Evert Mouw, one of the first users of the website Stormfront is demanding large damages from research group Kafka. He wrongly believes that he has been portrayed as a “convinced National Socialist and Hitler supporter”..
"I'm afraid we'll never get rid of the Jews." It is 5 May 1998 and Sleeve (1976) writes about his ideas about Jews. On this day, 53 years after World War II has ended in the Netherlands, Sleeve emails on the English-language e-mail discussion list of the website Stormfront that “we” will be a year or 50 already tried to get rid of Jews. “And look at the results!”, he exclaims. He also has a proposal for a more effective approach. “We must focus on the weakness of our enemy. And the weakness of the Jews is their love of money.”
Aside from the ghastly anti-Semitic, murderous and Nazi content of the message, two things stand out. First, that Sleeve seems to feel at home on this discussion list. And second, that he is the Nazi ideology that drives this mailing list, fully embraces: 'we will never get rid of the Jews. We tried some 50 years ago’. Sleeve leaves nothing to the imagination in whose tradition he places himself: National Socialism, the Third Reich and the mass murder of the Jews.
But take a step back. What was the context of these messages? Sleeve became active on the internet in the mid-1990s, which was still in its infancy at the time. Websites consisted only of letters, good search engines had not yet been invented and discussions took place on very fledgling forums or on mailing lists. Sleeve managed to find a place in this global maze that was an extension of his political interests: Stormfront was in 1990 founded by American neo-Nazi Don Black and from 1996 a first website was launched. It was therefore one of the very first right-wing extremist places on the internet. In addition to a very rudimentary website, an international mailing list is the most important stage on which the Stormfront supporters can express ideas in the early years. That mailing list is, not surprising, dominated by American neo-Nazis. All the more remarkable that there are between those Americans 1997 a Dutchman also reports: Evert Mouw, a 21-year-old IT specialist from the Veluwe. From his first post, he continues to post with some regularity, at least until mid 1999.
Those contributions fit the National Socialist character of Stormfront. Sleeve regularly writes negatively about the relationship between Jews and the 'Aryan race'. According to Sleeve, Jews would be a danger to "Aryans". Because Jews “control” the media and world trade and strive for a multicultural world. This would make the differences between the “races” less clear, as a result of which " hun presence is also less visible”. A multicultural and international world would be good for Jewish trade profits, says Sleeve, but a danger to “Aryans”. “We want an Aryan world” writes Sleeve. “Where our way of life is leading” he continues. Sleeve ends this argument as he invariably does with his posts with: ‘Heil’ of “Heil to all”.
Not only Jews are affected by the contributions of Sleeve. Also black people considers Sleeve as a threat and are negatively qualified by him. “It is their oldest wish”, writes Sleeve “to enslave the white race”. According to Sleeve, this wish stems from the self-awareness of black people “that they know they are Untermenschen”. Sleeve writes that black men feel they have to destroy white culture through “white women who have already lost their Aryan spirit” by “pumping their sperm into white women”.
The intimately connected biologically determined contradictions between the "white race" observed by Sleeve, Jews and black people is one of the core elements of National Socialism. But not only this race thinking and virulent anti-Semitism are embraced by Evert Sleeve during this period. Also the National Socialist ideology as a whole, the driving force behind the Stormfront mailing list, endorsed by Sleeve. In a strategic exchange on this list, the question is raised how National Socialism can be popularized. Evert Sleeve does have ideas about that. It all comes down to good communication, he says, in which whites tell the truth about race, National Socialism , Jews and international finance. Sleeve realizes very well that this is not easy, because these concepts are burdened with “emotional connotations”. Therefore, he suggests such words (as race and National Socialism) to take on a positive meaning, of, if that didn't work, replacing them with new ones for the listening public, positive words.
Expressions of Sleeve on mailing list Stormfront
But in further strategic discussions on the same mailing list, Evert Sleeve turns out not only to have ideas about spreading ideas and whitewashing National Socialism and anti-Semitism. He also reflects on practical ways of realizing these ideals. And one theme that stands out is the use of violence. "We have to", he writes “not afraid to use violence”. But he advises his readers on Stormfront not to apply ill-considered and poorly organized violence on instrumental grounds.. “It will turn the media and the white masses against us,” predicts Sleeve. No, Sleeve sees it a bit bigger. “We must” he writes before continuing in capital letters “PREPARING FOR A WAR ON ALL FRONTS”. To close his message again with “Heil!”.
When another user on the Stormfront mailing list in a discussion about how “the Jews” should be “defined” signed a message with the violent and Nazi battle cry RAHOWA, Evert Sleeve responds by typing in his answer under RAHOWA “I agree with 14 words”. This conversation seems cryptic to an outsider. But within far-right circles, RAHOWA is a well-known abbreviation for Racial Holy War, a call to engage in a racist race struggle. And Sleeve's “14 words” are also a lot usedunderstanding within the extreme right. It refers to the famous slogan 'We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children' by the neo-Nazi David Lane. Lane was a member of the neo-Nazi group The Order and was jailed for more than a hundred years in the 1980s for his part in the murder of Alan Berg, a Jewish talk show host.
In 1998 Evert Sleeve builds his own website, which he describes as “racist” in his own words. The website, of modest size (total of seven pages), contains an extensive overview with click-through links to neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial websites such as those of the Klu Klux Klan, ‘White Pride Worldwide’ en de CP’86. But most striking is the prominent link to a download of Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'. At that time it was still completely clear that the distribution of Mein Kampf in the Netherlands was not only controversial, but also criminal. Also at that time Mein Kampf, for the same reasons, almost impossible to obtain in the Netherlands. Through this link, Evert Sleeve makes this Nazi Bible accessible to his supporters. By the way, it won't be the last. In 2004 Evert Sleeve offers another Dutch neo-Nazi digital shelter on his server Germanic.info. This other neo-Nazi posts an html version of Mein Kampf here and then advertises it on the Stormfront forum.
Convinced National Socialist and Hitler supporter
In 2005 we published an article about the Stormfront website on our website, which at the time housed a forum, with a very large and active Dutch section. Sleeve appears sideways in this article, as an example of one of the first Dutch people who was active on this website. We qualify him as someone who presents himself as a "convinced National Socialist and Hitler supporter". In 2023 Sleeve subpoenas both journalists from De Volkskrant, The Daily Standard to appear as Kafka at a court hearing. Our qualification would be “unlawful”., have no “sound factual basis” and assault “the honor and good name of Sleeve”.. Sleeve claims to have incurred twenty thousand euros in “immaterial damage”.. Why Evert Sleeve, who himself has never made a secret that he was active on Stormfront, now suddenly states that this statement is illegal, is a mystery to us. After all, the article has been online for more than fifteen years. And his racism, fierce anti-Semitism, orientation towards National Socialism, violence and Hitler, in an environment like that of Stormfront, justifies the qualifications we have used.
political career
After Sleeve has stopped writing on Stormfront, he remains active in the extreme right-wing political world. In 1999 he says he is a member of the New National Party (NNP). De NNP can be regarded as an indirect successor to the CP'86 and Sleeve writes an article for the newsletter for this party. Quarrels arise within the NNP, because of the sale of Nazi CDs by the prominent member Jan Teijn. Teijn is a district councilor for the NNP in Rotterdam and the quarrel is so high that he leaves the party a few months later (in 2003) to form a new party, of Nationale Alliantie (NA). Evert Sleeve follows Teijn with some delay. In 2004 he indicates that he has become a member of the NA and, just like with the NNP, Sleeve begins to write for this party's newsletter. After that, Sleeve is not visible in the extreme right landscape for years. Until he shows up at a demonstration of Right in Resistance. Right in Resistance is a split from Pegida Netherlands and came in January 2018 big in the news for laying down a decapitated mannequin at an Amsterdam mosque under construction. About a month or two after this shocking and controversial action, Sleeve is present at a demonstration of the Right in Resistance in the same city, directed against the construction of the same mosque.
In 2019 Sleeve no longer focuses on obscure parties and organizations as described above, but on an established far-right party, Forum for Democracy (FVD). Sleeve writes a positive article about Baudet's controversial 'boreal' victory speech, after the big win of the Provincial Council elections 2019. Baudet retweeted this article. And a year later, Sleeve and Baudet are together in one program of the broadcaster Ongehoord Nederland.
If we should summarize the development of Evert Sleeve's 25-year political career in one word, then that would be consistency. sleeve it, with some breaks in between, almost always been active in political organizations, platforms and demonstrations on the extreme right side of the political landscape. In addition, the way in which these activities are viewed by the outside world has changed considerably. Were the NNP and the National Alliance extremely controversial extreme right-wing organizations at the time that Sleeve was active there, this is now much less the case for FvD. But that is different for the hard anti-Semitism and the other extremist expressions that Sleeve 25 years ago on Stormfront. These are seen as extremely problematic throughout society to this day. That Sleeve is now trying to brush away that reality with legal action, shows no self-reflection.
