The ‘Freedom’ convoy: Canada’s far right revolt

Unfortunately, some of those involved in the convoy and on online forums dedicated to it have called for a January 6th style event in Ottawa

By

 Derek Royden

 -

February 4, 2022

SOURCENationofChange

Image credit: Photo: Nate Tabak/FreightWaves

Last Saturday in Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, a self proclaimed ‘Freedom Convoy’ of vehicles traveling from different parts of the country converged to protest a mandate that forces long haul truckers who cross the border with the United States to quarantine for 14 days and take a Covid 19 test when they return if they aren’t vaccinated. This rule was copied by the Biden administration soon after, making the convoy somewhat useless even if it were to somehow manage to achieve its original goal.

Contrary to a lot of the reporting around it, the convoy is not the first of its kind. In 2019, what was called the United We Roll Convoy traveled from the western province of Alberta to Ottawa for a two day protest against a carbon tax and in support of pipelines and the oil and gas industry.  A darker side to this earlier protest was revealed by some of those in this much smaller group who had ties to the far right and tried to shift the focus towards immigration and fear mongering about Muslims.

The latest rolling protest led to one of those rare occasions when something happening in Canada caught the attention of some politicians and the press in its much larger southern neighbor. This was especially true for America’s rightwing media and politicians, including the former president and his oldest son, as the arguments being made against public health mandates in response to the pandemic both influence and are influenced by these kinds of voices on both sides of the border.

WednesdayThose following this story couldn’t help but notice that American outlets like Fox News were often inaccurate in their descriptions of what was happening and who was involved. Fox newsreader and opinion host Sean Hannity at one point claimed that there were 10,000 trucks headed to Ottawa. On social media the number of trucks converging on the city was inflated to as many as 50,000.

Claims like Hannity’s were widely refuted by Canadian media, with the Toronto Star reporting that the smaller convoy traveling from the east was said by police in Kingston, Ontario, through which it passed on the way to the capital, to consist of, “17 full tractor-trailers, 104 tractors without trailers, 424 passenger vehicles and six RVs.” 

Although aerial images of the larger convoy traveling from the west were impressive in terms of its length, the number of actual trailer trucks involved didn’t reach the bloated number cited by Hannity, let alone some of the exaggerations that have been making the rounds online. Pretending that crowds are much larger than they appear is a tactic embraced by the right at least since Donald Trump claimed he had the largest number of people at a presidential inauguration in his country’s history.

While the convoy traveling from the west grew steadily as it crossed the country and the numbers at the capital and at a separate protest at the Alberta/Montana border can’t be denied, the truth of the matter is, in line with the rest of the population, almost 90% of Canadian truckers are fully vaccinated and are continuing to work.

The convoys are also not supported by mainstream organizations representing the industry’s workers, including the Canadian Truckers Alliance, the country’s largest, which released a statement last Saturday, which said, “While a number of Canadians are in Ottawa to voice their displeasure over this mandate, it also appears that a great number of these protesters have no connection to the trucking industry and have a separate agenda beyond a disagreement over cross border vaccine requirements. As these protests unfold over the weekend, we ask the Canadian public to be aware that many of the people you see and hear in media reports do not have a connection to the trucking industry.” 

Nonetheless, following a trend that’s been visible since the beginning of the pandemic, there were images of people carrying Trump flags and signs, swastikas and the Canadian version of the ‘Blue Lives Matter’ flag at the protests. One pickup truck was even adorned with a Confederate flag.

News reports showed placards and messages on vehicles concerned with conspiracy theories like Qanon, the ‘Great Replacement’ and paranoia about the ‘Great Reset’ called for by the neo-liberal billionaire class associated with the World Economic Forum.

This is not to imply that those involved in the convoy don’t have the right to protest, and the majority of the crowd still in Ottawa are ordinary citizens from many walks of life exhausted by what we’ve all suffered through for the past two years, even if a lot of the anger is misplaced and fueled by misinformation.

Unfortunately, some of those involved in the convoy and on online forums dedicated to it have called for a January 6th style event in Ottawa, incitement to violence that’s not protected under the country’s constitution. There have also been reports of harassment of those wearing masks and people of color by some of the protesters. 

This is not the only bad behavior on display in the country’s capital so far. Disruption caused by the noise of car and truck horns blaring alone has to be driving people unlucky enough to live in central Ottawa to distraction. Many businesses in the area have closed to avoid having to police belligerent customers who refuse to wear masks. Media trying to cover the protests have been harassed and in some cases chased away by protesters who at the same time complain about a lack of coverage.

Parts of the city have been gridlocked by vehicles, some with their wheels removed, making commutes difficult and more time consuming with no end in sight as convoy organizers have promised the blockades will remain until their unrealistic demands are met. What started out as a very specific cause quickly expanded to include all mandates, including those requiring citizens to wear masks, most of which were not imposed by the federal but by provincial governments and, in many cases, private businesses themselves.

As the protests began on Saturday, with the temperature a frigid -18.4 F in Ottawa, large numbers of these protesters invaded the Rideau Center mall refusing to wear masks and causing its closure to protect those working there. As of this writing the shopping center has yet to reopen.

As if to show how little they know about their own country’s history, a large group of these protesters played drums and chanted “yabba, dabba, doo” in a disrespectful imitation of the music of some indigenous North Americans.  Anecdotally, these are likely some of the same people who post in online comments sections about how the systemic campaign of murder and cultural genocide directed at Canada’s indigenous people over centuries happened ‘long ago’ (which is untrue) and shouldn’t weigh on their consciences.

In yet another incident, some of the protesters descended on a soup kitchen serving the unhoused demanding food and harassing staff.

As the president of Shepherds of Good Hope, which runs the kitchen, Deirdre Freiheit, told a local news radio station, “Staff and volunteers were verbally harassed by people who came to the kitchen looking for meals. We also had a situation where the trucks were blocking our drop-off in front of the shelter, which is where police and paramedics come to bring people to us for care. That was blocked and that could have cost somebody a life.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a separate convoy consisting of about 100 vehicles, including farm equipment in oil rich Alberta blocked the Coutts border crossing, likely adding to supply chain issues in the short term and essentially blockading the small town of the same name as the crossing, where citizens were cut off from the closest grocery store and pharmacy in the area, some school children were unable to attend classes and locals have been told they will not receive mail until the convoy disperses. 

Bowing to the pressure brought by authorities, the protesters freed up two lanes to traffic on Wednesday.

Just like other protests targeting public health measures across most Western democracies, the far right have attached themselves to the Freedom Convoy and are using it to spread unscientific opinions, hateful messages and probably to recruit.

Many on the left have argued that if this protest involved them and the movements they support the crackdown would have been swift and likely brutal, something we have seen time and again at protests against police brutality in Canada over the years. With no end in sight and so many illegal acts on the part of the protesters it remains to be seen if authorities have the will to do their jobs.

*For those with an interest in those who organized the convoy and how it’s being funded, Global News Canada has a detailed report on these issues here.

Why the ‘Flu Trux Klan’ movement needs to be

 taken seriously

Trucks line Wellington Street in Ottawa on January 30, 2022.  Credit: News 360 TV / Wikimedia Commons This week rabble’s staff writers and contributors continued coverage of the so-called “Freedom Convoy 2022”.  Karl Nerenberg, senior politics reporter and Ottawa resident, shares what he and his Ottawa neighbours have been experiencing since the beginning of the protests last week, while the police stand idly by: “Never before has a protest movement in the Canadian capital been accompanied by hundreds of massive, multi-wheel rigs, spewing clouds of noxious diesel fumes, and blaring their oversized horns in a 24-hours-a-day cacophonic symphony,” he writes, noting the hateful signage and behaviour of some associated to protest. The presence of all these trucks and protestors poses a challenge the city - one that has experienced thousands of protests - “has never before had to deal with.”  While Ottawa police, with reinforcements from across the country, claim they are doing their best to keep the peace, activists are seeing a double standard in how protest movements on the Hill are dealt with. Contributor David Climenhaga explains why the convoy protests must not be permitted to continue.  Climenhaga was one of the first to break the story of the far right involvement in the convoy’s GoFundMe page, where this protest began online. This week he ponders whether some of those funds might go towards damages from the protests. Climenhaga has also been keeping the spotlight on Alberta’s political leaders - and reporting on their involvement in the protests and in far right ideology. He ponders, for example,  whether Premier Jason Kenney encouraged the copycat Coutts blockade which he now condemns? It would be ironic, Climenhaga writes, if Kenney’s dubious claim a week ago that Ottawa’s vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers was leading to empty shelves in grocery stores, ended up being what is causing real shortages. Where has the organized Left been on all this? In their must read piece, Judy Rebick and Corvin Russell argue that while it may be appealing to dismiss the ‘Flu Trux Klan’ convoy as an assemblage of the fringes that needn’t be taken seriously, “this mobilization provides one of the few outlets for many people to visibly express anger and frustration around legitimate grievances with government failures during the pandemic.” The left, they point out, has been entirely absent on Covid and the vaccine mandates, and must engage.   Civil disobedience is important. That’s not what the 'Freedom'  Convoy is. by Rick Salutin February 4, 2022 The keys to breaking the law for a political goal are (1) you’re prepared to take the consequences and (2) you’ve made the justice of your cause clear enough that there’s wide public support, and the authorities—cops, mayors etc.—have to worry about suppressing you for fear of offending their electorates. I confess I’m a sucker for people going into the streets. It hooks me every time and renews my faith. In what? Democracy. (“The streets belong to the people!”) Voting is such thin gruel. Then you belt up again for years. And it’s secret, so it keeps politics compartmentalized inside individuals. It’s anti-social! When my kid was small, I took him to a G20 protest. He didn’t get the point and was reluctant. But when we arrived, he got it. There were people we knew; it was festive, collective and funny. (UNDERCOVER COPS FOR PEACE!) Just being there transformed who we were as citizens. I could go on and on. There’s also something about acting directly. Years ago, during the campaign against South African apartheid, Stan Persky wrote about buying a bottle of South African brandy in Vancouver and smashing it on the store floor. He called it exhilarating. I’m aware that Hitler’s brownshirts went into the streets, from the 1923 Munich Putsch to Kristallnacht in 1938—as did the Ku Klux Klan and the Jan. 6 rioters in D.C. Going into the streets can be for good or ill, like almost any public act. A lot depends on who might be manipulating it surreptitiously. Still, I can’t help feeling that frisson of real democracy, or a touch of its breeze. It’s also possible the actors will learn something from misguided actions. It’s in concrete practise that understanding advances. When I worked as an organizer in the textile industry, union leader Kent Rowley used to encourage well-meaning but naive leftists to infiltrate factories to try and organize workers. “They might learn something,” he said, “beyond their ideology and rhetoric.” One can hope that a few of the idiots interviewed in the cabs of their trucks (“We are here for freedom!”) could hear the loonie drop. Idiots? Of course. I’m not totally blinded by my infatuation with going into the streets. “We’re here till they end the mandates!” But why would “they”? Or the inane notions in their loopy “Memorandum of Understanding” about how change happens and government works: they meet with Gov. Gen. Mary Simon and then run the country together. But what they really don’t get is civil disobedience, which this action falls under. The keys to breaking the law for a political goal are (1) you’re prepared to take the consequences and (2) you’ve made the justice of your cause clear enough that there’s wide public support, and the authorities—cops, mayors etc.—have to worry about suppressing you for fear of offending their electorates. It depends on an implicit moral appeal to the population, which leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. factored in, in advance. That’s an actual strategy. These folks are intellectually rather more limited. It’s as if they realize there’s a thing called protest, but their notion is vague and ill-formed. If you think you’re in the right, you just stay put till everyone surrenders. It’s basically infantile: I want what I want, when I want it. “The fastest way to get us out of the nation’s capital, is to call your elected representatives and end all C-19 mandates,” wrote a “senior convoy leader.” That’s a fantasy, not a strategy. IMO, the Ottawa police know these principles of civil disobedience, and took their time till public opinion developed vigorously against protesters—then began moving carefully, with arrests and tickets. This, BTW, has little in common with the Jan. 6 riots in D.C., which surely inspired the tiny minds occupying Ottawa now. The problem there wasn’t so much the rioters, who’ve been arrested. It’s that a mainstream party, the Republicans, backed them and used them to advance their own fortunes. It’s part of the establishment there that’s the deep danger, not the mob. Here, the Conservatives are courting the occupiers, but indecisively so far. Why? Because the overall political culture of Canada isn’t—certainly not yet and maybe not at all—receptive to that stuff. This column first appeared in the Toronto Star.