Pox populi: Anti-vaxx, anti-politics

Abstract

This article explores the political meaning of the interconnected anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown protest movements that have emerged in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. A range of academics and commentators have argued that such protests should be understood in terms of a dangerous resurgence of far-right populism, one that is fuelled by misinformation and extremist ideologies. This article tests such a framing by engaging with recent scholarship on the ‘anti-political’ – the theorisation of the growing inability for political action to occur other than in opposition to the political system itself. Against the conventional reading of the protests as fundamentally political, this article looks at recent anthropological work on ‘conspirituality’ in order to investigate how the aesthetic and performative dimensions of such protests may be key to understanding contemporary anti-vaccine thought and action.

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“…In recent years, an empirical consensus has been forming regarding a gradual rise of public mistrust towards reliable health information; this has been particularly visible, and has become particularly poignant, throughout the recent COVID-19 pandemic (2020-23), with multiple theories and practices contesting scientific knowledge on the subject (Lazarus et al, 2002). Concomitantly, citizen adherence to health policies saw a significant decrease, often to the point of hostility, coinciding with the promotion of alternative (and ineffective) therapies, unexpected alliances between wellness communities and conspiracy-driven propaganda, and even outright fabrications (Russell, 2022).…”

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“…Topham and Smith offer a generative way forward that 'refocuses our attention on the sensory as a means of thinking about and responding to the 'problem' of misinformation'. Russell's (2022) exploration of anti-politics in the anti-vaccination movement, 'Pox populi: Anti-vaxx, anti-politics', also seeks to complicate binary assumptions about protest and political engagement. Russell traces how the anti-vaccination communication, which, pre-pandemic, was more typically associated with the 'left' of the political spectrum is now understood to be part of the 'cosmic right', akin to the QAnon shaman.…”

“…However, as Russell argues, anti-vaxxers and associated post-pandemic wellness cultures are not easy to map onto the left/right political binary. Nonetheless the, 'desire to read the anti-vaxx movement as political requires a nostalgic attachment to the era of mass politics, in which social movements could be reasonably expected to gain greater institutional coherence, and ultimately to influence democratic state governance' (Russell, 2022). To move on from this unproductive binary Russell suggests that anti-vaccination maps onto ideological extremism, not simply left vs right.…”

“…Humphrys (2019) defines anti-politics as a 'short-lived bursts of protest, electoral volatility and political crises … [which] tends to dissipate if not given direction'. Anti-politics can also be understood as an 'attack on representational democracy and conventional political institutions by political actors' (Russell, 2022). Anti-politics is a useful frame to understand the affective tenor of anti-vaccination activities because it detaches what Russell identifies as the political aesthetics of protest from politics or the political.…”

“…This helps us to understand anti-vaccination protests as 'sticky' sites. Russell argues that they are enlivening and may be attractive as a seeming reprieve from the perceived 'stagnation of contemporary representational politics' (Russell, 2022). While anti-politics may speak to the hollowing out of political action and the possibility for change in representative politics, it is also, in many ways, a hopeful reading of the anti-vaccination movement.…”