The Provos were a group ofyoung Dutch anarchists who sought to provoke people into action by utilizing imaginativeforms of direct action, attacking conformity, obedience and consumerism, and developing a new kind of radical politics transcending the class struggle politics of more traditional socialists and anarchists who looked to the working class as the agent of revolutionary change.
‘PROVO’ MAGAZINE LEAFLET
THE ANTI-BOMB MOVEMENT, WHICH SEEMED to be the only dynamic element ' on the Left in Holland, has disappeared up a back alley. The ban-the-bomb groups have given up their work...
The Peace Committee andthe People's Committee do not seem to be able to attract many more supporters and are becoming isolated.
The annual march through Amsterdam, performed with the painful regularity and senselessness of a ritual, only just manages to keep the flame burning.
The Dutch Left will have to find new ways ofachieving real results before it loses its attraction altogether. We believe that nonviolent dissidence is only incidentally appropriate to our ends because it is not happening on a large scale.
When slogans and gestures fail we have to turn to action and attack. We believe that only a revolutionary Left movement can bring about change!
This preference for direct action leads us to anarchist concepts. Anarchism propagates the most direct rebellion against all authority, whether it be democratic or communist.
The Dutch anarchist movement has been languishing since thewar. We want to renew anarchism and spread the word, especially among the younger generation... Why?
— because this capitalist society is poisoning itself with a morbid thirst for money. Its members are brought up to worship Having and despise Being.
— because this bureaucratic society is choking itself with officialdom and suppressing any form of spontaneity. Its members can only become creative, individual people through anti-social conduct.
— because this militaristic society is digging its own grave by a paranoid atomic arms build-up. Its members now have nothing to look forward to but certain death by atomic radiation.
PROVO feels it must make a choice: desperate revolt or cowering defeat. PROVO encourages rebellion wherever it can. PROVO knows it must be the loser in the end, but it cannot miss the chance to thoroughly provoke this society once more.
PROVO sees anarchism as a well of inspiration for the revolt. PROVO wants to renew anarchism and bring it to the young...
The Editorial Board May2S, 1965
BRUSSELS PROVOCATION NO. 1 Ban-the-Bomb March, Brussels, 24 April 1966
As in previous years, thousands of demonstrators will be taken in coaches to Brussels. For the most part, they will be Sunday pacifists and occasional ban-the-bombers. They will demonstrate in a leisurely manner and then, in the evening, happy and satisfied, they will go back home.
IT IS COMPLETELY ABSURD AND RIDICULOUS, it is totally useless taking part in a ban-the-bomb march ifthe next dayyou are going to submit docilely to the authorities and the powers-that-be, who are responsible for keeping up the threat of war and the atomic hazard, or if—except for one single afternoon a year—you let yourselfbe incorporated into a society which, though it may not actually approve of war, nonetheless tolerates it.
To demonstrate against the bomb =TO PROVOKE THE AUTHORI TIES!
A ban-the-bomb march should be a PROVOCATION against the power structure, the authorities and the submissive and complicit crowd!
WHAT IS THE PROVOTARIA17
What is the Provotariat? Provos, beatniks, pleiners, nozems, teddy-boys, rockers, blousons noirs, hooligans, mangupi, students, artists, misfits, anarchists, ban-the-bombers... Those who don't want a career and who lead irregular lives; those who come from the asphalt jungles ofLondon, Paris, Amsterdam, New York, Moscow, Tokyo, Berlin, Milan, Warsaw and who feel ill-adapted to this society.
The Provotariat is the last element of rebellion in our ‘developed' countries. The Proletariat is the slave of the politicians. Watching TV. It has joined its old enemy, the bourgeoisie, and now constitutes with the bourgeoisie a huge grey mass. The new class opposition in our countries is the Provotariat against this mass.
But the Provotariat is not a class—its make-up is too heterogeneous for that.
ANARCHY DEMANDS REVOLUTION
‘PROVO' despairs of the coming of Revolution and Anarchy. Nevertheless it puts its faith in anarchism; for ‘PROVO' anarchism is the only admissible social concept. It is ‘PROVO's ideological weapon against the authoritarian forces which oppose us.
Ifthe Provotariat (so far) lacks the strength for revolution there is still—PROVOcation.
Provocation—with all its little pin pricks—has, inthe face of circumstances, become our only weapon. It is our last chance to smash the authorities in their vital, soft parts. By our acts of provocation we force authority to tear off its mask. Uniforms, boots, kepis, swords, truncheons, fire hoses, police dogs, tear gas and all the other means of repression the authorities hold in reselVe they must be forced to use against us. They will thus be forced to show their real nature; chin forward, eye-brows wrinkled, eyes glazed with rage, threatening left and right, commanding, forbidding, convicting.
They will make themselves more and more unpopular and the popular conscience will ripen for anarchy. THE CRISIS WILL COME. It is our last chance. A PROVOKED CRISIS FOR THE AUTHORITIES.
Such is the enormous provocation called for from the International Provotariat by ‘PROVO' —Amsterdam.
PROVOKE!!!
The following excerpts are from the Provo pamphlet, “In Memoriam for Western Civilization," written by Roel van Duyn. The various “White Plans" referred to were specific action plans that the Provos tried to put into practice, such as the “White Bike Plan," where the Provos distributed white bicycles throughout Amsterdam to make them freely available to counteract automobile culture (“automobilism"). Years later, variations on the White Bike Plan have been implemented in a variety of cities. most recently Paris, with bikes being provided eitherforfree orfor a reasonablefee in order to cut down on automobile pollution and congestion.
HOW TO PROVOCATE
THE PlAYING PROVOTARIAT MUST BE VERY clever in his play. But it must be a play that has the appearance of a very intelligent struggle on the basis of a revolutionary conception but, nevertheless, is a play. Because for authoritarian ethics which preaches forced labour and utility, play is not useful and voluntary labourlessness a permanent provocation. It is self-evident that the writers ofletters-to-the-editor wish that we were in work camps.
Our tactic in the attack against authoritarian society must consist of a combination of reformism and provocism. Against each part of the social machine we must act by constructive White Plans as well as by negative provocations. Positive and negative, but in both extremes. On one side we must show by reformist White Plans how society should be, and on the other hand, we must show by provocations how the society is in reality. Our provocations must create crises so that in the confusion the White Plans have more of an opportunity to be realized. The ultimate consequence of this reform provocating tactic is the direct solidarity between the provotariats in super-cultivated countries and the proletariat in the undeveloped countries.
Against the authoritarian society we place the anarchistic one. The political accent here lies not with the authorities at the top but with the producers and consumers at the basis. They rule economic life according to the three political principles of anarchism: Federalism, antimilitarism, and collectivist property.
Against the authoritarian ethic we place the free one. We are against the ethics of monogamy because this maintains in general poor sexual relations, and we stand for the White Wife Plan of which the principle is total amoral promiscuity. Secondly the White Wife Plan is directed toward the emancipation of women...
Against the slavery of the consumer we place his being conscious. The consumer must be informed about all he consumes and the way in which it is to be consumed from the point of view of the consumer. Against the expensive and too inferior products the consumer must be brought into action.
The consumer boycott is the only form of economic resistance that shall be possible in the labourless future, when people as a whole are no longer part of the production system. To strike at production like the workers do and have done shall be impossible then. To strike at consumption is the only alternative. And also now widespread conscious consumer action can have deep consequences.
The evident forms of super-culture like nuclear armaments, the spoiling of the air and food poisoning are the greatest objects for agitation, because they are evidently faulty. Even the authorities can make nuclear armaments under false pretences, because everybody knows that the preparation for an atomic war is a crime against humanity.
More and more cities start to close their centres against private automobile traffic.
The White Bike Plan is an effective provocation because an enormous army of workers is involved in the auto-industry: one of seven Americans. By accentuating the White Bike as a public means of transport it is also a provocation of authoritarian private property. Traffic is also the eternal pretext of the authorities to maintain public order.
The White Chimney Plan has the same effect. It accentuates fresh air as collective property and resists against exploiting this collective property by big industry and automobilism.
And these provocations are only the beginning; or should the provos accept without resistance the pollution of their food, of their soil and water?
...[ Olur provocations in the immediate future... must focus on
1. the making of consumer consciousness and
2. the resistance against the planologic catastrophe by actions against cars, the
Increase of people and pollution. Concerning world politics the provotariat in
The welfare states has to play the role of the fifth column of the enormous armies of the hungry proletarians in the underdeveloped countries.
THIS MUST BE THE BASIS OF PROVOMONDO!
Roel van Duyn November 12, 1966
THE WHITE BIKE PlAN Amsterdamers:
The asphalt terror of the motorized bourgeoisie has lasted long enough. Human sacrifices are made daily to this latest idol ofthe idiots: car power. Choking carbon monoxide is its incense, its image contaminates thousands ofcanals and streets.
PROVO’S BICYCLE PLAN will liberate us from the car monster. PROVO introduces the WHITE BICYCLE, a piece of PUBLIC PROPERTY...
The white bicycle is never locked. The white bicycle is the first free communal transport. The white bicycle is a provocation against capitalist private property, for the white bicycle is anarchistic. The white bicycle can be used by anyone who needs it and then must be left for someone else. There will be more and more white bicycles until everyone can use white transport and the car peril is past. The white bicycle is a symbol of simplicity and cleanliness in contrast to the vanity and foulness of the authoritarian car. In other words:
A BIKE IS SOMETHING, BUT ALMOST NOTHING!
WHITE SCHOOL PlAN CALL TO ACTION!
Hanging over your head all the time is the threat of:
—getting kicked out of school, temporarily or for good;
— all kinds of penal measures such as disciplinary work and detention, and sometimes even physical punishment like getting beat up, having hair pulled, being kicked, etc.
The time has come for secondary school pupils to act in unison to shake themselves free of the crushing yoke of dogmatic conservatism by means of several planned ‘white’ actions.
They must take the democratic process within the schools into their own hands, because the educational leaders, both inside and outside the schools, are clinging to obsolete standards that hinder full concentration on studies and poison the atmosphere in which this happens.
An important aspect of this democratic process is the student-teacher relationship. The headmaster always sticks to the attitude of The party is always right,’ a frustrating influence on the personality, which is noticeable in the level of achievement. A school is primarily a living community in which one is supposed to associate on a basis of equality.
As a revolutionary answer to the problem we propose to establish the S. O.S., STICHTING OPSTANDIGE SCHOUEREN (Institute of Revolutionary Pupils), which in turn will launch the WHITE SCHOOL PLAN.
Whenever headmasters will not listen to the demands we make under the White School Plan, we shall be forced to press them home by means oflarge-scale actions such as school strikes, boycotting of teachers, sit-ins, sit-downs (with or without smoke bombs), inflammatory leaflets...
World History
