Understanding State Responses to Collective Nativist Violence: White Appeasement in Rotterdam, 1972

Nativist violence illuminates a tension between two pillars of the modern nation-state: on the one hand the concentration of the means of coercion guaranteeing state control and on the self-legitimizing profession of deference to mythological and racialized notions of “the nation”. In this article I examine how states grapple with this challenge, resulting in four types of responses. Three of these: condonement, containement, and suppression, have been empirically studied in various contexts of nativist vigilantism. Subsequently, I present a case study of appeasement, a fourth response to violence that has been empirically overlooked. Prevalent in nation states that nominally reject racism, appeasement is a law generating force turning racial violence into ostensibly non-violent racialized law that seeks to preserve the racial hierarchy. Drawing on a case of nativist vigilantism in Rotterdam (NL), the so-called Afrikaanderwijk riots in 1972, I outline some mechanics by which appeasement comes to be a modus operandi for state officials in racial democracies. During the riots, vigilantes raided the lodgings of Turkish migrant workers in attempts to chase them away from the neighborhood they resided in. Drawing on rich archival material that includes archives from leaders of neighborhood organizations, the city council, court cases, local newspapers, and radio- and television broadcasts, I examine the processes that lead to the Labor-led city government’s attempt to appease the violence by passing discriminatory legislation to limit the presence of migrants in the city through immigrant quotas and lodging closures.