‘Fire is Catching’: What Americans Should Learn From Canadian Freedom Protesters

Canadians and Americans love to fight over who has the better country. I think it’s pretty clear the US wins most rounds. (After all, we haven’t actually locked people indoors and we don’t have people hopping the border to access healthcare). Yet when it comes to the people rising up against COVID authoritarianism, Americans can’t take a victory lap.

Canadian truckers recently launched a massively successful and highly visible protest against their government's COVID-regime policies. And Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has drawn near-universal condemnation for his terrible handling of the protests.

Trudeau unfairly smeared the truckers as all racists. His government has banned honking to try to stamp out the wildfire. Canadian police have been filmed stealing firewood that the protestors use to keep warm, taking their fuel, ticketing those who donate, and even beating elderly citizens in the street. The backlash to Trudeau’s leadership during this uprising has been so bad he even went into hiding, a cowardly act if there ever was one.

https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1491591217909571584

But while the US government has not yet quite reached this level of extremism, Americans should be on guard. It’s not for lack of desire.

Just this week, the US Department of Homeland Security released a statement labeling Americans who question the government’s COVID narrative or undermine its institutions as a “terrorist threat.” 

https://twitter.com/HannahDCox/status/1491795731547504649

Notice the common thread between Trudeau’s language and the US government’s rhetoric. Citizens who protest and dare to rise up against injustice (as is not only their right but their duty in democracies and republics) are immediately maligned as racists, terrorists, and threats.

This is a tale as old as time. The US government in particular has frequently used this tactic to undermine dissenters like Martin Luther King Jr. and whistleblowers like Edward Snowden or Julian Assange. And for some time, it has been effective. Many people are gullible and easily scared into submission by such labels.

But something is changing in the era of COVID. We have the internet this time around, we can see videos of the protestors, we can hear directly from those they are trying to silence. We will not be so easily fooled by their lies.

Steal our firewood, seize our fuel, it doesn’t matter. Fire is catching, and the actions of our governments are only throwing gasoline on its flames.

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