Dutch active on hacked neo-Nazi forum: report

Multiple Dutch right-wing extremists were active for years on an international, fascist web forum that is linked to a violent neo-Nazi group and a number of murders in the United States, AD reports based on countless messages posted on the closed forum Iron March which hackers released late last year. The Dutch AD identified tried to set up a new organization in the Netherlands, and raged against gay people, Jews and Muslims.

Iron March was active online until 2017. Late last year hackers released hundreds of usernames, email and IP addresses, and countless private messages and group chat conversations online.The forum attracted neo-Nazis, fascists and other right wing extremists from around the world. The slogan on the site was: "Gasify the Jews! Race war now!". AD found between 10 and 15 users on the database which it identified as almost certainly Dutch based on statements or personal data.

In August 2017 a Dutch person contacted a representative of a well-known Australian neo-Nazi group. "I want to set up a movement in the Netherlands with a few friends, can I ask you some questions about the right tactics?" he asked, according to AD. The Australian advised him to always search new members for eavesdropping equipment, and always communicate via secure email addresses. This same Dutch person wondered way the "muzzies", Muslims according to the newspaper, cannot attack Gay Pride in Amsterdam.

A boy from the east of the Netherlands bragged about his grandfather fighting on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. Another Dutch person, who calls himself "Batavian Fascist", said he went to the Ukraine to fight with a right-wing extremist battalion in the civil war. A student in Leiden called Amsterdam a degenerate "sewer full of left-wing activists and Jews". One posted a video of NSB members marching through Amsterdam in 1940, describing these as "better times".

A Dutch person known as "white mamba" on the forum wrote that they "decided to take up the battle", according to the newspaper. "Democracy fails, our country is in decline without respect for old Dutch norms and values. Logically, fascism is the only solution."

As far as is known, Dutch users of this forum did not commit actual violence. But in the United States, at least three members are linked to murders. One is currently on trial for stabbing a Jewish and gay classmate to death. An 18-year-old is in custody for killing two roommates in 2017. And a third was arrested the day after the 2017 murders. The police found guns, ammunition, and bulletproof vests in his car, and equipment to build a bomb in his garage.

According to AD, Dutch members of the forum expressed condolences for the arrested Americans.

Both the Dutch coordinator for counter-terrorism NCTV and security service AIVD warned of increasing aggression from right-wing extremists in recent security advice. "Right-wing extremist groups in the Netherlands are marginal and not violent," the NCTV said in its December assessment. "But a right-wing terrorist attack by a loner is conceivable. This assessment is mainly based on the possibility that an (online) loner will radicalize and commit an act of right-wing extremist violence."

AIVD said that it is "concerned that the (online) language use in the right-wing extremist scene has become increasingly aggressive and inciting in recent years".