Canadian Trucker Protest

[gounion]

The shear hypocrisy of it.

Any time there are protests for whatever reason that involved blocking traffic, truckers are the ones that are completely incensed. They swear they'll run over anyone blocking THEIR roads.

But hey, it's okay if THEY do it.

[ProfX]

Just saw the other day ... the national Canadian Trucker's Union is not supporting these "wildcat" protests.

[gounion]

Just saw the other day ... the national Canadian Trucker's Union is not supporting these "wildcat" protests.

There's money beneath this - beyond the GoFundMe. Follow the money!

[Drak]

It’s apparently being funded by the same folks who funded J6.

[Libertas]

It’s apparently being funded by the same folks who funded J6.

Coming here next and they hope decent patriots like us will get angry and try and do something. That way they can have the excuse to do mass violence, all in the name of trump and ANYONE who votes for ANY con.

[ZoWie]

I've been following the money from the start. These guys can't afford to park their trucks indefinitely and essentially camp out in them. Someone's bankrolling it.

GoFundMe froze their account there. I don't know what that means. Maybe they return donations. I doubt they keep the money. But I think something like $5 million was involved, so this is not a few truck drivers putting in chump change.

My guess is that they don't speak for international truckers. They don't speak for owner operators. They are useful idiots serving the usual Republican big-money axis of evil which has turned politics into a covert spending exercise. They're linked to all the usual people, either inspired by their propaganda or even taking donations from them to spread their anti-vax and Q nonsense, which has become some kind of weird freedom thing among people who considered similar rhetoric seditious when people in marginalized classes did it.

This is what happened to populist bottom-up protest. It got hijacked. We are in a not-so-brave new political world, where the money does the talking, the primary weapon is Internet propaganda, and the old generation of left-populist leaders is bought off or just too tired to fight it anymore.

There used to be a left in the US. I think it's shell shocked. Its tactics got appropriated and its political analysis got perverted into online conspiracy paranoia. The fringe remnant seems to spend most of its time and energy fighting among itself online.

[bradman]

The police are outnumbered and overwhelmed. Towing 18 wheelers is nearly impossible without the truck owners co-operation.

To me, it seems to be more about an overall growing discontent with covid period.

https://www.theday.com/article/20220207/NWS13/220209627
The 1918 flu didn’t end in 1918. Here’s what its third year can teach us.

By the winter of 1919-20, Americans were weary of the limitations on daily life. Nearly all of the public health restrictions - such as mask-wearing, social distancing and the closure of schools and churches - had been lifted. A hasty return to public gatherings led to an increase in case numbers. Politicians either blamed people's carelessness for the re-emergence of the virus or downplayed the seriousness of it.

The fourth wave was not front-page news in the way that prior spikes had been. The coverage was often relegated to small paragraphs deep inside newspapers, reporting thousands of new cases on a weekly or even daily basis. By February 1920, there was an epidemic in a state prison in New Jersey, and some courts were forced to halt proceedings because of illness.

[bold] The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It may be funded by some questionable humans that lack moral fiber, but it seems to be attracting an audience outside the Q nuts.

[ZoWie]

Fourth wave? You must be right that news of it was either suppressed or just nobody cared. The statistics they've been using for comparison between 1918 and covid seem to stop after the relatively mild third wave of the 1918 pandemic.

We're in the fifth and sixth wave with covid, and you're right that no one seems to care. LA County dug in and said they are still requiring masking but it takes about five minutes of observation to see that 70% of people might grudgingly put on poorly fitting and inadequate ones for 30 minutes in a store or doctor's office, but otherwise they're over it.

One old lady on oxygen in my acquaintance went to a convention (non-political group) in Florida. Yes, she got it. She's been sick for weeks now. But nobody cares. Next time there's a convention in Florida, they'll all go in a second.

[ProfX]

Elon Musk–backed ‘freedom truckers’ in Canada get Bitcoin lifeline after GoFundMe freezes millions in donations
https://fortune.com/2022/02/08/freedom- ... donations/

[snip]

Following a “review of relevant facts and multiple discussions with local law enforcement and city officials,” GoFundMe found that the fundraiser for the trucker convoy was in violation of its terms of service, which “prohibits the promotion of violence and harassment,” the company said in an official statement. The funds from the donation campaign—nearly $8 million—will be automatically refunded to donors.

But the convoy protesters have now found another donation lifeline: a group of Canadian libertarian Bitcoin evangelists who go by the moniker “HonkHonkHodl.” On Twitter, the group described themselves as an initiative to “orange pill Canadian truckers.” The term is a play on the red pill and blue pill concept from the 1999 movie The Matrix—“red-pilling” in recent years has also been adopted by alt-right communities who claim to know the “real” truth about society. Taking the “orange pill” refers to people who buy Bitcoin, which evangelists say represents financial freedom and monetary sovereignty.

“HonkHonkHodl” is a group of four—Greg Booth, Jeff Foss, and two men who go by online pseudonyms “Nobody Cariboo” and “BTC Sessions,” according to Canadian publication The Star—who created a crypto crowdfunding campaign on the platform Tallycoin as an alternative funding portal for the “Freedom Convoy.”

[snip]

“Legacy financial infrastructure…can be politicized and clamped down upon,” the group wrote on their Tallycoin fundraising page. “Bitcoin is truly censorship-resistant. Don’t allow your voices to be silenced.”

[snip]

The crypto fundraiser, which launched a few days before GoFundMe froze the trucker donation page on its platform, gained more prominence after the GoFundMe shutdown and major donations from well-known members of the crypto community. Jesse Powell, cofounder and CEO of Kraken, one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges, donated approximately $43,592 to HonkHonkHodl. Powell voiced his support for the Freedom Convoy on Tallycoin: “Fix the money, fix the world. Mandates are immoral. End the madness. Honk Honk! #FreedomConvoy2022,” he wrote.

[snip]

Demonstrators have rallied around the slogan of “freedom over fear,” and have called on Canadians to stand up against vaccination passports, lockdowns, and COVID mandates to “make Canada free again.” But Canadian police have voiced their concerns over the growing extremist and far-right elements among the protesters; as of Sunday, Ottawa police have arrested 60 people tied to the demonstrations over “mischief, thefts, hate crimes, and property damage.” Some protesters have been seen displaying swastikas and Confederate flags.

Around 80% of Canadians are fully vaccinated, and 65% of Canadians believe that the Freedom Convoy represents a “small minority of selfish Canadians,” according to a new poll conducted by survey and research firm Leger. Still, 44% of the fully vaccinated Canadians surveyed sympathized with the protesters’ frustrations and concerns, the poll showed. The convoy has “captured and crystallized” the underlying frustration that’s simmering among a broader populace of the Canadian public, said Leger’s executive vice president Andrew Enns to the Canadian Press. “It’s a bit of a message for [the] leadership that this might be a bigger problem,” Enns said.

The protesters have drawn support from prominent figures like Elon Musk, who tweeted “Canadian truckers rule” in late January; and former U.S. President Donald Trump who issued a statement saying that the convoy is “peacefully protesting the harsh policies of far left lunatic Justin Trudeau who has destroyed Canada with insane COVID mandates.” U.S. right-wing figures like Ben Shapiro and Michael Flynn have also voiced their support for the protests and shared fundraising sites to donate to the demonstrators. Meanwhile, similar anti-mandate protests inspired by Canada have spread to Australia and New Zealand.

[snip]

But Trudeau said that the protesters “don’t have the right to blockade our economy, or our democracy, or our fellow citizens’ daily lives. It has to stop.”

[snip][end]

Strangely, -- not that I support said initiatives -- those who said people should be "free" to run over/down BLM protesters blocking traffic or interstate commerce ... seem to be strangely silent about these truckers who are blocking traffic and commerce.

[bradman]

The thing that does it for me is when i walk in to a Home Depot. If the country is half full of assholes, then why are 95% percent of the people in Home Depot not wearing masks?

[ZoWie]

You don't understand.

Disrupting commerce is only bad when we do it. It's freedom fighting when Republicans or their hordes of the persuaded do it.

We let them own the language, now we reap the consequences.

Then we have crypto. Something's gotta give on that disaster, or it's over for economics. The 1930s depression and 1940s wars will be minor ripples by comparison. Among other things, the lack of accountability in the system has paid for some of North Korea's nuclear missile program.

[Drak]

The same people who whine and cry about government lockdowns are attempting to shut down Canada. Makes sense...

[ZoWie]

Makes perfect sense. It's only bad when we do it.

That's inherent to the process by which power maintains itself.

[ZoWie]

The truckers in Canada started it over economics, and the right carefully grafted their populist message that they were victims onto it. We see here a perfect laboratory-grade lesson in how the covert financial circulation works among the right, and why it always prevails.

[gounion]

I've been following the money from the start. These guys can't afford to park their trucks indefinitely and essentially camp out in them. Someone's bankrolling it.

One thing truckers love is money. They want to be making it as much as they can. But they can also be lazy. So, if someone offers them big money to just sit in their truck, they'll always jump at that chance.

But one thing conservatives NEVER want to do, is take any money out of their own pocket.

[ZoWie]

They'll kick in chump change. Otherwise, since they are fronting for the moneyed class, they'll activate the same channels that put a failed Manhattan real estate speculator with a severe personality disorder into the White House. These have international reach, and are essentially bottomless. Internet feeds the madness, and cryptocurrency puts the problem into double overdrive.

[Libertas]

Very bad days ahead, very bad.

These fascist assholes who are NOT doing this because of Covid AT ALL but are doing it to OWN the libs, are going to escalate because they have the usual big money rightwingers behind them.

[ZoWie]

What hope there is comes from awareness of the situation. We need new tactics and strategies in a war which is currently being fought with covert transactions and online persuasion. What you see in the street is the front. The headquarters are elsewhere, and they are the best targets.

[Libertas]

What hope there is comes from awareness of the situation. We need new tactics and approaches to a battle which is currently being fought with covert transactions and online persuasion.

In November it is likely that the voter turnout will again be in the 50% range. Right?

That means there are far too many fucking people unaware of where we are OR they believe the LIE that voting makes NO DIFFERENCE!

Either way, they must be SHAKEN out of their ignorance and complacency and frankly I dont care how it is done.

I had the idea of a mainstream, well known democrat go on MSM and accidentally but on purpose and rehearsed in reality, let the F word fly WHILE describing the DRASTIC situation our democracy is in. When I suggested this at DU, I was attacked by many people and one of them said "sure, most people care about this instead of Covid or economy" in a sarcastic way. Actually, YES, THAT IS THE PROBLEM! They are aware and concerned about Covid and the economy but unaware of the REAL immediate threat, MAGA etc...

[ZoWie]

Covid, racial discrimination, and the economy are global situations that cannot be understood until reduced to human scale terms. The other side has done a better job of doing this, since it controls the channels through which most people get their information. The result is drumpf, Q, and now the general revolt by one loose, small, and very informal coalition of dissatisfied elements in Canada. A very minor uprising as these things go has captured the imagination of the world, in ways which we are now seeing are most likely influenced by the same wonderful people who put drumpf in the White House in the first place.

[ZoWie]

I must add that none of this is rocket science. Indeed, we are doing an almost picture perfect replay of the same politics that processed the Spanish Flu pandemic that coincided with World War I. There was a need at that time to maintain a political hierarchy in order to finish the war, and therefore a disease became politicized to the point where the same kinds of people we see here were spreading the message that face masks were a Bolshevik plot to take over the world.

Point is that this stuff is NOT new, though Internet makes it a lot easier and any number can play.

[Libertas]

I must add that none of this is rocket science. Indeed, we are doing an almost picture perfect replay of the same politics that processed the Spanish Flu pandemic that coincided with World War I. There was a need at that time to maintain a political stability in order to finish the war, and therefore a disease became politicized to the point where the same kinds of people we see here were spreading the message that face masks were a Bolshevik plot to take over the world.

Point is that this stuff is NOT new, though Internet makes it a lot easier and any number can play.

Can you explain a littler more how the Spanish Flu was used with World War I

After that, what is the solution to the problem of waking up the half that wont vote? Ideas? Sincere question.

[ZoWie]

I would imagine that election participation was even more limited in WWI, seeing as ethnic minorities and women were excluded from the process altogether. Voting in itself is a process, and as we've seen recently far more than 50% vote if they get fired up about an issue. The hard part has always been about motivating them to vote on your issue.

There was considerable interest in not stirring people up during WWI. Leaders wanted to stay focused on the war, and then the Russian revolution got a lot of people concerned about the spread of ideologies deemed subversive to the established order of things. For both reasons, the pandemic was feared in some places as a distraction, so as was noted in another post it was at least partially hushed up by wartime censorship. The statistics are not as definitive as we would like them to be, hence the missing fourth wave mentioned in another post, which I didn't even know about. What I did know was that the third wave of that one was very mild, so now I'm wondering whether it was just kept quiet more effectively.

The major point is that in both cases a public health matter was politicized into an extension of the debates over other issues. "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

[carmenjonze]

I must add that none of this is rocket science. Indeed, we are doing an almost picture perfect replay of the same politics that processed the Spanish Flu pandemic that coincided with World War I. There was a need at that time to maintain a political hierarchy in order to finish the war, and therefore a disease became politicized to the point where the same kinds of people we see here were spreading the message that face masks were a Bolshevik plot to take over the world.

Point is that this stuff is NOT new, though Internet makes it a lot easier and any number can play.

All very true

[Drak]

Republicans like Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, etc. keep praising the trucker convoy and calling them Canadian patriots. They are not patriots. These same politicians praising the truckers are also constantly attempting to blame Biden for supply chain issues, which is what the convoy is causing.