"Freedom" marches/rallies

[bluethrunthru]

Just watched the BBC News and coverage of Canadian border bridges which is now severely hampering cross border trade....... I think the idea for the Canadian truckers that things will just reset to them and they will be welcomed in the USA after costing US truckers and truck stop owners serious financial damage is fanciful

 

[Dax777]

I doubt I'd support their aims and imagine that there is a fair chance they contain elements linked to the lunatic Trump/QAnon/Libertarian lunatics that have gripped certain elements of the US.

However, as long as they protest within reason and without malice, they have a right to do so.

Obviously the next part is pure speculation, but I would also have big money on most of their number not being similarly sympathetic to the right to protest/match for climate protestors, black rights or anything they consider 'liberal'.

You'd probably find that you are wrong. What you might be right about though is that they generally are opposed to violent riots.

So if they get violent, they should get jail. Same rules, whether it's Truckers, Climate Resist, or Black lives... Once you start burning, you should get some time.

 

[Postman Pep]

You'd probably find that you are wrong. What you might be right about though is that they generally are opposed to violent riots.

So if they get violent, they should get jail. Same rules, whether it's Truckers, Climate Resist, or Black lives... Once you start burning, you should get some time.

Have you been amongst them doing a vox pop or something .... maybe a Dax pop :)

 

[Dax777]

Views vary based on the cause being championed. One is a group of people glueing themselves to roads over climate change (sympathetic), the other is a group of people blocking roads with trucks as part of an anti-vaxx campaign fuelled (no pun intended) by foreign cash (not sympathetic).

Personally, I’m all for a spot of civil disobedience irrespective of the cause, but if the cause is one I’m not sympathetic too (anti-vaxx, fascism, hurting animals), then I’m not going to support them. Sure, they are free to protest, but equally I’m free to oppose them. I’m not obliged to support the aims of every protest movement.

Calling it an Antivax Campaign is a bit disingenuous. It's an Anti-Mandate campaign. It's every bit as sympathetic as any other campaign. Perhaps even more so. Seeing as the solutions to the campaign demands are actually within the control of those being protested. Unlike say, climate change protests in say Manchester. The problem won't be fixed no matter what England does. As you can't control what China or say Nigeria does about climate.



Now, if you think government usurpation of more power is great if you agree with what the government does with the power. There are those who don't. Even if they agree with the policy of the government.

I always point out the Lawyers who argued to shutdown Joe Biden's Vaccine Mandates we're both triple vaxxed.

A good portion of the Anti-Mandate folks are fine with vaccines and are vaccinated. They just aren't cool with irrational mandates that make no sense. From Mask Mandates, to forced vaccinations. It's all wrong and autocratic.

.'

 

[Dax777]

Have you been amongst them doing a vox pop or something .... maybe a Dax pop :)

Nope, but I actually watch the news and listen to the interviews covering the protests.

 

[Postman Pep]

Nope, but I actually watch the news and listen to the interviews covering the protests.

Dont suppose you've got any clips where the libertarian trucker meets the climate protestor glued to the road where they amicably agree to disagree in the name of the right to peacefully protest?

 

[Dax777]

Dont suppose you've got any clips where the libertarian trucker meets the climate protestor glued to the road where they amicably agree to disagree in the name of the right to peacefully protest?

That'd be something. Wouldn't it?

 

[bluethrunthru]

I am sure that this would be happening in London but all UK trucks are stuck in lorry parks in Kent

 

[billymumphrey]

Calling it an Antivax Campaign is a bit disingenuous. It's an Anti-Mandate campaign. It's every bit as sympathetic as any other campaign. Perhaps even more so. Seeing as the solutions to the campaign demands are actually within the control of those being protested. Unlike say, climate change protests in say Manchester. The problem won't be fixed no matter what England does. As you can't control what China or say Nigeria does about climate.



Now, if you think government usurpation of more power is great if you agree with what the government does with the power. There are those who don't. Even if they agree with the policy of the government.

I always point out the Lawyers who argued to shutdown Joe Biden's Vaccine Mandates we're both triple vaxxed.

A good portion of the Anti-Mandate folks are fine with vaccines and are vaccinated. They just aren't cool with irrational mandates that make no sense. From Mask Mandates, to forced vaccinations. It's all wrong and autocratic.

.'

I would argue that merely calling it an anti-mandate campaign is also disingenuous. All you need to do is scratch beneath the surface to uncover an intersection of the worst of the worst of conspiracy theory rhetoric underpinning a lot of what they are saying. To paint it as simply 'sympathetic as any other campaign' and that they're "fine with vaccines and are vaccinated' is clearly misguided.

I know this because I have been dealing with these people in Canberra all this last week. I live 100 metres away from one of the locations they've protested. I see and interact with them everyday. So I respectfully put to you, that what you're spouting through your 'informed analysis of watching the news and listening to interviews' is not strictly correct.

I've seen them spout anti-mandate rhetoric in the name of protecting small businesses - whilst at the same time review bombing any small business that exercises their rights to move them on from their premises.

I've seen them argue that they're doing this to 'protect the children' - whilst their selfish actions caused a suicide prevention charity to have to cancel one of their major charity fundraising events.

I've heard them yell all manner of nonsense inciting violence (advocating hanging and killing politicians), talking about satanic ritual abuse and paedophile rings, voting conspiracies, election rigging, antisemitic and new world order conspiracy tropes. The whole gamut of craziness, and then add in a dash of far right propaganda with Proud Boys and other adjacent organisations within their ranks stoking dissent. When someone tells you who they are, I'm inclined to believe them.

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

I've seen them argue that they're doing this to 'protect the children' - whilst their selfish actions caused a suicide prevention charity to have to cancel one of their major charity fundraising events.

I've heard them yell all manner of nonsense inciting violence (advocating hanging and killing politicians), talking about satanic ritual abuse and paedophile rings, voting conspiracies, election rigging, antisemitic and new world order conspiracy tropes. The whole gamut of craziness, and then add in a dash of far right propaganda with Proud Boys and other adjacent organisations within their ranks stoking dissent. When someone tells you who they are, I'm inclined to believe them.

That's QAnon in a nutshell.

Thought that after 'The Great Awakening' failed to materialize and the lack of recent Q-Drops that they had lost some momentum. But disconfirming evidence (as eventually happened with 'Pizzagate') is never permitted to falsify the narrative. Instead, it gets dismissed as expressive of the agenda of the 'deep state', or 'big pharma'. The same principle is operative in Climate Change Denial, with IPCC scientists cast in the role of pharmaceutical company representatives.

What I find especially despicable about this is that Trump blatantly pandered to QAnon as a voting constituency. And on the back of their co-opting of the #SaveTheChildren hashtag, he earmarked $35 million to combat child trafficking (that never even got spent on initiatives).

These days I am beginning to think of those who subscribe to QAnon beliefs more as diverse members of a religious cult than as a meta-conspiracy theory or political movement, with Q functioning a little like the Hidden Imam does in Shia Islam, given that that this elusive online presence now appears to be in a state of occultation.

The whole business also puts me in mind of Erich Fromm, who back in the 1950s wrote a book called The Sane Society arguing that it was possible to diagnose whole societies as mad. Certainly, that seems to be the case in the case of a significant minority of the population these days.

With this, the popularity of demagogues like Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro, Orban, Duterte, Le Pen, Farage and others, the still ongoing pandemic, climate change, and the situation in the Ukraine, we're deeply in the shit as far as I can tell.