I'm pondering a much longer piece about this, but I will throw this out right now -- what is happening in Ottawa and in Coutts, Alberta should scare the living shit out of normal Canadians, because it represents a really, really ugly and frightening development related to Canadian fascism.
I submit that these blockades have nothing to do with vaccine mandates -- never have, never will. What they represent is a "trial run" to demonstrate that, if you can make enough people angry, then harness that anger and point them in whatever direction you want, they have absolutely nothing to fear from either the cops or the RCMP.
And that is exactly what they just proved.
Until now, when Canada's right-wing propagandists like Rebel News, True North Centre, Post Millennial, JCCF and other bottom-dwelling white nationalists encouraged and organized public confrontations, one could at least assume that, if things got out of hand, law enforcement would always be ready to step in and put a stop to it.
Not anymore.
If this was a "normal" protest, then there would have been angry truckers, and they would have showed up for a couple days, and honked their horns, and finally got tired and gone home. But this time, things were different. This time, all of this anger was encouraged and funded, with these right-wing outlets exhorting truckers to stand tough, and stay the course, and not back down, and so on, and so on, and the goal here was surprisingly obvious: It was to prove that, if you collect enough angry people, and give them fawning press coverage, and make them feel important, and subsidize them via fundraisers to the point where they're just not going to back down, then the cops and the RCMP will totally throw up their hands and walk away.
This was not a "protest"; it was a trial run to prove, once and for all, that right-wing mob rule will trump law enforcement and, having proven that beyond even the slightest doubt, none of Canada's fascists are even the teeniest bit scared of the cops anymore. They came, they saw, and they put the fear into Ottawa Police Services and, for the first time, they know that they can do that whenever they want.
This is not going to end well.
AFTERSNARK: Snippet from first commenter:
And now the Saskatchewan legislature is seeing the exact same thing happen there this weekend…a bunch of fascists organizing what they are calling a “trucker convoy” without a permit (which they are very proud about) and they have openly stated they will be blocking streets and access to the legislative building.
And I'm willing to bet that, having seen the embarrassing ineffectiveness and cowardice of both the RCMP and Ottawa Police Services, they have absolutely no fear of pushback by law enforcement. This would seem to be the perfect experiment to see if what I've written above is accurate.
5 comments:
It also doesn’t help that conservatives parties both federally and provincially are openly supporting these protests and taking their side of “freedom” against vaccine mandates. Just look at Saskatchewan and Alberta. And now the Saskatchewan legislature is seeing the exact same thing happen there this weekend…a bunch of fascists organizing what they are calling a “trucker convoy” without a permit (which they are very proud about) and they have openly stated they will be blocking streets and access to the legislative building. And Scott Moe and the Sask Party sure didn’t put up with this sort of thing when it was First Nations protestors. In those cases they immediately went to police and demanded physical removal.
The same is true of the protestors at the Co-op oil refinery a couple years back when workers went on strike. The government was very vocal against those workers “freedom” and actively interfered in the protest, working with federated coop to shut it down, and getting police he’s ily involved. And I recently read the organizers of this trucker convoy played a role in shutting down these workers protests when they tried to spread to AB. Their “support” of workers “freedoms” was solely limited to threats of violence and insistence they be run over.
Funny how conservatives only support “freedom” for themselves but nobody else. Funny how they so eagerly cater to the worst in our society, while spitting in the face of everyone else. And as others have pointed out in other posts, it’s funny how much they hate when First Nations or Muslim or POC exercise the same “freedom” they claim is absolute and beyond any restriction no matter how minor.
This was never about freedom. It was about re-asserting who has power and control. It’s about fascism, as you eloquently put it. It’s solely about conservatives contempt for democracy.
Anon: I will take issue with one point you make. It may have been that Cons were *initially* thrilled with the fascist trucker convoy, because they all assumed it represented really bad news for Justin Trudeau.
They are now clueing in to the fact that these truckers have no ideological bent -- they simply hate the government, whatever the stripe, and those Cons are now having serious buyer's remorse because the mob is now coming for *them*. And they have not the slightest fear of meeting any resistance.
@CC: Not in Y'Allberta - Kenney just bent knee to them ... because what they wanted is exactly what he's been looking for an excuse to do.
He's also all but refused to take any action that would bring them to heel - even though the lot at Coutts are literally blocking hundreds of millions of $ worth of trade ... and in theory he's all about unfettered trade and the importance of the economy.
The cons are now working furiously to figure out how to manage / control these types via their money and propaganda networks - and sadly the "Convoy" now occupying Ottawa has shown us that it can be done.
Looks like the Sask Party, who previously was super supportive of the trucker rally in Ottawa, and whose “leadership” was praised by the Ottawa rally organizer…has shut down the legislative building due to safety and security concerns from trucker rally supporters. Isn’t that their own people? Their base? What happened to the idea that the problem is just a couple bad apples and the vast majority are good people just fighting for freedom?
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/02/04/saskatchewan-legislature-closes-to-public-security-risk-posed-by-protesters-cited.html
If the police won't do anything, then it is going to end up as a streetfight. Now might be a good time to invest in ax handle futures, because we are going to eventually have our own Battle of Cable Street.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cable_Street
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