Vaccines are being portrayed as limiting personal freedom – but this can mask the true reasons for hesitancy

For those watching the news, anti-vaccination movements seem to be evolving, with both new tactics and a new watchword – liberty, rather than conspiracy.

As 2021 neared its end, protests against mandatory COVID vaccination policies spread across Europe. In city centres, placards and their holders shouted “freedom” and asserted the right, as one sign expressed it, to “use your own judgment”. Then, earlier this year, the “Freedom Convoy,” funded in part by donations from American citizens, brought the Canadian capital and border crossings to a standstill. Similar trucker protestsappeared in France and the US.

But though this wave of resistance seems to find unity in a shared rhetoric of state overreach and personal freedoms, the wider population of vaccine resisters may not actually share much in common with it. History shows that in the context of anti-vaccination, the rhetoric of liberty can gloss a more varied set of concerns, obscuring as much as it enlightens.