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.
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.
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
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.
Ah I remember that. Forever burned into my brain: “Eighteen naked cowboys in the showers at Ram Ranch…”
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 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.
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.
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…
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.
Is that what it was about? Because there was no clear message, and there were some Nazi flags, people complaining about sex ed curriculum, something about farmers … It was pretty much an incoherent mess that messed up the daily lives of Ottawa citizens, for what?
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.
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.
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.
They were useful idiots
It formed because of a group of people manipulated into a protest for “our rights”.
Neither the people participating or the ones driving the propaganda ever gave two shits about anyone else’s rights.
They’d support a law requiring everyone be a fan of their favorite sports all team, because it doesn’t negatively effect them and since it aligns with their established beliefs it’s the “right” decision for everyone else anyways.
This is how “for the greater good” can do great evil and why writing off people who commit monsterous acts as monsters is fucking stupid.
We need to understand why they do this shit so we can explain to them why they shouldn’t.
What fucked us over is the only other option we’re neoliberals. They can’t talk about fixing real problems because they’re paid to ignore those very problems. So instead they try to make Dem voters think of it like sportsball too.
The problem is at best Dem voters aren’t maniac fans like Republicans. We’re the home team fans who hate our own team and wish anyone else was calling the shots. It’s like we were cursed to be born in Cleveland and LeBron James already moved away
THE GREATER GOOD
As a Clevelander, who’s used some of those same talking points…are you making a padody of me? You following me around?
Because those groups were right wing and funded by political agitators, multiplied by manipulated media. The people on the ground did believe in the issues, but it was a concerted effort of political theater as a show of force.
Everyone else is now debilitated by wage theft that they can only care about the economy. When the market crashes harder and full recession hits, that’s when people will take to the streets because they’ll have lost jobs and freedoms. That’s when the martial law will start.
🥱
