Darkness has ascended upon the enlightened country

‘By completely cutting off the unvaccinated from their daily life, Emmanuel Macron has segregated the French territory into two categories, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, with the latter being stripped of all its rights.’

July 14th 2021. The French national celebration commemorating the 232nd anniversary of the storming of Bastille, a major event of the 1789 French revolution. This year’s celebrations, however, were sombrely marred by President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that vaccination in France would essentially become mandatory. Unsurprisingly then, I found myself participating in the French national sport – protesting.

As the sun beamed down on the beautiful city of Montpellier, I was kindly greeted with a strong but refreshing cup of Ricard from a pleasant elderly man who had made the trip from the neighbouring city of Toulouse. Like many of the 1500-plus in attendance, this protestor was already vaccinated. His presence underlined the indispensable message of the manifestation: ‘We are not anti-vaccination, we are pro-choice.' Indeed, 232 years after their first revolution, the French found themselves de novo resisting an authoritarian state trying to assault the country’s ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity.

Under Macron’s proposals, unvaccinated people will no longer be able to enter a shop, a restaurant, a café, or even visit a dying relative in a hospital without a vaccine passport. While there is still the possibility to enter these places with a negative PCR test (conducted less than forty-eight hours beforehand), one must expose the French president’s decision to raise the cost of these formerly free tests to eye-watering prices; essentially giving us no choice but to vaccinate.

By completely cutting off the unvaccinated from their daily life, Emmanuel Macron has segregated the French territory into two categories, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, with the latter being stripped of all its rights. Furthermore, the French President has engineered a divisive and toxic ambiance in the country that seeks to pit one category of its people against another. Indeed, his televised speech, which resembled that of a deranged wannabe Napoleon Bonaparte, was haunted by his promise to both socially and economically suffocate those who failed to comply, so that the rest of the country could finally enjoy the liberties that he had stripped from them. This ultimatum’s sole purpose was to plant the seeds of resentment within the minds of the already vaccinated who will now viciously pressure their fellow citizens to follow orders.

One could be excused for refusing to believe that the French President had once publicly expressed his scepticism towards the efficacy of a vaccine that he is now forcing people to take.

Moreover, this vaccine passport not only applies to adults but also children as low as the age of twelve. Such an irresponsible decision leaves us with a possible scenario whereby an unvaccinated child could be snatched from its mother’s arms by a police officer upon entering a shop. This, despite the fact that there have already been hundreds of cases of heart issues amongst young people as a result of their vaccination.

As I take my usual morning stroll through the beautifully sun-lit historic centre, I now feel a terrible sense of foreboding resonating throughout my body as I witness both police and military presence around the city multiplying with each day. These people have been given the important job of patrolling every single establishment, with an intimidating presence, to make sure these rules are ruthlessly enforced. This kind of police presence is nothing new for the Macron administration, however.

If one casts their mind back to 2019, one will remember the merciless manner in which Macron’s minions, the CRS, dealt with the Gilets Jaunes protestors. Tear gas, water cannons, broken skulls, and rubber bullets to the eyes; just to name a few.

Macron’s authoritarianism can actually be traced back to his legitimacy complex. Unemphatically, the Fifth Republic’s eighth president was elected on an incredibly weak mandate of just twenty-four per cent of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections. Furthermore, with an abysmal turnout of just sixty-five per cent, coupled with the fact that the majority of his support came from those simply lending their vote to prevent Marine Le Pen from winning, it can be argued that Macron realistically only had ten per cent of the electorate backing him. This feeling of weakness, derived from an absence of respect for his authority, has mutated his former liberal hubris into nasty despotism, making him capable of crushing his own people.

The French President can pride himself in the fact that his vaccine policy is in good company. Indeed, the only other countries to have imposed mandatory vaccination on the entirety of its population are three Middle Eastern dictatorships: Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Whilst the former has a history of assassinating journalists and supporting the beheading of French teachers by Islamic terrorists, the latter has recently unveiled a ridiculously large golden statue of their dictator’s dog. Nice work, Macron!

And for all those who continue to bombard me with responses of 'just stop complaining and get the vaccine', the truth is that I simply cannot. After having listened to Macron’s speech, I decided to go on the Government’s website to see if there was any availability for receiving the vaccine and, lo and behold, the website had crashed. Unsurprisingly, the website could not sustain the surge of almost a million people panicking about their holidays. When I tried my luck again two days later, there were no more slots available until mid-August. Herewith, even if I were to get vaccinated, my vaccine passport would not be activated until October (two weeks after the second dose).

Ultimately, this policy will have another catastrophic effect on the already moribund French economy. All restaurants owners, shop owners, and bar staff will no longer be able to enter their own establishments and thus be forced to shut down for another two months.

We must thus pose the question: is this really worth it? Macron’s draconian measures will reduce the country to a segregated society in which its citizens are defined by a code on their phones and ruthlessly policed. Unlike many previous vaccines, the Covid vaccine fails to prevent the transmission of the virus while the number of double-vaccinated people dying from (or, at least, with) the ‘Delta' variant is said to be increasing with each day.

When it comes down to our individual liberty, we simply have two options: use it or lose it. I, for one, prefer the former.