Paper short abstract:

Covid-19 public health restrictions in Ireland were opposed by various groups and individuals, many of whom invoked particular notions of individual freedom as their rationale. This paper offers an ethnographic and political analysis of these expressions of freedom and liberty.

Paper long abstract:

The impact of the global Covid-19 pandemic manifested in particular ways in Ireland, with the Republic enduring some of Europe's longest and most stringent periods of lockdown, while simultaneously experiencing one of the highest rates of voluntary Covid-19 vaccination take-up. Despite high levels of overall compliance with public health measures, and State measures that aimed to protect workers who had lost their jobs through the Pandemic Unemployment Scheme, there was also a small, but vocal resistance to lockdown measures, mask-wearing, and the Covid Digital Certificate. Protesters expressed themselves online via social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram, as well as through street demonstrations. Many invoked the concept of individual freedom and liberty, as well as appropriating and simultaneously mocking the language of progressive campaigns such as that of the reproductive rights movement (e.g. "my body, my choice"), topical in Ireland following the 2018 referendum that legalized abortion. Others drew on alternative medicine, spirituality and esoteric Celtic mysticism as part of an imagined past of national purity and freedom. This paper explores the conceptions of freedom and liberty underpinning these narratives, arguing that in the post-Trump globalized digital age, the rhetoric of freedom in opposition to Covid-19 measures has both international and specific national manifestations within the Irish context.