Religion has always played a role in low vaccination rates. A 2015 literature review on to measles vaccination that examined major religious groups around the world — Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Protestant Christianity, Amish, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Islam — found that, although there are always social determinants that explain religious objections, there were also specific issues such as the possible use of aborted human fetus tissue in the making of the vaccine (Christian, Roman Catholic) or the use of animal-based gelatins (pork and cow for Islam, Judaism and Hinduism).

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Another analysis of Europe’s identified five that are at a higher risk: Orthodox Protestant communities, anthroposophists (Steiner schools), Roma, Irish Travelers and Orthodox Jewish communities. In , before the pandemic, Muslim families had significantly lower vaccination outcomes compared to other religious groups.

The Alt-Medicine Crowd

The alternative medicine/wellness crowd became another predictor of low vaccination when Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 paper in The Lancet sparked an international wave of vaccine hesitancy at a time when vaccination drives had achieved the eradication of several deadly diseases around the world. Wakefield’s scientific deception is skillfully summarized in Brian Deer’s “,” where conflicts of interest (Wakefield had filed his own single measles vaccine patent before publishing this research) and reports of abuse (invasive and unnecessary tests on autistic and neurodivergent children) are documented.

Wakefield’s now-discredited publication, which connected the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine to gut inflammation and falsely correlated it with a diagnosis of autism, effectively launched the modern reincarnation of the anti-vaccination movement.

Contrary to the vaccine hesitancy among religious communities, alt-medicine groups have managed to monetize their opposition to vaccination. A report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) estimates that the anti-vax media complex is , with estimated annual profits at around $36 million, based on publicly available data.

Some of the leading figures in the business earn six-figure salaries (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earns $255,000 a year as the chairman of Children’s Health Defense). Anti-Vax groups also applied and received more than $1.5 million in loans from the federal Paycheck Protection Program in the US to help them to survive a pandemic they questioned.

More disturbingly, the CCDH report estimates that anti-vaccination-related traffic is extremely valuable for Big Tech, worth estimated at around $1.1 billion. An analysis of showed that the majority of anti-vax advertisement is funded by two campaigners, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Larry Cook.

Dabbing in Extremist Hatred

Before the pandemic, anti-vax groups were a public health concern in terms of various that became more frequent since the early 2000s. However, once the anti-mask protests of 2020 evolved into the anti-vaccination protests of 2021, the far right has managed to successfully traditional anti-vax communities, turning a public health concern into a political problem of .

This anti-vax, anti-government, far-right nationalist protest medley is evident anywhere from Canada to Australia, where COVID-19 anti-lockdown protests have turned to violence and conspiracy-driven . In France, the ubiquitous used by protesters to denote unvaccinated status became a stark reminder of how the pain of Holocaust survivors can be easily appropriated.

Similarly, the movement has used opposition to the relatively mild COVID-19 restrictions in the country as a vehicle for anti-Semitic and radical-right extremism. In both Greece and Cyprus, where a SafePass — proof of vaccination or a negative test — is required to enter any commercial or public space, large anti-vax protests turned violent, in the case of Cyprus attempting to a TV station.

Some evidence suggests behind these protests: a German group, the Free Citizens of Kassel, seems to be behind the “World Wide Rallies for Freedom” organized since March 2021 in all corners of the world, even in tiny countries such as Cyprus and Luxembourg, using the hashtag #WewillALLbethere.

Another German movement promoting anti-vax conspiracy theories is called Querdenken, which translates as “lateral thinking.” It is now by Facebook and it has been linked to the far-right Alternative for Germany party. According to some , Querdenken has managed to infiltrate teenagers’ social media channels and successfully spread COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Satanic Vials

Religious symbols at these anti-vax rallies, however, reveal that their message is not only about religion. Behind the bizarre circulation of the “” card is the fact that Christian symbolism is simply the metaphor, not the substance, in demonstrating against a “satanic” vaccine or an oppressive government that will lead to the “apocalypse.” The history of Christian thought and scientific consensus is much more than simple refusal. In fact, Christian religious leaders in the US have vaccinations despite debates on the use of fetal cells for research.

However, in the US, anti-vax protests are less about religious beliefs and more about the awakening of that is pro-Trump and QAnon-positive. The group has skillfully embraced Christian nationalism and engulfed religious beliefs in an ideological mix of anti-mask, anti-vax, MAGA white nationalism.

Among US Christian groups, represent the largest block in anti-vaccination ideology. Although they may use the Bible as a source of vaccine hesitancy, more often they resort to a rhetoric of condemnation toward the “” that resembles the anti-establishment language of right-wing extremism.

In Greece, countrywide anti-vaccination protesters brandished Greek flags, big Greek Orthodox crosses and chants of the national anthem and “Christ Has Risen.” At the same time, priests and monks marched alongside Golden Dawn followers who brought their neo-Nazi arguments to the anti-vax demonstration. During one of these protests, Elias Kassidiaris, a former Golden Dawn MP, joined the protesters from prison via phone. All of these phenomena beg the question of how much the seemingly religion-inspired anti-vax movement is another expression of Christianism.

Conspirituality and Vaccine Refusal

The term “” was coined in 2011 by Charlotte Ward and David Voas to signify a productive merging of the mostly male-dominated world of conspiracy theories with the feminine New Age spiritual wave. The term has since taken on and found a revived relevance during the current pandemic. The Conspirituality podcast, launched in May 2020, has been a brilliant weekly take on the “converging right-wing conspiracy theories and faux-progressive wellness utopianism.”

The phenomenon is directly relevant to the alt-medicine crowd that has always emphasized the idea of one’s sovereign, meditative body that exerts control over its immune system and is impervious to the replication of the virus.

The main message throughout the pandemic has been to question the scientific existence of COVID-19 — for example, Kelly Brogan’s Questioning Covid website — but also to interpret the pandemic through the concept of “the great reset,” which Brogan’s partner, Sayer Ji, explains as “Tyranny. Technocracy. Experimental Jabs.” It is a form of neoliberal spirituality that places emphasis on individual responsibility and deflects from the role of public health research.

But the synergies between those spreading “medical freedom” and the far-right crowds should not be underestimated. One of the leading entrepreneurs of the anti-vaccination movement, Del Bigtree, spoke at the January 6 “MAGA Freedom Rally D.C.” just a block from the US Capitol. The creator of the Facebook group “Stop Mandatory Vaccination” Larry Cook also launched the YouTube channel, “Medical Freedom Patriots,” describing it as pro-God, pro-Trump, anti-vaccine and QAnon-friendly.

The Bollingers, an anti-vax couple with a large social media following and even larger revenues, founded the United Medical Freedom Super PAC that campaigned against vaccination during the 2020 election. Sherri Tenpenny, a trained physician who advocates against vaccination, is an adviser to Mike Lindell and a promoter of the so-called “election fraud” debate in the US.

In many ways, COVID-19 has made possible a backslide from the alt-medicine to the alt-right: your yoga teacher, organic food guru and meditation partner who advised you on how to keep your immune system strong in order to avoid vaccines is now talking about the government’s plan to microchip you to facilitate the trafficking of young children.

In effect, the far right has the leftist side of the anti-vax movement through a shared anti-establishment stance. As Andreas Önnerfors has pointed out, these anti-vaccination protests represent a of the left (green/progressive/liberal) with the socially conservative right.

Vaccine Hesitancy vs. Anti-Vaccination

The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization defines as “delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability of vaccine services.” It notes that it is a complex societal and cultural phenomenon related to three factors: complacency, convenience and confidence. This largely psychological approach, however, misses the political dimension of anti-vax ideology.

Currently, the challenge is to understand how reasonable fears and valid questions surrounding vaccination mutate into radical and extremist anti-democratic ideology. Part of the explanation is how narratives of have succeeded in appropriating anti-establishment sentiments. A recent study by analyzed narrative tropes and rhetorical strategies in anti-vax platforms and found that the narrative of “corrupt elites” and the strategy of appealing to the vulnerability of children were most frequently used.

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As Mark Davis argues, even before the current pandemic, anti-vaccination websites oppositional and antagonistic strategies to produce an anti-public discourse that mostly resembles white supremacist, alt-right and conspiracy forums.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that vaccine hesitancy is not just about the vaccine. It showcases the algorithmic traction of the antagonistic discourse on social media that shuts down arguments with a concern for the “ordinary” people or “defenseless” children. Ultimately, it is about mistrust of authority, the specter of corrupted elites and a misplaced desire for freedom and choice.

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However, there was also a third and powerful presence at the event: keynote speakers who are members of the far-right Italian government as well as a strong by the neo-fascist Forza Nuova. All of these groups coalesce under the banner of the (heteronormative) family, a central concept in the radical right’s fight against “gender ideology.” There are two important effects of this coalition: First, how family is weaponized in opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage and, second, how the radical right capitalizes on this family lobby”in order to claim socially conservative individuals who do not feel represented in other political parties.

The Invention of Gender Ideology

There was a point in the early 2000s when the Catholic Church decided to tackle head on the question of gender by addressing the “signs of the times” in its various communications. In one of the first references, the Pontifical Council for the Family published the conclusions of a series of meetings in a 2000 , “Family, Marriage and ‘De Facto’ Unions.” The (rather lengthy) document refers to “the ideology of ‘gender,’” carefully placing the word in quotation marks as if to destabilize and question its meaning.

The major argument here was that an environment of “radical neo-liberalism” fostered the spread of an ideology that threatened the institution of the family by allowing any type of union to be called a family. By 2009, when the Fifth World Congress of Families took place in Amsterdam, the to the participants referred to “the gender ideology” (without any quotation marks) as an established reality that continued to erode the “natural family” and create futile opposition between the sexes.

Gender scholars are genuinely perplexed with the term “gender ideology” or, as it is sometimes labeled, “gender theory.” At no point in a Gender Studies 101 course is such an ideology mentioned. Feminist theory does make a distinction between “sex” and “gender” with a rudimentary — if not — description: “sex” refers to the biological designation of male and female organisms as opposed to “gender,” which signifies the socially constructed roles and expectations associated with being a man or a woman.

This is exactly the point of contention: The Catholic Church is arguing that gender does not exist — its creation is a “theory.” In the church’s point of view, there is only a natural, biological reality of two complementary sexes that constitute the building block of the family institution.

Allegiances aside, one must admit that the rhetorical tactic of calling gender an ideology or a theory is a masterful approach. The Catholic Church does not engage in debates regarding inequality, violence or oppression that form the basis of gender studies research. Instead, they undermine the substance of these debates by questioning the existence of a foundational concept in feminism. In doing this, they have created the perfect breeding ground for the type of radical-right ideology that is needed in order to supplement its Islamophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric — in this case, with homophobia and sexism.

Opposition to gender ideology, therefore, became a meeting point for far-right parties, especially because it was anchored on the concept of the family, with all its nationalistic connotations.

The Family Lobby

The main force behind the World Congress of Families are from both the US and Europe with a shared agenda against abortion, LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage. Opposition to euthanasia is often an additional objective as it fits within their general pro-life framework. All these groups have come to crystallize their ideology under the banner of “family” — a descriptive and benign term that has been turned into the primary frontier of social wars.

Even the relatively newly formed CitizenGO, active since 2013, which was also a sponsor of the 2019 WCF, proclaims that its goal is to “defend and promote life, family and liberty.” Interestingly, its website also links to a page on , which outlines a declaration of rights from “a Christian perspective.”

Groups such as CitizenGO avoid the term “human rights,” which they consider to be tainted by organizations such as the UN and the EU using definitions that they oppose. Instead, they seem poised to fight these definitions on a global scale. That is why Brian Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, announced in 2016 the renaming of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society to the International Organization for the Family in order to create a worldwide nexus of activists and religious leaders connected by the belief that the institution of the family is under attack.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists IOF as a because of its obvious anti-LGBTQ agenda. It is a carefully articulated agenda, of course, steering clear of blatant hate speech and focusing instead on the protection of the “natural family” — another instance of semantic subversion.

Allan Carlson, the editor of the IOF’s journal, The Natural Family, why the phrase works: “the term ‘natural family’ avoids other alternatives: ‘nuclear family,’ which sounds like a bomb; or ‘traditional family’ which is excessively backward looking. In addition, the ‘natural family’ is a positive expression, which does not require a discussion of negative incompatibilities in order to gain recognition.” Indeed, naturalization is the ultimate form of legitimization.

Politicizing the Family

From a political point of view, this “natural family” lobby has succeeded in bringing together a diverse group of actors, including activists and religious leaders from all over the world. Peculiarly, it has also produced an between the US Christian right and Russia, where anti-LGBTQ policies as well as setbacks in enforcement of gender-based violence laws are routine. The WCF helped Russia launch the FamilyPolicy.ru advocacy group in 2012.

Slowly, the family lobby has diversified its stakeholders by expanding through far-right governments or by inserting the concept of the family in official government bodies. Italy’s political leadership was represented at the 2019 WCF by the then-Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini (of what was then the Northern League party) and an MEP from Forza Italia. Salvini had also a change in official government forms to defend the “natural family” as “the union between a man and a woman.” The forms would refer to “mother and father” instead of “parent 1 and parent 2.”

In Hungary, there is a state secretary for family and youth affairs under the auspices of the Ministry of Human Capacities, and the Catholic Church has routinely the government for its family policy. Similarly, in Italy, there is a Ministry for Family and Equal Opportunities created by Salvini’s government. Both Hungarian and Italian ministers, representing a wide spectrum of the far right, were at the 2019 WCF conference.

When WCF was organized in Hungary in 2017, Prime Minister delivered the opening address. There is also a Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy in Poland, and in Greece even the leftist Syriza government had recommended the formation of a Family Ministry citing demographic woes — usually the talking points of the radical right. Finally, , in Spain, was partly achieved through an opposition to gender-based violence law and a proposal for a Family Ministry to protect the “natural family.”

These government family agencies usually peddle the language of European extinction and demographic winters as they take on the role of mainstreaming the “natural family” concept beyond its religious confines. A good example of this is Family Day in Italy. Sara Garbagnoli in “Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against Equality” that the first Family Day in Italy was organized in 2007, mostly by Catholic movements and associations, when it succeeded in countering a bill on same-sex unions introduced by Romano Prodi’s government.

When the event was revitalized in 2015 and 2016, it no longer featured only religiously affiliated family organizations but included a strong presence by Forza Nuova and Casa Pound. Last June, the founder of Family Day, Massimo Gandolfini (a keynote speaker at the 2019 WCF in Verona) was in the news for his because he had argued that pedophilia was among the gender identities approved by Arcigay, Italy’s first and largest national gay rights organization.

Collision Course

The radical right today is helping to both normalize and amplify the “natural family” lobby by couching it within the larger rhetoric of European/Western/white survival. More importantly, they are often in a position to cash in on their political capital by using policy positions to regulate the “” of our times. For the European Union, this mainstreaming of the “natural family” is on a collision course with the gender mainstreaming policies that member states have been implementing for the past 25 years.

The radical right has already embraced the challenge of moving the “natural family” debate from ecclesiastical to bureaucratic headquarters. The 13^th World Congress of Families ended with the adoption of the , which is a roadmap for the family lobby. It begins with the following affirmation: “The right to life is the foremost of all human rights: it must be recognized and protected — from conception to natural death — regardless of the quality of life that lies ahead.”

Later on, in one of the urgent imperatives, the congress declared that women’s rights should be protected so that, among others, they can “Choose to dedicate themselves exclusively to children and the family, with adequate remuneration for home work where the spouse’s salary is not sufficient for a free and dignified existence.” Margaret Atwood could not have written this better if she were to distil “The Handmaid’s Tale” into a policy brief.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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