By Don Urquhart, Times-Chronicle.
I knew for sure things had taken a turn for the worse when such esteemed luminaries of disinformation and democratic destruction as Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump weighed in on the ‘Freedom Convoy’ that was wheeling its way to Ottawa.
As the protest convoy kicked off, wending its way through B.C. towards the nation’s capital everything seemed . . . well, basically all right. While perhaps not the noblest of things, protesting vaccination mandates and all, I think most Canadians generally accepted it as a legitimate protest.
But at a certain point long before even reaching Ontario the message started to change. Very quickly the protest was becoming a grab-bag for all things pandemic. The cross-hairs were on mandates of all kinds (lockdowns, vaccination mandates for healthcare workers, etc.), pandemic control measures, business closures, vaccines and so on.
The tenor of the rhetoric changed sharply too, becoming more aggressive, and angry.
Clearly, the original protest had been covertly hijacked by others with a greater, more dangerous agenda. Far past the ‘centre-right’ of Erin O’Toole, and even that of ‘further- right’ Maxime Bernier (yes his toxic finger prints are on this too) lurks the ‘far-right’ extremists.
Their strategy was clever. Steal the pulpit and use the more benign truckers’ protest as cover, lending legitimacy to their far-right stance while they rabble-rouse, spread messaging and narratives of hate, and promote anti-government sentiments.
The demands being made are absurd – witness the “memorandum of understanding” which demands the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Governor General sign the MOU to remove Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from office. Apparently, in their quest for ‘freedom’, they see no problem trampling a few minor details of the democratic process along the way.
Many Canadians were caught off-guard by this subtle shift in power – a coup d’état really – that had taken place.
Suddenly the peaceful trucker convoy, originally protesting vaccine mandates for truckers, had turned into some kind of mob anarchy which saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and Terry Fox memorials disrespected, and images of Nazi symbols and upside-down Canadian flags appearing. Some protestors denigrate the government for what they claim is a slide to communism, but clearly, fascism isn’t off the menu either.
These were and still are the minority actors in the protest, but they are the dangerous catalyst to this equation. Their toxicity, generalized rage, and anti-government sentiment have been stirred into this heady mix drawing those with perhaps similar but milder sentiment, into their orbit. Radicalization is one term for it.
These people, from run-of-the-mill protestors to the vilest extremists, as a group are still clearly a fringe of Canadian society. But it is a fringe that can only be ignored at this country’s peril.
The pandemic, aided by the insidiously destructive algorithms of social media, has riven fractures throughout our society. Those that thrive on the destruction of the institutions and values that make up this country thrive on these fractures.
The government will never capitulate. It simply can’t because it’s being challenged by the most anti-democratic of forces. Contrary to the claims of some, vaccine mandates for specific sectors are not the threat to freedom and liberty in this country.
The very real and persistent threats to freedom and liberty in Canada are less dramatic but far wider and far more serious: inequality in wealth distribution, racism and hate violence (be it racialized, gendered, religious or other forms), settler colonialism and structural/ systemic forms of oppression woven within the fabric of our nation.
These are the threats to our freedom and liberty. And so too are the extremists who have made this protest their own.
