual, hardly attractive: “People with taste must be able to appreciate this.” The company logo missed any clear line, had gone beyond the boundary inside which things can still be found pretty or ugly. The squatters' symbol of the circle and the broken arrow aimed at an upward slant possessed too that sloppy meaninglessness. It missed the transparency of pictogram language and derived its mystery from that.

The classic ideals attributed to rebellious youth, from angry young to clean-cut and cheerful, serious but fun, glanced off this unperceived, reassuring superficiality. They succeeded in shirking the obligation to conquer the world, or even to start up a subculture. This low culture profile with its simultaneous high action level guaranteed a perfect unfamiliarity with tradition, including your own. The mechanism which produces culture from a break with what came before, which people are supposed to forcefully shun, could be avoided like this. Cultural consumption limited itself to borrowed arts like punk, new wave, political street theater and commotions. Artists in a squat always meant trouble. The expression of the I is difficult to combine with topical living.

Once squatting you found yourself confronted with the palette of nuances that the preceding decades had contributed to the state of the house. Not only the ten layers of paint, the three ceilings, the slabs of plastic foam, scrap iron and the cork on the mantelpiece, the whole miasma of stuffiness and failure pervaded the buildings. In the case that it was missing, on entry into offices and freshly produced luxury apartments, this was a sign of evil that was exorcised by immediately turning it into a dump. This was the end of the line for the buildings. Once sucked up by the vacuum behind the front door you landed in a time gap left behind by the history of the premises. The back-owed state you found the rooms in provided the building blocks for the new palace. Our squatters knew an ironic relationship with comfort. The semi-permanent rehousing of the doomed flesh brought a total package of temporary provisions along with it. Garden or fire hoses as water pipes, electrical wires hanging above the street, gas heaters with sagging lids, blankets acting as a door, a wooden framework under the sink...”Squatters are renovating the city here too.”

In this encampment the garbage question was permanent. Because the rigid functionality of the house blueprint had been abandoned, a state of continual rebuilding could establish itself. This metamorphosis of the space was further fostered when half the building was emptied in preparation for the house party, in order to be filled by nocturnal events. The open house, packed full of uninvited visitors, presented itself as general rehearsal for a threatening eviction, or a celebration if the threat was averted. Excessive consumption of beers and joints, combined with noisy dramas, a whining wall of sound, little scuffles, exhausted dogs, guaranteed that by about one o'clock the police would reunite the partygoers in the street. The whole route from garbage heap to lifestyle residence and back could thus be covered in 24 hours. The lines of building up the house and letting it go to pot crossed at the least excuse. The delightful transience of existence was ecstatically lived out with the clumsiness of the year zero.

The right to housing by which squatters legitimatized themselves was their answer to the emptiness's invitation to move in. The emptiness opened itself as the field of tension between action and shiftlessness. It was alternately gaming den, exit base or breeding ground for the refusal to function in society. Until it suddenly found itself smack in the middle of history. There was violence in the air. The broken-open emptiness had to be protected again with barricade material. The house was becoming a growing collection of objects, acquaintances, phone numbers, addresses, the neighborhood an unsurveyable network of cafes, community centers, contacts with building workers, city-wide meetings, and the city an impenetrable tangle of actions, research collectives, press contacts, purchase groups, and sudden phone alarms. Time after time prehistory is surprised by spectacular events.

“Spring was coming. The most beautiful houses were being squatted everywhere, sometimes for the biggest idiots. We'd come back to the Groote Keyser after one of those squats, and there we were staring at those steel plates again. Cozy, you know, outside the sun's shining. So we conceived a plan to squat one of those nice canal houses ourselves, with more or less the whole Keyser group and a few people from the city center around the canals, just from the neighborhood. We found a place on the Herengracht that turned out to go through to the Singel. And that was the Vogelstruys.”

The Groote Keyser consisted of six offices on Amsterdam's Keizersgracht, squatted on November 1, 1978, and was named “groote” (big) in contrast to the Little Keyser across the water. In December 1979, the squats had in a very short time become national symbols of revolt against Amsterdam's “betrayal of the 53,000 homeless and complicity in development, vacancy and luxury apartments.” An eviction order was pronounced on October 26, 1979, with which the 50 squatters had to comply within a month. This was enough for the majority of the residents, and they slowly but surely abandoned the complex.

Right then, in fact, the squatters' neighborhoods, which had been blossoming up all over the city, had gotten mature enough for a city-wide search for a place where everyone could collectively go onto the offensive. It was time for a speculator's property that could be used to make the step between passive resistance and active defense. The Keyser was big and empty, and everyone fit inside it.

To the surprise of the canal-area group, it was the drooping Keyser which was now barricaded shut and stampeded by the city. It was not strange in itself that a big squat should be adopted
by another squatters' neighborhood; that had been known to happen. But why should those houses whose front-door keys had been handed around by tourists just last summer, houses that had had Israelis barbecueing on the floor, start to function as a symbol of the people's will? The Keyser owed its notoriety in squatters' circles to the paranoia surrounding Harry Gouwswaard's gang, and from resident Paul van Wissen, who was a spy for the owner. Beyond that there was nothing special about it.

Two months later, in mid-December 1979, it had still not been evicted, and rumors flew about “a big squad of riot police” that was preparing for combat. Then the city council was assailed by fireworks, smoke bombs and 100 demonstrators. “They were people from all over the city, making their first effort in a long time to transfer the misery they suffer daily because of their living situation to those who so willingly take political responsibility for it.” The action lasted no more than fifteen minutes, but was dubbed “D-Day” because it amounted to a declaration of war on politics. The wait was over and momentum was picking up. But eviction day just wouldn't come, though barricading and acquisition of weapons were stepped up to ever-greater heights. The ammunition room was filling up, the radio station The Free Keyser was set up and went on the air from the squat, and the bedsprings were replaced by welded-together steel planking, supported by builders' props. A whole counterintelligence system
was set up. By posting people at police stations and riot police training grounds, the squatters could find out in time when the eviction would take place. The neighborhoods also divided up the bridges surrounding the Keyser, each to defend one by its own devices. Hundreds of people were on constant standby. In a demonstration at the end of January 1980, 3000 people marched past the houses as those inside waved flags decorated with squat symbols from the roof. But January's second big threat was survived.

The tension built up around the symbol was released in February in a series of incidents with the police: skirmishes, raids, smaller evictions, arrests. This, it was decided, had to be stopped, and some people re-squatted a previously evicted house in the Vondelstraat at about 5 p.m. on Friday, February 29. The head-on street clash with the riot police which had been expected at the Keyser finally happened. The squatters won the battle on the corner of the van Baerlestraat and Vondelstraat, and the intersection in front of the recaptured building stayed barricaded all weekend. When tanks came to wipe the streets clean the following Monday morning, an energetic riot spread across the city. But there was no action from out of the house itself, and it was otherwise left alone. On practically the same day came the announcement that Queen Beatrix was to be crowned in Amsterdam on April 30th. April was proclaimed action month, which opened with the squatting of 52 luxury apartments on the Prins Hendrikkade. The squatting wave was reaching its crest. Everyone was up and at it day in day out, and new squatting groups appeared in neighborhood after neighborhood. Attention for the Groote Keyser ebbed away amid the storm of events.

Throughout this time a group was hovering between occupying and living in the Keyser. Barricade materials had overrun the house; the one small kitchen was a wreck. No daylight got through to the bottom floors. “It wasn't a question of living then, but of surviving, around electric heaters,” wrote a paper a year later. “Experimentally living together at its most extreme, you might say; the threat of eviction hanging constantly over your head, working on the house however you could. Trying to clean up a bit, going out for a good action or a drink, freaking out over the cold and there always being so little to eat, having fun with a little shoplifting, anarchistic eating, and so forth.” More or less vague characters were constantly walking in, making the place a sort of open institution. “The people who helped with the barricading just stayed there. I was living somewhere on the canals, I came there, and in a rush of 'this is where it's happening' I sort of lived there from then on. I never moved in. You were just there.” This is Max. “Since they just wouldn't evict us, we stayed on watch on the roof kind of like faithful dogs, and we set up a scanner team to sit in a house in the neighborhood in case of an unexpected eviction, so everything could be defended. The people who were kind of trying to keep the Keyser running, about ten or twenty - more and more kept dropping out, it was driving them crazy - stayed with it pretty consistently until about April 30.” Until then there were countless meetings about the Keyser. Max: “After a while no one knew what to do next. It was so falling apart at the seams and so heavily barricaded that you couldn't do anything with the building anymore, publicity-wise either. Then we were like: that's great, hang onto that Groote Keyser, but we're leaving.” The indoor crew broke into the basement, barricaded the inside stairs to the living area and organized a six months' threat
party with bands and flat boats on the canal. “That long hall in the basement looked great after the punks had stood there spray painting the hell out of it all day.” A week later, on May 31, they squatted the Vogelstruys.

When tension builds up around a point, it will always discharge itself, there or elsewhere. The Groote Keyser, on rational grounds, was declared a symbolic squat: it was to be the first big eviction of “1990: Year of the Eviction?” when many other houses would follow. To fulfill its function as pioneer, the house was sacrificed to a series of military measures, from heavy barricading of the house itself (for the first time so thoroughly), and stoning teams with ammunition galore at their disposal, to a comprehensive defense strategy for the surrounding streets, and a network of sentry posts reaching far beyond the city. Without anyone studying for it, the squatters discovered the three central principles of fortification formulated by Maarschalk van Vauban at the end of the 17th century and put them into practice. Vauban proposed, first of all, that defense should take place on a number of lines placed one behind the other; in the second place, that the particular characteristics of the place where a fortress is planned are employed in entrenchment and the eventuality of sorties; and in the third place, that an imbalance is created between the entrance and the exit: it must be difficult to get in and easy to get out. Normal social life in the houses had come to an end; at the most, people camped, awaiting coming events. From the moment of fortification, the tension was fed from two sides: the other squatters in the city attached their fate to that of the Keyser, and the inside crew prepared to go to all extremes in the defense of the houses. The Keyser, in contrast to nuclear plants or army bases, was a symbol you were for*, one that summed up your whole story. That story could not be told to completion, because the authorities were afraid to take up such an extreme challenge. The Vogelstruys was to redeem the promise of the Keyser - an active defense from the inside out. By mid-1980 the squatters had gotten acquainted with street confrontation, but where such active defense would lead to, no one could say.

Frits was hanging around a lot with the Keyser group. “I had heard which house they wanted to squat and it was in the middle of Amsterdam South. You drive by a real estate agency, those photos are hanging there and you always check if anything in the neighborhood's still empty. The Vogelstruys happened to be up there too.” So it was definitely for sale. The Vogelstruys consisted of two houses, Herengracht 329 and Singel 370, connected to each other by a passageway. On the day of the squat, May 31, 1980, it was in possession of the Böschen family, “black marketeers from World War I,” who were trying to make a speculation profit of fl 360,000 on it. “We assembled that Saturday afternoon in the Spuistraat. A crew went on ahead to break in, but didn't have any luck. Crowbars didn't work. I happened to have this heavy straight one-and-a-half-meter bar with me, not subtle in the least, and we rammed the door open with that and then the alarm went off. That shut us up; the barricading was passed along and the hammering began. Along with the bedsprings, we used boards. It all took a bit longer than usual.” Max: “Then we were inside; the police were already arriving too, but there were so many people, it was OK. It was really cozy too - finally a familiar downtown squat again. Lots of people you knew; it had its atmosphere. As 50 squatters were ramming in a door, with leather jackets and all, an angry little man came running out of the neighboring house and said, 'You can't do that, that's not your property!' He was pushed away, like, you go play somewhere else.” A banner with “RETEKETET we've squatted” on it was hung on the front of the house. Some musicians happened to be walking down the Raadhuisstraat in riot police uniform and came to blow their tune at the door.

“When you came in on the Herengracht, it was all street level, no stairs or anything. There was an elevator to a sort of fake apartment on the second and third floors. The elevator had been installed for the previous owner's mother, an invalid lady. There was a telephone in the elevator and it worked at first too. The funny thing was that the detectives from the Lijnbaansgracht police station who'd been by had gotten hold of the number. They called up in the evening to tell us the recommendation they'd given, that they had established vacancy, and so we wouldn't be evicted for breaking the domestic peace. I stood in that elevator with the telephone and said, 'Well, that's great, but could you maybe tell me what my number is?' A few days later it was disconnected. After a while we deactivated the elevator. When there was an emergency, an 'alarm', and we used the phone tree, and a lot of people came, there were punks who would play with the elevator. It had one of those trap doors in it and those guys would climb through it. You can't have one of them accidentally getting squashed.”

The building was quickly inspected. Frits: “There were some old books; other than that it was empty. Except for an apartment on the second floor on the Herengracht side with some pseudo-antique furniture, a bath, a built-in kitchen, plus a little room with a big bed, all to suggest that it was lived in. And there was a mysterious room on the ground floor that you could only get to with the elevator. That was pitch, pitch black, a gigantic black hole, without windows or doors, creepy.” Max: “It was really one of those old mystical Amsterdam houses. Downstairs there was this old kitchen with a hearth and those little tiles. Underneath was a vaulted cellar with a cesspit. Then another basement went to the Singel side. No one had ever lived on that side; there was nothing there but centuries-old dust. It was a very ghostly,
romantic house. It had a beautiful attic, and I decided to live up there. It had a door that opened onto a flat roof between the two houses. There was a door to the Herengracht side, where you could walk along to a back part of the house with an annex, all built onto each other with different levels. Underneath you had more passages connected to each other.” And he continues: “I and several others moved all our stuff to the Vogelstruys. We'd never done that in the Keyser. There you just slept on a mattress somewhere behind the armorplate. But now we thought: This is it, we're going to live here.”

“Around 11:00 some vague guy came by, a Czech, Michael Schmaus, who claimed he worked for the owner. He said, 'Böschen is busy getting together a gang and they're coming tonight around 12:00.' We said, sure, always those panic stories...And at exactly 12:00 they started to hack in the front door with axes, while we were sitting there kind of stoned drinking beers.” Frits was alone upstairs. “There were a lot of bricks by the windows. Suddenly there's a huge racket. I see the thugs coming in. They were builders, not martial arts school types. They were on the street. First I threw a big brick down, but missed on purpose. Next a small rock, missed by accident. Sietze and a few other people went running up to them yelling and then they ran like hell. For me that was important, because all three times that I'd stayed overnight after a squat before, a gang had come. I was scared to death, but here, just throwing stuff and seeing them running away, my fear was immediately gone.” That same night the windows of the
owner's house, almost on the same canal, were smashed. “That didn't need much discussion.”

An threat existed unabated the first few weeks. There was talk of the formation of a gang of 60, accompanied by still heavier barricading, squatters sleeping over, keeping watch, and actions against Böschen. Right after the squat he'd filed a report of a breach of domestic peace, which was still being dealt with despite the report from detective Erhard, who had established vacancy on his visit. Frits: “I went again with Max to the Palace of Justice on the Prinsengracht, in search of Asser, the acting District Attorney. There were rumors that there would be an eviction that day. We were going to ask what was going on with that breach of the peace and to tell them they really couldn't do that. Because meanwhile two ads had appeared in the newspaper offering the Struys for sale. That was also evidence that there
was no breach of domestic peace. Plus my story that I'd seen it for sale at the real estate agent's.” Max: “At one point we got to speak to Fehmers, the DA who had had weekend duty during the squat and had to decide whether to adjudge breach of the peace. He seemed hurried and accepted the information. Nothing more happened that day.”

There were indications that police or thugs would come over the roof by way of one of the neighboring houses. On the landing from the roof to the Singel side a fort in the round was built out of bedsprings and barbed wire. Two canal searchlights were set on both corners, in case the thugs came at night. Frits: “I'd taken one of those nice big lamps that light up the trees along the water from in front of the house. An annoying guy lived next door, one of those subservient geranium specialist types, and he'd seen this. The next day I was carrying the lamp away with a carrier bike, right out in the open, and he saw that too and warned the police. But they were too late.” The whole house was full of bricks and clubs. “The tension was good.”

For Max it was the season of the Duvels. “We stayed home a lot to look after things and someone would go pick up some beers at the Ace of Cups; we had a deal with them. We mostly sat in that apartment on the third floor, where there was also a fireplace. There was also a panel that made a sort of closet. It was June, but pretty cold despite that. So we set that whole wooden board on fire, drinking a Duvel, watching the fire and just talking a bit about how things were. I was also quite in love in those days, with Claar, and she was living there too.” Frits: “We played a lot of Doors, smoked joints, lit fires, that atmosphere. We ate light brown sliced bread in plastic bags, with a hunk of cheese from the Albert Heijn supermarket; we stole everything there. Now and then someone would cook. You were on watch the whole night on group duty, and that went on for weeks in a row. That's all you do then. Those weren't the type of people to have meetings; except for one they weren't intellectual types. I knew those people very well and the neighborhood group feeling was very strong. It was your neighborhood, your block. You were there and you helped them. And you spent as much time as it took.”

Max: “We had brought along an idea with us from the Groote Keyser like: if anything happens we'll fight. That was like an unwritten rule; we all knew it of each other. In those days we were sick to death of all those meetings, at the Keyser too, where no one could agree with each other. And then at the Vogelstruys it was suddenly: this is how it is. Everyone was on the same wavelength. It was extremely clear. People did talk about it, but everyone adjusted to each other; it happened pretty automatically. And besides, around the canals and the Jordaan, the Vogelstruys was something more personal. It was on a somewhat smaller scale. It was also a breather for a lot of people - that we didn't discuss what would or wouldn't happen. The press never wrote about it either before the riot.”

Yet a number of residents left, not wanting to end up in the whirl of actions and guard duty again. “When we were out of the Keyser, Hein from the Staatslieden district took charge of the house, to get the whole thing back on its feet, with new residents and all. He got a couple of us involved and worked on their feelings. He appointed them sort of lieutenants whose task was the reconstruction of the Groote Keyser. Hein paid no attention at all to the fact that there was much more going on in other places in the city at the time. At the Keyser there was actually nothing going on at all. In the first few days, for example, we had picked up gas masks, fireworks and some smoke bombs from the Keyser. Hein insisted that the stuff go back. What
a misconception. If gas masks were useful anywhere, it was at the Vogelstruys. We argued like hell about that. A kind of half animosity developed.”

The stenciled brochure which presented “The Groote Keyser Kampaign” of Hein and consorts to the neighborhoods put it this way: “Having to sit amid the debris did not benefit the residents' psychological condition. This caused a few old residents to temporarily drop out. These people coming back again, as well as enthusiastic new residents coming along, has ensured that motivation is optimal once more.” They began by emptying the fort and setting up an info center in the basement of the Keyser. The radio continued broadcasting out of the squat: “The Free Keyser is really* free. For Christ's sake, let's not lose this, but expand it. It's one more reason to do our extreme best to keep the Groote Keyser.”

At about 11:00 on the morning of Thursday, July 3rd, Max was lying in his bed in the attic of the Struys. “Suddenly I heard shuffling and thumping on the roof. So I get up and I see all these big fat guys, taking down the barricades bit by bit. We'd set glass plates in the gutter on the roof and they were stealthily passing them through to each other. I thought at first they were the owner's gang.” Max fled through trapdoors and hallways to the Herengracht side, where there was a walkie-talkie in the living room. It was there for an emergency call to someone on the outside who'd sprained his knee and was always home. But on this particular day he was visiting his mother in Friesland.

“I went in the bathroom with that thing, locked the door and called him, 'Sietze, a gang! God damn it, come on! Aren't there any batteries in this thing?' After a few minutes I hid the walkie-talkie behind the toilet. I'd grabbed some kind of iron bar, and I went out of the bathroom and snuck downstairs to warn the others. I went around a corner and there was a cop. And then you think: oh, a cop, better that than a gang. So I throw the bar away and say: let's just talk about this. Then it turned out that plainclothesmen had come in over the roof and had opened the door downstairs. Now there were vans, and cops in the hallway.”

Chief District Attorney Messchaert, after returning from his vacation, had ignored the report of the detectives who'd visited the Vogelstruys after the squat and adjudged the Böschens' breach of the peace. Besides, Commissioner Toorenaar had just been demoted from Narcotics to the Lijnbaansgracht station and he wanted to prove that he was still good for something. So for the eviction, he chose the day when the court case was to come up against the residents of the luxury apartments on the PH-kade (“because important people from the squat movement were at the trial,” according to a newspaper). Max: “Six of us were in the house, and when we were brought outside handcuffed, there were people standing there yelling. They'd been to warn everyone at the courthouse on the Prinsengracht.” Karel: “Judge Borgerhoff Mulder was only just getting started when someone ran into the courtroom with the announcement that the Vogelstruys was being evicted. We dashed out of the courtroom to the Herengracht. There we ran into Toorenaar who was strolling back to the station by himself. So we yelled, 'Asshole, you can't do this!' He answered, 'Go squat in the red light district, then I'll have some respect for you.'“

Frits:

“That morning I was standing with Patrice at police headquarters, waiting with paint bombs for the police vans filled with the people who'd been picked up for smashing in an owner's windows in Landsmeer. First we went to go get Max, because he was always late. The doorbell must not have worked. Anyway, they didn't open the door, they just wouldn't wake up. We threw rocks against the window. Time was running out, so the two of us went to the police station to wait for the vans. They never came and when we were back home we heard that the Struys had been cleared. It turned out everyone really had been sleeping when it happened. They must have really had a lot to drink. I was standing on the Northern bridge on the Singel side. It was already blocked off by cops. I was furious because not a damn thing was happening. The alarm call started to work, but very slowly. No one dared to break through. There were too few of us.”

The police had let in some builders cum* thugs, and left themselves after an hour. The squatters walked around both sides of the house to assess the situation and heard loud hammering going on inside. Joep had never heard anything about the Vogelstruys:

“I was home alone and I'd just handed in my last paper for my history studies that morning before I quit, when I got the alarm call. I went there on my bike, without any preparation. Everyone was gathering in front of the house. There were no meetings or discussions, there was no flyer or banner. The question was when there were enough people.”

More people came gradually biking up, and it began to sink in that they were completely among their own, with the police nowhere in sight. The last riot had been April 30th, when
thousands of people had thrown rocks and had a blast and every connection with squatting had seemed far away. There had been every indication beforehand that the coronation day would end in a general assault on authority; the call to the front during “April Action Month” had been a great success. Having been afraid of this, the squat groups had opted for a defensive gesture and redubbed the coronation day national squatting day. Buildings were to be squatted outside the city center, and other squatters were organizing a party in the Sarphatipark. A poster also went up calling for a demonstration against the coronation spectacle. In the midst of a media war squatters seemed to be internally divided about what should be done with the slogan “No accommodations, no coronation:” simply do some squatting, or actively disturb the ceremony.

The police, led by Commissioner De Rhoodes, launched a frontal attack that morning on a neighborhood party organized by squatters in the Bilderdijkstraat in the Kinker district in celebration of the squat of an empty office building. The crowd of squatters realized that the large-scale brawl they had feared for was coming. But shortly after the riot broke out, the police, with horses, water cannons and all, suddenly pulled out. This got everyone in the mood for the festivities that had been planned for the rest of the day. That afternoon the police attacked again, at the incipient anti-coronation demonstration on the Waterlooplein. When the police were driven away here too, there was a run down the streets Damstraat and Rokin on the church where the coronation was being held. Most of the squatters went along with abandon, angry and relieved that the police had given them their riot that day after all. But the street fights, in which a large part of the police equipment was helped to the scrapheap, had attained such proportions that the squatters felt the riot wasn't theirs any longer. “It was just harrassment, drinking a beer and then back on the street going after the ME, and then back in a bar watching them going by through the window.” (Max) “That wasn't squatting any more, that was a wholesale movement where everyone could blow off steam about whatever they wanted.” (Joep) The driving force behind April 30 came from more than just the squatters' corner; it was all getting too big for them. After the holiday this led to intense and persistent infighting, which was unloaded specifically on an NRC resident, who, according to a press organ, had distanced herself from the riots “on behalf of the squat movement” (she said, “We think what happened was senseless.”).

Now, on the street in front of the Vogelstruys, the squatters found each other suddenly back on a surveyable playing field, in a small but familiar group and with a clear goal: a house. The local experience was functioning again. “It was just about squatting and speculation again and we were completely within our rights.” (Joep) They were moving collectively through the familiar squat space once again and they knew it. The obvious thing seemed to be to re-squat.

A re-squat is an extreme squat. When a gang of thugs is driven out, there is the air of a civil war; “taking justice into one's own hands” calls up images from the 1930s. The opinion processors like to present it as a sign that democracy will soon go under. Furthermore, the recapture of a building emptied by police is the farthest-reaching form of denying “their legal system.” You can't claim a single right anymore; you've lost or given up on all your trials. You've been thrown out on more or less legal grounds and have only the moral right of the strongest still on your side. The re-squat instantly makes a building a highly intense symbol.

The Vondelstraat was one of these resquats. It led to great riots, but the house itself played a less important role. The occupation of the intersection had overshadowed the entire re-squat and the building did not ultimately need to be defended from inside. The Groote Keyser had created the prospect of a terrible battle, but it got too convoluted to ever be realized.
The Vogelstruys offered the same promise, but on a practical scale. The whole story about speculation and thugs was so obvious here that it no longer needed to be told. The house was worth more than a quiet eviction with a few cops; it had been established that there would be a violent defense. Now that, thanks to Toorenaar's sly moves, this had failed to happen, they wanted to give themselves a second chance. What was more, after having seen each other in an argumentative atmosphere for two months, Amsterdam squatters met each other again without feeling any need of debate, and consequently they could surrender themselves completely to the event. It took them up on the offer.

At 1:00, when there were enough people and the police were still nowhere in sight, there turned out to be too little equipment to go into action. Helmets and crowbars were fetched, and on the Singel side the first windows went in. A group hesitantly formed and tried to yank open the cellar door there with a crowbar.

Frits:

“That door opened outwards, so it was pointless. We'd even barricaded it. The thugs started to fling things down from the third floor, rocks, a piece of sewer pipe, and a chair. Some people had helmets on and pieces of wood in their hands, but it was too dangerous and we quit. I walked around to the Herengracht and there was a big group of people there too. Rocks were thrown back and forth. There was no way to get to the door; their aim was right on the mark. Since we knew we couldn't get to it that way, a couple of us rushed to the Keyser with a carrier bike. Because we knew how much material there was inside the Struys. On the way we picked up a big door from a trash container. It had a round hole in it and we wanted to set legs under it at the Keyser and lay a bedspring on top, so heavy things would sort of bounce back. A nice construction, but there were no tools at all in the Keyser. It had gotten so desolate there that we couldn't even find any nails. Time, time, time, hurry. It got really rickety. It could just take the weight if we stood right under it, but that was it. With a lot of trouble we got the thing onto the bike and pushed it to the Herengracht. There with united strength we got it on its feet, then under it and shuffle, shuffle, shuffle forward.”

Karel was also on the Herengracht side.

“We were hiding behind trees and cars; we were standing in a group hurling sharp street rocks that were being beat with a hammer to a handy size a little way away. When the door on legs started moving, a tremendous rain of rocks flew from the street at the house to keep the heavies at a distance. While the windows clattered down in shards they threw back just as hard. We inched to the right-hand window where there was already the beginning of a hole in the barricading. Thugs were standing behind it ready to let loose. Then all of a sudden it started going really fast. The gang just disappeared and within a minute the front door was rammed in with beams and traffic signs.”

By 3:00 the people were streaming inside one after the other.

Frits:

“We'd made a big trap door between the ground floor and the second floor and it was closed. We were standing packed together under it. I knew that there were refrigerators and washing machines upstairs waiting to be set on top of the trap door; we'd put them there. It was highly probable that the thugs had shoved them onto the trap door by now. Suddenly there was someone with a circular saw, and the person just started sawing into that trap door. I mean, who would have something like that with them? Maybe it was just lying there. I was scared because a huge mass of people was standing on the stairway. We yelled to the thugs that they had to leave, over the rooftops, and they should avoid a confrontation. Because they were lynched. Finally the trap door did break, and thank god, there was nothing standing on it.”

They ran from the Herengracht to the Singel side to throw open the door. There Joep entered the house:

“I was astounded by a mess of Italians from the Oosterpark who came in a bit later and - I'd never seen it before - had iron catapults with them. Amid screaming and yelling we fired lead shot in the round, narrow stairwell towards the upstairs, where some of the thugs were still sitting. They escaped by way of the roof. We wondered for a while whether everyone was really gone. We'd only find out later. The owner had a crippled stepson. One of those amazing stories that came out during the trial was that we had held him hostage in some dark little room by the elevator. I heard he was outside and we'd had telephone contact with him. Those were the kind of things we didn't know for sure. After that the alarm call was repeated several times and some tools were sent for.”

After the euphoria, the event went into a lull, and after its mass attack on the building the group fell apart. People like Karel and Joep, who hadn't been inside before, sprinted through
the house and paid a speedy visit to the roof to inspect the escape routes. Joep pulled off the barbed wire that was stretched over the roof escape route, “but I didn't look further than the end of my nose on that.” Frits went with a friend to drink coffee on the Spui. Those inside busied themselves with fortification. The door that had served as a shield was nailed provisionally behind the smashed window. Bedsprings were brought in through the Singel side. Word came that the riot police were approaching. The squatters inside the Vogelstruys realized that the moment had finally come to defend the house from inside, and begin to inwardly prepare, to get their nerves under control. Across the Herengracht canal a whole crowd had gathered and stood watching, and the tourist boats kept going by.

Max was still in the cell on the Lijnbaansgracht.

“At one point the PA in the station said all riot police personnel had to go and report. Then I thought: hey, wait a minute, who knows. Then at about 3:00 was my interrogation. 'Do you have anything to state?' 'No.' 'Then hurry up and fuck off to your buddies.' I didn't know what was going on, so I just walked back to the Vogelstruys and I see all these people throwing rocks...I got there right when the riot police were standing pressed up against the house.”

120 riot cops had been rounded up posthaste and sent without any briefing or knowledge of the situation to the Herengracht address. A vanful of riot trainees were first, tearing up from the Raadhuisstraat; they blazed a trail through the surge of rubberneckers on the other side of the water, turned onto the Huidenstraat bridge, drove blindly up the piece of canal in front of the Struys, piled out and started a 200-meter-long charge.

Joep and Karel were still inside. Joep:

“The minute the police come you have to decide: stay in or go out. For me the main reason to stay was, once you start something you have to finish it, no bitching. But of course you also have this vague feeling inside you do have a bigger chance of getting busted. But it was mainly to be consistent. They were your buddies, you stuck by them. They were squatters, but also people who knew each other well from these situations. The tourists and Italians just gave it an extra dimension. There were also some people busy collecting household stuff that had been left behind. That might have been a reason for them to stay inside too. Of course there are also people who stay to make sure it doesn't all get out of hand, take care of the wounded and all that. There were 30 or 40 people. When the fighting got really hefty on the Herengracht, the door on the Singel side just stayed open. Fantastic.”

Max was busy on the Herengracht.

“There was a fight every meter. There were relatively few people, or they were pretty spread out over all those bridges and corners. Five of you stood there with rocks, and then throwing as hard as you can and the cops PAF! And then they charged again, and then someone came forward and scared the shit out of 12 riot cops all by himself with a steel bar. The cops started throwing rocks too. Then I heard that you could still get in on the Singel and that's what I did.”

Karel:

“I had decided to stay inside, but I suddenly lost the people from my neighborhood. I walk outside onto the Singel to tell them that I'm staying inside and see them all just then running to the corner. I run after them, but I think again that I want to be inside. As I run up the steps to the house, I see Joep just pushing a beam behind the door. He says sorry anyway. I ran around the northern side to the Herengracht.”

Frits came walking up from the Spui and landed in the middle of the fray.

“It drove me crazy that I wasn't inside. We knew for sure 30 or 40 people were in the building. You couldn't get through anymore. It was sealed shut and they were like mice in a trap. Only the Singel side wasn't blocked off yet with cops. First I was on the corner of the Herengracht and the Oude Spiegelstraat. A row of cops was standing on the canal. We ran forward, around the corner, threw rocks and ran straight back. Preferably bouncing off the ground, because they had shields, but if they bounced they couldn't tell where they were coming from anymore. That was the only time I saw a woman throwing rocks non-stop, too. The cops couldn't take it; they were standing there jumping and throwing back. They came tearing at us on the bridge in a van. In a split second a rock's coming straight at me. I see it just a meter away in front of my face and duck away. A minute later they sprayed tear gas behind me, huge clouds, as the riot squad was charging in front of me. I held my breath and ran straight through it. That'll make you sick.”

In the meantime the rest of the riot squad arrived, including the tear gas unit, which sprayed - instead of the CS gas which the squatters had gotten acquainted with on April 30 - the old CN gas which had been banned since May that year. Karel:

“The gas came into the alley where we were standing. We didn't worry about it because we had scarves on. It suddenly turned out to be much stronger than we'd thought, and we ran back retching over the Singel. In one of the streets we went to a greengrocer's to buy lemons, which we had cut and then squirted into each other's eyes to get the gas out. When we'd gotten over it, we found everything blocked off.”

Inside the house, Joep and Max ended up on the third floor. Joep:

“You couldn't see out very well. We mostly heard what was going on, on the canal. Crashing, rock-throwing, yelling. When the street had been cleared you could see bunches of riot cops standing by trees with shields. We opened the windows and started throwing stuff. There were three or four of us. And the Free Keyser was on the air. We had a radio and they were playing the
eviction tape, 'Street Fighting Man' and 'Anarchy in the U.K.' - that added to the festivity. I was like, 'They always play the same thing! Can't I make a request?' The material to be hurled outside were at the ready. Whole bedsprings were going down, chairs, tables and heaters, really everything. Finally it just couldn't be heavy enough; it didn't matter for shit anymore. I do remember I said to Max, 'Should we do that?' But he said, 'What does it matter if you throw a one-pound rock or a six-pound bed?' He's completely right, of course.”

In principle, the police followed the same tactic during this second eviction as the squatters had applied that afternoon. At the water's edge, behind the trees, stood tear gas marksmen who shot as many tear gas grenades as possible inside, to keep the crew inside away from the windows. At the same time, a group inched forward with the shields over their heads, in order to get back inside the house through the right-hand window. Max:

“It was really pretty Asterix and Obelix (like a cartoon) with those shields. On the second floor they managed to shoot gas inside, because there were large windows. But we were behind a pretty small window and we were holding a mattress in front of it, which we pushed aside every now and then to throw stuff.”

Joep:

“It wasn't worth it to push that mattress aside for just a rock, so at one point we chucked a whole box of bricks down and finally a bedspring when we left. It's also a question of efficiency, optimal use of gravity. You have no time at all for crazy schemes. The only thing you stop to think about is, how do I survive this?”

Max:

“I sat there yanking on the washbasin since there was nothing left to throw. The thugs had already dumped half of the throwing material out on the re-squatters, so the ammunition was just used up. It got pretty quiet. From the second floor we heard nothing more; we got the feeling that the people there had fled. No tear gas had come in where we were yet, although you could smell it. There fumes got so bad we couldn't take it anymore. Then it was like, we're going to have to try to get away; this isn't going to work.”

Michiel and about 15 other people were throwing rocks down from the second floor on the Herengracht side when tear gas was shot in from the street.

“We ran out of the room and stood in the marble hallway on the third floor. From the room on the Herengracht we saw big yellowish-white clouds drifting towards us, but we couldn't smell it yet. Then we decided to leave via the Singel. We took the barricades away from the front door, which took a long time. Things were really quiet on the canal, a strange contrast with inside. There were lines of cops left and right with their backs to us. It took at least another minute before they saw us. 'Let's break through the lines,' someone yelled. We went to the right, it was about a 100-meter walk. When we were halfway the line turned around and rushed at us. We ran back but there we came up against the line from the other side. Then almost everyone either jumped or was knocked into the water. I got hit right as I jumped into the canal. On the other side
were flat barges with lots of people standing on them cussing at the police and they hauled us out.”

The ones who didn't jump into the water passed Commissioner Toorenaar on the bridge, standing there encouraging his men with a “beautiful, beautiful!” to lay into the passersby some more.

Max and Joep were still in the third-floor apartment. They heard nothing more from below and went to have a look in the hallway. Max: “We open that door - a white fog of tear gas. And through that onto the flat roof.” Joep:

“On the roof we hiked to the attic on the Singel side, and there we ran into people from other parts of the house who'd also come onto the roof. I stayed in the stairwell a minute to check where the rest were. We didn't know for sure when the police had gotten inside. Before that we'd seen them busy outside, but when you suddenly realize they're inside, there's sort of a moment of panic. Because it makes a whole different sound. A riot cop standing outside is very different from a riot cop in your own house. The space is different, the acoustics are different. You don't see people from above under their shields and helmets, but on the stairs face to face. Then it's suddenly about your own ass, whereas if you're outside or throwing stones from above, then it's about the building. When they're inside you're not thinking anymore about attacking or defending, just about saving your own ass, that was how it was for me. Getting into hand-to-hand combat with the riot police was out of the question.”

To get onto the neighbors' roof the group had to jump over an alley one meter wide and twelve meters deep.

“So we had to get over that and that went OK because the ones who still more or less had their cool hung onto those who were really wobbling. Two stayed behind on the roof.” Joep: “We stepped inside the neighbors' house through a kitchen window. It wasn't open; I believe we had to use some force there. But it was also necessary, because we were pretty dazed. That gas really affected our breathing, everyone had red sweaty faces. We were kind of dizzy, groggy, couldn't make it any further. We needed to drink water in the kitchen, dry off. Then a little old lady appeared out of a bedroom; she was all upset, but she was sweet.”

Claar had come onto the roof out of the Singel house and jumped with the others over the alley. She told a newspaper later:

“When I was half inside the window of the neighbors' house and glanced backward, I saw that the police had reached the roof by then too and were grouped around the two who'd stayed behind. When I was inside I sat for a minute to get over the gas. Then we all went into a living room on the first floor. No one was there; as compensation for the use of the room a few people laid money on the table plus an apologetic note.”

Max:

“We ended up right in the house of that guy who had rushed outside during the squat and was totally against it. That guy came running outside and said to the chief of the riot squad, 'There they are!'“ Joep: “We saw the police there on the street running back and forth. We went to the john, washed up and checked if there was anything to eat or drink. We discussed what we should do, break out or stay there. What could they do to us if we were in there? We were going to explain to whoever lived there what our situation was. I took my jacket off and stuck it under a bed. I waited there about 20 minutes – an amazing silence, very relaxed, that alternation between intensity and calm. Until the cops came with Wagenaar, the resident. They hammered on the door and I opened it with the story that they had to understand our difficult situation - wham bam, out. 'This is my house!' He already thought he'd lost his house. The cops went crazy and hammered us down the stairs, out of the house. They were whacking us on the head. I kind of lurched up the street and saw cops with long batons coming towards us, they thought, 'Hey, where did those squatters come from?' Running the cop gauntlet, maybe I'll get away; but it didn't work.”

Max:

“Claar was walking in front of me. The cops were pushing so hard that everyone tumbled off the stairs; she fell and then she was taken inside by the downstairs neighbor and didn't get arrested. She knew the woman because her dog, who she'd had in the squat for awhile, had been bitten by this neighbor's dog, and the woman had paid the veterinary bill. In the chaos no one noticed that she rescued her.”

A reporter saw the rest staggering up the street. “'Kill them, kill them, those scum,' yells a man from a neighboring house. On the street corner a boy lies crying, as a group of eight riot police beat on him: 'Mercy, mercy, oh please.' A girl with bleeding head wounds is kicked into a police car. Others are dragged down the street by their hair.” Despite heavy head wounds, a number of people managed to escape in between the police into the crowd of onlookers standing further down in the Nieuwe Spiegelstraat. Others were arrested and transported to police headquarters. The two stragglers on the roof were smacked across the roof and back into the house by the police. One was so seriously injured that he lost consciousness. He was dragged unconscious from the hall behind the Singel door into a room. The woman, who had also been kicked, had to lie next to him on her stomach with her hands behind her neck. “After about 45 minutes we were pulled up by our hair. In the hall they put handcuffs on us and tightened them very painfully. We were dragged out the window by our hair and pulled into a riot van.” Two hours later they were already free. A total of 16 people were arrested in and around the building, of whom ten were quickly released.

In the meantime, someone took the people who'd been fished out of the water to the NRC building. Michiel: “But no one there wanted to let us in, because they didn't want anything to do with the riot, an aftereffect from April 30. Finally they did let us take a cold shower. We borrowed clean clothes somewhere else and went back to the riot, where we ran into lots of people we knew who were surprised we hadn't been picked up.” During the eviction the riot
in the street carried on with great ferocity. The offices had let out and City Radio had come on the air, so lots of people came to get a look. Frits: “We roamed around for hours. On the other side of the Herengracht, we, this bad-ass group in black going on an expedition, terribly conspicuous among all those onlookers, walked to the Boschen house to smash windows. We stopped to rest on the Spuistraat. You couldn't get to the house anymore, the cops were still standing there. A couple of days later I went on vacation.”

Karel was standing by one of the Singel bridges where a platoon was being pelted from two sides. “Then the group to the right of us attacked, at which the police rushed forward, so that we could bombard them from the side. There were lots of misses, by us as well as by them. All the stores, coffee shops, cars, and just about everything got smashed to smithereens in the process. Plus the riot vans had already smashed up the bikes that had been locked to the bridge. The police were covered from head to toe in paint. The audience was sitting in the cafes there on the canal, beer in hand, cheering us on and cussing us out: 'Where are those
50,000 homeless anyway? I've never seen them.' When one of them started to take a picture we threw a rock into the bar. Eventually you couldn't tell bystanders and squatters apart anymore and there were also lots of plainclothesmen. We went home then.” Late that night Claar snuck out of the neighbor's house. She walked to the Groote Keyser, the closest squat, and was refused entry. Max: “One of Hein's new policy lines was that only residents and people who had a temporary duty in the building could be walking around. I heard that from Claar later when I was in the can. You really start hating someone like that.”

The squatters were evicted and the riot was won. The monotony of the months of waiting for the Keyser's eviction had been broken. The squatters had proven to themselves that what they had endlessly been talking about was no bluff: they really were crazy enough to
stake their lives on defending a building and unleash an unheard-of amount of violence in the process. That they lost the house in question did nothing to alter that. Without any preparation or discussion among themselves, everyone let the event carry them away. It had been waiting for them for a while already and was now unexpectedly being kicked off by the radical naivete of one Toorenaar, clueless as to the trip he was interfering in. The pretension of spontaneous rage over housing was made good here without a sound about media, symbolization or advance planning. The squatters broke through their fears and entered into total confrontation, without hesitations regarding goal, feasibility, purpose or future perspective. Vacancy, chaos, violence and fun: “You really got away from it all.”

On July 3, 1980, a terminus was reached; in their minds the squatters had crossed the boundary separating civilization from wilderness. It had not been a game, but not an embittered final battle either. The break with the everyday legal order that had made squatting possible in the first place had been taken to its most extreme consequences. Many wanted no part of it anyway. Others, who had experienced the extremity and survived, knew now what it meant. They had no reason to go so far ever again. At the same time, the outside world thought that from now on squatters were prepared to defend their houses like this forever. That made them able to keep this shadow up their sleeves in future evictions.

The six remaining Vogelstruys arrestees were taken into custody. Joep: “At that point it started to happen rationally. The high and the haze, the automatism and the mechanism were over and I thought, now I have to start thinking strictly legally, or strategically. It was a different level. The cell was the next step in the struggle, continue consistently, stay militant and prepare for what's coming. Don't say your name, be a nuisance and make things pleasant for yourself.” The arrestees' group sent mail and packages and organized “noise demos” outside the jail for the people inside. The “Struysvogel Politiek [Ostrich Attitude] Work Group” declared the building contaminated and sent out a communique: “People fighting against the housing shortage are being abused in a fascist way and arrested.” The Böschens fled to Germany, “scared to death of reprisals.” The Free Keyser made jailhouse radio and Max got a visit. “Some total hippie came into my cell, who I couldn't tell if he was looking at me or not. And that was my attorney. Then the guards came to bring something every hour, a magazine or a bunch of grapes with notes. It was driving them crazy. Sunday my attorney comes back to go over the arraignment, and that stupid guard suddenly brings in another package. Claar had baked a cake, it was still warm. The pan wasn't allowed in the cell, so the guard starts to pick the cake out of it. And he actually manages to get the damn cake out in one piece. So I say to my attorney, you want a bite? And he says, must be a hash cake, but what the hell, it's Sunday. So I break a piece off, and they've baked a file in there, an old rusty wood file. We were falling down laughing. I was transferred to the jail in Haarlem, I was standing there with all my bags and everything was searched. That pan was in one of the bags and I'd stuffed the file in a sweater. The guy says, what's this? How...how...or what? I go, don't ask me.” The arrestees were scattered all over the country and remained in custody for six weeks. Squatters had never been locked up for so long. Joep designed the trial strategy in letters to the others: “It would be ideal if we could make a combined play among us, the attorneys and the audience - testimonies, expert witnesses, pleadings and supporting theater in the gallery. If the judge should start being difficult, then of course we will too: keep talking and talking, retract our statements, argue, swear. I think it would be good to pull a good joke when the verdict is announced, like Bas and Max have suggested (puking, shitting, standing on your head, fainting, pointing out a zit to the judge, etc.).” “That to me is the essence of a political trial. Not so much the testimony you give, but that you see it as a fight: who's determining the order here?”

At their arraignment on August 14th their temporary remand is suspended until the 18th. When they are released that day, the first thing they do is to liberate fellow arrestee Bas from a hospital in Haarlem where he's in for his appendix. Two days later, the first day of the trial is scheduled, but none of them shows up, since they are suffering from “collective appendicitis”. They do show up in the club Paradiso the same day, at the squatters' court, pronouncing judgment on speculators, the city, the police and the law (with demonstration afterwards).

In the six intervening weeks of city-wide meetings a change in course was decided for in reaction to the Vogelstruys, among other things. A direct confrontation with the riot police could be prevented by placing evictions in an economic context; from now on they had to start costing the authorities as much money as possible. The strategy was two-pronged: on one hand the house had to pose enough of a threat that the police would be forced to deploy the maximum amount of personnel and equipment. On the other, the riot had to be got under way in order to do as much damage as possible to banks, the city, real estate agents and other nasties. Thus the concept of the scripted riot was born, a logically planned havoc under their own control. It would speculate on police strategy, involve the media in the game and dictate to the people who respond to the emergency alarm what they had to do. The squatters needed to go through a learning process to stop hanging around the squat; they had to cut the tie to the local experience and spread throughout the city.

In a long series of city and neighborhood meetings they talked over what ought to be done, and when, about the next approaching eviction: the PH-kade. At the same time, however, it stayed unclear whether the house was actually going to be defended from the inside. This was used as a threat, but no one could determine whether it was intended for media agents or fellow squatters. The PH-kade's having been set up as a “political squat” was now taking its toll. In preparing for the squat in April no one had worried about putting together a stable group of residents, and this did much to divide the discussion over the manner of defense. Some raised the issue of the loss of public support, while others prepared a military response and started training programs in order to be better able to fight on the street with the riot police.

The result of the confusion was that the first gauge of the new strategy was a smashing success, and the second a complete failure. The barricades inside and the ammunition on the edge of the roof made all the papers, and the police turned out that afternoon with “2000 men, armored cars, armored bulldozers, mechanical shovels, three hydraulic cranes, two tower wagons, two water cannons, and dozens of vehicles, marksmen armed with automatic rifles equipped with telescopic sights, and a military police unit equipped with batons, shields, pistols and bulletproof vests.” The squatters disappeared at the last minute through a hole in the wall to the church next door and had a toast in the parsonage. At the PHK at the moment of the eviction only one squatter was inside. He read out a statement with a megaphone: “We will keep our struggle in our own hands and determine ourselves how and when it will take place.” But then, on the street, all the interested parties who had responded en masse to the media reports, expecting the squat to be defended inside and out, were run over and beaten up by a line of motorcycle cops. The panic was further heightened by the new police tactic of arrest squads who suddenly appeared out of the crowd of everyday people and drove vans into passersby, mostly tourists. In the squat the function of the indoor crew was taken over by select delegates from the mainstream Dutch media. A newspaper: “With Johan van der Keuken and two sound people were a reporter from the VARA, three people from Veronica, one from the Nieuwe Revu, an editor from the Nieuwe Linie and a reporter from the Haarlems Dagblad. Other media, according to the squatters, are unreliable.” The media they'd wanted to use to make fools of the police had taken over the situation and could now be deployed by the authorities in an advertising campaign for their equipment. The group who'd been beat up in front of the house, according to plan, should have marched through the city to go after the real culprits. But the fact that you could lure the police into such a spectacle by means of a squat was so amazing that everyone stayed to watch, while according to the agreement they were allowed to do almost nothing. Unknown rioters took over the enterprise from the squatters, who were merely wandering around in frustration, forced to acknowledge that the riot was going according to the police's script.

The ex-Vogelstruys arrestees were there that day. “When I got out I went straight over to the Keyser,” Max recalls. “I'm back! But everyone there was stressing out getting ready for the PH eviction. Actually I could better have left. The day of the PH-kade I was walking around in the middle of all those events, but I was more like a zombie there, I just didn't get it anymore, forget it.” Joep: “For the first time I threw something again at a riot van - a banana. But that PH eviction kind of went over my head. It all seemed artificial. It was completely different from the Struys.”

After none of them showed up on August 20, the first day of the trial was set for Monday, September 8th. The night before, a small group squatted the Vogelstruys for the third time.

There was a meeting in the basement of the Groote Keyser on Sunday the 7th. Frits: “The people were very diverse. We arranged everything in a couple of hours, mainly ladders. We couldn't alert anyone before it happened. That was because sometime in June Herengracht 242 was evicted and the resquat failed, because it turned out the plan had leaked after a long meeting and the building was full of police. We just boarded the front door shut with boards and nails straight through the frame. Then we held a spontaneous demonstration. It was a first, hesitant foray. Max, I believe, smashed in windows at the Greek airline because he'd had bad experiences with them, and at the South African VERKEERS office. Hein thought we shouldn't have discussed it, that the six of us who went out for some fresh air during the meeting could have just retaken it. That was why for the second resquat of the Vogelstruys a select company was called for, though pretty broad, from Hein to Michiel, about 30 people.”

The re-squat of the Vogelstruys was to be a political squat, the option of occupancy really played no role, and it wasn't organized by a residents' group. The chance of a speedy eviction was too great for that. “We got in three ways on the Singel side, with two ladders and through the front door. Smashed in a windowpane, that was easy, and the front door just opened, but it was chained. Hein was standing there pounding on it dazedly, while others were very simply unhooking it from inside. On the first floor on the Singel we discovered a squat interior, but somewhat neater, the house owner's equivalent of the minimal table, chair and bed.” Michiel found it bizarre that plastic sheets had been hung up as walls. Frits: “Three people were sitting in there. They were taken outside. Then the alarm was phoned out, but the response wasn't too good. That night was damn scary and tense, not fun at all. I was afraid.” The police blocked off the canal, but received instructions from above at 11:45 that they were not allowed to take action and had to withdraw. Frits: “That night for the first time I heard people say that they felt abused during the action like livestock. In Paper for the Spiderweb #7 a few people wrote of their frustrations: “We were drummed into action for something when we hadn't been involved in the planning or decision-making; we didn't really know what the goal of the action actually was, when we'd achieved anything, or when to end the action.”

Max, Joep and the others were just having a preparatory meeting with their attorneys when a phone call informed them that the Struys had been re-squatted. Max: “Later that night I climbed the ladder inside. It was already a different house than it was in my memory. That whole re-squat was sort of unreal. It was strange too, because the two people who'd gone back to the Keyser after the first squat did a whole lot this time. They wanted to make up for it. The re-squat was a great starting point for a riot, no more and no less. And that's what it turned out to be, a festive day out.” For Joep it was more a bonus. “It wasn't that serious, but symbolic.”

The trial, which began at 9:00 a.m. the next day, September 8th, only took a few hours. Because the case was so complicated, it was sent on to full court. This was the first of a series of days in court which, on up through appeals, would last two years.

Joep: “At the trial we were going to ignore all the accusations and permanently prevent any questions from being directed at us. This DA can't prosecute us! There was an illegal eviction, you guys tried to kill us with lethal tear gas, Böschen is a speculator and this whole trial can't go on! We weren't going to deny the charge either. We'd walk away if we didn't like it. Who's determining the order here, that was the issue. We tried to be a step ahead of the normal process every time, by telling the DA before he started, hold it! You can't have the floor here. They couldn't stand us continually enforcing those things. The attorneys just had to make sure that we could keep the floor if the DA protested. Or like when Toorenaar was subpoenaed. When he finally showed up, I asked him questions till the judge said I shouldn't interrogate him so harshly, because it was making the guy so nervous.” About the conclusion of one arbitrary session that had lasted eight hours, a paper said, “B. packed up his colorful knitting, eliciting Mr. Slagter's remark that 'Bas may be the only one who did anything useful today.'“

Max: “The trials were a mixture of kind of being concerned with the political background and making a gigantic chaos out of it. The last day was brilliant. I had made a flyer that was distributed in the courtroom: 'Vogelstruys almost done for...? If the main culprits aren't nailed now, something's gonna blow.' Gerrit could puke anytime he wanted to. In the afternoon break we stuffed him with tons of fast food. Then he went back up to the gallery. When it became clear that they weren't complying with our demands, we stood up and Joep started to tear up old law books and throw them across the courtroom. It was full of security, they suspected something was going to happen. Suddenly - Bwah! this stream of vomit spews from the gallery into the room. The presiding judge turns bright red, grabs his gavel and thud! The session is closed. They didn't get Gerrit. When we came outside we saw that Bas had taken the judge's gavel. I went back again a lot later to watch during the appeal, but then the
Böschens had finally shown up as witnesses after all and those guys sitting there made me so sick that I left. I wasn't into it anymore.” Joep would finally be acquitted and get back the jacket he'd stuck under the neighbor's bed (his comment: “That was class justice.”). Max and the others got two months, Bas four.

After that first morning of the trial, September 8th, the Vogelstruys was still resquatted. Max: “After the trial we were sitting on the Rozengracht in the sun drinking wine. Suddenly someone from the Staatslieden district comes biking by: 'They're evicting the Vogelstruys.' Gradually I was back in the mood and we walked over there just wearing t-shirts.” Frits: “I'd gone to the university for coffee and a sandwich, because at the squat we had plenty of ladders, but no coffee. I came biking back on the Singel side and right at that moment I see a guy falling down, jumping. He landed OK, but was in a total panic. They were being evicted from the roof again. I sprinted away to phone through the alarm. Four people were picked up inside the squat; the remaining four escaped from the second floor with the ladder. Max: “It was very spontaneous. People came running from the Singel. We had taken a beam off a flat boat, beat in the basement door and in with the smoke bombs. It wasn't so clear exactly what we were trying to do.” The alarm was quickly spread, and on Singel and Herengracht the police, who were in the minority, were forced back in charges and hand-to-hand combat. Riot vans started driving into rock-throwers and lots of tear gas was fired. Once again, the police had mis-assessed things, and only prepared 200 riot police. City Radio had come on the air at 5:00 as usual and was reporting live from the riot. Home from work, Karel turned on the radio: “I hear a description of a big fight and I'm wondering, which was this, the PHK, April 30? Turns out it's live. I jumped right on my bike and rushed on over.”

The riot script for which had been developed in the abstract for the PH-kade was suddenly brought into practice with great success, to the surprise of the gathered squatters. They said
farewell to the place without difficulty and began a trek through the city. They spontaneously let go of the battle in and around the fortress a la Vauban and switched over effortlessly to the principles of movement war. These date back even further than Vauban's fort-based defense; Sun Tzu had already described them in 500 B.C. in his handbook, “The Art of Making War,” with the central thesis, “Keep your army in constant movement. In war it all comes down to speed.”

Frits: “It became an expedition. The group in front was yelling 'Right to live!' We'd yell that and then we'd go in a certain direction and the others would follow. It was eerily quiet in the group. Except for that 'right to live' there was no yelling or slogans. It wasn't a demonstration, either; you were doing it for yourself. At one point the group got surrounded and had to go
straight through an office building to the next canal.” Max: “Right after the eviction a bunch of people went to Böschen. Windows out, smoke bombs in. Turned out it was his son's birthday. He was having a kiddie party. So all the little kids come out, with party hats and everything. Huh? What the hell is this? Oh well, guess we'll just keep walking.”

The Free Keyser came on the air and sowed confusion among the police by reporting that another house had been squatted somewhere else. On the Rokin, a barricade was built out of three builder's huts and set on fire. Karel: “When I got there the group was already long gone. I watched the fire for a while and the huge bulldozer that came to push away the barricade. Then I finally ran into people I knew and went into the little streets behind the Spui and around the Struys, catching tear gas grenades and throwing them back. In those days I always had a bag ready with riot accessories, scarf, gloves, gas mask, poker, and I had that with me. In between we went back to the Spui to watch the news and then we just kept going.”

As the Rokin was being swept clear, the windows of the Bijenkorf department store a few hundred meters away went in; the group then hiked onward to resquat the PH-kade, “but a column of riot police foiled the march on the luxury apartments.” On the Dam, meanwhile, the different groups that had been dispersed were getting back together. It was dark by now; in the Damstraat all the garbage cans were on fire and a line of motorcycle cops who had been drummed up in great haste stood before the Rokin. The windows went in at the Royal Palace and the display windows at department store Peek en Cloppenburg were plundered; not just the suede jackets but also the mannequins, disrobed, were brought outside. Press voices: “Members of the squatters' movement who witnessed the looting tried to limit the damage by throwing as many things as they could back into the broken windows. The windows of the Deuschle-Benger lingerie shop in the Paleisstraat were completely demolished. The owner had to dismantle a clothing rack to barricade his shop. Even the Amsterdam Diamond Center's bulletproof glass was damaged by a rain of small stones.”

Max: “It was really one of those nights, set a dumpster on fire somewhere and then back into the bar. If you lost people, or there were too few of you, you'd go by the Too Narrow bar to have a look, you'd run into a couple of people there. A Duvel, and then, here we go again. The Black Helmet Brigade from the Staatslieden district was around by then, you'd run into them every now and then in the city. They were geared up for a riot. But it was just a bunch of fragments that spread out.” The motorcycle cops started to drive into the crowd, and people who got cornered against a wall or in a doorway were beat up. It started to drizzle. After the motorcycle cops were lured into a trap in the Kalverstraat and crashed into a dumpster that had been rolled into the street, everyone went home to bed, tired but satisfied. The destruction had been worthwhile; heavy economic damage had been caused.

Frits: “After the second Vogelstruys riot, for me it just turned into a game, or a way to blow off steam; it was never serious again. At the PH-kade they said, 'We won't leave'; everyone kept yelling that, but the people did leave, so the phrase instantly became hollow. For me, the Struys was the apotheosis of what had been built up with the Keyser and the Vondelstraat, that determination. In the Vondelstraat and the Keyser it was still very (open)/BLANKO; we didn't know what defense meant. It was big in our minds, but the Struys was where it happened.” The Vogelstruys, which had managed to reunite the squatters who had been driven apart after April 30th in the re-squat and defense of the houses on July 3rd, was now, two months later, the point from which the squatters dispersed once more, this time consciously and willfully, in a night of a “GOEIE PUINHOOP.” By the next eviction, the bank expedition strategy was preferred over a scuffle in and around the squat. But to this end, the
squat groups had to steamroller over the neighborhood- and house bound local experience that had started it all. The houses themselves, stripped of their excess value of being part of one's “own” space, could be staked in negotiations over purchase, renovation and rent settlements. Threats and use of violence during evictions and other ways of getting into the media were meant to secure a strong position in current or future negotiations. Amidst the realpolitik surrounding the retention of living accommodations, however, some persisted in clinging stubbornly to the local experience, to the mystique of “our” squat.

Max: “It got to be a sort of tradition to go after the Vogelstruys. For years July 3rd has been the date for all kinds of actions. People ran into each other the night before in the neighborhood near the house, with plastic bags and even a Molotov cocktail once: 'Oh, you too? Shall we do it together then?' That new owner Cutts was always really the dupe. Demonstrations for arrestees went from the Palace of Justice through the Leidsestraat to the Vogelstruys. Hey, Cutts' car! Bam. Wrecking the video camera was another challenge. Whoever could take that would get to drink free one night in the squat bar.” Frits: “It was endless revenge. Paint was constantly being thrown at it, the locks glued shut. And with a butane gas burner we tried to get through the plastic windows. For five minutes, but it didn't really work. Once we stripped a heavy expensive car parked outside the door. You'd always bike by the Struys, that's what we did then, always keeping an eye on it. One night I saw Cutts getting out of a yellow deux-chevaux. I went to a squat bar and afterward we were going to go throw that car in the canal. We'd already arranged to meet on the doorstep of the Vogelstruys, Joep and I were standing there waiting for the third person, but he didn't show up, he had to discuss his relationship. After a half hour wait the two of us just pushed it in the canal. That was already the second time?”

Max: “And then that one neighbor. One time some people rang his doorbell to give him a good punch in the nose. His wife opens the door, and then it's like, aw, forget it. Better luck next time. That guy always got away. Cutts was interviewed: over the years there were 80 attacks on his house, he'd kept count. The Vogelstruys is so central, you almost can't help going past it. All those actions were on the edge between bitterness and playfulness, they're intertwined. A lot of people had trouble with that for a long time, like - they're not rid of us yet. They haven't had it all yet.”

A month after the third Vogelstruys eviction, on October 6, 1980, the city unexpectedly purchased the Groote Keyser. By then the info center in the basement was already open. On September 20 a “protest demonstration” was held. The basement always tried to give the impression that it was developing a multitude of activities: “We give information to the schools, go to the schools, there's a stand with all the new and latest squat information, newspapers, posters, leaflets. There's also what I like to call the squat museum, the photo exhibitions on evictions and riots. These days there's a reading table with all the weeklies.”

On October 21, two weeks after the purchase, there was to be an official meeting between city and “residents”. Questions like, who will live there, what do we want to do with the basement, and “do we let the radio stay in the G.K.?” were discussed at length beforehand in neighborhood periodicals and other stencilwork. At the city conference (SOK) about the purchase on October 16th, “for the first time, the radio finally came up for discussion,” the Free Keyser wrote later in the squat news. “And how! The meeting was run by a group of hotheads who demanded the instantaneous departure of the transmitter: 'After all, Messchaert could be at the door any minute!'“ There was a fear that the squats, now that they were in the hands of the city, still wouldn't be allotted for “young people's housing”, if the radio kept clinging obstinately to its illegal broadcasts out of the Keyser. The neighborhood's discussion piece for the SOK says, “The transmitter will be used as an argument for eviction. The existence of the Free Keyser must be detached from the existence of the Groote Keyser.”

The radio responded to this by broadcasting out of the Keyser for the last time on October 26th, '80, under the motto “Let a thousand antennas bloom”, to become mobile thereafter and transmit from a new neighborhood every day. In their final statement they addressed the lack of a radio culture among squatters: “Criticism of the radio stays limited to catchphrases
like: there's too much freaking going on during shows, they blindly encourage violence against the police, there's too much intellectual crap.” They felt that most squatters had risen to the baiting of the press campaign which had been waged against the Groote Keyser since April 30, but “the smear campaign against the radio is in fact a smear campaign against the squat movement, under the pretence that there are good and bad squatters.”

On October 21st, during the talks, which took place on neutral ground, Hein and his people reached an agreement with the city that living cooperatives would move into the Keyser, and the Labor Party was informed that the radio would soon be gone. Max:

“There was already a lot of resentment about Hein and the Staatslieden district, how they walked all over people in order to live out their obsession against the Labor Party. And it was them of all people that you saw in the paper sitting at one table with the city officials. It gave us a pretty bad feeling.”

In the final week of October the very last of the campers departed. The cooperative groups had been organized, but hadn't moved into the building yet. The Keyser was empty again. Max:

“Then we were like, HET IS MOOI GEWEEST, let's re-squat it. A good joke, we'll have a party or something for all the people that were involved before and then we'll leave again, or we'll see what happens. For me it was also a kick (in Hein's leg/poke in ribs): OK, DAN WEET JE DAT.”

A party was planned for the night of October 31 in the basement. In a supplement to the kraakkrant (squatters' paper) entitled “Garbage man, can this mess go too?!” one of the party guests wrote later,

“The re-squat was a counteraction, a punch in the shoulder for the squat movement. The plan was to give a party inside (fun), on the occasion of the fact that the Keyser had been squatted two years on that day (why hadn't that occurred to anyone else, anyway), and to emotionally say farewell to the Keyser, which to us was in fact dead.”

At half past midnight the resquat group of about 25 people rang the front doorbell of the Groote Keyser. A boy they'd never seen before opened the door. The kraakkrant version: “He closes the door behind him and tries to run down the street to a nearby house on the Prinsengracht to warn people. On the way the 25 people surround him and push him up against the wall, and under the threat that he'll be beat up if he doesn't, he hands over the front door key.” One of the partygoers wondered, “How is that possible - that guy comes out of the Keyser, sees us standing there and starts to yell, 'The neo-fascists are here'...? It was because he didn't know anyone.” The kraakkrant report continues, “The group enters the residential part of the Keyser. The door of the ammunition room is kicked in and it is looted. Walls are splattered with paint (including insults to certain individuals). Others go down to the basement. The entry from the residential part is forced. Then the door to the radio room is destroyed.”

Some people from the radio group had stolen the transmitter earlier that week, unbeknownst to the rest, and had brought it along tonight so they could broadcast again. “Unfortunately we couldn't because the antenna had already been removed from the roof,” explains one of the swipers. “Apparently they wanted to assure the police that there couldn't be any more broadcasting.” The original Keyser-Struys group which had helped organize the re-squat/party knew nothing of the internal differences in the radio and was busy somewhere else at the moment. The kraakkrant: “After breaking into the liquor cabinet in the basement, they begin to construct a music system. One of the 'squatters' goes to phone the squat cafes and other such places with the message that there's a big party in the Keyser. Around 3:00 the 'party' begins. The atmosphere is pretty quiet, a little music, some drinking. The people who come because of the phone calls don't notice anything right away either. Maybe it's because they know most of the people there and don't expect anything. People who sense that something is wrong leave without realizing what has actually happened. One more smoke bomb explodes; around four the party dies down.” Max had gotten a bit drunk and went home too.

But then it happened. While a good number of people went to visit the building in a farewell mood and called the party a “re-squat” to show that they had made the Keyser's history and wanted to round it off as well, other visitors went much further. A few among them wanted the radio to go on the air that night by hook or by crook. If there was a reason to start transmitting at that hour, it was to force the police into an eviction. They were unable to broadcast, the police stayed out of the picture, and no gang of raging fellow squatters showed up to bounce out the re-squatters either, so the energy directed itself at the info center. Says the garbage can supplement, “There was no advance plan to destroy things. In retrospect, however, it had to happen, in light of the discontentment of various people, the way people blow off that kind of steam, and the situation at the end of the average party.” The kraakkrant summarizes: “Doors kicked in, paint all over everything, poster exhibition totally destroyed, photography exhibition half demolished, the arrestees' archive mixed up on the floor and partly ruined, fire extinguishers emptied of their contents, kitchen stuff spread all over the floor. The exterior of the Keyser was covered in slogans too ('re-squatted', 'the Groote Keyser is ours', 'Frankenstein free”).” In addition quite a few things were taken from the house.

There was no way the chapter of total determination could noiselessly segue into practical living. They wanted to say farewell to the border-crossing chaos, fun and vacancy in their own way. When the Vogelstruys group left the Keyser at the end of May, ready to plunge into the next adventure, the Hein group had started a reverse movement to bring the fort back within the bounds of civilization. “Enthusiastic new groups are taking over the HANDEL and beginning the seemingly endless cleanup. Moldy dogshit from the previous inhabitants, bedsprings solidly anchored in even the smallest room, and trash, lots of trash. Anyone who wanders through the desolate halls can see the kind of injuries that were inflicted. Only in a few places can you call it a house; mostly it reminds me of the cold bunkers in the dunes.” (from: Keyser's newest KLEREBENDE). The intensive wilderness-living of the early months of 1980 was banished in the summer so people could concentrate on filling the spaces politically. One of the revelers vented his spleen about this later in the kraakkrant:

“What's become of the Keyser now? The political face of 'the squat movement' for the bourgeois. The basement's been neatly painted white, all the great graffiti's gone! They're displaying to the outside world, in a tidy way, what squatting and everything means, what it's about! Who really knows?”

By negotiation time in mid-October, a vacuum had arisen between occupation and ordinary occupancy. This was the squatters' last chance to make the squat movement disappear, under their own direction, in the same place where it had begun. But at the same time the Keyser had become the symbol of the power squatters had managed to build up by thwarting eviction for so long. The squat spokespeople arrived at the negotiations table with this air of
invulnerability (to the surprise of both parties, everyone was satisfied with the outcome, and both were able to claim it as a victory). It became apparent that power, once obtained, could be used only to return comfortably to organized boredom. The re-squat and demolition were the group's failed attempt to throw off the power which they couldn't avoid building up with a symbol like the Keyser. The slightly foggy rationale behind it was that “JE DIREKT AFZETTEN against something” should not be aimed at going on as long as possible - the goal is “getting away from it all”.
In that case, you still end up back in the same daily grind, but something has changed.

The re-squatters wrote: “The differences between us have existed a long time. Since April 30th, actually. Some people live for the future. For what's necessary, what's good for the outside world. Proving yourself, showing you can do something. This is manifested in material things (the project movement). Everyone knows the people who were there on Friday at the re-squat were people who have done a whole lot for the Keyser. But they don't want to adapt to the future.” These people feel misused by “a small group of REGELNEVEN”: “That manipulation, calculation, organizing different groups to achieve your own goal, they're good at that, you have to give them that.” A later kraakkrant explained the original endeavor this way: “From out of the situation created by the Keyser, leading a life that's more focused on yourself, dealing with things in a different way, discovering new things. Not living according to the activism you're doing, but activism according the life you lead, or want to lead. Not living and working based on the future, but just seeing every day if the sun's come up or if the bomb's dropped!” Don't create conflicts, meet them.”

The group that cleans up and refurnishes the Keyser under Hein's leadership for the second time the day after the re-squat turns out a precise inventory of the total economic damage (fl
4883,25). For a full year, the symbol Groote Keyser had derived its intensity from the fact that people had attached their own fate to that of the building. From now on that was over. It acquired another value, which was expressed in guilders. A sample from the list: “Destroyed: chest, swinging door panes, tool room pane, coat rack (fl 35), burlap, a steel cabinet, a wooden cabinet (fl 50), radio, typewriter, fluorescent tubes, box of spoons (fl 50), 30 packages of cups.” And stolen, among other things, were “three hammers, acetylene torch and hose, 15 spotlights (fl 150), two extension reels, five cans of paint, gas tank, at least 70 lps, speakers (fl 100), six beer crates (three full, three empty), four containers of juice, six packages of sugar, coffee creamer (fl 10), cleaning supplies, five Vondelstraat riot brochures (fl 37,50).”

At the second re-squat of the Vogelstruys in September 1980, a banner reading “Squatting goes on” went up. When the squatters were evicted the next day, those who had gathered in response to the alarm quickly dispersed throughout the city. Small groups of people trekked through the city center, setting a fire here, smashing a window there. Sometimes their paths crossed by chance. The coining of the “goes on” slogan literally coincided with the disintegration of the squat movement.

The move to the city

Michiel:

“I think for us the Vondelstraat was the break between neighborhood and city. Till then we were united as a squatters' group, with the same experiences, the same history and because of that the same standpoint. Because of the amazing speed of events people were going through different things, because they were, or chose to be, in different places. In those days I was having so many intense experiences with others from outside my neighborhood, that they ended up being the people I stayed with. I had hardly any contact with my neighbors because I stayed closer to downtown. I saw a lot of opportunities in the city and so I became very removed from the neighborhood. I did keep going to our local squat bar every night. But that was more to tell what was happening in the city and to ask if they wanted to join in.”

What is “the city”? Michiel:

“It has to do with switching over to involvement on a daily basis. In one neighborhood you just can't squat day in day out. Neighborhoods were mainly meeting points, control points, with lots of different types. Most people weren't on the dole back then either. Now, in the 1980s, there's a group that lives on it day by day. They all look for projects, for something to hold onto, with people they feel comfortable with.”

What was different about “the city”? Michiel:

“I remember we were talking after a Groote Keyser meeting in Cafe De Piepel. I overheard Hein talking to somebody, giving them a brief evaluation, and he was using such military terminology: 'We've thrashed those guys, now we've just got to take these guys out. We'll tell the Indonesian District we've taken the mollies off the roof, that'll shut them up.' We were absolutely naive about thinking in terms of power, idealistic we were. So it was disillusioning to realize others didn't think that way. Our opinion was that the neighborhoods should make the decisions. Right after the Vondelstraat Hein started organizing meetings, where he would unveil his plans for the coming months to about 25 important people from the neighborhoods. They had to discuss it in the neighborhoods, but they couldn't tell us everything because it might get leaked. And then people had to be mobilized. There was a big revolt against this in the neighborhoods; 'Are we just supposed to carry out plans thought up by some vague mastermind?' That secret club did exist, but just before an eviction or a big action, a 'SOK' was also called. We were for discussing plans at the SOK, so everyone would be in accord with it, without any lobbying going on in shady circuits.”

The SOK (City Conference of Squat Groups), an appelation handed down from earlier times, was a name for the irregular and chaotic meetings that all the neighborhoods were invited to via the emergency phone tree. In principle any squat or neighborhood could call a SOK. It was a place for proposing actions to other neighborhoods and dividing tasks: assembling crews for inside and outside a squat under siege, putting together a press group, making a poster, painting banners, rounding up materials, preparing for actions. It was not a central organ where a basic democratic decision process was implemented towards a longterm strategy. The idea was that neighborhoods and individual squats would make their own decisions in each case how they would defend or attack, and this by definition could not be surrendered to a higher power.

Michiel:

“The debates about democracy, the position of the neighborhood, those were actually a bunch of bull, because it didn't matter what anyone said. Opposition to what was done on the city level played no part. Events were so overwhelming, at the neighborhood
meeting you couldn't get a grip on what the next 'big action of the squat movement' would be. And that was the illusion. In our experience, in our neighborhood, there was clearly a power center for the city and we weren't it. For a few months it was mainly Hein and his cohorts who determined what the next action of the 'collected Amsterdam squat groups' would be. But they too were overcome by things like April 30th, however hard they had worked towards them. There's no way you could say they directed that or had it under control. But no other organized group had so much power to bring about events.

I thought it was a kick that the events always just swept people away, but not everyone in the neighborhood felt that way. There got to be a rift, because a lot of people were really seduced, fascinated by what was happening, and wanted to be involved every time. After that the neighborhood just fell apart. You had a nonviolent segment who just didn't want fuck-all to do with it anymore. Those situations scared some people to death. And everyone just ended up in them; for a lot of people being a squatter wasn't a choice.”

Back to nature

Michiel:

“In our neighborhood we mainly had living cooperatives. From the moment the squatters' bar opened, 60 or 70 of us were there almost every night. Squatting was over for us at the end of 1979, because there were no boarded-up buildings left. The debate that came up afterwards at our neighborhood meetings in the 1980s revolved around the fact that half wanted to make sure city things didn't win out over the neighborhood struggle, while others wanted to work on a city-wide level. The heart of our organization had become city squatters, and because of that we weren't doing all the things we used to in the neighborhood. There was a big group who wanted to get back to that, who kept seeing that as a problem - that you have to do things with the people you live with, with your neighborhood, with your immediate surroundings. That it's natural to organize yourselves as a neighborhood in a city and not as squatters in a city. And if you did things that the neighbors didn't understand, that was wrong, and you had no chance of becoming strong, spreading out in the neighborhood.

Then a house was squatted in the center of our neighborhood, so a neighborhood shop could be opened in it, and this was done by squatters. Afterwards the construction workers and everyone went to stay in the building, while it was still squatted. They cancelled their leases on their own work spaces and all cooperated there with each other.

From '81 on, whole squatted blocks grouped together to search for a house somewhere else, because demolition had begun; the bar was first. We never fought evictions. The neighborhood wanted new buildings, and if you opposed that, there'd instantly be a
conflict with the neighbors. It wasn't even discussed.”

The neighborhood mystics, who saw the neighborhood as the natural relationship of an urban person with his environment, stayed. The dropouts disappeared from the scene. The rest kept going, wanted to choose, and chose for the unnatural identity of uprooted squatters.

Becoming a squatter

Michiel:

“We felt like young pups, fresh, compared to the older ones. They all dressed in dark clothes, were marked by life, all had Palestinian scarves. We still wore long hair, of course.”

Karel:

“Mine came off after April 30. You'd hear all these stories about plainclothesmen driving through the neighborhood with photo books of easily recognizable rock-throwers. Plus you'd seen that when you got arrested you were pulled into the vans by your hair. You'd see that a lot after big actions, that people's appearance would suddenly change.”

The police cameras recorded the haircut you had left over from the 1970s, which gave you the occasion to modernize your personal style. At the same time it became necessary to disguise yourself during public activities with clothing which was as uniform as possible. The
nondescript-ness in front of the cameras which the squatters were able to achieve in this manner, however, made them that much more conspicuous to onlookers. The print media also picked up this difference and emphasized it in visual design, to label the social problem with clearly identifiable faces. This is how a squatter was constructed and sharply distinguished from other city dwellers. And this while, in neighborhood squatting, domesticity and the normality of the “new residents” was being pushed into the foreground.

Stephan:

“When we started up our squat consultation hour at the beginning of 1980, we got a typewriter and some tables right away from the community center. All the information about vacancy and owners they received, they passed along to us.”

Karel:

“At the consultation hour neighborhood residents came by a lot with that kind of information too. We squatted regularly for families from Surinam who'd just come over, because the situation there was getting more and more uncertain. And that was where I first experienced everyday racism too, in one of those streets full of respectable poverty.”

Free swimming in normality bumped up against borders, once it could no longer be concealed that squatters were involved in very different things than the people down the street, and neither of the two groups were prepared to accommodate in the long term. “They talk about changing the world, but when you realize how difficult it is to change one street...” Neighborhood squatting was thus inclined to withdraw into itself, and the image the neighbors had of it became accepted as one of the boundaries you had to take into account.

The “lightning strike”

By the end of 1980, a new “means of communication” had been developed.

“The lightning strike is not an alternative for a riot, but an opportunity to break out of your own powerlessness on the street by determining your own movements. The ideology of it is not that the police are your most significant enemy, but the network of people who are responsible for property development and speculation. By taking action against a banker, architect or real estate agent you're taking on the guilty parties.”

The “lightning strike” was referred to for the first time as such at the “Close Dodewaard” blockade during the fall holidays of 1980, against the nuclear plant in the city of that name. A month later the threatened eviction of the Groote Wetering squat was completely dominated by this shift.

“It's cool. You decide yourself what you're going to do and you choose your own methods. No plainclothesmen-paranoia, no endless bullshit meetings or long preparations. You're elusive and you don't attract attention with a small group of people. In a huge crowd you don't do anything; a few people throw rocks, thousands of people do nothing but yell chants: riot squad go away.”

Something had fundamentally changed in the street. The crowd had released its potential energy and could no longer be whipped up. Insofar as anything still happened, it was done by people who had made the decision in advance and brought their own equipment. This professional attitude inevitably produced an audience which stood and watched, and encouraged a good show with cheering.

“Someone told me very happily that they'd just thrown kilos of tomatoes with a group of people. They used a point system. One point for a riot van (the easiest), to four points for running military police. He was just on his way back to the greengrocer.”

From now on passersby were used for the purpose of blending in. The too-slow crowd, unleashed by the lightning strike, could pick up speed again. On a visit to the Friesland-Groningen Mortgage Bank:

“The action was so lightning fast (in 30 seconds it was done), even we were surprised. We all walked into the office, left flyers, paint, smoke and bewildered employees behind. We tinkered with the electricity too. Then we went
back outside fast and dispersed.”

This was not a case of being overcome. The impulse to let yourself be swept away by a grandiose event and radically liberate yourself from your own will was no longer part of the game. This loss was converted into a gain: now you could determine personally what you did and didn't want to do, once it had been established that something had to be done. The action was no longer an occurrence you went along with as a matter of course, but a “choice,” a word never before included in the squatters' vocabulary. The progress of a mass action in the street couldn't be controlled; at most it could be influenced. Too, then, such an action could always turn against you, leading to brawls and arrests. The lightning strike was a reaction to this capricious course of events. The possibility of a catastrophic fragmentation of the crowd through violence from outside was prevented when one fragmented the event oneself. The large-scale confrontation around a symbol was supported by doing economic damage elsewhere:

“Let 1000 windows shatter.”

The idea was to bring all possible connections with the casus to light (banks, attorneys, real estate agents, security companies). And this not by bringing charges against them, but by dealing with them in turn. Every strike could be separately controlled, and derived its meaning from the larger context within which it occurred. The lightning strike was introduced as a gimmick to attract attention for the press release. With the lightning strike also came the tendency of making one's own propaganda out of the event, to prod others into doing their own actions. The strike then only made sense if it appeared in the media.

Revenge

This type of lightning strike was devoid of any strategy or tactics.

“Once again a visit to Bakker in which his car changes color. In retrospect not so favorable for publicity, because it gives him the opportunity to act pathetic for three-quarters of a page in the newspaper. But we've gotten out some of our tensions and frustrations and that's worth something too.”

Revenge needs no legitimation. It can exist without rationality. It can, to be sure, be curbed or delayed, through discussions over the pros and cons of getting someone back, but never prevented. Revenge combined the impulsive character of the lightning strike with the permanence of a scar. It had a better memory and more patience than mere arguments. It was rooted in hard information which had built up around a building or person. Revenge robbed them of the protection of their role in society, it placed the culprits outside their political, economic or social framework and reverted to an elementary form of individual responsibility. Revenge was thus always very specifically aimed; this distinguished it from the economic-damage principle, which was out for quantity.

In addition it ensured that you weren't blocked by the frustration which unavoidably comes up in confrontations with higher powers. Feelings of revenge are a constant source of inventiveness.

“After a drink, pissing in a property owner's mailbox, sending bedbugs in an envelope, having a cold buffet for 12 people at fl 28 a head delivered, half an hour later a disco show at fl 1500, followed a day later by a funeral wreath.”

Undefendable as revenge was in the context of bigger actions, there were enough justifiable lightning strikes to ensure that it would not lack a context. The lightning strike must prove that it is not “blind” revenge to head off bad press. To this end it used the press release. Revenge itself was not concerned with media attention. Stronger still, “you try to keep actions like that out of the press because it's so bad for your good name.” (Frits)

The scene

The fragmentation of the event into the lightning strikes coincided with the appearance of the scenes. What began as a chance meeting under bizarre circumstances during a squat or on the street led gradually to a closer acquaintance in the private sphere. The extraordinary unrepeatable character of the events was set down in an esoteric language, which only the intimate few could enjoy. The many groups, left behind as residue after the wave of squats and evictions in the early 1980s, each cherished their legends about the mass events of times past. They consolidated them by each choosing a project to digest and revise the experiences gained. One chalked it up to “increasing repression,” the other stayed a chaos artist, a third saw it all as the beginning of “the movement” under construction, a fourth remembered it as a meeting of kindred spirits and continued in the women's, dyke, or gay scene. It quickly became inconceivable that there might be a way to interpret events that was different from your own.

When people started running into each other more often in select places, the scene was born. There was enough to drink, closing time was pushed back further every night. Now that you'd quit your studies, there was no longer a daily rhythm the dark hours needed to fit into. Not only did people succeed in memorizing each other's faces, addresses and names in the course of these sessions, they began to know each other well, all too well: “broadening towards the inside.” It was even swiftly forgotten that the acquaintances had once been strangers. What had been anonymous abandon became a common denominator under which one attempted to find oneself again, as soon as the high faded. Those who couldn't find themselves under the denominator stayed away in the end, those who had no need for denominators in the first place disappeared after the first night. The scene resembled an 18th century coffee house, a 19th century salon, the lodge, the groups and schools of artists' circles, bohemia, the debating society, the church congregation; in short, all those (in)formal institutions which combine the memory of events with a lifestyle, in which the promise of recurrence is cultivated.

The scene preserved the memory of the accidental meeting and at the same time made it impossible for it ever to take place that way again. The capacity of a crowd of strangers for spontaneous action was denied, while the formation of the group guaranteed at the same time that outsiders could only look on. In practice, if you wanted to carry out actions at all, it became necessary to organize them carefully in advance since otherwise no one would know what they were supposed to do. The anonymous crowd, written off, was used as a threat to the outside world. And inside the ranks, the promise that it would someday happen again as a result of your own actions was preserved. This inherent contradiction prevented terrorism and/or the action grinding to a halt. Henceforth you got to know only the others in the scene, no one else. Entering a scene is a full-time job, making the particular stories, relationships, codes of behavior and fashions your own.

After 1980, the scenes' fragmentation of the memory of original events made them soon incapable of getting anywhere with each other on the level of personal contact. Everyone was talking about something different. But at the same time these loose fragments were lumped
together as historic referents, with the suggestion that everyone's experience had been the same: “the Vondelstraat”, “Dodewaard,”, “April 30,” and so on. The events lost their reality potential, were converted into imaginary idioms, but that was what made communication between the scenes possible again. One can refer to a historical continuity; the yoke of history creates “unity in diversity.” Though the scene begins its own project, proceeds a step further, the plan cannot succeed, because otherwise the endeavor would lose its larger context.

A scene is only a scene when it is aware of being part of a diffuse whole which legitimizes its existence. Lacking this larger context, it is merely a clique. The scenes nevertheless maintain a distance from each other, in order to guarantee the unfamiliarity that makes it possible to keep doing the most unexpected things at the bigger actions. The artificial preservation of this unfamiliarity guarantees besides that the idea that one is part of a growing movement, and thus the existence of the scenes themselves, keep their appeal: “More and more people are joining the resistance.”

Inside media

To assemble one story out of the lightning-strike snippets, the press media became indispensable. The papers had to condense the scraps afterward into one event. There arose a need for an overview of all the incidents that took place around an eviction. This passion for
documentation couldn't have the big media forgetting the little details. The inside media had to inform the outside world, but especially each other, what one had gotten out of it all. And if you discovered that they'd forgotten to mention your action, the indignation was great. In the action consciousness, something had only really happened once it ended up in the media, even if that was only in papers read solely in your own circle.

But at the same time, the memory of earlier events stayed strong enough that they determined the newly developed forms of action. When the crowd in the street is no longer spontaneously gathering and growing, the image of the great solidarity that used to be is evoked time after time by the media which have been called into life by the people themselves: the “movement zines.” These were all projects of specific scenes and the other scenes thus followed them with a certain suspicion. The writing style and choice of subjects clashed with your own approach, but on the other hand it was these papers and broadcasting stations which were responsible for the larger whole which you felt part of. This diffuse framework inside which one's actions and themes were placed made it impossible to distinguish between internal and external use. Friends as well as enemies were listening in. The paper ended up on the desks and tables of municipal strategists, secret services, coffeeshops, common rooms, parental houses, revolutionary salons and in garbage cans.

This vagueness concerning the addressee was intensified by the tendency of all media to target themselves at an imaginary crowd. For whom, exactly, were the inside papers being written? While a paper like bluff! considered itself a “megaphone to the media,” for example by threatening a riot, for this same reason it was challenged by other scenes as a “springboard for careerists.” However small the inside publications' print runs were, their producers always assumed that they had to be readable for all the nation, because they would someday, via medial multiplication, end up in every living room. This was the argument against hanging out all the dirty laundry in the inside media, even if done as initiative for a “dzkzn.” Discussions were published afterward anyway, so there was no influence whatsoever on their outcome. That the inside media focused on potential allies as well as having to function as cement between the scenes gave birth to a language that ironed out all the absurd and grisly sides. The words that couched a press release for the public were detached from the level of the local experience. One's own actions were translated, not told, directly onto an imaginary level. Prehistoric jargons could be brought off the shelf this way too, from Marx to men's group. You were “in the media.”

Squatting is more...

The squat movement, post-1980, could boast of a number of buildings, developed facilities and a series of spectacular events. But it had yielded no ideas which placed the activities in historical perspective. They couldn't even be explained to befriended “movers” in Berlin, Freiburg, or Zurich, who were having their heydays in 1981. At the most, these people could be presented with hard information on local speculators, housing distribution and urban renewal. The pictures Amsterdammers brought along, however, were valued by the rioteers in foreign parts, and colored in with articulations of the local malaise. The squatters who came home from trips to Central European “action cities” brought back the German word “Bewegung,” which was tacked onto the events without hesitation from the first chain reaction.

The acceptance of the “goes on” slogan, after the big squatting wave had reached its end, unavoidably called into question what squatting meant. Until then “squatting” had stood for more squatting and holding onto the squats. This ideology does not answer the question of what to do if your squat isn't being threatened for the time being, or is even about to be legalized. The eventuality of clearance of the entire stock of captured houses, like in foreign cities, was never in question. The self-image of the squat movement as “anti-eviction movement” thereby lost all charm. If a large squat had been evicted, the residents sometimes squatted another adventurous location the same day, just as easily. Plus, you could always start negotiating for legalization, because what you decided to do with your squat was your business, had nothing to do with anyone else. Consequently, the idea of “total confrontation with the state” never really caught on here. But if squatters wanted to choose to go on regardless, then the squatter identity needed substance.

The question was never “why squat?” (“Don't ask how, take advantage now!”) Squatting was pure practice; to give squat space a time dimension, an ideology had to be instilled from outside. One was articulated in 1981 in the slogan, “Squatting is more than just living.” The “more” was now filled in by “the movement,” which displaced the accent from squatting to “the action goes on.” What's noteworthy about the more-than-living slogan is that the original
Living question was clung to as well as let go of. The newly formed “Beweging,” or movement, could have been the way to a radical metamorphosis of the squat movement. It could have left its own past radically behind and gone to do something completely different. But the movers saw no reason to distance themselves, since newcomers all too often got involved in actions by way of the remaining squat channels - and how should they otherwise? Because of this, however, those in the movement affirmed for a long time that the squat movement still existed as usual, even though they had opted not to go through life as squatters any more. This was good for a decade of confusion.

Besides, the introduction of the action ideology was not experienced as a break, because on a personal level it was the full-time city squatters who transformed themselves into “activists”, working hard at it day and night to various ends. All the scenes that switched over to “squatting is more than just living” distilled a common denominator from their original squatting past: the “direct action”. When your group visited some object or other for the purpose of rebuilding it, something else again happened, something different from the meeting of times past. Besides, in a direct action the familiar surroundings could be left behind and you were “unpredictable in the type of action and the place where you show up, surprising in the arguments that are used, not accountable and extremely unreasonable for our opponent, never prepared to compromise and thus make demands, always out to provoke a confrontation in the minds or hearts. We'll never win anyway (and it's a good thing).”

...than just living

There were British miners, the protest against the Borobudur amusement park, 16,000 fake gift certificates for the department store Vroom and Dreesmann, Navajo Indians, dealers in the Staatslieden district, illegal Surinamese, the American consulate, Center Party skins, repression in Belgium, Turkish labor unionists, witches' night, Moroccan Amicales and Turkish Gray Wolves, sisters, ammunition transport, discrimination in Lelystad, NATO's Wintex exercises, an anti-strip-search demo in Arnhem, welfare women, a demo against the visa requirement, Tamil refugees in Lochem, the pink front, the international nuclear lobby, women in Eritrea, the French total objectors' hunger strike, porn, Rotterdam harbor strikers, the van Bossestraat, Startbahn-west, dictatorship in Uruguay, students' aktions, vigilantes, Dev Sol, mobile home residents, a Whitsun weekend against nuclear energy, axions against German multinationals, the animal liberation front, arms for El Salvador, NATO's Reforger exercises, criminalization in Switzerland, the PASTORIE of Zwaag, squat-guard agencies, builders for Nicaragua, technology as a weapon, Nolympics, old people's homes under threat, the patriarchy, abolishing apartheid, Kurds, the squatted Hafenstrasse in Hamburg, low-intensity conflicts, the straight man syndrome, the Moonies, infiltrants, children, squatting in “Utreg”, Moluccans, local police stations, a demo for the Palestinians, nuclear transport, security services, runaway homes.

The Onbenoembaren/unclassifiables

They kept going on, succeeded in never choosing to. Without exaggerated hassle they managed to keep their radical naivete·. They followed the ideological debates in the squatters' papers, but shrank from the obligation to apply it to themselves. But they were available for any cause. They'd cook for it in their restaurants, set collection pots on the bars of their coffeeshops, watch the videos, go to all the benefits, come help fix a house up here and there, march at all the demonstrations, help refugees find shelter and stand up for European nomads when they happened to be struck down. Everyone was welcome. Their tolerance and acceptance of the other was boundless, till the bomb exploded and gigantic fistfights broke out. But those were forgotten in a couple of days.

They'd been earning honorary membership for years from Social Services, on which they expended too much energy, owing to their aversion to authority and their chaotic nature. With utter abandon they devoted their existence to supporting activities, to which they devoted all their time. The productive sector with its professional mentality inspired great distrust in them, since it drove prices way up. Their distaste for economics made anything above fl 3 suspect. They stayed healthy in connection with the scene through saunas, swimming, massages and tai-chi, but just as easily drank the night away on a line of speed. The apocalyptic variant, out to take self-destruction to melodramatic heights, lived in their midst, but they themselves took it all the way only sporadically. Their capacity for active forgetfulness prevented them from going under in these excesses. They lived in a timeless ambiance, which made them immune to the wave of success which washed over the 1980s.

They were the object of the machinations of the strategists, who tried to put the actions that needed doing into a “political” perspective. Their years of consistently living in the present made every argument in which a historical continuity was explained simply a pretty story from which not a single conclusion had to be drawn. Every action stood completely alone; there was nothing to learn from it for a future occasion. The discussion afterwards was simply the cloud released after the clash. They managed to shirk any pressure to become different than
they were, by clinging, against all previous agreements, to a behavioral code too amorphous to possibly define. The strategic thinkers claimed they had to reactivate them over and over, to entice them into contributing to the impression “that so much is happening again.” They made up the movement.

The propaganda of the attitude

Michiel got into antimilitarism:

“The appeal of [the activist group] Onkruit wasn't so much the hatred of militarism, but the prospect of the uncompromising revolt you can wage against the army. You didn't have to mess with eviction dates and other people interfering. Activism would be much more difficult with, say, men's liberation. Militarism is the perfect area and the military are perfect opponents besides because they do exactly what you want them to do; they're so rigid.”

Onkruit was initially a nationally organized group of “total objectors” who did “pick-up actions” with friends, to make their arrests the most radical and clear-cut events possible. Later the national structure was dissolved, in order to literalize Onkruit's slogan that it was “not an action group but a group of actions” against militarism in general. A brochure stated: “There is a great field of people around Onkruit who are somehow ready for more radical action but who aren't yet doing it. People project their hopes onto Onkruit or write a letter asking how they can join. It isn't like that, it's about forming a group yourself.” The local groups opened a post office box where you could apply to become a member. Total objectors continued to work within the framework of these groups, but others, “with their roots in the squatters' movement,” did their own actions on the side.

Michiel:

“With squatting you always had to deal with purchasing, requisitioning and who knows what, a much shadier area. Changing the public housing authority is less insane, is always a little closer to home. We didn't want any changes in the defense budget. Stealing a secret makes it public, destroying something destroys it; that was the kind of change we wanted. There is an essential difference between squat and Onkruit actions, though there's no opposition between them. Throwing a paint bomb at an F-16, the action is the act and everything that comes after it its completion. The police and whatever, that's not part of the action anymore. If you compare it with forcing a riot in the street, there the confrontation with the police is the act. Another attraction was the combination of illegality, from doing actions at night to stealing secrets, and seeking publicity through the press, exhibitions and schoolrooms.”

By definition, the army cannot be defeated, but that wasn't the point.

“We always said, in the 60s and 70s people thought revolution was possible, that society can be fundamentally reformed. That's bullshit. All you can do is what you do yourself, with each other. You shouldn't neglect doing it, because it will make life for you and those around you more pleasant; you're keeping your dignity, you're not just sheep, you're creating something yourself. At Onkruit meetings the obsession was, how do we create another event that will appeal to the imagination? With squatting it was really difficult to plan what was going to happen, there were a lot more things possible than lightning strikes on real estate agents, lawyers and so on.”

Merely pursuing an unattainable goal, by sawing down RTV antennas or breaking into warehouses, did not supply enough motivation. The actions had to be seen as components of a diffuse whole that could be achieved:

“We had more ideas than, we're only doing our action. Once a whole lot of people start to do things like us, then a lot will change in Holland. We don't demand that change, but realize it ourselves through our action. Stealing and publishing documents, we thought, that will help a lot of people, give them more self-confidence in their own lives, too. You were showing that you weren't powerless, that you were perfectly capable of doing something, that you didn't always have to bend. For us it was very much about people's attitudes. If lots of groups like Onkruit spring up, if for once people would get up the nerve and directly stand up against what upset them or bugged them, Holland would be a lot nicer place to live; that would be fascinating...and in our wildest fantasies that isn't limited to militarism. If everyone starts to short-circuit electric wires, then you have more than just a counterpower with a whole infrastructure like the squat movement; it's much more an attitude.”

The action was consciously a goal in itself. It was not aimed chiefly at the adversary or the outside world, but attempted to reach potential imitators. The “huge field” of people in Holland who would take over the activism created the feeling that the movement was snowballing, what someone from Onkruit once called “broadening from the inside out.” The media were essential in reaching these people. Michiel: “It wasn't about the act, it was about the registered act. You can define it like this: we considered Onkruit actions a failure if they hadn't played some role in the media. And we always made sure the media were present. Just like with squatting, a lot of time was put into the press groups and press contacts. Your performance had to be good enough that just through a description your ideas would still come out. Just like it was later: if you just give your activist group a clear name, then at least that gets into the paper.”

The media were not used to portray a specific political goal as worth pursuing; they served to disseminate a mentality. Nevertheless, it was first propagated among those who carried out the actions: “If we succeed in obtaining and keeping space for humanity, friendship, initiative and love, then we can carry on indefinitely,” reads an internal article. Furthermore, “Through strong internal involvement, the greater emotional bond and suppressing childish behavior you reduce the chance of stupid leaks and infiltration.” Social control in the group caused the mentality to become a requirement.

Thus, out of the “group of actions,” a small group separated itself, people who knew each other thoroughly and possessed equal amounts of activist savvy. The media, the target of the activism, for they passed news of the group's activities through to the outside world, slowly but surely served to legitimize the group's chosen isolation from then on. The message the group began transmitting said: you can't participate in our kind of actions, but you can copy them, if you've studied our zines to find out how we did them. They legitimized the actions to themselves through the evidence that “more and more people are joining in” to do similar actions. But at the same time they were constantly searching for new modes of action, ones that would speak to the imagination. Besides, reporters stayed home from performances they'd already seen somewhere else.

The inside media served to export behavioral codes to other scenes. The emotional energy released in the group, which was unable to leave it, precipitated in testimonies which illustrated the progress of a heavy action in detail and analyzed its outcome. But propaganda was also consistently made, towards the collective processing of the internal experience at the front:

“With churning stomachs, sweaty hands, we got together. Got talking. That conversation was so good because we talked about fear in a really open way. Fearless macho men had no chance at all. It was very difficult at this action to estimate what the results would be for your own life, and that made everyone pretty insecure.”

So as not to scare away readers, direct action, after the steel doors of bunkers were burned open, was defined as:

“that you say what you think, that you skip down the street if you're happy, that
you cry if you're sad. That you trust that you achieve more with honesty and sincerity, by being yourself, than by taking a stand and trying to wake people up.”

The goal of the action was to get “the movement” underway; it had to exploit the media sphere for conveyance of the impulses it released. The crowd it was aiming at was that of the supposed spectators and the scenes. In the crowd in the street, energy broke loose in a chaotic production that made the most remarkable connections possible. The group that combined its energy in the group process of the action could only bring about connections with “the wildest fantasies.” The real crowd, as it appears at evictions, airshows and other spectacles, had become just as foreign to it as the scenes in other squatters' bars. “You keep seeing fewer people and lose interest in other scenes.”

Antimilitarism, which was chosen because there one couldn't get stuck in the red tape of changing governmental policy, ultimately got bogged down in the feedback of the group process. It started with: “The good thing is you can do your own things with your own group. You can keep closest to your feelings and experiences that way. Besides that, for a lot of people being concerned with how you work together, how the labor process runs, how you live with each other, is a revolutionary goal in itself. A point at which more can be achieved in small, safe groups.” And it ended with “the stupid fucking stress in anarchist groups”: “the danger of independent groups' so easily working parallel to each other, the lack of discussion. Initiative just blows away. Politics are no longer made. Some people glorify this, but in fact become locked up in their own groups, and no longer take responsibility for how the action comes across, what it's meant to achieve, how the movement should continue.” Michiel: “At one point we started to really take 'trust in your own power' literally. When you shut yourself off like that and only work with each other, that's limited.” “Going on” got bogged down in group dynamics.

Tourist at your own action

Big objects demanded big actions. A small group would decide that a nuclear plant or launch site had to be shut down and seek allies to organize this in a couple of days. The Dutch population had declared itself in accord with this in the opinion polls. Enough demonstrations; the activists decided to really go all out for once. The managers of the action were meeting months ahead of time to determine the days' programs and put together the facilities package (Adzuki beans/punk bands/brass bands and puppet theaters/first aid kits). Publicity flyers with maps were distributed and the real media were tipped so they could begin the baiting, while the underground papers just had to mess around a bit with the arguments. The activists dropped by to inform the regular clientele and kept their eyes peeled for new market segments for the coming event. The organizers grew into their role, quite happy with their responsibility.

So potential participants wouldn't be scared away, “the violence discussion” was gone over one more time. The fixed outcome was that the principle of nonviolence would, in principle, be upheld. The leaders of the action had to make sure the tour parties of diverse plumage were kept separated so they wouldn't go interfering with each other. Practical experience had taught that mingling of the sitting and running segments of the crowd always worked out to the disadvantage of the sitters. In order to make the blockade attractive to both target groups, a festive or spectacular mood was promised. Registration for the weekend would be open.

And then the chatter began about the deeper purpose of the trek: are we going to experience real things on this outing, or are we just taking a trip inside our own heads? In the motor coach operator' terms, the first variant in the blockade was “effective” and the second “symbolic”. But strangely enough, it was the nonviolent symbolists who wanted to make optimal use of the impending traffic jam; with rosters they made sure the access roads were guarded 24 hours a day. Then the radicals, who actually would have liked to seal off the chosen industrial park, knew it was destined again not to be, because there were too many symbolists hanging around. That was a reason to concentrate on one gate as a symbol for the whole complex. This could be torn down to the ground, should the opportunity present itself.

The day dawned, the day everyone had looked forward to for so long. To really make it complete, a piece of ground, allocated by the authorities, was squatted. Then the third group entered the picture: the action tourists, who would spontaneously provide the necessary broadening. Befitting their touristic attitude, up to now they hadn't concerned themselves with organizing the trip. They knew nothing of the previous arrangements made, and when they made inquiries into it, they were referred through to task groups about which they had no clue. They hadn't read the underground media either, but had apparently been lucky enough to get offered a last-minute ticket since there were still a few places left, with the assurance that the weather forecast was good. They stepped carefree into the coaches and were driven to woods and meadows, where the fully-equipped campsite awaited.

Once there, they took a stroll around to inspect the scenes arranged by gate. Naturally, they ran into acquaintances from previous trips, or were attracted by the relaxed atmosphere to the campfire that the heavies kindled at nightfall. That was often the only place where the
unorganized day trippers could get anything to drink. By that time, boredom had noticeably set in. The raised expectations had not been fulfilled, so they decided to provide some action themselves. They started messing with fences or riot vans and refused to be distracted by the reasonable activists, who believed in the effectiveness of keeping agreements. When the other side finally reacted, in a flash the adventurous tourists met the talk-weary radicals, who badly needed to work off the frustration of the preparatory meetings.

The effect of this chain reaction was staggering, in intensity as well as duration. Once the riot broke out the organizers and their sympathizers felt reduced to tourists at their own action. This was what would become the media event. There was no excuse for this. Whole platoons of riot police were put through the meat-grinder. Miles of fence went down. The guests who had appeared out of nowhere threw their own bodies into the fray, for hours on end and blind to the risks, heedless of the amount of violence they unleashed in the process. And they had shrieking fits of laughter...This had no place whatsoever in the painstakingly developed travel ethic. The only thing the leaders could think of was calling a halt to the blockade via communication tolerated by the police. In vain, of course. When they didn't want to distance themselves from the revelers later after all, they were forced to pin the event on the police, who were exercising “more power all the time.” The possibility that “people in the movement” could be using the riot police in a game in which they dictated the rules fell outside the tour guides' scope of vision.

The weekend had been intended to give the term “movement” substance in the eye of the media, in the hope that new groups would join in. The big action was seen as the lowest common denominator of the scenes, but they were already living in completely different worlds. The convergence had been supposed to release new energy, yet, however it was organized, unavoidably took on a touristy character. Therefore, like any vacation, it would remain without any consequence whatsoever. After two weeks the battle would provide fodder for conversation. What remained in the long term was concern over the unpredictable tourists “from outside,” who dared to act. This would manifest itself in even tighter organization at the next three-dayer.

The restorers

More and more people quit bothering with squatting. “These objectors haven't the inclination, the time, the priorities. They discover their studies, femaleness (maleness), work, relationships, unemployment, antimilitarism, antifascism, and so on. In short: after years of subservience to the 'massive and powerful movement,' now they're into their own individuality.” This was an analysis of the squatters' movement three years after the Groote Keyser. A group of veterans appointed themselves about this time to save the squatters' movement from its downfall. They were irritated by the “squatting is more than just living” adherents, who were moreover cocky enough to have an opinion about them. The seniors dismissed this opinion as “delusions of bosses”; that is to say, the ex-squatters saw ghosts who wanted to grab the power within the squatters' movement for themselves. But, said the bosses, we don't exist, we want nothing more than to “coach inexperienced press groups for their radio or TV premiere.” According to them the wrong subjects had been whined about for too long at meetings and in weeklies and squatting had gotten bogged down in “adolescent bickering.” The constructors from day one therefore took it upon themselves to purge the squatters' movement of the “movement.”

“In past years squatters' discussions at the City Conference were screwed up too often by people with frustrations and other interests.” For this reason they called a meeting in the closed sphere for “people of the opinion that the action structures must be restored in any way (squat consultation hours, means of communication, neighborhood gatherings, flyers, alarm lines, squatters' bars, contacts with other action and neighborhood groups, etc.).” When their plans for discussion leaked out, they felt obliged to give the meeting an open character, but “we can't discuss with 400 people at one time.”

In the necessary selection phase beforehand, an oppositional group susbequently formed and started among themselves to “talk and think about the movement in the broadest sense of the word,” in response to the rumor of the “bosses' conference.” The bosses themselves promptly paid the group a visit. “A point of discord that night was the atmosphere, the way people were talking,” the hosts indignantly stated in their report. “If you wanted to say anything you had to have a well-constructed, argued story. This demand, by the way, is also one of the biggest criticisms of them.” After this, the veterans decided to abandon their attempts at reconstruction.

Only a year later did they reappear in the media. They published the legendary discussion piece, Squatting or Shopkeeping, which would be talked and written to death for years to come in the squat papers. It was meant as a manifesto for the resurrection of the City Conference of Squat Groups, known as SOK '84. In contrast to before, this was to be a closed meeting, for which a number of people from each neighborhood would be specifically invited to meet weekly. In Squatting or Shopkeeping the restoration was no longer seen as merely a daring technical exploit of organizational science; squatting was provided with content, which subsequently had to be cleansed of weird stains.

To “restore and strengthen the skeleton of the organization,” history first had to be reinterpreted, to make it clear that squatting had essentially been “confrontation politics” and had to become so again. Around the bare bones of the action structures, according to the
diagnosis, were “squat activities.” Considered thus, they made up the flesh of the squatting body. This body had originally put up a playful resistance, but

“in 1978-79 came a turning point in response to a massacre in the Kinker district, where squatters, en masse but defenseless, got their asses kicked. The mood swung into a consistent defensive attitude, which was to determine the face of the Groote Keyser and of 1980.”

From the outside world, this armored body with the defensive face took toward itself only substances which would strengthen it: “Large groups of sympathizers outside the squat movement were mobilized by ceaseless confrontations, without (as now) making concessions to them first. Press and politicians came to us, not the other way around.” In the body, the organs - the neighborhoods - functioned in harmony inside the armor; internally it had “its own legal system”: “The squat structure built up then was recognized in the whole squat movement and did not have to be completely destroyed to depose an authoritarian boss. Criticism was aimed at the adversaries; self-criticism was not limited to destructive soul-searching.” The flesh wounds in the chest area came later, in the form of boss delusions. In the beginning the squatting body was still sound, pure, it trusted in its own strength and it knew no “undigested fear, dejection, passivity and surrender.” Until something went wrong: it “slid back to theater, fun and kicks which belied the gravity of the situation.” “The fight was, as regards content, displaced more and more to the swampy provinces of work, justice, publicity and debate.” The body weakened on this slippery ground; “We let our weapons slip out of our hands.” Nonetheless, with our hands free, we went unexpectedly back to work: “Tool lending services, studio, bicycle repair shop, carpentry workshop, printing press: under the protection of the squat movement(s), commerce and the alternative work ethic gradually grow rampant.”

Once stripped of its protection, through contact with the outside world, the disintegrating squat body became susceptible to the cancer of work. Other malignant diseases were bound to appear: “In the work culture you can work yourself to fuck to earn back the welfare payment you turned in. And then you have to go legal.” Owing to this last, the ravaged body was beseiged by “hordes of attorneys who make a career out of squat cases” and “undermine quite a bit of fighting spirit.”

After so many attacks on its health the body was bound to become emotionally insecure: “The unpleasant feeling creeps over many a squatter that he or she isn't liked anymore.” According to the doctors of the movement, however, this emotion was downright disgraceful: “As if the press hasn't always been whiny and evil! (and correspondingly more evil the vaguer we got).” The cure for this corruption followed logically from this: the squat body needed to find clear boundaries again which would not be muddled by “collaboration,” and the squat media would be the mouth of this new body (“megaphone and serving hatch.”). Confrontation politics as the squat movement ought to practice them were intended to transfer the emotional difficulties onto the adversary, by “making the politicians physically feel our stress.” Making deals with them, as the “work-shy instant bosses are now doing, is rank treason.”

Surprisingly enough, this term was not applied to the successful negotiation for legalization of the Grote Keyser, but only to failed discussions over a number of later squats. The old guard, which had conferred with Labor Party leaders over the Keyser in late 1980, was even praised, as “the vanguard who worked hard and steady for four long years to build up the squat movement.” But by the end of the 1980 season these pioneers “had bitten off more than they could chew, got tired and partially pulled out.” The intent behind Squatting or Shopkeeping was not to help this old guard back into power, and “just as little do we disapprove of the alternative business activity, the use of legal aid and the publicity-seeking. It can only happen through politics!” These magic words would also restore the sharp borders to the squat body; “We have to try to throw out political lines that people and groups can orient themselves to.” Then the organs would be able to strengthen each other again: “No reciprocal ban on action, but solidarity! But also: no internal lovers' spats, but militant cooperation.”

After all this body language, the “Amsterdam squatters,” as the restoration group had modestly designated itself, ended with the closing text: “We don't stop with these words.” They announced the incorporation of their practical work, discussions and contributions in “a new practical squatters' handbook.” This never appeared. They also announced a black book: “It will settle the score with the old boy network, deals with property owners, speculators and police, betrayal, misuse of the squatters' media for silly, apolitical things, commercial abuse of the squat movement. The statement will be harsh but just.” The black book never came. This restoration never got beyond the first impulse either.

The failed attempt “to kind of start fresh” saw “going on” in squatting as a cyclical movement: once every few years the body of the squat movement had to go through a regeneration, otherwise it would become sick, weak, sluggish. The work on the body necessary for the periodic reconstruction, however, had to be strictly distinguished from working for others, for money. It was no accident that the restorers' fury focused on squatters' coffeshop “The Piggy,” which did pay taxes but did not provide activists with free coffee: money was the sludge in which the swines wallowed. The “aggressive combat” of confrontation politics had to be directed at this mud, against everything revolving around money: “bureaucracy, capital, corruption, speculation, you name it.” But the sludge appeared in another form: anti-money aggression was impeded by the “introverted living cultures in the closed circuit of anti-active squatters.” These too were muddy: sludge was anything which made physical contact, which passed from hand to hand, whether it was money or snuggling up.

It was the restoration group who had already come up with the slogan “Squatting goes on” in 1980. Years later they wanted to purify this slogan of contamination through the “Squatting is more than just living” credo. To that end, everything done in squats was associated with squalor. To let squatting go on it had to be detached from comfortable living, which led to treacherous softening. Whatever was screwed around with behind a pried-open front door, it could not take center stage, or it would constitute a threat to ongoing squatting. In order to make possible the separation of squatting and living, the restorers had to turn back to the time before people squatted en masse, when only “right to live” existed, and virgin houses to be penetrated. The moment at which squatting began was by them proclaimed to be its essence. Actually squatting couldn't go on at all, because it couldn't help turning into living. To preclude this, it had to repeatedly start over. The term “squatting” had to remain vacant, and the restorers named that vacancy “politics.”

However fragmented the squatter's movement became into scenes, incidents, actions and individuals existing parallel to each other, a remnant of the original feeling of movement stubbornly lived on; people “still had something together.” This became obvious in February 1984 at the eviction of Wijers, a gigantic block of office buildings near the Central Station in Amsterdam. Without residents or media expecting it, in the night before the riot police were to empty the building, 2000 people showed up and, to their own surprise, held a sort of reunion of the squatters' movement, with music, stories and much joviality at finally seeing each other again. The night was not an expression of a revival of Amsterdam squatting, or an endorsement of the anti-suburbanization slogans of the Wijers residents; rather, the reunion was a remembrance of a movement in which they had shared joys and sorrows, but which was of no further use to them. When the following morning, after some yanking and pulling by the police, they strolled out of the squat as a group, they immediately lost track of each other again. The slogan, “I'm not a part of the movement, the movement is a part of me,” indicated that communality was not the context in which they “fought a city battle,” but a sting which had stayed behind in each individually.

For years already the phrase “the squatters' movement is dead” had been appearing in the (inside) media. But this imprecation was never very convincing, considering that in the squatters' movement accord was never reached about where the terminus in fact was. Neither had anyone ever succeeded in forcing its downfall. Squatting went on, unreasoning, whether as “movement” or as structures to be restored. Different from what befell, for example, the Berlin Bewegung. With the death of Klaus-Jürgen Rattay on September 22, 1981, during a series of evictions, that movement was assigned a definitive end. Afterwards a debate broke loose in Berlin over what exactly “the death of the movement” meant, until on May 1, 1984, the last squats there were either evicted or legalized. Yet in Amsterdam there was also such a vanishing point.

The November 23, 1978, clearance of the Nicholas Beetstraat-Jacob van Lennepstraat corner house in the Kinker district of Amsterdam is praised in current creation narratives as the step up to a squatters' movement which in 1980 no longer steered clear of violent resistance. The pictures on film show it. On that day, squatters, who stood three rows deep with arms linked to passively stop the eviction, were beaten up with batons while shouting, “No violence, no violence!” It was clear that this would not happen again: “In answer to the senseless provocations of the authorities it's difficult to stay a bit reasonable yourself. A crowd stirred up has such an unheard-of energy, if that's unleashed the professional brawlers will be nowhere,” stated the nonviolent activists afterwards.

When the Groote Keyser got an eviction notice at the end of '79 and was rebuilt into a fortress, the collective feeling was that the lesson of '78 now had to be taken through to the extreme. The shared certainty that the squat would be actively defended went so far that rumors made the rounds “that there were people who'd decided to fight till the death.” This worriless preparation for the unknown kept the fury alive which made of a motley group of neighborhoods, houses and individuals “the collected Amsterdam squat groups.” As a sign that they would “go on” to the bitter end, the circle with the arrow borrowed from Hobo language was elevated to squatting symbol.

In the Vondelstraat it would become clear what it meant in concrete terms to cross the border of violence. “There was one time I was really very scared,” says Erik.

“That was at the Vondelstraat when that helicopter came and they said they were going to shoot. Then out of the morning grayness the whole mess of them came marching up. There were still so few of us. My legs were shaking - from over-exhaustion too, I think. I was scared, very scared, like, now people are going to die.”

Despite tanks, forceful charges and mass brick-throwing, no one died. The magic moment was passed over. On April 30, 1980, too, despite the flood of rumors about two victims, death remained no more than a threat.

Despite ever harsher means by the authorities - smoking out squatters and injuring them with tear and vomit gas, drawn pistols, vans that drove into crowds and summary jurisdiction of spies - the riot code born in 1980 stood firm on the side of the squatters. The riot code was aimed at maintaining the legitimacy of justified rage, which needed to spent through honest means. New forms of action like the bank expeditions backed away from confrontation; they stopped short at the limit of the mollie (molotov cocktail) and the pistol. These methods were reserved for the case that there might be a death - “If we're shot at, we'll shoot back” - and not before. In the preparation for every riot lay apprehension, “whether they'll force us to go one step further again.” But the feeling prevailed that if you did that, “something massive would happen.” The fear of (but also the desire for) the hell that would break loose meant that neither a death nor the use of a mollie was allowed to be included in the strategy. In the private sphere there was no taboo on incorporating death in the thought play about the next riot, but at meetings and in statements for the outside world it was not allowed to be mentioned.

Maya to Simon in late 1980:

“I can still hear you at a meeting about defending the PH-kade saying, 'we have to consider that there could be deaths.' I could have slugged you! For me that's not a consideration.”

Simon:

“It was the discussion about, if we were going to defend ourselves, what happens then? Well, you could see that afterwards. There were goddamn sharpshooters.”

Maya:

“If you're ready to get shot down, that seems so absurd in my mind. I would never, never be ready to do that for something like that. They can't push me that far!”

Simon:

“It's weighing the interests. I've got it shitty now, I don't see a single way ahead in my future. I only keep going for I don't know what, because I still have some feeling of purpose. If I drop dead now, it will make no difference. But if I have the feeling that there's a point to getting shot down, well, fine. With that I'm mainly thinking of publicity. If a squat is a symbol of an unjust eviction, of a policy that's wrong, then it has a point. After all, I've got nothing...none of this is mine. I've got nothing, so it doesn't matter a fuck to me.”

Simon here prosaically interprets the heroic vision of one's own death: by dying at the right moment, no-future living finds purpose. He is ready to use his life as a means of action to bring the squatters' movement to its climax. Maya radically rejects this sort of heroism; she sees her life separately from the squatters' movement, as an absolute value. But this fully conscious acceptance of martyrdom was an exception. The contemplations concerning death revolved, rather, around the death of the other. If a fellow activist should be murdered on the street and the rest would thus be survivors, it was up to them to redeem their guilt with respect to the death with the “massive” something which was then to happen. That was the secret of the squatters' movement.

On August 19, 1980, the tension evoked by the secret was released in a remarkable way. After the clearance of the PH-kade that afternoon, despite the mayor's assurance that no other evictions would follow, Huidenstraat 19 was suddenly evacuated by plainclothesmen with drawn pistols. When riot police appeared on the canal afterwards,

“it was completely obvious to us what was going to happen: they would go around the corner and try to take the Groote Keyser too.”

The Keyser, a stone's throw away from the Huidenstraat, had already been two months under reconstruction, under the leadership of Hein from the Staatslieden district, but for that work little spirit existed in the city. It preferred to move from one symbol to the other along with the eviction wave. Yet the Keyser was still looked upon with awe as the place where it all started.

Immediately after word of evictions was spread, massive barricades were thrown up at the bridges around the squat. The feeling that the final battle that had never come that afternoon at the PH-kade was now about to be fought rapidly accelerated the excitement to a fever pitch. But nothing happened; the police did not attack. Then the question was: what now? At that moment the police came to the squatters with a white flag and proposed, “We won't clear the Keyser if you take no further actions and give up the barricades.” The question now was whether, in exchange for the levelling of the barricades, it should be demanded that all arrestees of that afternoon had to be immediately set free. The police would never concede to such a demand, and it could provoke a super-violent clearance of the Keyser. At a meeting called between the barricades a bizarre argument arose about this between Hein's group, who wanted the riot and thus really thought “we have to fight to the death,” and a number of veterans from the Pijp district who blamed Hein for wanting, by staking the symbol, to specifically force the death of the squatters' movement. The eviction would have made the Keyser a squat which could be fought over with the city for years to come; kept, it could at the most stay legalized and lived in, whereby it would lose its symbolic power. After the police had signed a paper that they would clear “neither the Groote Keyser nor any other squat...on the condition that no more squatting will take place on this day and the barricades are cleared away in an extremely short time,” the commotion was over. Since then, the collective secret has never again expressed itself in the desire to go down together in an immense Armageddon.

At the second “Close Down Dodewaard” blockade in late September 1981, the police, for that matter, proved quite capable of forcing the death of a movement. There were no deaths there either (though there were rumors), but everyone present went away with the feeling “that they were trying to kill us all with the tear gas” and that proved sufficient, as far as no nukes were concerned, to do away with a movement feeling which wasn't so lively anyway.

Thursday, October 25, 1985. The “Amsterdam Squatters' Movement” has one symbol left, and a few enclaves which are organized more or less according to the 1980 model. Against this symbol, the Staatslieden district, the municipality has announced a final offensive, with the goal of definitively putting a stop to the squatters' power in this neighborhood. A separate police team with its own local station has been set up to eliminate the squatting group. Its secret policy plan has leaked two days before, and via City Radio been brought into the open. On October 24, against all behavioral codes between neighborhood and municipality, the storefront Schaepmanstraat 59-I is evicted. An alarm is given and a group of about 100 people assembles in the public squatters' bar The Sewer Rat. Karel:

“I ended up there by chance because I'd been asked that afternoon by a friend to help squat a flat in the Okeghemstraat. The whole group that was sitting in the Schinkel district waiting for the meeting address decided to bicycle to the Staats when the alarm came, because it was obvious that this was the beginning of the big eviction wave the city had been going on about for years. In front of the Sewer Rat we stood waiting about another hour in the sun. When we saw that the child of the woman who'd just been evicted had red hair, we decided to help with the re-squat. Then there was a little meeting inside the Rat. Piet asked if we really felt like re-squatting, because there were cops in the building. I'll never forget the surprise on his face when everyone, without hesitating, roared 'yes.' 'It's never been done before,' he said carefully.”

The group, armed with table legs, sets out for the Schaepmanstraat, about a 100-meter walk. At the re-squat no one turns out to have brought along a crowbar and the door is pounded in with battle weapons. When the first person tries to climb inside through a bashed-open door panel, he is shot in the arm by one of the officers who are in the house. After much yelling by the re-squatters the police climb over the balcony to a neighboring house, where they can stand and watch the further course of events without being further harrassed. Karel:

“I was standing there on the street wondering what all was suddenly going on, I hadn't been at a riot in ages. Neighbors were hanging out the windows and yelled that if the street was going to be barricaded, we could use their old trailer. The sidewalk got broken up a bit, but it still didn't amount to much. Suddenly a cop car drives through the street just like that, to case the situation, but it was chased away by flying rocks. Then a rock crashed inside and a minute later I see someone run out of the house and plop down in front of me on the sidewalk. 'Shot in the arm' was going around. It didn't look so impressive anyway. It didn't really sink in either, after all no one had ever been shot by police before. Later the guy was taken away in an ambulance. I thought, that new eviction policy is already tainted with blood, from now on they'll think twice about coming and evicting stuff.”

The flat one floor up is moved into by a group of regular Sewer Rat customers, who begin to throw in rocks to be used as ammunition. They had been waiting for weeks for a hefty confrontation with the local team. Karel:

“When it got through that the riot police were approaching, Piet stood there with a megaphone hollering out a window that everyone had to get in the building. It seemed like a good idea to me, the safest place anyhow. Once we were inside and the downstairs door was barricaded shut, it turned out Piet had left the building again. Out the windows you saw the rocks whizzing onto the flat hats who were supposed to come wipe the street clean. Then I realized that the situation that afternoon would be something different than I'd just estimated.”

About 50 squatters are there, spread through the building, and manage to ward off the first attack. Karel:

“It lasted forever after that. The riot police were spread out all over the square diagonally in front of the building. As soon as they came closer they got roof tiles over them. Harry took a swig from a beer bottle, but there was ammonia in it for pouring out on the cops.”

Harry:

“Then I left through the back garden with Betsie and a guy who'd got hit on the head with a rock, to find a doctor, but we were immediately arrested. Betsie was thrown back out of the police car again fast, but we two were driven to the hospital and brought in in handcuffs and examined. The doctor said I had to drink a lot and if I'd swallowed any of the ammonia it could go wrong. I could choke. At Headquarters I quickly started claiming I was really short of breath. Then within two hours they kicked me back out onto the street.”

Karel:

“In the Schaepmanstraat that afternoon there were negotiations out the window with a cop over unopposed withdrawal and no eviction, but what did we have to offer in exchange? We started to play games on the stairway to kill time ('I'm going on a trip and I'm taking along...'). Then in the setting sun on the roof opposite us, we saw Hein appear, like a sort of mythical figure, waving and everything. That was a kick. Then we agreed to strike back at the riot police one more time. Not much discussion was necessary. It was more of a sporting exploit. The fact was we were stuck and the outside crew who were supposed to rescue us were nowhere in sight. Strangely enough everyone was pretty relaxed; a sort of military sobriety had come over us.”

Despite a tremendous rain of street rocks, roof tiles, windows with frames and all, beams, doors, and paving stones from the building, at 6:00 the riot police succeed in occupying the house once more. Some of the squatters manage to escape through a neighboring house over the street, but 32 people are arrested in and around the building with much violence and taken into custody at Headquarters.

A day later, Friday around 4:00, a group of 200 squatters outfitted with helmets, clubs and leather jackets advances from the Sewer Rat to re-squat the Schaepmanstraat for the second time. The group is thwarted by a platoon of riot police at the corner of Schaepman” and Van Hallstraat. “Rocks, smoke bombs and a single mollie ZIJN HUN DEEL.” Then an attempt is made to set the nearby wooden municipal outpost building on fire, “because the city isn't keeping up its end of the bargain.” But a beginning fire goes out quickly. After the first collision between squatters and riot police, the former withdraw at an intersection to regroup for a second attack.

Paul was there too:

“The mood was that we'd recapture the house however we could. Everyone was standing close together. The riot police stayed in front of the Schaepmanstraat. Piet had a radio and right at the moment it was getting quiet, the 5:00 news came on with the report that one of the arrested squatters had died in the police cell. Then Piet turned the radio up loud and held it above his head so everyone could hear. It was like a bomb had fallen on that square. First everyone was standing close together listening, but then everyone suddenly moved back and away and finally Piet was standing there by himself with the radio over his head. Till he must have thought, what am I doing here, and walked away. Actually you'd expect that the reaction to the news would be a huge outburst of rage, but instead it seemed like the people didn't know what to do anymore. The motivation to keep on with the re-squat had disappeared in a flash. Everyone was silent, at the most talking quietly to each other. It was soon known that it must be Hans Kok, maybe from people who'd been to take packages to the prisoners. We decided to go back to the Sewer Rat to deal with the news. People couldn't believe it, it hit harder than a smack with a baton. Maybe something played a part like, shit, if they destroy someone who's already in a cell, then they can shoot us down here on the street like that too.”

The police had known of the death since 12:00 and were present en masse in the Staatslieden district. The group of re-squatters which had fallen apart and turned back to the Sewer Rat was being awaited in every street, riot police vans tore towards them and it appeared that tear gas would be shot, “but the wind wasn't right so they called it off.” And, continues Paul,

“so we had to run the gauntlet. A sort of difficult route was chosen to come back to the Sewer Rat. There we were with 200 people, the whole lot packed like sardines, and even before we talked, what the plan was, we were suddenly surrounded by riot vans and riot police got out with tear gas guns meant for us. They really had this idea like, before it escalates, before the rage can express itself, first we have to wipe it out, at least intimidate. Then the riot police withdrew. They were just showing us what they could do.”

A second group is just hearing at the Sewer Rat that a squatter has died in a cell: “Jesus Christ! Just murdered! Beat to a pulp and left to his fate.” Then riot police appear once more on the small square outside the cafe·. The inside media report:

“People are hardly able to jump out of the way. Followed by a rain of rocks the van drives away. Barricades are thrown up around the square and this time tear gas is fired. People are chased away from the Sewer Rat and mostly followed far into the neighborhood by plainclothesmen. Police everywhere, easily 300 riot police and virtually all the snatch squads. The Staatslieden district is more or less closed off.”

An hour and a half later in the community center The Copper Button a “mass meeting” is held, for which the press too is drummed up. The dejection from the Sewer Rat appears to have moved into a following phase: “We'll get them back.” Because of the spies present no concrete plan of action could be discussed. Besides, there were far too many riot police in the city to carry out a mass action. It was decided to go back to the neighborhoods and “break up that night into small groups and attack as many municipal institutions as possible.” Piet told the press, “I have no authority over everyone here. I can imagine that people are so angry they'll do very strange things. But that's for the city to deal with.” There was no contact among the respective neighborhoods until the demonstration, announced for the following day. After five years it turned out that the secret about the death of the other was so alive and well that everyone knew exactly what had to be done now: the “massive” thing which had been waited for all these years, now the magic moment had arrived to let it happen.

Paul:

“It was really strange that Friday night. Suddenly everyone seemed to have the same kind of click. Everyone had the idea, now we'll use the ultimate means, just before the guns anyway: the mollie. Even people who were generally moderate said, now it's gone too far, this has to stop. Militancy had suddenly set in. That night was really an exceptional situation. Everyone went around with mollies in their pockets, everyone had full gasoline cans and went to work with fire. Now you could; it was the new action method. The fear threshold was gone. It didn't matter if you were picked up either. I think there was really a feeling of justification, like, I'm within my rights. You can bust me but it doesn't matter a fuck anyway. Normally you don't set cop cars on fire in front of a police station, you think it over a couple of weeks, how you'll go about it. Then it happened spontaneously, wham. Saturday I ran into people who said, I thought we were the only ones who'd go do something so heavy. And everyone did it.”

The fire obsession went so far that, according to reports, certain gas stations in the city, where suddenly all kinds of heavy types were ceaselessly streaming up to fill gas cans, didn't want to provide any more fuel, “because you guys just set fires with it.” In addition a story went around that “people you'd never have expected it from were fooling with timing mechanisms.” At least 40 lightning strikes took place, including arson at the traffic police (damage: 1.2 million guilders), at municipal outposts, an empty prison, the city records office, builders' huts, garbage cans, a tour boat, the city hall. And other cities would not be left in the dust either: in Nijmegen automobile tires on the freeway catch fire, in Utrecht windowpanes perish at municipal buildings...

Late Friday night the squatters' movement made its secret public. Under what circumstances Hans Kok had died were at that moment irrelevant. People had pictured the death of the other on an urban battlefield amidst clubbing riot police and charging vans, but that someone in a cell had now died a miserable death, “À la South Africa or Chile,” made in fact no difference. Through his death he became the one waited for for so many years; Hans Kok was “the other.” All suppressed movement feelings could now be brought to the surface in all their compelling pathos. The sting of the fear felt all those years at various actions, and of the pain of all those times you had run away when you should have fought back, comes spewing out when someone has stayed standing and perished for it. The guilt of having narrowly escaped death so often, to have survived such heavy things that it was only by chance that you walked away in one piece, and the knowledge that someone had now died the death that the authorities had had planned for everyone, placed Hans Kok far above the concurrence of circumstances that had caused his death. This was something the media could not fathom; for them a “normal” arrestee had died and what were those squatters getting so excited about? That after so many years of loss of the squatters' movement there was still a large group of people who were deeply hurt by the first death on the side of the squatters, was beyond their comprehension. Fear of and longing for death are extramedial; they cannot be converted into obligation-free information. That on Friday night the limits of fire hazard had been exceeded on a large scale proves that the intention was not to convert emotional intensity into understandable performances. The censorship prescribed by the media on actions which “are bad for the public opinion” were radically shoved aside for a night. The actions were not aimed at an imaginary viewing crowd which had to be mobilized or influenced, but were an expression of the desire to raise a real crowd to collectively rage out the anger and the grief.

The fire actions were still being done by relatively few groups. But at the demonstration the next afternoon a few thousand people were suddenly present. From this it became apparent that those who hadn't joined in actual (squat) actions in a long time were still tuned in on the secret: for them too Hans Kok had become, in one blow, the other. They had responded to the call of the nightly signals of fire and falling glass. But now that the secret was openly acknowledged and raged out, it had lost its power. The demo which began en masse on the Beursplein quickly thinned out in a series of confrontations with the police who were already present. “A whole lot of people lost track of each other because they had to run from riot cops and plainclothesmen.”

On Friday night all those who still considered themselves part of the squatters' movement had rediscovered their unity, by without previous arrangement all providing a series of fragmented events with the same mass symbol, flames and tinkling glass. The unity of Saturday's demonstration had the same emotional charge as the night before, but the real crowd did not succeed in staying together. It could have been a funeral procession, in which all concerned could have collectively carried the squatters' movement to its grave. In raging out its secret driving force, it could have come to a halt on the spot where the first squatter had died. The demo after the death of Hans Kok could have become that vanishing point, but the police, afraid of a new upsurge in “squatting incidents,” kept the crowd in permanent motion with charges and plainclothesmen-paranoia. Thus it stayed unclear, for the demonstrators themselves too, what they had in common that day, what good it was doing them to take to the streets en masse for this particular cell death.

The rage after the announcement of Hans Kok's death derived its power from the fact that a squatter had been killed. The police immediately issued a press statement in which his death was made an apolitical overdose, in the certainty that in squatters' circles this could count on minimal attention. On Friday evening from the squatters' side a demand was formulated: “There must be an independent investigation into the cause of Hans' death by doctors appointed by us.” This was an attempt to get medial legitimation for the rage which at that moment was in its construction phase. But the press didn't want to hear much about the squatters' arguments and blindly followed the version propagated by police PR. The demand for an investigation also included an element which pushed Hans Kok aside and incorporated him along with the many anonymous cell deaths. This “broadening” was correct from the standpoint of the activists, who had already tried before to file complaints against the circumstances in police cells and never been listened to. But that his was a cell death was less important than the fact that he was a squatter, and therefore the connection remained abstract.

In the call for an independent investigation, however, the factor which would dissolve the rage into medical, scientific and legal details had already been introduced: it made the cause of death a problem for the experts. Precisely as the rage over the housing shortage in '80”'81 had become entangled in a juridic network around purchase, claims, anonymous subpoenas and other procedures and arguments incomprehensible to the uninitiated, the Hans Kok case passed through a similar cycle. The media too figured out after awhile that the police had simply publicized some random versions of the death in order to camouflage their own mistakes and negligence. They in turn began to press for more investigation. After a closetful of reports and counter-investigation, accompanied by stacks of newspaper clippings and chief-editorial commentaries, all the research ultimately produced no more than private security guards in the cell block, to prevent the overtaxed guards from making mistakes again with undesired publicitary consequences.

Hans Kok died because the police let him die. But he died also because he, in any case to a certain extent, wanted to: during his arrest he swallowed a bottle of methadone tablets and he knew what kind of consequences that might have. Hans Kok had said to his parents that “he wouldn't see 30.” His death fit into the no-future heroism that Simon had already formulated in 1980, and which is part of the secret arsenal of dreams of every life-artist who wants more than flyers and peaceful demos. One who gets involved in a battle with adversaries, in the end, does not escape either accepting his own death as a real option or fleeing. But the readiness to put your life on the line creates, along with the fear that you could actually die, the desire to get acquainted with the boundary. In the short moment of violence, death, which is normally denied or misjudged, is brought into circulation. Not as a danger to be taken into account, but rather as a familiar acquaintance whose presence in the background is soberly assessed.

Hans Kok died and the squatters survived the collective longing for death. That he kept his dignity had never needed to be made secret, as has happened for years in kilos of investigation reports. And they could have been proud that someone had finally done what they had secretly wished upon the movement. Hans Kok was not the ultimate victim of increasing repression; rather, he was the most radical activist (whether or not he wanted to be). He took the accumulated intensity through to its extreme, and made it final. Activism after Hans Kok had lost its radical naivete for good.

After Hans Kok had died under the watching eye of the police, the squatters' symbol appropriately appeared on his grave, which meant that squatting would go on to the bitter end. But after that it also lost its impact for good; it had become a memorial. One year after the death of Hans Kok, on October 25, 1986, a memorial procession travelled from the Haarlemmerplein through the Schaepmanstraat to Police Headquarters. If the demonstration itself has been rather quiet, before Headquarters a total silence suddenly falls. For minutes, everyone stands, says nothing, does nothing; a drum beats a slow rhythm, and then it too falls silent. After two minutes the streetlights go on. When people further down start to smash in the windows of the police station, the sound comes as a relief: the situation is normal again.

The wreaths and flowers brought along are laid against the wall. It grows dark, and then the riot police appear. The large group runs away and is followed far into the Kinker district. A number of people, among them ex-resistance fighters and the father of Hans Kok, link arms and form a line around the wreaths. A line of riot police halts before the group and stays standing in formation for half an hour. Everywhere around them are riot vans. Slowly but surely the press crowds in. The TV network news arrives with a large camera. The group around the flowers shouts, “Back off! No violence!” Then the riot police suddenly take a step backwards and begin to ram into them with batons. The flowers are trampled.

When the squatters' movement began in late '78 in the Jacob van Lennepstraat the situation had been the same, except that then they had been defending a squat and now they were defending memorial wreaths. The circle was round. Rage over a “failing policy,” that you could stake your life in the battle, had made place for rage over the desecration of the death of the other; not the right to a place to live, the right to one's own life, but the right to mourn, the right to an own death, had become an absolute value. In Hans Kok the squatters' movement mourned for itself, for its own standstill, its own death. The total silence which suddenly fell before Police Headquarters, where he had died, was the silence of a movement which realized it had died here itself. The memorial wreaths were meant for it. But there was not only reason for sorrow; that the chronicle of the squatters' movement ended here also came as a relief. That terminus which had been awaited for years had finally been reached. And everyone knew it. Two years after his death, Hans Kok is no longer collectively commemorated.

“More and more I am convinced that mentalities spring from mass experiences. But are people responsible for their mass experiences? Don't they end up in them without any protection? With what should one be equipped to be able to protect oneself against them? Should one be able to form one's own crowds to be immune against others?”

Elias Canetti, The Secret Heart of the Watch.

On March 29, 1986, in the small village of Kedichem in the central Netherlands, a hotel where two right-wing splinter parties were attempting a reconciliation burst into flames. The Center Party had held one seat in the Lower House since 1982, on a platform which presented itself as antifascist and antiracist, but which made a case for the “protection of Dutch cultural values,” a modern form of racism in which foreigners in particular are blamed for the housing shortage, unemployment, environmental pollution and overcrowded roads. After a faction seceded from the party, Holland's far-right parliamentary organization seemed about to die a quiet death. Ten days before “Kedichem,” for the first time in postwar history, a “fascist” from the Center Party was elected to the Amsterdam city council. He was to be sworn in on April 29, and inside the antifascist movement, discussions over how to prevent this were in full swing. With the Lower House elections ahead on May 26, the rivalling CP factions decided to call a meeting to end the internal disputes and patch things up. The violent disruption of this conciliatory meeting by antifascisist activists prevented the formation of a reunited far-right party, and would keep them out of the House for the next three years.

The media coverage got across in detail the atmosphere of heavy violence the activists had managed to evoke around the parties. The photograph which summed up the whole occasion as a media event depicted the CP Member of Parliament, a sorry sight, fleeing the smoking remains of the scene of the disaster, and would later be designated Press Photo of the Year. The motto of the action had been, “Fascists may never be permitted to organize; their meetings must be disrupted. We must deter fascists from becoming active in the CP.” The activists correctly observed afterwards, “Kedichem had this effect.” As far as positive results and publicity were concerned, the action had been a complete success. That Dutch organizational life distanced itself, condemning the methods used, put the satisfaction over the smashing of the meeting into a respectable framework.

Since 1981, a broad antifascist movement of local committees, foreigners' organizations, the former resistance, women's groups, and youth organizations had been growing. At the same time the activist segment of the population was coming into confrontation with thugs, angry rednecks, “discos”, football hooligans and skins, who were summed up as “rising fascism.” Both groups were strongly divided over the question of whether the CP, as the political expression of this trend, ought be banned and how action against it should be taken. What the two groups had in common was their appeal to the antifascist attitude and the resistance in World War II. In all actions and documents there recurs the desire to reshape the memory of the horrors of fascism, which is still at the forefront of Dutch education, media and literature. The activists wanted to shape it on the existential level of bodily confrontation, because they had come up against “the fascists” as a direct assault on their way of life. The committees, however, found political consciousness-raising about “everyday racism” and demonstrations after incidents with right-wing groups more useful. Their fear of violent actions is owed to the fact that a mass antifascist movement would, in principle, include the entire Dutch population. This imaginary mass can actually only get smaller, since its dimensions are already maximal. Even the Center Party recognizes this. Their commentary on Kedichem was, “They didn't do the antifascist committees any favor, because quite a lot of honest people are on them.” The differing perspectives on the imagined allies and opponents guarantees a permanent lack of understanding on both sides between the “political” and “existential” variants of Dutch antifascism.

A research tradition into the wheelings and dealings of far-right and fascistic individuals and groups in Holland has existed for some time. During investigation, it was discovered that the reconciliatory meeting of the right-wing faction was set for Saturday, March 29, but the location was kept secret even in CP circles. On Thursday the 27th 75 activists met. The topic of discussion was the crucial importance of disrupting the merge and how this disruption would take place. A small group of experienced activists had taken the organization of all this upon themselves, and there was no discussion over the plan of action, apart from a vague reference to the “Boekel model.”

Two years before, the last CP convention had been held in the village of Boekel, in the province of Brabant. Activists from all over the country had entered into heavy confrontation with the 300 party members. The “Boekel model” now consisted of surrounding the conference room, demanding the departure of “the fascists” and, in the case that the damand was not met, “smoking them out” with tear gas or a smoke bomb, in which case the CPers were offered an escape route via which they could piss off. In practice, there was a big difference in Boekel between on the one hand the “demonstrators,” who wanted to protest against the CP in a nonviolent way to mobilize public opinion, and on the other the heavy faction that sought direct confrontation and was prepared for it, arriving with helmets, leather jackets, clubs and smoke bombs “in self-defense.” Because this group was the first to
arrive at the still secret meeting address, their strategy was immediately put into effect: windows went in, a tear gas grenade flew inside and in the street there was heavy fighting between the CP thugs, “heavies,” and the newly-arrived demonstrators, who took the knocks.
There were major disagreements among the activists afterwards, but shortly before Kedichem it all seemed to be forgotten. It was assumed that everyone knew what the “Boekel model” meant. Now it was time to take action; quarrels were put off until later, in line with Dutch action tradition: act first, talk later.

The group who found each other that Thursday evening in Amsterdam included every branch of the movement. Johan:

“Time after time you see that people do get back together. I think Hans Kok made it clear that despite all the different currents, if something gets you good and mad, you still have a lot of things together. It's logical that you seek each other out to fight the CP. Everyone was enraged at the fact of Kedichem and the danger that the CP might get into the House. We all felt like it could be of decisive significance.”

The lowest common denominator of the movement had become the reaction. In the days after Hans Kok's death the assessment was that the instant reconciliation between the scenes, cliques and sympathizers would not last:

“In the fires, when the rocks are flying through the windows, during a serious demonstration, all the differences between us don't count. In our anger over Hans' killing we can find unity for a weekend.”

Nonetheless, five months later, on the eve of Kedichem, it was apparent that the mutual trust had not yet vanished. The active forgetfulness which is the basis of reconciliation constituted sufficient guarantee that they could again collectively carry out an action.

At 9:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, the 29th of March, about 300 activists from all over Holland assembled in an old squatted hospital in Utrecht. Since it was unknown where the CP meeting would be held, this central location had been chosen. It was known that a number of CP members were to gather at the Utrecht soccer stadium. They were secretly followed by people on motorcycles who regularly called up the meeting point to pass along how many fascists were on their way and where they were going. Not until 2:30 p.m. did it become clear where the fascists had assembled.

During the long hours of waiting on Utrecht there was not one collective discussion about what exactly was going to be done. Only the near-magical phrase “the Boekel model” bounced about. “In the sea of time and the relatively pleasant atmosphere in Utrecht it was explained insufficiently and too hastily what our intention was,” Tineke conclude afterwards in the autonomous weekly Bluff!.

“Was it fear of differences of opinion within the group and heated arguments right before the action? Was everyone already occupied with their own fear of violence and expecting to be outnumbered by the fascists we thought we'd be up against? I could kick myself, I was just spacing out too, while in the back of my mind I had a vague feeling that a lot of things weren't quite right.”

Kasper said,

“In the rumors in Utrecht there got to be more and more fascists. And we went and got more and more beer and drank, because it really took a long time. Your nerves were on edge the whole time. For three hours all those people were waiting in those halls, drinking and getting stoned. And then we finally got on our way.”

Johan:

“The fact that at a meeting point with so incredibly many people we were told that about 100 far-right types armed to the teeth were waiting for us, I call false information. After that you start to really doubt, if they saw it wrong or if they were trying to freak us out on purpose.”

Among the waiting crowd in Utrecht there was already a clear distinction between those who were sublimating their fear into a worthy demonstration and the “heavies” who were cultivating their anger into an attack high. That the mob didn't interfere at all with the organization was because it came across as extremely professional. “The organization had a mafia-like, secret service style,” says Kasper.

“Motorcycles were going all over the country, people were tailing the fascists, everything was running smoothly, it all looked like a well-oiled machine. Everything was taken care of, you could hand that to them.”

It was comforting that the power was delegated; in an activism culture which recognizes no organization, the people in charge are those who take on the practical details beforehand. In case of trouble afterwards, they will also get all the blame heaped onto them. The crowd will always declare itself innocent; for the crowd only the fascination of being among so many counts. Ronald:

“When I went to get sandwiches I saw that the center of Utrecht was swarming with people in leather jackets. It was really insane.”

The security of belonging to a crowd makes it possible for individuals to concentrate exclusively on their own emotions; making collective decisions therefore falls outside the field of vision.

At 2:30 the message comes through that the fascists have assembled in the Hotel Cosmopolite in Kedichem. Ernst:

“I picked up the phone because I happened to be standing next to it. Where? I said. I had them spell the name and wrote it down on a piece of paper.”

Since the hotel was so small, the motorcyclists thought it was a preliminary meeting point. It was therefore decided that the activists would first gather at the station in Leerdam, a town near Kedichem. Finally the waiting crowd was allowed to move. Barend writes:

“There's cheering when we hear the word Kedichem. I dance with joy. Everybody gets moving. To the vans. People are yelling. We still have to arrange things. Who's the speaker here? Different people come forth. One of them wins. He arranges a car to drive ahead and case things out. He says a couple more things have to be done, like 'entering the scanner frequencies.' No one asks what that means. I don't ask anything myself but I think it'll be OK. Then a message comes that only 18 CPers are inside. But no one listens to that. The message is too unclear anyway. We'll see in Leerdam.”

At this point almost 100 cars and rented vans left Utrecht. In Leerdam the procession posted itself in a long line before the small station. In front was the leaders' “commando truck” which was crammed with scanners for listening in on police radio. The vans of the “heavies” grouped around it, to be sure not to miss anything. When a police car drove by and the scanners indicated that more police were on their way, and when a message came from Kedichem that the Cosmopolite was indeed the meeting place of the CP, the front car decided to leave immediately. There had hardly been any contact between the separate vans, and no one knew the geographical outlay of Kedichem. Barend, in Bluff!:

“Suddenly we have to leave. Who gave the signal? That's unclear. We'll see in Kedichem.”

In the waiting crowd in Utrecht, something like an expectation of command had set in: the people's forced apathy could only be broken by the signal that they had to leave. The leaders' order was a relief.

The road from Leerdam to Kedichem is eight kilometers long. The touristic experience brought about the “We sensation” which goes along with such an outing of “the movement.” Ronald:

“A long line of vans left for Kedichem, we made a mess of the traffic, ignored traffic lights and began to drive through the polder landscape, like a caterpillar on those dikes. It was an incredibly pretty route. You drove out on a very narrow dike along the river Linge, where no oncoming traffic could pass. Halfway there we came across a cop car parked in a parking lot in which two startled cops were babbling into their mobile telephone. We weren't driving on a straight canal, but a winding dike road, so you saw the procession ahead of you and behind you the whole time.”

Betsie: “It was a real caravan, a convoy.”

Coming from Leerdam, the Hotel Cosmopolite is situated on the left side of the dike, with the village of Kedichem on the right. From the dike a road leads down into Kedichem. When those in front arrived at the hotel, they checked out the situation and parked so that they would be able to leave quickly in a different direction than they'd come from. As they were getting out the vans at the back were still about a kilometer from the hotel. Once these arrived, much later, the long procession parked along the road on the dike and the people began to walk towards the hotel. There was a heavy wind.

The events in front of the hotel unfolded at terrific speed. Kasper was part of the group up front who had decided on a direct confrontation with the CP members:

“When we got out we put on our balaclavas, first half on, then all the way on. We saw a lot of cars still driving up. We all had sticks and clubs and quite a lot of adrenalin and everyone ran towards the hotel. We waited for each other so there would be a lot of us. There were about 40. There was a cop car in front of the hotel.”

Ronald: [quote]“The cop car said we had to remove ourselves or 'force would be used.' We were all bent over laughing, of course; three or four hundred people with clubs and helmets and one police car.”[quote]

The conservative newspaper De Telegraaf quoted a party member:

“We hadn't been in Hotel Cosmopolite for ten minutes when two policemen came in. 'We have some unpleasant news,' they said. 'About 200 thugs are on their way and we can't protect you.' The policemen left immediately and at the same moment the first bricks came through the windows.”

Kasper:

“We started to yell, 'Fascists fuck off,' and 'Fascist pigs!' Then the hotel owner showed up in the doorway and the police said, 'Let's keep it down.' The owner said they weren't fascists and we should leave them alone, he just wanted to make some money. But people started to throw stones at the owner and yelled at him that he was a fascist collaborator and he should fuck off. The windows were smashed and all kinds of things were thrown in. The police had gone away by then, up the dike, because they couldn't control it. More and more people showed up and windows kept shattering and people were beating on the windows with clubs. Empty beer bottles went in. Ashtrays from the bar downstairs were flying around our ears. We also heard a lot of screaming inside, those people were really scared.”

Ernst: “I was standing with Piet staring in through the windows, when bricks and paint started flying over our heads through the windows.” Ronald: “You couldn't see who was inside, the curtains were closed and the lights were off. You only saw shadows. Then the smoke bombs went in.”

“More and more smoke kept coming out of the front,” Kasper continues.

“We had no strategy, only to smoke them out. So we thought, we'll just throw in a smoke bomb, shall I do it? But everyone wanted to throw in a smoke bomb. There was too much ammunition, I think. And too much adrenalin from waiting all day, the bottled-up aggression. Then one
smoke bomb got stuck in the curtains, I saw that too.”

Ronald:

“If there's throwing during a riot, everyone has to do their part. The pavement went to pieces right away, and the parking lot on the side of the hotel too with those handy cobblestones. One smoke bomb got stuck in the curtains. It was probably an old one that got damp; they combust with a flash. Suddenly the white smoke got a little darker and the flames shot out of the building.” Ernst: “I saw two smoke bombs and an orange pipe going in. It started to burn instantly. Piet and I looked at each other and went, 'Let's get out of here.'“

Kasper:

“When we saw that the hotel was on fire we went to the back. I said to the person I was with, 'Let's check if they can get away, this is really getting heavy.' Then we saw that nobody was coming out, but also that nobody could get in, because we did still want to beat up some fascists. We only got scared when we realized that they couldn't get out of the hotel. I thought, there's water behind the hotel, they can jump in there of course, but still...It turned out later there was another exit. I was pretty worried. Then I went all the way back to the other side of the hotel to see if they were getting away there. In the beginning I was only thinking, if they get away we can really kick their ass with those clubs. When we saw those flames coming from the first floor we thought, this isn't going to work, those people are all going to die in there.”

Barend saw it like this:

“All the windows are smashed out. You see the room already full of smoke, look inside, some shadows are walking around in the back. But the throwing of smoke bombs doesn't stop. Huge whoppers are thrown in. In the panic - or is it enthusiasm? – everyone wants to get rid of their stuff. You think: this is enough. But you're part of the stream, can't say anything anymore. Your yelling is drowned out. And then: white smoke becomes black smoke. Suddenly fire is crackling. I yank my helmet off my head, throw away my club and start to run; I don't want to have anything more to do with this.”

Panic is always fear of murder: the murder which can be committed against you or the murder you commit yourself. The group of attackers behaved like a classic baiting crowd. Cannetti says about this:

“the baiting crowd forms with reference to a quickly attainable goal. The goal is known and clearly marked, and is also near. This crowd is out for killing and it knows whom it wants to kill. One important reason for the rapid growth of the baiting crowd is that there is no risk involved. There is no risk because the crowd have immense superiority on their side.”

The waiting crowd in Utrecht was not out for murder, but was preparing itself for a confrontation with shadows. How many, how strong, all unclear. But when the front ranks formed on the Lingedijk, they had one goal in mind:

“In the van we'd talked the whole time about fascist thugs, we expected that. We were all really raring to go and we wanted to get the fascists. Everyone was 'in the mood for killing.' But there was nobody to fight with, nobody showed themselves.” (Kasper)

When they came near the hotel (and parked as close to it as possible) and found out that they were far in the majority, there was no restraint to prevent the group from turning into a baiting crowd. The people had concentrated on their individual fears of being hit and on their desire to hit back, but not on the collective experience which awaited them. While they themselves were going into attack, their thoughts revolved around the imaginary crowd waiting for them. They had protected their bodies with leather coats and helmets, but they were not protected against the crowd they would form themselves. All the mass experiences from previous actions were forgotten. For the group on the dike no danger existed; they proved much stronger than what they were attacking. The danger lurked in the crowd itself; as individuals they suddenly recoiled from the act which the crowd committed.

The crowd was still innocent at first: a white mass. When the smoke turned black the change came: guilt spread over the mass, and it turned black. That guilt was the panic: the awareness of being responsible for the murder made the crowd a group of individuals who only wanted to get away from the scene of the crime. And they were able to get away, since their cars were free and within reach.

They all escaped, as individuals. Ernst:

“I couldn't find my van because they'd all been rented from the same company and my driver was clever enough to put on a balaclava. Then I just got into some van and we were out of there.”

Kasper:

“We wanted to save our butts, threw away our gloves, balaclavas off and back to the car. I didn't see the other people after that. We heard all these sirens and the police car came again and tried to drive into us, but then people threw bricks in the direction of the vehicle. In the car we took off our black clothes, they were too conspicuous, and we turned on the radio to listen. We raced home like that. Every time we passed another exit I felt more relieved, because we were incredibly worried, at least I was, about what had happened to those people in the building. I was thinking of babies sleeping upstairs in the hotel.”

To the group who came behind the attack group, the demonstrators, thigs looked a lot different. Harry:

“We got lost on the way. When we arrived in Kedichem, we parked the van in the town and climbed up the dike. I walked towards the hotel. It started to smoke more and more, the closer you came the more smoke. From a distance that's a pretty sight, you know. But I had no idea what was going on there. I'd thought it would be some kind of occupation, that you go inside and expose the CP members. Actually we arrived much too late for the action. When the flames came from all sides of the building we heard, 'Back to the cars!' I was still going forward when others were already running back. 'Take it easy, take it easy,' people were yelling.”

Betsie:

“I was in the middle of the procession. I had the idea that it was a demonstration. After a while we stopped and walked to the hotel. Then I heard glass shattering, I saw smoke and stuff. But I didn't get close up. Suddenly everyone started to run back: get away! I saw a cop car driving criss-cross through it all, he didn't know what he was doing either. Back at the car, we waited first till the others were back. Then the car turned around on the dike, it was really chaotic. All the cars were driving around in front of each other, you couldn't get out. It was heavy, in the distance you saw all those clouds of smoke, it's pretty, really. I thought, there's no way to get off this dike, there were no side roads. I thought going back was stupid, straight ahead was better, but almost everyone was turning around.”

The demonstrators who had been waiting all day were initially strongly attracted by the fire from which the attackers had fled. They had not yet come to a discharge as a crowd; they had not yet reached that point at which each individual in the crowd feels equal to all others. When they learned that for them the party had come to an untimely end, they had to turn back, but against all common sense they formed into a flight crowd which by definition has danger behind it. Only as a flight crowd could they experience that desired discharge. But forming a flight crowd was for them the only possibility to avert the panic which they were part of, but which they did not understand. And they had to cope with that panic (although they knew nothing of any possible murder):

“The incoming wave which was threatening to crush the building suddenly turns around. On top of the dike is a tangle of vans trying to turn around. People are gesticulating and yelling. Two vans bump into each other. A van which is still empty tells two refugees to find their own van: you don't belong here. Meanwhile some of the townspeople have stopped staring; they start to move towards some of us. A few of us catch telling blows, but no one does anything: it's every man for himself.” (Barend)

It was not only panic which determined the behavior of the fleeing demonstrators. Harry:

“Our car wouldn't start, on top of everything. We were pushing the car. Meanwhile we were being harassed by locals who were holding their lighters near our gas tanks. They said, 'What have you done? You set the place on fire!' When we'd been the last to arrive. It was a shot in the dark on their part that we had done it.”

The fact that the flight crowd didn't feel responsible for the fire they had to get away from proved to be fatal: it resulted in the return of the passivity which had anesthetized the waiting crowd in Utrecht.

After the chaotic reversing the procession drove back to Leerdam. But,

“After a while a cop car came and sat straight across the road, we all had to stop. Nobody knew what was going on. There were a lot of cars ahead of us. Then we all got out. We were standing there for an hour, we were closed in, front and back. If you wanted to you could still get away through the pasture, but I thought, we're in the middle of nowhere.” (Betsie)

All the people from the cars were arrested and transported to Leerdam in a police wagon. There was no resistance. The vans stayed behind on the dike and were later towed away by the police to the yard behind Leerdam Headquarters. One person who had crept away into the reeds along the river and hid there until 9:00 p.m. managed to get away by joining a group of Turkish boys who were paying soccer on the dike. All the others who managed to reach the Leerdam station were arrested on the directions of the locals from Kedichem. Harry had already been picked up in Kedichem itself:

“We were running behind the car we were pushing, the police came off the dike. The moment the cops were two meters behind us the engine started. The cops busted us and those locals who were interfering got another person. It was funny; the car drove away and we were the first to be caught.”

The police car in which the three handcuffed detainees were locked blocked the dike when the fire department came. The car had to be pushed to the side of the road, which kept the fire engines a few minutes longer from reaching the hotel. When they arrived it was already ablaze. Over the police radio the detainees heard that a woman's leg would have to be amputated. It was not mentioned who.

The CP Member of Parliament Janmaat, who had called the meeting, told de Telegraaf about the leg:

“I was fleeing with my secretary, Mrs. Corselius-Schuurman, and some other people up the stairs. From the window we could see the flames and some other people running outside meters below. Within three minutes everything was on fire, including the stairs. We tied sheets together. I was the first to climb down, to see if it would work. The sheets were too short and I had to jump. My secretary came after me. But she swung from the sheets straight through a large window and crashed to the ground. She was bleeding terribly. I tried to help her. But later her leg had to be amputated. Awful, a disaster. In this same suit, full of bloodstains, I will ask questions in the Lower House: Why were our people not protected against this riffraff?”

The arrestees, of whom the majority would be detained for four days and eventually only a few would be sentenced to three months' imprisonment, would not be allowed to keep their clothes; after they had thrown away their helmets and caps, the police in Leerdam took all their other clothes away for laboratory examination for gasoline traces. Harry wouldn't even get his back; ten days later he ended up in the street in Dordrecht in his underpants. All those who eventually were not sentenced received f150 per day compensation, f200 per day for the first two days. That could reach an amount as high as f4000.

The group of attackers returned unharmed to their home base:

“We drove back with the group to a squat bar. We didn't run into any cops and there was no beer left either. Back in the bar we heard no one was dead, that a woman was injured and it really made us laugh. We also heard about the 72 arrestees and we all thought that was really shitty.” (Kasper)

At home the attackers got over their panic immediately: the murder had not been committed against people, but against a leg. The relief over this was expressed in a laughing fit. Ronald, who had gone back to another bar:

“We turned on the 5:30 news and only then we heard that there were all those arrests and a number of seriously injured people. There was only really a damper on things after that. Anyway, you can argue about whether it was such a clever action, but it really was an awesome kick to see a hotel burn down like that.”

At the same time a press release made the news, by the “Radical Anti-Fascists” (RAF), which suggested that they had organized it all. The phrase in the statement that “the events in Kedichem could be repeated” was associated instantaneously and by everyone with The Leg. The interpretation was that they would not shrink from inflicting more serious casualties in the fight against fascism. What was shocking about this statement was that the “organizers” did not shrink from recognizing “the murder” and thereby suggested that the panic had been planned. And this while the majority of the activists, now they were home, were exerting themselves, by discussing the effect and the strategy, to eliminate the panic of the action in themselves.

Ronald went immediately into politics, first by organizing attorneys for the arrestees, and a day later in a press group which was formed “because nobody liked the sound of the RAF statement. After that press release we didn't see any of the leaders, the organizers, again. We tried to salvage what there was to salvage.” The first goal of the press group was to distract attention from The Leg, which had begun leading its own life in the media.

“A news program on TV had an interview with the woman, in bed, without her leg. And that hotel owner was ranting too. Our aim was to explain that it hadn't been our intention that a leg had to be amputated. Besides that, we wanted to bring forth our own arguments about why we'd done the action, and subtly incorporate into it that we were critical of how it had gone.”

This press group too sent out a statement, signed “the activists of March 29,” which said, “We literally smoked out the fascists. That the Hotel Cosmopolite went up in flames was not intentional. If any non-fascists were injured, we regret it.” In this way, the kick and the panic were written out of the Kedichem story. But while there was no longer any panic in the story for the big media, in the inside media a culprit for the panic was explicitly fingered. One was quickly found, since the RAF had already claimed themselves that panic had been part of their plan.

In Bluff! Barend wrote about the RAF spokesman, “I think he's an incredible bastard. But I don't want to imply that he's the only one guilty. After all, we're all responsible.” And he continues about the RAF: “They're people who decide as a very small group that Holland is ripe for terrorist attacks, but are too spineless to do it themselves. People who trample others playing terrorist, they can be burned at the stake as far as I'm concerned.” And he concludes, “We have much more important things to think about. We will have to learn to discuss and organize things together, otherwise the movement will be ruled by crafty crazies again soon.”

In Barend's analysis of the relation between the individual and the crowd, the individual is declared innocent of the crowd's actions. He sees the crowds of Utrecht and Kedichem as victims of those who knew how crowds react and how to direct them. In order to prevent the rise of this sort of evil leader, he proposes forming an “own,” “good” crowd which through discussion and democracy will be capable of withstanding devious leaders. The search for a panic-free form of action calls forth the desire for an organization of mass actions in which unforeseen circumstances can be ruled out. The discipline of the activist necessary for this was just as radically in contradiction with the rule, still active in '86, that only spontaneous, chaotic actions done without rigid organizational form lead to the most bizarre and contagious break-ins and holdups without thereby deteriorating into terrorism.

Barend's characterization of “crafty crazies” does speak of respect for these leaders. But he does not ask why the Utrecht crowd delegated power to them. Why did they let themselves be seduced into inertia? And why did the attack group let themselves be worked up to the extent that they were prepared to kill? Barend circumvents this question by talking directly about “the perspective of the movement”; since he is not able to conjure up his own crowd in non-organizational terms, he comes no further than declaring panic a taboo once more.

The very fact that the activists in Kedichem panicked proves that they were no fascist horde themselves. There is no panic in fascism. Fascist gangs and bureaucrats did not shrink from murder. The planning of the panic by the leaders was dictated by the calculation that it would allow them to get away quickly. This could get them accused of having terrorist tendencies, an accusation Barend does make. But terrorists do not need a crowd to be able to operate; the term is introduced only so that this group can be excluded next time. The only thing the organizers can be accused of is that they possessed knowledge of what crowds are and how they function, and applied this knowledge after taking the organization in hand from the beginning.

Barend's dilemma was that, if one accepted the activism tradition of the 1980s, it was impossible to exclude groups from actions: that is only possible inside a continuous organization which is prepared to establish order patrols and mentality police. A movement which does not wish to disappear will eventually find turning into such an association unavoidably necessary. All those who, with or without secret amusement, dissociated themselves from the RAF and in so doing held onto their own myth of mass activism as a spontaneous and chaotic event within an unorganized structure, denied themselves the possibility to pad their strategic knowledge of actions with insights about how crowds function. But precisely because of this, they remain liable on future occasions to end up “unprotected” in a mass experience. Active forgetfulness is the charisma which protects radical naivete from all danger.

Afterwards the sons of the owner of Hotel Cosmopolite told a newspaper,

“Two years ago we also had a fire in our home furnishing shop in Leerdam. By now it's almost been rebuilt. We've almost finished the job. We thought we could start to take it easier now. But we can't because of this fire in Kedichem. It was an unexpected blow. For me and my brother it only means about f200,000 material damage. But for our father it goes much deeper. He feels it as an attack on his life.”

Two months after this attack, which had happened Easter weekend, March 29, 1986, the movement in the Kedichem case came to a standstill.

“The 62-year-old owner, Mr. P. In Den Eng, according to the police, had purchased a second-hand mechanical shovel to take up the demolition of the Hotel Cosmopolite himself. The facade of the building had already been pulled down by the local authorities for fear that it would collapse, and on Saturday the owner wanted to remove the remains by himself. Since the old machine didn't want to start he had placed pedals between the right front and rear wheels, with a separate battery, whose wires he had to connect to the starter inside the machine. As soon as the connection was made, the heavy machine – whose shovel could hold a few tons - unexpectedly started to move. In Den Eng, whose path was obstructed by the pedals, was unable to get out and was run over full-length. He died instantly. The machine, dragging away a crush barrier, crossed the dike, piercing an iron bar through a window across the dike and then, thanks to its security system, came to a standstill.”

“After you have achieved everything, you must give up; you must destroy yourself.”
- D'Annunzio

“There was a big terrace on the roof of the Mariënburcht. You could see out over the whole city. When it snowed you could look down on all those white roofs. And across the Waal was the white polder. It was beautiful.”

The Mariënburg is part of a massive new block of movie theaters, banks, shopping arcades, a national police station, and a parking garage complex with offices on top. It is situated in the center of downtown Nijmegen, on a hill along the river. The Mariënburg mall is dead at night, like the entire center of Nijmegen, gray concrete walls in a sea of orange-yellow lamplight. 1960s city planning has left its mark. To get to the offices you have to climb up past eight levels of parking, where four stories tower over it all. In September 1986 they had been empty for a year. From the Grote Broek, a large squat nearby, the bare offices were easily observable. They would become the Mariënburcht.

“We'd been looking for a place to live for a while. Nothing anonymous, but a nice building, where we could do other things too. Finally we had a choice between two buildings. One promised more comfortable living, but the Mariënburcht was a bigger challenge. It's a kick to take over a building like that, in that spot.”

Wim is still enthusiastic. The entrance to the parking garage from the street is wedged between a bank branch and the Arsenal, the municipal records office. Across this street, surrounding two large parking lots, are several more banks, the social security building, a nightclub, police headquarters and a little church. “What clinched the squat was the fact that the Mariënburcht is owned by the Shell retirement fund. The squat would be a good way to keep Shell's involvement in South Africa in the news.”

In the fall of 1986 total calm pervaded Nijmegen. “A lot of people have left the city.” The local squat identity, “which people call the squatters' movement,” began in early '81 behind barricades in the Piersonstraat. Until then the activist segment of the townspeople had been divided according to a series of themes: feminism, nuclear power and anti-militarism. It was the last of these groups which decided to go into local politics. The impetus was the impending demolition of a squatted block of houses and a factory, which were supposed to make way for a parking garage: “Cars in the living room, people on the street.” After months of activism people decided to speed up events and take control by provoking eviction. On the night of Sunday, February 15th, 1981, barricades were erected at each end of the street. To the great surprise of those present, the police failed to show up. The only ones who reacted were half-smashed bargoers, who threw the first bricks. The police didn't come on Monday either, but the schoolchildren gathered in their place to hurl bricks at the squatters. After the barricades had survived that first exciting day, more and more reasons for hanging onto the squat were found. For seven days, hundreds of people lived in the liberated area, “the Unicorn Free State”. Squatters, people from the grassroots groups, passersby, Belgians and other tourists, everyone came by. They dug anti-tank ditches; barricades rose to a height of three meters. The week culminated in clouds of tear gas, armored vehicles and 2000 police troops. Nonviolent defenders got beaten up in front of the barricades, and after a heavy battle, the violent ones behind got free passage. The Piersonstraat was demolished, but the parking garage was never to be. Many a barricade-builder later got the chance to move into a new apartment on the street, and can look down nowadays at an untitled sculpture “in memory of events.”

After the Pierson, a local pattern arose: for a long time the activists only saw each other in the pub, except on special occasions when, to everyone's surprise, they would generate an immense explosion: the bank spree after the riot in Amsterdam over the Lucky Luyck squat, the eviction of the Sterreschans squat, discontent over the tax increases for people sharing apartments, and the arrival of cruise missiles. Some took part in actions against the Center Party and turned back from Boekel and Kedichem full of doubts. Squatting had changed into a live/work culture, with a particular identity to accompany it which was fixed after long debates. What was more, vacant buildings were running out. Time after time, Nijmegen's activist culture was forced to acknowledge that it did not form a continuous movement, but a wave-like one.

Then, on September 16th, 1986, the Mariënburcht was squatted. The day of the Queen's annual address is a recurring peak on the action curve; it is “a golden oldie, a bit worn out, but something always happens.” A surprising number of people were mobilized for the squat, planned for 2:00 a.m. on this third Tuesday. The squat was sold as a protest against the Lubbers government's demolition policy, the announcement of the vacant building law, and Shell's support for the racist regime in South Africa. “And of course also so we could live in a nice building in the center of the city,” laughs Theo. In the Grote Broek, 150 people were waiting for a sign from the “pre-squatters.” This first group, the door-breakers, were sturdily clothed, so as to absorb any initial response to their actions. Henk had been in the Nijmegen scene for a while: “With two of those police stations nearby, of course you have to be extra careful. Their strategy is nipping squats in the bud. We mostly squat at night, because then they have a small crew. We also like to do it with as many people as possible. It went fine that night.” The offices above were just a bit narrower than the parking garage below. A van could drive up to the stairs leading to the entrance to the offices. “We climbed inside, not only through the door, but also through a huge pane that came down in shatters. Someone did open up an arm on the glass. They had to go straight to the hospital. Across the street at the police station they didn't notice a thing.” The others were warned with a flashlight signal. The usual sprint was omitted; everyone was too busy exchanging bits of news - people didn't get to see each other so much anymore – and eight floors of garage were a bit much. Then everyone disappeared into the gigantic offices.

“With those big windows it looked like an aquarium, with the sleeping city outside. The heating was on low, nice carpeting everywhere, big staircases. There was a completely furnished canteen on the top floor for parties. Beautiful facilities and modern gadgets you could never use, but it was terrific that they were there. People were roaming all over the building; the transient who always slept in the doorway was sucked inside with the rest. It was a chaotic situation. I think I even thought the place was too big. All those cold rooms, with thin walls; it was difficult to imagine making them at all livable.”

Two weeks before the squat there were only five residents, says Wim. “But when the rumors got around about a nice new squat in the center, people streamed in from all kinds of places. Some of them I only vaguely knew. A few days before the squat there was a residents' group of twelve people.”

The squat was received warmly in the city. Political parties came to express their support. “They thought it was really different, the combination of students and squatters. The majority of residents were students, or ex-students. We were helped by a few squatters.” Theo found the support essential.

“Those guys knew how to set up that kind of squat. Kind of what the problems were and how you could respond to them. The first few days we got a lot of interest. The squat cop came by to establish vacancy and to get acquainted. He would be our contact with the police, he told us. That was nice. It surprised us that we were allowed to stay. It had become our house, of course, but we hadn't expected the DA to think so too.”

Articles appeared in various newspapers. The size of the building and the unexpected character of the squat struck the right chord with the media. A journalist reported from a reliable source that there had long been plans inside the Nijmegen squatters' movement to breathe new life into the movement by means of a spectacular squat. Wim knew nothing of those plans.

“When we decided to squat we went looking for the squat consultation hour, but it had been gone for a long time. There were a couple of people who wanted to help us. They had before, for an action against the reduction of student grants. Tires and smoke bombs for a demonstration. We arranged the squat together. But I didn't notice any movement, just some folks who came to help now and then.”

In the first few weeks, the Mariënburcht became a meeting point for new enterprises. Three floors were reserved for residency, the uppermost for community business. Students met, antimilitarists prepared for new actions in the Mariënburcht. The squat consultation hour was set back on its feet; a new movement paper saw the light of day. New buildings were squatted. Parties were repeatedly held. Big fires burned on the roof on those nights, to mark the spot. All over the city, circled A's with arrows pointed in the direction of the squat, like new traffic signs. An three-day anarchists' gathering in November made the city nervous. Shopkeepers were asked not to leave their Christmas trees standing on the street, lest they should spontaneously combust. In the Mariënburcht strange forces were at work. When it became clear that people wanted to live in the squat too, the first supporters dropped out. Horizontal communists distanced themselves. They gave the old slogan “The worst of all are the rightists disguised as leftists” a new twist: “Beware of individuals who only want to use activities, actions and others for their own benefit.” Wim: “I was looking for a different way to live. Not that cramped room in student housing anymore. I wanted to resist in a different way, not playfully or non-violently anymore. I made the decision after we occupied the Ministry of Education in Zoetermeer. They drove us out with lots of force and I got really bashed up. That wasn't going to happen to me anymore. A few other people felt the same way. There wasn't much else happening in the city. The only things that appealed to me were in the areas of squatting and antimilitarism. Then we moved into the Mariënburcht together, where I think we were the most fanatical residents.”

Once a week there was a house meeting in the squat. People did as much as possible together. In principle someone cooked for everyone every day. It was fun, but there wasn't a lot of peace and quiet. The residents had never had to work so hard at living. The Mariënburcht had great appeal. A girl who left the squat due to inadequate comforts came back now and then to show it to all her friends. This was often at night, after closing time in the bar. Others came to visit too, taking along the windowpane of a bank or a newspaper on the way. “Chaotic situations.” All this quickly gave the Mariënburcht the image of an active squat with busy residents. The onset of winter could not temper the enthusiasm. Owner Shell did indeed disconnect the heating, but breaking into the central boiler room solved that problem temporarily. Newspapers did their bit for the high spirits in the form of a Dutch Christmas poem:

“High above the city and the shopping center,
descendents of the squatters' guild have built their nest.
High and dry.
A legacy from the day of the Queen's address.
And as the cuckoo displays deviant behavior,
So too these children feel the need
to deposit their egg in someone else's nest.
Our cuckoo children.
Ach.”

Years ago there would have been an uproar, but nowadays hardly anyone looks at a squatters' nest.

In mid-December big fires blazed again on the roof of the Mariënburcht. Not party fires this time, but a signal. They were there to alert the darkened city to a threat to the squat. The spectacularly equipped fire department was refused admittance. By the time the extension ladder reached the roof the fire was out. “What did they think? It was our house. We'd told Shell so in a letter, too.” A flyer explained: “When Shell failed to get the residents and users out voluntarily, the rats switched to nastier practices. They installed a voyeur/photographer, who photographed three random people at the anarchist three-day.” With these photographs an anonymous subpoena was written, with which a court action was begun in an attempt to wangle an eviction order. A “bus full of Nijmegen squatters and sympathizers” paid a visit to the Arnhem Palace of Justice where the case was proceeding “without a hitch.” The paper M'burcht reports afterwards:

“Shell came up with two rats who could only submit three oral witness statements. It was all too clear to us that the subpoena and the way it had come about didn't add up at all. Yet the judge attached more value to Shell's story (does he have shares...?).”

This nameless subpoena, according to the Burcht, jumped the gun on the institution of the vacant building law a few weeks later. In a “playful protest”, the squatters made this clear by “subpoenaing bailiff Mink on the basis of a photograph of a pig sitting behind a desk in a striped suit.” It was also made clear to the police and media delegates: “A squatter: as far as squatting is concerned, anything goes, apparently. In the future we'll all have to go through life camouflaged. Otherwise we'll be photographed by some twit and have to answer for things we have nothing to do with. Starting January 1, 1987, people can be subpoenaed anonymously. No name, no photo, you just have to exist,” said a report in a local newspaper.

The vacant building law had been bouncing around the squats for 17 years already, but it had never been experienced as a real threat. Interest among squatters was lacking - it was part of “their legal system.” In Fall 1986 things changed. The fresh squatters of the Mariënburcht succeeded in presenting the vacant building law as a direct attack on their lives, though the grounds for eviction had nothing legally to do with it. By making the connection anyway, they could adopt old slogans like “vacant building law = war” and “tens of thousands thrown out on the street.” A national info campaign, meant to breathe new life into these slogans, had already been started. “The authorities are making an extremely sick and inadmissible contribution to the UN Year of the Homeless 1987,” said a press statement. “December: a month for reflection, not because of Christmas, but about this scary law that's already making us see stars.” “There are rumors that 40 buildings or flats will have problems quickly once it's
instituted.” “They want to hit the jackpot in the new year, and gauge our strength that way.” It was repeated for years: this would never be allowed to happen. It would be strongly resisted. The shit would hit the fan. Discussions and compromises were not possible. The vacant building law would set off the powder keg. Whether it would really start to burn, no one knew. The Mariënburcht was to become the first symbol for the proclaimed intransigence, and plugged into an end-of-an-era mood among squatters. Theo:

“Everywhere in the country we went to tell about the impending eviction, people were furious. Everyone was going to come help. The institution of the vacant building law certainly added to the squat's national notoriety. That was great for our mobilization. Yet I also got the impression that lots of people were thinking of revenge. Too many blows had come down on their heads in the past few years. It was time to even all the scores. A lot was going to depend on our plan for the eviction.”

Barely three months after the squat, the Mariënburcht had become a household word.

“The subpoena came sooner than we expected. We had counted on getting an anonymous subpoena on January 2nd or 3rd. But we didn't expect those photographs. The Mariënburcht was going to be the first eviction in the year of the vacant building law. It was a good thing that the problems there were in the house at the time were over with straight away.”

Wim was afraid the squat would gradually empty.

“It was cold. People wanted to get on with studying or had other plans. Studying in the Mariënburcht? Forget it. In a sense that subpoena came at the right time. When everyone was home we talked about it and it was obvious that we were going to resist the eviction. But we didn't know how. It was almost everyone's first time going through something like this. Some were more fanatical than others. One group of people wanted to put up a strong resistance and the others didn't. The people who weren't for strong resistance also tended not to have much time. That meant their voice in the matter was limited. But on the other hand - after all, it was our house, and if people didn't want to defend it...that's not right. Soon it was the most fanatical people on our side and some people who came by to help who were discussing how it should go. Part of the old guard, folks from other cities.”

Thus the Mariënburcht managed to reach a radical tension. A large group was preparing itself for a first confrontation with authority. For Wim and Theo such a confrontation was a break with their past. Others were tempted to balance on the fault line. For people like Henk, who had been on the scene longer, it was “just a new mobilization point” which fit into a nationally evoked mood which was about to kick off the final battle around the last squats. “We have a lot to lose; we'll put up a good fight.”

After the verdict on December 24th everything went at a rapid pace. Theo:

“It was like a high you got into. We tried to devise a perfect plan, one where you don't take any knocks yourself but cause the other a lot of damage. The words and the action kept going faster. People thought about it all, but a lot of times only afterwards. You didn't think about the consequences for yourself. And nobody asked many questions about what it meant for other squats and activities in the city.”

For a while, the city and Shell appeared to be hoping the cold would do the job. Life in the squat got more and more difficult. If it was really going to freeze, the four radiators wouldn't be able to heat everything. Tents were hung up in the empty rooms to keep out the cold. A room jammed full of heaters and couches functioned as a living room. Everyone was always there. The bastion was barricaded and took on a medieval air. The Mariënburcht was a vacuum cleaner, drawing everything toward itself. Stairways and elevator shafts were filled with things from the street. Walls disappeared, only to pop up elsewhere, braced.

“It was never any problem finding someone to go get barricade material somewhere. The van we used was sometimes so full of people, there really wasn't any room for materials,”

according to Henk. Wim is still surprised that they managed to do it all, as the police calmly looked on.

“Someone did occasionally get picked up, but there were never any real problems. One time after the pub we went to sing a song at the police station. After all, they were our neighbors. Two people were arrested, because it was prohibited there. Or, no, they were arrested because they tore up the citation, and that was public littering.”

Naturally, the squatters tried to get as much publicity as possible. Old contacts with the media were strengthened. Various smaller actions set a trend inside and outside, according to Theo. They were not meant for the newspapers, but the latter usually picked up on them.

“On the way home from the pub, you'd walk by a real estate agent's or a bank and break some windows. Or later at night you'd go visit a councilperson. It all just happened. You didn't have to do any organizing or talk about it for a long time.”

One day there was an attempt to switch off the giro bank's computers. The electric switches for the entire complex were inside the squat. The effect of that action remains unknown - except at the greengrocer's, where the refrigeration went out.

To prevent the cold from slowly doing its work, the squatters decided to provoke the eviction. There was hardly a chance that the city would legalize the squat. The mayor - the same one as in the time of the Piersonstraat - would have rather not had this problem dumped in his lap in his last days. In the newspaper the deputy mayor and a councilman acknowledged the difficult situation, “but they've done enough in the last few years towards solving the housing problem.” Then the burgemeester suddenly trotted out some “(young) beginning entrepreneurs”: the new occupants of the Mariënburcht! Eleven in number, they were a lot fresher-faced than those people who had spoiled his nice reception last New Year's by going overboard on the drinks and refreshments. He was prepared to hear out their arguments once, which he had already been advised to do in the evaluation report from the Piersonstraat. As a first argument, right before the discussion, the a small fire broke out in the town hall. “The stuff we were going to use at a possible eviction was floating all around the building. Smoke bombs, scaffolding pipes, tires, the strangest things. When some of those things disappeared I doubt anyone missed them.” Theo cannot explain how they materialized again later, aflame, at an entrance to the town hall. A brick decorated with a pretty bow, left behind on the mayor's table after the discussion, had no consequence in the policy sphere. The police had learned from “unidentifiable sources” that this resistance will be nothing to worry about. In other places people thought differently on this matter. And so a group of Groningers came to Nijmegen when a rumor went around that the Mariënburcht was about to be evicted. “That was a false alarm we didn't know a thing about,” Wim says.

“That used to happen. We sat waiting a whole afternoon once with helmets and clubs, because someone had told us that the Special Assignments Team from the Arnhem police was going to come evict us. We looked heavy, but I was scared to death anyway. In those days the tension kept rising and so did the exhaustion. It was sort of a continuous process. Finally we decided to provoke the eviction ourselves. That way we could call the rules of the game and the timing.”

The plan for the eviction was simple. A group would withdraw into a heavily barricaded room inside, and there would be barricades outside. The expectation was that the barricades would force the police to start an eviction. Theo:

“It looked like a good idea and we worked hard the last few days to get everything ready. It was well-received in other cities. It was a clear-cut plan no one had many questions about. Everywhere in the city people were busy making smoke bombs, crow's feet, anything we could think of. We were consciously choosing for a provocation. But no one knew how it would all turn out. Of course that depended on the moment, and on the number of people who would come.”

“The bear is loose.” The voice over the police scanner sounded almost relieved. The night of observation in the cold had paid off. On Saturday evening information had come through to the police that “the squatters' movement is planning actions on the night of Sunday, January 18, possibly with the intention of forcing an eviction.” Contacts with informants, kept up for years, were finally paying off. Important pieces of information, however, seemed to be missing. Henk:

“The nationwide mobilization had escaped them! The police report afterwards shows that they had prepared for the same kind of eviction as the squat Nuts. That one had happened a couple of years before. After all this talk about hard resistance and all that, the riot police took care of it fast in peacetime dress. The resistance had been symbolic.”

All through the night people gathered all over the city. Well-known bars bulged with people. After closing time, many buildings were mobbed. Wim was in the Mariënburcht.

“A group of nine of us was going to stay inside and try to do something there. A journalist was going to stay in the house too. The idea was for everyone else to be out of the building around midnight. But it was a bit later. By 2:00 only the inside group was left. We made the last barricades, tore out the kitchen block, ate and drank and then it was just waiting.”

By around 4:00 at least 400 people were assembled in buildings in the city. Various vans from other cities were searched by the police, but their presence brought the latter to no conclusion regarding their own mobilization. “The vans that did shuttle service with Amsterdam were the suckers,” Henk says. “The plan was that everyone would come to the Mariënburcht all at once. We had agreed to start the barricades at 4:15. There was a tool room in the Grote Broek. Crammed full of stuff, garbage dumpsters for the barricades and pickaxes, shovels, crowbars were in neat rows. Anyone could take something. On the way to the Mariënburcht a big window at the Postbank blew apart.” Wim had already been sitting on the roof for half an hour.

“At 3:45 we went upstairs. On every corner were barrels we'd made out of an air conditioning system, filled with tires, gasoline and oil so they'd burn for a long time. It was dead quiet at that point; you couldn't hear a thing. When we saw the different groups arriving, we lit the fires and stuck scaffolding pipes over the edge against tower wagons. From that moment on there was a fucking racket, enormous. Windows smashing, lots of fireworks left over from New Year's going into the air. Because of the height that was about all you could see. From above it looked like they were having a lot of fun. A swarm.”

An avalanche of stuff came out of the squat for building barricades. Grocery carts, tires, scaffolding pipes, wood, washing machines, the kitchen block, bikes, filing cabinets, all disappeared into a great heap. “I don't know how the barricade went at the beginning. I ran with a group up to the fifth floor of the parking garage to keep the cops at a distance with slingshots.” The first barricade progressed slowly, says Henk, because the ground was frozen.

“Soon a riot van drove up. They thought they could manage with ten men. It was easy to keep the first small charge at bay with rocks. This was at about 4:30. The water in the squat was shut off during the night, only they forgot that in a garage like that there are more connections. And since there had been a good freeze, soon the street in front of the first barricade was a beautiful slide.”

The barricade was on the driveway between the bank and the Arsenal, so that all access to the Mariënburcht was closed off.

“We had left an escape route open for ourselves at the side of the barricades, towards downtown, away from the police station. A little side street along the Postbank had been left open; there they could come closer. But they could forget it, with those slingshots. The windows of the bank were in smithereens in no time and I saw a couple of people working on a door.”

From the roof, Wim saw a long column of riot vans heading towards the city center with searchlights. “Their movements were easy to follow from the roof, but when they came closer they disappeared behind the houses. We yelled down till we were hoarse. Something was wrong with the walkie-talkies.” But it was on the side of the defenders of order that many things were going amiss that morning. The riot police had to change into battle dress outside in the cold. The antenna at Headquarters was iced up and useless. Queries of who was in charge sounded over the police scanner with regularity in the first few hours. Many riot police were angry because they were allowed to do nothing but stand and be hit by rocks. At 5:10, an hour after the actions had begun, the first big charge was launched. The riot police came running up from the right-hand side, curved to storm the barricades, and landed on the icy slope. “That charge was an unforgettable sight. They looked like penguins as they slid down. And a fleeing line was a pretty sight. We did a counter-charge after them,” recalls Henk. “Someone was picked up during that by a complete arrest squad. We'd seen them driving around, but till then they'd stayed at a distance, not too sure of their job. A little later a line of riot police tried to close off our escape route on the left side. A big group ran over and drove them back. The windows at Social Services perished in battle. After that it was quiet for a while. I sat down to rest on a tire, smoked a cig.” Among the riot police, doubt prevailed. The commander of a newly arrived unit refused to deploy his troops. “We have been attacked from behind. The situation here is deadly.” Radio connections were not functioning. A bulldozer called in to help popped its tires on the crow's feet in front of the barricade. Tear gas, the oft-used panacea, could not be put into use because the gas masks had been forgotten. The chaos lasted for hours. Theo:

“Meanwhile a big group of us went into the bank. There was great barricade material in there. Office furniture, an aquarium, everything went into the second barricade. The first was already burning by then. Outside the chairs were being tried out, and people were sitting reading the bank papers. A couple went upstairs to stone the cops. They broke the windows and someone threw a mollie at the art work in front of the bank. On the way out we turned on all the faucets. Other people were working on the door of a bank nearby. No one really had any influence on what was happening anymore. I stood yelling for a while about where the second barricade should go, but everyone was much too busy to listen. We had organized a lot of things beforehand, but at the moment it was all such a terrific chaos.”

By 7:00, the various platoon commanders and the crisis management seemed more or less to agree. Meanwhile, the mayor had arrived at the office, three hours after the start of it all. As a first action, he approved the use of tear gas. The preparations for this were visible from the roof.

“We put gas masks on and drew back on the fourth floor. The barricade to the roof was sealed. In one of the two stairwells we'd made a space to withdraw into. A few people were going at it with smoke bombs, fireworks and oil that we were going to use when they were inside.”

Outside, the second barricade was burning too now, full of typewriters and monitor screens. Big, black clouds of smoke hung over the city. Henk:

“We had understood that they wanted to use tear gas and to us that seemed like a good moment to disappear. We left along the barricades, past the Arsenal. On the Koningsplein where we came out there was a line of cops with an arrest squad. We chased them away. Unfortunately the windows went in at a few shops. First everyone walked to the Grote Broek. Some went inside. The rest went on into the city. I was needing some coffee myself, so I went into the Broek too.”

The riot police did not notice that everyone on the street had disappeared. The bulldozer carefully tried to drive through the barricades. Then the parking garage was searched, meter by meter, for anyone left.

“I think they came upstairs at about 7:30. At least on the first floor. We kept them busy a few more hours with all that barricade material and the oil, before we withdrew into the last room. Unfortunately a can of insulation foam had frozen, so we couldn't close the last chinks, and the smoke we'd filled the whole building with came in where we were too.”

A reporter:

“The police break-in crew had to break through thick concrete several times, with crowbar and circular saw. There were whole steel constructions, made of scaffolding poles and central heating radiators, anchored to the walls with rawls, so that the police had to break away a piece of wall to get any further.”

“It was 11:00 before they got to us. I still know exactly because that was when the news came over the radio that the RSV Co. had withdrawn from South Africa. A strange moment. Then we were taken away one by one. In the stairwell I had trouble staying standing up with all that oil. The riot surpassed everything we'd expected. You do plan some things, but you never know exactly how it's going to go. When I came out of the Mariënburcht and saw that street, I had to look twice. We were all arrested on grounds of public violence. A few days later everyone was out again.”

Theo walked through the city with a group.

“More bank windows were still getting broken in different places. And barricades were set up later in a few spots in the city. But from then on the riot was out of our hands. Riot cops and arrest squads were tearing all over the place. Then I went inside somewhere for breakfast too.”

What had announced itself as a final battle turned out to be a catastrophic riot in the series of one-time events Nijmegen is rich with. Someone simply turned up at a chosen place, sought an arbitrary context for the purpose of attracting a crowd and then creating high-speed energy, and after it's over only surprise and legends were left behind. The following day a fire was set at the national police station. The total damage amounted to fl 4 million. Then things in Nijmegen quieted down again. A few days after the outburst no trace of a Nijmegen squatters' movement was to be seen. The riot seemed destined to stay completely without consequence. After appearing out of a vacuum inside of four months, it disappeared again in no time flat. It was not an expression of an upcoming or dying movement, but a pure materialization, sheer entertainment, escapism in its most elementary form. They had gotten away from it all one more time. The visit to the bank next door summed up the riot as a media event. A paper:

“Furniture demolished and hurled outside onto a pyre. Wrecked 'beepers' and smashed monitors. Splotched walls and uprooted flower boxes. But especially, shattered windows. You can see the tracks where the squatter-vandals steamrollered through the bank building on their spree of destruction. Confidential mail is found on the Koningsplein and the Ziekerstraat.”

A squatters' statement followed: the squat De Tien Zilverlingen had been evicted almost two years ago in Wageningen, and the squatters had suffered the necessary damage.

“We limited ourselves then to 2-1/2 instead of 300,000 guilders. Much too little. We promised the bank we'd repeat that damage someday. And nothing ever came of that until yesterday. Now we've collected our huge debt in one go. De Tien Zilverlingen, with all the nasty games surrounding it, has now been revenged at last.”

The symbol of the event was a TV news picture of a fish gasping for air on the floor of the bank. A media review stated:

“The cameras did their job and zoomed in flawlessly on the enchanting symbol of a dead fish from out of the smashed aquarium, inspiring the riot reporters once more to squeeze original images out of their word processors, and clarifying everything for the average newspaper reader: the riot was the work of the frustrated unemployed, violent good-for-nothings, spoiled children. Supported by like-minded hooligans from all over the country, naturally.”

In the course of 1984 the Amsterdam city council figured out that the city's image was so devastated that its economic disadvantages had become greater than its touristic advantages. Amsterdam, which had profiled itself in the early eighties as a place where you could behold the latest social contrasts with your own eyes on the streets, suddenly turned out to inspire physical disgust. The garbage along the streets, the dog doo on the sidewalks, the torn-up roads, the purse-snatching and car radio theft, the tens of thousands of unemployed, the parking problem, the heroin needles in the doorways, the sluggish bureaucracy, the grouchy Amsterdammers, the run-down houses, the epidemic graffiti, the blind violence of the rioters and other "persistent drawbacks" lost their folkloristic aspects and made living in the capital unbearable.

The "largest ad agency in the world" was hired to design a promotional campaign which would give Amsterdammers back their self-respect and would create the idea in the outside world that this lively city had everything to offer. The concept was summed up in the slogan, "Amsterdam has it", and the "it" was carefully not filled in even approximately. On the posters and in the newspaper ads a space was deliberately left white "to encourage reactions from the citizen; graffiti is fine." They were after positive contributions to Amsterdam, the Concept. The chief of garbage collectors summarized it like this: "By means of catchy slogans we're trying to get Amsterdammers to do their bit towards the big city clean-up." The city anticipated that it would take a five-year campaign before the population would again conform to and defend "social standards" on its own. The authorities also tried to organize spectacular shows with the proportions of a big riot to jack up the (inter)national style of the place. It started with "Amsterdam fashion city" and the regatta "Sail", but the people at City Hall soon got bigger pretensions. They applied for candidacy for the 1992 Olympic Games.

Squatters had experimented before with arguments against so-called cityvorming, literally "suburbanization", but really a word for the strategy of a mafiose coalition of city councillors and big capital to rebuild the inner city into one big hotel chain cum amusement center, with casinos, sex industries, tourist shops and canal bikes. Around the umpteenth imminent eviction at Singel 114 an "attack with high sensational value" was committed on "the tourist product Amsterdam."

"At 2:23 p.m the tour boat would be at the place we intended to deal with it. Shortly before that time everyone was ready with paint, smoke bombs, camouflage nets and tires, trying not to be too conspicuous, which didn't really come off in light of the heavy character of the action. A cable fixed over the canal ahead of time was pulled tight, so that the boat couldn't reverse, and scaffolding pipes were fastened vertically to the bridge so that sailing forward was also impossible. The moment that the tour boat stopped was the signal for the attack: the paint splashed all around and, more quickly than expected, great panic ensued among the captain and passengers. A few tourists crawled under the benches. An American woman screamed, 'So this is nice Amsterdam.' Tourist-hunting season got off to a turbulent start."

The tour boat action's effect was astonishing. A picture of the boat amid clouds of smoke made the world press. The residents of Singel 114 gave "international interviews" day in day out about the new phenomenon of anti-tourism. The "paint and smoke treatment" to the city's image proved to hit the mark infinitely harder than attacking objects belonging to the city or the speculators. A few more steps were undertaken along the same lines, yet despite all surprise people balked at consistently carrying this strategy through. On the one hand because they had nothing against tourists per se; they were regularly "tourist in their own city" (and elsewhere) themselves, and tourists and tourism were so difficult to separate. On the other hand, these mediumistic actions took place on such an abstract level that the direct connection with one's own place and experience was already getting too tenous.

The good old-fashioned method of throwing stuff was extremely attractive, but difficult to defend afterward. However concrete, the action remained too theoretical to bring up with people inside and outside the scenes. This sort of actions could have nothing whatsoever to do with a movement which is enlarged by sucking in outsiders. Tourist actions were aimed at keeping aliens away. The paradox of a movement which grows because people are deterred is unresolvable. This was a consequence of the classical dilemma that actions are always carried out according to the philosophy of preceding actions. After the death of movement, they were not yet up to assessing this new situation on its own value.

Thus it was up to a small group from outside the earlier movement to further work out the concept of an action which aims to prevent an event. The negative action is based on a great reverence for the existent. It seeks its beginning not in criticizing failing structures and past mistakes, but in rejecting a future which is being forcibly imposed upon it. This made it possible to respect the leftover unclassifiable "vague types" for their acquired attitude to living, but also to consider the bomb-brewers, dreaming of the big bang, as a lasting enrichment of the democratic landscape. It was not necessary that the meeting between the participants be brought about with great violence. They didn't have to arrange themselves under one political heading; being anti was sufficient. You only had to bring your own identity along as a sign of what you stood for. The very fact that the squat movement had gone under made the aura of failure around "the squatters" so strong that the image of success could be paired with it. The best weapon against the pep talk that things are going great for you is to indulge in shameless exhibitionism of your own fuckups. This is the concept of image pollution. The point of this is not to discredit the manager culture, but to propagate the beauty of non-esthetics. Around the Olympic candidacy, from outside the movement, a group suddenly discovered the power of failure.

Once the city had boarded the Olympic train, they immediately signed on some "communications specialists" to work on the population as well as the members of the International Olympics Committee (IOC). Under the motto "Together we can do it", enthusiasm had to be cultivated for a mega-project which no one had been consulted about or had had the chance to air an opinion on. A mandate was sought in order to sanction the bribery of IOC members. In times of budget cuts in every area, the population needed to be artificially primed for this grandiose frittering away of community funds. The promotion campaign needed to be an enlarged version of "Amsterdam has it", with the same sanitary objectives. While the slogan "Amsterdam has the Olympic fire" polished the image of the capital on the Dutch-language posters, the foreign posters trumpeted the vague phrase: "Holland wants the world to win". 3.5 million enclosures in bank mail, 3 million door-to-door circulars, 120,000 posters and brochure racks of various sizes, 1500 flags with the action symbol and 120,000 pound bags of Olympic candies worth fl 510,000 were implemented as a tactic. Olympic sports bags, centerpiece flags, paper and plastic shopping bags, toy buses with the Olympic logo, 20,000 glasses, buttons, matches, stickers and pins and "36 different textile products with an Olympic aura" were available too. The single with accompanying video, "Amsterdam wants the world to win", was performed by the Hilversum Pedagogical Music Academy. The total costs were reputed to amount to 20 million guilders.

Meanwhile the 88 IOC members were buttered up with the methods usual in such circles, varying from free trips to the host country and a videotape with accompanying VCR to gala dinners, buffets and other trips to gastronomic Valhalla. Persistent rumors also surfaced of gifts of jewelry inlaid with South African diamonds. The numerous preliminary rounds in the promotional battle among the twelve candidates for '92 offered plenty of opportunities not only for corruption, but also for goal-specific actions.

Once the candidacy was presented during the Los Angeles Games in July 1984, Amsterdam policymakers turned out to already have flung themselves into the devastating urban planning which was supposed to accommodate games, athletes and press. The first anti-group immediately appeared out of the districts which stood to suffer the most under stadiums, parking facilities, highways, temporary accommodations and security measures. The group rose up out of community work to become the official "No Olympic Games Committee". It organized a residents' protest and drew up an "anti-Olympics charter" which was sent to every national Olympic committee in the world. "A number of people are also involved in a somewhat more radical action group, which presents itself under the name 'No Bread, No Games'", it was reported elsewhere. This second group would take on all the unaccounted-for work.

Until October 17, 1986, the day of the IOC's deciding vote, a minimal group of activists would succeed in achieving the maximal media effect for at least two years. The fact that the administrators had been using the candidacy for image improvement, which by definition belongs in the media sphere, from the beginning, made it possible to slay them with mere media presence. If the city had put all its money on, for example, the stimulation of sports in Holland, such an exclusive media strategy would have been impossible. Besides, the Olympic Games had long been the equation of money + media, so interest in the sporting element only appeared in the form of prickings of conscience in certain managers with an athletic past.

So all attention could be focused on polluting the image. It is true that resistance to the Amsterdam Games '92 began in the neighborhoods affected, but at its climax it reached such a meta level that only media scholars were really aware of where the next effect could be realized. The success of "Nolympics", the collective name for all the anti-initiatives, lay in its troublesome presence on every occasion for which a link with Amsterdam and the Games was even suspected. Always more people hanging around with their banners at the hotels and conference centers where the Amsterdam triumph was supposed to take shape bit by bit - that spoiled the air of success for many an official. Their harness of businesslike optimism was gradually damaged by a ruined atmosphere that came to hang over Amsterdam's candidacy. One who fights his opponent in the media ring can only K.O. by availing himself of a total media package. This is expressed in the word "media" alone; they plied the local press with local arguments, wrote in heavier language in their own papers, used objections of national importance on radio and had mail on diverse letterheads delivered constantly to IOC members all over the world. One of the letters came from an attorneys' collective who referred to the violation of human rights in Amsterdam in connection with the death of Hans Kok. Naturally they did not neglect to show up at the compulsory hearing or on the letters pages in the daily papers.

Unscrupulously they copied all the methods and techniques of the enemy foundation: the organizers' personal gift to the IOCers is followed by a bag of marijuana, received in the mail, with a letter signed by mayor Ed van Thijn:

"After the South African diamonds, we're sending you something with which you can clear your mind. The Dutch Olympics Committee would like to acquaint you with one of the products of Amsterdam. We hope in this manner to exert a positive influence on your decision. Our national product can be obtained in 500 legal sales outlets. Please don't be bothered by increasing opposition in Amsterdam."

When it was made known through the slip of a councilperson's tongue that every IOC member had received a free video recorder, the committee requested to institute a criminal investigation against van Thijn for attempted bribery. At the same time the committee put out its own well-made video film. An Olympic torch-bearer walked through Amsterdam, running up against local problems. After clambering over the traffic jams, he fell into some roadworks, landed in the middle of a squatters' riot, gave a light to a balaclava with a bomb, stumbled into the red light district and was robbed by a hash smoker, after slipping in the dog shit.

The official "bidbook" in which the city of Amsterdam presented its plans was countered even before publication with a "people's bidbook" in which the "Amsterdam Never" argument was supported. A press packet with the complete collection of clippings on the anti-actions was offered to the IOCers with English subtitles. It shows, among other things, that the municipality granted subsidies to the organizing foundation, but not to the anti Games committee, which had put in a request to annoy the regents. A small riot even broke out, generating much press interest, over the copyright on the five Olympic rings, which were used by Nolympics left, right and center. The committee so emptied the symbols of meaning that, even if they were meant to be cheerful and fresh, they were no longer capable of arousing any enthusiasm.

An example: the city parks department planned to contribute to the Olympic mood by planting a flowerbed along an access road to Amsterdam in the shape of five rings, the Amsterdam coat of arms and "1992". Harry, on none of the committees, reports, "We were driving into the city one night in a van when we suddenly saw the flowerbed. We immediately pulled over and tore it apart." The chance passersby then sent a report to the inside press with the announcement, "Once again tourism and other political-economic objects will be targeted." The action sparked inspiration in others. A week later the "propagandistic flowerbed" was restored with violets, and that night the "autonomous" activists returned, this time with shovels and a photographer, to thoroughly redo the work. The picture of the destruction shows a balaclava'd gardener in heated action, clods flying. A letter was printed next to the photo in the dailies:

"This is the beginning of a long struggle, a seven-year war if necessary if it's up to us. The initiators of the money-guzzling promotional campaign will become targets in the creation of an unsafe climate in Amsterdam."

No Bread No Games subsequently prepared a postcard on which two antis were spreading out a Nolympics flag in the ruined bed. A large print run of these was provided with the addresses of the IOC members and could be sent with a personal anti-arguments. The postage stamp was also pre-printed. After all this messing about, the flowerbed had to be put under the care of Beuker security.

However anonymous and bizarre the Nolympics actions were, the No Committee always had a respectable face handy for press and other authorities to get furious at. This was one Saar Boerlage, an amiable middle-aged lady who was well-known in political circles as a passionate advocate and an expert university instructor. She was one of the founders of the "No Olympic Games Committee" and remained its spokeswoman from beginning to end through unfamiliarity with the action traditions. It was a shocking fact that a framework inside which heavy actions were done had a frontwoman with a surname and face that before long all of Holland knew. She could thereby be the dumpster into which every journalist, manager and administrator could pour out their frustration and fascination. She embodied the self-abuse of a nation. Because who would take on the thankless task of consistently pushing the bumblings of Holland Inc. in the faces of the leaders of the "We are the champions" feeling and refuse to be flustered by all the bad press, as over the course of the action it becomes more and more focused on herself? In media actions a central hostess is essential. And what could be more exquisite than a matronly type, who can bullshit any spluttering journalist into a corner?

The actions were concentrated on businesspeople's two Achilles' heels: humor and confusion. The imagebuilders knew they were gambling, and they felt slightly ridiculous to begin with when required by business life to beg for money. In such a situation every joke hits like a sledgehammer. Moreover, one splotch on a three-piece suit is more effective than 100 good arguments. Thus, the International Sports Federation was invited to hold its conference in Amsterdam, so it might be favorably impressed by the sporty city. The invitees were on the way to a dinner with mayor van Thijn in the Maritime Museum and had walked from their hotel to a waiting tour boat. There, from a bridge, 100 demonstrators pelted them with paint, eggs and rotten tomatoes. The police charged down the canal, first to drive away the throwers and then to keep the livid sports guys in check. The president of the federation:

"If the vast majority of the Dutch people stands behind the Games, then we have obviously met the small minority tonight."

Other sports events too got a visit. The night before the first 67th International Open Golf Championship in Noordwijk three holes were completely dug up. The participants of the world baseball championships had the honor of walking through a "Nolympics triumphal arch" on the way to their reception in the Historic Museum and picking up a leaflet with the counterarguments. And the night before the World Women's Hockey Championship in the super-guarded Wagener Stadium in Amstelveen, the Astroturf was decorated with the Nolympic rings. Right before it was finished three of the five artists were picked up. The Nolympics argument that Holland could not sufficiently guard its sports events against attacks was hereby confirmed.

A spokesperson for the No Olympic Games Committee said he found the action "spectacular" and "playful". "They're just asking for it. They never wanted to take their opponents seriously. Now van Thijn is trying to squelch the opposition by playing so-called hardball. Naturally it's rotten for the people who are locked up, but what's happening now is showing the true face of the Olympic Games." After two days in a police cell, Piet, one of the arrestees, immediately filed two complaints. One for "unlawful imprisonment" (they were not allowed to detain him longer than six hours for vandalism) and one for "mistreatment by seven police officers". He wanted fl 50,000 damages.

Along with all this digging and scribbling the official No Committee persisted in being annoyingly present at IOC meetings. At the 90th session in East Berlin, with Erich Honnecker as speaker of honor, the opponents showed up again. Saar Boerlage, the only Dutch person who had managed to get across the border, handed out leaflets and spoke with the promotion teams from Paris and Brisbane, "who were very interested in my arguments." Her posters were illustrated with the Olympic Games logo, except one of the five rings was replaced by a bomb, which was supposed to point out the danger of attacks during the Amsterdam Games. When she called an international press conference by the fountain under the Fernsehturm, she was arrested by the Kriminal Polizei and after six hours of interrogation expelled from the country. A letter-to-the-editor writer took this up: "When the DDR made things impossible for Saar, van Thijn should have quit his activities. Now he has continued in his outlandish activities, which are doomed to fail anyway, under the protection of a totalitarian state." Another letter writer responded under the heading "Letdown in Berlin is Godsend for Amsterdam": "Many Amsterdammers will have registered the clumsy presentation in East Berlin with approval."

The group visited Lausanne, where the IOC had its seat, several times. In December 1985 all the candidate cities gathered in the Palace Hotel for a first round. "Two demonstrators forced their way into the leading hotel, wrenched themselves out of the desperate grip of the Olympic press representative and before the eyes of the shocked company unfurled their banner 'Nolympics in Amsterdam'. At a signal from the IOC president the hotel staff interfered and the demonstrators were ejected into the street. The calamity, however, had already occurred and in the next few hours the news of the Amsterdam demonstration raced around the world." The group also took advantage of the opportunity to take photographs which would later turn up everywhere. Always with that same one, neat banner held up by two people: in front of the Palais de Beaulieu, next to a burly statue, before Lausanne-Palace. The last photo summed up the strategy: it showed a crouching photographer snapping three officials smiling at the camera, while at the back to the right, before the columns of the hotel entrance, the duo with banner stole the show.

Gunnar Ericsson visited Amsterdam as a "senior IOC inspector" and was treated early in the morning to the banner and a bit of music by 30 people. "We did that to wake up the three IOC inspectors." Ericsson spoke with Saar and finds it "an amusing breakfast". At the end of February 1986 Nolympics were back in Lausanne, where Amsterdam was offering its bidbook.

"Two demonstrators, all told, chilled to the bone, stood by the IOC headquarters, the Chateau de Vidy, waiting for the delegation from the capital. The two were even allowed inside to present the IOC chairman with 'the people's bidbook'."

The more the deadline approached and the banner frequency increased, the more irritated was the organizers' reaction. In every interview they had to comment on the Nolympics actions. Ed van Thijn:

"Naturally we're easy as hell to blackmail. Every Amsterdam citizen we lock horns with can threaten that he's going to approach the IOC."

Embroidering on the reasoning, "Spain has its Basques; we've all got something," van Thijn kept presenting his opponents as proof of "the power of Dutch democracy". The face of the daft right wing in Holland, the fat regent Vonhoff, sat on the presidium of the advocates. He too briefly tried to hold himself back: "Holland without activist groups? That's like Holland without tulips, wooden shoes and windmills."

But while the ringleaders acted as though nothing was wrong, at the lower levels of the organization the promotors were starting to stress out and develop an allergy to the press. In Seoul, which lay outside the range of Nolympics, a last presentation was in the works. Amsterdam's act was a flop; they had forgotten to bring the scale models of the Olympic city and tried to entertain the crowd with an "amazing magic show by world champion Ger Koppers." For this Van Thijn was described as "the one who has to clean up the mess, trying to poke up the feeble Olympic fire a little bit." The critical press was revolted just by the mountains of exclusive comestibles.

"The kind of things on those tables would eventually have to come out the nostrils of even the most spoilt gourmand."

Back in Amsterdam they decided to keep completely silent about the anti-Olympic actions, and the papers obediently followed suit. Nolympics reported:

"When we wake up the whole Amstel hotel early in the morning, because IOC member Jao Havelange is staying there, the police are there, almost laughing. Whatever you do, keep things calm, is the policy these days. Every riot is to the advantage of the Nolympics movement, they figure. If the Olympic tram is pelted with paint bombs, there is no publicity about it. That's a lot different from their hysterical reaction when the tour boat was the target."

But then something happened that could not be kept quiet. On the night of August 21st, 1986, two bombs exploded, destroying the front door of the Olympic Games Foundation building and the only satellite dish antenna for telephone traffic in Amsterdam. The attacks were claimed by the "Out of the Blue Revolutionary Cells Command". At this "important link in the propaganda for the Olympic Games" a bomb was placed in the heart of the dish antenna, but the most damage was caused by a chemical liquid which was sprayed in the cable channel and destroyed the internal wiring. Signs were found at both locations reading, "Warning - explosives - do not approach". In the press statement, which was found in a garbage can at the squatted complex De Binnenpret, it says, "With these attacks we mean to inflict direct damage on the polished-up image of the city of Amsterdam." A poster was attached on which Ed van Thijn, with a fanatical expression, is personally pressing the button on the explosive box with which the dish was blown up, with the caption, "Olympic fire in Amsterdam". Hordes of journalists promptly phoned up Saar Boerlage to note down her denial of involvement. To their amazement, a "hurrah mood" prevailed on the No Committee. Saar in the media: "We would never have thought of something like this ourselves, but we're happy with the way it went. This incident is making the world press and that's unfavorable for Amsterdam. We'd be crazy to commit attacks; if a court found out we were behind it, we'd be sentenced to pay for the damage. This is one more blow for the organizers. They're trying in a boorish way to lure the Games to Amsterdam and give opponents no chance to propagate their objections. The authorities are encouraging violence that way." This reaction proved the superiority of the media strategy. The multiplier effect worked: others' planting bombs did not act as a restraint, but strengthened the strategy of dragging down the own image. So the committee could wonder astonished why "we didn't think of it ourselves" and they could use the attacks as an extra argument against the Games. This watertight reasoning had to be adopted by whiny journalists. The new argument was now: "More attacks expected if Games come to Amsterdam". Saar Boerlage remarked, "Those boys and girls were not after anyone else's life or property. Of course, the authorities will have to pass judgment on this. But not in terms of serious crime, as van Thijn has done."

Two weeks later there was a last incident before the caravans left for Lausanne to witness the IOC vote. The annual floral procession, which travels from the Dutch bulb-growing area through Amsterdam, was dominated by the Olympics. For this reason the police had mobilized extra manpower, such as arrest squads. As the floats moved past the Binnenpret, activists with sandwich boards attempted to walk along with the procession. The texts read, "Mexico 1968: hundreds dead", "München 1972: hostages burned", "Montreal 1976: the people are still paying", "Amsterdam 1992: out of the blue?" The police chased the demonstrators out of the parade, and they got on their bikes and headed for the Dam under police escort to go hand out leaflets.

After the bombings things were as tense as they had ever been. The plan was to bring the tension to a climax in Lausanne. First Saar and her committee would arrive with the famous banners. A secret weapon was concealed for later in the week: the savage hordes who would come to confirm Amsterdam's bad image. "From Amsterdam a bus trip is being organized that no tour operator can touch. The trip will take four days and cost about 90 guilders. Accommodations will be available." "Because the No Committee had needed no membership file or broad base for their work in the media, certain circles were now being warmed up for a nice outing. It appealed to the target group and they understood what was desired of them. Two punk bands went along to provide a musical touch. The last-minute tickets for this "wonderfully planned vacation" were distributed at trusted addresses.

The special Olympic train of officials had already left. A private enterprise by the supporters, sponsored by the firm Sorbo (kitchenware manufacturers), also presented itself, setting out for Switzerland in vans. In Lausanne the activists' coach (decked out with slogans like "No Way Eddie!") and the Sorbo vans came across each other the first night. Flip: "Those vans drove very close alongside us and we kicked some dents into them."

The group of action tourists was received in the Martin Luther King center, "the only wreck in Lausanne". It sat beside a river which emptied into the lake of Geneva. Large tents were set up on the grass next to the building. The presence of "van Thijn's household garbage" in the place where he needed it least was enough to cause total culture shock among the assembled world press, the Swiss police and the officials. "Saar Boerlage's greasy hangers-on" not only wore their leather jackets, army boots and Nolympics t-shirts, but left behind mountains of refuse wherever they went. They were constantly yelling, jumping, tugging at fences and hitting between the railings with bars so that a godawful racket rang out. They danced in the planters. They carried around slogans that even by their own standards went over the limit: "Amsterdam supports apartheid", "No games No bombs", "Munich '72 = Amsterdam '92" and "Munich can be repeated – Amsterdam fights!". Two opponents from Barcelona also appeared in Lausanne at one point with their own banner, were filmed by Spanish TV and to their surprise were allowed to join up with the troop from Amsterdam.

In the clean, sterile environment of Lausanne it seemed as if the barbarians had invaded civilization. The action style was based on the spassguerilla (or “fun guerilla”) logic based on knowing what the adversary hates most to hear or see about itself, and going that one better. But at the same time something else happened: it suddenly sank in to the Amsterdam squat experience how extremely clean and respectable the world is. Amid the giggles that set in, the insight flashed up of how wonderful their own filth was. Up until then the unclassifiables had had no interest in others' rejection of their appearance. Now they understood that tidy people just couldn't take so much gunge.

Flip:

"The noise demos in front of the gate always go according to the same pattern: jumping out of the bus, making a racket for an hour with whistles, rattles and horns, handing out pamphlets, waving banners and then back on the bus, back to our base."

The travel organization followed a Spartan regime in order not to miss a single opportunity to give act de presence. The group was already awake at 6:00 to be able to ruin breakfast in the Calgary Palace Hotel around 7:30. The outings were totally aimed at the world press, who were walking around frustrated too since the IOC members were completely unavailable. They only flashed by in buses and plush cars. The police remained friendly, so as not to bring Lausanne a bad name under the watching eye of the reporters.

The night before the vote they set off again, this time to the hotel where the gentlemen were sleeping. Flip:

"An enthusiastic horde jumps out of the buses again, runs down the street where to heighten the action's effectiveness the bus of IOC members is just driving up. To get into the hotel they have to pass the roaring crowd."

This was the only time that the dignified gentlemen made bodily contact with the rabble.

"This was the demo that did it. A few hysterical activists started to accost the Mercedeses. Some idiot with his face bright red with agitation wouldn't stop crying 'fuck you capitalist bastard' and jabbing his middle finger in the IOCers' faces, picking fights in passing with other activists who didn't like it. The fun idea came up to slap stickers onto the IOC members' backs. A fossil of an IOCer almost had heart failure and had to be propped up by his chauffeur. People seemed more and more capable of becoming wild with rage just at the sight of an IOCer."

Joop:

"The story that we threw beer bottles is nonsense. Someone accidentally dropped a bag with a few bottles in it. That's all. At most somebody hit a bus."

Flip:

"The prince of Monaco got a gob of phlegm in his face, that was funny. This action became completely successful when the riot police was sent after us. They came running over the whole street, they made a better-organized impression than our own riot police. So, we broke up quickly, beat a chaotic retreat in the flush of victory. Now the press was happy too."

Betsy:

"We were stopped again by the cops because there was so much junk in the street; I believe people started to pick it up."

Joop:

"It was a typical Amsterdam demonstration at the hotel in Lausanne. But for the IOC members it would have been the hot topic of the evening at dinner."

That night the company amused itself at a benefit concert held in a youth cultural center.

On D-day, after the first demonstration at 8:00, a "lawn meeting" was held before the Palais de Beaulieu, where the decision would be made. The question was what to do when the result was made known. Before they knew it, they had landed in a tactical debate. A small group around Piet and Hein, "who had otherwise kept pretty aloof from the big group", thought that this was a nice opportunity to bring down van Thijn. Sandra:

"They wanted to play leader. Everyone thought the proposals they made were too heavy considering the Swiss riot police's action the night before. The police had come at us like it was Brazil, with vans that looked like they were from an exterminators' team. Their clean approach and their marching made it unclear what they planned to do. Did they just want to chase us away or really get us?"

Piet and Hein's faction still hadn't figured out that they had landed in a media action and the strategy of being "simply unclassifiable" was heading for a resounding success.

Things came to a head around the question where and how many smoke bombs should be set off. The compromise was an "Olympic smoke torch" which was carried by the "living work of art" Fabiola. The "dying torch with the Amsterdam Olympic fire" was lit at the entry gates, at exactly the moment that the assembled IOC was being photographed on the steps. The smoke floated beautifully through the group portrait.

Shortly after it was announced that Barcelona had won, and that Amsterdam had already lost in the first round with the lowest number of votes of all the cities (5 of 130). At this the group boarded the buses, cheering, to go back home.

"The best part might have been the hilarious feeling about how all those inflated Dutch delegates were degraded to almost nothing. 'Five votes!' everyone was yelling all day. For the elite the world was briefly reversed. The people from Nolympics became world news. In contrast to the official delegation, who were reduced to extras and got very little international press."

The strategy of constant presence was now taken to the extreme. The Nolympics buses were back in Amsterdam quickly enough to arrive at the same time as the disappointed returning delegates. They were to give a last press conference in the World Trade Center. A segment of the Nolympics traveling association, it is true, felt more like going straight home, but they were dropped off in front of the office complex unasked. Another banner was made: "No way, ha ha!" and "4 million guilders per vote". When the delegation arrived at the trade center on the Olympic train's final run, the regents had to walk from the station over the public road to the building's entrance. On the street they bumped into the same Nolympics group that had tormented them to exasperation in Lausanne. This was too much for most of the officials. Now it was their turn to physically approach the enemy. They pushed the activists aside and tried to fly into them, but the latter reacted nimbly and vocally. The fat Vonhoff got spit in his face. In a rage Vonhoff dragged the activist to the nearby police officers to have him arrested, but the activist was freed by his comrades. Once inside Vonhoff demanded to mayor van Thijn that the boy be arrested. When a new load of police arrived, they arrested him. He was released the same evening.

The excitement in the press over this incident had already reached unheard-of heights. In one fell swoop "Saar Boerlage and her hangers-on" got all the blame for the city's tremendous flop in front of the world. An activist asked afterward, "What's so awful about spit anyway? How is it so much more radical than a pie? Spit is so awful because it comes from the human body. And that's something the elite don't want to be. They aren't bodies, they are Order."

Amidst the mudslinging which continued for a few weeks, a newspaper published an interview with Saar and her No Olympic Games Committee. Saar: "Our last message to the members of the IOC is that we think Amsterdam is a lovely city. We have said that we want to keep it that way."

Question: "Mayor van Thijn said over the weekend that No Olympics was responsible for the loss of seven to twelve votes in Lausanne. What do you think of that?"

Answer: "Let's hope so. That would be a great honor for us."

A movement which has not been able to trace its own terminus will ultimately consider itself required to force it. Even if it has resolved to go on as long as possible, at some point it will try to call it a day. Closed groups will form inside the movement which see themselves as the only true heirs to the original events. They will take the task upon themselves of playing out against each other all the other fragments which see themselves as part of the movement, to distil the nucleus that the original impulse is rolled up in. They can achieve this by bringing on a maelstrom of internal purges and exclusions, which take on the character of a fatal chain of events. The snowball sucks all the energy towards itself and transports the movement to a violent vanishing point.

Not one “mover” is then capable any more of backing out of the events, which have the intensity of the early days, only now the outbursts are caused by attraction and repulsion between the bits of the movement itself. Everyone chooses a position in the internal field of tension, which moves into a more violent release than anyone had ever considered possible.

The effort of the final battle is a crystal to be saved, from which a new crowd might someday form. If this fails to happen, the movement is in fact removed from history. If the crystallization does succeed, then future movements will unavoidably have to do with this group, which tries to steer the events based on an impulse foreign to the new movement. For the crystal is no longer capable of changing shape, however much circumstances alter themselves. Those who have not been admitted into the crystal are able to go into a metamorphosis once more. One who survives the movement's self-destruction can begin again, but the radical naiveté is henceforth mixed with a heavy dose of unsociableness.

On Thursday, October 23, 1986, seven flats in the Okeghem and Hendrik Jacobstraat in Amsterdam, which had been moved into under supervision of the Schinkel district squat group one year before, were evicted.

Stephan, from the Schinkel:

“The afternoon of October 22nd, someone comes walking into our coffeeshop in the Binnenpret with a short note from Inspector Vos from the van Leyenberghlaan police station, saying he was going to be evicted. Slowly but surely more people came in with notes like it and it became clear that this was a coordinated action.”

It was highly unusual to let people know about their eviction a day in advance. That it was happening now was immediately connected in the Binnenpret with recent actions against Amsterdam's candidacy for the 1992 Olympic Games.

A broad group of 50 “antis” travelled behind the Dutch Olympic Committee by van to Lausanne, where the final decision on which city would get the games was to drop. For three days, before the eyes of the massive press turnout, the group managed to “trash Holland's good name in the world” with slogans like “Amsterdam supports apartheid” and the physical (approach) of IOC officials; it never came to violence. Friday October 17 had been the vote and Barcelona had won the race. When the Dutch delegation headed disappointedly back to Amsterdam the next day to give a final press conference in the World Trade Center, the vanload of “bums, drug addicts and anarchists” (van Agt) which had driven back in the meantime was waiting to roar “No way, ha ha ha!” at the company. A fat trustee's face is spat on. This was “the drop that made the bucket run over”; “frenzy” broke out among police and administrators. A daily paper noted, “the official spokesperson for the Amsterdam police: 'We're sick of always being confronted with members of the squatter's movement, raising hell. There's always trouble with the same individuals. It's high time tough measures are taken.”

It was known to the police that some of the No-Olympians lived in the Okeghem neighborhood. The Housing Association, which owned the squatted flats there, had to admit later that it had been pressed by the police to have the buildings vacated as soon as possible, while the Association hadn't considered this necessary. For the squatters it was clear from the outset that this was a revenge exercise “against people who had been in Lausanne and had fun with van Swine's [Amsterdam mayor van Thijn's] letdown.” If the police wanted a riot so badly they'd get one; all night the Schinkelites prepared to hold back the eviction, while the residents, those who were around, moved their stuff to empty attics nearby.

Stephan:

“People went around to the squat bars that night to warn others. There had already been action against the Housing Association's strategy of sticking guards in the houses or putting them in a hut on the street in front of the buildings. Once one of those huts was set on fire in a playful way. So the people in the city more or less knew what was going on. It was also said that at the eviction the idea wasn't a symbolic action, but resistance. So the intention was that you were unidentifiable, had your helmet on, whatever.”

The next morning the police showed up for the announced confrontation. Stephan:

“When pigs tried to get through the door at #20 with axes, tiles were thrown off the roof.” Then the riot police showed up and two mollies fell. The seven flats were vacated, but the police found only one squatter there. She tried to short-circuit the SLYPTOL the police were sawing the door open with by pouring “a couple of cartons of milk” over it and was subsequently arrested. It took some time before the police located the activists. In the street there was a tussle with the people who had answered the alarm. In the unevictable residence Okeghemstraat 14 #2 the squatters were discovered. With a blank search warrant the police GING ERTOE OVER to storm the door, but it was finally opened by the people inside, “after it was agreed we would name no names and give no statements.”

All told, 20 people were arrested and transported to van Leyenberghlaan station. Stephan: “Six of them were released by Thursday, a few Yugoslavians who were visiting, Krijn and Robert who were from other neighborhoods, and someone they forgot to put into detention. On Friday the rest, except for five, were let go.” The demonstration which was to memorialize Hans Kok in front of Headquarters had been supposed to march to the Okeghemstraat to re-squat the houses. But the plan was foiled when the riot police disrupted the ceremony.

Stephan:

“The Monday after that, the five remaining arrestees were brought before the examining judge. When the attorney came outside, we found out all five of them had gotten extended detention. And that was based to a very large degree on a statement by one of their fellow arrestees, at the top of which was a CID number, Criminal Intelligence Service #337. The person had pointed out people in photographs who had supposedly thrown mollies and tiles from the roof, while he stayed sitting in the flat at #14. When the news was known a meeting was called right away in the coffeeshop. It was initially supposed to be a neighborhood meeting with the ex-arrestees, but more people were invited, or just came. What should we do? Who is the person who gave a statement under a CID number? In the 'Handbook against the Cops' we had found that if you have a CID number, you're a completely checked-out informant. The attorney came too and gave a short speech and confirmed that the person with the CID number had to have been an informant for a while. Just a week later we found out someone could be assigned one of those numbers ad hoc. We had the statement in our possession, and could pretty much find out in detail who had been in that room at #14. So soon we knew Krijn or Robert must have given that statement, but you have to substantiate something like that. Some people wanted to go break their windows right away, but we decided to discuss it first. The first discussion with both took hours. They had to recount the events, how they got the alarm, why they went, if they answered alarms a lot, why they hadn't gone other times but did now, what they'd seen, what they'd done at the police station, what they'd stated, etc. And Krijn especially came forth during this as an unstable individual; he didn't talk for long either, he was really upset. Robert said quite a lot, but a lot of things didn't add up, contradictions.

After those discussions the suspicion only increased with respect to both. It was clear that one was the CID number, but what the other's role was stayed shadowy; he hadn't per se had to give a statement. Robert was released the first day by chance, and not because of a technical mistake. That made him a bit dubious in our eyes, plus he was unknown; that played a part too. That night we found out that it was Krijn who had given a statement under a CID number. He told a housemate and the person contacted the Schinkel. So, we met again, but we were divided about what to do with him. Some people thought he should be taken out of his house right away - his stuff in the canal, chase him out of the city, or break his windows. The next day Robert was invited to the Binnenpret and questioned twice, the first time by a group that was recognizable and the second time by a group of people with balaclavas on, in the vain hope that he would be scared into explaining the contradictions in his story. He didn't, so it had little result. That night someone proposed making a poster of the traitors. Also, a big argument started about what methods could be appropriated against someone who a lot of people considered an unstable individual, who got caught in a situation like that almost against his will. That was also the strange thing about that guy Robert, that he had dragged Krijn along to the eviction, knowing something could happen. Everyone was very clearly told right before the eviction what was going to happen, and people who couldn't get involved, or who were nervous about it, had the option to leave the building, and later he always vehemently denied that.”

Johan lived in the old city, and saw it from another angle:

“I knew Robert as a squatter from the neighborhood, he lived with his girlfriend in a squat nearby. Krijn had lived there too and was around there a lot. I only knew him by sight. He said he'd heard in the Binnenpret the night before that all kinds of things in the Schinkel would be vacated the next day. They decided to go to bed early and be there the next day. They didn't know several codes that are fairly well known in squatters' circles, the position to take at that kind of eviction, what you can do and what not, whether to wear a helmet, about getting picked up, raids, police violence, basically how you work together in that kind of dire situation. I'd never seen them at an eviction before.

We hadn't heard anything ourselves about the situation, only that some people had gotten picked up, but it was all pretty far away. Two days later I ran into Robert and he started to tell me everything that had happened the morning of the eviction. Krijn had locked himself in the
toilet, it was all too scary for him. Robert had stood at the window and watched it all. At the station Krijn blabbed pretty quick about what he'd heard from the people who came back from the roof. The police put more words in your mouth than you really know, they presume things that eventually you say yes to. If you're scared and blabbing then you go along with a story that's constructed for you. Krijn saw Polaroids of the people who were picked up and pointed people out. He got assigned an informant number because of his story, and in that case the informant is actually supposed to be made anonymous, but only if they ask to be. Krijn didn't do that, he didn't think about repercussions at all. Robert signed a short statement that he hadn't seen anything, they both gave their names and were let go right away. The anonymous statement with the CID number may have gotten into the attorneys' file by accident, a substantial mistake by the investigation department, and people in the Schinkel got hold of it. That got them thinking, what could this mean? The conclusion they immediately drew was that Krijn was an infiltrator sent by the police to be at the eviction. The Schinkel people found the people who were released soon after their arrest right away. Robert was frisked, in any case his pockets were emptied, his house keys were copied and his house searched, pages from his appointment book were copied and the telephone index taken out. Those people never approached anyone from our neighborhood, they just went to do things themselves straight away. They thought Robert was Krijn's runner.

Around our neighborhood people were of the opinion that someone with no experience should be able to make mistakes. They considered interrogating someone in balaclavas a secret service method. People from an extra-parliamentary movement don't treat each other like that.”

The squatters' paper de Grachtenkrant received two pieces from Krijn and Robert and placed them in their entirety, like all incoming copy. The Schinkel squatters were also asked for their report of their investigation activities, but no response came. Krijn wrote about his interrogation,

“I gave a disgustingly incriminating statement. You should only be sitting there, scared, confused, and extremely unstable. Afterwards, yes, you feel like a huge asshole. I flipped in that cell. For two days I sat there and read a pink slip of paper. Panic, fear, how can this be, I didn't do anything. What I'm doing to other people is terrible. I'm so disgusted with myself. I'm so terribly sorry.”

In his testimony, which quickly went public, he stated to the police:

“On photo #33 I recognize a boy who was lugging around a crate of so-called swing-stoppered bottles. I clearly saw that there were cloths or cotton stuffed into the necks of these bottles. When he came back I also heard this boy say, 'I aimed a fire bomb at a cop car and I hit the bullseye. It caught on fire.'“

Robert defended himself in his article:

“After twelve hours of being locked up I'm sick of it. I give my name and a vague statement. I'm set free immediately but I'm not too happy. After two reconstructions from me the Schinkel district concludes in a way unclear to me that I might possibly be an informant or infiltrator. I am confronted with having to prove myself innocent. I have now described this case from one of my viewpoints. There are many other ways of describing this.”

Stephan from the Schinkel:

“About two weeks after the eviction the group busy with the statement issue was getting smaller and smaller. Then the undesired publicity started too, the Grachtenkrant choosing the side of the 'underdog' Krijn and of Robert, and against the 'investigation group,' which had then already noticeably changed in constitution. We knew who had given the statement, so for us not much more needed to be done. We, as a pretty closed group, in a hectic time, occupied with one topic, thought we had every right to investigate and solve it like that, up to and including interrogation with balaclavas, because we thought it was crazy that so much was hanging over the heads of those five people because of a statement by possibly Krijn, but with a suspicion of Robert, which was never removed...but never confirmed either.”

The Schinkel squatters observed with surprise how, on one hand, a group of old acquaintances gradually took over the investigation they had launched into the CID number, turning out to have their own plans for it, while on the other the squatters' media fell upon them as if they were the “Squat Contraintelligence Service, Schinkelbuurt Division.” “FC Grachtengordel (where Krijn lived) had its good name damaged by the Schinkel group.” Neither the squat media nor the investigation group paid much attention to the arrestees, one of whom was unconditionally sentenced to five months and two to the six weeks they had been locked up in custody, one person who had refused to give his name was held three months without being convicted, and “photo #33” was locked up six months long based on CID#337's statement.

The group of old acquaintances, who slowly but surely took over the original investigation group, consisted for the most part of people who had had problems over the years with their respective squat groups. Now they seemed to have found each other, OP a theme “they had gotten enthusiastic about.” (Joris) The unfamiliarity between the scenes guaranteed that many squatters knew these people by name but not by face. There were soon remarks being made like “There is a group of people around who don't know what to do with themselves, who have found an occasion to focus their reeling minds.” They soon became generally known as “the investigation group,” after they had taken over the leadership of the original group of ex-arrestees and Schinkel squatters. A number of them, including Hein and Piet, had been at the No-Olympic incidents in Lausanne and caused bickering there too over how the action should go. A “chaotic report of the No-Olympics trip” described the difficulties as

“a discussion between the relatively unorganized group and a group who thinks they have to organize it in a way they've devised. We suddenly find ourselves in a group that wants to bring down van Thijn. In itself not such a bad idea, but I want to stand up for something without being channeled into it by some idiot.”

Frustrating the Olympic campaign, which had been organized by others, was right up the street of someone like Hein, who ever since he had gotten involved in squatting had displayed an obsession with knocking Amsterdam's social democracy off its throne. The slogan he hung on the Groote Keyser about the “rightists disguised as leftists”, the worst of all, who must be avoided like the plague, had referred then to the Labor Party.

The investigation group now seized upon the “Okedighem aftermath” to profile itself by raising the theme “betrayal or blabbing.” This was not done to broach a discussion, but to devise a criterion for who can and can't be an activist. The “rightists disguised as leftists” came ever closer. From the beginning they required anyone calling themselves a squatter to take up a stand for or against Krijn as a symbol of the traitor mentality. Every individual had to clearly declare that traitors must be “isolated, driven away and eliminated.”

On Sunday, November 2, a group of “hot-tempered individuals” pushed Krijn's housemates to throw him out. Wednesday, November 5, he was phoned with an ultimatum: “Saturday, November 8th, at 8:00 p.m., Krijn has to have fucked off, otherwise the house will be vacated by the 'city-wide squat movement.'” Krijn left the city that day, “scared as he had been by the threatening phone calls and people coming to his door with threats.” The housemates called a city-wide conference for November 6th.

“That Thursday night there was a busy and predictably aggressive atmosphere, big mouth strikes again, the investigation group cooperated great from the start by stating right away that they had nothing to state. Angry reactions to the threat on Krijn's housemates were disposed of with, 'See, you're protecting him.'”

That same night the poster “Traitor has disappeared” appeared with the text of the statement and Krijn's full name on it.

A months-long publicity flood of leaflets and articles followed, in which the investigation group sent decrees out into the world and the rest of the movement indignantly agreed. All these texts were aimed at the outside world, to whom it had be explained what exactly happened and what didn't, and how you ought to stand on it. Striking, however, is that these scribblings were practically incomprehensible to anyone not already in the know about the incidents described. But it was precisely this orientation towards outsiders who, even if they wanted to, could never understand all the ins and outs that played a role in the conflict, which revealed them to be the ones it all revolved around. It was also some time before the various squabbling parties figured that out.

When “the inside media” in Amsterdam did not wish to pursue the same course as the Schinkel squatters, who as the arrestees' group had still not clearly distinguished themselves from the “investigation group,” they turned to the Hague paper de Zwarte (The Black), to publish the arrestees' prison letters with their commentary. Right after this the paper was inundated with heaps of articles from on the one hand the investigation group and on the other outraged commentators from all the land. It then became a widely read paper in Amsterdam as well, where distribution had already been taken over in a number of neighborhoods by the investigation group.

Then on December 15, 1986, the investigation group published another poster: “Caution: Traitors!” It bore two pictures of people who “have supplied information in exchange for a favor,” and next to them an empty frame and below it the text, “name and photo to come.” The suggestion was that every squatter could expect his or her picture there. A leaflet by the investigation group about its enemies put this somewhat more clearly: “The heart of the matter, which they are attempting to conceal with all that display of so-called moral outrage, is that they feel attacked if 'an underdog...who blabbed during interrogation' is exposed.” The poster got “European distribution,” but in Amsterdam was accompanied instantly by strips stuck over the heads of the “traitors” with the text “Warning: Police provocation.”

However much they opposed each other verbally, all the columnists and poster-hangers agreed about the issue at stake: making sure their circle didn't lose the potential to someday bring a great group to its feet again. Opponents of the investigators wrote, “Their work doesn't exactly have a stimulating effect on new people hooking up with the scene”; “They're scaring other people away, destroying a lot.” And Barend, in an observation of the “squealers situation” in the weekly bluff! with which, to the anger of many, he would make the national press: “This rabble-rousing will scare away new people. It creates the impression that you have to have heavy activist training under your belt first to be allowed to participate.” The investigation group countered in its own flyer: “A movement that acts against treason, for newcomers as well, inspires confidence and gives a guarantee of backing.” And in March '87 it formulated “conditions for getting back on the move”: “It's high time to make a choice between just two things - either supporting treason or dealing with it.”

By this time the group had started its own paper, Staatsnieuws, or State News, whose home base was the Staatslieden district. This was supposed to “work supportively with uncensored and factual reports instead of rumors and negative stories of a personal character.” If at the No-Olympics the investigation group had still been able to walk around unhindered among a motley crew from “the movement” and try to impress its stamp upon what was happening, henceforth it only stood by, investigatively watching what the others were doing. “In early '87 was the sixth eviction at Singel 114. Hein and Piet were there in a van across the canal taking pictures, to show that the whole thing was just a sorry mess, poorly organized.” The rest of the investigation group had already made known before the eviction that it would have a folding chair rental across from the Singel. That morning they were indeed sitting on the terrace diagonally across from the squat. One still saw the group occasionally, but after a series of angry discussions the general feeling was that they should be ignored. Their demand of a choice between two things was answered with the rejection of “the terminology the choice was offered in.” After December 1986 the excitement ebbed away.

In this first round the investigation group managed to find a theme, with which the right chord could be struck inside the “movement”. The group appealed to the movers at their weak point: the stagnation of the growth of the (imaginary) crowd, something for which the group itself too still hoped. They claimed to have found the cause of this stagnation, for which the other scenes had no unequivocal answer. Many also shared the investigation group's criticism of the “lack of substance and the little cliques.” But the conditions under which the investigation group saw the crowd growing again conflicted with those of the other scenes. By demanding exclusions, it brought the self-image of an “open and growing movement” under heavy fire. The investigation group was pressuring the movement to prove that it still existed. It suddenly managed to make it apparent that the movement had become pitifully small. At the same time, it proved possible for a tightly organized group to determine the agenda, which had been unthinkable before. By demanding that everyone “choose” among the choices it outlined, it also showed that light-years of distance stood between the various scenes, which one year after the reunion for Hans Kok already couldn't understand each other anymore.

Its whole operation was an attack on the way things were “going on” after squatting's heyday was over: “The action groups in Holland have taken on the character of Scout groups, the actions that of a game, exciting ritual incantations to immerse you in the still tepid bath of your community, which has gotten to look more and more like a monkey house than a house with people in it.” And from this the group concluded, “The current noises from the 'squat movement' are downright embarrassing: 'we must go on - we need each other, don't we?' Go on! Without drawing conclusions from what's happened.” The need for conclusions and a reinterpretation of the past supplied the energy for the second round.

Tuesday morning, March 24, 1987, at 6:30 a.m., a riot police presence of 240 occupied the city center of Nijmegen. They burst into five squats, arresting eight people who were suposedly involved in the Mariënburcht. The charge was article 140; “Participation in an organization which has the intention to commit criminal offenses.” In other words, someone who organized resistance to an eviction was responsible for the others' transgressions of the law. It soon became known that the province of Gelderland's Regional Criminal Investigation Task Force conducted research for two months after the eviction and amassed mountains of material:

“An in-depth neighborhood investigation in downtown Nijmegen was done with a photo book. All van rental companies had to submit their records from the preceding two months. All pharmacies in Holland selling chemicals were visited and asked whether, and to whom, they had sold ingredients for smoke. A store recognized a buyer as 'a squatter' (how did they know that?), wrote down this person's name and handed it over to the cops. The telephones of several large squats were constantly tapped and in February squats were broken into without explanation and papers, appointment books, newspapers and posters were taken.”

The arrestees were isolated from each other and interrogated for weeks, one as many as 29 times. The preliminary investigation had yielded no conclusive evidence of who had committed which acts of violence. This was why, for the first time in the case of a riot, the police had resorted to the dormant 140th section of the law. Only by making the arrestees give statements could it be proven that they had controlled the actual organization of the resistance. Nijmegen soon found out that six of the eight arrestees had talked about their own involvement with the Mariënburcht; one cited others as well. Two stayed silent for months.

Reports on the results of the interrogations were not publicized, because it had been decided to focus all attention on fighting the use of article 140, which hung like a sword of Damocles over every action. The poster announced, “They are trying to regard an arbitrary group of people as a legal body, and by doing so, make this section of the law applicable to everyone. It brings a loss of rights and judicial arbitrariness along with it.”

Just as resistance to the eviction of the Mariënburcht had been legitimized by the squatters with the vacancy law, which otherwise had nothing to do with it, Justice was now combatting the riot with whatever law happened to be handy. And the squatters reacted, exactly as they did before an eviction, by making it into an attack on their lives: then it had been “You only have to exist”; now “anyone” could be shadowed and picked up.

After 44 days all the arrestees were free. On October 15 their trial finally took place at 9:00 a.m. in Arnhem. The leaflet: “Justice suggest that they have arrested the brain behind the squat movement. No way. The squat movement has no directors, central committee or brain. It's their hierarchy, not ours!” That afternoon there was a national demo in the center of Arnhem.

A week later a nine-page “Report on the 'Article 140 Trial'“ was distributed in Amsterdam squat bars, written by “people present in the gallery.” The tone was that of sincerely interested parties, who wanted to be witness a political trial and to their bewilderment found themselves in the middle of a “completely incomprehensible” production. “At the request of the suspects,” the entire audience was frisked for cameras and recording equipment and “if it had been up to the suspects our writing equipment would have been confiscated too.” The report described how after a muddled inspection of the suspects' personal particulars by the judge, the eight withdrew into the gallery. The trial had been characterized by “dualism” - on the one hand the defense wanted the arrestees' sentences reduced, on the other they were trying “to make the trial a bit political as well” concerning the article 140 issue.

“When the presiding judge started to read out the onus of proof against the suspects, a whole lot of things became clear to us. The onus of proof consisted almost entirely of the statements the suspects had given during police interrogation. The suspects' walking off must be seen as fear of being directly confronted with their treasonous statements.”

The anonymous scribes then gave an overview of “treason in Nijmegen.” The statements of the six suspects, identified by name and sometimes address, were hereby subdivided into the categories “personal confession,” “betrayal of persons and action structures” and “dissociations.” At the end of the piece, the selection criterion of “talking or treason”, which had caused such a fuss a year before, was again defined:

“Activists in Nijmegen want to make it look like the six talked under extremely difficult circumstances. Nothing is further from the truth. Talking selectively is not talking, but treason. Continually dissociating yourself is not talking, but treason. Naming the names of your fellow activists is not talking, but treason. Giving so much factual information, so detailed and so across-the-board, is not talking, but treason. Not retracting your statements or not stating that you gave them under pressure is a confession of the deliberateness of the treason.”

They concluded: [quote]“Because the 'movement' accepts the treason, and it thus becomes so large-scale, the only proper sanction would quickly end in a mass execution. We hereby state that the traitors, under these circumstances, are not even worth a bullet anymore.”

In Nijmegen it was immediately obvious who wrote the piece. Hein and Piet, known from the investigation group, had been practically the only Amsterdammers to succeed in securing a ticket to the small gallery in Arnhem on the first day of the trial. They had been the first outside the door of the courthouse. The Nijmegeners reacted with outrage that the carefully planned trial strategy was now being thwarted at the whim of the “people from the 'investigation group', not one of whom by the way has ever been involved with the Mariënburcht.” As it happened, the Nijmegen trial group had decided for a collective defence with the whole group of arrestees, in which the article 140 threat would play a central part. But at the same time they wanted to protect the individual suspects from too heavy a prison sentence by keeping them out of their own trial as much as possible. After the trials their “talking” during interrogation could always be examined in more detail.

On November 4, the second day of the trial, the Nijmegeners tried to keep two other members of the investigation group, Hendrik and Sylvia, outside the door in Arnhem, but they managed to be admitted to the courtroom under police escort: “It was unknown what they came for, but known that they shouldn't have.”

In Amsterdam the investigation group's own paper had left the Staats sometime ago, the better to cause city-wide fuss under the name Stadsnieuws (City News). In the first widely-circulated issue, #13, the investigators published a programmed preface about their intentions:

“A new squat movement is what we are working for, but first the old one must be torn down. You only build new structures once the old ones are demolished and the ground is made ripe for building. You can help us; then it will be quicker. You can work against us; then it will be slower but also bloodier.”

The group made clear with this that they, just like the rest of the movement, wanted to go on. But first, a regeneration had to occur. Starting the same thing over again was another way of going on.

Along with the usual squat reports, Stadsnieuws published a series of longer pieces under the name “Voetangels en Klemmen” (Pitfalls). In this series the history of squatting since the 1984 reconstruction attempt was rewritten. Several members of the investigation group had contributed to the discussion leaflet Squatting or Shopkeeping? and the revival of the City Conference (SOK). Now, three years later, this renovation attempt was named as the crucial moment at which the decline could have turned: “Since the blow of the failed reconstruction in 1984, the movement has no longer been able to restore itself. Today, in 1987, the chance to rebuild the squat movement again seems completely lost.” Hence the demolition plans. After three instalments, the series closed with the programmed announcement, “The labor of the few squatters who remain consistent, for whom Stadsnieuws speaks, will in the future be more theoretical than practical in nature.”

This theoretical labor was presently detailed in a special on “leaflets, bulletins and papers”:

“Assuming that society consists for 99% of 'meatballs' and that the squat movement is a reflection of this, then things are grim with politically independent thinkers, let alone doers. It is characteristic of any political movement to regularly purge its ranks. The majority often purges the minority; in connection with the aforementioned 'meatball theory' it is necessary this time that the 'political' minority purge the majority.”

The investigation group went on to claim that, with this ideology in the backs of their minds, they had been the “constructors of the old movement.” This view of the origins of the squat movement had already been refuted in Stadsnieuws itself in an instalment of “Pitfalls” in which the 1984 SOK was accused of “one-sidedly attributing the successes of 1980 to 'construction work' in years before, without giving enough credit to the social raison d'·à·tre of the mass actions.” From this rebuttal it could already be inferred that the investigation group were not as in accord with each other as they claimed.

The Stadsnieuws special argued forcefully that it was too late for the elite to make subtler value judgments on meatball-thinking: “We want to put all evil abscesses and excesses of the movement out of the fight. This is an unpleasant task, because such a fight can hardly be waged subtly.” The zine announced that as part of this task the first target would be the legal aid profession. In later issues the ideological standards of well-known squat attorneys were tested in a series of extensive interviews. The News wanted to find out whether they were guilty of “profiteering.”

The Stadsnieuws advertising slogan was that the zine was “taken seriously by no one but read by everyone” in the scenes. In mid-October Amsterdam was abuzz with rumors over a “traitors' brochure”, soon to be published by the investigation group, including a list of the names of “by now over 200” traitors from the own ranks. But when the Mariënburcht trial began the group saw a chance to take up its demolition of the movement. The Nijmegen issue had the advantage that it could never be cleared up, since legally and internally it was much too complicated. So the case could be used for any purpose. Furthermore, it offered the group a chance to bring its attack on attorneys “who had converted to yuppiedom” onto a practical level. After the account of the “treason”, Piet and Hein wrote in the report of the trial, “This account was a sample of the things read out by the judge. What the judge read, however, was again a sample of what the District Attorney and the eight activists have in their possession. For each activist there are statements ranging from about 20 up to 60 pages.” The investigation group's next act was to make these statements public.

On Wednesday, November 11th, 1987, at 2:00 p.m., a group of 17 people occupied the office of several legal aid lawyers on the Keizersgracht. The action was prompted by a debate currently going inside the legal aid profession over whether rapists and dealers ought to be defended. Quite a few people were asked to join the occupation on these grounds, but afterward another press release appeared, this time from “real squatters” calling themselves “representatives of the political wing of the A'dam squat movement” (PVK) The statement, which opened with the “rightists disguised as leftists” quote, gave this argument:

“This office has repeatedly opposed itself in word and deed to the legal aid profession. It is abundantly clear that these folks are competing for positions in which power, prestige and a prosperous and handsomely paid career are most important. Traitors feel at home in this office too. Everyone who does not condemn treason is automatically a target for action. This office is being occupied with the motto: Let the dissidents leave!”

The circle of leftist rightists to be exposed now included even the scene's own attorneys.

The press release closed with a surprising twist: “Now that we're here, we want to take advantage of the opportunity to demand the traitor files, at least copies of them.” An incomplete file on one of “the Nijmegen Six” found in the office was removed, and returned after being photocopied. With that the action had become the property of the investigation group. The attorneys responded in turn with a press statement: “We regret that a conflict inside the squat movement is being played out over the heads of the legal aid profession. The situation becomes unworkable when the files of some activists must be protected from other activists.”

Rudie:

“The day after they raided the office, right after noon on Radio Stad they said that Piet was about to clarify some things. I called some people, but no one was home. Then I just decided to get up my nerve and go to the broadcast. I told him off. I interrupted him and told him no one agreed with this. That really freaked them out, that I butted in and told it like it was. I didn't think it should be left up to him to say it.”

A piece in the Grachtenkrant, signed “an Amsterdammer”, called the raid “nauseating” and characterized the investigation group as

“former squatting big shots who, because of their lust for power, and later their fanatical destructiveness, were blown off long ago by the rest of the movement. They want to destroy the already non-existent movement, so then they can get control of the New Movement, for which the blueprints, modeled on fundamentalism, are already available. 'We are the New Squat Movement,' the spokesperson bleats on the radio. So we're manipulated by these guys, who in the past were so good at writing press statements behind everyone's back, like after Kedichem, for example.”

A new series of publications followed this. The inside media had so far been totally silent about the leaflet on the outcome of the trial and the statements on the Mariënburcht. An internal “article from the Nijmegen”: explained why: “the entire leaflet is based on factual inaccuracies, suggestive, and muckraking of the lowest kind! And that's why Nijmegen has decided not to respond to this article.” A city conference was held in Amsterdam, where the Nijmegeners made it clear that not one arrestee had given statements about anyone from another city. “The only one who gave a statement about someone else drew the conclusion meanwhile not to get involved in actions and such anymore.”

The investigation group managed to totally inflate this cold shoulder strategy. By occupying the office of popular legal advice laywers and making a public statement in the name of the squat movement, the group successfully struck a nerve again. Everyone in the movement felt obligated once again to take a stand for or against them. The fact that practically all arrestees and accompanying trial groups had handed over the management of their trials to their lawyers over the years and let them become purely legal affairs instead of spectacles where they had the starring role, was something that was never brought up for discussion anymore. The PVK had already brought this behavioral code under fire in their report on the Mariënburcht trial, where they wrote,

“You'd think either you make a legal trial out of it, in other words try to get off as easy as possible, or a political trial where you take a hard and principled line and use the court sessions as a platform for your political motivation. If you want to make a legal trial out of it, then why organize a demonstration on that very day? If you want to make it a political trial, then why submit so expressly to the legal process?”

But no one responded to this criticism, because in the Mariënburcht trial the arrestees, not the attorneys, had done the preliminary work and had determined their trial strategy themselves. The occupation of the attorneys' office could have kicked off a discussion about the dependence of attorneys. But the thievery of the file made it impossible to press this point. Just like at the Okeghemstraat, the investigation group, now the PVK, managed to immediately kill a discussion it had cranked up and thereby make only their own methods a topic for conversation.

The sensitive chord was no more gently struck for this. The weekly bluff! reports in its issue the day after the occupation, “More evidence of how crazy, how dangerous and how pathetic they are is not necessary. Think about this and talk about it. It's time.” A week later the paper, under the heading “madness in the movement”, explains why it stayed silent about the investigation group until the lawyer action: “bluff! has chosen until now not to write directly about their disgusting activities, so as not to give them too much attention, but the raid last week was the last straw.” It came with a concise “chronology of treason”, meaning the investigation group's activities.

The second publication wave set in once the pasts of the people who made up the investigation group/PVK had been publicized. But soon the past of the entire squat movement was being rewritten. Time and time again, analyses were published on the issue of what the squat movement was/is, whether the PVKers had been its “constructors” and what role they had in fact played in which incidents. Suddenly, after years, those in the movement had to develop a memory. At the same time they had to fight against the ancient non-committalness, which, according to a leaflet, “creates a vacuum where the investigation group can continue its practices peacefully and undisturbed.” And so this contribution to the discussion ran: “The group must no longer be ignored, but isolated. The best way to isolate them is by actively continuing in the right way ourselves.”

Now that ignoring was no longer OK, everybody had to go a step further and isolate the group. The passive manner in which they did this was dictated by the ethical attitude, “we refuse to employ the same methods as the investigation group.” Furthermore, it was impossible to get all the scenes onto the same wavelength, because some thought the group actually was broaching real problems, if its methods hadn't been too successful. The PVK was refused entry to most squatters' bars. But when the members of the group promised to behave reasonably, they remained welcome in circuits like the Schinkel and Oosterpark districts. The group did lose all access to the inside media, including Stadsnieuws, which was done in when #33 was made by its opponents with the names and pasts of the PVKers. The paper never appeared again after that. Even the Black, distributed until then by the PVK, joined in: “We now choose to isolate and eliminate the investigation group in the hopes of getting back control of the discussion.”

The PVK finally responded around Christmas 1987 by coming out with the promised 106-page booklet of traitors. On the cover was a photograph of a polder lake with a windmill in the distance. At the water's edge six people kneeled with thick rope tied around their necks and hands. They had bags over their heads. Behind them stood a figure with balaclava and raincoat who had just shot the first in the back of the neck and was aiming at the second. The title was Pearls before Swine. Decline and betrayal inside the activism movement in Holland. A report from the political wing of the squat movement. The caption ran, “Traitors are the lowest type of people. The type against whom all methods are permissible.”

The book reinterpreted the history of the squat movement in terms of a generational conflict between the older activists and the new guard. The stolen Mariënburcht files and some sundry police statements of activists were printed, the legal aid firms investigated, the inside media attacked, and finally, the correct “attitude of a political activist” prescribed. Squatting or Shopkeeping? is included in an appendix and claimed as their publication. A few “Western European” cases of betrayal were described as well.

The book did not sell well. For one thing, most of the excitement had already ebbed away and the phase of passive isolation had set in. For another, the work was removed from one of the few bookstores that wanted to sell it, when a demo of Autonomen happened to pass by. The owner entertains customers with the story: “Then suddenly this group in balaclavas storms in here, grabs that stack of booklets and runs back out of the place. I run after them. When I've almost got hold of the guy in back, he stretches out his arm and I see a crowbar. Okay, okay, I say, just take them already.”

The book was only sold under the counter in certain bars and shops, but was not discussed outside the circle of friends. “Everyone ignores that thing.” You weren't supposed to buy it or sell it and it was little-read. There was no fear of finding oneself on the traitors' list, since it turned out not to have been included and never did surface.

If in the first round after the Okeghemstraat, the selection criteria had been established for who was and wasn't allowed to let the movement grow, with the second round a new phase dawned. When a space was squatted to house a new bar, out of peevishness someone painted the name “De Harde Kern”, Dutch for The Hard Core, on the facade, since the police had been hunting for years for the “core” of the movement. Just then Piet came cycling by and yelled furiously, “How dare you! We're the hard core!” The investigation group started to behave more and more explicitly as though they were. It began to exhibit the traits of a “crowd crystal”. Canetti described such crystals as “small, rigid groups of people, strictly marked off and of great constancy, which serve as a basis for crowds.”

Some crowds form around one or more of these small groups which exist first. The heroes of the time of the first squats functioned as such cores, around which the first squat groups formed with patience and hard work. But the “movement” that the heroes thus created developed in a totally different direction than they had ever anticipated or wanted.

This is the tragic cycle of heroes: they are pushed aside by something they have brought into being. Many of the handymen from the early days fell victim to this: either they didn't understand what the newcomers were trying to do and they sulkily backed off, or they tried to regain power, at which point they were unavoidably pushed aside.

Several PVKers belonged to this scattered group of heroes from different neighborhoods, and in the second round they called attention to this. In addition, they imposed a strict behavioral code upon themselves, in order to mark themselves as “real activists”. Stephan:

“They were people who were concentrated on their goal 24 hours a day. Hein didn't smoke, didn't drink, kept in shape, ran the consultation hour, filled out forms, worked with foreigners, hats off as far as that goes. I can imagine that causes a hefty conflict with the squat culture, which expresses itself in drinking or snorting, like was in for a while; a relatively inconsistent activism that lives off its burps.”

In the first round the PVK demanded that the remnants of the squat movement consider them as the sole true founders and successors. The PVK had to be accepted as the hard core around which the New Movement would crystallize. In fact it was demanding here that the future crowd legitimize its existence as the core group. If the remnants ignored this demand, there would be pieces to pick up. The investigation group used the second round to this end, when it tried to legitimize itself in its own rightness. “The clear outlining, the isolation of the durability of the crystal contrast sharply with the nervous movements of the crowd itself,” writes Canetti. But the fanaticism with which the PVK tried to draw a boundary between their own group and the nervous others proved that it had not yet been able to condense itself
into a crowd crystal; it still had to contrast itself with others to keep its own boundaries sharp.

The last was also proven by Pearls before Swine, which was targeted at activists who hadn't yet figured out what kind of swamp they'd gotten into: only three pages were concerned with how the “political activist” is supposed to behave, the rest consists of attacks on others. The isolation called for by the group and to which it was condemned by the rest of the “movement” at the end of the second round could have strengthened the developing crystal structure. The third and last round made it clear that it did not.

October 6th, 1988: “Crazy Thursday.” At 8:30 a.m., squat bar The First Aid in the Eerste Oosterparkstraat was recaptured from the PVK. A history had preceded this. It had derived its energy from the special relationship on the one hand between the neighborhoods and on the other in the city. The city, in squatters' language, meant the other scenes besides those in your own neighborhood. And the term “city-wide” meant something concerned all the neighborhoods, including your own. In 1988 each “neighborhood” consisted of a small group with a bar and a squat discussion hour. Contact between neighborhoods relied entirely on incidents and larger actions. In fact, one seldom went outside one's own neighborhood, and moreover, the groups were scattered so far from each other over the city that it was a real undertaking ever to go visit another one (15 minutes on your bike).

One of the First Aid group's leaflets said,

“In contrast with the vast majority of the city, we decided a year ago not to go along with the policy of isolation regarding the investigation group. In doing so we chose to take on the debates about traitors, breaking down the squat movement/constructing a new movement, and so forth, as well as the connected ongoing conflicts and confrontations.”

The two PVK members in the squat group, Hendrik and Corrie, did engage in “agitation politics, combined with a thick-headed arrogant attitude,” but “the discussions were interesting and educational thanks to the very diverse opinions.” “We decided on a thorough renovation and a new plan that would make the First Aid more accessible for the neighborhood. We worked hard on this for four months.” Other PVKers also came to help.

Joris: “You know how that goes. The PVKers are there at 9:00 and the other squatters come by and take a look at 2:00. So they've done everything and feel pretty powerful and want to take things over.”

Stephan: “It gradually got to be a strange atmosphere with all those PVKers doing the renovation.” There was more then just altruism behind the helpfulness, as the Oosterpark squatters would begin to notice.

Joris: “After the traitors' brochure, their group must have thought, the squat movement will die out by itself, there’s nothing we can do. So they just calmly started to build their own little structures.” The group looked for select places, spread across the city, out of which they could spin a network of their own meeting places, neighborhood facilities and sources of financing.

Stephan: “In the Schinkel we'd always said we wouldn't go along with the movement's policy that the people from the PVK were no longer wanted and in a manner of speaking should be treated like fascists. We didn't want to exclude anyone.” PVKers Sylvia and Teun were working in the sauna in the Binnenpret in the Schinkel district on the basis of old friendships. Stephan: “There were incidents about subsidy allotments out of the profits from the sauna. Sylvia and Teun dominated the decision-making. The coffee shop they were building, their café the BAK in the Staats, their squat archive and their publications were getting money, and other things were getting nothing. There was also money going into the First Aid renovation.” The PVK set about their construction of a New Movement in the classic squatters' manner: they went to help build. Ironically enough, they financed this with money which was taken from “shopkeepers.”

The First Aid group published a leaflet which would be the first of a series that would far surpass the two preceding waves of publications about the investigation group. It says, “Discussions about the content of the new program were being put on the back burner. First we'd finish the renovation. Only right before the planned opening on September 17th did the two from the investigation group make their political line so obvious that further cooperation with them was impossible. Three women had taken the initiative of setting up a women's night. There were already twelve women from the neighborhood who wanted to work on this. And this was the point from which the split followed. The two from the investigation group were against groups like immigrants, women, blacks, dykes and queers, and so forth, “minorities,” having discussions, developing, organizing.

The PVK confirmed this in its “Announcement”: “It is sectarian when a subgroup alienates itself from the whole of social struggle.” The struggle against the more-than-just-living activists, who had muddied the image of squatting, obligated the PVK to reject all chance solidarities. Thus, for them, squatting became the only true total struggle against “all forms of reformism,” as they were typing the righties disguised as lefties this time.

But, continued the PVK's paper,

“the way the women's night was launched makes it clear that in reality there were other motives involved. It turned out to have been planned for weeks already and deliberately kept from the PVK. Reason enough not to approve it. The meeting fell apart without arriving at a solution.”

The First Aid leaflet described the end of the meeting as a “veto. They said 'we're against it, so we say it can't happen, and it won't. They forbade it!”

The Black was more specific: “Hendrik says now it's a fight to the finish. This will manifest itself first of all in locks being glued shut and shit being thrown through the mailboxes of others from the First Aid group.”

The next day, the six supporters of the women's night decided to call off the opening planned for Saturday, “because we didn't want a big fight in the middle of the neighbors we'd invited.” The PVK: “That day it turns out the six don't show up to work and the first tendentious leaflet is distributed in the city. It spreads the lie that the opening has been called off. At this, the group that did keep working decided to replace the lock as a precaution against other forms of sabotage. The opening went as planned.” The bar was brightened up for the occasion with some traitors' posters and brochures, and a “door policy” was enforced. First Aid commentary: “Could this mean that the investigation group wants to use the First Aid as one of its branches?”

According to reports, two days before the last First Aid meeting, Hein was heard saying to Hendrik, “The First Aid is on the same wavelength now as the Binnenpret sauna, the Crowbar and the BAK. Now the First Aid bears the stamp of the investigation group too.” This statement instantly became famous and got a lot of people thinking. Stephan: “One day a guy from the east side came by the Binnenpret coffee shop and said things were going to get heavy and the PVK wouldn't give back the bar without a fight. At that, the people in the Schinkel area sided with the First Aiders, because there were good ties from way back between the two squat groups, both being very small and having the same attitude. Even more importantly, they had recently found out by accident that the sauna, which was to become a foundation, was going to be registered under Hein and Sylvia's names behind everyone's backs, despite all agreements, motivated by the fact that Hein knew so much about tax-dodging.” They had just managed to foil the plan.

The First Aid group went by the various squat neighborhoods during the next few weeks to explain the situation and devise a counterplan. It was agreed that if the Oosterpark district could solve its problems itself, more power to it. But if the whole PVK got mixed up in things, it would be considered city business and the city would react accordingly. On Saturday, October 1st, Piet, Hendrik and a third PVKer went to see a woman from the First Aid group and threatened that, should anyone lay a finger on the building, they would get her and several others as well. The PVK had now made it more than just a neighborhood squabble, and it was up to the city to act. They thoroughly prepared for the re-squat. On Thursday the 6th it was time.

Harry: “After putting a new lock on the bar door early that morning, we brought in barricading materials and screwed bedsprings behind the window. Then we put a leaflet in Hendrik's mailbox saying it was re-squatted. Then we abandoned the First Aid.” The leaflet rewrote prehistory starting from the debate over women's night and referred to the PVK's “unwelcome intimidation”, concluding, “we expect that all this won't go unnoticed by the investigation group.” Harry: “A few people were waiting in the flat upstairs for what was going to happen and the rest gathered at a squat nearby. And another group was waiting in Frontline-Slagerzicht, the leftist bookstore by the Albert Cuyp market.”

The Black: “A bit later some First Aid people run into Hendrik, who yells that he's going to go get some more people.” Tanja was watching it all from the flat above the bar with another Schinkel squatter and some local people from the east side: “Gijs was the first PVKer to come driving up. And then Hein. We called the group waiting nearby and gave the alarm. Hein was shocked to see us sitting there. He yelled, 'Come down here and I'll kick your ass.'“ Seven people arrived on the scene from the nearby squat and a crowd formed before the door. There was shouting back and forth.

Harry:

“I said, 'Hey Hein, I'm here to talk to you.' Hein goes, 'It's too late for that. Are you part of the traitors' club now?' When I went and stood against the door Hein yelled 'Stay away from my bar!' I said, 'What business do you have in this neighborhood?' Hein goes, 'Go take care of your own neighborhood!' Then he started to yank on me. We restrained him. There were seven of us, four from the Schinkel and three from the Oosterpark. When we let him go he attacked again, so we grabbed him again. We didn't hit him or anything. Then he went and watched across the street. Right then the people from Frontline came walking up. We opened the door to go in. Then Hein stormed forward and sprayed tear gas in our faces. Then he got a few whacks. Then we went inside. It stank worse in there than outside, because Hein had already sprayed tear gas through the mail slot.”

Tanja:

“Neighbors must have called the police. Hein was waiting at a distance. He had a bloody lip. The neighbors pointed him out and he was arrested for illegal possession of a weapon, but none of us wanted to file charges. They let him go a couple of blocks away. Then he must have gone back to the BAK.”

In the PVK version Hein was “handed over to the police after a wrestling match of 20 to 1.” After this a city-wide alarm call was made.

Stephan:

“Hein's not stupid. He knows too that if he tries three times to get in, he might get a punch in the face, maybe more. The PVK was supposed to get together that night at Piet's house, but what does Hein do? He takes things into his own hands and comes back with a bloody lip. The reason Hein reacts so intensely is to motivate his group, he knows how to fan the flames. Then he can say he was attacked by 20 people, without mentioning that he busted in there three times and used CS gas.”

The PVK gathered at several points in the Staats and Oosterpark districts and left by car for Frontline-Slagerzicht. In all conflicts, the PVK followed the strategy of the Spassguerilla: think of what your adversary would hate the most and do it twice as bad. They achieved a climax with this in the cover photo of Pearls before Swine: shooting down traitors in a primeval Dutch landscape. This strategy was now being employed in street confrontations. Slagerzicht Bookstore wrote in its newsletter,

“Right before closing time we were 'treated' to a short but heavy attack. Within minutes the group managed to transform the building into a huge wreck. People armed with clubs pulled down bookcases, windows were smashed, a typewriter, radios, telephone and a copy machine were demolished. They didn't even forget the kitchen: the stove, refrigerators and a coffee machine had to pay too.”

Six PVKers caused more than fl 10,000 worth of damage. A chance visitor recognized Hein: “But Hein, what are you doing?” Hein: “They stole my bar!” The four workers were threatened, one got a broken arm from PVKer Arnold at the door and was taken to the hospital.

The PVK afterwards: “The main people behind 'frontline' have always played a leading role in the agitation against the PVK. In other countries too, in particular, 'frontline' deliberately frustrates our contacts.”

The later “Positions Over Crazy Thursday” indicated that the PVK had broken an accepted behavioral code: “That the Investigation Group has gone so far means that from now on they have obviously declared war on the entire city and are also dragging persons and organizations who were not directly involved into the hostilities.”

The First Aid received news of the vandalism by phone and a few people left to inspect the damage. 40 people stayed behind in the bar, including Staatslieden squatters who had come in response to the alarm call. Harry:

“The attack on Frontline was presumably a diversionary tactic. They must have thought we'd all respond to that in a herd. That didn't happen.” Half an hour later the bell rang; it was Arnold, who was not well-known in the city. The door was opened and three of the PVK group, which had grown to thirteen, stormed inside. “They came to throw us all out of the place. Piet jumps on the table and yells, 'everyone leave.' Panic broke out and everyone backed away. But just before that the helmets and clubs had arrived from the squat bar downtown. So we picked them up. People were throwing beer bottles, chairs and everything that wasn't nailed down and hitting with the clubs. The group were outside faster than they'd come in.”

The Black:

“When the investigation group arrived at the First Aid, two people were standing in front of the door. One of the two gets clubbed in the head and the other tear gas in the face. The second walks away to get over the tear gas. A bit later the investigation group walks back and runs into him. At this the whole group jumps on him. Hein shouts, 'Hit him in the knees,' and does. But then Piet says, 'We can use him better if we take him with us.' At this he is dragged along to Hendrik's place.

There they sit him down on the couch. First he is frisked, to check for weapons, as they say. Keys and papers are taken off him. Piet says, 'You're such an asshole not to have any weapons. Aren't you ready to fight?' Then the interrogation begins. Piet takes charge and places a sheet of paper in front of him: 'Now you're going to write down names. You have no rights at all here. You have to cooperate. We want the names of people who helped with the re-squat.' He names several names, but they already know those. He says he doesn't know any more names, since he's only a minor figure in the squat movement.

Then Piet takes a blue machine with two (pens) sticking out and says, 'Now tell us everything you know, or you'll get the death blow.' Then they ask how the re-squat had been set up. One by one he has to tell them what his keys are to. Then Piet says, 'Now go tell your friends in the First Aid how awful it was,' and orders him to dissociate himself from everything else, or they'll come to his house and beat his face in. If he withdraws the chance that his house will be spared is still minimal, because this is war.”

The PVK version: “We took one of our enemies. Under no pressure to speak of, he gave us useful information.”

Joris:

“In the Staats we didn't know so much about the First Aid situation. We were surprised that a neighborhood so unfamiliar to us was standing up against the investigation group, but that was it. Then Frontline was attacked, and we really didn't understand what that had to do with it. We got a phone call, 'neighborhood meeting at 8:30 in Wicca.' That was our meeting place.

We get there and find out someone from the Staats was attacked in our own neighborhood by five people. They said he'd been sighted at the First Aid. The people from the investigation group beat him up and he started yelling. When someone else came they walked off. They said, 'We got one, there are four left on our list.' For us that was the limit. At the meeting in Wicca we decided to attack the BAK. We went to the city, they had their meetings at 11:30 in the First Aid, and announced our decision: 'We're going to do it in any case; if anyone wants to come...but if no one comes we'll still do it.' A group stayed behind in the east to take Hendrik's place apart. His windows were broken and the interior and his car were completely smashed to smithereens. The rest, about 50 people, came to the Staats.”

Douwe: “I was with them. We assembled first in Wicca. It was really a mess there, drunk people at the bar were getting involved, but didn't feel like helping out. So people were constantly yelling, 'Just shut up!' A very chaotic situation. About 2:00 we left.”

Joris:

“We just walked down the street to the BAK, some with balaclavas, some without, and bashed in the windows there. We did want to start a confrontation, but no one was there. The bar was pulled apart, crack, crack, crack, took out the carrier bike and left, back to Wicca. Feelings were already getting nice and heated. People wanted to get Hein too, and Piet, break their windows. So without it being announced people went there, just casually down the street, sort of strolling over there. Hein happened to be standing on the corner, he'd stayed home. 60 people came walking around the corner and he just stood there. 'Jesus, it's Hein.' 'Oh, is that him?' So few people knew him. Four people went for him, kind of hitting him and throwing sticks, no one really dared to try anything with Hein. Someone did light into him and ended up with a concussion. People broke his windows. He was yelling, 'alarm, alarm,' really loud. The rest of his group was at the BAK checking the damage, and now came running back, helmets on, wham.”

Douwe:

“It scared everyone that the atmosphere was so aggressive. Rocks were thrown back and forth. The police had gotten there by then, but they stayed out of it. Finally we backed off and went back to Wicca. A few people were very upset, it was just very badly organized, some were already quite confused and didn't know what to do.”

Joris: “That kind of thing creates an impression of absolute power. 60 people attack one guy and he beats them off. By himself. Hein beat off that disjointed group that came running up. They thought, now we can take over the control, just keep pushing a bit further and use terror. With the idea 'we've been done an injustice.'“ The PVK ended its announcement about Crazy Thursday with the battle cry, “We have nothing to lose. We are prepared to go to the extreme.” A flyer was attached with the text,

“Through a specific action campaign, the PVK will exact the following demands:

1. The outrageous occupation of the political neighborhood bar 'The First Aid' must be ended immediately. The space must be returned to the original users;

2. All material damage caused by the occupiers must be compensated for; this means that before the occupation is discontinued all residences, rooms, cars must be restored, by means of the sum of money which the aggressors and their followers have collected;

3. After compliance, voluntary or not, with the abovementioned items, they must break off hostilities; only then will we proceed to the order of the day!”

A year earlier, after a series of incidents lasting years, a definitive schism had arisen in the Staatslieden district. On one side was the “living cooperative” around Hein and Piet, who were also the central figures of the investigation group. On the other side there was the new “squat group.” Cause for the split: the relocation of the squat consultation hour from the Sewer Rat bar to the new women's squat Wicca.

Ernst: “At the meeting about it 95% of the people who were active unanimously agreed that we should go to Wicca. A new squat, we can work on it and it can last for years, we'll just do it this way. Halfway through Hein comes in and proves himself capable of completely fucking up the discussion. He wanted to do it in this other building and said, 'I'll sabotage this relocation and ensure that it'll be successful there.'” With that, both groups decided to work parallel and fully autonomously.

Ernst: “At first that was a real impediment. Certainly it's very difficult to explain to the outside why you have two consultation hours. After something like that it's doomed to fail. Then they handed the building over to the people in between*. They actually already didn't want to work with us anymore, but there was no formal split yet.”

Joris:

“Then they started their paper Staatsnieuws. The first four, five, six issues went OK, just info on this and that. Some still worked on that. Then they brought the traitor stuff into it. People didn't want that, they sent the magazine back. But it worked in spite of that, because they sold it to people who were a bit doubtful with 'We don't mean any of this badly; we want to shake things awake, provoke a little, then at least something will get going.' So whole debates came up over a couple of flyers. They wrote that the consultation hour was
shitty, but they still wanted to come make copies at Wicca. We wouldn't let them. If you want to destroy the movement we're not going to give you the facilities to realize it. For me that was the incident that made the separation complete.”

Then painstaking negotiations began over the division of joint property. Ernst:

“We said, let's divide up the carrier bikes, stencil machine and that kind of shit. It was impossible to talk to them about that. Their answer was, if you guys want to secede that's fine with us, we're keeping our stuff. They didn't want to give up the finances, which they were managing, either. Then the squat group formed out of Wicca. Really we should have shared it, but we got nothing. But we didn't want an outright war: 'Let's keep the dirty laundry inside, they can have it their way. We'll start a new action fund and we won't bullshit any more about it.'“

Joris:

“Everyone knew how hard those guys were, people were sort of wary of them, partly because everyone's so close together. And no confrontation was necessary; there was a solution, that separation, you guys here, us there. With unwritten rules; you didn't come to each other's meetings, you stayed out of each other's squats, did your own thing, we even still said hello to each other.”

Ernst:

“Here in the squats it was really a small-town solution. We also became isolated from the city, we were still identified for a large part with the cooperative, and those people didn't know we had nothing whatsoever to do with the PVK. We just hadn't started a war.”

Joris: “A group from Wicca was spotted in the First Aid. When they saw them something must have clicked - forget the First Aid, we're going to concentrate on the Staats.” An article from the Staats describes the local situation:

“Some people wondered if the incidents at the First Aid and Frontline constituted a neighborhood problem, so that we only had to talk about that person who got beat up by four people. People thought it was just a small incident. The next day, Friday, several neighborhood residents were again stopped, pushed into doorways and threatened. They were given to understand:

1. First Aid back;
2. Fl 5,000 damages;
3. Carrier bike back.

Especially the first demand made it clear that the incidents in the area did indeed have to do with what was happening elsewhere in the city. That night five people were attacked, sprayed with tear gas and took a few punches.”

The neighborhood meeting decides to ignore the PVK ultimatum: “Reasons for this: First Aid is not the Staatslieden districts squat group's first concern. fl 5,000 glass damages is idiotic. Besides, the BAK is rented and therefore has glass insurance through the housing association. We don't know where the carrier bike is.”

Joris:

“In the Staats the prevalent idea was that nothing could be expected of the city. They do something and we take the shit. I was scared to death that if something happened, the PVK would feel so justified - and they're really militant - that people would get killed. There was a city-wide meeting all day Sunday, people who were ready to go beat the shit out of the group. After endless talking we postponed it. We also decided that we wouldn't do anything until we were ready for it.”

He continued,

“Then we had two days of rest. Doorbells and knocking, nothing more. Tuesday one of us was walking down the street and was going to go in someone's house. Suddenly Hein started hitting him and kicked him outside: 'I'll beat the shit out of you till there's nothing left.' Door shut, done. Then he went back outside and sprayed tear gas in Hein's face.”

The stenciled “Positions on Crazy Thursday” affirmed, “Hein will be going over the limit if he attacks the guy a second time. The meaning of that is that absolutely no one involved can be sure any longer of their safety, even if Hein and others have already got hold of them.” These words betrayed an across-the-board by-the-book justice principle: anyone who contributed to the demolition of the BAK could expect a punch in the mouth. Then the score would be settled. Yet the PVK did not stop. This was the final straw: “The PVK has taken responsibility for a great deal of the violence. This is not only as a 'logical' angry reaction to the taking back of the First Aid, but as a systematic policy.” The PVK took the Staatslieden district first as territory for its intimidations.

Arthur:

“That Wednesday I was walking out the door at 12:30 a.m. I see them standing there and think, they're waiting for me. Hein comes walking towards me, white-faced. I turn around and walk calmly home. He grabs me from behind and gives me a few wallops right in my face. I tumble over backwards and start cursing - 'Asshole, who do you think you are!' He grabs me again, pushes me into the doorway and keeps bashing. Piet comes up and says, 'Hein, stop, this was the first time, for the window. You'll give us fl 500 and we'll be back.' Then I stood up and got whacked again. I went out. A bunch of people were standing around; they were being very overt about it. Suddenly Hein took a swing at someone else, right in his face, and said, 'This is for Wicca as a meeting point, you're responsible for that.' I had a bump the size of an egg on my forehead, two black eyes and a split lip. I went inside as Hein was yelling, 'Your house will pay for this,' referring to Hendrik's house.”

Joris:

“They had a list of 30 people they wanted fl 500 from, or they'd take some punches, they'd be treated as accessories. One time they forced their way into someone's house and robbed him of his passport and the keys to his carrier bike that was outside the door. They appraised the bike at fl 400, so he still had to pay fl 100 or he wouldn't get his passport back. And he gave them the money.”

Ernst:

“And they were always tearing through the neighborhood in their cars. They went and stood outside the door of Wicca and shone a spotlight in that was mounted on the car roof. The threat of attack was hanging over Wicca, but they didn't barricade the building. Nobody barricaded. We thought, if they come tear the place down here we'll rebuild it. They
also barged into the Blue Thumb tool rental in balaclavas with walkie-talkies. Hein had once arranged funding for it, so the Blue Thumb was theirs. The conflict had already made it there, and they didn't want to rent them any more tools, so they just came and stole it.”

Joris:

“They were always walking around on the streets with walkie-talkies for keeping in touch with each other. That looks intimidating. A guy that had hit Hein on the head on Crazy Thursday and ended up with a concussion himself was on the list to be fucked up. One day he's walking down the street, just coming back from the Chinese place, looks back and sees Hein coming up behind him with a stick, and ten more people behind him. They thought he'd messed with their cars, flattened the tires or something. He runs into a snack bar, jumps over the counter. They didn't dare to go any further and backed off, saying 'We'll get you.' He rushed home with the whole group behind him. The first thing his girlfriend says when he comes running in is 'You forgot the prawn crackers.' She goes in the kitchen and comes out the front door with two big knives. 'If you mess with him you're messing with me so get out of here.' Then they slunk off.”

Ernst:

“After ten days it stopped. A peace group was started at the squatters' bar the Crowbar and they wanted to mediate. They took the communication between the two group upon themselves. The way it went was, the PVK would deliver an ultimatum, and then we talked about it. Our position was, if you guys don't attack us, we won't attack you, and we'll stay away from each other's property. That led to a sort of cease-fire, although the threat was still there. It was a diplomatic way of putting them in check and taking them out of the game and it worked. They came up with the idea that the Staats should be a demilitarized zone, that there would be no gatherings in the Staats for actions against the PVK. We would avoid each other's streets.”

The squatters' bar Crowbar had published a Statement in which they said that, though everyone wanted to isolate the PVK, they would maintain their open-door policy, and that the difference of opinion over First Aid policy among the original group of rebuilders needed to be resolved. The bar group at the Crowbar included some PVKers, and its neutrality was thus somewhat unconvincing. A Wicca leaflet on “the enterprise of the doves” countered, “That this needs to be talked about does not mean there must be negotiations. At present it is impossible to discuss redress or reparations.”

Ernst:

“The city was very suspicious of those indirect negotiations. The city thought the Crowbar should renounce the PVK, but they didn't want to. They were seen as a nonviolent division of the PVK, except by us.”

Meanwhile, the City Conference of Squatters sent out a letter to all kinds of community centers and groups and the city conference of such bodies where PVKers work, requesting that they “bar the so-called 'investigation group' out of welfare work.” They intended to stop the group using “all kinds of donation pots and facilities in various centers.”

Ernst:

“The isolation strategy started to work well. They were expelled from everywhere else in the city that they still belonged to. We heard from the peace group that this was one of the things that bugged them the most. They didn't want money anymore, just for the isolation to be discontinued. They were going to write an article on what they stood for, but they never did. They never worked that out among themselves.”

The article had been demanded by Wicca in the case that they still expected money: “After all, we don't subsidize everyone and their dog.” A request had to be accompanied by a proper argument.

After peace had returned to the Staats, the PVK moved its activities to other neighborhoods. Since Crazy Thursday the First Aid had been constantly guarded by a group of people and it was reopened for the second time on Tuesday, October 18th. Four days a week there was a
program from 11:00 a.m. till 9:00 p.m. plus a women's day. The guard team was dissolved. There were only minor incidents: “The lock at First Aid is glued shut a few times during the night, and people's doors are pounded on and their locks messed with.”

These actions were ascribed to the “Politieke Verpeste Kleuters,” or the Politically Fucked-up Toddlers. The window of squatters' bar The Hard Core in the Kinker district was smashed to smithereens for the first time. PVK cars were sighted all over the city. Only in the Schinkel district did the group keep itself under control, since Sylvia and Teun had created a deadlock in the debates, already dragging on for months, about their involvement with the sauna and the PVK, which kept them from “leaving voluntarily” for a while.

One night Rudie woke up in his canal house:

“I heard fumbling around downstairs, thumping on the ground. They were breaking the lock fastening the carrier bike to the house. It didn't take them long. Two guys, bundled up against any avalanches that might come from the house. They walked off with the bike. I thought, we'll get that bike back. I got dressed and went after them on my bike, but those two were nowhere to be found. Eventually I saw the bike here around the corner lying in the water, one side sticking out. They couldn't get away with it very easily because there was a very good lock on the back wheel. That was in the middle of the carrier bike war.”

On Saturday, October 22nd, in an interview in the local weekend supplement of a daily newspaper, Hein gave an analysis of the motives of “the new guard of activists” with whom he was at loggerheads.

“Neighborhood-unfriendly, ego tripping, a little fun activism for the sake of the action. Out from other mother's wing and don't give a shit about anything and anybody. What good are they? Setting tires on fire in the street in the middle of the night. For nothing! Their squats look bad. So do they, sometimes. Action? Yeah, putting on clean underwear once every two weeks.”

Yet slowly but surely the tide began to turn. The Wicca group's delay tactics had taken the steam out of the events. Joris:

“They had 15 people and the city had 300 and we knew where they lived. They were within range. Some must have recoiled from the methods and thought, if we keep doing this we'll go under for it. Meanwhile, a poster was made to inform the neighborhoods, the news poster 'Investigation group under the magnifying glass' with a pretty unclear text. It was meant as information, but worked as provocation. They also had to answer to the canary posters.”

These were 8 1/2” by 11” posters featuring a short dialogue between Hein and Piet.

“P: So, one less traitor.
H: What are you doing?
P: You can see that.
H: But that was my canary.
P: It was your canary.
H: Why, tell me, why did she have to die?
P: Those things are dangerous, man. They see everything, they hear everything, they chirp everything out.
H: Hmm, you've got a point there.
P: So now we're going to stamp out all pigeons in the neighborhood.
H: Why do that?
P: They fly around with notes, didn't you know that?”

Another poster:

“H: Do you think we're still the boss everywhere?
P: Of course.
H: But nobody obeys us anymore.
P: Oh no? Just yesterday I went to the greengrocer's.
H: Wow, intense.
P: And I said, over here with that head of lettuce.
H: You've got guts.
P: And he obeyed my orders.
H: Really?
P: Well, I did have to pay three guilders, but that's OK, you have to make some sacrifices if you want to be the boss.”

Joris: “Those posters helped a lot in the Staats.”

Friday, October 28th, was the second women's day after the reopening of the First Aid. The next night the PVK paid a visit to the establishment. They opened all the beer bottles and poured them out over the floor, the chairs were destroyed, all the posters torn from the wall, all electricity and water lines cut, the drainpipe smashed to bits, the money taken, the toilet poured full of cement and a booby trap with tear gas affixed to the toilet door. A leaflet from the First Aid group: “During our 'redecorating' over the next weekend they came back twice to destroy the front window and among other things to rip the front door out and take it away.” Windows were smashed that weekend at people's houses and the Hard Core. On the broken glass they spray-painted, “Hi from the PVK - See you soon.”

“It was getting more and more clear to us that they definitely weren't going to stop the violence by themselves,” wrote the SOK.

Douwe:

“There was a big city-wide. There was a lot of talk about violence. The crazy thing was that half were already in that spiral of violence and were waiting for the moment when they could deal them a definitive blow. A lot of new people thought that violence would only make things worse. I walked out. The people who did want to do something decided to go further. At a preliminary meeting they arranged what to do, against who and what the objects were.”

The final battle was approaching.

Then it was Monday, October 31st. Ernst: “The magnifying glass posters had been printed. They were to be posted the next day. We met at Wicca. We had agreed that no violent actions would be done from there, but posters aren't violent, so that was OK. There were 30 people on the posting team. The PVK noticed and followed along behind in cars. We drove them away with stones. That was at about five in the afternoon. The PVK were beside themselves because we were working out of Wicca. The people from the Crowbar came running up - “This is war, it's all over, people will be killed.”

Then the PVK came out with the “Proposal for constructive means for achieving the desired result, i.e. 'peace',” a list of nine items written the day before. Among other things, it said, “The hostilities out of the Staatslieden district must be put to a stop. Houses and activity spaces may no longer be gathering places from which hostile actions are carried out. Confrontation can best be avoided by those involved avoiding our streets to guarantee peace. The compensation must be seriously considered.” The “Proposal” ended with, “It is no more than logical to us that if no results are achieved in the short term, we will pursue our defense campaign in the rest of the city, but it will be focused in the Staatslieden district in particular.”

Ernst: [quote]“They gave us a deadline to sign all the items before 9:00 and return them via the Crowbar. We wanted an extension, since we had to call a neighborhood meeting. The neighborhood did want to do something because that evening someone had been attacked at the Surinamese restaurant. The PVKers started to goad him. Then he grabbed a little knife and they beat it. The deadline was pushed back to 11:00. Several PVKers were sitting in the Crowbar the whole time waiting for the reply; that was no-man's land. Then it was moved back to 1:00.” The complete Staats squat group was in conference all night long in Wicca.

The SOK leaflet reported, “They tore through the city for four weeks and did much of their vandalism and threats from cars, which at the same time protect them like a sort of steel armor. With an action against their vehicles we will deprive them at any rate of their mobility, speed and a suit of armor.”

Douwe:

“We met beforehand in the Jordaan area, near the Staats. A group went to the river to mess up Arnold's car and several group members' windows were broken. We split into two car groups, two door groups and a standby group. 50 or 60 of us got on our bikes. Everyone had a helmet and a balaclava, bundled up in black, the majority had some kind of club, baseball bat, pieces of wood, lead pipes, and of course that was completely inconspicuous too.

We left the bikes at the quay and walked. Major confusion because nobody could find the group they belonged with. There was some yelling, helmets went off to look. We went there in groups and right before the houses we split up. Demolishing the three cars made a hellacious racket. You could see the astonished faces of the neighbors.”

A neighbor: “This little punker's whaling away on a headlight, and a woman yells from the balcony, 'You guys are fascists!' 'Us? No way,' he answers and just keeps going...”

Joris: “About 1:00 someone comes into Wicca: 'Right this minute they're smashing up the cars,' as we were sitting calmly behind our beers. It obviously wasn't us.”

Hein's and Piet's front doors, which opened inwards, were held shut and when the roaring PVKers managed to pull them slightly open, the door crew sprayed tear gas inside. Douwe:

“Then the cars were so destroyed that we figured we'd back off. When we were halfway down the street, Hein stormed out of his house with a helmet and a bat. He was looking for a fight. The whistle blew, and some people turned around and started hitting back. Just a couple fought, the rest were onlookers.”

An eyewitness: “Hein came outside with a lance, a piece of wood with a knife attached, three others behind. He's running by himself after that group, with the idea, I'll chase them all away, just like last time. Piet comes running, but turns right back around. The police got there and asked, 'Everything under control, Piet?' 'Yeah, everything's under control.'“ The Crowbar group:

“One of the four got a rock in his face, another in a helmet gets a rock on the head and hits the ground, as another of the four loses consciousness after being hit with a steel bar in the back. The latter two are surrounded and kicked at by about 20 people. The other two from the PVK are kept at a distance from the group by a rain of rocks.”

An eyewitness: “Hein was beaten up, Hendrik's helmet was broken in two. Then they were taken away to the hospital. Piet probably came outside with a gun yelling, 'Someone's going to get killed.' He was beat up in his doorway with a thud by someone who was the only one to leave from Wicca.” The SOK: “The next night we added the remaining cars to their automobile graveyard.”

Ernst: “And then it was over.”

The third round was provoked by the PVK, which considered itself a complete crowd crystal. It described in its “Announcement” how after the second round it had concluded “that it was irresponsible to continue making up a part of this marginal subculture. We decided with the small group that was really solidary with us to start over and turn our backs on the mire which the movement had become.” They put this resolution into practice, however, by trying to take over all existing squat facilities. Stephan:

[quote]“The PVK's glance had clearly fallen on certain neighborhoods where the original squat structure could redevelop, neighborhoods where social action was possible. You can go into one of those with the idea to get it all back on its feet, but you're ignoring the existing things and as far as that's concerned these were not the most tactful people.”

The plan to set up “bases” in several neighborhoods was thwarted when two PVK members suddenly forced the latent conflicts in the First Aid group to a head. Because the PVK had reinterpreted squatting history so that they were the only ones who had marshaled the “meatballs” from the very beginning into “the squatting struggle”, they now assumed that what squatters there were left wouldn't be capable of organizing themselves. This was also because they themselves also were no longer involved in the structures handed down from days of old and no longer had a view of what was happening inside them. When “95%” proved quite capable of organizing and re-squatted the First Aid, “We were forced to depart from our
decision to build new structures separate from the remains of the old movement.” This departure brought them back to the starting point of the second round, when they had proclaimed the total demolition of the squat movement and intended to put its abcesses “out of the fight”.

The method the PVK used after Crazy Thursday was identical to the aftermath of the re-squat of the Groote Keyser on November 1, 1980. Then, too, it had been Hein with his hangers-on who had pressured people to name those who had been involved, then too with ultimatums, people who were put on lists to have the shit beat out of them, detailed bills of losses to be paid. Then, too, three cars had driven through the city past certain addresses, invaded houses and taken people's stuff in compensation for the destruction of “his” Groote Keyser. Then too: “a few punches in the jaw, a blow to his kidneys knocking him down, a punch in his teeth, furious swearing matches.”

The re-squatters had wanted to throw a party that night to celebrate the end of the squat movement, of which the Keyser was the symbol. Then Hein was the one who broke loose in order to see to it that squatting could go on. Eight years later, to his annoyance, he had to observe that the squat movement was still going on, and he started a “reign of terror” in order to finally put an end to it, so he and his faithful followers could return to the way things had been before the Groote Keyser, when it all had yet to begin.

This dogged adherence to one idea of squatting and the origin of events, the hate for one enemy called the rightists disguised as leftists, in combination with one rigid behavioral line with regard to adversaries inside the circle, suggests that Hein and his group constituted a crowd crystal with the historic durability mentioned by Canetti. The fact that, after being isolated by the “city”, they did begin expanding a structure of their own, evokes all the more the image of a group which saw itself as a “starting point for crowds”.

But they completely underestimated how strong a group's unity must be if it is to defy the times. Their threats against the remains of the movement got steadily worse, and they said of the near future, “The methods used up to now are nothing compared to what we've got in store.” This forced the squatters scattered through the neighborhoods to reorganize again, which took a month, but was thoroughly successful.

In the third round, the “city” took the behavioral line of the first and second round, before they grasped the newness of the situation. In the weeks before Crazy Thursday they tried once more to ignore the investigation group, by assuming that the conflict at the First Aid could remain a “neighborhood problem”. When the PVK fet obligated to keep supporting the outrageously impolitic actions of two of its members come hell or high water, it ended up in a fatal track which became ruinous for it. The “city's” reaction to the mutual destruction on Crazy Thursday, just as in the year before, was to isolate the group. The PVK was now forced to do what until then it had only bragged about: eliminate the new guard.

They did this by systematically transgressing every unspoken behavioral code among squatters - tear gas, electroshocks, vandalizing squats which had no role in the problems, and so on. From the humorous strategy of the Spassguerilla, they switched to the classical principle of terror: making their outrages so unprecedentedly heinous that they became almost unimaginable. They were thus able to arouse a fear which was no longer rationally controllable, so that their victims became paralyzed.

This attempt to force the end of the squat movement out of their own group as a rock-solid base went awry when the fear that had been summoned by the terror reversed into an energy which unloaded on them. This turning point was reached when the debilitating diplomacy of the Staatslieden district intersected with the slow anger of the city squatters. “They were shocked that such a military action could be planned out of the city.” (Joris)

After the last battle the intimidations stopped for once and for all, and the crowd crystal was
smashed. The group had appointed itself to destroy every last fragment of the squat movement, leaving the pure original core, which could begin afresh in virgin neighborhoods. Its purging attempts were successful, but it was they and not the other scenes who got chased out of the movement for good. From then on, they were no longer a part of it. When in September of the following year they published a new document in attempt to incite “a feverish but short-lived revival of anti-PVK activities,” it was regarded as a curiosity and nothing more.

Henceforth, the problem of those who still considered themselves PVKers was how to survive in a time when you no longer existed.

On November 1st, 1988, the centre of the maelstrom was reached. With the destruction of the crowd crystal the squat movement had forced its own end. It could now disappear beneath the surface of history. At last it had freed itself, with the necessary violence, from the obligation to go on.

On November 19, 1989, shortly before 6:00 a.m., 200 people in black stream from various assembly points toward two squats in the Tesselschadestraat near the Leidseplein. On arriving they erect barricades on both sides of the street and withdraw into the building.

The riot police advance with a bulldozer, but disappear again before they can do much, because tires have been set on fire in the street in another part of the city and need to be cleared away. On top of that, when they get there, the Volkswagen of the cops patrolling the scene catches fire behind their backs. Once the police are gone, a group emerges from the house to embellish the barricades with beams, a dumpster, tires, scaffolding pipes and three expensive cars.

When the bulldozer shows up again the whole mess is torched. When the fire dies and the spectacle is over, everyone reassembles in the squat. Then the police come in by way of the roof and give them safe conduct. The complete group walks through the police cordon yelling in unison, “GORBI! GORBI!” on the way to have coffee somewhere else.

The next day a poster is pasted up all over the city, bearing an announcement which had hung on a banner between the barricades and been extensively propagated by the media. Against a background of the circle with the broken arrow read the words: “We're back”.

“Did you expect this?”
- graffiti, placed between the Vondelstraat barricades, early March 1980.

Time and again, heretics have been surprised to discover that the march of history can be brought to a standstill, releasing an intensity which makes everything else just history, just movement. More possibilities exist than can fit into our expectations. They exceed our needs without meeting them. It is these moments of metamorphosis which keep the engine of history turning. Revolutions are moments for breathing new life into the course of events. This is interesting to the heretics, but does not impress them. Their fascination is valid at the moment of the event itself, when an extrahistorical space opens and demands exploration.

Suddenly you're offered the chance to become someone different from who you've always been. You don't have to go against your mapped-out life path; another way of life turns out to exist parallel to it. Consciousness-expanding substances can serve as an introduction to this space experience, or be used to enhance it. It's no accident that so much drinking, smoking, snorting and gulping goes on in movement circles. But the subtle difference between living parallel and dropping out is still strictly attended to. During an event, you're moving in the transit space of the emptiness. Turning back in time is essential. Because only the blessed are able to hide forever beyond the horizon of history. “Making history is not the mystery.”

*

In the beginning was the event. Time was compressed, space concentrated into one point - the metamorphosis took place. The movement is born out of this first impulse. It seeks a way to consolidate the last stage of transformation, to give it substance. The movement knows no stopping now; it is past that point. It expands in order to give the event maximum range and place everything under a common denominator. But it can never carry this totalitarian tendency through to the bitter end, because the movement's internal dynamics inescapably lead to its fragmentation. The original event had an overwhelming density, which the movement later reinterprets in terms of a lost unity.

The movement attempts to retrieve this unity by subsuming what energy it has left into a static establishment. Stuck in these mighty ruins, the movement has a tendency to stall. The remains stay populated as long as an internal dynamic between demolition and construction is kept up. But the movement itself lacks the mobility to become something else just like that. It will endlessly branch off, get stuck, scheme internally, sprout over again, be exploited, describe itself, see itself on film. Metamorphosis, however, will remain a mystery, a game of appearance and disappearance which does not let itself continue, which followed a rule which is excluded by the movement's range of standards.

*

Why are events followed by a movement? Are they doomed to be incorporated into a history which progresses from past to future? Their abrupt appearances, which make fools out of the great sense-makers of existence, were anxiously secreted away into one continuing story for millennia. The astonishing detail of the story, taken up into a larger context, was drowned out.

Currently, however, an opposite strategy for enfeebling the event is being followed. The detail is blown up on the screen and the continuing story is fragmented into items, whereby the mystery of the sudden kindling of the event is made invisible. Neither the media nor History are able to transform the dynamics of the eruption into a story which stands on its own. While the movement is inclined to “go on” in the absurd, the event is out to recover itself. Its order is that of a cycle. It tries to repeat the moment of its appearance, to rub itself out. The event does not oppose growth or development, but breaks in on it. It follows its own track. But it also invites us to step in; when it is over, you step back outside. There's nothing more to it. It goes without saying that endless enterprises will be started afterward, in order to keep things moving at all costs, but this does not interest the event. However the event is pulled and tugged at, its brilliance remains unscathed.

*

Canetti writes somewhere of “the point in time when history stopped being real. Without noticing, all humanity suddenly departed reality; everything that has happened since then is absolutely untrue, but we can't see it.” This entrance into post-history set in with the freezing of prewar movements by means of the Cold War. The global conflicts which had kept feelings running high for a half-century were made henceforth impossible by the introduction of the Bomb and the deterrent balance. Classical reality was thus left behind in an era to which a return was impossible. This dismissal of previous reality value was compensated for by the wholesale spread of auto and television. The movement was picked off the street and transferred onto the screen or the windshield. You could sit back, relax and watch. Special movement study started here.

History as a movement which propagated itself through causality chains was replaced by a parallel circuit of easily digestible news reports. The media in their constant omnipresence replaced time and space. The media eye shines on everything. The remote and the strange are continuously brought into the living room, causing the place where you are to become suspended. A topographical amnesia: one can be anywhere on earth, but where one's really hanging out, no one remembers.

This permanent timeliness, however, can exist on its own strength even less than can history. Like it, the media have an engine, but no fuel. So the media suck everything and everyone into the picture. They feed off every energy that is invested in their reality. But nothing fits the scale of the media. Anything having substance must be subjected to a revolutionary change. Every object, every situation, every person must radiate significance, which will then be used to report on something different. Where a thing had been, there came information - the fuel which fires the media. And here special movement study stops.

*

“Tear down a media.” History was cool, but now there are other things on the agenda. Everything revolves around the media; the extramedial is covered in even the most remote corners. But at the same time, this totalitarian tendency evokes uneasiness in the media. We want something new. So a retro-movement has appeared which plays on our growing need to make history ourselves, alongside work, in a hobbyistic or touristic ambiance. It consciously pushes the media into the shadow of the event, returns for an evening or a weekend to a place before Canetti's point. We don't have time for the media just now. The boundless, the unguarded, calls. Fortified with a helping of media-free relaxation, we can stand it all again for a while after. This healthful therapy aims to cure the medial fatigue in the subject her/himself, but leaves the cause alone, since it has its nice aspects as well.

*

Nevertheless, there are individuals who have undergone the extramedial experience and upon return are left with an immense rage. They experience their transformation into information as an assault on their lives. They go on the offensive. The antimedial movement which they unleash fights back hard, but wants nothing to do with powers which oppose the freedom of the press: a hand pushing the camera away, the last picture where the soldier fires at the cameraman, a ban on pictures at the borders...Emotional displays, all too gladly transmitted, because they prove that the media still deserve the support of the democratic community. The antimedials see the conspiracy lurking behind this league of monsters. They demand that democracy's ties with the media be broken. They do their part by literally cutting the connections. No out of fear of contact, but in order to meet someone again.

A 1987 “Theme Proposal” sees a lot of positive sides in the attack on the media: “By isolating and attacking the media we will reach more people.” Sick of the extreme negative portrayal
of its resistance, it goes in search of causes: “We are writing this piece because there are still people inside the movement who find it necessary to express their opinion to the press. The time when we could achieve something through the press is long gone.” The antimedial movement would rather have avoided the media, but keeps running up against it and just can't get free of it. Yet that's from a glowing perspective: “We were going to take big steps and this is the biggest. No more press...To begin with, it means a lot less work and ass-kissing. If they aren't up on our activities any more, they can't write negative things about us any more either. You do lose the chance to make your action more important than it actually is, but there's more room to create your own world.”

The antimedials wrestle with the problem of how to meet others without bringing the media into play. Because this has become unimaginable, they seek other paths toward providing the media with content: “Several computer experts are at work trying to break into the Dutch Press Agency telex, the word processors and typesetting computers of the newspapers and the central teletext office.” This strategy aims to fight the enemy with its own methods.

But when you launch information, you become information yourself. The theme proposal recognizes this hack-practice dilemma. Therefore, it turns away from the electro-sphere and
resorts to bureaucratic jobs. Because the media don't want to hear about their discontent, they are promoted to the status of action object. The antimedial scenes' lightning strikes cause puzzling breaks in the data circuits. They briefly create media-free zones, where meetings suddenly arise between people who suddenly aren't getting a picture and come to ask what's going on. The antimedial arsenal proves unlimited: short-circuiting telephone exchanges, bringing satellites off course, burning down cable boxes, sawing down electric pylons, not paying television and radio fees, sending out fake press releases, getting cameras
to show up for nothing, pouring cement into dish antennas, cutting assorted cables, cleaving TV screens in two, painting over security cameras, altering data, installing magnetic fields, implanting and spreading viruses and worms - communicating with the hammer: “Talking back to the media.”

*

Recognizing the omnipotence of the media and living with it does not necessarily lead to happy destructivism. And the laborious strategy of antipublicity can be avoided too. Instead of being employed in an alternative way, the media can be taken to ecstatic heights. This supreme self-experience of the media has passed the stage of information absorption and transmission. The point is to cause medial effects without references to an outside world. This is achieved in the sovereign media.

The sovereign media do not bid against reality, but endeavor to make it the exceptional situation. It is not the media which are conquered, but hybrid handiworks from age-old to hypermodern. They irregularly appear in print, on the air, in data networks. The program producers do not show themselves; they show only their masks, in formats familiar to us. The sovereign media have nothing to do with social developments. They do not emulate the other media in their field. They make up no audiovisual avant-garde and are thus not of this age. They transmit nothing, but simply do their thing. The sovereign media have left the dialectic of goal and method behind them. They do not approach their public as a moldable market segment, but offer it the “royal space” which the other deserves. They invite us to hop on the media bus straight away. “Soon the boat will sail and take us all away.”

The sovereign media dare reality to prove its existence by denying it. They constitute a risky venture which plays with the boundaries of the senses. Yet they are not concerned with heavy
themes like waste, excess or the game with death. They want to travel, preferably as far as possible. While the media compress the world and history to screen size, the sovereign media move in the opposite direction. They suck us into a universe to sail the sea of noise and to bring the oceanic feeling up to date. For a moment, only media exist. In this transit space, too, the thing is not to hang around too long so you don't end up in art or politics, for the sovereign media's denial of reality borders on that.

*

The extramedial figures regard this all a bit pityingly. When they are asked to participate, they don't answer. They do not wish to be spoken to. Without looking round they keep walking. They appear to live in another universe. They're occupied with all kinds of things, but their purpose remains invisible through the medial lens. They seem never to know what they want. But this dismissive attitude is not merely indifference. They are intently concentrating on the right thing; their silence stems from this. They only answer unasked questions. Their attention is focused on the approach of an event. And when the time comes, they are the ones who move into action without hesitation. When they have accepted the invitation, the event starts to happen. Then they are together in extramedial space. Metamorphosis takes place. Then movement study steps back. On it rests the task of chronicling the stories of those who return.

Closing Remark

“Movement teachings are not based on the facts which they appropriate, but on coming events. Their value lies not in the events which they illuminate, but in the shock effect of the events they anticipate. They have no effect on the consciousness, but directly on the course of events from which they obtain their energy. A clear distinction must be made between them and philosophical gymnastics and everything which is written in connection with the history of ideas.”

Johan Sjerpstra.