Front Burner - U.S. right-wing media adopts the ‘Freedom Convoy’

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

Canada’s trucker’s and the ‘Freedom Convoy’ protests have inspired similar protests around the world, from France to New Zealand to Australia. But it’s especially drawing the adoration of Conservative commentators in the United States -- like Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. The ‘anti-mandate’ and ‘anti-lockdown’ movement has also become the obsession of the darker, more alt-right corners of the internet. Today on Front Burner, a conversation with CBC’s Washington correspondent Alex Panetta on how the trucker protest is playing out in the U.S. media, and Jared Holt, a domestic extremism researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, on how it’s manifesting in right-wing online spaces.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. The Canadian Freedom Convoy protests have been inspiring similar protests around the world. In France, dozens of trucks under the banner Convoy de la Liberté say they're headed for Paris to protest the country's vaccine pass.

Police there have responded by saying they'll be blocked from entering the city. Posts on social media show protest plans for all of the EU's national capitals. In Australia, the self-described Convoy to Canberra have been demonstrating since last week. Convoys, there's just the highways jammed with people, with flags and that, they're coming to Canberra. And in the U.S., a convoy from California to Washington is expected on March 4th. There are warnings that protests could disrupt the State of the Union and the Super Bowl. Today we're going to focus on how the protests here are playing with the right wing media and politicians to our south. But they're scared because if usually mild mannered Canadians have figured things out that most of what their governments did to fight COVID was insanely destructive. Then how can liberals here possibly think for one second that they're going to keep this COVID theater going on in the United States for much longer?

they're going to keep this COVID theater going on in the United States for much longer. CBC's Washington correspondent Alex Panetta is with me now, but later in the show, we're going to be talking to Jared Holt, who studies domestic extremism at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab. And we're going to talk about how all of this is playing out on right-wing online spaces. Hey, Alex. How are you? Great, great. Thanks so much for coming on to the podcast.

So we've seen some of the Fox News clips here and there, but I wanted to get your sense of it all. How much coverage and attention is the story getting from conservative media? Oh, it's absolutely huge. On traditional media, Fox News alone has devoted more than eight hours of screen time to this story. I mean, this is unparalleled for a Canadian event. Night after night, you've got protest sympathizers on. One research group, Media Matters, counts 13 cases of people involved in the protest being invited onto the airwaves. And that's just Fox. In social media, Americans are watching this story closely. If you look at Google search terms, the word convoy has been searched way more often than, you know, the Canadian election, for example.

Which isn't surprising. Justin Trudeau's reelection was a blip in U.S. news coverage. But this is turning into a monumental story. So tell us why you're doing this, if you would. There's just been a stifling of freedom and a stifling of unity in Canada for two years. A lot of people are down. A lot of people are fired. Man, you can't even go into a grocery store without getting into an argument about a mask or whatnot. Well, it's beautiful to watch from below your border.

The government seems to be doing all it can to prevent you from peacefully protesting. Alex, I'm curious, when you're watching Fox News, for example, what elements of the convoy are being lashed onto here by their big time commentators like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson? Look, you could not genetically engineer in a lab a storyline better scripted for conservative media in the U.S., right? Half the stories on Fox News are about one storyline and one storyline only. And it's how working class people, especially the white working class, are being victimized and suffering injustices at the hand of left-leaning elites and technocrats. This is the age-old elites taking on the people. This is the left, once again, showing utter disdain for average, everyday, hardworking people that keep the country going.

I mean, we're used to it here in America. Of course, a Canadian might say, well, OK, well, these pandemic rules come from the provinces mostly. Doug Ford, Jason Kenney and Francois Legault are not exactly left wingers all of a sudden. But guess what? Nobody telling this story on primetime U.S. airwaves cares about that nuance. You know, American media don't tend to care very much about foreign nuance at the best of times. And now, I mean, this has become a story about a revolt against Trudeau. And because, frankly, it's a better story to tell. Talk to me a bit about how Trudeau is factoring in all of this. We're obviously seeing a lot of anger directed towards him here from the protesters. Well, I think it's disgusting for any leader of a country to vilify people for exercising their democratic right, their right to protest, their right to demonstrate peacefully.

I think it's terrible. But what is the common narrative in American right-wing media right now? There's a funny story about Justin Trudeau and views of him in the United States. I feel like having been outside the country for his entire prime ministership, I've seen this arc. So at first, after he was elected in 2015, I'd hear from left-leaning Americans who were so fascinated with him and wanted to know everything about what was happening in Canada with Trudeau. And you didn't really hear people on the right talking too much about him.

Then I recall this turning point. It was, I think, maybe 2017, when Donald Trump at a rally mentions a conversation with Trudeau, and it has to do with trade. He says, you know, I got a call from Justin Trudeau. And people start booing in the crowd. And Trump actually shuts them off. He says, no, no, no, no, he's a good guy. He's a friend of mine. Canada, you know, Canada, nice guy, nice guy. But that was the first indication I had that he was starting to pique people's interest on the right, that he was becoming somewhat of a boogeyman to people on the other side of the political spectrum. And today, seven years almost into his prime ministership, you hear about him on the right a lot more than you would do on the left. It's the opposite. People kind of like taking shots at him. I have a message for you, Prime Minister. You're a disgrace in terms of being an excuse for a

leader, but demonizing hardworking truckers, anyone else who doesn't surrender to your point of view, one size fits all medicine. This is how you lead. He looks like he wet his pants. I have not seen any barbarians with tiki torches and pitchforks. These seem like reasonable people that just want to work. Canada should be ashamed of this.

God, I almost said douchebag. What's his face? The bozo who's the Trudeau. Just an elite cupcake. You know, it's interesting, Alex, a lot of the vocabulary the protesters here are using is sort of quintessential American vocabulary, liberty and freedom. We're just really tired of getting our freedoms trampled on. It's worth sticking up for what you believe in. Now that this language is being broadcast back to the United States and beyond, what does that tell you? Well, it tells me that Canada is in the import export business. You're taking in American ideas and other countries' ideas and you're provocating them out to the world. You know, you mentioned freedom and liberty, I would submit that there are actually other terms

that the protesters are using that are much more uniquely American, you know, you have people in that protest calling, you know, referring to themselves as we the people, you know, the first three words of the West Constitution, referring to themselves as patriots, and it dates back to the American Revolution, and is a term generally used in the more activist wing of the of the, you know, pro-Trump protesters. And you heard it often on January 6th. You know, you have people talking about holding the line. This is this is U.S. vocabulary, right? This is these are not terms that come from Canadian political discourse. But the what's happening now, I think, is just part of a massive phenomenon.

We live in the information age where you're not just having a certain set of ideas proliferating between borders. Information and social movements are being shared. Vocabulary is being exchanged at a much higher pace among a broader cross-section of the public than happened a generation or two ago. So now I want to talk to you about how this is playing out in the sort of political arena,

because it has become very political in the U.S. Really prominent Republican voices, including Trump, have voiced their support for the truckers. And I also understand that the convoy came up in the middle of like a heated debate about vaccine mandates in US Congress and tell me what happened there. Yeah, so a couple weeks ago, there was this interesting conversation of a US Congressional Committee, where the Democrat chairing the committee, scolded a Republican there for spreading disinformation about Justin Trudeau. Chip Roy of Texas had tweeted something about Trudeau escaping to the United States. So we should deport him back to Canada and not give him refuge here, which is total bunk. Right. And so this

Democrat says to him, you know, this is disinformation. This is lies. Why are you spreading this? And the Republican responds, you're you know, you're aligned with Justin Trudeau on, you know, vaccine mandates. And I'm perfectly happy to slap Trudeau around and support the truckers. And I would just say, you know, if the chairman wants to follow the leadership of Justin Trudeau in Canada, be my guest. I'm perfectly happy to slap around the Canadian prime minister for his absolute abject failure and decide with Canadian truckers and those who are standing up for freedom and our neighbors up north of the United States. And to this point, just in the last few days, you have amplified fictional rumors that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fled to the United States to avoid protests from Canadians opposed to vaccine mandates. Let me be clear. This is disinformation, your disinformation. Welcome to the American culture war or welcome to the Canadian culture where they kind of got fused in the last couple of weeks. But I would say that it's actually

moving well beyond right wing media. Now that you've got border crossings and bridges blocked, that it's affecting auto plants, that car production is being slowed down, that the White House National Security Advisor, Homeland Security Advisor to President Biden convened a meeting on this at the White House, that there's talk of a convoy to Washington, you know, a country that has had recent political unrest, shall we say,

where people are much more heavily armed than in Canada. There's their national security considerations that are emerging in the U.S. that go well beyond conservative media. Now it's becoming

a mainstream story. It's coming up every day at White House briefings. So it started off as kind of a Fox News phenomenon. Yeah. And now it's becoming a mainstream story it's becoming up every day at white house briefings so it started off as kind of a fox news phenomenon yeah and it's now it's a it's a broad social phenomenon now this week the protest spilled into the u.s on the ambassador bridge in detroit the bridge a major border crossing for commercial trucks shutting down Do you see the rhetoric shifting on Fox, for example, now that this major border crossing is blocked? I mean, there's a lot of money and trade at stake here now. Haven't noticed that yet, but I would suspect that once these protests start to affect Rupert

Murdoch's friends and start to affect industry in the United States, you might see a slight, let's say, recalibration of the conversation, especially because, you know, this could potentially produce an opening for Democrats. Right. Joe Biden's been getting hammered for months over supply chain problems, computer chip shortages, problems at ports, inflation. shortages, problems at ports, inflation. Well, if you see truckers start to disrupt trade and start to, especially if they do this in the United States or at the U.S. border or inland, you can easily see a scenario. I'm thinking ahead a couple of weeks here where the White House starts to say, look at these protesters cheered on by Fox News disrupting our supply chains. You basically turn it into a story where the opposition is to the president as actually causing problems for the economy. And Democrats, I mean, just the context here is they're in big trouble. Midterms are coming up. They're heavily, heavily favored to lose these midterms and basically lose control of Congress. You know, they're looking for lifelines

here. And there are a couple of potential ones. And I think that this this, you know, depending on how this plays out, this might end up turning into a conversation that Democrats are perfectly happy to have. And Republicans start to become a little bit more nervous about. It's really interesting you say that, because I think there are probably parallels to what's happening here. So Candace Bergen, the interim conservative leader, she said today, we're talking on Thursday, that the time has come for the protesters to take down their barricades to stop this disruptive action. To all of you who are taking part in the protests, I believe the time has come for you to take down the barricades, stop the disruptive action and come together. You know, that has come in the aftermath of this major trade route being blocked. Talk to me a little bit more about the political

establishment in the U.S. and who else has latched on to the protests and why? Basically, every ambitious Republican has latched onto it. Right. This is not them driving the cart, although elite opinion has a way of generating more conversation. Like when Donald Trump mentioned it at his rally, you know, more people started talking about it on the right. But it's also like a bottom up conversation. Right. So politicians like Ted Cruz. Let me say the Canadian truckers are heroes. They are patriots and they are marching for your freedom and for my freedom. People who have presidential ambitions, he has them. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is believed to have them. He's talked about investigating GoFundMe. The attorney general of Texas has opened an

investigation into GoFundMe. Lots of politicians who basically have ambitions on the right. See, this is a way to, as a touchstone with their base. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

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I understand there's a former Trump advisor who's actually in Ottawa. And can you tell me about that guy, Paul Alexander? Yeah, Dr. Paul Alexander. And he was very, very clear with me when we spoke that he wanted to talk to me only if I agreed to call him Dr. Alexander, because he is a PhD, Oxford educated Canadian, who ended up working in the Trump administration, because of a mutual connection with the administration. He was hired during the COVID pandemic and his views put him at severe odds with others in the administration, the professional bureaucrats and with most of the health policy making community. Basically, he believes in herd immunity. Why would we push these vaccines when the natural immunity that somebody has is superior to the vaccine immunity? superior to the vaccine immunity.

He thinks that, I don't want to spread disinformation, but I'll just suffice it to say, his view is that the vaccines have been oversold, that they're less effective than advertised, that there's a risk in them. And in a very, very, very small number of cases, they have been linked to fatalities. But in his view, we didn't really need them. We should have gone with herd immunity.

They better pay attention to the trucking convoy that has begun in California and headed to D.C. They want their freedoms back. They want the mandates dropped. Governments have no position anymore, no credibility to keep these things in place. They have to stop these mandates because people are suffering. And he told me that he believes that the people who push vaccinations, especially on younger people and healthier people, he told me he wants to see policymakers put in jail at some point. So you mentioned before the GoFundMe page that was shut down and the calls from attorney generals to investigate this. And I just I do want to talk to you before we go a little bit about the money angle of this.

So we can't say for sure where all the money has come from, but one of our colleagues, Elizabeth Thompson, analyzed 6,600 comments made on that GoFundMe page before it was shut down. And she found that 573 donations amounting to more than like 33,000 bucks came from people who said they were located abroad and half of those were American. And now the people behind the replacement fundraiser at the Christian site Give, Send, Go, they said that they have donations coming in from all over the world. But why is questioning the funding, even though crowdfunding for a movement as big as this is completely legal, why do you think it's an important one to explore here?

This goes back to one of the fundamental long-term realities of the Canada-U.S. relationship. And, you know, and it's the oft-quoted line from Pierre Trudeau about a mouse sleeping next to an elephant, right? That mouse can get pretty overwhelmed pretty quickly with cash if the elephant decides to start dropping stuff on its side of the bed. So in this particular case, I mean, we don't know what percentage of the money is from abroad. We may have a better idea soon because I think GoFundMe has agreed to testify at a parliamentary committee in Ottawa on March 3rd. So we might have a better idea soon. In the meantime, what you're seeing is an unrivaled, an unparalleled fundraising success for a Canadian cause.

Just Give, Send, Go alone generated over $7 million Canadian in just like a few days, which is what a Canadian political party, a major national party would raise over several months in an election year. And, you know, the rules around it are really unclear. So that's it's opened up new questions that we're not used to dealing with. I do want to just read this this comment from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. I do want to just read this comment from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. Be cautious of amplifying ideas that this is a foreign-funded slash organized movement.

This occupation movement is Canadian, made up of Canadians, organized by Canadians. There may be boosting, bots, money, but nothing concrete. So don't absolve responsibility. Canada did this. Which I, is important for us to note in this conversation. We don't really know where all this money is coming from right now. Well, exactly. And I think this is actually, it's almost too cute to make this a conversation about foreign funding in the sense that every single protest movement in the world, you have leaders who want to discredit it, say it's outside agitators, right? You don't want to fall into

that trap either and sort of gloss over the problems or the realities in your own society. You know, Americans too in 2016 blame the Russians for having elected Trump. While there may have been an element of truth about Russian involvement, you know, these issues, socially divisive issues, raise questions that you want to also resolve domestically and not just point the finger outside. Alex, I wonder if before we go today, looking at this protest and how it has resonated south of the border and even around the world, what's like a big takeaway for you here? What are you thinking about? You know, the old saying about all politics being local. Well, I think you might want to flip that on its head and say all politics is global now.

A polarizing debate over vaccines that existed in the United States, and it wasn't so polarizing in Canada. You know, we can import that and we can import the language of patriots and we the people and hold the line and it becomes a part of Canadian protest. So like I said, Canada is in the import business. It's a global world and we're watching the trade in, you know, right wing protest ideas. All right. Thanks for this, as always. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So that's how this has been playing out in U.S. conservative media and politics. And now on to Jared Holt to talk about the deeper, darker corners of the Internet and how this is all playing out in right-wing online spaces.

Jared is a researcher at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, where he studies domestic terrorism. Hi, Jared. Hey, thanks for having me. Thank you so much for making the time. So I know you monitor right-wing social media channels in the U.S. and right-wing online forums. We've had you on the show before to talk about the Proud Boys. And I'm curious what you're seeing right now. What kinds of things are being talked about?

What elements of the movement are being latched onto by these online groups? of the movement are being latched onto by these online groups? So the way that they're talking about what's happening in Canada right now is as if it's something to be emulated. For American far-right audiences, they view Trudeau and the majority Canadian government as the same kind of liberal world order that they believe is imposing all kinds of unjust things on the world. So you have everything from white supremacist groups talking about this as white people standing up against a government that tries to enforce multiracialism, everything from that to conspiracy theorists talking about protests as a means of putting their foot down in the face of a global conspiracy, and the list of a global conspiracy.

And the list goes on and on. What are some of the biggest channels or accounts that are fueling the activity on this? So what we're looking at here is accounts and influencers from all over the right-wing political spectrum within the spectrum, major influencers like Jack Posobiec, who has millions of followers on Twitter to Facebook groups with tens of thousands of people, channels on Telegram, those can have hundreds of thousands of people, tens of thousands of people at the minimum, all kind of speaking in unison with approval for what is happening in Canada and, you know, kind of looking at it as something that should be replicated or something that should have an American answer to it.

Can you tell me a bit more about Jack Posobiec? Yeah, Jack Posobiec is a far-right political operative who came up under the wing of Roger Stone, who is a longtime associate of Trump and has a reputation in American and to a lesser degree in international politics as being kind of a hatchet man doing the kind of dirty work that establishment Republicans might not want to get their hands soiled with. The purpose of virtue signaling is the signal, right? None of what they say matters. But what matters is the fact that they said it.

So he came up under Stone's wing and advanced all kinds of conspiracy theories in 2016 around the election of Donald Trump, including Pizzagate. He was one of the main purveyors of that. And the craziest fake news of all is something called Pizzagate. People actually believe a conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton and her former campaign manager, John Podesta, ran a child sex ring at a pizzeria in D.C.

People started showing up at the restaurant to investigate for themselves, like well-known right-wing activist Jack Posobiec, who used a video camera to live stream his visit on Periscope. He also has used his platform to channel in extremist, white nationalist and anti-Semitic sentiments into broader pro-Trump audiences. And this is a guy who has seemingly just, despite all of this, continued to climb and influence. And I understand he's changed his Twitter username to Truckistan. And what is that? What is Truckistan? It's a playoff Afghanistan, uh, but of course mentioning, uh, the trucks, uh, this is something? I might stumble upon more information or more favorable talking points or coverage about what's happening. How much of the discussion that you're seeing online is focused on the original grievances,

so vaccine mandates and lockdowns, et cetera? And then how much is veering into right-wing extremism and conspiracy theories? You know, these messages of opposition to mandates or vaccination requirements is really taking the front seat, but very little is being done to excise the more extreme elements that are also kind of attracted to it.

You know, it's really kind of developed into kind of a giant fly trap for every, you know, nut and extremist element buzzing around the right wing sphere. Seeing the, you know, anger and resentment that happens in those kind of discourses as avenues for them to inject their own ideology or siphon people off the edges of those movements towards their own. Yeah, almost like recruiting. Is that fair? Yeah, fair. And even if it's not recruiting into a specified group or organization, something like the Proud Boys, at least recruiting people down to the ideological path towards extremism. Okay. Jared, thank you so much for this.

Yeah, sure thing. All right, that is all for this week. FrontBurner is brought to you by CBC News and CBC Podcast. The show was produced this week by Imogen Burchard, Ali Janes, Katie Toth, Simi Bassey, and Derek VanderWijk. Our sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron and Nooruddin Karane. Our music is by Joseph Shabison. The executive producer of Front Burner is Nick McKay-Blocost, and I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening.

We'll talk to you on Monday. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.