The media have difficulty understanding the anti-tax movement demonstrating this Saturday in Nantes. Should we give them the floor? Ignore them in the name of public health? These questions are debated in the editorial staff …
Are the media giving too much voice to the antivax? Last May, the website of Point was already organizing a “vote” on this subject. Result: six out of ten Internet users thought that indeed, we heard too much of these antivax, which very often are connected to political movements, sometimes conspirators, in any case falling within the anti-system dispute. But here it is that Tuesday, the interview “Facing the readers” of the Parisian Emmanuel Macron, put this very minority population back on the front of the stage with the famous phrase ” I really want to piss off the unvaccinateds “and its corollary: a denial of citizenship for those he judges” irresponsible “.
Emmanuel Macron, in principle president of all French people, probably thought more about antivax than unvaccinated, these 20% of the population who may not be vaccinated for various reasons without necessarily rejecting the vaccine. But the fact is that he managed to get what he was looking for: a cleavage between a majority who thinks like him and a very small minority who refuses the vaccine and thus places the very heavy burden on hospitals of supporting the wave. Omicron.
Therefore, there are those who consider that it is necessary to treat antivax at least, and with a grain of salt, they are so likely to dissuade vaccination with their infox, and those who think that it is necessary to show who they are, what they think. On the one hand, we find for example Frédéric Filloux, journalist and associate professor at Science Po, who attacked France Inter on Twitter for giving the floor to a non-vax who ” tells about his messed up life, his drinking with non-vax friends, his borrowing of a QR code to go to the gym “. In short, he said, a ” asshole that the journalist does not bother to contradict “. On the other, France Inter, of course, which has already made anti-vaccine interventions live on its antenna. Its director Catherine Nayl rejected in July any stigmatization of antivax and any ” scientific brutality that would prevail in a top-down fashion “.
From now on, it is important to hear, to follow antivax, to know how far they are ” pissed off As Macron said, with their false vaccine certificates and tomorrow their false health passes. Important to also hear their anger which can aggregate other anger, as we have seen with the yellow vests. At the same time, we must not fall into the trap of political instrumentalisation of antivaxes by giving them too much importance. This is undoubtedly what some antivaxers hope, but also perhaps the power to show that the responsibility is on his side.