This week Canada and the world were shocked to see something interesting happening in Canada, when the capital, Ottawa, was besieged by seemingly well-organised protests of truckers angry at the imposition of a vaccine mandate.
That it was organised by truckers gave it a heft other protests had lacked. That it was not just about the vaccine mandate became clear — if it were ever in doubt — when the objectors began noise protests aimed at the capital’s inner-city residents, disproportionately well-heeled bureaucrats and corporate types.
The whistles and horns wailed until 5am, driving people crazy, prompting fights in the street and, allegedly, the attempted arson of an apartment building. Hard-right and other exotic elements were soon drawn to the protests, and a GoFundMe account quickly raised $2 million, mainly from the US.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared a state of emergency, but stopped short of more forthright action. (His father had not been so mild; during Quebec’s separatism years, then prime minister Pierre Trudeau suspended habeas corpus and locked up hundreds of separatists, violent or otherwise.)
Perhaps Trudeau Jr feared that repression might generate a wave of support for the protest. Maybe he even had an ear to Facebook chatter that police and military elements were sympathetic to the protests…
Days, perhaps hours, after the Ottawa protests started, similar unrest bubbled up in Wellington around “the Beehive”, New Zealand’s ghastly Parliament building. At one point Prime Minister Jacinda Arden’s official van (yes, van) was forced off the road. Now it’s all on in Canberra, although our capital’s layout, as a sort of Erinsborough from hell, appears to be defeating protesters’ attempts to blockade anything.
So how far is this going to go? Is this just a Commonwealth thing, or will it catch fire across the world? There is every possibility. Truckies occupy a similar space to construction workers — a mix of labour aristocracy and petit bourgeois subcontractors, their politics a mixture of leftist militancy and right-wing anti-statism.
They probably have the same justified claim against the manner in which vaccine mandates have been imposed — i.e. treating them like cattle — and wish to reemphasise their status in the production process.
The fact that social democratic parties have handled the extension of mandatory vaccination to manual workers so badly is a measure of how separated they have become from actual labour, and the cause of its human dignity; they only have themselves to blame for the crossover that many have made.
But who knows… By next week this may all be filed away as a “something interesting happened in Canada” story. Or is it the start of something bigger, where a movement will coalesce across the globe simply because it has recruited people who have the means to bring whole cities to a standstill?
If so, that will serve as a guerilla focus, for such movements do have a way of gaining territory, even temporarily. In that case, it will count as a mirror to the Occupy movement at the beginning of the decade. It will also announce that progressive and left mobilisations will at best have to share power with these new movements — or at worst be displaced by them.
Thin end of a wedge
To a degree, this has already occurred. The post-Occupy rise of “progressivism”, which focused overwhelmingly on cultural-political goals, has seen a gradual fusion between such politics and the state — for the enforcement of progressive values across the whole society. By the time COVID hit in 2020, this had been all but completed. The “iron-hand” lockdowns by Victorian Premier Dan Andrews and others completed the process.
The “I stand with Dan” movement didn’t start with the lockdown. It was a smooth passage to being the authorised power, and it continued long after it was clear that much of this display was a calculated political performance. This was demonstrated when Omicron hit and, faced with a variant that could not be controlled, the Andrews government deserted the stage from the beginning of summer onwards — no strategy, no public leadership — to keep itself fresh for the November election.
This new assault on the capitals represents the right’s best chance to turn these inchoate movements into a movement that can articulate a baseline resistance to the fusion of government, social control and delegated technocratic rule that the pandemic has wrought. One would be very surprised if there is not active international coordination going on by a global movement of traditionalist ethno-nationalists — and even more surprised if Sarah Ferguson’s bestie Steve “Two Shirts” Bannon were not around the edges somewhere.
Notably, left and progressives have not mobilised in any number to challenge the anti-vax/freedom marches, even when it was clear the movement is a toxic stew of anti-Semitism, deranged conspiracies and nativist sentiment.
Given that Melbourne used to mobilise “you will never win in Melbourne” mass protests against the hard right’s pathetic manifestations, this is a curious omission. Has that been because stray elements of the anarchist left, and some Indigenous activists gone to the right, were involved? Or is it because the great shift has happened?
The brief Western socialist surge post-Occupy is over, the transformation to a knowledge/culture economy has clicked on apace and the progressive base of what was once resistant progressivism is now absolutely integrated with the state — such that its members, from their pleasant apartments, can now watch the cops corralling the hi-vis rabble before breaking off to ride the police float in the Midsumma Pride march.
In a world where major Marxist activist group Socialist Alternative advocates lockdowns long after the state has (a triple backflip of dialectical genius worthy of the great Tony Cliff himself), what resists the state but the right?
Well, we shall see.
Our saving grace remains, as ever, that no one has emerged with the charismatic force and depth to weld the right and overcome the mismatch of its fragmented projective fantasies.
With these protests, though, it feels like that is being done in increments, like death on an instalment plan. So perhaps if not now, soon.
But I mean, Canada?
There was certainly plenty of anger amongst the people in 1930s Germany, just like today. Hitler didn’t create this anger, he just fed it and fed off it. So yeah, could happen again. The main counter to this, and what is different to last century, is the very diversity and globalisation that enables the Right to exist in its current form in the first place. It’s hard to see what the group could coalesce around in order to become a global unity. Nationalism? No – it’s a global movement. Race? Well, maybe, given the predominance of White supremacists, but, among other things, indigenous people have been pulled in to swell the ranks, so there’s no longer any racial homogeneity (if there ever was). Religion? No – too diverse there as well. Class? No – as pointed out by Randy Moe, they’re a motley crew. What’s left? A group of people who are just angry. Angry at everything, dammit.
“Eff the effing government!
“Which government?
“Every effing government!”
“How about a prototypical anarcho-fascistic oligarchy organised around the concept of the Great Leader?”
“Huh?”
An alternative could be benevolent dictatorship tempered by frequent assassination – it keeps on their toes.
Amazing how Right-wing demonstrators keep calling for “Freedom!” (Or “Liberty!”) But they are remarkably vague about what they mean by it.
These folk remind me of the Luddites, or the Captain Swing rebels – not in the usual misrepresentation of people mindlessly hostile to machines, but in the resistance of people seeing the livelihoods and sodalities in which they grew up being swept away by social forces over which they had no control.
We are already well into the fourth industrial revolution. Modes of production are increasingly automated. How likely is it that in five, ten, or fifteen years there won’t be any truckies? The autonomous delivery services taking off now are simply a harbinger. Consider developments in fabrication technologies or agricultural robotics; human input is intellectual. You can wear a hi-vis top if you like but we are close to the old gag about the man and the dog; the man’s job is to feed the dog and dog’s job is to bite the man if he touches anything.
In David Brin’s The Shockwave Rider (1975), he coined an aphorism which has stuck with me; in the beginning it was the legs race, then the arms race, and then the brain race, and maybe, if we are lucky, the human race.
umm, John Brunner?
Damn! Yes
Piece in the New Statesman (3rd Feb) by Megan Gibson suggests that Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” is a bigger threat to the right than the left, exposing deep divisions within the Conservative opposition.
Assume Gibson is Canadian, but one also assumes these street protests aka astroturfing Tea Party, Capitol Hill etc., like Melbourne too, are used to threaten and highlight centrist government, but also seem to intimidate conservatives generally who do not follow; quite authoritarian, but neither dissimilar nor disconnected from UK’s Brexit and US’s Trump or GOP.
This one simple sentence explains most: ‘One would be very surprised if there is not active international coordination going on by a global movement of traditionalist ethno-nationalists — and even more surprised if Sarah Ferguson’s bestie Steve “Two Shirts” Bannon were not around the edges somewhere‘.
There is clear evidence in the Anglosphere and Europe that this is exactly the case with ‘freedom protests’ being replicated globally round same issue, same groups and same modus operandi; very logical, strategic and long term reasoning in the background.
Who or what? Koch (global Atlas) Network think tanks against climate/Covid science, regulation, taxes and govt.; Tanton Network to co-opt alt right, well being, QAnon, ‘great replacement’ etc. for active street support (aka Tea Party & Capitol Hill), then media from Fox through to (Canadian) Rebel Media and freelancers to transmit and amplify ‘themes’; great opportunity.
Why? Partly to preserve previous generations’ work of think tanks on ‘freedom & liberty‘ from climate science (hence, denial/delay), regulation, taxes and government promoted at the ‘retail‘ level by protests and media, but in fact to advantage the ‘wholesale‘ level i.e. corporates and/or oligarchs in 0.1%.
Believe these movements are all climate deniers, have corporate clout in their numerous public relations subsidiaries, and lastly to preserve their 1% of worlds wealth for themselves.
Pandemic has brought up the lack of basic services in most countries and one must keep the plebs down at all costs. Of course MSM also believes in the current systems.
When Bannon was ousted from the Trump administration, he openly boasted about how he was going to move his operations to Europe and set up a foundation aimed at fomenting dissent in European countries. I suspect that the uprising of the Yellow Vests may have been a bit of a test of that operation. I mean, someone had to fund all those vests they were handing out! 🙂
Unfortunately Australian media and/or editors avert their gaze from these clear dynamics, although not helped when up close to daily news cycle; of course our consolidated media oligopoly censors through omission while dog whistling any off piste sociocultural issue.
Anyone investigating these influencers, dynamics, relationship etc. have few if any research resources locally to shed light on issues e.g. climate science, white nationalism/alt right, Brexit/Trump, donations, relationships. ‘architecture of influence’, astroturfing, media outlets etc.; backgrounded by trigger happy LNP political elites using equivalent of SLAPPs to shut down discussion.
Fortunately there are relevant research sources and databases including SPLC & ADL (US nativism), DeSmog (UK/US climate science denial), Open Democracy UK (UK nativism/Brexit) etc.; DeSmog has more about Australia and related individuals than Australian outlets or equivalents manage?