The co-founder of the Dutch national-conservative party JA21—an offshoot party from the Forum for Democracy (FvD)—has slammed the extreme eco-leftist activist group Extinction Rebellion, saying that, despite the image it puts forward to the public as an innocuous pro-environmental group, its true goals are quite sinister.
Annabel Nanninga, who presently serves as the leader of JA21 in the Senate, the Netherlands’ upper house, insists that the leadership of Extinction Rebellion uses its pro-environmental image—a cause most people support to some degree—to occlude its primary objective, which she says is to usher in a communist surveillance state, the Dutch news portal NieuwRechts reports.
The Extinction Rebellion group “mainly uses climate as a mask for their actual goal: a communist redistribution agenda in a surveillance state,” Nanniga wrote on X (formerly Twitter), adding that “being sensible about emissions, environment, and energy sources is fine in itself, of course, but that’s not what they’re about.”
“The core of those climate terrorists consists of ‘melons’: a green shell under which their ‘red’ (communist) heart is hidden,” she continued. “Plus the hundreds of naïve followers; frightened children, and orphaned BN-ers [“bekende Nederlanders”: Dutch celebrities] who naively but more or less sincerely believe in the Extinction Rebellion brainwashing.”
Nanniga’s statement echoes earlier comments by Pieter Boot, the former head of climate at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Boot, who earned his Ph.D. on the economy of the communist German Democratic Republic, stated that the major climate ambitions, namely “the goal of zero CO2 emissions by 2025 [sic],” will lead to “Stalinism.”
Increasingly, far-left eco-activists have linked the fight to ‘save the planet’ to the fight against global capitalism and ‘racism.’ For example, chief eco-extremist Greta Thunberg, in a speech given last year, claimed that the current world order is “defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression, and genocide by the so-called global north for its own enrichment.”
Furthermore, the 20-year-old Swede claimed that the so-called ‘climate crisis’ has its “roots in racist, oppressive extractivism that exploits both people and the planet to maximize short-term profits for a few.”
Days ago, some 2,400 Extinction Rebellion activists, including dozens of minors, were arrested while they attempted to block traffic on the A12 highway leading to The Hague. Police documented more than thirty parents who had brought along their children to the climate blockade, and as a result, reported them to the domestic violence and child abuse hotline Safe at Home.
Police in the Hague defended the move after they were accused of using the hotline to intimidate protesters.
“Colleagues have acted in good faith. They were genuinely concerned about people taking their children to an illegal protest. Our actions have nothing to do with an opinion about the protest or its purpose,” the police commander said.
Dutch police unions and the outgoing justice minister also backed the move. “It is strange that as a parent you do not realize that this is dangerous,” says ACP chairman Wim Groeneweg on behalf of the four police unions.
In a joint statement, police unions wrote:
The problem is that no permission has been granted for the blockades. We have no objection at all to parents taking children to legal demonstrations, on the contrary, that is part of their social upbringing. But these are illegal demonstrations and there is a chance that the police will have to use force to break up the demonstration. As a parent, you consciously put your child in a dangerous situation.
Justice Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz argued it is the “task of police” to report to the Safe at Home hotline if a minor is arrested. “I am quite sure that if the police did not do that, this House would not accept that,” the minister said.
