Antoine Bristielle is an associate professor of social sciences and a doctoral student at the Pacte laboratory (@A_Bristielle)

From Florida to Paris, from Berlin to Canada, "anti-mask" movements are multiplying around the world, and far beyond the United States alone. With the number of cases of Covid-19 contamination on the rise for several weeks now, and the fear of a second epidemic wave more topical than ever, many governments have stepped up measures requiring the wearing of masks.

However, this measure is far from being unanimously supported, as witnessed by the 30,000 people who demonstrated in Berlin on August 29 to protest against this obligation. In France, although 80% of the population would like to see the wearing of masks made compulsory, even outdoors, the anti-mask movement is organizing a fightback. On social networks, and Facebook in particular, numerous groups have sprung up to assert their refusal to wear masks. But who are these individuals, and why are they refusing such a public health measure?

Facebook as a new field of research

This is the question we set out to answer for La Fondation Jaurès, a progressive think tank, based on a questionnaire survey of over 1,000 individual members of "anti-mask" Facebook groups in France. Although this type of survey has been criticized, the literature shows that it offers strong methodological guarantees.

Indeed, using Facebook as a sampling frame is relevant when trying to identify the contours ofa hard-to-reach activist population too small to be captured by nationally representative surveys. This is even more the case when mobilization takes place mainly online.

The validity of this survey method can be seen empirically, for example, when the results of a questionnaire in evangelical groups are very close to those obtained from the General Social Survey which is the very best in terms of representative surveys (carried out face-to-face on a random basis).

From mistrust to conspiracy

These anti-mask activists are characterized first and foremost by an extreme distrust of political and media institutions. Only 6% of them have confidence in the presidential institution, despite it being the pillar of French institutions, and only 2% have confidence in political parties. Similarly, only 2% of anti-mask users have confidence in television news. When institutions are so discredited, conspiracy theories are all the more appealing. Thus, 52% of anti-mask activists believe in the existence of the Illuminati, and 57% in the presence of a worldwide Zionist conspiracy.

This attraction to conspiracy theories is also apparent when these anti-mask campaigners are asked to explain the reasons for their mobilization. While the first reason invoked typically concerns the mask, deemed useless or even dangerous, a second reason is quickly invoked: the epidemic is in fact over, or even never existed, and the mask is merely a "muzzle" imposed by governments to test the population's servility, with a view to subsequently establishing a new world order in which citizens would be deprived of freedom. 

Individual freedom, the matrix of protest

In fact, it's clear that, along with institutional distrust, the value of individual freedom is a decisive factor in the mobilization of anti-mask campaigners. Between health safety and respect for freedom, anti-mask users clearly choose the latter. Thus, 87% of anti-mask users surveyed agree with the idea that society works best when it lets individuals take responsibility for their own lives without telling them what to do. 95% think that the government interferes far too much in our daily lives, 59% that everyone should be free to do what they want.

Indeed, these libertarian attitudes largely explain the profile of the individuals mobilizing on these issues. Indeed, when we look at the socio-demographic characteristics of these anti-mask activists, the results are extremely disconcerting, as they do not correspond to the most defiant, populist and conspiratorial people. We're dealing here with fairly well-educated people, with an average of 2 years' higher education, who tend to be older and from higher social classes...

The various studies carried out in the USA show quite clearly that individuals with libertarian attitudes generally have a high level of education and income, and come from the upper social classes... a profile very similar to that of the anti-maskers in our study. While libertarianism seemed to be a phenomenon confined to the United States, Europe too seems to be experiencing the mobilization of these groups in the current health crisis.

But more profoundly, the anti-mask movement shows us that we live in a society of profound distrust of political institutions. Although the anti-mask campaigners stand out from the rest of the population as "super-distrusters", this should not obscure the extent to which this institutional distrust is shared by a large section of society. If, in normal times, institutions manage to function despite this lack of legitimacy, the situation becomes much more complex in times of exceptional crisis, when greater efforts are required of the population. In such circumstances, the measures taken are perceived with widespread skepticism, and are liable to mobilize large sections of the population against them.

Unless the inadequacies of our institutions are addressed in depth, it's a safe bet that other episodes of a similar nature will follow. And the next one may be closer than we think: 96% of anti-maskers say they will refuse to be vaccinated the day a vaccine against Covid-19 becomes available...