The attacks on the Freedom Convoy have escalated over the last week, both from the government and from a media complex that has suddenly decided it hates protest movements. On Tuesday, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau accused a Jewish MP of supporting Nazis because she disagreed with his authoritarian use of the Emergencies Act, and right on cue, press outlets are now following suit with that theme.
According to The Washington Post, the Freedom Convoy is “rooted” in Canada’s “colonial history.” Worse, the desire for basic freedom that underscores the protest is itself a “key component of white supremacy.”
The convoy has surprised onlookers in the United States and Canada, both because of the explicitly racist and violent perspectives of some of the organizers and because the action seems to violate norms of Canadian “politeness.” But the convoy represents the extension of a strain of Canadian history that has long masked itself behind “peacefulness” or “unity”: settler colonialism. It is not incidental that this latest expression of white supremacy is emerging amid a public health crisis. The history of Canadian settler colonialism and public health demonstrates how both overt white-supremacist claims and seemingly more inert nationalistic claims about “unity” and “freedom” both enable and erase ongoing harm to marginalized communities.
Note that the author of the piece never actually provides any evidence that “some of the organizers” are “explicitly” racist and violent. You’d think a charge that serious would come with at least one example, but who needs proof when it comes to smearing an entire movement of working-class individuals who just want to be able to ride in their trucks without the government interfering?
She then goes from that completely unproven, slanderous contention to confidently labeling the Freedom Convoy as an “expression of white supremacy.” According to her, people protesting COVID mandates in 2022 is just an extension of “settler colonialism” that began hundreds of years prior in Canada.
After much bloviating along those lines, the article eventually gets to the thrust of its contention: That freedom itself is white supremacy.
The primarily White supporters of the Freedom Convoy argue that pandemic mandates infringe upon their constitutional rights to freedom. The notion of “freedom” was historically and remains intertwined with Whiteness, as historian Tyler Stovall has argued. The belief that one’s entitlement to freedom is a key component of White supremacy. This explains why the Freedom Convoy members see themselves as entitled to freedom, no matter the public health consequences to those around them.
Yes, the supporters of the Freedom Convoy are primarily white. Do you know what Canada is? It’s a primarily white country. Yet, in the woke-sphere that these lunatics call home, the value and legitimacy of a person’s speech are directly tied to their race. According to this author and this “historian,” the fact that a white person is asking for freedom is simply proof of their white supremacy, and they must be destroyed.
In simpler times, we’d all call such a charge overtly racist because it is. But in today’s insane political environment, that kind of prejudice gets you printed in The Washington Post and lauded as an “expert.”
As to the notion that the Freedom Convoy doesn’t care about “public health consequences,” that’s false as well. Most of them are vaccinated, and of those that aren’t, many have natural immunity. Still, the vaccines do not stop the spread of COVID-19, thus, there are no “public health consequences” stemming from truckers not getting the vaccine. That doesn’t matter, though. They are white so their speech must be deemed invalid.
It’s incredibly disturbing to see racism being mainstreamed like this just because it targets the “right” people in the eyes of the left. Society can’t survive when groups of individuals are placed under such strictures simply because of the color of their skin. Freedom is freedom. It is not a dog whistle and it is not white supremacy to desire it.
To be frank, this article in the Post is heading down a very dark path. If freedom is white supremacy and any white person who desires it is societally objectionable, that opens to door to all kinds of mistreatment, up to and including violence. What’s in that article is the kind of framing that has led to many historical atrocities. Such thinking is not normal, and it should not be treated as such just because the media are attempting to normalize it for political gain. Rather, that kind of racism is gross and dangerous, and it should be opposed with vigor.
Author: Bonchie
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