Cassandra, COVID-19, Political Crack

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

On Tuesday our fearless leader wrote about the trucker convoy situation in Ottawa. I’ve been following it the last 2 weeks too.

Initially I wasn’t following it that closely as I thought it was going to be only mildly interesting. Then I came across this tweet:

And then I saw this one:

And there’s more:

The cover image for this post is by Theo Moudakis of the Toronto Star, and it easily sums up where things are now—that is that there is more going than a vaccine-related protest, especially when you factor in the high vaccination rate among truckers and the Canadian Trucking Alliance’s opposition to the protest. And it wasn’t a peaceful protest, either either as truckers began harassing and assaulting downtown residents as per this firsthand account:

Friends of mine who wore masks and walked through the truck blockade were yelled at and spat at. A downtown household with a rainbow flag in the window reported being screamed at, culminating in someone defecating on their front step. Employees at the Shepherds of Good Hope say they were harassed by convoy members demanding free meals that were supposed to go to people experiencing homelessness.

Teenage coffee shop employees say maskless customers uttered death threats , while refusing to comply with public health guidelines. And residents in the north part of Centretown are at their breaking point after 48 hours of honking, idling, fireworks and air horns.

As it turns out, Adrastros’ reference to the Yellow Vests was spot on:  the leadership of this convoy have been part of the Canadian Yellow Vest movement, and the various groups they have been involved with are full of right wing extremists. One of the groups closely associated with the convoy is a neo-Nazi group called Diagolon, which has called for this protest to be Canada’s 1/6. Yeah about that…

The protestors gathered to give their demands a few days ago. And yes, they are delusional:

I am amazed by sheer entitlement of these people. They have made a series of demands backed up with violence in the streets against the residents of Ottawa, and now they expect to be brought in to negotiate their demands with members of Parliament. Sounds about white, eh?

Their end goal is to overthrow the Trudeau government, which they can’t do. They’re not elected officials. And Trudeau is popular enough in Canada that he would survive a no confidence vote. And they don’t have the support of the majority of the Canadian people. So what is the point?

Part of that answer lies here in the United States. Right wingers here had been giving to the trucker’s GoFundMe campaign (since shut down). Hangers on from the TFG’s administration turned up:

And some of the biggest Facebook pages dedicated to the protest were run by an account that had been hacked.  So what does this mean for the United States?

It’s probably not good. A Facebook page organizing a truck convoy to Washington, DC was just shut down, and organizing is happening in other online spaces that protect extremists:

I have no idea what is going to happen. But I lived in DC for 20 years, including on 9/11, and I know it’s not going to go like it did in Ottawa. I guess we’ll find out soon.

This seems like the way to close this out:

One thought on “The Unbearable Whiteness of Being”

  1. Maybe the Ottawa police should take a page from the Portland police during protests and start deflating tires with knifes on the vehicles that belonging to protestors ( not the press which Portland PD did)
    But in cases of white truckers that would just be mean. After all its not like they are indigious people protesting to protect their land from a pipeline like in B.C. Then anything goes.

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