Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson Use Dutch Farmer Protest for Political Goals and Conspiracy Theories

Dutch media is wide­ly report­ing on remarks by Don­ald Trump express­ing sup­port for Dutch farm­ers protest­ing pro­posed envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions they believe will adverse­ly impact their liveli­hoods. Accord­ing to a Dutchre­view report:

In a two-hour speech, Trump expressed his sup­port for Dutch farm­ers and par­tic­u­lar­ly appre­ci­at­ed their resis­tance to the cli­mate cri­sis. Clas­sic. The ex-Amer­i­can pres­i­dent pre­sent­ed his thoughts to a crowd of young con­ser­v­a­tives in Tam­pa, Flori­da. This is what he had to say: “At the moment, Dutch farm­ers are brave­ly resist­ing the cli­mate tyran­ny of the Dutch gov­ern­ment, which wants to cut their pro­duc­tion rig­or­ous­ly despite increas­ing food short­ages.” When ref­er­enc­ing the Dutch farm­ers again, he point­ed out their “peace­ful” protests. Who’s going to tell him about the minister’s house riot and the ambu­lance road­blocks? While you may be think­ing: “Why does Trump even care about the Dutch farm­ers?” they’re actu­al­ly the per­fect demo­graph­ic to ref­er­ence for his (main­ly) rur­al Amer­i­can audi­ence. Marieke de Vries — cor­re­spon­dent for the NOS — explains that Trump is using the Dutch farmer sit­u­a­tion to gain the sen­ti­ment of rur­al Amer­i­cans, who also fear that they’ll have to change lifestyles too due to the cli­mate cri­sis. Start­ing to see the pat­tern here? As Trump prais­es the farm­ers for their rejec­tion of the nitro­gen poli­cies and incites rebel­lion against the “cli­mate fanat­ics”, he’s sim­ply play­ing the polit­i­cal game.

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Anoth­er Dutch report by Alge­meen Dag­blad (AD) cites an ana­lyst who believes that Trump’s remarks are con­gru­ent with con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about a delib­er­ate­ly cre­at­ed food cri­sis to con­trol the world’s pop­u­la­tion, an idea ampli­fied by Fox News star Tuck­er Carlson:

Trump repeat­ed in his speech what has been around among con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists for some time, notes Kather­ine Keneal­ly, who mon­i­tors Amer­i­can extrem­ists on behalf of the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute for Strate­gic Dia­logue. Online groups that have been work­ing for months on a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry about a delib­er­ate­ly cre­at­ed food cri­sis to con­trol the world’s pop­u­la­tion with hunger, are now talk­ing a lot about Dutch farm­ers. “Trump is say­ing what a large part of his sup­port­ers want to hear,” Keneal­ly thinks. “Anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ists and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists share the Dutch protests to sup­port their own sto­ry. They use a lot of fear-mon­ger­ing: the gov­ern­ment does this not because of nature, but to con­trol the pop­u­la­tion. They say: the Dutch are ruled by the new world order and it is the TURN of the US.” That’s what right-wing TV com­men­ta­tor and one of Trump’s most promi­nent allies Tuck­er Carl­son sug­gest­ed on Fox News, in one of Amer­i­ca’s most-watched cur­rent affairs pro­grams: that Dutch wildlife pol­i­cy is a har­bin­ger of what Amer­i­cans would face, “if we allow it.”

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The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) has already report­ed exten­sive­ly on Tuck­er Carl­son’s ongo­ing ampli­fi­ca­tion of Russ­ian talk­ing points on Ukraine.

The AD report also notes that far-right Dutch politi­cian Thier­ry Baudet, founder of the Forum for Democ­ra­cy polit­i­cal par­ty, is also help­ing to spread anoth­er promi­nent con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry known as the “Great Reset,” which alleges an inter­na­tion­al plot to weak­en nation­al sov­er­eign­ty. In an inter­view with the far-right Epoch Times, Baudet claimed:

“How is it pos­si­ble that in an age where everybody’s talk­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of food short­ages, of inse­cure sup­ply chains, the Dutch gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing this pol­i­cy which will lead to even more depen­dence on inter­na­tion­al sup­ply chains and, thus, uncer­tain­ty for the Dutch peo­ple?” Baudet said on July 8. “The answer is the peo­ple gov­ern­ing this coun­try are fol­low­ing the script writ­ten by the EU, to real­ize what they call a Great Reset. They want to make us more depen­dent on inter­na­tion­al sup­ply chains. They want to weak­en Dutch sov­er­eign­ty and autonomy.

The AD report also says that the same the­o­ry was out­lined by For­mer Forum for Democ­ra­cy mem­ber Eva Vlaardinger­broek on a Tuck­er Carl­son episode. Baudet was iden­ti­fied in a GIOR report on the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Alliance.

The AD also reports that “admir­ing tweets” for the Dutch farm­ers’ protest have come from Jack Poso­biec, an indi­vid­ual cov­ered exten­sive­ly in anoth­er recent GIOR report on US ampli­fiers of Russ­ian propaganda.