Conversation with Third Way: „The idea is to fight cultural terror with cultural terror” Ritchie, the head of Zwart Front
Salute! Before we will go to our conversation, please tell us few words about yourself. What is your name? How and why did you become a nationalist?
I am Ritchie, I am 25 years old and I am from Nijmegen in the Netherlands. I became a nationalist very early on, about 12 years ago when I was 13. The values had always appealed to me and struck me as natural and normal. Sadly, the majority of society doesn’t seem to share this view anymore. It is this reason that I became active.
What is history of Zwart Front? How and under what circumstances your organization came into being? How big is Zwart Front now? Where we can meet branches of your organization?
Our organization was founded in 2011 but really went public in 2012. Its roots go way deeper, to the restoration movements of the interbellum. Zwart Front now is not so big any more, we have seen better times. It’s mostly our local division in Nijmegen with some loose sympathizers here and there. The reason we founded our movement was that the nationalist scene was dying for some years with the old guard retiring and living normal lives. When we founded, there was only one serious movement left and it was very closed and was slowly going on a new right course. We saw a chance to start a modern and revolutionary movement that had actual substance.
How about your ideology? In what way you would describe it? Who from the “godfathers” of nationalism inspires you the most and why?
Zwart Front is a fascist organization. We try to be uncompromising and non-conform as we can be. The idea is to fight cultural terror with cultural terror; we inspire to be everything our opponents fear and hate, but in a way that we remain true to ourselves. I mean by this that we stand in a certain fascist tradition with a certain history that prohibits us to, for example, go all out in third Reich sympathy. It’s not that we ideologically disagree, but it is mostly that we have our own history, symbols and tradition that are authentic Dutch and represent better what our people should stand for. This is important; ever since the Second World War the true far right in the Netherlands has been mostly in Germanic spheres where they copy the third Reich blindly. This alienates a big proportion of Dutch that feel nationalistic because it basically means they have to collaborate with people who would dismantle everything they love to either become part of Germany or a greater Germanic empire. It is also for from this that the most of the inspirators we present with our organization are either Dutch or figures no Dutch nationalist could object to on ground of national reasons. Of course certain foreign thinkers receive a lot of praise in private, but as an organization we have our duties. The figures we hold high are mostly unknown in other European countries but the most import are Arnold Meijer, the founder of the party “Zwart Front” in the interbellum where we got some of our inspiration for the name from, and Wouter Lutkie, a catholic priest that was close to Mussolini and functioned as a mediator between different groups who tried to get them to work together. Another person who should be mentioned is Joris van Severen, the founder and leader of the Verdinaso, a organization that operated mostly in Belgium. He was at first, however a proponent of the Greater Dutch theory, the idea that the Dutch speaking parts of Belgium with Dutch roots should become part of the Netherlands. Later he steered a new course where he wanted to create a Lower Countries Confederation that included the Walloon province and Luxembourg. During the war he was arrested because he was suspect of collaboration and was transported to France where he was shot by French soldiers.
What can you say about your activism? How it looks like? What kind of actions, Zwart Front usually organize?
Currently we are focused on producing ideological works. When these are done we will present them to the nationalist public through presentations. Meanwhile we are mostly busy with supporting actions and demonstrations of others and trying to forge better bonds between the many nationalist splinters in the Netherlands. We have talks going with lots of movements, even those that stand in the new right tradition, despite our many ideological differences. The reason we are aiming so broadly is that we are with so few that there is no room to fight each other also when we could collaborate on points we do agree with. This generally is our internal course if it comes to collaboration: work with others on points we agree with, ignore the actions and points we don’t agree with.
What do you think about modern ways of nationalist propaganda(such us counter-culture, music, graphics etc.)?
I think we finally live in interesting times again where the nationalist movements in Europe are busy with experimenting again and trying new technologies and technics. Things and movements like Casapound with their hip and strong culture come to mind, or National Action that, despite their views for national socialists seem to be very nostalgic, stand with both feet in the present. These movements did one thing very right: they didn’t copy the past blindly but managed to catch the spirit that was behind it and that drove them and export it to the current times. The movements are clearly recognizable as current, modern and relevant while at the same time it feels trusted and authentic to nationalists. The Netherlands however lags behind in this respect very badly. There seem to be few people who are gifted with image editing skills for example or with video editing. One of the major movements hasn’t changed its standard propaganda poster formats since the turn of the century which at the time as very modern but now looks ancient and dated.
Who Zwart Front declare as the most dangerous enemy of your fatherland and Europe? Communists? USA? European Union? Maybe someone else?
We have in our mission that we wish to destroy plutocracy, with which we mean the rule of borderless money, and the absolution of Cultural Marxism which we consider a spiritual cancer that is slowly killing us. Our third point is that we wish to build upon the ruins these two will leave behind and rebuild what was lost.
What is your attitude towards capitalism? Zwart Front is anti capitalist movement? If yes, tell us more about it.
We are not opposed to free market as long as it does not contradict or oppose the national interest or oppresses any of our workers (or other groups in the fatherland). We oppose the rule of big companies that invest money in political parties and lobbies and buy their way to the rule of a country. We oppose international borderless capitalism that replaces our native culture with a brainless consumer culture. We would like to instill a system of national synthesis, either corporatist or syndicalists, depending on the situation as an alternative that guarantees all classes of society with equal chances of representation and power.
Please share your thoughts on Partij voor de Vrijheid. If nationalists in Netherlands cooperate with political parties like that? What do you think about cooperation with “official politics”?
We absolutely despise the PVV. They are Zionist and populist who say certain things but do the opposite. They present a social image which attracts lots of people but when push comes to shove they bail and vote the opposite. They currently are the biggest and most popular party however. Among their ranks is a lot of chance to win new people since the party itself is very closed and barely offers chances to people to develop themselves as nationalists. It only takes in the people they can easily control but at the same time do everything they want. Geert Wilders, in contrast to his talks of freedom and democracy, likes to strictly control the party and be its single and only leader. There are very strong suspicions that he has ties with the Mossad since he very regularly visits the Israeli embassy which very symbolically opposite the Dutch parliament building. Our security forces and several media tried to investigate what he does there, but it’s all very vague. We consider political parties to be part of the establishment and don’t work with them in general since we oppose the parliamentary system and it would be hypocritical. We, however, do try to work with new right movements because they tend to have people in their ranks that are either more radical or have to potential to become more radical. There are also those in their ranks that are working from faithful motives but simply have different ideological views. It’s easier trying to manifest on the streets when nationalists don’t fight each other but the reds that want to keep us off them.
What is a situation of nationalist movement in Netherlands? How you would describe it? What about police’s repressions?
It’s poor. There are dozens of splinters; most are just the same populist new-right crap. Most of these groups contain 5-10 activists at best that don’t want to work with other movements either because of ideology, personal conflict or otherwise. Recently there have been two major attempts at bundling splinters, one with both moderate and radical groups that has now died out and one that bundles the radicals. The second one is going strong and we are part of it. We are in a situation where national socialists and other radical nationalists join moderate new-right groups (that sometimes even present themselves as the “true antifascists!”) just to be more popular or be with a bigger group. We find this totally unacceptable and believe that people can achieve the most if they are sincere in what they say and mean. Repression is somewhat tame here, you are allowed to do pretty much if the state doesn’t consider you a threat. The only real obstacle is banned symbols like the raised right arm, swastikas and some other runes, which are banned if they are used in a discriminatory way. Only occasionally when someone does a lot of stuff that is either outlawed or bordering on outlawed but they can’t catch him, the secret services will jump in to threaten them. They did this last year twice that I know of.
What is your opinion about newly elected president of the United States, Donald Trump? What you, as dutch nationalists, think about him? Trump will be real shock for world geopolitic or nothing serious will change? What do you think?
We were at first positive about his stance on the middle east, hoping it would break the neocon war streak but we have not seen anything in that direction so far. Recently Trump has said stuff about Israel and Iran which gives us cause to suspect that our hopes, as always with a candidate in the democratic system, were mostly unfounded. We don’t care about his internal homeland policy.
What do you think about cooperation between European nationalist movements? With which groups from Europe, Zwart Front have good relationship?
We focused on this in the past to the expense of national efforts. Many people in the Dutch scene for example said at times that we were better known in other countries than here, which made us turn our attention back inwards. We still believe that European cooperation is important but currently we are better off trying to recruit new activists nationally and becoming more known. In the past we visited Casapound many times and last summer we went to Hogar Social Madrid. We also did a small project some years back where we did the same interview with about ten different movements which was called “Waarheen Europa?” which would translate to “Where to Europe?”. We had good contacts with the Italian and Belgian movement Zenit which no longer seems to exist. We also had some contacts with the British National Action, but they have been banned recently by anti-terrorist laws. We also have lots of contacts in Flanders with many different movements and people. Occasionally we did small international support actions, the biggest and most notable is when Hogar Social got kicked out of one of their squats. We did a banner and flyer action in Eindhoven in support of them, asking people to donate to them.
This is kind of our tradition here, last words belong to you Ritchie:
I wish the best to our Polish comrades and hope they achieve victory in the future!