Anti-Vaxxer team up with Alt-Right against the COVID-19 vaccine

As California and the nation begin rolling out coronavirus vaccines, anti-vaccine activists are joining forces with small business owners and far-right groups. Some experts fear this could heighten suspicion of the government at a crucial public health moment.

In California, the corporate movement is led by a group called Freedom Angels 2.0. Originally founded by three women in response to a 2019 bill tightening vaccine requirements for school attendance, the organization was best known for its protests at the State Capitol against this measure and other vaccination laws, which frequently filled hallways and hearings with children disturbed in tow.

But as the coronavirus has spread, its message has spread too – a more general, values-based ideology that focuses on the government’s overreach. This broader approach has helped the organization attract new audiences in the business world, along with others who are concerned about schools, the economy, and the social toll of isolation on seniors.

“There’s this strategic mission that sneaks into other groups who may feel dissatisfied,” said Richard Carpiano, professor of public policy and sociology at UC Riverside who has been behind the anti-vaccine movement.

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

Eric Ward, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said he was pursuing a deliberate “old-right attempt to politicize the … anti-Vaxxer movement,” the pandemic “providing fertile ground for that organization because of the” People are afraid of right. ” now.”

Devin Burghart, a social justice activist who specializes in researching white nationalism, said anti-vaccine activists appear to be adopting the language and beliefs of the militia causes, along with rhetoric of reopening, an attempt to existing anti-vaccine networks, including worried mothers, radicalize their children’s health.

“What began as wine mothers and health-conscious yoga types has quickly become the militant wing of the COVID-19 uprising,” said Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research and Education in Human Rights. “They have been inundated with this larger far-right base of activism that has inexorably shifted its trajectory.”

Burghart said he had been tracking the transition between chapters of the Freedom Angels in other states and groups, including the People’s Rights founded by anti-government activist Ammon Bundy, suggesting the need for violent non-compliance with public health measures Coronaviruses. In California, Freedom Angels members have posted pictures of guns online, and its founders have offered firearm safety training and advice on how to circumvent lock orders.

As the various factions have come together online and during protests, Carpiano and others said they may “mutually fertilize” ideologies and spread unfounded conspiracies and inaccurate information, especially to viewers who have not previously participated and who may not fully understand far-right alliances .

“It is now more worrying to see how they have been more legitimized by expanding into these new territories and attracting these new allies,” Carpiano said.

Already less than half of Americans said they will definitely receive the vaccine, and about a quarter said they won’t, according to a recent survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. According to health experts, around 70% of Americans will need to take the vaccine to control the spread of the virus.

Ward said the Freedom Angels had only recently got on his radar, but their influence had grown rapidly.

“They are an organization that has tried to oppose government efforts to mandate vaccination, and their recent activities have really made them an essential leadership group in the United States,” he said.

When the coronavirus lockdown was first announced in the spring, anti-vaccine groups, including the Freedom Angels, quickly joined protesters against the lockdown and found common ground in suspected government motives and the idea that personal freedoms were at risk due to the lockdown Public Health Rules. Colorado, Florida, Texas, and Wisconsin are some of the states where the “strange bedfellows” have been seen as anti-vaccine groups angry with public health measures to fight the virus, as Carpiano describes it.

In California, rallies at the Capitol in Sacramento, temporarily organized by the Freedom Angels, drew thousands of supporters from a spectrum of discontent, from church leaders to tea party types to supporters of Blue Lives Matter who started protests against police shootouts were dissatisfied.

The Capitol rallies were also attended by far-right groups, including the Proud Boys, who, along with pro-Trump protesters who continue to falsely deny Biden’s election as president, have engaged in several violent clashes with anti-fascists in Sacramento in recent weeks Groups were involved.

Ward, an expert on extremist groups, predicts these forces will remain allied under the new presidential administration, creating suspicion of COVID-19 vaccinations. Burghart predicts that economic dissatisfaction and anger over lockdown measures will also remain as binding forces.

The growing popularity of these grievances is evident in places like the San Joaquin Valley, which has been hit hard by both the coronavirus and economic stalemate. With the latest round of lockdowns closing restaurants and services such as salons, the Freedom Angels have turned again to focus their attention on local communities and the idea of ​​”safe towns” for businesses that are exempt from the lockdown rules.

The urge to advocate for mom and pop entrepreneurs in financial trouble has raised the group’s profile and gained their trust in desperate entrepreneurs who have never heard of their vaccination efforts as they approach councilors and boards of directors on behalf of beleaguered companies.

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

Their message that the government is going too far is resonating particularly in the largely conservative areas of inland and northern California. Shutdown orders have temporarily closed thousands of small businesses, and many owners say they are on the verge of being permanently closed with no financial support or the ability to serve customers. At the same time, the shutdown orders seem arbitrary for some, leaving many big box stores up and running while small 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 a Freedom Angels campaign in this town despite never having heard of the group and unaware of their background.

Hernandez and Arevalo have tried working under state restrictions to keep their gastropub running, but they are almost out of money and solutions, they said. They didn’t qualify for federal loans because they’ve only been open for two years and lost money in the first year – which excluded them from eligibility, Arevalo said. Now they absolutely want to be able to operate, even if they only dine outdoors, to keep their business going.

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

“Nobody talked about it [vaccines]”Added Arevalo.

Neither was concerned about belonging.

“It’s about business. It’s about survival,” said Arevalo.

In a recent interview with The Times, Tara Thornton, co-founder of the Freedom Angels Foundation – the original group that protested vaccination legislation but has since fragmented – said she wasn’t surprised her new organization had found allies in the business world. She says entrepreneurs are left unheard of by the government and run out of options.

“You’re being pushed against the wall where no one else can go,” said Thornton, who lives in Northern California.

Stockton-based co-founder Denise Aguilar said the problem of small business closings is out of reach for her group as she views lockdown rules like vaccine requirements as an unjustified government interference.

“This is the same problem,” she said. “It’s always the same. It’s exaggerated.”

But the group has not given up its vaccine opposition.

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

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

Both Thornton and Aguilar said they were against COVID-19 vaccines and expected their group to speak out against them in the coming months, and predicted wider support for their views as more vaccines came under restrictions.

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

Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), the only doctor in the Senate who has also been harassed by the Freedom Angels and other anti-vaccine groups, believes the anti-vaccine contingent remains a “loud minority” but admits it could have an oversized effect.

“You could sow enough people to endanger everyone else,” Pan said. “You’re just big enough to ruin it for all of us, and that’s the big problem.”