No-Vax Extremism: Myth or Reality?

Abstract

At the beginning of September, eight no-vax activists were arrested in Italy. They were accused of planning attacks against journalists and authorities during a demonstration against the “Green Certificate" to take place in Rome in September 2021. The activists came from northern Italy and were all users of the Telegram channel I Guerrieri (“The Warriors”) which is a platform to exchange information to organise against public authorities. The investigation issued search warrants for activists’ homes to later discover various weapons including katanas, knives, and sprayed pepper gas. This event seems to be the final stage of a harsh escalation of protests to contravene the government’s crisis management and the polarization it caused expressed in online and offline contexts. The online platforms especially became a more common forum for expressing objections against crisis measures, including lockdowns and curfew, the pro-vax campaigns as well as the Green Pass certificate. The latter is now mandatory in Italy in almost all public and private areas, such as offices and schools...