All Episodes
Feb. 10, 2022 - Conspirituality
01:53:19
90: The Convoy is an Occupation (w/Elizabeth Simons)

We cover a lot of ground in this episode. But to introduce it in seed form, we want to draw your attention to a 15-second video we’ve posted to our Instagram. It shows a little boy, clearly stressed, sitting in the cab of an expensive black pickup truck with the window open, holding his ears against the incredible noise of the air horns as his mother takes a triumphant pan-shot video of a convoy rally. The clip encapsulates the surreal chaos of a deceptive, astroturfed, funded-from-outside, social-media-driven catastrophe that is right in line with the worst of the conspirituality world. A torrent of misinformation, co-opted trauma, and “freedom-fighters” LARPing, in which children are weaponized by super-pilled parents, in which we can witness the cycles of social neglect and psychic violence turning in real time. We open today with a review of the Occupation of Ottawa and what we know so far, and a discussion of how our conspirituality friends are co-opting and distorting events in ways that are not only craven, but will increase the chances that this event will end in violence. Finally, Matthew interviews Elizabeth Simons of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network on the deep background, the big picture, and the horizon. CORRECTION: Matthew incorrectly stated that The Branches Yoga in Kitchener Waterloo hosted a workshop by Selam Debs. They did not host it, but they did promote it to their community. Show Notes Canadian Anti-Hate Network New Age Healers and Right-Wing Militants Come Together in Ottawa Canadian Yoga Teacher and Anti-Racism Educator Targetted The 'Freedom Convoy' Is Nothing But A Vehicle For The Far Right Mayor of Windsor: “Some occupiers are willing to die.” A Holocaust Denier Is Travelling Across Canada Building Up The Country's Newest Far-Right Militia Movement - Canadian Anti-Hate Network Canada's “Freedom Convoy” Is a Front for a Right-Wing, Anti-Worker Agenda Ottawa police discover children living in protesters' trucks | The Star Freedom Convoy Brings the Far-Right  -- -- -- Support us on Patreon Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This is Chris Christensen from the Amateur Traveler Podcast.
The Amateur Traveler Podcast is about the love of travel.
It's about where to go and why you should go there.
We're going to open up to you different destinations you haven't heard of or places you have heard of but things you didn't know to do while you were there.
Each episode is about 45 minutes long and it's typically an interview with someone who wrote the guidebook on that destination or who has been there or who's a local tour guide or someone who is an expert on that destination and knows how to tell you what to do to get the most out of your precious vacation time.
So if you value your vacation time and you want to use it wisely, listen to Amateur Traveler and learn about destinations both domestic and international, places you've heard of and places you haven't.
Amateur Traveler has almost 900 episodes talking about different destinations, so if there's a place you want to go, odds are we've already covered it and can help you plan a trip there.
Amateur Traveler, subscribe today.
Comedy fans, listen up.
I've got an incredible podcast for you to add to your queue.
Nobody listens to Paula Poundstone.
You probably know that I made an appearance recently on this absolutely ludicrous variety show that combines the fun of a late night show with the wit of a public radio program and the unique knowledge of a guest expert who was me at the time, if you can believe that.
Embrace yourself for a rollercoaster ride of wildly diverse topics, from Paula's hilarious attempts to understand QAnon, to riveting conversations with a bonafide rocket scientist.
You'll never know what to expect, but you'll know you're in for a high-spirited, hilarious time.
This is comedian Paula Poundstone and her co-host Adam Thelber, who is great.
They're both regular panelists on NPR's classic comedy show.
You may recognize them from that, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.
And they bring the same acerbic, yet infectiously funny energy to Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone.
When I was on, they grilled me in an absolutely unique way about conspiracy theories and yoga and yoga pants and QAnon, and we had a great time.
They were very sincerely interested in the topic, but they still found plenty of hilarious angles in terms of the questions they asked and how they followed up on whatever I gave them, like good comedians do.
Check out their show.
There are other recent episodes you might find interesting as well, like hearing crazy Hollywood stories from legendary casting director Joel Thurm, or their episode about killer whales and killer theme songs.
So Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone is an absolute riot you don't want to miss.
Find Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
If you're a fan of workplace comedies like The Office or satire like The Onion, then I have a podcast that I know you'll love.
It's called Mega.
Mega is an improvised satire from the staff of a fictional megachurch.
That's the premise.
Each week, the hosts, Holly Laurent and Greg Hess, are joined by guests, people like Cecily Strong or Jen Hatmaker.
To portray characters inside the colorful world of Twin Hills Community Church, which they describe as a mega church with a tiny family feel.
The result is a sharp-witted and hilarious look into the world of commercialized religion using humor to cope with the frightening amount of power that church and religion have.
So I very much recommend you checking out Mega's episodes like the one with Saturday Night Live's Cecily Strong playing Cece String, a hilarious character who's fresh out of jail, and also comedian Jason Mantzoukas.
You may find yourself dying of laughter and perhaps inspired to take an improv class yourself.
Mega is able to keep you laughing as you think and reflect about the world we live in.
You can find MEGA on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Hey everyone, welcome to Conspirituality.
I'm I'm Derek Barris.
I'm Matthew Remsky.
I'm Julian Walker.
You can stay up to date with us on all of our social media handles, including Instagram.
Predominantly, we are all on Twitter.
Sneaky Julian over here went and changed his Twitter handle from Embodied Sacred to Julian M. Walker.
I learned how.
I guess Julian Walker is just squatting on it.
So you can find him at Julian M. Walker on Twitter.
We are also on Patreon at patreon.com slash conspirituality where for $5 a month you can help support us as well as get access to our Monday bonus episodes.
Conspirituality 90.
The Convoy is an occupation with Elizabeth Simons.
We cover a lot of ground in this episode, but to introduce it in seed form, we want to draw your attention to a 15 second video we've posted to our Instagram.
It shows a little boy, clearly stressed, sitting in the cab of an expensive black pickup truck with the window open, holding his ears against the incredible noise of the air horns as his mother takes a triumphant pan shot video of a convoy rally.
The clip encapsulates the surreal chaos of a deceptive, astroturfed, funded-from-outside, social media-driven catastrophe that is right in line with the worst of the conspirituality world.
A torrent of misinformation, co-opted trauma, and freedom fighters, LARPing, in which children are weaponized by super-pilled parents, in which we can witness the cycles of social neglect and psychic violence turning in real time.
We open today with a review of the occupation of Ottawa and what we know so far, and a discussion of how our conspirituality friends are co-opting and distorting events in ways that are not only craven, but will increase the chances that this event will end in violence.
Finally, Matthew interviews Elizabeth Simons of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network on the deep background, the big picture, and the horizon.
So Derek and Julian, we have a dynamic interview with Elizabeth Simons of the Anti-Hate Network to roll in a bit, but we're going to set that up with some context first.
Beginning with me giving a Canadian side of the border rundown on occupation basics.
And I know that you both have been looking into how our conspirituality influencers have been spinning it in typically noxious ways.
We'll talk about that as well.
Now, Simons gives a lot of detail in our interview, but for now the top line points are, so the newsflash material is, first of all, I'm not going to call it the Freedom Convoy because that's what the organizers are calling it, and they are lying liars.
It's really a disruptive nihilism death wish convoy, or as Elizabeth Simons states it plainly, it's an occupation.
The top organizers are not truckers.
I repeat, they are not truckers.
They are ethno-nationalist, anti-labor, fringe politicians who have seized upon vaccine conspiracism to forward an anti-democratic power grab.
They're calling for the resignation of Trudeau, who just won his election five months ago, and worse, they're calling for the dissolution of Parliament.
Their stated aims to end vaccine quote-unquote mandates are BS because the vaccination requirements are actually a cross-border issue negotiated with the United States.
The U.S.
requires professional drivers to be vaccinated as well, and 90% of actual working truckers are vaccinated.
The Teamsters Union is opposed to these blockades.
All real truck labor is actually opposed to the blockades.
One of the top organizers, Pat King, Look Him Up At Your Peril, has consistently called for political violence, and his Ottawa live streams are just as aggressive.
He's also an avid practitioner of pretendianism, Invoking First Nations, Indigenous and Métis peoples' liberation discourse to launder his aims.
He loves the drumming, ceremony, feathers, and many First Nations peoples have denounced him and the occupation as a whole.
Now, a number of the organizers, Elizabeth will tell us, beta-tested this idea with something called United We Roll back in 2019, which rolled on anti-immigration themes.
Now, why is that?
In part, because the demographics of trucking in Canada are slowly changing from all-white to now about half South Asian.
And the South Asian truckers are pro-union and have been avidly campaigning for stronger job protections.
The Occupiers have been joined also by the Canadian QAnon sideshow of Romana DiGiulio, the self-professed Queen of Canada.
She's useful for spectacle and disruption, but the white nationalists actually hate her.
She's from the Philippines originally.
They prefer their conspiracy theories about COVID and vaccines to be all white.
Now, the Ottawa Police Services were as unprepared for the occupation as the Capital Police in Washington were for January 6th.
Now, it seems there are many complicated reasons for this.
There might be an aspect of police sympathy with the occupiers.
That's plausible.
It might take time to really sort it out.
What's clear is that the entire
The meeting of the occupation was under-resourced from the beginning, and in contrast, as soon as Ottawa Police Services and the Ontario Provincial Police and the Mounties get wind of something like a First Nations protest of ecocidal pipelines on unceded territories, they show up in military gear and beat the shit out of people.
So, after 10 days, it's now 12 actually, so my script is a little bit old here, of downtown hell with air horns and even air raid sirens deployed by the occupiers to drive the residents mad.
Pat King was actually laughing about this on his Telegram channel just today.
This is at almost constant 100 decibel noise.
A judge has issued an injunction against the horns and the Ottawa police have made small strides to limit the flow of fuel and food into the occupation sites.
Ottawa citizens are also taking legal steps.
There's a class action suit and there are petitions to the truckers insurers because the trucks are clearly not being used for commercial transport at this point.
And all of those owner-operators are in real danger of financial penalty or repossession.
But Chief Peter Slowly, who happens to be black, and I've seen some Ottawa local commentary say that he doesn't necessarily have consistent support from the mainly white force, has openly said that there is no policing answer to the occupation.
Now, he uses very nuanced political tones.
I think he's trying to send calls for help to various layers of government.
The downtown hell has featured vandalism, occupiers harassing and assaulting citizens for wearing masks, throwing feces on houses that fly pride flags.
The occupiers are harassing women.
They're obstructing social services.
And they are non-stop partying.
And despite that, their organization is pretty tight.
They've brought in construction cranes, porta-potties, saunas, cooking tents, and an enormous pile of dry firewood.
They've been allowed to paralyze the core of a capital city.
Now, what about funding?
You might have heard that GoFundMe shut down the $10 million kitty that they had raised, and they are issuing refunds because they said that the campaign violated their terms of service involving the promotion of harassment.
Now, the other issue is that the money is not mostly coming from inside the country.
The CBC just published a study showing that 63% of the donations identified by the comments in that GoFundMe campaign, now closed, came from outside Canada and they were from the US.
Now, some of that money may be being used to set up things like bouncy castles for the occupier's kids.
That's right, there are children at this occupation, and the Ottawa police have counted about a hundred of them living in the 419 trucks that are still blockading the streets, which means that they're effectively being used as human shields, perilously complicating any possible police action.
Now the right wing of Canadian politics is caving to this chaotic fringe with Aaron O'Toole, the now former Conservative Party of Canada leader, getting turfed from leadership in favour of Candace Bergen, who is fond of MAGA hats and taking selfies with the occupiers.
And meanwhile, the guy who actually has jurisdiction over Ottawa, the Tory Premier here in Ontario, his name is Doug Ford, is pretty much missing in action.
And things are so weird that his daughter Krista is actually a prominent occupation influencer, pro-occupation influencer.
She's married to a cop who was recently suspended for refusing to be vaccinated.
Now, this is a very fluid story, so the latest from today is that Pat King is leading a breakout convoy to disrupt the Ottawa airport and the Ontario Police Services, sorry, the Ottawa Police Services has tweeted out that the occupiers are now overwhelming 911 services with non-emergency calls and that, of course, endangers lives.
So that's the rundown, but I also want to tell you both and the listeners that, as with many others living here in Canada, this hits obviously really close to home in a number of complex ways.
For me personally, on Monday night, I was really disturbed to see the occupation descend on my mother's hometown of Windsor at the southernmost tip of Ontario, which is separated from Detroit by the Detroit River.
Now, they've blockaded the Ambassador Bridge, which has been open since 1929, and over which 25% of the cross-border trade every day is carried.
And a few days into this action, the auto plants in Windsor and Toronto are actually starting to drop shifts and curtail production, sending workers home without pay.
CTV reporter Sean O'Shea reported on Twitter that, quote, the mayor of Windsor says some of the protesters blocking the Ambassador Bridge are mentally unstable, willing to die for their cause in some cases.
He made these comments on radio, unquote.
Now, the Ambassador Bridge is as iconic in Canadian architecture as the Brooklyn Bridge is in New York, or the Golden Gate in San Francisco, and has for almost a century been a symbol of North American industrial collaboration and growth.
For better or for worse, and to some degree, labor solidarity, especially in relation to the auto industry.
My father grew up watching boat races on the Detroit River, and during the Depression, my mother's grandmother in Windsor sent the kids out with hampers full of sandwiches made in her kitchen to sell to the drivers, lined up at the bridge, not to block it, but to cross over.
And I traveled over that bridge hundreds of times as a boy to visit my grandfather on the U.S.
side.
And, you know, if you're detecting nostalgia and idealization in my tone here, I'm going to be exploring that in this upcoming bonus episode, in which I'll be describing the wake-up call a lot of especially white Canadians are hearing in those air horns, white liberal Canadians, because a huge part of white liberal identity in this country is rooted in the assumption that we are better than this.
Specifically, that we're better than Americans at democracy, inclusion, and statecraft.
This is delusional.
One of my contributions to this podcast is to take psychological principles like spiritual bypassing, which is Julian's specialty really, like he describes it all the time, which we see all over in yoga culture, And, you know, which in Julian's terms, he really shows that, well, how would you describe it?
It's the usage of, like, spiritual concepts and ideas to do what?
To essentially avoid existential anxiety, authentic emotional experience, psychological trauma, that sort of thing.
Yeah.
But we can see it in political terms certainly as well.
Right, and I think we can see it exacerbated also by political economies that view itself as liberal and progressive but are actually hyper-individualist at root.
And, you know, to the extent that yoga and wellness cultures have been depoliticized by consumerism, but because that consumerism is framed as virtuous, things can feel tolerable and workable, we can go with the flow.
So, my thesis for the bonus episode is that the line between spiritual bypassing and the illusion of a national identity that depends on a genteel self-image can be really super thin.
So, the bonus episode will be a study in ending Canadian bypassing.
You know, we live in a media bubble, I think, around the world, and certainly in the West, where America sucks up all the oxygen in the room, and so I realize how little I know about Canada, and therefore, because I know very little about Canada, my capacity to put myself in your shoes, in terms of
Being a Canadian is, you know, very limited and so hearing some of the history and how it's impacting you personally and hearing some of these landmarks and, you know, everything you've just shared is very moving and helps to create a context for this that makes it very real.
So thank you.
Yeah, I mean, that kind of media imbalance goes both ways.
For me particularly, but I think I can speak for a number of Canadians who find themselves inundated by American news and culture to the point where Canadian politics itself can recede into the background and can feel like it is playing second fiddle to what is happening on the world stage.
And that's, it's really just not fair.
It doesn't work.
In learning about the Canadian trucker version of conspirituality and how some former Green Party members and people involved in the yoga and wellness scene have become swept up in this protest movement.
I have to say, I also found out that before the pandemic, the area currently occupied by the convoy would on warm days draw as many as 2,400 yogis, Matthew, for these massive outdoor free classes on Wednesday nights called Yoga on the Hill.
Yeah.
I can't help but feel like that.
And especially given, you know, how high Canada's vaccination rate is, right?
You're at like 88 to 90%, I think.
It makes me wonder how much of an overlap there really is between those folks who would have been showing up for the yoga classes and this occupation.
Well, that's just the thing.
I mean, you just don't know.
Most of the occupiers are not Ottowans, so they're definitely from out of town.
But I have Ottawa yoga friends who also work in health care and social services, and they are appalled by what's happening.
But I've also heard anecdotally that there's a lot of Ottawa Yogaland support for the fake truckers.
And as we'll see, this stems from either basic or will Willful ignorance, maybe boredom, and also a willingness to use any contrarian content for social visibility.
But I think the more complicating factor comes from overlapping spheres of influence in the online world.
How many of those yoga on the hill people were Q-pilled in 2019?
I mean, probably a minority, but how many are fans of contrarian influencers who are willing to BS about the occupation?
A lot more.
We got this amazing comment from somebody on Instagram who wrote, I asked my brother-in-law what the protesters that he supports wanted.
His answer was to send me this list of people.
So, bizarre, right?
The list of people.
Russell Brand, Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, JP Sears, Dave Rubin, Kid Rock, Kyle Kemper.
So, he was asking his brother-in-law for a list of demands.
And the brother-in-law who's pro-occupation said, what we want is these people.
What these guys say.
Well, maybe these people?
What these guys say?
We want them in charge.
We want them in charge.
By the way, Jordan Peterson has moved into peak belligerence.
During this time, while tensions are flaring in downtown Ottawa, where occupiers are actually facing off with cops and taunting them with jerrycans of diesel fuel, he's tweeting out support for them, and then tweeting a photo of himself shooting an automatic weapon at a gun range.
And then there's one name in there that you might not be familiar with.
Kyle Kemper is actually Justin Trudeau's half-brother, who's an anti-vax crypto guru.
So if you think your family's complicated, well... I think what he's requesting is for Kid Rock to make the soundtrack for their dance parties using all of the other guys' voices as part of the soundtrack.
Samples, yeah.
To sample in, oh my god.
We won't say what they sampled to our Rogan saying for that one.
Yeah, and I mean that Jordan Peterson photo, I've seen, you know, many, many retweets of it where people are captioning it in pretty funny ways, because he looks kind of ridiculous, but it is, it's super disturbing for sure.
It's disturbing, and I also, as funny as some of them are, I'm not going to not take a photo of a man with an automatic weapon seriously.
in terms of what his intentions are.
And that is where I think the irony of it or how people are using sarcasm, which I'm perfectly fine with.
But also, my reply to that was, well, we've seen Mickey Willis and J.P. Sears posting about their tactical training.
We know Rogan's stance on that and that Peterson was just on Rogan.
And when you add in all of these figures who are just keep talking about J.P. Sears, of course, with his recent, I was wrong on the Second Amendment.
We need more guns video.
There's only one direction that sort of rhetoric moves in.
So seeing another person throwing into that mix just is not good.
Especially somebody from Canada with a psychology degree who is fond of vests and pocket watches.
I mean, there's a culture jamming thing there that brings in a different demographic as well into Second Amendment discourse.
We're just gonna, you know, the NRA has been losing funding, Matthew.
We gotta sell some guns in Canada.
I think that's, you know, maybe he's the new spokesperson.
Yeah, and of course we march closer and closer to the idea of these people all being in a compound together with armed guards and heavy artillery.
Just bizarre.
Well, independent journalist Christopher Curtis of the award-winning substack called The Rover has penned an excellent piece titled, Freedom Convoy, New Age Healers and Right-Wing Militants Come Together in Ottawa.
So I really wasn't kidding when I said I'm learning about the Canadian trucker version of conspirituality.
In this article, he tracks the makeup of the Canada Unity online message boards, which I get the impression that these are sort of the organizing people behind all of this, Matthew?
Yeah, that's correct.
He shows how on those boards you see posts from metaphysical bookstore owners, naturopaths, wellness influencers, life coaches, sitting alongside anti-immigrant and Islamophobic white replacement conspiracy theory posts.
On the ground in Ottawa, he reports Save the Children and Where We Go When We Go All QAnon signs being displayed, and says that he personally knows people involved who are, and I'll quote him here, Green Party supporters, a lefty journalist, vegans who volunteer with the homeless.
These folks, he says, seem to be blinded by the right-wing racism of the convoy by their own conspiratorial interpretation of what the pandemic means.
He also talks about the daily death threats he receives for covering the convoy and anti-vax movement and points out that these threats are always more voluminous from talking to colleagues and gruesome in their details when directed at women and journalists of color.
Now on that note, a black and queer self-described yoga studio owner and anti-racism educator named Salam Debs, whose Juicy Yoga is in Waterloo, Ontario, reportedly received thousands of hateful, racist, violent, threatening messages in response to a Facebook post naming the connection between white nationalism and the convoy, or as Matthew has I think correctly been calling them, the occupiers,
Because, of course, that's exactly how you demonstrate that you're just a bunch of peaceful freedom lovers.
Let me add a little backdrop here, rolling off that, in the United States.
In the first five weeks of this year, there have been two waves of bomb threats now sent to historically black colleges and universities.
There are a hundred in America, and dozens of them have received such threats, which resulted in schools closing or classes being cancelled.
And just on Tuesday, the first gentleman, Doug Emhoff, was quickly ushered out of a very well-known Washington, D.C.
high school where he was giving a talk for Black History Month, his wife, of course, being the first African-American vice president in history and first female vice president.
And that was after the school received a bomb threat.
So intimidation of people of color is also experiencing an uptick on both sides of the border right now.
Salam is actually in my circle here in Southern Ontario.
In fact, she just presented a seminar in whiteness and spiritual bypassing at the Branches Yoga Center, shout out, in Kitchener-Waterloo just this past fall.
So, her content has stayed consistent and on message.
The Branches is one of the last places where I'm still helping in yoga training and they're really good friends.
And I met Salam, years before that, when giving a talk at a training that was hosted at her studio, which, as I remember, was a really cozy place and she was a great host.
She clearly had good chops for community care.
I think it's worth underlining what you mentioned above and what Curtis was referring to in that article, that while our project has been vocal about racism and white supremacy going right back to the beginning, We haven't gotten any blowback from white ethno-nationalists.
It might be lucky, or it might be that when a black woman steps onto that battlefield, she's just an instant target of hatred.
I want to add, too, that a police investigation has been opened into the threats that she's received.
Yeah, we clearly don't have that same kind of magnetism for that particular brand of hate.
You know, I also came across a very photogenic and well-styled Canadian couple, a young couple, though seemingly they're in exile somewhere else.
I don't know if you know about them, Matthew.
They have a yoga business called Boho Beautiful, and they have over 2 million followers, do you?
Yeah.
2 million followers on YouTube, 410,000 on Instagram.
How do you know them, Derek?
During research, I came across their YouTube, and the fact that what you're about to say is not surprising to me.
Yeah, they've come out in solidarity with the truckers, and the post in which they do so features the two of them holding little handwritten signs saying, we stand with you and mandate freedom.
The caption is fairly long, but basically it says, this is not about being anti or pro vaccine.
It's definitely not about racism, supremacism, or anything else the establishment would like to distract, discredit, or divide us with.
Which makes me wonder, well then what is this about?
It turns out it's about unity, support, love and equality, concern for the mentally ill and unemployed who have been suffering under lockdown, outrage at the billionaire class and the wealth transfer which means they're getting richer during the pandemic, all things we of course Would also, you know, have an issue with, and about having a good answer for their little son who's featured on their stream and looks to be just a few months old, who in years to come will ask, what did you do when freedom called?
Now the post ends with an all caps phrase that we've often heard around from QAnon supporters waiting for the fulfillment of their dark prophecies, hold the line.
And now I just want to say that from looking over their stuff a little bit, what I'm about to say is so on the nose for our beat that I had to share.
Through their Instagram, they advertise a retreat to Costa Rica, a prenatal yoga course, free resources for vegan living and detoxifying.
Oh, and of course, a seven-day online program called Ascension.
I have to ask about the psychology of this in terms of when they make statements like that.
You know, QAnon Anonymous is doing great reporting on Ron Watkins' congressional run and where one of his issues is water on Native American reservations.
And they pretty much showed how he's just trolling, that he doesn't give a shit about it.
But when people like this say these things, I truly have to wonder, do they really believe that that's what it's about?
Or are they just looking for the lowest hanging fruit to try to distract people from what their real intentions are?
Yeah, I mean, I tend to think that they are misguided idiots.
More so than trolling the way that Watkins is.
We know that when Watkins takes, when he is at some kind of QAnon event and some reporter comes to him and says, hey, what's your platform?
We see that you're running for government.
What's your platform?
And he goes, well, you know, I really think that Native American water research, you're like, yeah, he's going to say whatever thing he thinks will make his particular demographic of followers laugh their asses off.
Yeah.
So in terms of stateside crossover support, I did come across a charming Twitter account with 15,000 followers.
I just had to show it to my wife.
She's from New Orleans.
It represents a yoga studio in Chauvin, Louisiana called Yoga Down Da Bayou.
And this is your standard scroll of retweeted anti-trans, anti-mask, panic over communism type of material, but now it also features Freedom Convoy support and anti-Trudeau tweets.
So yeah, just seeing how these dots are being connected right now.
Unsurprisingly, Gun-toting, roid-raging, unfunny former emotional healing coach J.P.
Sears created a satirical news broadcast video in which I counted the word freedom 24 times.
The video quotes both Jordan Peterson and Elon Musk, as you do, voicing support for the convoy and disparages Canadian PM Justin Trudeau as a wannabe authoritarian tyrant who dresses more nicely.
And the video features Sears endorsement at the end for a totally legit electromagnetic frequency blocking phone sticker and a laptop mat.
Here's how it starts.
Good evening.
Welcome to tonight's special report on the Freedom Convoy of Canadian Truckers, where we'll call freedom a dangerous fringe concept in order to intimidate you into obedience, because our house of cards is on the verge of crumbling.
So please listen up.
What's all this mean?
In Canada, a massive trucking convoy involving 50,000 truckers stretching 70 kilometers long has driven across Canada from Vancouver to Canada's capital city.
50,000 truckers, eh?
Well, the Ottawa Police were reportedly expecting between 1,000 and 2,000 vehicles last Saturday, with the crowd on the streets ending up swelling to around 8,000.
Now, some news sources have said that the crowd may have gotten as large as 15,000 or even 18,000 on previous days, but Ontario Provincial Police recorded 113 trucks and 276 personal vehicles in the convoy.
Sears also repeats another falsehood later on in the video that the truckers, and by the way, my favorite hashtag critics are using on Twitter is Flu Trucks Clan, which I thought was kind of brilliant.
The claim is that they've broken the Guinness World Record for the longest convoy by a factor of 10.
But this has been denied by anyone that you can ask who knows anything about it.
JP makes much of these exaggerated numbers so as to create the impression, this is his argument essentially, that there's an overwhelmingly popular uprising that the propaganda mainstream press is framing as being a fringe minority and Trudeau even used those words.
But with 88% of Canada vaccinated, A population of 38 million?
Contrary to the spin he tries to put on it by showing videos of large crowds, look, there's a lot of people, right?
Even at the most generous estimates, Trudeau would still be correct in saying that this is a fringe minority.
You know, guys, it's almost as if anti-vaxxers who misread the data on efficacy and massively overestimate the risks of vaccines while massively underestimating the risks of COVID are confused about basic math and percentages.
I know I mentioned this in Slack, but two weeks ago on Bill Maher's show, Fiona Hill was talking about how the number of people who were actively engaged in violence during all of those years in Ireland with the quote-unquote Catholic versus Protestant, it was more political than that, fighting that was going on was roughly 400 people.
And this just all reminds me of that in terms of in the you don't need a lot of people to actually create a lot of destruction.
And that seems to be the case here.
So even when you're at these littler numbers, you're still getting what's happening to the people and resonating around the fucking world because there's going to be a convoy going out of L.A.
after the Super Bowl this weekend.
And it's just so.
And I mean, you know, in terms of that, even such a small number as they had in Northern Ireland, the moment they start putting car bombs in front of pubs is when you really start to get big carnage.
Yeah, and you just invoked J.P.
Sears, whose grift extends to crypto.
I work full-time in cryptocurrency.
I take no issue with the protocol, just very often how it manifests and how people use it.
That's another issue, though.
But I do want to point out that since the shutdown of GoFundMe's Pipeline.
Interestingly, this announcement was immediately met with suspicion by American congressional members who vowed to open an investigation into GoFundMe services, because of course they did, the party of little government and all.
But because of all this, going back to crypto, stepping in to fill the void is honk honk hodl.
Which is four crypto wealthy men who started a site called TallyCoin to raise Bitcoin for the protesters.
And as you'll hear during Matthew's interview today, which I did not know when I first found this out, while it's being presented as a decentralized attempt to support the truckers, the term Honk Honk is a neo-Nazi Chan code for Heil Hitler.
As of Tuesday, when I read the article on it, the site TallyCoin had raised over a half a million dollars in Bitcoin, and given that it's going up right now, that means it's actually worth more if they haven't converted its US dollars.
And this all, of course, follows a January 27th tweet by Elon Musk, which has been retweeted hundreds of thousands of times, which is simply, Canadian truckers rule.
Disowning him as any kind of expat South African.
So, speaking of GoFundMe, another one of our usual suspects, Jason Sherka, you may remember, owner of the Academy of Divine Knowledge website, which is actually very well put together and I'm sure generates a lot of money, and author of the book The Pyramid Code, which he claims was actually given to him by a clandestine organization called The Light System while he was in hospital recovering from a staph infection in his left leg.
He had this to say on his Instagram about the controversy regarding the Convoy and GoFundMe.
GoFundMe has officially announced that they will be shutting down the Freedom Convoy fundraiser and actually redistributing the over $10 million in funds raised to what they call credible and established charities that are actually verified by GoFundMe.
I wonder who those are.
If you were one of the over 100,000 people who donated to this cause through GoFundMe, you can request a refund right now by scrolling to the bottom of the GoFundMe Freedom Convoy page and clicking the request a refund button.
Be sure to do so before February 19th or they will quite literally steal your money and give it to whoever they want.
And with that, may GoFundMe go bankrupt, and may the freedom movement get a whole lot stronger.
We should note that GoFundMe has changed their stance, and they are refunding everyone without question, so you don't have to request.
That was recorded before that happened, so it doesn't dissuade from Sherka's promotion of this, but GoFundMe is refunding everyone 100%.
Yeah, yeah.
And so, you know, part of what I'm doing here is just checking in with each of the different people that we've covered to see to what extent they are supporting this movement, this phenomenon, and in which ways they're doing it.
Red-pilled QAnon magic chocolate salesman David Avocado Wolf, We've really got unhinged in the last couple years.
Wade in via his Instagram with a post featuring a very psychedelic image of a semi and the words get in the truck on the image and his caption read freedom will find its way out of the grip of tyranny before of course inviting people to join him on telegram.
You know, all these fucking people and their fascination with truckers.
It's like the time Trump sat in the truck.
But what's interesting is David's father is an obstetrician.
He actually worked in the very hospital I was born in.
Wow.
David told me this one day years ago when we worked together on things, and I checked my birth records.
He was not my delinquent.
But also Sayerji's father, I recall, is some sort of scientist.
So I find the fact that people who grew up in medical households that turn into paranoid conspiracy theorists in adulthood just fascinating.
And I have many issues with Sayer's grift, we've covered it, but David truly turned out to be paranoid.
His telegram is one of the most toxic places I've just ever seen in any feed.
He has no boundaries whatsoever.
But I also remember him that when he left New York City, he bought farmland in Canada.
So I probably he feels some sort of synergy with truckers traveling along vast expanses in the name of freedom.
Another one of our usual cast of characters, Dave Asprey, you know, the magic butter coffee without all that nasty mold salesman.
We haven't covered him in depth.
We probably should.
Yeah, we've referenced him from time to time.
He's definitely worthy of a lot more attention.
He's created posts attacking GoFundMe and supporting the Convoy, too.
But what would this episode be without a quote from the super macho anti-trans real women give birth alone on the frozen tundra, Mother of Dragons herself, Bauhauswife, who wrote this caption under an Instagram post that just said, keep on trucking.
OK, I'll I'll try to do the voice.
Today is my 41st birthday.
I've never been big on patriotism, but I'm so proud to be a human being right now.
Just one of the many revolutionary aspects of the Trucker Convoy is the fact that it was initiated by the working class.
Very good.
And that it transcends the identity-based constructs and divisions that have been largely imposed on us Okay, I gotta fuckin' wash out my mouth.
I think the long-term pod listeners will be familiar with how much we adore Yolande Norris-Clark, also known as Bauhaus Wife, for just sheer brain-meltedness.
It's like really a free-range fondue up in there.
But this time, I want to point out how stuff like this from her and Sherka and Sears and countless others, it's really moved from opportunist I mean, let's face it, like a level of imminent danger, because, you know, in general, this scam of outside influencers, especially if they're in the U.S.,
We can expect that they're going to use an event like this to upsell their brands.
But I think we also have to acknowledge that the impact on the actual occupiers in Ottawa right now, who are cold, They are hungry.
They are being threatened with all kinds of legal and financial repercussions.
They are not sleeping.
They're probably living on Red Bull and who knows what else.
For them to be cheered on, and validated from afar, and from unlikely sources, like people who they would typically not be regarded by, people who would not give them the time of day, people who would share some of their maybe class privilege with them and that might feel gratifying in some way, people who sound educated,
People who tell them that they're part of a global and spiritually relevant movement and that now is the time to put everything on the line.
You know, violent confrontation in Ottawa is being predicted by major analysts on the ground and people familiar with policing.
And as it becomes more and more likely, these people, the people that we're describing, They're full of shit, they are boosting their brands, and they're also ramping up the emotionality of occupiers who actually have no way out.
So, any message other than, hey, we heard you, Go on home and make sure you vote if you didn't last time, or even better, come on home, get back to your life, your family needs you.
Like, any message other than that is, at this point, aiding and abetting preparations for violence.
And for what?
Like, at best, it's the vicarious thrill on the part of the influencers, I think, of imagining that they're participating in something.
At worst, it's for the clicks.
You know, we talk about how conspirituality influencers have the blood of promoting vaccine hesitancy on their hands, but this is another form of, like, real material danger.
And what I want to add about Norris Clark's total perfidy and hypocrisy here is that if she had spent five minutes outside of Telegram, or her own ass, she might have learned that the occupation wasn't being led by truckers, that its leadership is anti-working class, it's rooted in anti-immigrant movements, Assignments will help lay out in the interview.
And maybe she would see how empty her claims of solidarity with the working class are when they are posted on Instagram from the beach in Nicaragua where she works at what?
Like exactly?
I know she does online coaching for women who don't want to give birth in hospitals, but working class?
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean this distinction is so crucial, Matthew.
It really jumped out at the great interview that we're going to hear in a little bit with Elizabeth because This far-right libertarian populism that pretends working-class solidarity is so distorted and so false.
And that's true everywhere in the world that it rears its head.
It claims to be anti-elite, but make no mistake, the salt of the earth, common man, they appeal to always has some deeply bigoted racial, religious, and political qualifiers.
And yeah, these truckers, as I've learned, And I can understand, frankly, yoga and wellness influencers fetishizing the working class without knowing a single one, a member, because influence work is a little dissociative, don't we think?
I mean, I'm sure there's a part of them that really wants to get offline.
To feel what it would feel like to, you know, grind gears on a fucking 18-wheeler, to feel what it would feel like to be paid for labor value and not their hot takes.
You know, so I, you know, I've said before that the product of the wellness industry is like nothing beyond the aspirational self.
So, I imagine it feels awesome to identify with the working class when you have no way of measuring what you actually produce beyond views and clicks?
You're also not, that online marketing model is not trying to sell to the working class.
It's trying to sell to people who have significant disposable income and aspirations toward that self-improvement kind of aesthetic.
Right.
I mean, with Bauhaus' wife, the real kicker is, I mean, I wouldn't expect her to know about this detail because she doesn't learn anything, but for someone who is a natural advocate of free birthing, who has nine children, someone who has basically made a living on the spectacle of family and reproduction, she might just take interest in the fact that the occupiers are, as we said, using children as human shields.
And to just give a little sense of how much pressure that involves and how horrible the situation is that she's praising from her beach hut, I want to take a listen to something.
This is very difficult, actually.
Here's an occupier, a guy, he looks like he's in his young early 30s.
He's yelling at a reporter Who is asking him to respond to the news that the Ottawa Police Services has called in Child Protective Services to advise them on what to do about the hundred children living in truck cabs and pickups in the freezing cold.
Did you hear the statement?
So you're saying that my teenagers are threatened for being in Ottawa?
Is that what you're telling me?
Answer my question!
People will answer questions, you answer mine.
Are my children in danger?
I don't work for the Children's Aid Society.
Are my children in danger for being in Ottawa?
Are my children in danger for being in Ottawa right now?
Tell me yes or no!
You tell me.
You're coming here trying to say that children are in danger.
The fact that the Children's Aid Society is getting involved sounds like they matter.
You got the inside scoop because you guys are the messenger for the devil.
You tell me right now.
Are my kids in danger for being here?
Should I send them on the first train out of town?
Tell me now.
It sounds like the Children's Aid Society is saying that they are getting involved.
So you're saying that my kids are going to get hurt?
I'm not saying anything.
All I'm saying is that they put out the statement that I'm looking for your reaction.
So you, so you're telling me now that I should be getting my kids out of town?
You sold your soul a long time ago, and you sold your soul a long time ago.
We're not psychologists, but I think it would be unethical to ignore the possibility of real projective rage here.
Here's this guy asking, are my children in danger over and over again to someone who literally can't answer and who I think he knows can't answer that question.
And it begins to sound less like a question and more like a statement or like a cry for help.
As in, my children are in danger, which given, you know, all of the media around this guy that is telling him that they should be vaccinated and wearing masks, makes a lot of sense for him to hold that particular concern.
But, I mean, what a declaration that's fueled by, like, mortal shame and disguised as rebellious dignity.
Yeah, I mean, to follow on from that psychological speculation, obviously, I mean, it also sounds to me like he's in denial of how much danger he's putting them in, and he's projecting outward that these Child Protective Services people are somehow threatening And the dissonance of hearing, Oh, Canada, during that clip also is really a lot.
Yeah.
And I'm going to get to that a little bit in the bonus episode when I talk about what does sort of various forms of Canadian nationalism, like what roles do they play in these situations?
It's pretty thick.
But anyway, I hope that Yolanda Norris-Clark hears this.
I hope she hears this guy specifically and maybe pauses to reflect.
But she might not, because as we've seen, you know, most conspiritualists are really fond of using their kids in the same way, I have to say, as emotional pawns.
Self-objects symbolizing their own contradiction of purity and vulnerability.
Now, this post that you brought up, Julian, is from days ago, but just a few hours ago, Clarke issued a kind of a walkback, but it's delusional, because she's now calling the occupation a PSYOP, to scapegoat truckers for the inevitable supply chain disruptions.
She says, it's heartbreaking because, yes, the vast majority of people involved in the convoy showing up at the protests are sincere and peaceful and full of hope.
And of course the neo-nazis and the white supremacists are crisis actors, duh.
And then she goes on to talk about how the truckers are actually not intelligent because they don't understand that they should just, like, refuse the mandates.
They shouldn't show up so late to the game.
So, no matter how many news outlets have reported on it, the ethnonationalism on display is a false flag to her, and then, you know, so much for working class solidarity, because she implies that the occupiers are stupid for organizing, that they should just take off their masks, do what they want, they should shop differently,
Now, this is coming from someone who froze herself out of New Brunswick because she refused to mask up early on in the pandemic, then she fled to Costa Rica to complain about it, and then fled again to Nicaragua, maybe when it was clear that the Rico government wasn't going to allow her unvaxxed white kids to just run around on the beach.
So, Occupiers, there is Bauhauswife's advice for you.
Follow your own truth all the way to Nicaragua, and that's how you'll get your country back.
She has a course on that that you can purchase, by the way.
For Bitcoin.
I just want to say that this psychological and cognitive whiplash that influences this deep into Byzantine conspiracism, she's really exemplifying it here.
The hundred mile per hour hairpin turns into claiming current events that you would recently voice support for are actually part of a psy-op, a false flag, these people are crisis actors, etc.
The use of these types of ominous-like Alex Jones sort of terms, like PSYOP especially, indicates so many layers of paranoid thinking, right?
It's like one after another after another.
And it's also then the default fallacious argument that fuels a sense of heroic resistance against phantom enemies that are sort of everywhere crowding in.
No one can be trusted in the old reality Hall of Mirrors.
And Bauhaus' wife shows her cards here a bit, in case anyone was still not sure.
This is like full QAnon-level behavior.
It demands that followers ride that sickening rollercoaster of shifting loyalties and manic revelations along with her.
Yes, well, back to reality and groundedness a little bit with this interview with Elizabeth Simons of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
You can catch her earlier guest appearance on Conspiratuality Podcast in episode 79.
That was with journalist Dan Collin and video journalist and DJ Morgan Yu.
Elizabeth Simons of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
Welcome back to Conspirituality Podcast.
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
It's good to be back.
I wanted to start with a land acknowledgement for both of us.
I think we're both in Toronto right now, is that correct?
Correct, yes.
And that means that we're meeting on the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples.
And this is now the home to many diverse nations, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.
But, I also have to say that any land acknowledgement at this particular point in time takes on a double significance, maybe even more, when we're talking about an ethno-nationalist movement laying siege to Parliament Hill.
Ottawa, by the way, is located on the traditional unceded territory of Algonquin Anishinaabeg people, so it's like we're witnessing an occupation of an occupation.
And so I wanted to start with this big picture question, which is, to what degree is this convoy consistent with Canadian political history and sentiments, and also consistent with national attitudes towards the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the Indigenous?
Yeah, I mean, the irony of everything has not been lost on me over the last, I guess, what is it now, 11, 12,000 days?
I've lost track.
But yeah, I mean, we've seen Indigenous ceremony and culture co-opted and appropriated at the Ottawa Convoy, certainly.
We've seen some pretty offensive displays of how they interpret To support their alleged support of First Nations peoples through, you know, some pretty offensive interpretations of ceremony.
I know that there have been a lot of Indigenous speakers, influencers, activists who have been speaking out against it, and that's been really helpful to kind of contextualize for the larger audience, but
I think we also need to recognize that, you know, these occupiers, and I will call it an occupation and I will call them occupiers, they hold up black and indigenous and people of color persons in the movement as kind of a shield against criticism that the movement has racist elements.
So they're often kind of They're tokenized, for lack of a better word.
Right.
So they're taking up the space and disrupting the lives of people in diverse neighborhoods.
So if you look at Ottawa, down to the downtown core is a diverse neighborhood.
Winnipeg, where there is another convoy that has set up an occupation.
The downtown of Winnipeg is made up of BIPOC and working class people and families.
So it's really dismissive of the Indigenous people who came before us, whose land we're on.
And it's very dismissive of everyone else that this country has exploited for so long.
So I mean, it's co-opting the language of the labor movement, which as you know, people may or may not know, but Canada has a really long history of labor activism.
You know, you look at Winnipeg, for example, The 1919 strike, the general strike in Winnipeg, and then you look at them using labor language to kind of co-opt that sort of same feel, and there really isn't any of that at all.
So, there's a long history here of white settlers, European settlers, co-opting language, movements, people, and we're just kind of seeing that play out.
On a really kind of micro level versus the very macro level that we're used to seeing it.
Now, at the Anti-Hate Network, you've done this really great job of backgrounding the occupation.
And from those articles, which I'll post to the show notes and also a solid Jacobin piece, We learned that the leaders come from labor union disruptor movements, from anti-immigration activism, from Yellow Vest and Wexit factions.
A lot of them are coming from, you know, Alberta.
They staged a test run of the present action in 2019 with an event called United We Roll Can you take us back and fill us in on the parties and the personalities and the continuity between then and now?
It almost feels like, well I guess in a way we are kind of having this conversation again because I remember the last time that I was on your show we talked a little bit about how the COVID conspiracy movement can be directly linked to NTM 103 and then the Yellow Vests and We're seeing that here.
So, if you look at the people who are involved in the organizing of the convoy, of the occupation, some of them were involved in the United We Roll convoy in 2019.
So, we've got James Botter, journalist Justin Ling, I believe it was him who called James Botter the architect.
Of the current convoy.
And he founded Canada Unity, which is a big driving force behind it.
And Botter was actually an East Coast organizer for the 2019 convoy.
He was a Yellow Vest.
He has promoted, you know, QAnon messaging.
He has promoted quite significant and extreme Islamophobic messaging.
And so, His trajectory is quite, you know, it's quite obvious, it's quite overt.
There's other organizers like Tamara Litsch, who is probably most well known for organizing that rather large GoFundMe.
She was a Yellow Vest organizer in Kelowna, and I believe she also was on the 2019 convoy as well.
And, you know, she has shared anti-Muslim content on her social media.
podcast and influencers and whatnot.
Then you have Pat King, who I think most people are quite familiar with at this point.
He's made a lot of racist statements over the years, and he actually came to our attention during the 2019 convoy because he was a participant.
So I mean, it's, I have joked about how this is like you inevitably roll to like roll harder.
Like I've joked about that, but like, it's basically like, it's like a retox.
But obviously in this situation, because they've, they've scooped up the COVID conspiracy and they've latched onto that as kind of their, their message du jour.
Cause it does change, right?
To put it on the movement.
It has grown.
Obviously, to something that has far outsized what we saw in 2019.
Well, to speak to this continuation, but also the mingling of messages that I think show the historical connections, there are three rationalizing frameworks that organizers are deploying.
And these get parroted by the occupiers but also unfortunately in the mass media and in these unlikely yoga and wellness and new age spaces that we will have already talked about in the introduction to this interview.
So the rationalizations go like, you know, the first one would be This is all about unity and peace and standing up for everyone's rights.
We're an inclusive movement.
Another one would be, we are not anti-vax, we are pro-freedom.
And then thirdly, we have, and this speaks to something that you've already mentioned, this is a working class movement.
The salt of the earth are going to rise up and change what generations of libertards haven't been willing to change.
So, what can you tell us about these frameworks and how they stand up to scrutiny, but also, you know, how they're deployed?
If you look at the language being used there, it's all so benign sounding, right?
So, and that's certainly intentional.
And I mean, we saw these kind of buzzwords, unity, peace, inclusiveness, love.
We saw that back in the Yellow Vests.
The Yellow Vest Movement that kind of preceded this one.
Lots of talk about unity, peace and freedom.
But what does that really mean within the scope of what their actions are?
So we know from polling data that the majority of Canadians disagree with the demands of the occupiers.
So if the majority of Canadians disagree with their demands, it isn't inclusive because it doesn't take into consideration the fact that the majority of the country doesn't actually side with them.
Further, they actually dismiss that as impossible.
They dismiss it as fake news or a lie or as media manipulation.
And they just refuse to believe it, even though it's been reported in multiple outlets.
There's hard data to support it.
This came from polling data.
It wasn't just pulled out of thin air, but they just refuse to believe it because it doesn't confirm their own echo chamber.
You know, we're not anti-vaxx or pro-freedom is one of the most egregious things to me because their behavior in multiple cities suggests, strongly indicates otherwise.
I mean, we've seen so many reports of assaults, attacks, harassment against people just for wearing masks in public.
You know, there have been stories of
Probably one of the stories that upset me personally the most was the story of the women who were at the shelter for victims of domestic violence and women that were staying at the shelter who had left arguably the worst experience of their lives and are trying to rebuild were outside and wearing their mask and trying to go about their business and they were accosted by people, by men
who made them feel extremely unsafe.
I believe one had to go to the hospital for panic attacks.
And I mean, whose freedom are we talking about here?
Because it doesn't seem that they care about anyone else's, you know, quote unquote, freedom, but their own.
So that, I mean, that was a very upsetting story for me to read.
And yeah, the working class movement, I think, is so interesting.
So I know earlier you had mentioned the piece in Jacobin, So Emily Leatham, who's a wonderful journalist, generally works for the Press Progress.
She does a wonderful newsletter called Shift Work on labor.
If folks haven't signed up for it, go to Press Progress and do that.
So she did a wonderful piece on this in Jacobin, and she basically tore down the idea that it's a grassroots labor movement.
So a few things to consider, the fact that there's a large number of the people involved are not truckers and have no connection to the trucking industry, but they've instead co-opted the messaging of a labor movement to advance their own agenda.
Some of the truckers that we've seen are actually owner-operators, and they don't suffer the same kind of labor exploitation that we see in the trucking industry, which disproportionately targets South Asian workers with things like wage theft.
So, I mean, it's a white movement, it's an owner-operator movement, and it's organized by people with a history of being anti-union.
So, I mean, certainly there's absolutely no way that I think it can be called a labor movement.
And then if you take into consideration one example where the Coots Alberta blockade, so there's a blockade currently at the US and Alberta US and Alberta border at Cootes, Alberta, and that blockade left up to 100 South Asian Canadian truckers stranded in Montana for two days without food in the middle of a blizzard.
But these are workers, so how is it a workers' movement when it's treating workers this way?
I'm wondering if the Ottawa citizens who are trying to go after the insurance contracts of the drivers, if they're aware of that and if that is actually more significant for owner-operators than it would be for hired drivers.
Because they own the insurance, they have to be insured.
Exactly.
The insurance with owner-operators would be theirs, and it would be underwritten for them.
Whereas if they're a hired driver, they don't really have anything to do with the insurance, right?
It's not their liability on the line.
So there are some very convoluted memes and messages that are flowing through the Occupier discourse.
For instance, I've learned that Hong Kong, as printed out in a hashtag, is a common neo-Nazi code for Heil Hitler.
And it just happens to slide right onto the air horn usage mobilized by the truckers to drive Ottawa citizens mad.
Now, of course, this is all cloaked in what you explained to us in your last visit with regard to irony poisoning.
Do you have any clues into how many occupiers are really aware of these particular threads and influences?
Yeah, that's a really good question, and it's probably a good opportunity to also explain that this is not a movement of just hateful people.
This is also a movement of people who believe that they're doing good, as misguided as they may be.
They may not be racist themselves, and a lot of them are just unwilling to accept what they've decided to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with.
Right.
Yeah, the honk-honk thing, it's kind of a longtime meme.
It comes from the honkler, which is kind of like a clown version of It's a version of a version of a version of Pepe the Frog.
So it kind of comes out of that a little bit, but it's a different version of it.
So it's an evolution of it.
It's dressed like a clown.
It's got like a clown wig on and a red nose, and it's the Honkler.
So we've seen the Honk Honk with Most specifically with a network that we monitor called Canada First, which is a young white nationalist, ethno-nationalist, white nationalist, racist, anti-Semitic network that is made up of what's called Groypers.
Groypers are the followers of American white supremacist Nick Fuentes, and they're basically like the newer version of the alt-right.
So after Charlottesville, when the alt-right had a huge PR problem, that was kind of when the groyper movement started to surface.
So they changed their language a little bit, you know, they won't call themselves a white nationalist, they'll call themselves a paleoconservative.
It all means the exact same thing, but they're sort of like eschewing certain language to make themselves appear more palatable, and their goal is really to obtain political power.
So we saw in their chats, like one specific example was Tyler Russell, who's the leader of Canada First, and really it's just like, Like a, like a giant tiger rip off of Nick Fuentes.
He put out a post on Telegram and it said, can I get an HH and then in brackets honk honk for the truckers.
And you know, the comments are full of, you know, HH brother, HH.
And then, you know, one person said, oh my God, I just realized what that meant.
And so what we're looking at here are people who are kind of subverting the movement in order to introduce more extreme messaging.
Now that doesn't mean that the majority of occupiers and convoy participants are even aware that this is happening.
I would argue very few are.
I would argue very few understand That what they're doing is actually bringing great joy to the white nationalists and the racists.
And I imagine they're not aware that...
Deploying the hashtag also puts them into horizontal connection in their social media environments with the exact Facebook groups that and the telegram groups that that are seeking recruits as well.
Absolutely.
Because we've seen we've seen just the glee across the spaces that we watch of the people that are hardline racist and anti-semitic and white nationalists.
We've seen just the absolute glee that they have over people.
Introducing honk honk into, you know, mainstream, you know, quote unquote, mainstream discourse.
So it's kind of, it's not dissimilar to, you know, back in the days of the yellow vest, when people would share anti-Semitic memes or tropes, and they really wouldn't have any idea of what it was they were sharing.
And I do feel like a lot of these people don't understand the adjacency that they have to these kind of hate elements.
The problem is that when you tell them that this is happening, they don't believe you.
They don't want to hear it.
And I think because of the fact that these kind of hate elements cannot be disentangled from the convoy, from the occupation at all, you can't disentangle it at this point.
Like, at what point do they push them out?
At what point do they take a stand?
We don't see anyone attempting to do that.
You know, your description is making me think of a clip of some citizen journalism film that was taken from the occupation in Ottawa, where This really young, maybe 19 years old, very fresh-faced boy with a cowboy hat on is doing his, you know, very diligent work and filling up his jerry cans out of a larger diesel can.
And when the journalist asks him what he's doing, he gives this very earnest and heartfelt explanation about, I'm just lending a hand, it's the least that I can do, our rights are under assault.
He gives the entire kind of, you know, Jeffersonian pledge in his very simple terms.
It's extraordinary to think of how That's being preyed upon by Language and memes and links and just this whole network of much more radicalizing influences.
It's like I'm looking at people who are a kind of fresh meat to a very vigorous movement.
Yeah, it's true.
And I think that's really the danger of this movement as a whole is that These people are right for that sort of susceptibility, and they're right for that sort of, you know, intervention.
It doesn't take a long time for somebody to go from, my rights are under assault, to blaming who they perceive is behind it.
You know, which in this case, depending on who you ask, it could be Jews, it could be Muslims, it could be globalists.
But even that term globalist, like they talk about, they talk about the global cabal, they talk about globalists.
Well, you know what, who are globalists?
Like, who are they really?
We're talking about largely Jews, right?
Same thing with, you know, the, you know, this has turned into a communist country.
Well, no one, no one is actually afraid of communism.
Like, this is not a communist country, nor are we at risk of becoming one.
They're talking about the trope of Jews creating communism.
And the trope of Bolsheviks in World War II.
So, they're using this kind of language to pull these people in.
And these people who, you know, maybe are lacking in some civics knowledge, maybe are lacking in some political knowledge, in terms of theory.
They are having a hard time kind of parsing what it is that they're absorbing and what it is they're consuming.
And if they're not questioning who they're standing with and what they're consuming and what they're absorbing, it's very, very easy to get sucked into this kind of worldview and ideology.
Well, moving to the reality on the ground, it's extremely fluid.
We're recording this on Tuesday morning, I think February 8th.
And I'm sure things will change before we publish in two days.
But two days ago, a provincial judge ruled in favor of an injunction against air horn usage, which Has to come as such a relief to Ottawa residents, many of whom haven't slept in those 10 days.
There have been some limited attempts made by the Ottawa Police Services to stop the flow of fuel and supplies into the encampment.
Now, we don't know how long the real hardcore elements are going to stay.
We do know that some occupiers have, as you said, assaulted Ottowans for simply wearing masks.
You mentioned that women have been stalked and harassed.
We also know that journalists are being attacked.
There's feces being thrown at houses that are flying pride flags.
The social services for the unhoused and the women in shelter that you mentioned have been disrupted.
And then people who depend on services and deliveries to the downtown core have essentially been cut off.
And of course, we've also seen Nazi, Gadsden and Confederate flags waved around.
What is your current, knowing that it will change, but your current material assessment of the situation today and where it's likely to go?
It's interesting that there are now some like alleged crackdowns, and I say alleged because There hasn't really been much that we've seen in terms of actual crackdowns at this point at the time of recording.
And what's really interesting is that there have been some pretty overt attempts to provoke altercations with law enforcement.
Like there have been, you know, we know that there are people on the ground who are attempting to kind of troll law enforcement.
You know, filling jerrycans with water and other fluids and trying to, like, go to the cops and to, you know, attempting to arrest them or charge them or, you know, take away the jerrycans.
And we know that there's this kind of, like, trolling elements that are on the ground.
We know that there are people who are attempting to, you know, to cause provocation.
Because of that, and because of the logistical support, these people have truly dug in for the long haul.
No pun intended, but they've dug in for the long haul.
And the logistics and material support by way of supplies they have is just massive.
The videos of the tents, Showing like the food supply and the diesel supply and the gas supply and it's just, it's wild.
And so when you take into consideration the amount of work that they've done to really dig in for the long term, plus the attempts to provoke.
I know on Monday night there was a report of 100 people surrounding one law enforcement officer who was attempting to arrest someone for carrying a gas can.
So, I mean, it's going to get worse before it gets better, in my opinion.
I don't think they're going to go down without a fight.
This is also considering the fact that these people have said consistently that law enforcement is on their side.
Law enforcement, the military, RCMP, everyone's on their side in their view.
And so to see law enforcement maybe turn on them is going to create a A break in that sort of dynamic, whether it's a one-way relationship or not, it's going to create kind of a break in that.
So, the city and the law enforcement in Ottawa has set up a situation where any pushback against them will not be taken well.
And there's a real likelihood of it escalating in further escalation before it's over.
Now, whether that escalation is Aimed at law enforcement, whether it's aimed at the residents, I think we can all agree that the most at risk are the residents of CentreTown, of downtown Ottawa.
They're the ones who are at risk of feeling the brunt of this, right?
Because they're the ones who have been dealing with this for days on end.
They're the ones who are likely to be attacked just walking down the street.
And I think that in the end, It's not going to go well.
I think in the end there could potentially be violence.
I think it's a powder keg.
Just to go back to this claim that the police or the military are on our side, Pat King released a number of statements about how, you know, 50% of the Ottawa police services have turned in their badges.
Of course, it's total bullshit.
But it's, but this is a very common sort of QAnon related fantasy that, you know, beneath the kind of administrative shell of the deep state, there is a, you know, quote unquote, patriotic, militarized source of might that's actually going to come to the aid of truth and justice in their view.
And so that seems like a very common, I don't like almost mythological belief that The freedoms that we fought for abroad during the Second World War and so on are actually here and still active and they're going to come to our aid.
It's fascinating how that gets repeated.
It is, and it's consistent, right?
Because it does kind of help them bring people on side.
Because if you're an individual who is consuming this sort of conspiracy content, And you're told like, hey, 50% of the Ottawa police side with us.
If you are not going to be critical and think that through, you're going to go, oh, well, maybe I'm on the right side then.
Because these people really do, a lot of these people anyway, really do It's actually just occurring to me how dangerous a rumor that is actually because it puts the occupiers in the position, if they believe it, that the police that are going to resist them Are somehow in, you know, losing favor, or they're in a dwindling minority or something like that.
And it's probably going to encourage a more aggressive posture on the side of the occupiers.
Absolutely.
I hadn't really put that together, right?
Yeah, it absolutely would.
Because the cops who come to arrest them are actually the bad cops, or the inauthentic cops, or the cops who are on the losing side of history.
But the real cops will come to their aid, right?
That's right.
The law enforcement that's acting against them is part of the collusion, part of the conspiracy against them.
Whereas the good cops, the real cops, are the ones that are going to come in and save the day.
And this isn't helped by the fact that there have been law enforcement coming out in support of them.
Well, I wanted to turn to that, actually, with regard to the police response.
Because there are at least three things I think we can say about the preparedness and the response.
I mean, first of all, they obviously weren't prepared and their initial stance was appeasement, which has been a disaster.
Secondly, you know, that appeasement stance is completely inconsistent and galling in relation to how First Nations protests over Pipeline projects, for example, are met with absolute brutality.
And then as you're just starting to mention here, anecdotally, there are reports of Ottawa Police Service's officers fraternizing with occupiers.
And these incidents might indicate a peacekeeping response or instinct, or that officers sympathize with the action.
What's your take on that?
Yeah, well, in addition to the Ottawa police who have done photo ops with the occupiers, there have also been videos coming out from other Ottawa, not sorry, forgive that, not Ottawa, but Ontario police.
You know, a few of them have done like, you know, in the car selfie videos where they share support for the convoy.
And I know there was just one that came out a couple of days ago of an Alberta police officer, a former Alberta RCMP officer.
who came out in support of it.
And my understanding is that the head of security for the convoy as a whole is a former RCP officer.
Yeah, he is.
There's a lot of, plus you have the police on guard organization, which is made up of current and former officers.
So there is police support.
And I think that that is actually quite typical of a populist right-wing, far-right movement.
You know, it's typical because it bolstered, the movement bolsters their already existing ideas of power, right?
Right.
And it, you know, you tend to see police officers siding with the far right in many cases, if not overtly, then just kind of like a soft side, because they will come down harder on counter protests against the far right than they will on the far right themselves, historically.
So that kind of tracks, right?
But yeah, the issues that you mentioned, they're absolutely connected.
Because the movement isn't really about disrupting capital, which is kind of another reason why this can't be described as a labor movement.
Because it's not about disrupting capital, it isn't treated the same as a movement led by BIPOC people, which is about disrupting capital.
Land back, you know, things like that.
Water rights.
So while these people are permitted to bring in saunas and build small houses, police are using extreme force to tear down encampments.
If you look at the side-by-side of Lamport in Toronto over the summer, the horrendous violence was used against Um, the people there defending the houseless population.
And then you look at what's happening here.
Right.
Just to note there, there, I think the numbered of unhoused people in Lamport Stadium was about 14.
Uh, and they must have sent in something like 150 or 200, uh, you know, riot geared police officers.
Um, and the scenes of brutality were incredible.
They, they beat the shit out of them.
They beat the shit out of them.
Out of the people there to defend them.
The people there to defend the community.
So you see the kind of juxtaposition between the two situations, right?
And, you know, you see these people who are allowed to have blockades disrupting regular people's lives versus the blockade disrupting capital that is quickly taken down by force, right?
And there's really, like, There's a matter of movement intent, but it's also, it's just a matter of race.
Like when you have a majority of white people who are, you know, Various backgrounds, but, you know, white individuals.
The enforcement has not been the same.
It's not even close.
And that's not to say that I think law enforcement needs to be as brutal with the occupiers as they are with other social movements.
That's not the case at all.
I actually don't feel that should be happening whatsoever.
I don't know that there is a policing solution here.
It's quite funny because everyone was quite upset about, she slowly, who said, There is no policing solution to this.
But I actually don't disagree with him, but probably for very different reasons.
Right, right.
I mean, it was a very transparent statement and kind of extraordinary to hear from a police chief anywhere in the world, actually.
Yeah, it was.
And I mean, I know that folks are desperate and calling for law enforcement to crack down, but I don't You know, when we compare the two responses, I really don't want it to be the interpretation that I or people are calling for that same level of brutality to be used on The occupiers, because that's not the case.
I don't think that level of brutality should be used on anyone anywhere.
It's just that the reality of the response does need to be addressed.
But yeah, I mean, it was quite funny to hear Chief Slobodny say that, because I don't think he's wrong, but I think it's probably for very different reasons.
So yeah, it's It's not been shocking, though, to anyone who watches these movements to see the difference in response, for sure.
It's not been shocking.
Well, turning now to the political response, newly former Conservative Party leader Erin O'Toole certainly was no friend of immigrants or equitable public health care or anything short of a quite right-wing agenda.
Even he has been cancelled by the occupier faction of his party because the interim Conservative Party and opposition leader is now Candace Bergen.
She is a MAGA hat wearing Pentecostal, maybe former Pentecostal, I don't know.
She grew up in a church who Went out for selfies with the occupiers just days before being sworn in.
Now, my sense is that the Canadian political right is actually more firmly and more openly aligning with the occupiers than even the GOP is aligning with QAnon south of the border.
Do you think that's fair?
I think the convoy is more approachable and palatable, and it can be more easily dressed in language that appeals to the base of conservatives.
Yeah, I do think it's fair.
You know, also given that the GOP has issues with QAnon, and to a degree, that's now a large part of their base.
But they are quite different things.
And there is obviously some crossover.
Like, I'm not sure if folks are aware of Romana Digilo, who's like the self-professed Queen of Canada.
Well, she's QAnon adjacent.
There's been a lot of digital flags seen.
There's been QAnon, you know, mottos and signs being spotted.
So there is some crossover, but they are quite different in the sense that their goals are different.
But yeah, I would say it's fair that the political right is siding with them.
I think that A big part of that is the conservatives are kind of hemorrhaging supporters to the more extreme factions.
They're hemorrhaging support to, like, the PBC and to the conspiracy movement, and so they're doing what they can to kind of bring that back.
Whether Bergen herself is actually a believer in these conspiracies, I mean, in my opinion, she's more extreme than O'Toole was.
I think O'Toole was Looking for an opportunity to stop the bleed, but certainly they're speaking to them and they're attempting to kind of win them back to their side, which, if we've seen how that played out in the U.S., right, the GOP attempted to do that, to bring people back to the Republican side, and they basically lost their party to the conspiracy theorists.
Now, CBC's Frontburner produced an excellent review of the internal Zello communications.
This is kind of like a walkie-talkie app of the occupiers, and it showed that, as with the hardcore conspiracy theorists that we cover on this podcast, many seem to live in a completely alternate reality.
They earnestly believe in the organizer's pitch.
We've spoken a little about this so far.
What do you think they need most to help them regain reality after indoctrination?
I mean, it's a really hard road to travel to try to bring people back from that ledge.
And I think the most important thing Unfortunately, the labor does fall on friends and family, people that love them, because those are the people that you want to bring your loved ones back, right?
So I think the most important thing is to provide them with a safe place to land, right?
They've been brought into that movement.
Probably buy a soft landing pad into those ideas.
We need to bring them back using the same kind of tactic.
We need to let them know that they're welcome, they're valued, and they're loved.
We need to make space for their grievances, while maybe misguided.
Their grievances are still based in real anxieties.
So if they feel a certain way and they believe something that is, you know, absolutely untrue.
What are the anxieties that are causing them to believe that?
Why are they trying to make sense of a complex world using these conspiracy theories?
And giving them that kind of safe place to explore that while not enabling their ideas is really important.
And also just using whatever opportunity you can to connect with their loved ones.
Like, you know, go for a walk.
Go do an activity.
You know, if it's summer, go for a picnic.
Go do anything you can.
Connect with nature.
You know, connect with each other.
And hopefully we find that as these people develop a stronger anchor to reality through their loved ones, that Veil of conspiracy thinking can kind of be pierced a little bit.
But it's when they are stuck in their echo chambers, when they are experiencing nothing but confirmation bias, that's when they get harder and harder to reach.
So we need to provide them with an opportunity to escape from that.
And connect with reality, even if they don't realize that's what's happening, by just, you know, being present with them, not talking about the conspiracies, going and doing an activity, and being a safe place for them to explore their grievances with.
You know, I almost want to rewind our interview to the point at which we were talking about policing solutions or non-solutions, because in light of what you've just said, any kind of aggressive crackdown measure is bound to increase the sense of Isolation and persecution and acrimony that is actually fueling the occupation.
Absolutely.
I mean, my brain very naively goes to, you know, well, why don't we call the Ontario College of Psychotherapists and send the troops in that way?
But you're talking, I mean, you're talking about family members, but I'm wondering if anybody I'm just wondering aloud here if anybody has theorized non-policing interventions that could somehow help organize and facilitate the repair of family bonds that way.
As I'm saying that, it sounds like a crazy idea, but I'm wondering if there's anything out there that you're aware of.
I'm not, but I'm also aware that this is a very New phenomenon.
We've not seen conspiracy to this extent before kind of widespread through society.
I don't think there's anyone in Canada that hasn't been touched by it at some point, right?
We all know somebody who's gone down this road and to varying degrees of severity.
I think that the obviously like there there is psychotherapy and clinical approaches to people exiting hate movements.
I think that the same approaches could potentially be used here.
Um, I'm not a clinical therapist, so I can't really speak to that too, too much, but, um, I certainly think that there's, there's space for, for a clinical approach.
Um, I just know that when it comes to conspiracy, people are more going to be more likely to, to accept concern from someone they have an existing relationship with rather than some stranger who says there might be something wrong with you.
Let's talk about it.
So, and yeah, you're totally right.
Like any kind of crackdown is going to, they're set to fail, right?
Because any kind of crackdown is going to further entrench them.
But they've got this list of demands that is completely unreasonable and is never going to happen in a million years.
So they've already set themselves up for that kind of entrenchment.
Right?
When they don't get their demands, they're going to be further entrenched.
When it's cracked down, it's going to be further entrenched.
And so there really isn't a way out of this where they're not further entrenched.
I think when it comes down to the actual occupation in Ottawa specifically, we have to prioritize the community.
And that is why I understand the call for more law enforcement.
I just think long term, that's not the answer.
Yeah, I mean... It's hard.
People say all the time, what do we do about it?
And it's like, If I knew what to do about it, we would have already done it.
But, you know, we're three people.
Our organization is three people.
And we aren't able to kind of come up with these answers.
So, Elizabeth, can you imagine A situation in which there could be a trusted public official.
I mean, maybe we've already gone off the rails there with regard to the occupiers, but I'm just thinking about how if somebody from the public health infrastructure of one of our three levels of government was able to go to the podium and say, you know, The people who are occupying Ottawa right now, they need their families' care.
And if anybody is out there that can speak to them, who can welcome them back home, who can support them as they try to get back to work, that would be really good.
Can you imagine?
Can you imagine anybody who would have the authority or the credibility to do that?
Would that be a possible approach?
Because, I mean, we are starting to talk about the occupiers in public health terms, I think, too.
Yeah, and I think it is a public health problem.
Unfortunately, I don't think that would work, and here's why.
The second at a mouthpiece for the government tells people to welcome their loved ones with open arms and work with them to bring them back to reality.
That's then built into their delusion.
Right?
That's now part of the conspiracy.
So the loved ones who say, Hey, Uncle John, you know, I'm really worried about you.
Let's go for a walk and talk about how you're feeling.
Suddenly, you know, well, you're in cahoots with the government mouthpiece who told you to do this.
This is just your attempts to, you know, subvert.
So I mean, what I've seen and what I've heard are just countless great ideas in terms of how to reach our people.
But And I hate, and I don't really want to be kind of the naysayer.
It's just, I don't know.
I think this is really, this has to be a personal level, like has to be, has to be approached without any kind of government intervention, because at its core, it's an anti-government movement.
I mean, to be frank, as a cult researcher, I kind of knew the answer to my own question, and I'm indulging in a kind of wishful thinking, I guess.
A very core principle in cultic dynamics is articulated by people like John Jalalich, calling the high demand group or the cultic group, a self-sealing system where everything refers back to the charismatic authority that's leading it.
There are no new sources, no new sources of information that are permitted.
Everything is suspicious and a potential point of betrayal if it starts to question the direction in which the group member is going.
So yeah, and cult researchers are just as stumped as everybody else, to be honest, when it comes to You know, how people get free.
And they also default to very difficult to legislate or to, you know, create legal frameworks around disbanding cults.
We really need psychological long term psychological and family therapeutic interventions.
So the story is the same there, too.
Yeah.
And it's so interesting to me that those kind of hallmarks of cultic behavior Is also kind of echoed in the hallmarks of what one would consider to be, you know, indicative of rising neo-fascism.
Right?
Like you've got the same kind of idea where outside media is not to be trusted.
The media is the enemy.
You know, only accepted forms of communication are allowed.
Or, you know, They kind of build these echo chambers, and they not just discount everything else as not factual.
They label anything else as a danger, right?
And they couch that in freedom.
They couch that in, it's a threat to democracy.
It's a threat to freedom.
And I think that it's so interesting how that, you know, we've got, you know, like Umberto Eco's, you know, Umberto echoes list of, you know, the, the indicators of fascism.
Plus you've got the, the indicators of, of cultic behavior and thinking, and they actually go side by side in a lot of ways.
Well, there is a concrete short-term solution, or at least strategy that you and your colleagues are starting to work on.
Uh, and that is enhanced social media regulations.
So I'm just going to quote from a recent article.
Your group writes, the people supporting this far-right occupation are both victims and perpetrators of misinformation.
Most of them find their way to the movement beginning on mainstream social media platforms.
The algorithms notice they engage with conspiracy content and far-right content, feed them more, and then suggest groups for them to join.
Fellow travelers say the unvaccinated are being persecuted on the same level as Holocaust victims, and that drastic action is necessary.
Eventually, they're angry enough to drive to Ottawa.
It will be difficult, if not impossible, for members of the intertwined anti-vax and far-right movement to come back to reality.
New people are finding them every day.
But with online harms legislation, we may be able to disrupt that pipeline by making it harder for dis- and misinformation to find people.
We may be able to build a fence of protection, both online and offline, around the groups that the far-right slanders, harasses, threatens, and attacks.
We have to try.
So can you walk us through what online harms legislation would look like and how it would be enforced and what the main obstacles are to enshrining it in law?
That's probably a whole other episode.
So the government is looking at advancing online harms legislation.
It's still kind of up in the air in terms of how it's going to look.
But what we have done is we have kind of presented an approach that we feel would work the best just based on our experience and And our conversation with other, you know, organizations and people that kind of in this in this world.
So we've been socializing something that we call the ombudsperson approach.
It is finding support.
We are finding that other civil liberties groups are And civil society groups are more open to that than what had previously been in the online harms technical paper before the holidays, before the election.
So what we're kind of seeing here is an approach that would be novel for Canada, but has, to my understanding, has been used elsewhere, or at least is being explored elsewhere.
So in the approach that we're kind of proposing, there would be an ombudsperson with an office, obviously with staff, who would be empowered with investigatory powers that can compel evidence and testimony from large platforms, social platforms, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube.
They would be empowered to make recommendations while upholding charter values.
So they would not have such ability that they would be able to override the charter.
It would all be within charter values.
But they would be able to make recommendations to these companies in order to make changes regarding things like algorithms, because algorithmic content is one of the biggest drivers of this sort of downward spiral, right?
So if the companies don't follow the recommendations, the ombudsperson can then apply to a court to make those recommendations into orders.
That approach, we feel, would honor the Charter.
It would honor freedom of expression.
But it would also allow us to kind of nip in the bud any kind of social media behaviors and activities that are actually driving people to these movements.
Because it is.
Social media companies are driving people to these movements.
We know for a fact that they look to create rage.
We know for a fact that they push this content on people.
If you start a, you know, a mega Facebook account within like a day, you have nothing but mega content.
Same thing with QAnon, same thing with any kind of far right.
All of these social platforms are just havens for this kind of material and conspiracy theories.
And they don't really have any incentive to kind of pull back from that because that's really where they make their money.
So we need to legislate them in order to make better choices that are better for the public health.
And we feel that the Ombudsperson approach is probably the best way to do that.
That has not been accepted by the government.
This is just like what we're suggesting is going to happen.
There are some things we like in the current proposal.
There are some things that we want to improve in the current proposal.
And we've kind of got that all laid out in the article that you've mentioned.
But we are really pushing forward the idea of the Ombudsperson approach as kind of a best of both worlds and an option that would allow us to make real, concrete, positive changes while still upholding charter rights.
Because we know that with the last proposal that came out, the last technical paper for online harms that came up before the election, there was a lot of concern from civil liberties groups about overreach.
So we do feel that this kind of addresses that, but we have yet to see what's going to happen with that.
Well, I guess it leads really to my last question, which is that, I mean, it sounds like a very forward-thinking and vigorous campaign that you're engaged in.
Is that a hopeful project?
And what more generally feels hopeful amidst all of this mess?
The most hopeful thing has been that The general populace is starting to realize the problem that we have.
It's been kind of feeling like we've been beating our heads against the wall for the last couple of years.
And there's been article after article in mainstream media and otherwise.
There's been podcast after podcast.
And I don't think people have realized until now the mess that we're in.
And I feel that people are also starting to realize that the approach to these people that we've taken to now We as a society, where, you know, folks have mocked them and made fun of them, that is maybe not working.
And I think people are starting to take it more seriously.
And I feel that now that we're kind of coming out of, you know, two years of pandemic, and people are starting to realize that something has to be done, on the ground organizing is starting to see a bit of a resurgence.
Vancouver did a wonderful thing, where Vancouver, when their convoys started to, you know, make its way down to where they were going to be staged, Vancouver residents waited until they were like two kilometers down a road with no side streets to turn off and used their bicycles to block them.
So the residents use their bicycles to block the convoy.
And then the convoy participants had to reverse two kilometers to get off of the street, which I just thought was a wonderful tactic.
And so I hope that we see more of that.
I hope that we see more creative solutions to the problem, more community centered, creative solutions to the problem.
And I think that's really what makes me hopeful, is seeing people kind of coming together and brainstorming about what can we do, not just about the convoy and the immediate, but also what do we do going forward?
Export Selection