Governments seek to contain citizens’ pandemic-fueled frustrations
A protester stands atop a vehicle in Paris on Feb. 12, 2022, as cars parade during a "freedom convoy" to protest against the government's COVID-19 vaccination policy and restrictions.
Benoit Tessier/Reuters
London
The protesters are very, very few in number.
But copycat demonstrations around the world in the wake of Canada’s trucker blockades still pose a thorny problem for major democracies, just as they are beginning to hope that the worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic might be waning.
The main challenge isn’t policing. Nor is it the policy issue emblazoned on placards from Paris to the New Zealand capital, Wellington – vaccination rules.
Why We Wrote This
Two years of pandemic have left many people angry. As extremists exert their polarizing appeal, governments must soothe spirits to avert more confrontational politics.
Rather, it is the array of extremist groups that have attached themselves to the convoys, using them as platforms for their confrontational brand of politics.
And ultimately at stake is the political ground such extremists hope to cultivate, comprising the many ordinary, often apolitical, citizens in whom two years of pandemic isolation, restrictions, and social or economic loss have built up a store of frustration and anger.
Addressing that deeper challenge will be partly down to governments, and the first step may be simply recognizing it exists. French President Emmanuel Macron seemed to indicate as much after police succeeded in limiting a Canada-style protest in Paris on Sunday.
“We are all collectively tired of what we have been living through,” he declared. “This fatigue shows itself in different ways: in confusion for some, depression for others. And sometimes that fatigue manifests itself in anger.”
But other influencers will have to be part of the answer as well – community and social groups, parents and educators, and the social media platforms themselves.
Their challenge will be to find a way to dial down the anger – to build on the widespread common sacrifice and cooperation seen early in the pandemic, so as to prevent its tail end from ushering in a new period of confrontation and polarization.
The good news on that front is that the protesters are not just few in number. So far at least, they are unrepresentative. A wide majority of people in the countries affected have followed pandemic mandates and guidelines. In Canada, most truckers are vaccinated. Their labor union has denounced the blockades.
And while some countries’ leaders have seen a fall in their popularity, like Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, there has been no sign of widespread support for the protests aimed at causing gridlock in major city centers.
Yet beneath even the generally genteel surface in New Zealand – where the authorities forswore water cannon to disperse protesters in favor of lawn sprinklers – there have been signs of the longer-term challenge ahead.
For months, the social media temperature there has been rising, and it’s not just political activists fanning the flames, according to the Te Punaha Matatini research institute. All sorts of ordinary citizens, with no particular political ax to grind, have been spewing invective on Facebook.
“Two years of the pandemic is very, very tough,” Paul Hunt, the head of New Zealand’s independent Human Rights Commission, told Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “People are struggling financially, emotionally, mentally … and sometimes people do lash out at something else – or someone else.”
The vituperation has spilled over into the Wellington protests. “Just got told I’m going to be executed by a woman holding a sign saying ‘love is the cure,’” tweeted one television reporter. And the influence of far-right political activists has been seeping in. A statue was defaced with a swastika. One protester scrawled “hang ’em high” outside Parliament.
A similar trend was highlighted last weekend in a report on how Britons opposed to vaccines are using Telegram, the encrypted phone and messaging service.
As with the “freedom ride” protesters, their numbers are very small; the researchers found about 220,000 “unique active” users in the anti-vaccine community, no more than one-third of 1% of the population.
They noted significant “crossover” between these Telegram users and the right-wing conspiracy theory group QAnon, along with United Kingdom-based conspiracy theorists and an anti-state militia.
In the longer run, however, it’s the non-extremists, the much wider group of voters feeling varying levels of pandemic frustration or anger, who may determine the trajectory and tone of politics in post-pandemic democracies.
How to engage with such voters – beyond Mr. Macron’s initial words of outreach – is a challenge that all the countries hit by Canada-style protests will have to meet.
One sign of its complexity, and the array of tools likely to be needed, has come from New Zealand in the form of a poster campaign launched by Mr. Hunt’s Human Rights Commission in response to record numbers of complaints about anti-social online behavior.
He had no illusions about being able to change the tone singlehandedly. “These things are complicated, and they require multi-dimensional responses,” he said. But he sensed one key was to connect on a human level with people clearly “stressed and angry.”
“Dial it down a notch,” said one of the posters. Another urged people to “read it” before posting a message on social media.
And a third asked a simple question: “What would your mother say?”