Conspiracy sphere and "yellow vests", the health crisis has forged links
Audio 04:06
The website of France Démocratie Directe.
© francedemocratiedirecte.fr
By: Sophie Malibeaux
9 mins
In the first round of regional elections, this Sunday, June 20, 2020, mistrust of political staff in France could lead to a record abstention.
Faced with this observation, personalities who present themselves as “
outside the system
” are trying their luck in six regions.
Against a background of conspiracy theories, they claim to want to put down the “
health dictatorship
”.
Publicity
It is difficult to know what this movement will give at the polls, but on social networks, the supporters of these lists total hundreds of thousands of subscribers. The heads of the lists - naturopaths, electricians or other - are newcomers in politics, but if we take the example of the France Démocratie Directe list, its supporters are often former "yellow vests" - with a certain notoriety on the internet. They express a social malaise that the health crisis has only reinforced. To this protest discourse, is added the infox propagated by conspiratorial circles. Everything is fueling a movement of anger that the lifting of barrier measures is not about to appease. The more so as the megaphones of this movement testify to a certain radicality, with calls to hang the elites known as "
globalists
”, accused of having created the crisis from scratch.
The stars of the movement, singer Francis Lalanne, comedian Jean-Marie Bigard, relay the theses of scientists breaking the ban, followers of alternative medicine and totally opposed to vaccination.
"Yellow vests" and covid-skeptics
It is the distrust of institutions that seem to bring these two movements together. One of the figures of the movement of "yellow vests", called Oliv Oliv posts virulent videos, denouncing in particular the vaccination of children. The speech suggests that there is an obligation to vaccinate, when in reality there is simply an incentive campaign aimed at young people from 12 years old who wish to be able to return to a normal life. The paradox is that the Facebook page of France Direct Democracy which relays this video, as well as a petition against the vaccination of children, claims "
collective intelligence
», While opposing a health measure which precisely implies taking into account the collective.
Young people are less affected by Covid-19 than adults and the elderly, but they also transmit the virus.
As we have seen in the United States, the United Kingdom and Moscow, the epidemic can resume where vaccination coverage is too low.
If this was more widespread in adults, the benefit of having the youngest vaccinated would be less.
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To read also: Elections in France, the conspirators invest the political field
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With the lifting of barrier measures and the circulation of a new variant - the delta variant detected in India - even more contagious than the previous ones, vaccination remains a major issue. Beyond the legitimate questions about the risk-benefit balance and the side effects, there is strong resistance in certain circles, clearly aggravated by disinformation campaigns on social networks. The sample of infox, more or less sophisticated, is likely to reach a fairly large audience. There is for example the production of curves and graphs using more or less fanciful data, sometimes difficult to verify, supposed to show that the countries which vaccinate are those where there are the most deaths. In reality,it is because they were very threatened by the pandemic that countries like the United Kingdom and Israel carried out a vigorous vaccination campaign, and not the other way around. Videos are circulating indicating that such and such a person died from the vaccine. However, we realize after an investigation that the person had serious comorbidities, or even, died following an accident unrelated to the coronavirus, it is still necessary to take the time to verify.
In addition, disinformation campaigns abuse the statistical effect and draw wrong conclusions, because the more people there are vaccinated worldwide, the more people at risk are vaccinated, the more the proportion of deaths increases. . Which does not say anything about the dangerousness of the vaccine. It is obvious that the larger the sample of the population, the more the number of deaths reported to this population increases, without it being possible to immediately link these deaths to the vaccine.
Finally in a totally eccentric register, we see circulating from various places in the world, videos tending to prove that after injection, we could magnetize all kinds of metal objects to the human body, while it suffices to moisten or grease the skin and the object - a cell phone for example - adheres to the arm - with or without vaccine - the time of a
selfie
.
The sequence is the
buzz
on the networks, relayed by those who are entertained, but also by Internet users already well worked by the fear of the disease, as much as of the remedy.
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