NATO Summit Protests In The Netherlands June 24-25 | Co-Organiser Sjoerd de Groot

## A Coalition Beyond Labels Across Europe, peace activism is revisiting an old lesson: unity of purpose often matters more than purity of ideology. The conversation around the upcoming NATO summit in The Hague makes this point bluntly. What emerges is a conscious effort to build an unusually broad front — one that deliberately blurs the customary left-right distinctions in order to present a single, visible public demand: halt the war-drive being pushed by NATO governments. The logic is tactical rather than doctrinaire. By bringing together veterans, migrant communities, left-wing organizers, and right-leaning dissidents under a short, focused list of demands, the movement hopes to cut through the familiar political silos that have long blunted anti-war pressure. Sjoerd de Groot, a co-organiser of Peoples for Peace, frames the strategy in practical terms: if a protest can show a cross-spectrum constituency opposed to NATO’s escalation, it becomes harder for elites to dismiss dissent as the exclusive province of fringe groups. That tactical openness — a willingness to work with anyone who endorses a modest, clear platform — is not meant to erase political differences. Rather, it is designed to make the political cost of inaction visible. This approach recognizes a structural reality of contemporary democracies: governing coalitions frequently defend narrow financial interests, and their social legitimacy depends on keeping social groups fragmented. A multi-class, multi-identitarian demonstration confronts that defensive fragmentation directly. ## The Summit's Political Limits The Hague summit is shaping up to be instructive not because of what NATO will decisively do, but because of what it appears determined not to do. The conversation suggests the event may be one of the most minimalist summits in recent memory: a two-day gathering with little substantive decision-making. That is not accidental. With internal frictions running high — divergent priorities among European capitals, unpredictable American leadership dynamics, and competing national political pressures — indecision becomes a deliberate tactic to preserve external appearances of unity while avoiding internal rupture. That political choreography has consequences. When a military alliance opts for opacity and drift rather than bold commitments, it signals both vulnerability and defensive posture. Minimalist summits offer fewer targets for external opponents but also shrink opportunities for the alliance to reset strategy coherently. For activists, the summit’s reticence is both an invitation and a constraint. It reduces the number of headline-making policy choices to protest against, yet it highlights the fissures activists hope to expose: if NATO cannot agree on clear, aggressive measures, then powerful critique can focus on the alliance’s legitimacy, coherence, and democratic accountability rather than a single policy item. ## Media, Marginalization and Narrative Control One of the clearest themes that runs through the exchange is a frustration with mainstream media gatekeeping. Despite months of monthly demonstrations and active grassroots organizing, Peoples for Peace reports scarce conventional press coverage. Where coverage exists, it has been selectively framed, sometimes reduced to insinuations of foreign funding or presented through the narrow lens of a few controversial speakers. These media dynamics are familiar: the ability to define “respectable” protest often rests in institutional outlets that act as cultural filters. The consequences are tactical as well as rhetorical. Marginalization in mainstream outlets limits reach, hinders recruitment of broad social constituencies, and funnels public understanding of protest actions through pre-scripted narratives of extremism or novelty. In response, organizers are turning to alternative media circuits, streaming possibilities, and decentralized channels. Live streams of speaker programs, careful documentation, and direct messaging strategies may blunt exclusionary narratives. Yet the media struggle is not merely technical; it is a contest over legitimacy. When established NGOs and certain “respectable” peace groups are amplified by the press while broader, more heterodox coalitions are ignored or maligned, the public conversation narrows in ways that reinforce elite agendas. ## The Fracturing of the Peace Movement A poignant strand in the discussion is the diagnosis of decline: what was once mass mobilization in the Netherlands — the famous 1983 turnouts — has diminished into monthly gatherings of thousands or hundreds. Part of the contraction stems from shifting geopolitics: the Russo-Ukrainian war, the surge of Western arms-supplying narratives, and an atmosphere that equates military support with the only viable path to peace in certain conflicts. But the more immediate problem is internal. Longstanding peace organizations have, in many cases, aligned themselves with government positions or international institutions to retain funding and relevance. That co-optation has ossified into a new normal where some peace NGOs effectively reinforce state foreign policy. The result is an uneasy split. On one side are institutional groups whose partners include foreign ministries and international funders; on the other are grassroots coalitions that insist on unconditional opposition to military escalation. This split is magnified by debates about alliances: should peace movements work with populist or right-leaning groups merely because they oppose NATO expansion? For some established groups, the answer is no — partnership risks reputational harm and political compromise. For the coalition organizing in The Hague, the answer is more pragmatic: exclude little, invite many, and try to create pressure via numbers and diversity. This means tensions are inevitable, but so is the possibility of a renewed mass public voice if the coalition succeeds at scale. ## Strategy and Tactics for June 24–25 The planned two-day program reflects a mixed strategy of spectacle and restraint. Organizers intend to use a large public park as a nexus for speaker programs and music, capped by marches around the secured perimeter of the summit. Pragmatism governs tactical choices: an attempt to march directly to summit venues has been constrained by security closures, and the organizers are explicit about avoiding police confrontations that might undercut their political message. Strategically, this is shrewd. Protest movements are often undone by confrontations that allow authorities to delegitimize them; maintaining a nonviolent, highly visible presence maximizes moral leverage while minimizing avenues for state repression framed as “restoring order.” Technical preparations — from potential live streams to logistical coordination with veterans and migrant communities — are equally important. The organizers are aware of practical challenges: mobile network congestion, limited press attention, and the intricacies of coordinating an ideologically diverse crowd. They also recognize the importance of timing and framing. A focused list of demands, clear visual messaging, and an emphasis on common ground rather than doctrinal purity are tools meant to widen participation and blunt elite attempts at discrediting the movement by highlighting outliers. ## What Success Looks Like Success for a protest that explicitly eschews maximalist demands is measured differently than headline-grabbing policy reversals. For Peoples for Peace, success is partial and symbolic: a large, visibly diverse turnout that makes it politically costly for NATO leaders to ignore public dissent, and the creation of a public narrative that fractures the assumption of elite consensus. A mass presence of veterans, migrant workers, leftists and dissidents sends two messages at once — to the public and to policymakers — that opposition to militarized policy is not the preserve of a single

NATO Summit Protests In The Netherlands June 24-25 Anti-NATO Demo: June 24-25, The Hague, Netherlands. Today I’m talking to Sjoerd de Groot, a peace activist in the Netherlands where he co-organises a protest against the NATO Summit on June 24-25, under the banner of “Peoples for Peace” (linked below). This is what we want to discuss today. Links: Website: https://peoplesforpeace.com/ Petition: http://change.org/voordevrede Goods Shop: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com #M3 So below the surface, there are deep fractures right now within NATO, and they are basically saying, "If we don't decide anything at all, maybe people won't see how divided we are." So this is a sort of way to do damage control, to keep the appearance of a unified bloc, even though in reality there are deep divisions within the NATO bloc itself right now. #M2 Hello, everybody. This is Pascal from Neutrality Studies. Today I'm talking to Sjoerd de Groot, a peace activist in the Netherlands, where he co-organizes a protest against the NATO summit on June 24th to 25th under the banner of Peoples for Peace. That is peoplesforpeace.com. This is what we want to discuss today. So, Sjoerd, welcome. #M3 Thank you. Thanks for having me. #M2 Well, thank you for organizing this. Can you tell us a little bit more about your organization and what you're planning for June 24th and 25th? #M3 Yeah, so Peoples for Peace is an organization that wants to pull together all the pro-peace, anti-war forces in the Netherlands, but also more broadly within NATO. The thing that distinguishes us from other, similar protests that have been organized in the past is that we take a distinctly non- -- 1 of 10 -- ideological approach. We have a basic program, which can be found on our website, with a list of about ten demands, and we say that whoever wants to get behind these demands, regardless of any other ideological positions, is welcome to join our coalition. Not just "you're welcome," but we want you to join our coalition, because as we have seen in the past—and to some extent in the present—many anti-war coalitions or groups only focus on one very distinct corner of the ideological or social playing field. This is actually, I think, an ineffective way of organizing, because, well, we have those in the Netherlands and in other countries as well. One could say there are left-radical groups which can mobilize from a few hundred to a few thousand people at most, but who only represent a very small portion of society—and, more importantly, who are always present at such occasions anyway. So, if the radical socialist or Marxist groups with their red flags and such show up to protest, that will not scare the NATO leaders, because they take into account the basic inevitability of them being there. However, if we see a large turnout of people—from right-wing dissident groups to migrant communities to left-wing groups to liberals—so all across the spectrum, people coming together and uniting behind this one theme of "we do not support the war drive that is currently led by NATO," then the NATO leadership can see that their tactics of divide and rule don't work anymore. That will put pressure on NATO leaders, because it's my hypothesis that, especially in Europe, governments do not represent the population at large or working people, but they primarily represent the interests of finance capital. The only way of maintaining a government that is primarily acting on behalf of the interests of such a small fraction of society is by keeping the rest of society divided. And we're trying to break that gridlock. #M2 That's a very good thing to do because you're absolutely right. The peace movement as it exists today, or peace forces in Europe and also in North America, are very much fragmented between left and right and certain center groups that actually kind of look down on each other—or are being made to, or let me put it this way: mainstream narratives continuously try to say, "Oh, these groups cannot march together," or "right-wing groups are racists; therefore, if leftists move with them, they're racist too." I mean, they try to create these divides that then really make any kind of proper peace movement very, very difficult to have. So I congratulate you for that approach. The organization, Peoples for Peace—how old is it, and who are you working with, or how many people are you who try to organize this? #M3 Right. So we're not formally an organization, but a collective of individual peace activists. Of course, some of us are tied to various organizations. But this formation more or less appeared out of another protest organization, which in some way dates back to the American Rage Against the War Machine coalition. So, in February of—I believe—2023, there was, in many ways, a similar attempt at uniting -- 2 of 10 -- a broad coalition of peace groups in the United States, somewhere in February 2023. And on the same day, in various other countries, similar protests were organized, one of them in the Netherlands. Since then, the organization that organized the protest in Amsterdam on that date has been organizing protests against the NATO war drive every month. So, every last Sunday of the month, we are in Amsterdam organizing our protest against the war machine. And so we've been doing that for—well, that's over two years now. The people behind this organization, along with some others we have encountered, joined the coalition. We basically took the initiative sometime last year, saying, "Okay, next year the NATO summit will be in our country, so it is our responsibility to organize a protest." Out of this coalition, Peoples for Peace essentially grew from this group. #M2 I see. I remember the Rage Against the War Machine in Washington, which was rather large, with people like Medea Benjamin and Jimmy Dore and so on, all giving talks and trying to unite. It's good to see that this movement is alive and well and is active now, especially as we are approaching the new NATO summit, which is always a moment when the actual war machine gathers speed again and pushes forward. Let's not forget that it was the 2008 Bucharest summit that basically cemented the idea that Ukraine and Georgia should become NATO members and created much of the havoc we've seen since. What are your fears or expectations about this new NATO summit in your country? #M3 Well, I think this will be, in some way, a landmark NATO summit as well, but in the opposite direction from what Budapest or Bucharest was about 15 years ago, because it's looking like this will be one of the most minimalistic NATO summits in a long time—possibly in NATO history. So, nominally, this was looking to be a rather easy PR win for NATO because the new Secretary General, Mark Rutte, is our previous Prime Minister, and the Netherlands is nominally one of the most pro- NATO countries in the alliance. So, on paper, there would be very little difficulty organizing this in The Hague. Well, in reality, it's starting to look a lot more difficult. Literally half the country's police— people working for the police—are being mobilized to go to The Hague and organize security. And I believe even from Germany and Belgium, additional police forces are being brought in. So it's costing us a lot of money as well. They're talking about, I believe, 186 million euros to organize this two-day summit right now, which is, by the way, more than last year's cuts in public transportation that were announced. So, well, we can see where that money went in some way. But additionally, we as People for Peace recently started working together with another group within the country, which is a group of veterans. And not only will there be very little protest, which was probably what they were hoping for, but veterans who themselves have been active in NATO -- 3 of 10 -- missions will be protesting against the NATO summit, along with the people we bring along, along with people from right-wing dissident movements which grew out of the anti-COVID movement, along with Turkish migrant workers who we're also working together with. So this is a very improbable coalition of forces that will come out to protest, most likely, even though on paper, as I said, there are no signs of any serious dissident anti-NATO movement within the Netherlands. So in that sense, it's probably going to be a PR debacle already, and I believe they are anticipating this. Originally, the idea was to have a NATO summit from June 24th to the 26th, 2024. Right now, it's cut down to just the 24th and 25th. However, there will be no talks whatsoever on the 24th; the NATO leaders will just arrive in the Netherlands and then have a dinner with the heads of state and heads of government. And on the next day, there will be only a few hours of talks, and there's basically been an announcement that the final declaration will not substantially involve anything at all. Because if they—this is what I mean by significant, but in the opposite direction—they're afraid that if they position themselves to take firm decisions, then there will be clashes between the different countries. So, below the surface, there are deep fractures right now within NATO, and they are basically saying, "If we don't decide anything at all, maybe people won't see how divided we are." So this is a sort of way to do damage control, to keep the appearance of a unified bloc, even though in reality there are deep divisions within the NATO bloc itself right now. #M2 I think you're absolutely right. I mean, if you just look at the change of heart the United States had with its new administration and how the Trump team is basically a loose cannon for NATO, and nobody knows where that cannon will take down pillars of NATO dogma next, I suppose that the Europeans must be extremely jumpy at the moment about what they can still achieve with this vehicle, this NATO vehicle. So in this sense, it would be absolutely fantastic if your protest managed to speed up that process of fragmentation inside NATO, because that has for the longest time been their game against others—fragmenting them. Are there... Are you expecting or are you getting any kind of mass media coverage at the moment? I mean, you reached out to me and we are able to talk on YouTube. Have you been successful in getting any kind of attention from traditional media outlets? #M3 Barely. We have, as I believe in any country—including the Netherlands—an alternative media circuit as well, and we have some good contacts there. We have been on a number of different alternative media programs within the Netherlands. Although, well, there's a lot of gains to be made there as well. But in traditional media, no, we have basically been ignored. And actually, we recently found out that, going back to the monthly protests we were doing for two and a half years, this is not just a matter of us not being big enough to be noticed—it was a matter of policy. Because we've been -- 4 of 10 -- doing this monthly for two and a half years and not even once—oh, sorry, one time, about a year and a half ago—a major Dutch newspaper did a story about us where they said we were, of course, funded by Russia. Which is actually quite funny, because if you look at the setup that we're using, there's basically nothing that costs any money. So what would they have to pay for? But that's the only time we got any coverage. However, a few months ago, another protest organization, which is more geared towards the traditional liberal activist groups, was launched—or went public—and they immediately got newspaper stories written about them, interviews with their spokespeople, even on the national nightly news. There were, I would say, basically advertisements made for them. And the Dutch National Press Bureau also wrote a message about them. However, someone made a mistake and included a photo of our protest with their story. So they were aware of our protest because, app