The protests were linked to concerns over personal freedoms and government overreach. Mainly related to COVID-19 mandates and stay at home recommendations.
Supporters saw the movement as a grassroots stand for liberty against government overreach.
*edit the freedom convoy organised 3 years ago in 2022 as pointed out by commenter’s.
Freedom convoy grew into something much bigger than Truckers protesting about vaccine mandates to cross the border. They had a point that they work in very isolated conditions, but covid freaks were opportunistic, and US/right wing funding to make it blow up was plenty.
The Freedom Convoy was as much about personal rights as the Civil War was about state’s rights.
Well said, there’s even a deeper layer: Ask the question “states’ rights to do what?” (A: slavery). The same can be asked of the freedom convoy: “personal rights to do what?” (A: infect and kill others with a highly contagious and dangerous disease). Their exercise of personal rights in the way that some people did, should have been prosecuted as goddamn manslaughter. Same for covid denying government officials in many countries
They never really protested any rights, they were doing a performative demonstration showing them to be a part of the conservative crowd.
None of them ever gave a fuck about not spreading a deadly disease. Fuck them
Each of those losers would be pro-Canada becoming a state. Fuck the ultra rw.
The Freedom Convoy had Russian money funding its media campaign.
The problem for leftist organizing always really comes back to the fact that capitalists are the ones in power, and that they overwhelming prefer fascism to a social democracy. There’s no billionaires funneling money into 50501’s pockets to organize a mass turnout. It’s the same reason the Tea Party was so successful while similar attempts on the left were not; their primary campaigns were well funded by the Koch bros.
Related story, basically the hardest I laughed during covid.
Being a good Vancouverite, when those convoy fucks wanted to parade around and honk at hospitals, hundreds or thousands of us with bikes got in their way and kept them away from the hospitals.
Okay, so we’re blocking an arterial and some convoy fuck is screaming at us about how, in his words, “we’ve got to protest smarter.” He then finally realizes we have been politely letting non convoy cars through the lane next to him, so floors the accelerator and aims for that lane. But, he didn’t shoulder check and slammed right into a car in that lane in front of a cop. So for the next however long we got to point and laugh while advising him about the merits of shoulder checking and how he needed to drive smarter.
Gotta love when an asshole causes a 100% fault car crash with no injuries.
The Convoy being a rights movement was a skin-deep excuse for what it actually was. It did not take long at all before it turned into a general anti-vax fascist movement that saw significant funding and support coming up from the US.
Right. Don’t forget how Republicans injected into schools that “my body my choice” that their kids shouldn’t be forced to get vaccinated, and then overturned the abortion laws the next minute. Fuck I hate those people.
Right! My body my choice, but some how abortion laws don’t follow this logic? Some serious mental gymnastics .
My dentist tried to bs me with this stupid convoy. He claimed that Trudeau picked up the phone ‘do you know who he called? Antifa’. I laughed in his face and found a new dentist.
“Why won’t he just hear the concerns of the people calling for his death!!”
Not to mention all the restrictions they were complaining about were put in place by the provinces. Ironically it was a Conservative premier in Ontario’s case.
And the US who had vaccine rules for people coming in to their country. Yet the kkklownvoy protested Canadas govt over it.
Or it was the US. Truckers couldn’t enter the US without vaccination, which is not the Canadian government’s fault.
I had a specialist doc a while ago who started out criticizing trump. But within five minutes was legitimately arguing that Charlie Manson would have been our greatest president and that it wasn’t too crazy for someone to only want to live with people “just like us” (both white) and that “them” really were a problem.
Like, I’m used to conversations taking a hard right turn, frankly I look like what white supremacists wish they look like, so I get it often.
But I just did not see that coming after she started out shit talking trump
He’s even losing the (relatively) wealthy and (absolutely) crazy racists now. That’s his bread and butter…
And they drove a bunch of cool trucks and everyone was happy to see them. /s
I didn’t find the video of the guy yelling at them to fuck off and go away from his balcony, but if anyone has a link, it was pretty good.
The Convites are a special breed of abject morons who couldn’t recognize authoritarianism if it hit them in the face. They were manipulated by Russia to do their dumbass protest, enabled by the cops (OPP and OPS were fucking worst than useless) and fueled by MAGA conspiracies.
Ah I remember that. Forever burned into my brain: “Eighteen naked cowboys in the showers at Ram Ranch…”
I for one ascribe the blame to at least 40 years of pseudoscience – neoclassical economic theory [1] – pushed by neoliberal economists. These same neoliberal economists are often backed by the rich (fuck you “Chicago School of Economics” [2]) . For decades they have pushed this narrative of “government bad” and “private sector” good. Taxing the rich only means you punish the people you want to help (middle and lower socioeconomic classes). This pseudoscience gave birth to the godawful economic policy of “trickle down economics”.
Decades of:
- defunding public services (by both parties, by the way) to make way for tax cuts for the wealthy
- middle class wage stagnation (ie, take for example the minimum wage and sub-minimum wage for tipped employees)
- decimation of union participation and subsequently power to labor
- cheap money backed by the faith of the US govt and given to the ultra wealthy as a means of extracting wealth from the people – see private equity
Want to know why many people are easily manipulated? They can’t afford the same lifestyle as their parents. Drowning in debt to greedy capitalist pigs. Years of this cycle and once the algorithms detect this, you can be easily turned into cannon fodder for the ultra wealthy.
“hey bro, your life is shit because immigrants took yer job!! Govt trying to inject microchips into you! Join the FrEEdOm CoNvOy!”
Get us into fighting a culture war against each other, when we should be banding together and fighting a class war.
Fuck the billionaire class.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassical_economics [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_school_of_economics
Look no further than Dr Ian Lee from the Sprott school of business at Carleton. That guy is a massive apologist for big business and sees everything through the eyes of profit. He’s on every week making excuses for stores and wanting to negotiate with Trump, the guy who wants to take over our country.
They were useful idiots
You have no idea how much I want to have this conversation.
I was told our rights to travel or go outside won’t return.
I was told that I would be immune compromised for taking an experimental vaccine.
Can we now get everyone to admit some people were very wrong during COVID?
A lot of things were wrong during covid. For example, I’m now convinced of the lab leak theory, having thought of it as a right wing conspiracy for too long. Polarized politics clouds our judgement on both sides. Yes, there were and are a lot of right wing loons, but that doesn’t mean they were wrong about everything.
The lab leak theory was dismissed because there was a lot of powerful people that didn’t want any serious investigation into it. China was 100% against the lab leak theory. Fauci and the CDC were also against the lab leak theory as he was directly responsible for funding gain of function research in the most likely lab, which had been widely criticised as extremely risky research.
It also makes an incredible conspiracy theory because it’s essentially impossible to prove either way at this point.
If it helps, the (main) lab leak theory was conclusively disproven back in 2020 when waste water samples from Italy in September 2019 to December 2019 showed the presence of natural precursors to Covid-19, with signatures indistinguishable from “the” Covid. Lots of people were reporting a strong ‘flu-like’ bout of illness at Christmas 2019. The idea that it leaked from a lab in Wuham in December 2019 makes no sense. Neither does wet markets and bat soup by the way - that was just good old racism.
A troublesome but mundane coronavirus of the sort that millions every year dismissed as a cold had a slight mutation and turned deadly and prolific. I think the knowledge that this can happen at any time scares people far more than the lovely little idea of it coming out of a test tube so we can blame a person or a race or a government for it, direct anger at a tangible foe rather than the fragility of biological life.
Yeah, I think ‘conclusively’ disproven or proven anything is not realistic here. Lab leak has a lot of things going for it too. Here’s just a recent example
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7vypq31z7o
Are you referring to these studies btw? https://www.wired.com/story/flawed-covid-19-origin-theory-italy/
Republicans actually think they are being set free with the removal of government employees.
Yes. Clinton also gutted government departments… Over the span of seven years. Trump is doing that within less than a month and is doing so much more damage. It’s like watching someone with a gambling addiction budget their monthly income.
People ARE protesting though. And they are protesting all over the world. I think trump is the first, most hated dictator in the world right after Hitler.
Clinton’s reductions in government was like dieting and exercising for 7 years to lose weight.
The current administration is using a chainsaw to cut off the legs to lose weight instantly.
*three years ago. I live downtown Ottawa and remember the convoy distinctly (unfortunately) but you made me feel like time was passing even quicker than it already is lol
