Facebook temporarily shuts down Dutch nationalist page, with 252,000 likes

Facebook closed down the Netherlands’ biggest far-right supporters’ page for a time, the NRC said on Tuesday.

The page, Nederland mijn Vaderland (the Netherlands, my fatherland) had 252,000 likes and was taken offline on Saturday, the paper said. It was back up and running on Tuesday afternoon.

The page was launched in 2004 on Hyves, a Dutch social media network which has since closed down.

Thomas van Elst, one of the page’s four moderators, told the NRC that Facebook had not given a reason for closing down the page. He said the page’s supporters ‘want to keep the Netherlands as it is,’ and that immigration, refugees and the EU were popular topics.

Another of the page’s moderators was behind a call earlier this year to ‘wave goodbye’ to Sylvana Simons, the black television presenter who campaigns against racism and the character of Zwarte Piet, the NRC said.

Between March and June, three other nationalist Facebook communities were taken offline with combined likes of 200,000. A fourth website, campaigning against racist stereotyping, has also been removed.

This article was updated on Tuesday afternoon.