The anti-restriction insurrection: protests against pandemic measures are radicalizing

In Ottawa, Canada, protests by opponents of pandemic restrictions have gotten out of hand. The mayor of the Canadian capital had to testify this weekend the state of emergency after a week of mobilizations against the sanitary measures that have paralyzed the city and have exceeded the local government’s capacity to react. A situation that is not exclusive to the North American country and that, in fact, is becoming more frequent, largely because these movements are becoming more organized.

liberty convoy. This is how the movement that has unleashed chaos in the streets of Ottawa has called itself. At first it was organized by Canadian truck drivers to protest against the obligation that this group had to be vaccinated to continue working, but it soon became a mobilization against all health measures and against the Government of Justin Trudeau, according to reports The world.

The success of the mobilization of the truckers, who have assured that they will continue on the streets until all the sanitary restrictions are lifted, has caused the protest to spread to several other Canadian cities such as Torono, Quebec or Winnipeg. In Ottawa, the police chief declared this weekend that he did not have sufficient means to deal with the protesters and declared that the capital was under a state of siege. The government is going to deploy 250 troops from the Royal Gendarmerie, Canada’s federal police, in the city to try to control the situation.

brussels on fire. In Europe, Brussels has been the city that has staged the most violent protests to date. Two weeks ago some 50,000 people from various countries gathered in the Belgian capital to demand an end to the restrictions. Behind this demonstration were several associations such as Demonstration for Freedom or Europeans United for Freedom, as reported by Euronews. The objective of the demonstrators was to put pressure not only on the Belgian government, but also on the authorities of the European Union, since many of its most important institutions, such as the Council or the Commission, are located in Belgium.

And in neighboring Holland the streets they also burned the massive protests that ended in clashes with the police and burning of cars, street furniture and even PCR testing centers.

A very political issue in Germany. Germany is one of the countries where the political drift of the anti-restriction movement is clearest. The dozens of violent protests that the Germans have experienced recently (the last one last week) have organizations like lateral thinker, far-right extremists who are even being monitored by the German Ministry of the Interior for their potential danger.

In addition, anti-restriction discourses have fully entered political activity through two parties. In the first place, the DieBasis, created in 2020 to, according to its promoters, recover the fundamental freedoms that the State has taken away from them with the excuse of the coronavirus and that got 700,000 votes in the last elections. And secondly, Alternative for Germany, a far-right formation founded in 2013 that in the last elections obtained 10.5% of the votes, recently has embraced the anti-vaccine movement and calls for the withdrawal of all bans stemming from the pandemic.

No to compulsory vaccination in Austria. Another country where anti-restriction movements have fully entered politics is Austria. Last September, in the regional elections in the central European country, a party opposed to vaccination campaigns and the use of masks that emerged from protests against the pandemic bans managed to win three seats in the Upper Austrian parliament, according to Yahoo News.

However, it seems to have been of little use, for the moment, to obtain political representation, since the Austrian Government has continued with its controversial measure of compulsory vaccination, which entered into force on February 1. Citizens of Austria over the age of 18 who have not received at least one dose by March 16 will be fined 600 euros.

In the US they raised $200,000.. Without so many political overtones, but also with a high degree of organization, on January 23 thousands of people (20,000 according to the organizers) went to Washington to protest against the mandatory vaccination, according to El País. The demonstration was orchestrated through social networks and attendees came from various parts of the United States. To finance both the trips and the event, the organizers managed to raise about $200,000.

In Spain there is little movement. In our country, on the other hand, the degree of organization shown by those who are against sanitary restrictions is low and, in fact, there have hardly been any recent mobilizations. The last of any size took place last December 11 in Valencia against the mandatory covid passport. Here, moreover, no party has taken the anti-restriction flag as its own beyond some specific measure, how Vox did with the covid passport.

Among the reasons for this lack of an anti-restriction movement can be found that in our country there is a low percentage of anti-vaccines, that the policies of our Government are more moderate than those of other countries and that a good part of the population considers that sanitary measures when contagion peaks occur should be more forceful, according to data from the Center for Sociological Research (CIS).

Image | Nacho Doce/Reuters