VACCINE RESISTANCE: PAST AND PRESENT CONTROVERSIES

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to analyze the motivations that drive the resistance of social actors to vaccination, with emphasis on the different sociopolitical contexts of the Vaccine Revolt, in 1904, and the protests arising from extreme right groups in the contemporary context. Therefore, this research has as its main task to underline the discrepancies observed between the prerogatives of the first republicans and the citizens engaged in the 2020 demonstrations, although some confluences can be raised in the vast field of disseminated and vulgarized ideas. With this, the reader can infer that this work does not reiterate the current historical analyzes that place the reactions against the vaccine, manifested in the past and in the present, in the common place of a mere protest engendered by violent sectors of the middle class. In order to safeguard the different circumstances and intentions of social actors inserted in different contexts, some objectives become essential for the unfolding of this study: first, it is necessary to investigate the political and social scenario of the First Republic where the Vaccine Revolt emerged, with the scientific mentality of the time and the authoritarian actions of the government and sanitarians. Then, the reluctance against measures to combat SARS-Cov2, which generates the coronavirus, led by contemporary extremist segments, will be examined, verifying their arguments and political positions.