Vaccine passes in Europe spur the pandemic’s second wave of protests
By Rick Noack and Kate Brady,
Geoffroy Van der Hasselt AFP via Getty Images
PARIS — When French President Emmanuel Macron announced a mandatory health pass last month — requiring vaccination, immunity or a recent coronavirus test to access trains, restaurants and other venues — pharmacy worker Agnès Biblot felt an immediate impact in the eastern French city of Nancy. Within days, interest in getting vaccinated surged.
Two weeks later, the vaccine-skeptical nation celebrated hitting its end-of-August target for the number of first shots more than one month ahead of schedule.
But at Biblot’s pharmacy, the enthusiasm took a sudden and unexpected hit. On July 24, panicked staffers and pedestrians had to take shelter behind the shop windows, some of them struggling to breathe through the tear gas that floated in the air. Outside, a small group of protesters attacked and dismantled a coronavirus testing site that had been set up in a tent. They attempted to shatter a window of the pharmacy.
“We’re still afraid,” Biblot said this past week. The pharmacy has resumed offering vaccinations and coronavirus tests. But Biblot said she and her co-workers keep asking themselves what will happen during the next protests.
On Saturday, for the fourth week, demonstrators across France are expected to rally against the restrictions that are set to take full effect on Monday. More than 200,000 people showed up last weekend.
Some of those demonstrating in France are from industries directly affected by new government policies: nurses who oppose a vaccine mandate for health-care workers, or restaurant employees who object to being asked to enforce health pass requirements.
The protesters also include people who express more generalized exasperation, who say they have had enough with what they characterize as government overreach. Both in France and in Germany, some protesters — rallying alongside far-right activists and anti-Semitic slogans — have accused their governments of resembling the Nazi regime.
In an interview published this past week, Macron called the protesters’ attitude “a threat to democracy.”
Officials in the European countries that have recently imposed or discussed near-mandates — including Germany and Italy — see the public on their side. They cite broad support for restrictions on unvaccinated people.
Acceptance of coronavirus vaccines has been on the rise in many previously skeptical nations, including France. Though less than half of those surveyed in France last year said they want to get vaccinated, more 65 percent have now received a first shot.
Meanwhile, support for anti-mandate protests remains limited. Whereas France’s yellow vest movement and its objections to inequality were cheered on by more than two thirds of the population at its peak in 2018, only about one third agree with the current protesters’ demands.
But governments have been surprised by the size of the protests, especially in Paris, which tends to be quiet in August. And a string of attacks on vaccination centers, death threats against politicians and social media chatter about further violent actions have alarmed security officials and experts.
Michel Euler
AP
People opposed to the health passes stage a protest next to a cafe terrace in Paris on Aug. 5.
“There’s a risk of an emotionalization or an escalation,” said extremism researcher Julia Ebner. She added that there are signs of a strengthened “alliance between vaccination opponents and right-wing extremists” amid the recent debate over vaccine mandates in Europe.
In an internal memo last month, analysts with France’s Interior Ministry reportedly warned that “the longer the conflict lasts, the greater the risk that the most determined, followed by the most radical, manage to take control,” as was the case with the yellow-vest movement.
The protesters this time tend to be younger and more urban, said Antoine Bristielle, a public opinion researcher with the Jean-Jaurès Foundation.
Extremism researchers are worried that far-right groups may be seeking to exploit the rallies as recruiting grounds, as they have tried — in some cases successfully — in Germany since last year.
Anti-lockdown protesters sparked widespread condemnation last August when they breached police barricades and made their way onto the steps of the German parliament building, the Reichstag, in Berlin. They appeared to have been incited by false rumors that then-President Trump had arrived in the German capital to free them from what they viewed as a “dictatorship” of coronavirus restrictions.
Since then, Germany’s Querdenker group — a loose affiliation of pandemic skeptics that unites homeopathy advocates and people trivializing the Holocaust — has become smaller but more hardened in its beliefs, said Josef Holnburger, co-director at CeMAS, a nonprofit that focuses on right-wing extremism and conspiracy ideologies.
Holnburger said some who initially joined the rallies may have changed their minds after seeing friends or colleagues contract covid-19 or get vaccinated. “But those who are still most present in the group have built up a distorted version of reality and are also becoming more radicalized,” he said.
In April, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency announced that parts of the Querdenker group would be put under observation. The agency argues that the group may pose a risk to democracy by delegitimizing the state and by increasingly being tied to violent extremists.
Paul Zinken
AFP via Getty Images
Germany’s Querdenker movement organizes a protest in Berlin on Aug. 1.
Berlin saw another round of violent protests last weekend, amid the country’s widening debate over how many privileges vaccinated people should receive and whether children should be vaccinated.
Both in Germany and in France, the specter of elections has loomed over the recent discourse, with a general election scheduled in Germany next month and France already focused on next spring’s presidential election.
France’s far-left political leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has called for the protesters to be “understood and respected.” French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and her counterparts in Germany have also echoed some of the protesters’ demands, with Le Pen calling Macron’s health pass plans a “serious setback for individual freedoms.”
But the violence and limited public support for the protests have diminished the appetite of the main far-right parties in Germany and France — Alternative for Germany and National Rally — to throw their full weight behind the protests. Neither party has so far benefited electorally from the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s very clear now that Marine Le Pen remains at a distance,” said Gilles Ivaldi, of the French National Center for Scientific Research. As Le Pen’s party tries to adopt a more moderate image, “she clearly thinks that this protest movement entails something that would be too radical,” he said.
By not fully backing the movement whilst echoing some of their demands, Le Pen may be trying to both appeal to moderates and some more radical supporters. Germany’s AfD party — which is polling near the same level as during the last general elections four years ago — has attempted a similar balancing act, even though it has at times had fewer concerns about being seen as allied with anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protesters.
Anti-vaccine groups are also seeking to influence the public debate beyond covid-19, according to researchers monitoring their online discourse. Some are mobilizing against migrants. Others claim that lockdowns will be imposed to fight climate change, said Till Baaken, an extremism researcher with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in Germany.
Querdenker members and sympathizers descended on a western German region hit by flooding last month, driving a vehicle that resembled a police van, and spreading false information through loudspeakers that appeared to imitate official announcements. Among them were people claiming to be former soldiers and police officers, who have vowed to shield protesters from the police.
After a protester died from a heart attack shortly after he was detained by police in Berlin on Sunday, the movement portrayed him as the “first death of the resistance.”
“You read things like ‘We can no longer be peaceful’ and ‘The era of the peaceful demonstrations is over,’ ” Holnburger said of the group’s social media posts in the wake of the protester’s death.
“More radical language online can translate into action on the streets, and we’ve seen this before, whether it’s the storming of the Reichstag steps in Berlin, or the storming of the Capitol in D.C.,” he said.
Brady reported from Berlin.
