“They don’t really believe Covid exists.” “They now agree on one thing,” my friend said. I visited friends in a picturesque Breton village this week which is divided between two hostile tribes: ultra- conservative Catholic locals and green, alternative-artistic incomers. In the United States, and up to a point in the UK, the politics of Covid scepticism has been a largely a Right-wing affair. It is also constantly criticised for being intrusive and suffocating. Mummy, or Maman, state is expected to do the laundry she is also criticised if she interferes in her children’s/citizen’s lives.Īnother less of the health-pass protests - but not an entirely new one - is that part of the French ultra or alternative Left is now as “anti-state” as the American hard Right. The French Etat (the “virus” on the Norman-Breton motorway bridge) is expected to be all-protecting. The Conseil Constitutionnel, which fulfils some of duties of the US Supreme court, approved the pass with a couple of relatively minor tweaks.Īll in all, the health pass has exposed the contradictory and - somewhat teenaged - French attitudes to “the state”. These allegations – and the suggestion that Macron is somehow turning France into a dictatorship – – fell flat on their face yesterday. Opponents say that the pass contravenes the principle of “liberté” or freedom of individual choice or that it offends against the principle of “ égalité” because it divides the French into first and second-class citizens. Macron argues that it rewards those who put aside individual or selfish concerns to protect themselves and others – a classic example of “fraternité”, one of the three principles proclaimed by the French Republic. But the French pass is the most comprehensive in Europe. Similar, though more limited, “vaccine passports” have been introduced in other EU countries, as well as in New York City. All health and care workers must be vaccinated by 15 September or risk suspension or dismissal.
UNHERD VACCINE CODE
To travel long distances or to visit a café, restaurant, cinema or museum from next Monday you must be able to show a code proving one of three things: you are fully vaccinated you have recovered from Covid or you recently tested negative. Some amendments were accepted during the emergency debate but the broad thrust of Macron’s policy passed both houses of parliament. In other towns and cities, habitual enemies walked together in condemnation of Macron and the French parliament which approved the health pass last week. In Paris there were four separate marches to accommodate the different points of view. This is supposed to be the country which invented human rights.” In Caen, Mélanie, a primary school teacher in her thirties, said: “I’m vaccinated. Others detest the idea of health passes restricting personal freedoms or creating separate categories of French people: the government-approved “fully-jabbed” and the unvaccinated and “unclean”. And there are also many hundreds of moderate-seeming, apolitical people. There is the rump of the anti-Macron Gilets Jaunes movement of 2018-9, which has little support and no clear aims but is keen to latch on to any protest against the President. The intended message is that “you-know-who” (ie the Jews) are somehow responsible for the pandemic.
UNHERD VACCINE FREE
There are priggish anti-vaccine fanatics, some of whom attacked and destroyed a stall in front of a pharmacy offering free Covid tests on Saturday’s march in Montpellier. There is the anti-capitalist hard-Left, which believes the pandemic was invented by “Big pharma” to sell vaccines. There is anti-Semitic ultra-right - some of them holding banners which read simply “qui?” or “who?”. The political and social geology of the gatherings is equally bizarre. There are anarchists. Further protests are expected this weekend. And the numbers have doubled since they kicked off three weeks ago. Politics goes to the street more rapidly in France than other democracies - but protests during the late July-August holiday season are very unusual. It may - though less plausibly - have been painted by ordinary apolitical people infuriated by President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to ban all fun and long-distance travel for unvaccinated citizens from Monday.Īll three of these groups, along with many other angry citizens, were represented in the protests against the “passe sanitaire” (health pass) on Saturday, which attracted over 200,000 people to 150 demonstrations in French towns and cities last Saturday. It may be the work of the libertarian Right. This may be the work of the anarchist far-left. Le virus c’est l’état (“The virus is the state”) - so reads a freshly-painted slogan on a motorway bridge on the Norman-Breton border. Mandatory passes could provoke a new Gilets Jaunes movement
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