The Dutch Terrorists: The racist conspiracy theory you’ve never heard of
By: Madelaine Lucy Hanson
Tags: History, Facts, Politics, Britain, Racism

The Dutch Terrorists: The racist conspiracy theory you’ve never heard of

The flames lick high around the rooftops of one of London’s landmarks, and the citizens look on in horror, gaping up as their world crumbles around them. How could this happen? Surely something darker was at play? Was this deliberate?

No, this wasn’t Grenfell. Or even the St Pancras fire. The year is 1666 and London is burning. Mile after mile of ancient London crumbles to ash, the rich alongside the poor, the weak as helpless as the strong, and the natives as powerless as the newcomers. And in the heat and the smoke, hysteria started brewing. No, this wasn’t an accident, people started whispering. This was deliberate. This was terrorism. This was the Dutch.

Everyone loves a good scapegoat. Has this ever changed?

Naturally, this probably made you laugh a little. The Dutch today are only considered terrifying to a very niche bunch of evangelist Brexiteers with a pathological fear of Brussels. But back then, they were thought of in a very similar way to how many people view Jewish or Pakistani communities in Britain today. There’s an uncannily offensive open memo written in the 1600s that demands that they are not allowed to settle in Britain and obtain citizenship, noting that “They do not integrate…they do not wish to marry us, worship with us…be friends with us or learn our language.” Sound familiar? That’s just the beginning. The same piece complains that they make their fortunes and return home to the Netherlands without spending it in the community. Some things never change. I digress.

So smoke-filled, horrified London starts whipping itself into a frenzy. They start attacking foreigners in the street, looking for anyone who looks ‘foreign’ (here meaning blonde and tall). It gets so bad that a Swedish immigrant, about to go visit his extramarital lady friend, is forced to stay in to avoid the mob. Elsewhere, gangs attack Dutch and French families fleeing their homes with goods in wagons, believing them to be in on the ‘attack’. The mobs claim to have found gunpowder on Dutch immigrants in the street, or books with lurid and slightly fanciful and unbelievable titles such as “the jewishe goverment (sic)”.

The fear of the other ends up costing more lives than the fire itself: there are accounts throughout the city of lynchers and hitmen going after hundreds of immigrants in the city from French and Dutch backgrounds, far more than the 9 lives the fire is known to have claimed. Figures are hazy in this time period, particularly when historians who want to paint Britain as great and civilised choose to quietly ignore questions around mass murder for several hundred years. This is certain, however: the Coldstream Guards (foot soldiers in the army) became so pre-occupied with hunting foreigners that there were more involved in the witch hunt than the number fighting the fire.

What am I trying to say? Yes, this is silly and ridiculous. Of course, the fire was started, as is documented and widely proven, from a badly maintained oven in a dodgy backwater called Pudding Lane. But fear sells. Fear kills. Hysteria and hatred of the other is ancient, callous, stupid, ugly and primitive. It’s nothing new: whether it’s the Muslims, the Jewish “Zionist” community, the Catholics, the Mexicans, the Africans or the lesbians, people have always chosen to blame minorities and immigrants for disasters and devastation.

So maybe think twice the next time you see a conspiracy theory.