Andrew Bolt: Media reveals its snobbery over vaccine anti-mandate protests

As hospitals empty of Covid cases, many of the bans on the unvaccinated will be superfluous — so it’s time to end this us-against-them mentality.

Some of the media hatred for the more than 10,000 people who protested in Canberra on Saturday against vaccines mandates seems like pure snobbery.

Normally the media has a lot of respect for such big protests, but not this time.

The media was horrified. Three protesters arrested! One had walked where he shouldn’t! The protesters stopped a Lifeline fundraiser by crowding the park! One of the more than 10,000 had a Croatian flag linked to fascists!

Labor was no better, faced with these workers. Frontbencher Kristina Keneally denounced the protest for including “violent extremists”, but the video shows the vast, vast majority were actually better-mannered than most of the Black Lives Matter or Extinction Rebellion protesters much loved by the media Left.

In fact, the crowd seemed to be largely middle-aged, if not working class, with many women. Suburban, really, treating Pauline Hanson as a hero and waving scores of Australian flags, which now seem to trigger people of the wine-bar Left and make them fear the underclass.

I can’t deny plenty of protesters believed vaccine conspiracy theories that I think are bonkers. They worry me a bit, but what worries me more is how often such anti-mandate protesters have been treated like scum by people typically keen to prove their morality by abusing someone else.

Some of the media hatred for the more than 10,000 people who protested in Canberra on Saturday against vaccine mandates seems like pure snobbery. Picture: Sam Beau Patrick

In Melbourne, the Labor government had police even fire rubber bullets at them.

Seriously? Must we really make these people feel like public enemies of a malevolent state? How is that meant to end?

It’s not illegitimate for them to ask: should a government really force people to inject themselves with a new drug they do not trust?

True, I’ve backed limited and temporary vaccine mandates – in nursing homes, particularly – where the duty to protect the vulnerable is clear. I also get the argument that mandates helped stop so many people from getting sick that they overwhelmed our hospitals.

But things are now changing. We’re down to just 257 Australians in intensive care. What’s more, we know vaccines don’t stop you from infecting others. They’re really to stop yourself from getting seriously ill.

So as hospitals empty, many of the bans on the unvaccinated will be superfluous. Governments are even considering giving up enforcing QR codes. Obviously, many mandate rules will at some stage be dropped. So why not say so now? Announce a target for removing them – like having just 50 people in ICU.

Please, bring down the heat, because this us-against-them has gone too far.