A passenger uses binoculars as another wears a face mask onboard Holland America's cruise ship Zaandam | Ivan Pisarenko/AFP via Getty Images Corona-snitches thrive in lockdown Europe Some countries have been keen to take advantage of their citizens’ rattiest instincts.

The French call them mouchards.

In Spain they’re known as chivatos.

In German, they’re referred to as Spitzel.

Every country has a word for snitches, those meddlesome people who report others to the police.

And in European countries under coronavirus lockdowns, a multitude of aspiring watchmen seem to feel that their moment has finally come, with untold numbers whiling away the hours in self-isolation by keeping an eye on their neighbors’ every move — and reporting them to the authorities if they slip up.

In Madrid, supermarket workers and medical staff have reported being mistaken for scofflaws and subsequently pelted with eggs and trash.

Ever since lockdown measures went into effect in the U.K. on March 23, police stations have been inundated with calls from curtain twitchers denouncing neighbors for excessive public outings.

The avalanche of complaints about twice-a-day jogs or overly frequent trips to the supermarket has been such that Thames Valley Police Commissioner Anthony Stansfield felt obliged to go on the BBC and urge citizens to stop tattling on one another.

Stanfield said that people should only call the constable in “extreme circumstances” and instead opt for exposing rule-breakers to that most feared of British punishments: polite disapproval.

In other countries, however, authorities have been keen to take advantage of their citizens’ rattiest instincts.

In Rome last week, Mayor Virginia Raggi unveiled a page on the municipal government’s website where the Eternal City's residents can denounce those who break the national stay-at-home order.

Opposition politicians accused the mayor of using the tools of a police state to enforce the strict rules, and on social media citizens said the system recalled the country’s fascist period, when Italians were encouraged to report on political dissidents and Jews.

Speaking on the Rai3 television channel, Raggi — a member of the anti-establishment 5Star Movement — dismissed the criticisms and justified the site's creation, saying that it was a way to centralize the “thousands of complaints” and take action against those who “for example, keep going for walks in parks, which are closed.”

Over 110,000 Italians have been issued fines ranging from €400 to €3,000 since lockdown measures went into effect on March 10; as of Thursday, nearly 14,000 Italians had died of the coronavirus.

In hard-hit Spain — where more than 10,000 have died — snitches are not only calling the police on perceived rule-breakers, but also subjecting them to targeted — and sometimes physical — attacks.

At a housing complex in Oviedo in northern Spain, a sign was posted last week singling out neighbors for not coming out to applaud the country’s health workers in the evening.

The sign’s author suggested that other residents show their displeasure with the unenthusiastic lot by calling the cops every time they went for “20-minute walks with their dog.”

In Madrid, supermarket workers and medical staff have reported being mistaken for scofflaws and subsequently pelted with eggs and trash.

More worryingly, numerous viral videos show quarantined Spaniards cheering on what appear to be acts of police brutality targeted at people caught violating the norms: In one video, a woman congratulates a National Police agent for violently slapping a young man across the face.

Sociologist Patrick Bergemann, author of "Judge Thy Neighbor," a book that analyzes denunciations in Inquisition-era Spain, Imperial Russia and Nazi Germany, said that snitching and semi-authoritarian behavior often surge in times of crisis.

“Fear-based denunciations are motivated by a perceived threat against individual or common safety," he said. "Traditionally, they’ve been targeted against a group — outsiders, immigrants — but in this case people are afraid of a virus, so it’s less clear-cut.”

Bergemann, an assistant professor of organizations and strategy at the University of Chicago, said that fear-based snitching is often also tainted by spite, with many attempting to settle old scores by filing reports — including false ones — against rivals.

“In Nazi Germany, an estimated 42 percent of the denunciations were false. Authorities debated changing the system, but they ultimately decided to keep it because it was great for keeping everyone in line.”

Historian Jean-Marc Berlière, who extensively researched the denunciations that were filed by up to a million Frenchmen during the period of Nazi occupation, said that situations in which snitching was encouraged tended to bring out the worst in people.

Even in a critical moment when defying stay-at-home orders can constitute "irresponsible, even criminal" behavior, Berlière said governments should beware of promoting behavior for which “France still pays dearly.”

“What can appear to be a civic gesture … can ultimately be morally reprehensible,” he said.