For 26 days, their trucks had held the country hostage. Some of them had the wheels removed from their juggernauts to prevent law enforcement from towing them. Their operations were financed by foreign funds. Funds paid, among others, by the American secret services. At their head was one of the leaders of Patria y Libertad, a far-right paramilitary group.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
It was Chile’s Red October in 1972.
The Chilean truckers’ strike had been the first of a series of crises engineered to destabilize the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. With the success that we know: a year later, the military junta had seized power.
I am not telling you that a potential Pinochet is preparing a coup in Canada. Only, I note disturbing similarities between what is happening in the streets of Ottawa, for 15 days, and what happened in the streets of Santiago, half a century ago.
Here too, the wheels of the trucks are removed to prevent them from being towed. Here too, support for the “freedom convoy” comes largely from far-right groups. Here too, the demonstrators finance their operations with funds from abroad. Here too, the blockade threatens the country’s economy.
And, yes, here too, the avowed objective of certain organizers of the convoy was indeed to overthrow a democratically elected government.
This is not hyperbole. The thousands of ordinary Canadians who joined the early days protest to express their disappointment are long gone. The Ottawa siege no longer has anything to do with the requirement for truckers to be vaccinated to cross the border. It doesn’t even have anything to do with the lifting of health measures.
What is happening before our eyes now is nothing less than an attempted insurrection.
Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly is in dire straits. He warns that the hundreds of protesters stationed outside the federal legislature are “highly organized, well-funded, extremely determined to resist all attempts to bring the protests to a safe end.”
They are extremists, mixed with conspiracy theorists pumped up by bathing in the toxic soup of misinformation that social networks serve them.
These people are stuck in an ideological bubble, a parallel world where authorities’ efforts to protect us from a deadly pandemic are actually a terrible plot to take away our freedoms.
They firmly believe in it. And they are ready to do anything to counter this tyranny. For opportunists from here and elsewhere, the opportunity is too good. Hearts on their sleeves, they embrace the cause of “brave Canadian truckers” as they would have embraced any other cause.
‘Cause all they want is to fuck up.
It had to happen in Ottawa.
A city that is said to be asleep – at least when the concert of car horns takes a break. The capital of a country renowned for its extreme politeness, bordering on boredom.
Three weeks ago, who could have imagined that of all the cities in the world, Ottawa would become the incandescent heart of an international revolt?
From Saturday, in France, angry “truckers” promise to drive to Paris. In each country of Europe, convoys are organized, with the intention of converging in Brussels. In Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, the United States and elsewhere, protesters will follow Ottawa’s lead.
Who would have thought that Canada, this country usually so measured, could galvanize the forces of the far right around the world?
Make no mistake about it. We are no longer faced with a spontaneous movement of citizens frustrated by the vaccination obligation and health measures. It is becoming increasingly clear as the days go by and investigative journalists dig into this story: this movement is orchestrated, encouraged and supported by extremist groups abroad.
Groups that want to paralyze the economy, destabilize democracy, make the people believe that the system is not working, that something has to be done, maybe choose another leader, someone with an iron fist…
These tactics were used in Chile 50 years ago. In Canada, we thought we were safe. We must now face the facts: we are not that much.
The methods, of course, have been modernized.
According to an investigation by the American magazine Politico on the financing of the Ottawa headquarters, tens of thousands of Internet users have been mobilized by extremist groups via channels such as 4 Chan and Telegram, the favorite social networks of supremacists.
An army of trolls also indulges inastroturfing, or “similarity”. They use Facebook’s disinformation machine, among others, to give the false impression that the movement has broad popular support.
Meta announced on Monday that it had taken down dozens of fake Facebook pages linked to freedom convoys. But the trolls creep in, as elusive as snakes. As soon as one page is abolished, another is created elsewhere. This is how propaganda goes in the age of social networks.
Donald Trump got the ball rolling.
In a speech in Texas on Jan. 29, he called Justin Trudeau a “far-left lunatic” and called on his supporters to support Canadian truckers.
Since then, Fox News hosts have made it their hobbyhorse. On the Net, the figureheads of thealt right American ask their subscribers to give generously to the organizers of the convoy, in the name of freedom.
In reality, they have nothing to do with freedom, truckers or Canadians. They do politics. They continue their culture wars by proxy, in foreign lands. With us.
It’s not even subtle. On the streets of Ottawa, we saw red MAGA caps. A man on horseback was seen waving a “TRUMP 2024” flag. We heard the slogans spoken in Washington in January 2021.
When GoFundMe, realizing that the demonstration was turning into sedition, suspended a collection of 10 million, donors turned to a competing crowdfunding platform, GiveSendGo. Thursday, donations reached $ 10 million on this platform, operated by an American Christian site.
Access to funds raised on GiveSendGo was finally frozen in the evening by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
In Ottawa, elected officials of all stripes are very concerned about foreign interference in this crisis.
But south of the border, radical politicians have had the nerve to cry robbery and fraud. They even threaten the crowdfunding platform with reprisals…
I will say it with all the Canadian politeness of which I am capable: mind your own business. Please.