Provo (movement)

Provo was a Dutch counterculture movement in the mid-1960s that focused on provoking violent responses from authorities using non-violent bait.

Provo was founded, on 25 May 1965, by Robert Jasper Grootveld, an anti-smoking activist, and the anarchists Roel van Duijn and Rob Stolk.

It contained the "Provo manifesto", written by Roel van Duijn, and reprinted recipes for bombs from a nineteenth-century anarchist pamphlet.

[1] In Provo #12, the magazine was described as a monthly sheet for anarchists, provos, beatniks, pleiners, scissors-grinders, jailbirds, simple simon stylites, magicians, pacifists, potato-chip chaps, charlatans, philosophers, germ-carriers, grand masters of the queen's horse, happeners, vegetarians, syndicalists, santy clauses, kindergarten teachers, agitators, pyromaniacs, assistant assistants, scratchers and syphilitics, secret police, and other riff-raff.

List of the White Plans: Tensions with the police peaked in June 1966, when the construction worker Jan Weggelaar died during a demonstration.

[6] In London a "Death and Rebirth of International Times" happening, after a police raid of the first UK underground paper, was seen as a Provo event.

The Manifest provokatie nr. 12 , 12 May 1966. Held in the Nationaal Archief