THE HAGUE--Thousands of homophobic messages have been posted beneath social media updates from Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten, with an investigation finding that roughly one in every 20 replies to his official X account contained anti-gay abuse. And that's just via X (formerly Twitter). Many experts believe when all of social media is taken together, Jetten's online abuse can be classified as extreme.
The findings provide a new picture of the scale and persistence of the hostility directed at Jetten, the Netherlands’ first openly gay prime minister. Earlier this year, Jetten said he receives threats related to his sexual orientation every day and that the abuse results in police reports being filed every week.
Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, AD, analysed 45,860 replies to 323 posts published from Jetten’s official account during his first six months in office. Of those replies, 2,293 were classified as homophobic.
The abuse was not confined to posts dealing with LGBTQI+ issues. According to the investigation, homophobic responses appeared beneath routine government and personal messages, including a congratulatory post for Queen Máxima, as well as posts concerning Amsterdam Pride.
AD identified two recurring forms of abuse. Some users posted direct homophobic slurs, while a much larger number repeatedly posted an insinuating question asking whether Jetten had told the people he was meeting that he was gay.
That question appeared hundreds of times, often beneath posts that had nothing to do with his sexual orientation.
The investigation also found that most of the abuse did not come from a small number of anonymous accounts. The large majority of users posted one homophobic reply and did not return. The 10 most active accounts together were responsible for less than six percent of the total.
Among the repeat posters that could be identified were a municipal official, an employee of the police and a member of the Dutch air force.
The involvement of public employees raises additional questions about professional conduct, even where the comments may not meet the legal threshold for criminal prosecution.
Marloes van Noorloos, professor of criminal law at Leiden University, told AD that some of the insinuating comments could be difficult to prosecute as hate speech or criminal insult because much depends on their wording and context. Public servants, however, could potentially face disciplinary action under employment rules.
The findings add to concerns Jetten has raised repeatedly about the treatment of LGBTQI+ people online.
At his first weekly news conference as prime minister on February 27, Jetten said he had been dealing with severe anti-gay hatred for around a decade.
“I have been dealing with terrible anti-gay hatred for ten years. That leads to threats every day, that leads to police reports every week,” he said.
Jetten has spoken publicly about the issue for years. In 2020, while serving as D66 parliamentary leader, he released a video in which he read aloud examples of homophobic messages directed at him online, saying at the time that such messages were reaching him on a daily basis.
He returned to the subject in later years, warning that anti-gay language in schools, workplaces, sports clubs and public spaces could have a wider impact on LGBTQI+ people who may feel unsafe being open about their identity.
During the 2023 election campaign, Jetten also said he had received serious threats following a televised political debate and that several reports had been filed with police.
Since becoming prime minister, he has increasingly linked his own experience with wider concerns about the role of social media platforms.
Speaking at the WorldPride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam last month, Jetten said major social media companies were doing too little to control hate speech and warned that online hostility was becoming increasingly visible and aggressive.
He said the Netherlands needed to reverse a decline in its international standing on LGBTQI+ rights and return to the group of countries considered global leaders in equality and protection.
X prohibits attacks against users based on sexual orientation under its own rules, but AD reported that relatively little action appeared to have been taken against many of the accounts involved.
The investigation suggests that the problem facing Jetten is not simply the work of a handful of persistent trolls. Instead, the abuse appears to be spread across a much broader group of users, repeatedly surfacing beneath even routine messages from the prime minister.
For Jetten, who has now spoken about the issue across several years and political roles, the latest findings put numbers behind a problem he has long described publicly: homophobic hostility remains a regular part of his online life, even at the highest level of Dutch government.
