In Austria there are many anti-vaxxers. For one, the far-right party (FPÖ) rambles against masks and vaccination mandates and directly targets the anti-vaxxing crowd in their speeches and ads.
*Additionally*, believe it or not, a new political party (named MFG) has formed and their sole agenda is to fight the vaccination mandate that is in place in Austria. In local elections, they were very successful and are now represented in 3 (of 9) state parliaments.
Lastly, a recent article said that former members of the Green Party are considering founding another anti-vaxxer party that leans left.
What’s it like in your country?
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Here in Italy,the two biggest far right parties..the Lega and FdI,led by Salvini and Meloni respectively,are not exactly ”anti-vaxx” but they are very vaccine hesitant.Both leaders at various times tried to hide the fact that they had been vaccinated,so as not to lose support.
They have also campaigned openly against restrictions, and tried to minimise the significance and the effects of the pandemic.
There are several small and even further right parties that could be said to be completely ”anti-vaxx” but they are electorally irrelevant in Italy.
There is no ‘left’ anti-vaxx party afaik.The mainstream left and centre left are broadly supportive,while the anti-establishment/Populist ”5 star” party includes both pro and anti-vaxxers.
I don’t think there are any parties that try to get anti-vaxx votes. There might be a few vaxx-sceptical politicians on the far right, but I really don’t think there are really a lot of votes to win on being outspokenly anti-vaxx! Then again, vaccine mandates have never been a topic here!
Anti-vaxxers did make a lot of noise, even though it is a very limited percentage of the population. It has become a lot less since we ditched nearly all restrictions.
Omicron seems to be a lot less dangerous than previous mutations, or maybe it is in combination with the vaccine, but we have had record high incidence numbers, yet very few people hospitalized or dead because of corona.
So we just ditched the restrictions.
In Ireland anti-vaxxers are generally regarded as morons or unhinged.
There’s a couple of parties catering to that kind of person but they don’t get elected.
There’s the Irish Freedom Party. Their highest profile candidate is also anti-EU which is definitely the wrong tree to be barking up in Ireland. Think he got less than 1% of the vote in his constituency when he ran. It was closer to 0% than 1% if I remember correctly.
There’s also the Irish National Party who are predominantly racist I think.
This niche in society is quite small and widely disregarded.
The problem in Austria is that any discussion over the meaningfullness and effectivity of the countermeassuerments was “verboten” and deemed as antisocial, far right or anti austrian.
We didn’t allow unvaccinated people to buy new shoes or clothes, I really think we got to far with that, but saying against something like that deemed you as surely a rightwing shill…
Austrias politicians and media had made the pandemic a political problem instead of an health problem and now reep what it sow
There really isn’t any major party for them in the UK. The Conservatives saw a massive poll bounce as a result of the speedy vaccine rollout, which they mention all the time, and the big opposition parties are in favour of them too.
There are certainly anti-vaxxers here (Andrew Wakefield is British, after all), but they tend to mainly engage in street politics (like large protests) and online posting, and are largely shut out of representative democracy.
I suspect there are some members of the Greens and Reform UK (the successor to UKIP and the Brexit Party) who probably hold anti-vax views but the parties themselves don’t let themselves get associated with that in most cases.
Iceland doesn’t really have a traditional anti-vax community (e.g people who believe vaccines cause autism or intestinal issues) and people who believe that are ridiculed out of the room but we have had our share of problems with anti-covid-vax people and it’s typically the neo-liberal parties or the fringe right-wing political parties that don’t even get 1% in the elections that weaponize them.
In Germany it’s mainly the AfD but there are also 2 parties (dieBasis and Wir2020) who almost exclusively focus on this topic similiar to MFG.
Most prominent, and the only one that got into parliament in autumn elections, is SPD. Despite their name (freedom, direct democracy) they are authoritative one man party, and they were really happy to have those anti-vax topics, because otherwise they are just fascists you get from wish.
There were plenty more, but luckily they all failed miserably. There was for example Free bloc (lead by former SPD member, who is well known and memed for starting fistfights in parliament). Trikolora, the ‘only pure right’, was also targeting those votes, as obscure ‘dog died’ movement did. They failed miserably.
I don’t know of any parties that cater to that demographic.
There’s a big overlap of anti-vaxxers and the far-right party SD though
There is a party called Resnica (truth), which mainly focused on abolishment of the PCT condition (green pass). I know they had three really big protests on 22.9., 29.9. and 5.10., and at one point 5 or 6% would vote for them. Not sure where they are now, as the green pass was abolished on 21 February.
As for the antivaxxers, as the vaccination rate is 57% you would expect that they are an important political group, but in reality, I don’t really think they are that much of a relevant politic group.
There are no political parties that want to be associated with anti-vaxxers here. It would be a political suicide.
Forum for Democracy (FVD) in the Netherlands. They were at first an more moderate option compared to the PVV of Geert Wilders but since Covid they have become more extreme than PVV. PVV is pro vaccination (but against QR Codes, lockdowns). FVD is against everything. They call the vaccin gif and they say that every country is part of ‘WEF’ (world economic forum) and that countries are controlled by them and want to start the ‘great reset’. They call for tribunals such as at Nuremberg after WW2 for the people that have helped to facilitate the vaccin and covid measures. They compare the unvaccinated with Jews in the 30s in Nazi Germany. And now they are pro Russia also.
Far right, but I think that only because it’s another way of arguing against the actual Spanish government (left)
SVP (Swiss People’s Party). And yes, they are. Their movement even has a name. *Freiheitstrychler* are/were people who walked through the streets in groups, rang cow bells and shouted to end the “mask dictatorship” and “vaccination dictatorship” and protect freedom and things like that.
None of the parties are explicitly pro anti-vaxxers, but some are softer on them than others.
There are generally more anti-vaxxers among the far-left, green and far-right party voters than among more moderate/traditional voters, but the differences aren’t huge. Anti-vaxxers in general are very loud but are a small minority with almost 93% of the adult population being vaccinated.
The AfD is the main anti-vaxx party now.
The Greens used to have quite a few people in their voter base that were anti-vaxx, but the Covid epidemic basically cleared that up.
There was an attempt to found another anti-vaxx party in the run-up to the last federal election, die Basis. They are full-on conspiracy nuts and they got a bit over 1% of the vote.
There’s *Valta kuuluu kansalle* (“Power Belongs to the People”), who are anti-vax and several other flavours of nut. They even have a member of parliament, who was elected from the Finns Party and then kicked out for being too much of an asshat even for them.
There’s also *Kristallipuolue* (“the Crystal Party”). No one knows what they’re about, but it’s quite possible they think healing crystals are a better option than the vaccine.
The Alliance – Alternative for Norway is a small far-right and neo-nazi party. They have protested against the vaccine and also given money to teenagers that promise not to take the vaccine. They are completly out of their minds but luckily they don’t matter at all.
There’s a huge difference between anti-vaccination and anti-mandate.
2 right wing populist parties (PS and VKK)
I don’t know if Anti-vaxxers are a ”relevant” group but the VKK party ideology is literally ”anti covid restrictions”
Here it’s also a far right party, Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland), that jumped on the anti-waxx bandwagon.
They have billboards campaigning against vaccine mandates and “covid dictatorship”.
They completely bought one of my neighbors with their conspiracy theory angle.
The AfD (extreme far right) is basically our slightly less insane Republicans. They are trying to capitalize on a strong, but isolated anti-vaxx movement. Their support hasn’t changed at all during the whole time and it’ll likely stay at around 10% for a very long time.
The FDP (liberal) is kinda torn. Liberals generally shy away from collective responsibility and there is a visible faction within the party that doesn’t like any mandatory covid measures, even masks. However, they’re in government and they have to take on some responsibility at least. I think its because of them that the planned vaxx mandate isn’t going anywhere.
The CDU (conservative) is opportunistic, corrupt and generally incompetent as you’d expect, but they’re not anti-vaxx. Some even vocally demanded a vaxx-mandate a while a go, after the party had been adamant that no such thing would happen when the debate around vaccination first started. Now they’re opposed to mandates again.
Lastly, there are the Free Voters, which is a generally conservative small business and farmer party that’s made it out of irrelevance in Bavaria, but not on the federal level. Their leader tried to galvanize support with anti-vaxx rethoric, trying to appeal to right-wing voters as a less obviously extreme alternative to the AfD. It hasn’t worked.
Funny enough, the supporters of the Greens are least likely to be anti-vaxx despite the hippy-back-to-monke types also being really “skeptical”. Seems like these people don’t matter demographically.
AUR(which translates as gold lol), disgusting little extremist shits that aren’t so little anymore and I am afraid how the next election results will look like
In Lithuania it was mainly the anti-West parties, such as the peasant’s party and the labour party, both pretty major politocal forces forces, with the peasant’s party actually being in power for the first year of the pandemic.
If you are only talking people against vaccines, they are just crazies on Facebook making noise.
Unrelated, is Austria still going through with the mandatory vaccination law?
It is a transversal phenomenon (we are surrounded by one of the most no-vax regions in Italy). Now the no-mask movement who opposed the most our response to covid has officially started their own party.