When it comes to anti-vaxxers, mockery is a big mistake
Sometimes it’s fine to call an idiot an idiot. Take, for example, Extinction Rebellion. You may have read about their latest brainwave. They’re urging us all to take a stand against climate-wrecking capitalism… by refusing to keep up with our mortgage repayments.
Apparently, this heroic act of defiance would shake the Government so profoundly that it would pledge to end carbon emissions, save the environment and eradicate poverty overnight. Activists appear convinced that their plan is foolproof. Accede to our demands for climate action, or TSB can go whistle. Stuff their mortgage. We won’t pay back a bean. “I hope this idea will be embraced by everyone who is reasonable,” said one of Extinction Rebellion’s cofounders this week, “and is willing to have a conversation.”
Yes – a conversation with the big burly men who get sent round your house to remove all your furniture. “I say, Mr Bailiff! Would you mind putting down that television a moment? I wish to open an urgent dialogue with you about the climate emergency. Do you have any inkling of the plight faced by the Ethiopian mountain lobelia?”
As so often with Extinction Rebellion’s proposals, it seems headspinningly out-of-touch. Perhaps its activists are just so fabulously posh, they’re genuinely unable to see how an idea like this could backfire. (“What’s that? You and your family have been evicted from your home because you refused to pay your mortgage? No problem. Just move into a spare wing of Daddy’s castle, that’s what I’d do.”)
Anyway, to return to my opening point: if you think Extinction Rebellion are idiots, you may freely say so. Go right ahead. Mock them to your heart’s content.
There are times, however, when calling people idiots is deeply unwise – no matter how idiotic you may believe them to be. Which brings me to the anti-vaxxer movement.
No one in this country, I think I can say with full confidence, is going to follow Extinction Rebellion’s advice on wilful non-payment of their mortgage. There are, however, people who will listen, in good faith, to fake news and conspiracy theories about Covid vaccines. This is dangerous. Without vaccines, we aren’t going to repel this virus, save our economies and rebuild our societies. Anti-vaxxer propaganda could cost lives and livelihoods.
So, given the gravity of the situation, it may seem natural to grow frustrated with people who believe this stuff. And that frustration may boil over into anger – and then ridicule. We may feel an irresistible temptation to mock anti-vaxxers. I won’t pretend to be immune to this temptation. In this slot a couple of months ago I wrote about the grotesque conspiracy theory known as Qanon, which posits that Donald Trump is the last line of defence against an ultrapowerful underground cabal of Satanic child-traffickers. I openly concede that my descriptions of this theory’s adherents were not wholly complimentary.
When it comes to anti-vaxxers, though, mockery is a mistake – and a mistake we could all come to regret. For the sake of their lives and ours, we need them to change their minds. And calling people idiots is a less than infallible means of winning them round to your point of view. Just ask anyone who campaigned for a second EU referendum.
Obviously I’m not likening Leavers to anti-vaxxers. But if anything is to be learnt from the past five years of British politics, it should be about the drawbacks of mockery as a campaigning tool. Because not only will mockery fail to win anti-vaxxers round, it will almost certainly push them further in the opposite direction. When mocked for their views, people naturally tend to feel hurt and alienated. They don’t say, “Sorry, yes, you’re right – I am a honking great moron. Thank you so much for pointing it out. I simply couldn’t see it before. Probably because I’m a honking great moron.” Instead, they dig their heels in – and commit even more passionately to the views you’ve derided.
Mocking anti-vaxxers, therefore, is counterproductive. It’s damaging to everyone’s interests. So in that sense, calling anti-vaxxers irrational is itself irrational.
But if not by ridicule, how do we combat conspiracy theories? If you’ve got friends or relations who refuse to countenance a vaccine, on the basis of some fallacious bilge they’ve read online about Bill Gates and microchips, how do you persuade them?
It might not be enough to suggest that, if we reject vaccines, it could lead to the eventual collapse of the economy – not to mention the small matter of mass death. After all, anti-vaxxers might call that Project Fear. And we know that prophecies of doom don’t always persuade people, any more than mocking them does.
Our best hope is to remember that anti-vaxxers exist on a spectrum. Some will be so fervently entrenched as to be unreachable. But others will be perfectly reasonable people who are fundamentally just anxious. And perhaps, when they’ve seen their own friends and relations take the vaccine, and emerge entirely unharmed by it, they’ll be willing to take it themselves.
Then again, you never know. Maybe it won’t matter if some people refuse to take it. It’s possible that the Oxford vaccine – of which the Government has ordered 100 million doses – will help to prevent transmission of the virus. Which would mean that others are less likely to catch it.
In effect, then, the vaccine would be protecting anti-vaxxers, too. Even if they refuse to believe it.
For the sake of their lives and ours, we need them to change their minds