As a growing group of truckers and supporters make their way to Ottawa in a protest against vaccine mandates, experts say the rhetoric online concerning the convoy is getting increasingly worrisome.
www.ctvnews.ca
From the article:
"Peter Smith, a journalist working with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said he’s seeing a lot of similarities between this latest convoy and a similar truck convoy from 2019 that was meant to protest federal pipeline policies.
“Right from the start, the largest groups … have been organized and managed by people who have connections to those types of groups like the Yellow Vests, the separatist Western movements,” he said. “So right from the start, this began as part of fringe politics.”
Smith said he’s seen people using the movement to accuse politicians of pedophilia and to accuse the government of being illegitimate.
“This has become the focus of the far right,” Smith said. “It's not to say that there's not people involved who have a ‘heart-in-the-right-place’ mentality, but this has become -- like the health restrictions -- an important opportunity to capitalize on people's justifiable discontent with the government.”
“Whatever happens in this movement, this protest will be a propaganda tool that's probably used for years.”
The rhetoric has also engulfed some politicians. Former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau the
“biggest threat to freedom in Canada,” while Pierre Poilievre, Conservative MP in the Ottawa region, recently called the truckers vaccine mandate a
“vaccine vendetta.” People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier called Canada’s COVID-19 measures
“fascist” and
“authoritarian.”
The convoy has even gathered the attention of Donald Trump Jr.
“When we push back against the insanity, we can win, and that’s how all this ends,”
he said in a Facebook video.
“This is a genius idea. We need to see more of this in the U.S.”
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