While most people were celebrating the end of 2022, others decided to, um, project racist slogans on the Erasmus Bridge. Sorry, what?
Sentences like “White lives matter,” “Cheerfully white 2023” and “Zwarte Piet did nothing wrong” were shone onto Rotterdam’s iconic bridge.
The police are investigating the case, reports the AD.
Hoe is het mogelijk dat tijdens de jaarwisseling racistische teksten op de Erasmusbrug in Rotterdam konden worden geprojecteerd? #Rotterdam #racisme #burgemeester pic.twitter.com/lXlWvxNydp— Rachid Talbi (@rtalbi) January 1, 2023
Fireworks show organisers had no idea
When Rotterdam’s fireworks show was cancelled due to weather on New Year’s Eve, a mystery projector stepped in, allowing the racist slogans to be seen at midnight. What a way to bring in the new year! 😬
READ MORE: Dutchies completely ignore firework bans, causing chaos and hospitalisations
According to Mark Rouwenhorst, one of the organisers of the called-off firework show, the projection came from one of the apartments facing the bridge.
“During New Year’s Eve, we already saw a text appear on the Erasmus Bridge as ‘Happy New Year,’ but we didn’t pay much attention to it. We did see that the projection came from a flat, and we thought it was a bit mischievous.”
Fascism is alive and well in the Netherlands. They're confident enough to spend New Year's Eve projecting racist slogans for all of Rotterdam to see. Hopefully they're prosecuted. https://t.co/tqLc9gIX8N— Alexander Louis Sallons (@sallonsax) January 2, 2023
“The next morning, we heard what happened to the original text, which is terrible, of course. If we had known that, we would have paid better attention to which residence the projection came from,” said Rouwenhorst to the AD.
READ MORE: Dutch church and monument burns down overnight, likely from fireworks
He also noted that it is not possible to project something from such a distance with your projector from standard stores, so it was probably a professional laser projector made for these kinds of purposes. Suspicious! 🤔
Called out
Many people decided to grab their keyboards and express their opinion on social media. Twitter has been full of reactions, calling the incident a shame.
Mieke Megawati-Vlasblom, a politician from BIJ1 Rotterdam tweeted as well.
“It gives a very unpleasant and unsafe feeling. I saw it on Twitter and immediately thought: racism doesn’t stop, not even on a festive day like today.”
Anyone who has information or has seen the projector is asked to report it to the police.
What do you think of this racist performance? Tell us in the comments below!
Anybody with a drone could have found out where the projector was. The Rotterdam police is known to be racist so they would have found the culprit immediately if someone had projected “Zwart Piet is racism”.