The clearest, most concise statement about the alt-right protests and demonstrations comes from Mark Carney, former governor of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada. This protest was never about freedom: it was always about pushing a virulently rightwing agenda, endorsed by the treasonous Donald Trump, to hold the lawful government hostage.
Source: Globe & Mail post on Facebook. Click the image to see the full column by Carney in today’s G&M (subscription required). See the comments below my previous post for links to other, related articles and analyses. And also on FB, Tony Veltri (of New Tecumseth’s madhunt.com) wrote: “Here’s all you need to know about the “FreedomConvey” and its organizers: they have Trump’s endorsement and an invigorated alt-right wing of the Conservative Party are falling over each other to wink wink nudge nudge.”
Re: “Conservatives Eat Their Own” I wish they had bigger appetites!
Hopefully Justin will move on soon….Carney is more like Pierre in intellect
https://rabble.ca/politics/canadian-politics/right-wing-u-s-paw-prints-are-all-over-convoy-disruptions/
The paw prints of malign actors like former Trump administration ideologue Steve Bannon are all over the occupation of Ottawa by the “Freedom Convoy” and disruptions of other Canadian cities and transportation corridors by far-right rent-a-mobs.
Journalist Sandy Garosinno, a lawyer and expert on the Canadian charitable sector, calls the $10.1 million raised by convoy protest organizers’ GoFundMe campaign in the two weeks before the crowd-funding site suspended it Friday “extremely suspect.”
https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/canada-freedom-convoy-conservative-right-wing-anti-worker-anti-vaccine
The “Freedom Convoy,” a right-wing, pro-business social movement, purports itself to be the people’s champion of liberty — yet it couldn’t care less about the hardships and burdens of its fellow workers.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/2/8/canadas-capital-is-being-held-hostage-by-extortionists
First, most of the long-haul truckers living and driving in Canada believe in science. More than 90 percent of them have been vaccinated. They know that to cross the border with their loads into the United States – Canada’s largest trading partner – they need to be vaccinated.
They appreciate that beating COVID-19 – if that is, hopefully, possible – means that Canadians have to not only work together, but think about what is best not just for themselves, but their neighbours, as well.
It is called having an abiding sense of community.
https://readpassage.com/p/the-trucker-convoy-is-not-a-workers-revolt/
The network of far-right, wealthy organizers and donors backing the convoy certainly calls claims of authentic connection to working-class truckers into question. The convoy’s two principal organizers are known figures of Canada’s far right. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network draws a range of further connections between the convoy and far-right, racist, and xenophobic extremists.
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/kaczorowski-the-dark-side-of-populism-is-at-work-in-the-truck-protest
What happens when the rules and accepted norms of a democratic society are threatened by those who violently reject the safeguards of order and stability? The events of the last several days in downtown Ottawa have provided a disturbing glimpse into such a world, a place where “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
https://pressprogress.ca/meet-the-extremists-and-social-media-influencers-at-the-centre-of-the-far-right-siege-of-ottawa/
The list of far-right agitators and traitors in these protests is long and scary – you should read this article. More proof that this was never about mandates or vaccines, but has always been an attempt to overthrow the government.
And the protest owes a lot to the alt-right conspiracy factory, QAnon:
QAnon is a delusional online community that believes Donald Trump is waging a heroic battle against a secret cabal of Satanic pedophiles. They had a highly visible presence at the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection.
A number of trucks associated with the Ottawa siege display slogans associated with QAnon.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/6/us-groups-need-to-stop-interfering-in-canada-former-envoy
A former American ambassador to Canada said groups in the US need to cease interfering in what many call an “occupation” in Ottawa as thousands protest vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions.
Protesters have shut down downtown Ottawa for more than a week, with some participants waving Confederate or Nazi flags and some saying they want to dissolve Canada’s government.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford called the protests an occupation.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/09/otta-f09.html
The far right and outright fascist supporters of the Freedom Convoy have occupied Ottawa for the past 13 days. They have been emboldened by the support they have received from the Conservative official opposition, much of the corporate media, and Donald Trump and his co-conspirators in the US. They are vowing to remain until all public health measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 are scrapped.
Canada’s political establishment is bitterly divided over how to bring the occupation—whose leaders have openly called for the overthrow of the democratically-elected government and its replacement by a 90-day emergency junta—to an end.
https://www.adl.org/blog/adl-finds-1100-people-donated-to-both-canada-freedom-convoy-and-jan-6-demonstration
The biggest funder of both campaigns is Jim Hoft, the editor in chief of Gateway Pundit, a far-right news site. Earlier in February 2022, Hoft was permanently suspended from Twitter for violating its civic integrity policy due to promoting disinformation about the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Hoft is also associated with the Justice League of America Vote Fraud Investigation, American Gulag for Jan 6 Political Prisoners, Help Gateway Pundit Fight GA (Georgia) Left Group’s Assault, Justice League of America Audit Reporting, TGP (The Gateway Pundit) Fights Back Against Big Tech Censorship, and Justice League for America Against Tech Censorship. As of the time of the leak, Hoft has raised $345,000 from these campaigns.
Extremists from various far-right movements have also voiced their support for the truckers’ cause. While ADL has not found extremists planning any decisive or violent action, users on Proud Boys channels, the white nationalist site Stormfront, and White Lives Matter groups have posted in solidarity with the truckers, sharing flyers advertising rallies.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-arrests-charges-border-protest-1.6354587
Of the four southern Alberta men accused of conspiring to murder RCMP officers, two have ties to a man who founded a neo-fascist, white supremacist group that aims to accomplish its goals through violence.
The goal of the group, says Hofmann who studies far right movements, is to establish a “diagonal” white nationalist state.
Those who believe in the Diagolon movement feel a civil war is needed to create a new state that would run diagonally from Alaska, through western Canada’s provinces, all the way south to Florida.
Although there is a widely spread conspiracy online among supporters of the Coutts protest that those arrested were outsiders, had just arrived in the area and were not part of the blockade group, a photo of a giant Canadian flag posted by Carbert’s personal Facebook page on Feb. 5, shows the signatures of nine of those facing charges.
https://www.trucknews.com/blogs/the-so-called-freedom-convoy-was-never-about-truckers-or-border-mandates/
From an actual trucker:
Truckers who participated in a cross-country convoy culminating in protest at Parliament Hill this weekend have been duped into believing the convoy was about them.
It never was. It wasn’t about your rights to continue crossing the border unvaccinated. And by the time the convoy rolled through Ontario it had already fully morphed into something much bigger – and more dangerous – than what truckers were ever told.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/18/occu-f18.html
The Convoy’s leadership—as this article will document—is in fact comprised of notorious right-wing extremists and outright fascists. The most prominent Convoy organizers and representatives are drawn from a cesspool of far-right, anti-Muslim, Christian fundamentalist, Alberta and western separatist, and libertarian groups. Many were previously active in the far-right truckers’ group United We Roll or in the Yellow Vests (which, despite its name, shares next to nothing in common with the 2019 uprising of working people in France against social inequality and economic insecurity).
https://pressprogress.ca/a-network-of-far-right-evangelical-pastors-helped-occupy-ottawa-and-block-us-canada-borders/
The Talibangelists working to undermine Canadian democracy:
A nation-wide network of right wing Christian Evangelical pastors have been participating in the convoy occupation of Ottawa and border blockades in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario.
The pastors, many of whom were previously fined for holding church services in contravention of public health orders, are part of a group called Liberty Coalition Canada.
The LCC was founded in January 2021 to oppose COVID-19 restrictions on churches but has since launched campaigns to oppose vaccine mandates and capacity limits in workplaces, schools and universities.
https://www.adultingishard.org/post/being-mad-doesn-t-make-you-right
No jobs were taken away from anyone as a result of the border crossing vaccine mandate. Truck drivers were given a delay to the rule to give time to get vaccinated. Most of them did so. The exemption period expired. The few drivers who chose to not vaccinate were re-routed to Canadian routes. That’s it. A change to their job, but still their job. Also. NEWS FLASH….the border has two sides to it. *gasp* Even if we dropped the vaccine requirement to cross the Canadian border – fun fact – they wouldn’t be able to get into the United States to begin with because there’s a vaccine requirement on that side.
https://disinfowatch.org/disinforeport-how-rt-amplifies-and-legitimizes-anti-government-narratives/
The alt-right is always doing Putin’s work for him….
The confusion, fear and anger caused by the COVID pandemic have been exploited by the Kremlin and other foreign actors, to undermine democracies around the world by promoting conspiracy theories and legitimizing anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown movements under the pretext of defending freedom. These movements have been growing around the world, including in Canada, where regular anti-vaccination/lockdown protests have occurred in most major cities. RT has further provoked these movements through a constant stream of propaganda designed to legitimize and amplify them, often with terrifying headlines intended to inspire anger and fear.