Investigations / Politics
Australia’s anti-vaccine movement is collapsing
Australia's anti-vaccine activists seized on COVID-19 and grew into an energetic and active movement. Now, their cause is falling apart.
The founder of Australia’s biggest anti-vaccine group looks exhausted.
In a video posted to Reignite Democracy Australia’s remaining social media accounts this week, a weary Monica Smit complains to her followers about the costs of running the group and employing staff as she asks for money.
“If we don’t get more funding, we’re going to have to cut down what we can do,” she pleads...
Despite its best efforts of creating viral medical misinformation, storming MPs’ offices and leading protests, it has been unsuccessful. Australia is one of the most vaccinated nations in the world and is emerging from the pandemic with one of the lowest death tolls. Even half of those aged five to 11 have received at least one vaccine dose, despite anti-vaccine groups having tried and failed to capitalise on parent’s natural squeamishness about young children.
Now, Reignite Democracy Australia — and the rest of Australia’s anti-vaccine movement — is showing signs that its best days are behind it.
Reignite Democracy Australia has been begging for funding through platform DonorBox and through their app RDASocial, but neither of those show how much money it’s earning. It lists its cryptocurrency wallet’s address as one way of donating to it. The wallet has received a total of US$7.35...
...the movement’s lasting influence will be the connective tissue created between the people sucked in by lies and rumours. Australians who were tepid or unsure about vaccine safety are now hooked into networks of conspiracy and extremism via apps like Telegram. Even as their white-hot anger and fear diminishes, they remain disenfranchised and sceptical, if not outright hostile, of the government and our institutions. These dormant concerns and connections are ready to be re-activated by the right moment or person.
But those watching the movement warn against assuming that the movement will peacefully ebb into obscurity, as it was before COVID-19. ASIO chief Mike Burgess warned about violence from radicalised anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown protesters just a month ago. The Australian reported that police were expected to charge high-profile leaders of the movement for incitement to violence, although this has yet to eventuate.
Online activists and researchers who’ve been tracking Australia’s anti-vaccine movement told Crikey that a new generation of more radical anti-vaccine protesters who are steeped in sovereign citizen ideology have taken the reins of the movement. Campsites with the leftovers from February’s Convoy protests — led by people like Jim “Iron Thunderbolt” Greer and Dave “Guru” Graham — are festering just outside Canberra. Diehards have spent weeks in squalid conditions, becoming increasingly detached from mainstream society and submerged in toxic communities using violent rhetoric.
Outside the Lodge on an overcast day earlier this week, an anti-vaccine campaigner spoke on a microphone at cars whizzing past. She told a handful of other assembled activists, three sitting in the gutter while one listlessly waved a giant red ensign flag, that the Australian anti-vaccine movement had hit a wall.
www.crikey.com.au
Australia’s anti-vaccine movement is collapsing
Australia's anti-vaccine activists seized on COVID-19 and grew into an energetic and active movement. Now, their cause is falling apart.
The founder of Australia’s biggest anti-vaccine group looks exhausted.
In a video posted to Reignite Democracy Australia’s remaining social media accounts this week, a weary Monica Smit complains to her followers about the costs of running the group and employing staff as she asks for money.
“If we don’t get more funding, we’re going to have to cut down what we can do,” she pleads...
Despite its best efforts of creating viral medical misinformation, storming MPs’ offices and leading protests, it has been unsuccessful. Australia is one of the most vaccinated nations in the world and is emerging from the pandemic with one of the lowest death tolls. Even half of those aged five to 11 have received at least one vaccine dose, despite anti-vaccine groups having tried and failed to capitalise on parent’s natural squeamishness about young children.
Now, Reignite Democracy Australia — and the rest of Australia’s anti-vaccine movement — is showing signs that its best days are behind it.
Reignite Democracy Australia has been begging for funding through platform DonorBox and through their app RDASocial, but neither of those show how much money it’s earning. It lists its cryptocurrency wallet’s address as one way of donating to it. The wallet has received a total of US$7.35...
...the movement’s lasting influence will be the connective tissue created between the people sucked in by lies and rumours. Australians who were tepid or unsure about vaccine safety are now hooked into networks of conspiracy and extremism via apps like Telegram. Even as their white-hot anger and fear diminishes, they remain disenfranchised and sceptical, if not outright hostile, of the government and our institutions. These dormant concerns and connections are ready to be re-activated by the right moment or person.
But those watching the movement warn against assuming that the movement will peacefully ebb into obscurity, as it was before COVID-19. ASIO chief Mike Burgess warned about violence from radicalised anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown protesters just a month ago. The Australian reported that police were expected to charge high-profile leaders of the movement for incitement to violence, although this has yet to eventuate.
Online activists and researchers who’ve been tracking Australia’s anti-vaccine movement told Crikey that a new generation of more radical anti-vaccine protesters who are steeped in sovereign citizen ideology have taken the reins of the movement. Campsites with the leftovers from February’s Convoy protests — led by people like Jim “Iron Thunderbolt” Greer and Dave “Guru” Graham — are festering just outside Canberra. Diehards have spent weeks in squalid conditions, becoming increasingly detached from mainstream society and submerged in toxic communities using violent rhetoric.
Outside the Lodge on an overcast day earlier this week, an anti-vaccine campaigner spoke on a microphone at cars whizzing past. She told a handful of other assembled activists, three sitting in the gutter while one listlessly waved a giant red ensign flag, that the Australian anti-vaccine movement had hit a wall.
Australia’s anti-vaccine movement is collapsing
Australia's anti-vaccine activists seized on COVID-19 and grew into an energetic and active movement. Now, their cause is falling apart.
www.crikey.com.au
