Canada’s Convoy, Part 1 : Radical Disinformation, Manipulation & Conspiracy Theories
First in a multi-part series looking at the political and legal issues around the Convoy protests in Canada
Above: Pat King, one of the organizers of the Convoy whose protests occupied legislatures and downtown Ottawa. He broadcast this message to supporters in August 2021.
It’s understandable that people don’t want to look back on the pandemic - it was a miserable experience - traumatic, painful, and what some have called a “mass grief” experience that we went through together.
There was a mix of fear, anger, panic - and the harshest resistance was really that of denial - a refusal to accept that we were living in a state of emergency that put people’s lives at risk.
The global pandemic was declared March 11, 2020 - and just ten days later, Nicole F. Roberts made an important prediction:
History - And Psychology - Predict Riots And Protests Amid Coronavirus Pandemic Lockdowns
“history has taught us that whether it’s caused by fear, frustration, or the helplessness that comes with imprisonment, human beings do not respond well to forced lockdowns. These feelings are often exacerbated by sentiments that the vulnerable are being taken advantage of. There is also outrage that accompanies the gained knowledge that in almost all cases, the resources needed are not available – as it is difficult to prepare for the unknown.”
Roberts’ conclusion was that “Riots Are A Predictable Part Of Quarantine”
Also in March, 2020, John M. Barry’s book, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History had a resurgence, with a focus on the most important aspect of ensuring that people survived - which was to communicate the unvarnished truth in order to maintain trust in authorities.
“So the final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that those who occupy positions of authority must lessen the panic that can alienate all within a society. Society cannot function if it is every man for himself. By definition, civilization cannot survive that.
Those in authority must retain the public’s trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best.
A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart.”
The pandemic was a time of horror - and as in any crisis, there were people as determined to make the most of the chaos, as well as people trying to limit it.
The Convoy
Canada’s convoy was seen as a sudden grassroots movement that exploded. There is much more to the story.
Riots may be a predictable part of quarantine, but there is no denying that this was a coordinated political effort involving politicians and far-right networks across Canada, North America and around the world.
There is also no question that the tactics employed by protestors were unlawful. Jamming 911 lines is dangerous - but blocking traffic on a roadway is a crime.
It’s also the case that for many followers, their beliefs and motivations were based on conspiracy theories that have the facts wrong on health, politics, and the law.
It’s worth breaking down the belief that drove people participating in the Convoy, because “they don’t like vaccine mandates” misses the a larger truth - which is that the convoy was based on the premise that people in public health were part of an elaborate and illegal plot to harm the people they were supposed to help.
There is no question that there was real suffering from lockdowns - because governments kept fumbling personal and business supports. In Canada, of course, health is a provincial responsibility. Each province had its own public health response.
There should have been non-partisan ways for all parties to work together so that it would be possible to build trust. That did not happen.
Effectively, Canada’s provincial governments were each running a control economy, where officials were dictating whether people could work or not, and whether they could run their business or not.
People could be designated as essential, they could be ordered not to work, guaranteeing that people couldn’t pay their bills. Businesses were ordered closed without compensation. Borders would be closed.
As a result, provincial governments across Canada - almost all conservative - were exerting total control over people’s lives, without explaining it, and without doing a particularly good job of it.
In this context, it is easy to understand why people would get fed up - because they wanted to exert control over their lives again.
All that is understandable.
However, when it comes to convoy participants, we know from their public statements that they were calling for the overthrow of the federal government - not provincial governments - and while their distress is real and can’t be disputed, what they believed and what motivated their actions was fuelled by online disinformation, and, often, because public health and emergency spokespeople failed to challenge the disinformation at all.
They also believe that basic measures (masks, reduced mass gatherings and distancing and even lockdown) are ineffective, when there are masses of experimental evidence showing their effectiveness.
They falsely believed that Covid vaccines are experimental (when they were subjected to trials) and their additional false beliefs include thinking that the vaccine has been engineered to render people and their children sterile as part of a global plot to reduce population. This was explicitly stated by Convoy organizers like Pat King.
They treated vaccinations, which are a basic health and safety requirement to prevent unnecessary infection, as a form of legal discrimination. Doctors, nurses, cross-border travellers and children are all routinely vaccinated.
On their own, each of these is incorrect.
Taken together, this mass of false beliefs led individuals to cobble together these ideas into a much larger false conclusion.
The people who were protesting believed that being required to take an experimental drug, when the vaccine was actually safe, effective and tested, approved by Health Canada that has been taken by millions of Canadians, including by all the people who recommended taking the vaccine.
From this, they concluded that they were being experimented on, in violation of Nuremberg laws, as if they are Jews in the Holocaust being experimented on by Dr. Mengele.
Though it is provincial governments who run health care, the Federal Government was blamed.
The individuals believed they were justified in calling for the overthrow of a democratically federal elected government - when their beliefs, and their actions, posed a risk to themselves and others.
We know all this because this what they said for months, before and after the convoy.
At its core, these views are all geared around refusing to accept reality, and it is being repeated, popularized and shared by the National Citizens’ Inquiry, pushed by Preston Manning, which is a sham inquiry that operates in a state of denial.
They have refused to accept that there is a state of emergency caused by Covid, and therefore they believe that any government response is unjustified.
This is not an accident: it is a state of affairs that is being deliberately created, especially by those on the extremes who want to disdain the mainstream media - which for all its flaws, is at least legally liable for what it prints.
We do live in an age of disinformation, and “polarization” and it is also being fuelled by foreign actors.
The point is not just to get people to disagree, but to be unable to tell what’s true.
In 1951, Hannah Arendt wrote in “On the Origins of Totalitarianism”
In this environment, we need to recognize that there we still rely on evidence, and facts, and what works out in the world.
This is why the understanding and unpacking the background of the Convoy is so important - as well as the deliberate propaganda and misinformation on politics, public health and the law, that drove all of it, and it is still affecting our country.
Well done!