[ Canada has been rocked in recent weeks by the "Freedom Convoys"
that have descended on the nations cities and blocked border crossings
across the country. Bryan D. Palmer maps the political and social
composition of this new alt-right uprising.] [[link removed]]

FREEDOM COMES TO CANADA  
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Bryan D. Palmer
February 15, 2022
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_ Canada has been rocked in recent weeks by the "Freedom Convoys"
that have descended on the nation's cities and blocked border
crossings across the country. Bryan D. Palmer maps the political and
social composition of this new alt-right uprising. _

, GettyImages1238329921

 

Everything happening in the United States comes to Canada, only a
little later and a tad more politely. The rage that erupted in a
Presidential-endorsed riot in Washington on 6 January 2021 has now
exploded to the north. Fueled by a confused swirl of resentment
against the array of pandemic protocols that all advanced capitalist
states have invoked to curb and contain Covid-19 – including
vaccination passports, mandatory masking, business lockdowns, and
cross-border restrictions – so-called “Freedom Convoys” have
descended on the nation’s capital Ottawa, holding the city hostage.
US-Canada border crossings have been blocked in Ontario, British
Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, and the convoys have
staged sporadic protests across the country, from Fredericton, New
Brunswick to Surrey, British Columbia.

Ostensibly led by “truckers,” the mobilization has generated
international attention. Copy-cat movements are springing up around
the world, with Wellington, New Zealand besieged, Washington, DC
threatened, and the Los Angeles – hosts of the recent Super Bowl LVI
– worried that they would have had to face the blaring horns and
diesel-fume spewing tractor trailer rigs of the “No Mandates:
Freedom Now!” crusade. In Europe, Paris and Brussels are currently
targeted by the vehicular brigade, although Macron’s gendarmes,
fresh from street battles with the _gilets jaunes,_ have indicated
they will brook no blockades.

“Freedom” in the face of the pandemic we have all been living
through has a nice ring to it. But the politics of these Canadian
convoys do not. They are animated by a _Breitbart_-like appreciation
that destabilization of the status quo is the first step in halting
the rush to a Marxist-inspired, totalitarian world order and the
restoration of a political economy of acquisitive individualism. You
do not have to scratch too deeply below the surface of the leadership
of this movement to discover alt-right conspiracy theories, Q-Anon
claptrap, and racist anti-Muslim and white supremacy sensibilities.
Twitter chatter has dubbed this mobilization the _FluTruxKlux._

These Canadian protests have been sustained through GoFundMe and its
Christian fundamentalist equivalent, GiveSendTo. The latter site,
dressed in evangelical garb, has materially facilitated unashamedly
racist movements; coordinated support for the poster boy of right-wing
vigilante movements, Kyle Rittenhouse; and raised money for
neo-fascist organizations like the Proud Boys.

Millions of dollars have so far flown to the non-trucking leadership
of the Convoy. As the taps of the crowdfunder have been turned off by
regulatory bodies, the organizers are looking now to cryptocurrency
markets to rally donors and continue what has proven a bonanza.
Whatever happens in the next days, this will undoubtedly turn into a
for-profit grift for some, as well as a boon to other alt-right
campaigns. Fueled by donations large and small, the angry anti-mandate
contingent is backed by some undoubtedly dark quarters, with
particular anonymous donors anteing up hundreds of thousands of
dollars. About 55% of the money raised comes from the United States,
with fund-raising techniques and the leadership of the “Freedom
Convoy” drawing from the playbook of the Tea Party that launched the
alt-right into the mainstream of American politics. Ted Cruz and an
array of Republican governors in the US are hailing the “truckers”
as heroes, anointing them the freedom riders for our times. Fox News
is making the highwaymen of the Convoy into a vanguard of the right,
with Tucker Carlson chipping in $15,000 to the cause and marketing
T-shirts playing off of his name and the protest, stenciled “I Love
T(r)ucker(s)”. Trump has tooted his approval, and Elon Musk has
given his endorsement (and undoubtedly some big bucks).

The symbols of all of this are a blend of the banal and the
brutalizing. MAGA hats bob in the crowd, along with Stetsons and
baseball caps proclaiming “Fringe Minority.” Canadian and American
flags fly, and “O, Canada” is the anthem of choice at the
occupations and blockades now underway. Patriotism seemingly
predominates, but last refuges of ugliness are never far from the
surface of contemporary populist nationalism. The standards of Trump,
the Gadsden Flag emblazoned with a coiled rattle-snake and the words,
“Don’t Tread on Me” (so prominent at the 6 January Capitol
riot), the Confederate flag, and the Swastika have all made
appearances, as have anti-communist placards and Q-Anon symbols. The
banner of choice, however, is the simple declaration: “Fuck
Trudeau!” It predominates among flag wavers and is emblazoned on the
grills and side panels of massive trucks.         

The expletive pretty much sums up the political consciousness of the
protests. Like 6 January, the aim of the “Freedom Convoy” is to
bring down the Canadian Liberal government headed by Justin Trudeau.
An early manifesto stated that the protesters were intent on getting
in on the governing act, calling on Parliament to dissolve and be
replaced with a coalition composed of the antiquated appointed Senate,
the Governor-General (an equally outdated post, representing the
Queen), and some of their ranks, political cranks aligned with right
wing and western Canadian separatist parties who cannot manage to get
elected. Even though provincial legislatures are responsible for
establishing most Covid protocols, it is the hated Trudeau and his
Party that has been called upon to capitulate.  Vowing to remain and
continue to disrupt the places they have settled into until all
pandemic mandates are withdrawn, the “Freedom Convoy” is entirely
out of touch with the vast majority of Canadians and anything
approximating political reality.

 Following the mythical script of the American rough-and-tumble
frontier,   protest organizers have sworn in their followers as
vigilante “peace-keepers.” They conceive of themselves as
modern-day militiamen, riding shotgun in the good cause of refusing
all infringements on their liberty.

How did these protests come to hold Canada’s capital hostage and
shut down a continental economy, blockading the Ambassador Bridge that
links the Canadian-US continental economy at its Detroit-Windsor
juncture, holding up international trade valued at almost $3 billion.
How has it happened that residents in Ottawa fear walking the streets
and international capital moans that it is now suffering unduly and
must shutter auto plants and other enterprises from Arkansas to
Ontario? In a word, they were welcomed, just like the 6 January
rioters in Washington, DC.

It was not Trudeau who summoned them, although hatred of this upstart
politician with few policies but an abundance of rhetoric, did
galvanize the rebellion. The official parliamentary opposition, the
Conservative Party, has been cozying up to the idea of a “Freedom
Convoy” for some time. Trumpism has taken over sectors of the party,
and the Tories’ former head, Erin O’Toole, was recently voted out
by his caucus for failing to live up to his promise to lead from the
far right, his wishy-washy support for the truckers that many in his
Party deify being a part of this downfall. O’Toole has since been
replaced by Manitoba’s Candace Bergen as interim leader. Known to
sport a MAGA cap, she at first hailed the convoy en route to Ottawa as
akin to a people’s parliament.

As the truckers approached the national capital, there was no attempt
to thwart their takeover. Electric highway signs pointed them in the
right direction of their protest destination. The Ottawa Police
Services did nothing to prepare for the takeover of streets they are
called upon to patrol, with many of the cops – not unlike the
situation in Washington a year ago – obviously sympathetic to the
protesters. After 15 days of chaos, Ottawa’s gendarmes remain
largely missing in action, their chief complaining that his forces do
not have the required strength to handle the crowds. The Canadian
Security and Intelligence Services, an historical outgrowth of the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (CMP/Mounties) apparently failed to
provide local Ottawa police with information on the trucker protest,
or if such reports were passed on they were ignored. Both the Trudeau
Liberals and the Conservative government in Toronto, led by right-wing
populist Doug Ford (whose daughter has been visible in the Ottawa
protest throng) originally sat on their hands and did nothing. This
created a vacuum that an 18-wheeler could drive through. Many
obviously did. 

The licensing of this motley crew, then, came from many quarters, all
of which hoped to make political capital out of the protests, or
harbored genuine sympathies for their cause. Trudeau, waylaid by a
mild case of Covid and attentive to the ways the political winds were
blowing, was largely unseen during the first stages. He understood
that the bulk of the country agreed with his dismissal of the
occupation of Ottawa as an annoying undertaking of a far-right fringe,
figuring that the fallout would rub up negatively on both the federal
and provincial Conservatives. Trudeau, as usual, misjudged the level
of animosity and pent-up antagonism that has been building over years
of his political posturing, exacerbated greatly by Covid-19
frustrations. Ford, waiting out the mess snowmobiling at his cottage,
was counting on things further blackening Trudeau’s already pummeled
eye. The Ottawa police merely played the role of enablers. It has been
left to citizen’s direct action, of late, to thwart the infusion of
new trucks coming to the protest party, thousands gathering at
specific junctures to block entrance to the city center.

The scene in that central district looks like a Woodstock for the
alt-right.  Portable toilets have been set up on Parliament Hill
outside of the Prime Minister’s office windows, large tents erected
in the streets blocked by horn-blowing rigs, violating a judicial
injunction against such noise pollution, secured by an irate Ottawa
resident. There is even the odd hot tub, in which bearded belligerents
bathe in below-0 temperatures. Music blares from sound systems, a
stage has been set up, and one evening a rock concert could be heard
for miles around. Fireworks explode in the night sky, pancake
breakfasts start the day, and barbecues and booze keep things going
well into the afternoons and evenings. Young children, schooled in the
rhetoric of refusal to wear masks, play ball hockey in the streets or
gravitate to inflated bouncy castles erected at intersections. Their
presence is a useful shield wielded cynically by parents who proclaim
they are there for the youngsters.

As the blockade of the Windsor-Detroit Ambassador Bridge angered
international capital, it was apparent that something had to be done.
Capitalist supply lines, already on life support after two years of
Covid-19 constipation, have been crippled.

 States of emergency are now declared by the Ford-led Ontario
government and the non-descript Ottawa mayor, but they have timelines
and will soon lapse. Bergen and the Conservatives continue to champion
the heroic truckers, but have now called for them to go home, vowing
to fight on in the arena of parliamentary cretinism. Trudeau is
talking tougher, a phone call from his Uncle Sam, Joe Biden, prompting
a bit of a tongue-lashing of the Ottawa police and a commitment to
send the Mounties in, if not to get their man, at least to make sure
that he doesn’t remain a visible thorn festering in the side of
constituted authority.

Even with State of Emergency provisions for $100,000 fines to be
levied against those blocking the Ambassador Bridge, and threats that
vehicles will be impounded, trucking licenses revoked, and the right
to enter the US rescinded, the police, who finally secured the opening
of the thoroughfare on Valentine’s Day, acted with a patience and
restraint seldom witnessed in more than a century of left-wing
protests. The protesters are not being handled with kid gloves, they
are being coddled and pandered to. Cops, in effect, have been giving
the rowdies the thumbs up.

If this were indigenous people blocking a wilderness roadway in
northern British Columbia to protest a gas pipeline traversing their
lands or closing down railway lines and highway thoroughfares in
Ontario over land disputes, blockades would have been broken up by the
RCMP or Provincial Police detachments within hours, a day or two at
the most. Homeless people tenting in Halifax or Toronto parks, causing
minor inconvenience for a disgruntled few and threatening no one’s
jobs let alone having an impact on corporate ledger sheets, have been
mercilessly bulldozed of late. Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
activists rallying on Parliament Hill or at Queen’s Park (sites of
federal and provincial legislative buildings) never faced cops as
congenially placid as those walking slowly in line formation at the
Ambassador Bridge, politely nudging a hundred or so protesters along.
The tens of thousands of people assembled to express their discontent
at G-7 Summits years ago, or the many militant workers who have stood
picket lines in defiance of injunctions, must be looking at their
television screens in bewilderment, wondering what gives with the less
than tough love these cops are exhibiting in their encounter with
alt-right protesters.

Politicians and pundits preface every comment on blockades and
occupations across the country with words defending the “right of
protest” in a democracy. Then they ask those who have obviously
unlawfully settled in and are obviously committing crimes by the
minute to please disperse. It is all so polite.

The left has experienced dissent differently. Our organizations have
been infiltrated, our movements monitored, our leaders and comrades
physically assaulted and arrested. At demonstration sites we have been
greeted by massive police presences, which routinely violate our
rights by demanding to search knapsacks, question our reason for being
at specific locales, interrogate our intentions.  We have been met by
steel fences and cement barriers; crowds are rudely dispersed; police
mounted on horses or wielding bicycles have targeted and ridden down
dissidents, or “kettled” them in cul-de-sacs; heavily armed,
plexiglass shielded, flack-jacketed, helmeted cops, decked out in
black, menacingly march in lockstep formation against us; we’ve
tasted tear gas hanging thick in the air, watching the canisters
explode at our feet as rubber bullets bounce off pavement; we’ve
witnessed/experienced many a police beating.

This is not happening at the “Freedom Convoy” sites because there
is one law for some kinds of people and quite another law for others.
The “Freedom Convoy” is _not _a working-class protest. It is _not
_a protest aimed at transforming the oppressive conditions of life
under capital’s reign, which weigh heavily on peoples of color and
minorities, those whose freedom has never been recognized.

The trucker front-lines of this protest, reinforced by farmers and
their large tractors and equipment, and the pick-up trucks and campers
and SUVs of small business proprietors, are indicative of a mass
constituency that may, to be sure, contain disgruntled proletarians.
Yet the vast bulk of truckers in Canada, supposedly 90 percent, are
opposed to the “Freedom Convoy,” and disassociate themselves from
it. Unionized teamsters want no part of this protest. The odd nurse
who has lost her job for refusing to be vaccinated, may well be
attending, but she is not the countenance of this protest.

Rather, it is the owner of the $200,000 rig, the rough-riding
“Don’t Tread on Me” independent contractor who wants no
incursions on his being, and has tapped into the ideological
wellspring of current revanchist populism. On the whole, the
“Freedom Convoy” is the lumpen petty bourgeoisie doing its
revolting thing. Elements of the state and its forces of repression
are, in many ways, connected with these protesters. They are genuinely
liked in some quarters, especially by those farther down the chain of
influence, the police ranks. In both their origins and instincts, the
cops are not far removed from those of the anti-mandate crowds. Their
sympathies for the protesters have been put on obvious, occasionally
brazen, display. Those higher up see the “Freedom Convoy” as
exceedingly useful, shock troops of reaction. As cynical as they
undoubtedly are, these overseers of the right share with those now in
the streets a _politics of acquisitive individualism, _whichresonate
well with the shrill cry of capitalism in crisis.

As the protests end, the problem posed by the “Freedom Convoy” may
well persist. For pandemic or not, protest occupations or not,
capitalism’s crisis is not going away. Nor is the mentality of the
lumpen petty bourgeoisie, and those stoking its politics of
resentment, ramping up the rage, and validating a willingness to throw
down the gauntlet of irrational resistance. That the anti-mandate
movement was shrewd enough to mobilize convoys, occupations, and
blockades at precisely the moment that many provincial governments,
led by Conservatives, were already preparing to wind down their
mandates, means that credit is going to be given, and seized, by this
alt-right uprising. That, and the dollars flowing into its clandestine
coffers, will only funnel the rage forward. This, sadly, is the
political ground of our times.

             

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