There has been a huge amount written about the numerous anti-lockdown protests we’ve recently seen. Mainstream media and politicians have alternated between calling the protesters racists, conspiracy theorists, fascists, and simply describing them as useful idiots being manipulated by an ominously vague “far-right.”
Political protests, by their very nature, attract a variety of political groups and individuals, sometimes quite extreme, to them, but the decision to centralise those elements, and to begin describing the protests as representing broader political viewpoints or ideologies, is an editorial decision, not one based purely on facts.
Sometimes the decision is made to present protests, such as the water protests, as extreme events in which a complicit and docile population is led astray be political radicals. Water protesters, we may recall, were likened to members of the Islamic State in the Dail; Leo Varadkar said that the water protests had a “very sinister fringe.”
On the same basis some of the largest and most respectable NGOs in this country, many of them funded nearly entirely by the Government, can attend an event, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Saoradh, a Republican group whose offices were raided as part of the investigation into the murder of Lyra McKee, and it can so obviously be ‘not newsworthy’ that only Gript even reported that it had happened at all.
Karl Deeter, a columnist for the Irish Independent and the Sun, went down to the recent Le Chéile anti-lockdown protest and surveyed those protesting in an attempt to move beyond the editorial line and figure out exactly who the anti-lockdown protesters actually are. We spoke to Deeter about his research.
It is important to note that the peaceful Le Chéile protest attended by Deeter has no connection to the far-left, Irish Council of Civil Liberties backed Le Chéile organization which recently shared material which seemed to call for the use of political force against anti-lockdown protesters – the material called for a mass movement to “sweep” the protesters “off the streets when the time comes”, and said that neither “the court”, nor “the ballot box” could be trusted.
On the subject of the protesters being “far-right” he told us that roughly 60% of those polled either don’t vote or don’t identify with any particular political party or candidate. Amongst those who do vote the largest party was the eurosceptic Irish Freedom Party (IFP), with Sinn Fein being the second most favoured party. The then Chair of the IFP, Dolores Cahill, was speaking at the Le Chéile event.
As the protests have been presented as being far-right Deeter asked participants if they held negative views on members of any ethnic minority. Only 1 person said that they had such views – that person was a People Before Profit voter.
Only a minority of the protesters identified as religious, with most protesters identifying as pro-choice. Most of the protesters were employed, with 10% unemployed and 9% taking the Covid payment.
Almost all the protesters wanted lockdowns to be ended, unsurprisingly, and 60% of the protesters said they were against mandatory mask laws. The vast majority, 98%, said that they believed that Covid-19 is less dangerous than the Government and NPHET have told people it is. We can’t tell from the polling if that means they think Covid-19 is harmless, as harmful as a standard flu, or very harmful but less harmful than has been presented.
The belief that the reality of Covid-19 is different than what we have been told about the illness ties into one of the most striking findings of Deeter’s polling – the incredibly low level of trust the protesters had both in the abilities of the Irish government to deal with Covid-19, and in the ability of the Irish media to hold the government to account for its failures and to report on the issues affecting the country fairly and accurately. On a 7-point scale of trust, with 1 being the lowest, both the media and the Government scored 1.3. On a 7-point scale of how upset protesters were at the perform of both the media and government, with 7 being the highest, neither scored below a 6.5. The police force was the most trusted of the organizations Deeter asked protesters their opinions of. Protester’s feelings towards the police were largely “benign”, although concerns were raised about how police were policing the lockdowns.
On conspiracies 52% said they believed that 5G was a health risk, but Deeter points out that this is very different than saying they believe in any sort of population control conspiracy about 5G – some of the protesters told him they just didn’t think the masts should be located on offices and houses.
The data isn’t perfect, and it was never going to be as Deeter is just a single man going out, on his own initiative, to gather data, but it does show us that the ways in which the protests have been talked about are simple not supported by the best facts we have available to us.