Provo (movement)

Provo was a Dutch counterculture movement in the mid-1960s that focused on provoking violent responses from authorities using non-violent bait. It was preceded by the nozem movement and followed by the hippie movement. Provo was founded, on 25 May 1965, by Robert Jasper Grootveld, an anti-smoking activist, and the anarchists Roel van Duijn and Rob Stolk. The term was used for the movement as a whole and for individual members. Provo was officially disbanded on 13 May 1967.

The Provos are thought to have evolved out of the artist Robert Jasper Grootveld's anti-smoking happenings in June 1964. The following year other groups appeared as a fusion of small groups of youths around the pacifist ban-the-bomb movement. Roel van Duijn is thought to have been the group's theorist, influenced by anarchism, Dadaism, Herbert Marcuse and the Marquis de Sade.

The Provos borrowed their name from Wouter Buikhuisen, who in doctoral dissertation in 1965, talked about “young trouble-makers” as "provos", a word derived from the Dutch word provoceren meaning to provoke.

Bernhard de Vries states that the Provos comprised four groups of people:

Harry Mulisch's book, Bericht aan de rattenkoning (Message to the Rat King, 1966), reflects upon the riots following the Telegraaf’s coverage on a worker’s death in a protest:

While their parents, seated on refrigerators and washing machines, watched TV with their left eyes, and their cars with their right eyes, a mixer in one hand and the Telegraaf in the other, the kids left Saturday evening for the Spui square.

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