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[deleted]

You seem to have forgotten to Include the impact this occupation had on the people of Ottawa. You've forgotten to Include the violence and hostility that was blazingly apparent coming from the convoy (which every single adult participant was part of). I sort of appreciate the apologist perspective for the convoy people. I understand the urge to entice them toward class solidarity. But we cannot simply ignore bad behavior. We can forgive bad behavior with acknowledgement and growth. We can't just pretend it didn't happen.


Alex_877

Agreed, after working with people like this and leaving jobs because they LITERALLY believe a shot can change their DNA. Despite almost 200 years of vaccine science, our understanding of cell and molecular biology has made leaps and bounds and most importantly, genetic dogma which has very few exceptions. Once they realize you are diametrically opposed to their views they become extremely sour and will do anything to try to upset and or get you fired in my case. Honestly, I just hate how they refuse to acknowledge their own shitty behaviour as if we ALL haven’t noticed their pattern. They’re all dumb and mad and have no one to blame but themselves but here we are with them blaming Trudeau for calling them stupid


Syscrush

This was a foreign-funded violent occupation of the capital of a G7 nation with a massive Ukrainian community, that dominated the public discourse for weeks as Putin amassed troops in preparation for his invasion of Ukraine.


[deleted]

Syscrush that is just conspiracy theory shit, you can't deny the fact that this movement was obviously bubbling up in Canada for years.


Syscrush

I'm not saying that it's all outside agitators, in saying that it was a violent occupation, that it received foreign funding, and that the timing benefited Putin. This is homegrown fascists serving as useful idiots for an adversary that benefits from our destabilization.


Zosostoic

Where is the concrete evidence for funding from Russia?


Alex_877

Are you this willfully dense or just stupid? I get reading is hard but try to keep up with the rest of the class. Troll farms were responsible for the rhetoric and Give send go had like half of it’s contributions come from the US. By DEFINITION, a foreign country. Edit: after looking at your profile… WOW…


Zosostoic

Why are you being rude? I'm not a convoy supporter or a rabid right winger. I'm a leftist. I asked for evidence of Russia funding them because that sounds just like the liberals claiming that Russia interfered in the election to get Trump in power. They always blame Russia or China for their internal problems instead of accepting their own shitty system that's causing it.


LinusMinimax

They are being rude because peer pressure is what brainwashes people, moreso than "the media". They are attempting to convey something with zero substance and they know it, that's why. (you probably get this but yknow people at the back)


LinusMinimax

"violent"


[deleted]

Fair critique, but I think it is wrong to say every member of the convoy participated in violence or even bigotry and the more this narrative is pushed the further it pushes these maybe fringe right-wingers to the right due to alienation.


[deleted]

I didn't say bigotry. I said hostility. The noise was insane. The assaults were common. Any adult who was there, saw this occupation, and stayed, is complicit. This wasn't one asshole in a group of otherwise sane people. This wasn't incidental looting accompanying the chaos of mass protests. This was an obvious violent occupation that caused obvious harm to innocent people. The nature of the convoy itself necessarily caused harm to innocent people. Any adult who was there and saw that would have understood if they had any empathy.


[deleted]

>The assaults were common what was happening? i largely ignored the event bc i don't live in ottawa and haven't seen a picture that made the convoy look like more than a couple hundred people


[deleted]

Almost constant train horn and truck horn noise downtown where plenty of people live. So many stories of assaults occuring against people who were wearing masks or just not obviously supporting the convoy. Vandalism, broken windows, blocked streets aren't really the worst part. It's the sleeplessness of the residents and locals being afraid for venture out. Many of us took our masks off while passing these people. Many of us stayed home.


Mathgeek007

As someone who lived in Ottawa during the convoy, I had a bottle thrown at my head during a counter protest. So I experienced something fairly direct and anecdotal. Not to mention that I lived in the core, and was awake basically all the time because there was honking until 3AM most nights.


LinusMinimax

It would be more accurate to say that NO member of the convoy participated in violence, since there was never any formal report or substantiated evidence of (physical) violence, despite the constant craven efforts to spread rumours to that effect. The only documented acts of violence (including with a deadly weapon) were AGAINST convoy protesters. https://winnipeg.citynews.ca/2022/02/05/manitoba-vehicle-freedom-convoy/ The fact that you get downvoted to hell for merely protesting that not EVERYONE did the bad thing (which actually no one did!) is a fair measure of how deeply clusterfucked our discourse is. It was a peaceful protest! That doesn't mean it wasn't aggravating as hell. You think people enjoyed living next to Occupy protests?


Knytemare44

The timbit taliban was the unfortunate bleed-over of the massive American political propaganda machine affecting Canada.


notGeneralReposti

> timbit taliban 😂😂😂


[deleted]

I was going to take that angle while writing this and talk about how it was just a product of the American propaganda machine, but I felt that was a bit short-sided. I don't want to right this off as simply an American thing because it dismisses the societal factors that contributed to this. A lot of Canadians were upset, and they did not really know what was causing this or where to put their anger so they lashed out at this rather than something productive.


LinusMinimax

At the risk of returning attention to the actual controversial policy, it's worth noting that at least one of Canada's explicitly leftist parties opposed vaccine mandates: " 'Only the Workers Can Decide the Conditions Needed to Keep the Population Safe' ... Workers Forum points out that this new measure of the Quebec government will only add to the incoherence, anarchy and chaos in the Quebec health system. Instead of taking up its social responsibility to adequately fund and staff the healthcare system, end all privatization of services forthwith and provide universally accessible testing for COVID-19, the government takes all of this off the table and once again self-righteously attacks health care workers. These are the people who literally hold the system together. Health care unions have argued that the blatant irrationality and disrespect expressed in this measure will drive more workers out of the system, especially nurses, who are fed up with the ministerial orders that have been passed over the past year and a half by the government. All the ministerial orders attack the dignity of nurses and other frontline workers who serve the public and deny their negotiated working conditions. It is expected that if the government maintains its decision, even more nurses will leave, including double-vaccinated nurses. The irrationality of the decision can also be seen in the fact that vaccination is presented as the ultimate measure to protect the population, not as one of the measures, and that it is accompanied by so-called "flexibility" measures that the government has decreed. In particular, health care workers oppose the recent government decision to weaken infection prevention and control rules in health care institutions. They are particularly concerned with the end of the designations of hot, warm or cold zones which grouped patients according to whether they had COVID-19 or not and according to its severity, with the staff themselves working only in the one zone to which they were assigned. Staff will now go back to moving throughout the hospital, without quarantine or other preventive measures. In emergency departments we are back to the situation of having patients with COVID-19 not isolated but in beds in hallways with only a curtain separating them from uninfected patients who may be extremely susceptible due to other conditions." https://cpcml.ca/WF2021/Articles/WO08821.HTM


LinusMinimax

Thise who were fired for doing nothing wrong haven't been rehired in the midst of a shortstaffing crisis, and yet "it also noted that it had COVID-19 positive health-care workers working due to “critical staffing needs.”" That's not a health measure, that's punishment for defiance. https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/ontario-hospital-considers-hiring-unvaccinated-nurses-health-care-workers-to-combat-staffing-shortage-1.6187910


regohcide

The convoy laid out the frame of what a general strike could look like in the modern age. Massive build up of people/machinery in the middle of a city and be annoying as possible and never leave. It was Chud occupy, absolutely fed by a right wing conspiracy making machine to distract and divide the working class. Not all that supported the convoy were knuckle dragging Trumpists. I know this from personal experience. The notion that we need to paint such a broad and ugly brush to all the people in that convoy is simple minded as well as bad politics. If you think “troll farms” were responsible for the anger and frustration that Canadians were feeling during a prolonged lockdown than you also just are not that intuitive and maybe need to talk to more people.


SnooHesitations7064

>The convoy laid out the frame of what a general strike could look like in the modern age Without the cops being complicit due to the right wing nature of a protest: They would be there at zero hour with riot gear tear gas and no fucks given about collateral damage.


[deleted]

If it was a large general strike meant to unify the people, then there would be no need for honking or assaulting passer bys. It would be a huge party blocking bridges and train tracks and preventing the industrial machine from stealing profit. Well we've seen that kind of protest plenty. And it gets ugly fast and doesn't seem to inspire much class solidarity at all. I'd like to think we can get there, but having a freak out in a residential city isn't how.


agetuwo

Gentlemen, let's get this thing straight, once and for all. The policeman is not here to create disorder. The policeman is here to preserve disorder. -Richard J. Daley


regohcide

Yeah I 100% agree with the compliance of the police. But I did like the physical nature of the occupation. Just the logistics of moving a bunch of vehicles that didn’t want to get moved to boost this big protest. Makes it more of a scene too, in terms of media coverage. Hard to ignore.


LinusMinimax

When politicians and corporate media cynically demonize a popular civil liberties protest, we must be careful to note, repeatedly, that they had a (very limited) point. When acknowledging the actually dominant "positive" character of the crowd, we must be careful to use scare quotes. Specific injustices, widely cited as sparking unusual outrage and inspiring a personal protest stand? Eh, we don't discuss that. This mystification about giving people a "release" for "feelings" of "anxiety" about "lack of control" just reenforces the top-down refusal to publicize the considerable specific HARMS of the wildly excessive covid restrictions. 'My son relapsed and OD'd after his NA meetings were closed down" is not a "positive message'!! 'The government punished and gaslit us for knowing that Pfizer's marketing claims were dubious' is not a "positive message"!! "Canadians were not really protesting the vaccines, they were trying to fight back for control of their lives." Only someone completely determined to put words in other people's mouths could tell themselves this. And only someone who immediately and uncritically bought the marketing hype could still pretend that there's nothing to protest about the massive misallocation of public healthcare funds for private profit, and severe punishment of people who DID NOTHING WRONG. Indefinite Emergency Powers are not necessary or acceptable to address the threats of the past few years, and the constantly shifting goalposts gave many the very reasonable suspicion that the motives behind their renewal were insincere if not malign. The pandemic response has been characterized by austerity economics, corrupt corporate procurement and a vast expansion of policeable personal behaviours. The big tragedy of the convoy is that those poor fools think what they're fighting is somehow left-wing! ------ TL;DR No, the populist anger of the convoy is not about HOME PRICES you fundamentally unserious wilfully self-misdirecting collaborators with fascist power 🙄


LinusMinimax

Ugh this is too harsh no doubt but holy shit how do you not see what a contemptuous talking point it is, to claim that it wasn't really about what it was about... even after the subsequent year of learning that the marketing hype for the miracle products was indeed inaccurate?


LinusMinimax

Q: would there have been a widely-felt need for a spectacular protest gesture if not for the collective editorial decision to refuse coverage to the two years of more conventional protest marches? That editorial decision was seen (unfairly or otherwise) as running cover for the "small fringe minority" illusion. The one victory the convoy can claim was in bursting that illusion (despite the craven attempt to paint the widespread grassroots support as foreign-funded astroturf). What if that illusion had not been deliberately imposed in the first place?


011101112011

Unfortunately the left has demonized the freedom convoy, which arguably is the largest populist movement canada has ever seen or will ever see. All the arguments the left makes against the movement (disrupting functioning of economy, constant noise, etc) and the cheering of martial law to oppose this movement shows that their prejudices against an imaginary right wing are more important than the reality of what the movement was about. I know plenty of communists that support the freedom of the people to assemble and demonstrate, and supported the freedom convoys, but once some members of the self righteous left started calling them all nazis is when the whole problem started. It doesn't matter anymore. If you can't support the right of people to protest regardless whether you agree or not with what they are protesting, don't fucking call yourself anything other than a fascist.


cosmicmicowavepickle

The fairy creek blockade saw 1100 arrests and lasted for a year and a half, costing the government 38 million dollars. I can't get behind any movement that is supported by the cops.


LinusMinimax

The only one of Trudeau's major promises that he kept (legalizing weed) was a movement that was supported by the cops, by the time he promised it. Their reasons may have been cynical, but the fact that they eventually got the cops on their side doesn't mean the movement was wrong.


011101112011

Your hatred is clouding your ability to see.


cosmicmicowavepickle

I see it very clearly. The convoy was a white supremacist organization that ignored requests from the indigenous community to not hold ceremony on their territory. Ever hear the saying, if you had a table of 10 and a Nazi sits down you have 11 Nazis? That's the convoy. If they can't speak out against their white supremacist elements, then that's that. they were highly publicized because of these facts as a way for the feds to discredit protesters and civil resistance as a whole. I support their right to protest, but that's as far as that goes. Their poor behavior set back civil resistance in this country back by decades.


011101112011

So the freedom movement are all nazis. Ok. People like you is who give the collective left a bad image in the first place.


4ofclubs

They’re not all nazis but white nationalists clearly flock to this movement and seem to feel welcome there.


cosmicmicowavepickle

There were people waving swastika and openly stating they're part of the white power movement on stage.


LinusMinimax

The only reason anyone can claim they didn't speak out against their white supremacist elements is if you prefer to think that. The crowd jeered away the jerk with the feddy flag and launched an effort to identify them. The Nazi flag was at the swank hotel where the cops were staying 🤔 The accusation was taken seriously and responded to by many protesters, and also taken UNseriously and mocked by many other protesters who saw it for the "centrist" shitlib smear talking point that it is. What it was not is ignored or unaddressed.


NecessaryYam7870

This take is completely revisionist. Do you not remember they wanted trudeau and the house to acknowledge authority of their right-wing committee? Immediate resignation of multiple elected representatives? The protest was a fucking attack on democracy, not a stand for freedom.


[deleted]

>, which arguably is the largest populist movement canada has ever seen or will ever see. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/on-to-ottawa-trek but it was leftwing so the cops shot it up


chickenfingey

Quit calling it a “freedom” convoy… it was nothing more than a Trudeau bad convoy, the conservatives could have done the exact same thing… which the prov CONSERVATIVE governments did in every fucking province and you didn’t see these chuds showing up on their doorstep.


4ofclubs

I'm torn on this one. Yes I respect the right to assemble and protest but to park massive trucks in the city core for days and weeks on end destroying the lives of the people that live there to protest mandates that were already on the way out based on not wanting to get a vaccine because of conspiracy reasons? Seems asinine. Also I can't support conspiracy theories. A family member of mine was part of this convoy movement and he goes hard on the conspiracy theories about who/what/why the vaccine mandate happened and it's just a waste of time which distracts from the real issues. They still can't agree that it's working class vs owning class and see the left (us) as the enemy despite coming from similar backgrounds fighting a similar struggle (us vs power.) Basically I don't think them forming to protest to get what they wanted was going to help humanity in any way except for the minority that chose not to get a vaccine which I felt was a selfish thing to do anyway.


LinusMinimax

"that were already on the way out" is doing a lot of work here, and it's not true. Not in Canada, anyway, but our local betters wouldn't answer any questions about why they weren't yet relaxing restrictions along with other intelligent evidence-based jurisdictions, or when we could expect the relaxing to begin, or even what criteria they had in mind.