July 26, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — The second round of anti-sanitary pass and mandatory vaccination demonstrations attracted hundreds of thousands of people in France last Saturday, all over the country, stimulated by the adoption of the government’s draft law last Thursday.
Government figures put participation at 160,000 people. As there were 168 demonstrations according to the government statistics, the official numbers would equate to about 1,000 participants per venue. Mainstream media quoted “hundreds” or at most “several thousand” demonstrators, clearly choosing their side in the battle of numbers that is now well underway in France.
The situation is reminiscent of the famed “Manifs pour tous” in France which organized several million-strong marches in 2013 against same-sex “marriage,” but whose numbers were systematically under-evaluated. This was despite the fact that photos and videos of the events belied the official counts. The same happened with the Yellow Vest demonstrations in 2018.
Some 71 arrests took place last Saturday and, as mobilization continues with a giant demonstration planned in Paris for July 3, radicalization may well be what the authorities are hoping for, even if they need to egg it on.
But the events will be hard to circumscribe, as they are multifarious under many aspects: the organizers come from all corners of society, with few political and union leaders. A remarkable exception is Jean-Frédéric Poisson, leader of the Christian Democrat VIA party, who has actively fought the sanitary dictatorship from the start.
Poisson initiated a recourse at the top administrative court, the Conseil d’Etat, against the decree closing all cultural and leisure venues that can hold 50 people and more to those without the sanitary pass from July 21. This recourse and a number of similar proceedings were rejected this Monday on the grounds of the “gravity” of the present Delta-variant and the right of the government to set up preventive police measures. It would seem that barring people who do not have a negative COVID test taken fewer than 48 hours before does not counter “fundamental liberties” of access to culture, artistic creation, and the freedom to follow a professional occupation.
People from the scientific world also took part in the Saturday rallies. Geneticist Alexandra Henrion-Caude, a specialist of RNA, got a triumphant welcome in Nice on the Côte d’Azur. She has been extremely vocal against lockdowns and other COVID restrictions, speaking of the ludicrousness of a so-called “asymptomatic” disease and of the tyranny involved in forcing people who are in perfect health to stay at home. She is also extremely wary of the experimental “vaccine” and considers it to be the first step to generalized transhumanism because it is forcing people’s bodies to produce proteins that are foreign to it … and toxic.
A mere look at photos and videos of the smaller events shows that most attracted thousands of people, while enormous crowds joined marches in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Lille, and other regional capitals. In Paris alone, three separate calls to demonstrate were made by the “Yellow Vests,” the health professions who are facing compulsory Spike injections, and an opposition front created by Florian Philippot, a former leader of the National Front, gathered crowds of many thousands.
Many videos of a sample of the demonstrations all over the country are available on the Catholic conservative news site “Le Salon beige,” here.
The big static demonstration at the Trocadéro, facing the Eiffel Tower, attracted “100,000” people according to Philippot. Even if this is probably an exaggerated number, the square and esplanade can hold a theoretical 120,000 demonstrators if densely packed. The real number must have been at least 50 or 60 thousand at any given time. Even this would be considerable in the middle of summer when so many Parisians desert the capital.
In ordinary times, calling for a demonstration in France during the long vacation in July and August is a recipe for failure. The consistently high turnouts all over France, in small, lazy provincial towns as well as in the larger metropolises have come as a surprise to the government and to Emmanuel Macron. France’s president was busy opening the Olympic Games in Tokyo last Saturday while his country’s citizens were shouting “Liberté, liberté!”
During the rally in Tours (in central France) on Saturday, a group of demonstrators entered the town hall and threw the president’s official portrait out of the first-floor window.
Macron went on to Tahiti, a French possession in the Pacific, where he declared: “If tomorrow you infect your father, your mother, or myself, I become a victim of your freedom when you had the opportunity to have something to protect yourself and me. And in the name of your freedom, you may have a severe form [of the virus], and you will arrive at this hospital. It is all these employees who are going to have to take care of you and perhaps give up taking someone else (…). This is not freedom, it is called irresponsibility, egoism.”
But at present, people who are getting the experimental COVID shot are clearly caving in to save their freedom to go to the restaurant, have a drink, or enjoy holidays abroad. Others are worrying about having to get the “vaccine” in order to keep their jobs and livelihoods, and a number of those at least will “choose” the jab if the pressure becomes too high. But it will not be to “protect” themselves or to “protect others,” as the public narrative goes. In fact, many discussions during the marches were about the inefficiency of the “vaccine” against the “D variant” of SARS-CoV-2, which the government touts and “forgets” in turn.
I joined the demonstration in Vannes. In comparison with Saturday, July 17, the numbers of participants was higher by at least 50 percent despite weather alerts announcing torrential rains and thunderstorms. The rain mostly stayed away, but the public did not: a probable 6 to 7 thousand joined the march, waving Breton flags or home-made boards asking “leave the kids alone” or proclaiming that both the vaxxed and the un-vaxxed are standing together against state “control” of all citizens. One read: “Macron, the more you jab, the more the variants jab back.” Bernard Deléon, a Breton militant who organized the rally, explained that he was not against all vaccinations, but against the COVID “vaccine.” “Apartheid”, “segregation,” “control” and the “fight for freedom” were recurrent in the march’s slogans.
The public was again very diverse, from Breton activists and left-wing environmentalists to neatly dressed traditional families, young people and old people, children and handicapped citizens in wheelchairs. It was the first time I demonstrated in a march where communist union CGT flags were flown, but there were also Catholics praying the rosary, hosts of people of all classes, simple or sophisticated. Macron has really set a large part of the French population, from all walks of life and regardless of political backgrounds, against himself and his globalist COVID measures. This is perhaps the best hope the movement has.
At present, several major countries in Europe are considering the introduction of vaccine passports or COVID-status passports, all more or less at the same time. These include Italy, where a decree set up a sanitary passport as of August 6, Germany, where the authorities are considering a restriction of rights for the unvaccinated, and the UK is also considering a COVID pass despite assurances to the contrary last June and the plummeting of COVID deaths over the last few weeks.
In France, COVID cases are still at a relatively high level (but not higher than in the UK a few weeks ago, where hospitalizations and deaths, as well as the case-count, are decreasing), but the number of people in hospital “with” COVID remains stable, and the number of patients in “intensive care” is quite stable, and under 900 for the whole country. The number of respiratory infections is very low nationwide, as is normal in summer.
