Around 1,000 far-right activists gathered on the Museumplein in Amsterdam on Sunday to protest about immigration and to “defend the Netherlands”.

There was a heavy police presence, with officers on horseback and a water cannon on standby in case of trouble. Last month an anti-immigration protest in The Hague erupted into a riot, with dozens of arrests and attacks on the police, parliament and political party offices.

With Steve McQueen’s film about the impact of World War II on the capital playing on a screen on the Rijksmuseum as a backdrop, the crowd of mostly men listened to short speeches and chanted “Wij zijn Nederland”.

Some carried modern Dutch flags, others the flag used by the Dutch Nazi party, with orange rather than red. One group arriving under police escort carried a large banner with the words “defend Netherlands” in English, lighting orange smoke bombs as they arrived to cheers.

There were a few scuffles with bystanders and police made several arrests, watched by bemused tourists. The Van Gogh museum had closed its doors for the day but the others remained open.

The crowd then moved off under police escort to march along streets surrounding the nearby Vondelpark, following almost the same route as last weekend’s pro-Palestine demonstration, which was attended by some 250,000 people.

Bystanders watched as the demonstrators walked by shouting “AZC, weg ermee” (get rid of refugee centres) and racist and antisemitic chants. One group marching behind the “defend Netherlands” banner sang about GroenLinks-PvdA leader Frans Timmermans, describing him as a “dirty cancer Jew”.

Some demonstrators threw eggs and water bottles at people who leaned out of their windows to show their dislike of the protest, ignoring the organisers’ appeal to them to move on.

Shortly after 4 pm, the first of the demonstrators had returned again to the Museumplein and after taking more photos, began to go home. One group headed to the city centre where they continued to chant and light fireworks.

A number of them were hemmed in by police on the Prinsengracht and police made several arrests.

Meanwhile, some 400 people gathered on the Jonas Daniël Meijerplein, next to the Portuguese synagogue in the city centre, as a counter voice to the far-right protest. That stage had a banner proclaiming “no more fascism” as a backdrop. The event on the Museumplein, one speaker said, was a “festival of hate”.