He has railed against immigration and called for Frexit. Now Florian Philippot, the former right-hand man of Marine Le Pen, is trying to position himself at the head of a wave of protests against restrictions being imposed by the government of President Emmanuel Macron to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Some 204,090 people, chanting “Liberté”, “Résistance” and “Macron resign” took part in 184 rallies across France yesterday against the introduction of the pass sanitaire — a health passport that from August 9 will be compulsory for those wanting to visit a bar, café or restaurant, the interior ministry said. This compared with 161,000 at similar protests last Saturday.
The protests — some of which turned violent — were joined by health workers angry at being ordered to be fully vaccinated by October 15 or face suspension without pay.
Rallies were also held in Rome and other Italian cities by those opposed to a similar “green pass” due to come into effect there on August 6, amid signs of a growing divide across Europe over the extent to which the state should restrict the rights of the unvaccinated.
In France the most prominent demonstration was that organised by Philippot, 39, a former vice-president of Le Pen’s far right National Rally, who quit in 2017 to set up his own party, Les Patriotes, for which he is running in next April’s presidential election.
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There was a carnival atmosphere as tens of thousands of people marched from Montparnasse through the Left Bank for a rally at which speakers, headed by Philippot, urged the crowd to resist the “shameful pass” imposed by a “shameful” government contrary to the “sacred principles” of France’s freedom-loving past.
“Vive la résistance, vive la liberté, vive la France,” Philippot concluded, as the Marseillaise blared out through a loudspeaker. He urged people to return for a protest next Saturday.
Among the demonstrators was Mina, 40, a nurse from Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris. “I am not saying the vaccine doesn’t work, just that it may have side effects that we don’t know about,” she said. She was echoed by Laurent, 52, an engineer, marching with a sign that read: “Macron, stick the vaccine up your arse”. He said: “The government has mishandled the health crisis and now they are trying to create a kind of apartheid between those who have been vaccinated and the rest.”
There was violence at another protest involving thousands of people near Bastille, in the southeast of Paris, where demonstrators built barricades and threw stones and other projectiles at police, who responded with tear gas. More than 3,000 police were on duty, many to prevent protesters spilling on to the Champs-Élysées. In Lyons, protesters gathered outside the Edouard Herriot hospital, where a group of workers went on strike last week in protest at the measures.
Nationally, the protesters appeared to be a mixture of antivaxers — many of them supporters of the far right — and others happy to be immunised but who reject coercion. There were also gilets jaunes, members of the grassroots movement that emerged in late 2018 in protest at Macron’s “green” taxes on fuel, causing chaos for almost a year.
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The new movement brings together “the same kind of people” as the gilets jaunes, according to Philippe Breton, a sociologist at Strasbourg University. Aged largely 30 to 50, living outside the main cities on modest incomes and suspicious of politicians, media and other public institutions, they consider the pass sanitaire an attempt to exclude the non-vaccinated from society. “They have taken it as a declaration of war,” Breton told the newspaper Libération.
After attracting little attention for months, France’s antivax movement has been given a boost by the restrictions, which were announced by Macron in a speech on July 12 in an attempt to give impetus to the vaccination campaign, which was beginning to slow amid a reluctance among the young.
The president’s strategy worked: more than another 4.7 million people have since had their first jab, spurred into action by the prospect of the pass sanitaire, which has been compulsory since July 21 for entry to concerts, cinemas, theatres and other places where more than 50 people are gathered. To obtain a pass, those who have not been vaccinated must either produce a negative test or provide proof of having recovered after testing positive for the virus.
Yet it has also provoked a backlash from those who see the restrictions as an assault on individual liberties: the voices have been loudest on the far right and the far left, both of which voted against the measures, which were passed last weekend. The constitutional council is due to rule on or after August 5 on whether it is in accordance with the French constitution.
Macron’s government could face a more serious challenge this autumn ahead of the October final deadline for hospital and other health workers to be jabbed. Some appear likely to resist. France’s public health agency estimated in June that 72.2 per cent of doctors had had a first vaccination, but only 58.7 per cent of nurses and 50 per cent of assistant nurses. There has also been talk of stoppages by railway workers, who will be required to check for health passes on inner-city trains.
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The consequences for the French presidential race are more difficult to predict: although their stand may win them new supporters at the polls, Philippot, and other far-right figures such as Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, 60, and François Asselineau, 63, also seeking to ride the antivax wave, remain fringe figures, unlikely to win more than a few per cent of the vote.
Yet some of their extra backing may come from erstwhile followers of Le Pen, who voted against the pass sanitairee but has kept a distance from the street protests for fear of alienating the mainstream voters she is trying to woo. If she loses too many supporters, this could harm her changes of progressing to the second round runoff, which has been expected to be a rerun of the 2017 election in which she was defeated by Macron.
The heated debate in France is mirrored by one in Italy, where two main leaders on the national conservative right, Matteo Salvini, head of the League, and Giorgia Meloni, head of Brothers of Italy, have both spoken out against restrictions — even though Salvini remains a member of the ruling coalition that imposed them.
