It Could Happen Here - Canadian 'Freedom Convoy' Part 2: Border Blockades & Political Ramifications

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

As the Convoy occupation expanded beyond choking a single major city, the blocking of supply lines and border crossings raised more questions regarding how the government's reaction might effect political movements in the future. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, and the second part of my little mini-series going into the occupation and blockade protests all across Canada that's been happening the past three weeks. For part two, we'll be starting off with a change of scenery. Instead of the

loud, cramped streets of downtown Ottawa and the Castle Lake Parliament building, we'll be taking a detour to the snow-covered prairies and oil fields of rural Alberta. As the convoy officially arrived in Ottawa on January 29th, smaller protests against health mandates were also happening across the entire country. One of these many protests was happening in the small city of Lethbridge in southern Alberta. But unlike the majority of other non-Ottawa protests, the one based around Lethbridge didn't turn out to be a simple weekend affair. With hundreds of vehicles, including some semi-trucks, RVs, and farm tractors all gathered together, it was decided to take part in a little mini-convoy of their own. But instead of going to a Capitol building, they rolled towards

the international border crossing used by truckers in the area. I was able to interview Jen, a Lethbridge local who also happens to work near the area of the Alberta border blockade. They kind of gathered in Lethbridge here and took off about 4.30 in the morning. gathered in Lethbridge here and took off about 4.30 in the morning. And so they made it down to the village of Coutts, which is essentially right on the border. It's the last stop before you hit the border at Coutts, Alberta, Sweetgrass, Montana. And they blocked off the highway completely,

heading both northbound and southbound. And they've been camped out since. So it's my understanding that at that point in time, throughout, you know, day one, two, and three of their protest, there was no getting in or out of the village of Cootes, which it is a small village, about 250 residents. And it was so bad that not even emergency services could get through. Again, blocking both lanes of the highway in either direction, in the ditches, and just weren't letting up. And so... Are they even driving anywhere or are they just like camped there?

Just camped out there, parked. And of course, you know, there's people that will drive down to the border and participate for a couple hours and, you know, turn around and go home kind of thing. But there is that core group, the majority of which are actually farmers bringing down like their tractors. are actually farmers bringing down like their tractors. And of course, there is some semi-truck drivers who are all a part of it and just not allowing anyone to get through on either side. So, you know, holding up a lot of our supplies, a lot of our food and things like that. At first, local police and RCMP just waited out the blockade, I guess hoping to see if the people would just get tired of camping out in the cold and then, you know, go home. But after a few days, that possibility seemed less and less likely. Then when the RCMP

did start to get more actively involved with kind of managing the blockade, albeit, you know, with a very gentle hand, in extremely stark contrast to how RCMP handles blockades, you know, defending Indigenous land. But at that point, it was already kind of too late, and the pacified police action only spread the protests' efforts. On day four of the blockade at the border, the RCMP had kind of moved in a little bit, tried to break it up. So some of the blockade at the border. The RCMP had kind of moved in a little bit, tried to break it up. So some of the protesters had kind of broken off and decided to blockade some other areas. So there was a blockade that happened on Highway 3, just outside of the town of Fort McLeod, on the way to the town of Brockett, which would be on the blood reserve here in Alberta. They blockaded the highway and wouldn't let anyone through. And then they set up another blockade

on Highway 23, which of course would be the next north-south route, given that Highway 3 was now blocked off, Highway 3 going to Highway 2. So they blocked off highway 23 um at there's a traffic circle or a roundabout kind of in the middle of nowhere in the highway uh at the village of noblesford sorry town of noblesford and uh they set up a blockade at the roundabout as well wouldn't let anyone come in north south east west didn't matter um so that was tuesday uh tuesday so they were blocking off like highways two uh four twenty three and three yeah so effectively shutting down any kind of like travel for like food and supplies for like all four directions pretty much exactly yeah like there was a lot of uh chatter on social on social media. Um, we have a local

Facebook group for road conditions and there was a lot of chatter, you know, where do we go? How do we get around this? What back roads should I take? Secondary highways, that sort of thing. And thankfully, you know, there was still, I suppose, some ways to get around it. The RCMP were kind of setting up detours and things like that, but those main routes were blockaded on Tuesday, which would have been, I guess, what day is that? February 1st. The static highway blockades preventing traffic in all four directions were mostly a one-day affair. The next Wednesday morning, more effort was put back into the main blockade at the border near Coutts, with some folks still participating in the rolling blockades of sorts, you know, on the surrounding highways. So instead of just blocking the roads by staying parked, people in vehicles kept a slow loop of traffic moving through the highway system to clog up travel.

And then, like, the contingent closer to the border has been more consistent you would say yeah definitely the the contingent at the border on highway 4 like i said at coots alberta they've been set up all the way through since the 29th um there has been days where the tensions are definitely very high where those protesters are saying we will not leave until um or we won't even come to the negotiating table until these restrictions are gone like we won't even attempt and so the rcmp have been kind of in negotiations with them over the last few days there's been a couple times where they thought they had resolution to open up lanes of travel to get some of these trucks with goods through. And of course, there's

been people stuck in their cars as well for quite a few days without food at that point. The protesters originally had come to an agreement with the RCMP to let people through and then turned around and decided, well, we don't really want to so that was kind of ongoing from i'm going to suggest the the 30th up until about the second um on the second the rcmp had set up a roadblock uh at the town of milk river to i guess dissuuade the locals from coming out and adding to the congestion and adding to the problems. And at one point, there was a group of people and videos are on TikTok, they're on Facebook, they're on Twitter, where people are blasting through the barricades, going through the ditch, going through the median, just bypassing it completely to get down to the convoy protest. As I record this, the border crossing port of

entry near the town of Coutts has been largely impassable for over two weeks. It's a major trade hub where millions of dollars worth of agricultural products like meat and feed trade hands each day. The first day had hundreds of vehicles participating in blocking access to the trade route along Highway 4, but after a week of blockading the Alberta-Montana border crossing, around 80 big rigs continued to remain along the highway. For a majority of the time since the 29th of January, vehicle access has been either completely stopped to and from the border, or at least substantially slowed down. The occasional day where vehicles are being let through on one lane of traffic has an estimated seven hours of stall time in order to get through just that tiny area of road. The blockade of that

international port of entry at Cootes, and the only 24-7 commercial land crossing in Alberta, is a direct threat to the economic well-being of growers, producers, manufacturers, and many other businesses that rely on the movement of both raw materials and finished goods in and out along the Can-Am-X corridor." Lewington has warned that manufacturing plants in the region will be forced to either reduce or cancel production as their supplies run out and they're unable to get their goods to international markets. This is something farmers and food producers are dealing with as well,

as agricultural exports are one of the region's main economic drivers. cultural exports are one of the region's main economic drivers. In 2020, the Lethbridge metropolitan area exported nearly $1.8 billion worth of goods, around 80% of which went to the United States. A vast majority of these exports went through this Cootes border crossing. That means for the city of Lethbridge alone, they're facing a roughly $3 million a day impact on the economic damage based on the road and rail travel that must move through that port of entry. The impact is, of course, four or five times larger than if you consider the movement of other Alberta goods in and out of that same north-south corridor. It's only more ironic and frustrating, considering that the idea of shutting down international capitalist trade, that the idea of shutting down international capitalist trade, you know, costing millions dollars in losses each and every day, is exactly the sort of thing that these same conservatives

would complain that BLM or Antifa would do, you know? Like, in terms of anti-capitalist action, this is actually more successful in causing damage to capital than really anything I've seen the Canadian left do in recent memory. Now, obviously, police response to a left-wing protest, you know, doing similar tactics would probably greatly differ, you know, plus the fact that these people participating in these blockades are the same types of people that talk about their desire to run down protesters in trucks, you know, whenever there's marching in the street or an indigenous road blockade to a new oil pipeline. Nevertheless, on top of the police inability, whether by choice or imagination, to handle the situation, and considering both the conspiracy-fueled political issues around masks, vaccines, and health

mandates, and the growing economic problems the blockade is causing, it's not super surprising that the conservative government of Alberta began the process of removing health mandates as the protests dragged on. come Monday, the caucus will vote as to whether or not to scrap it, which would mean that, like I said, now there's no longer that requirement to access some of these services from private businesses. And then ultimately, that would lead us back into our letter rip model that we had last summer. The Monday vote came in the next day, February 8th. Alberta Premier, and Premiers are like the, you know, equivalent of governors for the states, but Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced that the province's so-called COVID-19 vaccine passport program would end immediately,

explaining that the restriction program had served its purpose but is no longer needed since Alberta has passed the peak of Omicron infections about three weeks ago. Capacity limits were also nixed Tuesday night for venues with capacity limits under 500, including libraries and places of worship. And effective this past Sunday, February 13th, the province will also no longer require masking for children and youth in schools, and for any Albertans aged 12 and under in any setting. There is a second phase for Alberta's COVID restriction removal plan. On March 1st, the province is set to remove any remaining restrictions,

including the indoor mask mandate, work-from-home requirements, any remaining capacity limits and limits on social gatherings and screenings for youth activities. Jason Kenney did deny that the move has anything to do with the protests from those, you know, demanding the repeal of vaccine mandates of all types across the country, including the blockade that the government had condemned as illegal at the Coutts border crossing, saying, quote, none of that has anything to do with a few trucks participating at the Coutts border crossing, who added that keeping previous rules in place would invite widespread non-compliance for no purpose,

saying, why keep this going on for a few days when we know that in many areas we're already having noncompliance problems? So yeah, of course the demonstrations have continued, despite Alberta dropping multiple health measures and agreeing to a demand made by a lot of the anti-mandate protesters, measures and agreeing to a demand made by a lot of the anti-mandate protesters, which implies that this protest is about much more than simple COVID health measures, right? It points to the movement being more about taking political power and forcing everyone to comply with their own conspiratorial and alienated understanding of the world. As someone who's like living in Alberta, which is, you know is one of the more conservative like like how like how much did you see it's more of like a urban rule divide thing that's now just getting pushed into the

spotlight because of covid um or do you think it really is way more about covid itself um i think that the pandemic has definitely had a role to play in sparking a lot of this this furor and this uh this disconnect but the the seeds have been sown for many years through many successive provincial governments and and much rhetoric that um the west has always been ignored by the east by our political institutions in the east namely namely Ottawa, our federal government, the seat of our federal government, in favor of, you know, Ontario and Quebec and what they want. Albertans have always seen themselves with a bit of a martyr complex where we are the economic powerhouse of the country, but we are the ugly stepchild and we are ignored in favor of the

wonderful children in the East. And so that disconnect and that divide has always been there and the pandemic has been the catalyst. And of course, you know, whenever there is a federal liberal party that's in in power uh the conservatives feel the conservatives in alberta and in the west they feel even more disenfranchised they feel that this this government doesn't hear them they don't listen to them they don't you know follow the whims of you know the the dyed-in-the-wool conservatives and so that rhetoric has built and built and built over the years. And it's all tied into other things as well. It's tied into the economic policies and the policies of the liberal government in regards to climate change and carbon tax

and how that's been hitting Albertans. tax and how how that's been hitting um albertans you know they our province is very heavily dependent upon the oil and gas sector and it always has been for the last i'm going to suggest 50 60 years and so when they see things like in ottawa where they're talking about climate change they're talking about you know green energy it makes these conservatives angry because this has been our bread and butter for years. This is what's fed our families. They don't recognize that this is the path forward. All they hear is, we don't want you. We don't want your jobs. We don't want your products. We don't want you. We don't want your jobs. We don't want your products. And they're angry. And this has been the catalyst now where they're just fed up. They're fed up with not being heard. is ending up being taken out against just any symbol of liberalism, not really the government directly. Within this worldview, homophobic attacks can be then thought up as this weird

form of punching up because gayness is associated with liberalism. So it's seen as almost this system of power, even though that's obviously backwards. It's this kind of weird backwards thing where you can view attacking progressive things as an attack on the system. So that even though that's obviously backwards. It's this kind of weird backwards thing where you can view attacking progressive things as an attack on the system. So that means being racist or being homophobic is this rebellion against the system itself, even though it just ties into all those same systemic issues.

Just the other day in Edmonton, there was a business owner, a hair salon owner who's been very outspoken about this freedom convoy and about how she doesn't agree with their messaging and their ideas. And she was actually hunted down on social media, hunted down in person. Someone found her, someone found her, her business, went to her business and confronted her and assaulted her at her business, all because she does not support the convoy. And apparently this individual did.

You know, we definitely, we definitely see here that the feeling is that if you are a liberal in Alberta, this is not the place for you. You know, if you believe in, you know, equal rights for everyone, this is not the place for you. If you believe in the rights of marginalized and minority communities, this is not the place for you. If you believe in the rights of marginalized and minority communities, this is not the place for you. And I've seen that, you know, in taking part in various protests, I suppose that could be branded as liberal protests, like the Black Lives Matter protests and the protests and rallies that were held in support of the Indigenous communities last summer upon, you know, the news that kind of shook the world regarding graves at residential schools. And, you know, you see it with the Indigenous communities that protest pipelines on their traditional lands,

and they block, you they block railways. And the same people that are screaming for jail time and for violence and police intervention on these various protests are the same people that are taking part in this convoy. Protesters at the Coutts border crossing will now be charged or fined, according to the province and the RCMP. RCMP Deputy Chief Curtis Zablocki said in a news conference during the start of the second week of the Alberta border blockade that police are actively working to defuse the situation at the most important border crossing in Alberta, but are trying to do so peacefully, saying, Make no mistake, there are criminal activities taking place at these protest sites that violate both criminal code and provincial laws. We've seen

activities that are both dangerous and reckless and are having a very negative effect on Albertans who live in the area. He then pointed to, you know, dwindling numbers involving the blockade, from a high of around 250 vehicles to begin with, to around 50 vehicles last Tuesday afternoon, as a success of their efforts to this point. But, you know, this isn't convinced everyone since the blockade is still happening. So, Acting Justice Minister and Solicitor General Sonia Savage called the blockade intolerable and said that those taking part in the demonstration can be charged under several different federal and provincial laws, including the Federal Criminal Code, the Provincial Traffic Safety Act, and the new Critical Infrastructure Defense Act, which was enacted right in the middle

of 2020 during the international George Floyd uprising and the set in rail blockades in Canada. Now, I'm going to go on a mini tangent here just because of how terrible this bill is. The bill gives law enforcement and the judicial system extra power to dish out significant monetary fines and extra jail time for actions deemed to interfere with so-called essential infrastructure, quote-unquote. The stated goal of the bill is harsher penalties and charges for, quote, damage or interference caused by blockades, protests, or similar activities that can cause significant public safety, social, economic, and environmental consequences. The act builds on existing trespassing laws to create offenses for trespassing on, destroying, damaging, and obstructing the use or operation of any essential

infrastructure. Also under the banner of essential infrastructure, that includes public and private property, by the way. The bill was obviously aimed at left-wing protest, and specifically eco-defense and environmental protest and or sabotage, as the first two things defined as essential infrastructure in the bill are, quote, In the bill are, quote, pipelines and related infrastructure and oil and gas production and refinery sites. So, yeah, there's also been pressure from government officials to include forfeiture property in the Commission of Crime through the Civil Forfeiture Act. RCMP Deputy Chief Zablocki said that charges will be coming for those taking part in the protest and could be as simple as the way they are illegally parked on the highway. He did note that the RCMP has attempted to hire local towing companies to move the trucks and other equipment off the road, but have been unable to do so, with the companies citing concerns over damage to their business long-term or just safety issues in general.

This has also been a huge factor in attempts to deal with the Ottawa occupation. Zablocki said that there are concerns over safety and violence in response to the more aggressive approaches to breaking up the blockade. So far, the main action law enforcement has taken to dissuade people from blocking the border is just giving out tickets and fines for illegal parking. Premier Jason Kenney said that he is supportive of RCMP handling this as they see fit through the means that they already have, and has been supportive of using the, you know, pretty horribly authoritarian Critical Infrastructure Defense Act. Saying, quote, enormous powers, and very stiff fines and penalties, including the power of imprisonment.

We have made it clear to the RCMP, who is our provincial policing service, that they can and should use all of these powers. They're dealing with a very fluid situation, and I have respect for their judgment. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the ongoing blockades and protests across the country this past Friday, encouraging demonstrators to leave while also passing the buck on any blame, saying, quote, I want to remind everybody that politicians don't direct police departments to enforce the law. Instead, Trudeau made vague threats around revoking licenses and criminal records for those continuing to protest, saying, everything is on the table because this unlawful blockade has to end and will end.

Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. from the shadows presented by I heart and Sonora an anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America gasoline counters with shape-shifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The blockade at the Coutts border crossing is not the only convoy-aligned protest in Alberta. There have been many demonstrations in basically every major city. There have been many demonstrations in basically every major city. In Calgary, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees says that frontline healthcare workers, patients, and people living around the Sheldon-Kamir Health Centre have dealt with protests for weeks. But things have only gotten worse since the truck convoy hit the news. The vice president of the Alberta Union for Provincial Employees said that protesters have blocked the Amarlean's Bay, they have harassed workers and patients as they come to and from the center, they've banged on the windows of the facility and upset people inside, and they have

blocked the roads around the center. Moving on to the province of British Columbia, as the second weekend of protest was set to descend on Vancouver the weekend of February 5th, in preparation, fearing attacks would be carried out against healthcare workers like they have in the past, Vancouver's two health authorities issued internal M.O.s telling health workers to hide indoors as the convoy passed through the city and to, quote, refrain from wearing scrubs and or your ID badge outside the hospital during the demonstration. If you do encounter any protesters, please do not engage with them or respond to their questions, and please do not ask protesters to put on a face mask. Similarly, ahead of a protest in Toronto,

the Toronto Police sent letters to hospitals advising their workers to not wear any clothing or markings that identify them as working in healthcare, fearing attacks by protesters. As the second wave of the convoy arrived during the second weekend of the occupation in Ottawa, some of the on-the-ground organizational structure started to morph and evolve. The police estimated around this time that 5,000 people were still protesting in Ottawa, and around 1,000 vehicles were clogging the streets. During the second week of protests, in an effort to improve optics considering the four original organizers' explicit connections to the far right, a new lead organizational,

public relations, and bargaining team was assembled for the group calling themselves the Freedom Convoy. The new pseudo-leadership team consists of Daniel Bulford, a former RCMP officer who was on the Prime Minister's security detail. He quit last year after refusing to get the vaccine, and is now the convoy's head of security. Tom Quiggan, a former military intelligence officer, who also worked with the RCMP, and was considered one of the country's top counterterrorism experts, and Tom Marizzo, an ex-military officer who, according to his LinkedIn

profile, served in the Canadian Armed Forces for 25 years and now works as a freelance software developer. And just a side note, in terms of, you know, police and former military participating in the protests, there was an organization full of retired police that endorsed the convoy a few weeks ago and said that they have people on the ground there. And it just got announced, as I'm recording this, that two members of Canada's military counterterrorism unit is under investigation for allegedly taking part in the Ottawa convoy protests. So yeah, that's fun.

The occupation has been getting more and more organized on the ground the past two weeks, and has been able to keep one step ahead of any action taken against police against the occupation. Even just what the convoy participants have physically built is impressive. In less than a week after the convoy arrived, you started to see wooden structures being built around the roads, and a growing stockpile of propane and diesel fuel. There is an impressive amount of tents and wooden structures used for kitchens that local organizers have set up, and a whole supply chain has sprung up across the city to keep these people fed, working, and protesting. I'm now going to quote a good article in the CBC by Judy Trenn.

Quote, the group has set up not only near the parliament in Ottawa, but they have also built two encampment areas where they carry out logistical and supply work. Recent reporting has painted a picture that these areas are far more organized than widely thought. The group is also trying out new tactics, such as attempting to clog up traffic at the Ottawa airport. Other tactics, like swatting, have been reported as well. Ottawa police say they're aware of a concerted effort to flood our 911 and non-emergency police reporting lines, tweeting that this endangers lives and is completely unacceptable. Determined to not be outdone by their fellow protesters in the West, after the second wave arrived, the members of the Ottawa Convoy organized a way for the

convoy occupation to stay, but also put up a border crossing blockade of their own. Starting Sunday, February 6th, scores of truckers blocked the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario to Detroit, Michigan, disrupting the flow of auto parts and other products between the two countries. While this protest has been conducted more by pickup trucks than big rigs, it has been holding up the lanes. The bridge is the busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing and a key cog in both the U.S. and Canadian economies, as it carries around 25% of trade between the two countries. The effects of the blockade there were felt rapidly. The bridge regularly carries around $360 million a day in two-way cargos, but traffic is limited by its 1929 physical footprint. There's just two lanes

each way with no shoulders and antiquated customs booths, with the northern side just emptying out into the city streets. The bumper-to-bumper demonstration forced auto plants on both sides of the border to shut down or scale back production. The halting of trade has bottlenecked automaker Ford's ability to get parts from the U.S. to its Canadian plants in Windsor and Oaksville. Ford has shut down the doors of its Windsor plant and reduced the work schedule in Oakville. Ford said in a statement, the interruption on the Detroit-Windsor bridge hurts customers, autoworkers, suppliers, communities, and companies on both sides of the border. We hope the situation is resolved quickly

because it could have widespread impact on all automakers in the U.S. and Canada. Automaker Toyota said that its three plants in Ontario closed for the rest of the week because of parts shortages, and production has also been curtailed in Georgetown, Kentucky. More on the U.S. side of things, GM, Jeep, and Honda all had hours cut and assembly lines

shut down at their factories across Michigan and Ohio. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmore urged Canadian authorities to quickly resolve the standoff, saying it's hitting paychecks and production lines, and that is unacceptable. The federal public safety minister has said that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police reinforcements are being sent to Windsor, Ottawa, and to Cootes, Alberta, where the other border blockade is happening. With political and economic pressure mounting, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkins announced that the city would seek a court injunction to end the occupation, saying that the economic harm is just not sustainable and it must come to an end. On Thursday, February 10th,

the Biden administration urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government on Thursday to use its federal powers to end the truck blockade at the other side of the Detroit border. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of products have been held back for days as 50 to 60 vehicles and around 100 anti-mandate protesters camp out on the main road that leads on and off the bridge. And yes, it is ironic that the same people who are trying to sell Canadians fake stories about failing supply lines and empty shelves are now causing those supply lines to fail and causing those shelves to go empty. The irony is not lost on me, but it may be lost on the convoy participants.

Throughout writing these episodes, I was fortunate enough to get to talk to multiple people who have been on the ground in downtown Ottawa. One such of these peoples is Peter Smith, an investigative journalist for the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. We recorded our conversation, and I'm going to include some audio clips throughout the rest of the episode. We started off by discussing what made this protest movement pop off in this specific time and place. I do think it was maybe capitalizing on a moment, but also a fair amount of luck. You know, since 2019, the same organizers have attempted to put together other convoys, you know, generally never rising to the amount of attention that they had in 2019. You know, this convoy was also planned long before they specifically started focusing on truckers. And then it was a galvanizing issue.

It resonated with people who were frustrated with the Trudeau government and just their handling of health measures, as well as just became like a vehicle for expressing their general dissatisfaction with their own provinces. Most of our health mandates are provincial. Like the Alberta government is handing down

what's happening in alberta um so it's it's not just it's not just a a federal issue but coming down here and occupying the streets of ottawa and then now we're seeing occupying most of our major cities um you know ones like winnipeg gets significantly less attention, but are incredibly disruptive locally. And in some cases, more kind of incendiary than the one that we have out here, where, you know, participants and organizers are desperately trying to clamp down on any individuals who's engaging in harassment or is more common blaming it on liberal plants.

or is more common blaming it on liberal plants. Yeah, it just became this kind of expression of all of the frustration and very quickly drew attention, even from people who'd been dismissive of it very early on because of some of the organizers. Once it really started to galvanize attention and, of course, money, people couldn't stay away

i mean to the point that we even have mainstream conservative politicians now getting on board with it including the man who's very likely to be the future leader of the conservative party here i mean we're in a very unique moment um you know our far right and kind of conspiracy culture in Canada has also been getting better at organizing over the course of the pandemic. Once again, like all major cities have, and many small towns continue to have anti-mandate, anti-lockdown protests.

We usually refer to them as the COVID conspiracy movement, just because of how heavily informed it is by conspiratorial thinking. So it's like you had a large amount of people kind of spending the past two years in like an on-the-ground boot camp of how to organize within these cities and how to get people's attention. And of course, like a lot of the far right here, it fragmented. There was a lot of infighting. And then once there became a central point that was galvanizing a lot of infighting and then you know once there became a central point

that was was galvanizing a lot of attention it started receiving international attention you know there's been some questions about the source of some of the money but certainly the initial totals seem to be organically canadian yeah um it just became too big to fall apart essentially at least at this point um there has been some spats of infighting but mostly you know the most polarizing figures are either just keeping their head down or in some cases even choosing to stay away from the main events so as not to be a distraction um there's a lot one of the lines i see a lot is like this is the moment this is for all the marvels so there's a huge amount of importance being placed on that what actually happens like whether

they're able to paint what we've like the actual rolling back of band-aids that we were already starting to see before the convoy began as some type of victory for them. Or if this leads to further disillusionment, we don't really know at this point. But I think this moment is going to be a propaganda tool and kind of a point of... I think it's going to be a propaganda tool and a point of motivation for a long time.

From your like, both on the ground stuff and just from monitoring stuff online, what do you think like the actual actionable intention was once they arrived in Ottawa? Like, do you think they had a clear plan of what to do or was it more like, let's go here and then we'll figure things out well initially there there was a man initially there was a memorandum of understanding

which laid out kind of the the points of what the initial organizers were hoping to accomplish something they called operation bear hug um which includes having the governor general and our senate both of whom are unelected, dissolve parliament and reform the government immediately after we had a federal election. Since then, the message has evolved. Like they're trying to stay very, very like on script with this just being about freedom.

This just being about freedom, this just being about mandates. You know, initially there was a lot of attempts to even get people to stop mentioning the vaccine, though those seem to kind of fallen by the wayside, especially when you start looking at the speakers. It is interesting to kind of wonder what the actual goal is. They've started meeting with public officials

you know there is some type of negotiation going on um ostensibly the goal is just to have these border restrictions lifted on people on truckers who are unvaccinated returning from the u.s you know the obvious thing is to point out that the U.S. still has a very similar policy and reversing it here would have no impact on their ability to avoid this quarantine. But it seems like the goals are fairly murky and that's almost deliberate because then they can declare victory kind of when it suits them. Ambiguity around protest goals, demands, and purpose itself can be a useful tactic. The Crimethink zine slash article titled Why We Don't Make Demands makes such a case. Now, I don't have time to summarize it here, but I recommend you give the article a look if you're interested in this train of thought as an intentional tactic.

But on the flip side, you know, vague and directionless protests without much of a focus on a specific goal can also cause protests to peter out without having any lasting impact on the world. A discussion worth having is how the individual people that make up the Convoy participants have been convinced to take part in an occupation protest, and how what is considered valid political action has broadened in their own heads. If they are the ones doing the action, of course. Because from their point of view, since they are doing it, the cause must be valid. And therefore, the action is justified.

In 2020, we had the Wet'suwet'en rail blockades that was put on by various members of our first nations and then uh people who supported them you know the same politicians that are meeting um with the truckers embracing them saying that uh our current prime minister is demonizing them by kind of casting them as undesirables we're you know we're actively calling people sitting on train tracks as terrorists who are disrupting our economy. Obviously, in the context of the pandemic, that's very different because there has been kind of mass disruption to our economy. But this kind of picking and choosing of suiting the narrative to court far right voters seems to be popular. You know how conservatives typically aren't seen as the protesting type, right? Conservatives are supposed to be the type of

people who drive by the protest and yell, get a job. They're not the ones who are out in the streets picketing. But first of all, that's not really true. Historically, in just the past 100 years, there's always been conservative protests for, you know, regressive and reactionary goals. Also, conservatives have been much better at organizing off the street for their political policies, specifically around, like, abortion or Christian dominionism, anti-queer legislation, or recent stuff around anti-CRT and just the mainstream racism denial that's been propagated through media. But even if there is historical precedent for conservative protest, bridging the gap of what is seen as valid political action in the minds of these convoy attendees did still take place

over just the past few years. Just the past two years specifically, there's been so much conservative protests around COVID. A whole bunch of the people at the Ottawa protest, probably five years ago, would have never seen themselves going to protest in the Canadian capital, right? Like, if you told them a few years ago that in 2022, you're going to drive all these kilometers to the parliament to camp out in the cold for weeks to protest against the government and its rules for helping not spread the deadliest pandemic in a century, they would have probably laughed you out of the room. So what is the logical progression of conservative people who generally, you know, look down on any type of protest, especially Occupy-style protests, to the point where they are driving all the way to the Capitol to camp outside the building to honk horns day and night? A lot of that political change the past few years correlates to the pandemic, to the social isolation,

and the great opportunity for the fast spread of conspiratorial politics that it offered. Over the course of the pandemic, there's been this huge blending of rhetoric online, and especially in Canada, this kind of villainization of the other side. and especially in Canada, this kind of villainization of the other side. Increasingly, less and less criticism against the current government is less based on its policy and more based on its figurehead and the image of Trudeau as a globalist. Politics as opposition to whatever Trudeau and the liberals are doing. The result of that is just a whole bunch of escalation, because you have to keep always being antagonistic and always being contrarian, no matter what the opposition actually does.

The thing is, a lot of the people who used to just be kind of more general conservatives, as they get radicalized online and get caught up with far-the-right extremist elements, most of them still view themselves as, like, the norm. right extremist elements, most of them still view themselves as like the norm. They don't think they've politically changed the past five years, but if you look at their rhetoric and actions, they definitely have, kind of substantially. But they still view themselves the same way they would when they were voting for Stephen Harper. Unless you're a self-described extremist, you typically view everything that you do and say as normal and reasonable. Like you, you are the actual normal. Everyone else is shifted either way relative to you. During our talk, I asked investigative journalist Peter Smith on his opinions about what sorts of political and social factors have allowed the occupation and blockades to have enough numbers to last and continue on so long.

Kind of having spent a lot of time on the ground at the Ottawa convoy, just talking to people as a normal guy without my press hat on, it does seem like, one, there's a lot of owner-operators there, like when it comes to the trucks themselves. These people are the business owners. Yeah. Or like very close, like they're kind of independent contractors. Like when it comes to the trucks themselves, these people are the business owners. Yeah. Or like very close.

Like they're kind of independent contractors. Exactly. I think there was a report that came out showing a survey that done that like roughly half of the people there were unemployed. Okay. So like the financial promise of all the money raised may have been a big draw. Like not to say that these people don't legitimately believe the reasons. No, absolutely. But it created an incentive.

But then having roughly half of them still having jobs, it comes down to a little bit more than just money. It's about actual belief, actual ideology. But it is interesting for a large amount of people who are extremely worried about supply lines, about people having enough food initially, to kind of creating this self-fulfilling prophecy where that seems to be the main tactic, is just to grind as much to a halt as they can using as much, as many people as they can muster. And then just the kind of general hands-off approach that law enforcement is taking with them has allowed them to, to organize better, to evolve their tactics, to be more effective. Like I certainly don't think a policing solution is, is what's going to solve this. And, you know, there's a lot of calls for that which

is i think just going to result in a lot of people getting hurt in the street um but but yeah like it is interesting that how it kind of it came from the west mostly and then landed in ottawa and then kind of spread out from there once people realized it was effective once people realized you know there was there was safety in these numbers um it's it's drawn it's drawn so many people to it it's it's honestly it's it has been shocking like truly how quickly it has spread and how effective it has been it's not january 6th in the sense that like people are running around parliament and like trying to find you know every liberal politician but in the sense that it's a large amount of people motivated by conspiracy yeah that's where i view the parallel and because they and honestly the the actual sincerity of it poses more of a political threat than the animosity of

january 6th um in terms of like long-term like actual social change and using this type of like occupation as a tactic the more sincere you are the more of an actual political threat you can be in the long term because yeah if they start if they storm parliament then it'll get shut down in a day and then they'll be demonized then then the problem is over right at least at least in the short term right um but if you actually like do this sincerely and actually get people to buckle under pressure then that's like actual successful politics like that is you're actually doing politics objectively well um and that's more interesting to point out the problem isn't protesting like protesting as a

concept isn't the issue the problem isn't even blockades protesting as a concept isn't the issue. The problem isn't even blockades. No, the problem is not blockades either. All these things are just tactics and tactics are value neutral. Usually, you know, until you get to the genocide, which usually that's a kind of a downer, generally. But in general, I kind of view protest tactics as more value neutral it's about kind of what the underlying cultural motivation is and what they want the results to be and even still you know some of the some of the points they have are not completely invalid but once it gets caught up in

a culture war kind of mindset it's like you have to oppose it just because they're on the other side. So I kind of want to talk about the reasons why they are actually kind of bad, like, on a very sincere way. But then also kind of point out some things that are like, yeah, maybe these are things we should consider, and it shouldn't take this type of occupation to have us reconsider some of these rules and regulations yeah like completely like i i think there's no issue with having being uncomfortable with mandates um like even if you feel they're necessary like being uncomfortable with the amount of state power that is being accumulated um you know in in canada you know there have been sweeping changes to the way that we live our life like i i know that that's been universal um but there there is not a province that hasn't really suffered like hasn't really impacted people's lives dealing with

covid um and you know this is this is one of of the biggest issues when trying to point out disparate responses in policing. Well, it's like, oh, it's like, so we should treat the convoy participants like they treated everybody else. And it's like, no, like, you know, the police chief of Ottawa got a lot of shit for saying he doesn't think there's a policing solution and it's like I do agree with the criticism of him because he has attempted to kick responsibility to just about every other level of government available um but dragging people out like towing their vehicles and taking away their livelihood and dragging a lot of people out into the street and then into jail is not going to resolve these issues. No. And if anything, it could bring more support.

Again, there was another report today that I think it's 25% of people who have camped out have children with them. This is going to be an incredibly traumatic experience. It's going to help radicalize more people, and it's going to lend credence to their cause if they just go in and bust heads. And it's like, if the main focus of this convoy had been in Toronto, where we have an incredibly aggressive police force when it comes to homeless encampments, for instance,

I think the result could have been very different. Yeah. Because a lot of stuff around the question of governments and stuff, the type of things I can agree with, with right-wing libertarians, is yeah, you do have a lot of

points I can sympathize with around the state and around control, but the way you address them don't actually address the underlying power structures which give the state legitimacy in the first place. Yeah, absolutely. And the world that you kind of want in the end is still a world full of hierarchies,

just hierarchies that make your life easier. Right, skew in your favor. Just like asking for two unelected bodies to replace your democratically elected government. We had 10 years of Stephen Harper. People were unhappy and extremely critical of that government from the center and from the left, but there wasn't this broad support for the idea that that government was illegitimate which is i think what we see mostly today which is the most disturbing and kind of anti-democratic part of the whole pie yeah and that's the kind of one of the last things i want to talk about is like what do you see like eventually people will go home either out of exhaustion it'll maybe fizzle away like like the protests in portland did maybe they Maybe eventually police will kind of clear out small sections. Who knows? But this is not going – knock you out here, but this isn't going to last a year, right? I don't think they're going to have thousands of people camped out in front of the government forever.

the people camped out in front of the government forever. But what are the actual long-term political ramifications of this? Because we already saw the leader of the Conservative Party step down. So I want to talk about, specifically with the guy who's probably most likely to take his place, how

this just does kind of play into the more negative aspects of the convoy, is how they're going to use this as a political symbol and a political tool to push for policies and forms of government and actions that will end up hurting a lot of uh and will end up hurting a lot of people um in terms of you know how how it's going to be used in propaganda and rhetoric yeah well certainly if we have um you know strong legal ramifications put in place that make it easier for provinces, the federal government, whatever, to crack down on protests in general, which I think is something that

might be very attractive to our current government, that's going to have obviously very far-reaching effects. One of our opposition parties, which is, you know, generally further to the left than the liberals, the NDP, their leader was proposing ways to stop foreign funding from coming in to supply to the protests. You know, once again, we had protests a couple years ago by Indigenous people and people who support indigenous movements um

you know that that raised money using the same platforms and the same methods you know so i worry about like one the legal ramifications like two just this this idea like if the government does crack down very hard this idea of real grievance and alienation that the west has already been struggling with like we've had a real renewed separatist movement not from quebec where it's generally been the most successful but from the western provinces you know not not really getting close to obtaining any real political power but you know kind of steadily gaining support polling has shown that you know there is a real feeling of western alienation they don't feel represented and you know a lot of the ways our government

are set up actually makes that true um yeah ultimately these people i think become more and more disenfranchised um when government action begins to kind of justify imagined ideas of oppression you're going to have a real hardening and since the government in power is a progressive one is or at least one that espouses you know tries tries to reach for progressive values you know there's a good chance that those issues are going to get caught up with what is just like a quote-unquote leftist agenda. Whereas up until probably a decade ago, those things were very much seen as kind of inherent Canadian values that were embraced by both sides.

The current candidate for leadership, he hasn't won the seat in the Conservative Party yet, but Pierre Polliver has kind of always flirted to some degree with far-right talking points. I specialize in hate groups. I don't want to make too many pronouncements about mainstream conservatism. But even by members of the very far-right, who often have turned against the Conservative Party over the members of the very far right who often have turned against the conservative party over the course of the pandemic, he's often referred to as the adult in the room.

Um, and while still a politician kind of their best bet for getting someone in office that they would actually like to see in power, um, which could, I mean, could be interesting to see how they, if there will be continued support for the PPC in two to four years. But yeah, I just think there is a real hardening of the right. And it's not like the Overton window is shifting. It's just like it's getting wider. More and more is being incorporated as opposed to it just going one direction or another. That disenfranchisement is,

is a driving factor. Like they view this populist kind of uprising or upswelling that they're seeing now as a function of democracy or like part of how democracy is supposed to function. So again, like if you talk to them, they will quite earnestly say many of them anyway would quite earnestly say like this is about freedom this is about having my voice heard

yeah but without a lot of thought about how that will actually function in a broader scale i mean that just plays into like alienation as a general concept right like we're so disconnected from everything about our lives disconnected from concept right like we're so disconnected from everything about our lives disconnected from you know the way we work disconnected from our interactions with other people which we disconnected from like you know money or food you know it's all the stuff and like disconnected from like politics is that the only way that you can actually something feels real the only thing that actually feels like reality is going to do this thing in person, because everything else is so disjointed. There is so much of that space in between the phenomenon and the actual thing that leaves you wanting something, but you don't know quite

what. So yeah, you're going to drive to Ottawa because that feels so much more real. That feels like actual politics. And it kind of is. Like, that's always when it feels like when you're protesting. It's like, yeah, I'm actually doing politics now. Because that's how everything gets set up is by that type of, like, you know, getting people on the ground. Yeah, and it's such a more personal way to engage

than, you know, putting a note into a box every two to four years. Like, yeah, I imagine it does feel substantive and then i mean voting power is centered in our urban centers as well so there is there is a real disconnect with the representation that that rural people again western the western provinces received. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I now want to specifically talk about police response, and the ways this occupation and blockades being handled will affect the political organizing in the future. I think initially, the majority of police concerns and what they were actually

focused on responding to was fears around the convoy storming parliament, or if the convoys were going to do something exceedingly violent, which I don't think was necessarily the convoy's actionable objective from the beginning. If you listen to what they were actually saying, it was more about choking out the city and applying pressure on government officials. But the initial non-violence, coupled with the shield of being conservative white and middle class, whom, you know, the police are less likely to react as brutally to, allowed time for the infrastructure to rise that let the protest turn into a full-scale occupation of a North American city. The first real action police took against the occupation was on the evening of Sunday, February 6th. Demonstrators were gathering for dinner,

then dozens of officers in riot gear carrying munitions launchers raided a camp after footage of stockpiles and gas cans went viral days previous. In an attempt to cut the supply route, police say they seized around 3,700 liters of fuel and two vehicles, including a diesel tank. But within hours of the raid, protesters from the camp broadcast reassurance to their supporters and continued to organize, just utilizing smarter tactics. The day after the police raid, protesters continued to deliver fuel to downtown truckers as they executed a coordinated effort to exhaust police resources. Hundreds of demonstrators carried fuel cans, some empty, some not, just right past officers who mostly stood and watched as hundreds of people trolled them with decoy cans, while others smuggled in more fuel within the safety of the large crowd right in the middle of the day. Ottawa Police Deputy Chief Steve Bell said the demonstrators were filling cast cans with water to distract officers,

attempting to subvert their efforts, and that one officer was swarmed by the crowd while trying to confiscate fuel. To date, police have made around 30 arrests and issued thousands of tickets, launched more than 80 criminal investigations, and 400-plus hate incidents are also being investigated. Earlier this week, Peter Soley said that the force would turn up the heat as police started to crack down on anyone bringing material aid, such as fuel, to protesters. Police dismantled a protest camp near the Redew Canal downtown, and a fuel operation on the Coventry Road, east of the Corps. But some trucks and demonstrators continued to occupy downtown streets and the staging area on Coventry. Police say that they

need an additional 1,800 more reinforcements from federal and provincial governments to help end the crisis. The entire Ottawa police force numbers only 1,200, but has been supplemented with several hundred officers from the Ontario Provisional Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as well as local police forces elsewhere in Ontario over the past few weeks. Near the end of the second week of occupation, Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, declared a state of emergency for the entire province, warning protesters demanding an end to pandemic restrictions, that if they do not disband, there will be consequences and they will be severe. He said that those who continue to

impede the movement of people and goods could face fines of up to $100,000 Canadian dollars, up to a year in prison, and the revocation of their driver's license. During the cold morning of Sunday, February 13th, police largely cleared the portion of the self-styled Freedom Convoy blocking the Ambassador Bridge-US-Canada border crossing on the road between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit. The clearing marked a week since the border blockade had begun. Police made several arrests and towed vehicles in connection to the demonstration that had disrupted traffic and the flow of goods. After law enforcement enforced the injunction enacted two days prior, ordering truckers and their supporters to leave leave and ticketed and towed vehicles, a defined core of some two dozen protesters had remained on foot as temperatures

dropped below freezing. But around 9.30 local time, police had mostly cleared the streets of the bridge and were deployed around the area. It was unclear, however, how large police presence would remain to prevent vehicles and demonstrators from returning there. Meanwhile, in the capital of Ottawa, police grappled with an influx of anti-government and anti-vaccine mandate demonstrators for a third straight weekend, despite both local and provincial officials declaring states of emergency. Law enforcement appeared to be unsuccessful in attempts to get the Freedom Convoy protesters to leave by threatening them with fines, prison time, and the loss of their licenses. Police have not made any large effort to disrupt the convoys in Ottawa, similar to what they did on Sunday in Windsor, Ontario. Ottawa police say that over 4,000 demonstrators were in the city throughout the day.

throughout the day. However, on Monday, February 14th, police action was taken against the blockade at the Coutts border crossing that had shut down cross-border travel for almost three weeks. The RCMP said in a press release early Monday morning that they became aware of a small organized group within the larger protest at Coutts, which led to 11 arrests. They say that they had information that the group had access to a cache of firearms and ammunition in three trailers. During the raid, officers seized long guns, handguns, multiple sets of body armor, a machete, and a large quantity of ammunition, and some high-capacity magazines. Later that day, two other arrests were made in connection to the blockade. Following the police raid and

the 13 arrests, some other organizers of the protest said a decision was reached voluntarily to leave the Coutts area around Tuesday morning. The organizers made a statement saying, quote, we were infiltrated by an extreme element. Our objective was to be here peacefully. To keep that message going, we want to peacefully leave Coutts and return to our families. As of Tuesday the 15th, both the border crossing at the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit and the Coutts port of entry to Montana are open once again. As the border opened back up in Coutts, the previous blockade protesters and police embraced each other with hugs and handshakes. Meanwhile, on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history

to give the federal government and police extra powers to handle the ongoing blockades and protests against pandemic restrictions. Here's how the measures we're taking today will help get the situation under control. The police will be given more tools to restore order in places where public assemblies can constitute illegal and dangerous activities, such as blockades and occupations, as seen in Ottawa, the Ambassador Bridge and elsewhere. These tools include strengthening their ability to impose fines or imprisonment. The government will designate, secure and protect places and infrastructure that are critical to our economy and people's jobs, including border crossings and airports.

and people's jobs, including border crossings and airports. We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue. The Emergencies Act will also allow the government to make sure essential services are rendered, for example in order to tow vehicles blocking roads. In addition, financial institutions will be authorized or directed to render essential services to help address the situation, including by regulating and prohibiting the use of property to fund or support illegal blockades. Finally, it will enable the RCMP to enforce municipal bylaws and provincial offenses where required. This is what the Emergencies Act does. The Emergencies Act, which replaced the War Measures Act in the 1980s, defines a national emergency as a temporary,

in the 1980s, defines a national emergency as a temporary, urgent, and critical situation that seriously endangers the lives, health, or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to extend the capacity of authority of a province to deal with it. The unprecedented deployment of the Emergencies Act gives police, quote, more tools to restore order in places where public assemblies constitute illegal and dangerous activities, such as blockades and occupations, according to Trudeau. But the thing is, police already had all the tools they needed. The illegal occupations and blockades were already illegal. They just didn't want to enforce it. You can look at how the Coutts protesters and the police are hugging, right? This isn't a matter of having not enough tools. All this does is set a terrible precedent for using

this type of extra power in the future to respond to protests, because the cops are still going to take a very gentle approach if they ever are forced to take physical action against the Ottawa occupation. While using the extra powers of the Emergencies Act, the Finance Minister of Canada also announced on Monday a broadening of the laws regarding financing of crime and terrorism to now include crowdfunding, and also extra surveillance measures against people who donate and use crowdfunds for criminal acts, including illegal protests.

As part of invoking the Emergencies Act, we are announcing the following immediate actions. First, we are broadening the scope of Canada's anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use. These changes cover all forms of transactions, including digital assets such as cryptocurrencies. The illegal blockades have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding platforms and some of the payment service providers they use are not fully captured under the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act. Our banks and financial institutions are already obligated to

report to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC. As of today, all crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use must register with FINTRAC and they must report large and suspicious transactions to FINTRAC. This will help mitigate the risk that these platforms receive illicit funds, increase the quality and quantity of intelligence received by Fintrack, and make more information available to support investigations by law enforcement into these illegal blockades. That's kind of all the information I have at the time of recording. So now I'm going to talk more about the potential political effects that this protest could have, not just on Canada, but also in how we view protest in general.

So the actual result of liberal media framing this type of protest as scary terrorism is laying the groundwork for brutal police actions against massive, mostly non-violent and tactically smart protests to be more normalized across Canada. An extremely brutal police response and harsh charges are unlikely to be leveled against a protest made up of these conservatives, but will absolutely happen to any future progressive social justice cause, especially if they use Occupy-style tactics. The more powers police obtain and the legal precedents that are set will have long-lasting implications, with legal consequences that will always come down harder on the left than they do on the right. Police will do a bare minimum to resolve this conservative so-called

freedom protest, but then will use it as a justification to grab greater resources and power and use this movement to justify severe preventative protest suppression in the future. If liberals can widely celebrate and thirst for harsh crackdowns of a protest made up of white conservatives and their families, callingdowns of a protest made up of white conservatives and their families, calling the entire movement a criminal enterprise and cheering on as police steal property of the protesters, despite what the majority of these protesters are doing, just being kind of camping on the side of a street, think of all of the ways that consent can be manufactured to clamp down on any future large-scale protest, especially when the movement

isn't made up of a bunch of regular white people and their kids, and instead actually challenges the underlying power structures that prop up white Canada instead of just reinforcing it, like the convoy does. I have a similar issue around all of the hubbub around the fundraisers, right? Restricting where crowdfunded resources can come from will only result in future political social justice causes to be negatively impacted, whether that be bail funds or supporting indigenous blockades from out of country. On February 10th, the Canadian federal government effectively shut down the Freedom Convoy's Give Send Go fundraiser, making it illegal for the funds to be used in any

way. Governments setting the precedent for shutting down protest crowdfunding is not a good thing. Now any future protest bail funds and crowdfunding for the Wasetan blockade will always be in jeopardy. I'm by no means saying that action against a generally hateful, anti-democratic, and dangerously conspiratorial protest isn't justified. But just when governments start using it as reasons for more power and creating new precedents for years in jail and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for an occupation protest, like, that shouldn't be cheered on, because those things will only come back to bite progressive causes a lot harder than they will be used against the conservative convoyers.

There has increasingly been attempts at counter-protesting the Ottawa convoy and the various convoy-inspired protests around the country, many of which faced harsher police response than any of the convoy protests have up until this point. But those community-led counter-protesting efforts are vital. The Ram Ranch resistance actions are still ongoing. On Sunday night, the URL for the Give Send Go fundraiser was hacked by activists who redirected the page to a video of the Frozen song Let It Go, accompanying a manifesto condemning the fundraiser and the convoy. And that's great. That is wonderful counter-'s great. That is wonderful counter-protesting. That is very, in terms of effective ways to shut down fundraising efforts

for a basically pseudo-fascist, you know, anti-democratic conspiracy-led movement. That's great, right? And this was hours after it was officially confirmed via data leaks that around 56% of GiveSendGo donations for the convoy came from the United States. Around 30% came from Canada, and then 2% came from the UK. Although I think it's worth mentioning that for the initial $10 million GoFundMe, we only have confirmation that around $33,000 came from the United States. To understand how the convoy slash blockade is working, it's useful to get away from painting all of the participants themselves as extremists, because the fact that regular Canadian right-wingers are what's making this possible has a whole bunch of

other implications that people aren't really talking about. I'm seeing a lot of Canadians who are just really upset about how this convoy is affecting cities and the country as a whole, which, you know, reasonable. It is a thing to be upset about. But then just jumping to insist that it must be inorganic, I think, is kind of faulty. Focusing instead on theories around foreign influences and astroturf organizing, elements of which have been present, sure, but also the impact of which has, I think, kind of been overblown. But even if those things are completely true and major factors, that still overlooks the

fact that there are thousands of real Canadians from around the country camped up in Ottawa. And the majority of those Canadians sitting in the streets are not Nazis, right? Or really even extremists. And most of those people are not receiving personal funding from dark money billionaires. They consider themselves regular working class freedom-loving Canadians. It's much harder to reconcile a homegrown movement full of participants that have slid further to the right over the past two years due to rampant online misinformation coupled with ineffectual government support during the pandemic. It's easy to point to so-called organizers who are definitely more fashy, large-scale sketchy donations, and far-right media figures who are trying to drum up support for the convoy,

but those things alone don't get many of thousands and thousands of people and their kids to drive cross-country for a cause that they earnestly believe in. The years of political alienation and disenfranchisement that caused that to happen is a lot harder to solve than just cracking down on organizers and donations. Watching homegrown reactionary street politics that one day can grow into an actual far-right populist and fascist movement is a lot more frightening than the idea of overseesed astroturf organizing. Not that those things are mutually exclusive always, but I'm just trying to make a good point here. Despite cries to make this Canada's January 6th, in a way the convoy is more effective than January 6th in terms of the

evolution of valid political action. It's pushed the boundary on what is deemed as acceptable and even possible for large-scale occupations and supply line blockades in a major North American urban setting. People who would never consider themselves militant are now involved in multiple border-crossing blockades that's cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And to get to this point, so many things need to happen. COVID isolation offered fertile ground for people's politics to unknowingly slide more to the extreme. The many in-person connections that help prevent people from falling prey to conspiratorial

thinking ceased to exist. General frustration at Trudeau and the perceived notion of liberalism and elitism has been steadily growing since 2015, and all that mounted-up frustration is now being released, and as a result, the invisible Overton window of acceptable political action has shifted right in regular conservatives' minds. And a movement like this is hard to dissolve. Police actions have the chance of escalating the situation and elongating people's willingness to protest. And even if more mandates get removed, that doesn't mean the protest will stop either. Removing the Alberta mandates didn't stop the Coutts border blockade, for instance. Because, you know, even if all the

mandates in Canada get rescinded, which they won't and which they shouldn't, but even if they did, that would still leave the US's vaccine board requirements, which are preventing unvaccinated truckers from entering the States anyway. Similar tactics and protests inspired by the Canadian convoy have broken out overseas in recent weeks. The convoy and blockade-inspired protests in New Zealand have led to frequent clashes with police outside New Zealand's Parliament building for the past two weeks. French protesters formed their own freedom convoy against the government's vaccine mandates. The convoy converged on the Champs-Élysées in Paris on February 2nd, where protesters were

met by 7,000 police members and tear gas. Unlike Canada, where the government failed to stop a blockade at the US border, French authorities got way ahead of this protest by stopping at least 500 vehicles before they even got to Paris. Only a few dozen cars made it to the Champs-Élysées, and the police ticketed 300 protesters who were present at the demonstration. Protests against government coronavirus restrictions have caught on in Europe and other parts of the world in recent days, but they remained more subdued than the Canadian demonstrations. A convoy of about 500 vehicles, mostly from France, were barred from entering Brussels just a few days ago, leaving several hundred protesters to gather on foot at a city square instead.

leaving several hundred protesters to gather on foot at a city square instead. Another convoy of several hundred vehicles blocked access to the seat of the Netherlands government in The Hague on February 12th. And of course, many political figures in the US are really trying to get a convoy-esque protest kicked off here in the United States. Tucker Carlson and Fox News in general has covered the convoy non-stop, giving it tons and tons of support. Tucker has said that the Canadian trucker convoy is the single most successful human rights protest in a generation. Senator Rand Paul said that he hopes the truckers come to America, and specifically to clog up cities. At least nine

members of Congress, all Republicans, have all publicized their support for the convoy participants on Twitter. Self-appointed organizers for a U.S.-based convoy have found quick support from conservative outlets. U.S. convoy organizer Brian Brace has been making the rounds on Fox News, sitting down with Carlson, as well as the network's Fox & Friends morning show. Brace says that he hopes to organize a cross-country convoy from California to Washington, D.C., starting around March 4th. Routes to converge on D.C. from across the country are

being planned, while the group's Telegram channel is actively soliciting volunteers and donations of items like tents, generators, and PA systems. I kind of hope people on the left can look at the tactics being used in Canada, some that have worked and some that have faltered, but in terms of, like, anti-capitalist action, you can't do much better than causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to international trade between two of the biggest countries in the world, right? Now, no protest movement can be replicated, but any movement can be analyzed, and that can inform how folks approach future movements as they spontaneously arise. And I, at the very least,

hope you have a better idea now of how only a few thousand people can totally choke out a major city. Because we've talked about this possibility before, you know, a group of people overwhelming local law enforcement and taking over and shutting down a sizable portion of a popular metropolitan area, not to mention simultaneously blocking off supply lines, trade routes, and international border crossings. The evolution of these medium-scale anti-government resistance tactics is something we all should be paying attention to as the political tensions continue to rise right outside our doorstep.

Because it's always too late when you realize the call is coming from inside the house. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of riot.

An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.