It's obvious that Conservatives were involved in the "Freedom convoy" from the beginning - Part 2
On January 30, 2022 - before the convoy had settled in as an “occupation,” James Menzies of Truck News wrote that “The so-called Freedom Convoy was never about truckers, or border mandates”
On Feb 3, 2022, Jordan Peterson called out to Conservative Premiers Jason Kenny of Alberta, Scott Moe of Saskatchewan, Doug Ford of Ontario and the then-leader of the Opposition, Erin O’Toole, to “Seize the Day”.
Exactly what this meant is unclear - but it appears that he wanted them to somehow change the government.
While the convoy did not succeed in removing the government, the Conservative caucus reacted by immediately removing Erin O'Toole as Leader.
Interim leader Candace Bergen, from Manitoba, wrote in an e-mail they were going to blame it on the Prime Minister for “starting it”.
Examples of the genuine threats to human life and safety included a “slow rolling” truck protest blocked two seniors in rural Manitoba from getting to a hospital emergency room.
https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/manitoba-man-trapped-in-convoy-protest-while-trying-to-drive-his-sister-to-emergency-room-1.5775033
Another is that the blockade at the Emerson border in Manitoba, which is the busiest U.S-Canada border crossing between Windsor, Ontario and Vancouver, was stopping medical supplies for hospitals, including emergency nutritional supplements for newborns and cancer patients.
Premier Heather Stefanson claimed that the provincial government has no jurisdiction in civic protests, and the WPS tweeted that: “The Charter of Rights protects every citizens’ right to peacefully gather. This supersedes the Traffic Act and City By Laws” This has the law wrong, as the National Framework For Police Preparedness For Demonstrations And Assemblies states.
The international fundraising for the convoy was described as “unprecedented.”
When foreign donations were restricted by GoFundMe, Republican politicians in the US (Florida and Texas) protested that their donations to the Convoy were not allowed. Prominent GOP commenter Candace Owens called for the US to invade Canada, and so did GOP Congresswoman Lauren Boebert. To say this is a massive violation of another country's sovereignty is an understatement.
On multiple crowdfunding platforms, people from around the globe — often directed to the cause by American far-right influencers like Dan Bongino and Ben Shapiro — have collectively donated millions of dollars in support of the Canadian movement and started similar crowdfunding campaigns for like-minded protests in U.S. states and European countries.
"[R]ightwing U.S. political figures and content creators … really gave it a boost that made it global,” said Ciaran O’Connor, an analyst from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that tracks online extremism and which has been following the Canadian protests against the Covid-19 restrictions.
“Donations from abroad are quite a common part of any large crowdfunding campaign,” he added. “But the scale of this one is unprecedented.”
The global backing of Canada’s so-called truckers’ convoy comes amid a growing level of sophistication among anti-vaccine groups in coordinating operations online and in the real world.
National security officials and researchers have seen this global coordination jump into gear during Canada’s ongoing protests — in a country that boasts one of the world’s highest vaccine rates.
Since late January, the likes of Glenn Beck and Mike Huckabee have used their large online followings to spread the word about the truckers’ convoy, garnering tens of thousands of engagements including likes, shares and comments on social media posts in favor of the protests, based on data from Crowdtangle, a social media analytics firm owned by Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
In a post from late January, Eric Trump questioned why media outlets were not discussing the Canadian protests. Franklin Graham, an American evangelical leader, praised the convoy in a post that read: “I love these guys — Canadian truckers standing for freedom.”
Between Jan. 22 and Feb. 5, more than 7,000 Facebook posts, which collectively garnered almost 10 million social media interactions, mentioned the truckers’ convoy on U.S.-based Facebook pages, based on Crowdtangle data provided to POLITICO by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
The demonstrators are “highly organized, well funded, extremely committed to resisting all attempts to end the demonstrations safely,” said Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly, who added that a “significant element from the United States” was involved in the funding and organization of the truckers’ convoy.
On Telegram, groups with tens of thousands of members routinely swap the latest gossip about how the Canadian protests are going and share tips on how to spread the word beyond the country’s borders.
Mike Roman is the vice chair of the International Democratic Union, and former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the Chair. Roman worked for the Koch Network, for Trump, and was indicted in Georgia his role in presenting fraudulent electors to overturn the U.S. 2020 election. He was in Alberta in 2019 organizing with Andrew Scheer, and in on February 15, 2022, Mike Roman, tweeted this from his account.
Apparently he was in Ottawa during the Convoy Occupation. Roman once wrote "“If an election is worth winning, then there is someone willing to steal it."
The National Observer reported that the “Calls for Trudeau to step down during ‘Freedom Convoy’ traced back to Russian proxy sites”
Lots of this chatter took place on Telegram, whose CEO has just been arrested for refusing to moderate the distribution of child pornography, illicit drug sales, criminal activities and Russian propaganda. Telegram doesn't encrypt by default, and doesn't encrypt group chats, which means that the company has access to everything being shared.
And CSIS has said that India, China and Russia have all been interfering with Canadian politics at every level of government - municipal, provincial and federal. While all we hear about is China and the federal government, no one is talking about the provinces, and no one is talking about CSIS allegations that India and China directly interfered in the current Conservative Leadership race to replace Erin O’Toole.
When people talk about election interference, there has been increased focus on the vulnerability of nomination races or of politicians being elected by the public.
In Canada, because of our Westminster system, it’s possible (and indeed common) for sitting politicians to run for party leader, and be replaced and take the reins of power as a Prime Minister, Premier or Leader of the Opposition, based on internal party elections.
This is completely different than trying to affect the outcome of a general election at the level of individual members of parliament. Even with donations, messaging and organization the decision is still up to voters.
“Capture the Leader”
With choosing a political party leader, it completely different in critically important ways.
One is that the votes are by party members only, and memberships cost money, at least in Conservative contests. The other is that rather than choosing an MP, they are directly choosing the leader of the party.
That means tjhat while contributing financially to a party, a foreign power is choosing the leader. Organizers and donors have outsized influence - but it means an entire party can be captured because the leader has been - and no one is the wiser.
Canadians are being flooded and manipulated with a Tsunami of propaganda, foreign and domestic which is crafted to create chaos, divide us, and make us doubt everything.
she wrote in her 1951 Origins of Totalitarianism, going on to elaborate that this “mixture of gullibility and cynicism… is prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian movements”:
In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true… The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.
Why the constant, often blatant lying? For one thing, it functioned as a means of fully dominating subordinates, who would have to cast aside all their integrity to repeat outrageous falsehoods and would then be bound to the leader by shame and complicity. “The great analysts of truth and language in politics”—writes McGill University political philosophy professor Jacob T. Levy—including “George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Vaclav Havel—can help us recognize this kind of lie for what it is.… Saying something obviously untrue, and making your subordinates repeat it with a straight face in their own voice, is a particularly startling display of power over them. It’s something that was endemic to totalitarianism.”
John Barry is a historian who wrote about what worked to keep people safe in the 1918 pandemic, which killed tens of millions of people and destroyed people's faith in each other and institutions, was that:
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Your conclusion seems to be that 'conservatives listen to right wing sources.' This isn't surprising, or evidence of some kind of wide-ranging collusion. Public people like Jordan Peterson or Glenn Beck have no responsibility to me or anyone else. It's different with elected people, since they are only there with my consent. I'd wager that Vaclav Havel would say that our problems originate in the seat of power, not with its grifters and sycophants.