Anti-vaxxers team up with Alt-Right against COVID-19 vaccine

As California and the country begin rolling out coronavirus vaccines, anti-vaccine campaigners are lining up with small business owners and far-right groups in an effort that some experts say could heighten mistrust to government at a critical time for public health.

In California, the movement towards business is led by a group called Freedom Angels 2.0. Originally founded by three women in response to a 2019 state bill tightening vaccine requirements for school attendance, the organization was best known for its state capitol protests against this and other vaccine laws, often filling the halls and disrupting hearings with children in tow. .

But as the coronavirus spread, its message also spread – encompassing a more dominant ideology, values-driven and focused on government overreach. This broader approach has helped the organization engage a new audience in the business community, as well as others concerned about schools, the economy, and the social consequences of isolation for seniors.

“There’s this strategic mission creeping into other groups that might feel disaffected,” said Richard Carpiano, professor of public policy and sociology at UC Riverside, who has followed the anti-vaccine movement.

At the same time, extremist experts have warned that militant groups protesting election results and lockdowns across the country have also turned to the anti-vaccine movement, where they see a cause that could unite supporters after a presidential transition.

Eric Ward, senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said he had followed a “deliberate attempt to politicize the anti-vaxxer movement” with the pandemic providing “fertile ground for this organization because people are afraid. now.”

Devin Burghart, a social justice activist who specializes in researching white nationalism, said anti-vaccine campaigners appear to be embracing the language and beliefs of militia causes while reopening rhetoric, an attempt to radicalize existing anti-vaccine networks, including mothers concerned about the health of their children.

“What started out as wine moms and health-conscious yoga types has quickly become the militant wing of the COVID-19 insurgency,” said Burghart, executive director of the Research Institute and human rights education. “They have been inundated with this larger base of far-right activism that has inexorably changed their trajectory.

Burghart said he had followed the cross between Freedom Angels chapters in other states and groups, including people’s rights, founded by anti-government activist Ammon Bundy, which suggested the need for a no -violent compliance with public health measures relating to coronaviruses. In California, Freedom Angels members posted photos online holding guns, and its founders offered gun safety training and tips on circumventing lockdown orders.

As the various factions have come together online and at protests, Carpiano and others have said they are potentially “cross-pollinating” ideologies and spread unfounded plots and inaccurate information, especially to audiences who have not participated before and may not fully understand the far right alliances.

“It’s more concerning now to see how they’ve been further legitimized by expanding into these new areas and getting these new allies,” Carpiano said.

Already, less than half of Americans said they would definitely receive the vaccine, and about a quarter said they would not, according to a recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About 70% of Americans need to get vaccinated to control the spread of the virus, according to health experts.

Ward said the Freedom Angels have only recently come on his radar, but their influence has grown rapidly.

“This is an organization that has sought to resist the state’s efforts to mandate vaccinations and their recent activity has really established them as a vital leadership group across the United States,” he said. .

When the coronavirus lockdowns were first announced in the spring, anti-vaccine groups, including the Freedom Angels, quickly joined with anti-lockdown protesters, finding common ground in suspicion of the motives of the government and the idea that personal freedoms were threatened because of public health rules. Colorado, Florida, Texas, and Wisconsin are some of the states that have seen “bizarre bedfellows” as anti-vaccine groups along with those angered by public health measures to combat the virus, as Carpiano describes.

In California, rallies at the Capitol in Sacramento hosted by the Freedom Angels have at times drawn thousands of supporters from a spectrum of discontent, from church leaders and tea party types to disgruntled Blue Lives Matter advocates. demonstrations against police shootings.

The Capitol rallies have also drawn right-wing groups, including the Proud Boys, who, along with pro-Trump protesters who continue to falsely challenge Biden’s election as president, have been implicated in multiple violent clashes with anti-fascist groups in recent weeks in Sacramento.

Ward, an expert on extremist groups, predicts those forces will remain allies under the new presidential administration, uniting around mistrust of COVID-19 vaccinations. Burghart predicts that economic discontent and anger over the lockdown measures will also persist as compelling forces.

The growing popularity of these grievances can be seen in places such as the San Joaquin Valley, which has been hit hard by the coronavirus and the economic shutdown. As the latest round of lockouts shut down restaurants and services such as lounges, the Freedom Angels have again pivoted, turning to local communities and the idea of ​​’sanctuary cities’ for exempt businesses. lock rules.

The push to stand up for financially struggling mom-and-pop entrepreneurs raised the group’s profile and won it the trust of desperate entrepreneurs who have never heard of its vaccine efforts as it targets advice. municipal councils and supervisory boards on behalf of besieged businesses.

“It gives them popularity. It gives them visibility. It gives them more legitimacy, ”said Carpiano.

Their message of government going too far resonates particularly in the largely conservative interior and northern parts of California. Shutdown orders have temporarily shut down thousands of small businesses, and many owners say they are on the verge of shutting down permanently without financial support or the ability to serve customers. At the same time, the shutdown orders seem arbitrary to some, leaving many big box stores able to function while smaller businesses face more restrictive measures.

Stockton restaurant owner Johnny Hernandez and his partner and fiancé Rocio Arevalo, a nurse, are small business owners who joined the Freedom Angels effort in this town even though they had never heard of the group before and were unaware of its origins.

Hernandez and Arevalo have tried to work under state restrictions to maintain their gastropub, but are almost strapped for cash and solutions, they said. They don’t qualify for federal loans because they’ve only been open for two years and lost money in the first year, which excludes them from eligibility, Arevalo said. Now, they desperately need to be able to operate, even if only to eat al fresco, to keep their business alive.

“It’s news to me who they are,” Hernandez said at a recent rally on the steps of Stockton Town Hall.

“No one spoke once [vaccines]», Arevalo added.

Neither was concerned about affiliation.

“It’s a business question. It’s about surviving, ”Arevalo said.

In a recent interview with The Times, Tara Thornton, co-founder of Freedom Angels Foundation – the original group that protested against vaccine legislation but has since exploded – said she was not surprised that his new organization has found allies in the business world. She says entrepreneurs don’t feel heard by government and have no options.

“They’re pushed up against the wall where there’s no one else to turn to,” said Thornton, who lives in northern California.

Co-founder Denise Aguilar, who lives in Stockton, said the issue of shutting down small businesses did not concern her group because she viewed the lockdown rules, like vaccine requirements, as unwarranted government intrusion.

“It’s the same problem,” she said. “It’s always the same. It’s overbroad.”

But the group has not given up its opposition to the vaccine.

“You get libertarianism with a whole bunch of pseudo-science and conspiracy theories,” Carpiano said.

In a recent interview with The Times, Thornton argued that PCR tests, used to diagnose COVID-19, are inaccurate and “unable” to detect infection. She and other Freedom Angels members have also spoken publicly and on social media by repeating more widely debunked medical theories, including that the virus is no worse than the flu. They stormed local government meetings without a mask.

Both Thornton and Aguilar have said they are opposed to COVID-19 vaccines and expected their group to speak out against them in the coming months, and predicted wider support for their views as that more vaccines would be put in place despite the restrictions.

“You can see it’s something coming from a mile away,” Aguilar said.

Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), the only state Senate medic who has also been the target of harassment by the Freedom Angels and other anti-vaccine groups, said he believed the anti-vaccine contingent -vaccine remains a “strong minority”, but admits it could have an oversized effect.

“They managed to outrun enough people to endanger everyone,” Pan said. “They’re just big enough to ruin it for all of us, and that’s the big deal.”