It has also been commonly reported that the protestors are Nazis carrying Nazi flags, but this reporting is also excessively politicized. Here's a first-person account giving a completely different picture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtN4VqBeCMg#t=6932.
There are hundreds of hours of livestreams on youtube showing the protests. Anyone can dip in at random and get a sense. That's how I ran across that last link of the guy talking about the swastika flag. From the livestreams it seems clear that this is an authentic and peaceful working class protest, not some far right "insurrection" (a word that has also been chosen for political reasons). The most fascinating aspect of this event is what it reveals about the class divide in Canada, and the West in general, since each country has its own version of this right now.
I would question the "working class" bit. Most of us on HN are office workers, who don't get out much, so we tend to assume anyone who works outdoors, including driving a truck, must be working class. But remember that every trucker participating in this protest has a truck to participate in: they are either owner-operators, or participating on behalf of trucking firm. Owner-operators are petite bourgeoisie; owners of firms are capitalists. Neither are working class, in an economic sense.
Really, when we office drones say the truckers are working class, what we actually mean is that they are rednecks. They come from rural areas, they probably don't watch the same TV shows as us, and perhaps they don't even drink speciality coffee. But you can be a redneck petit bourgeois, or a redneck capitalist!
This is actually quite disingenuous. All it tells you is the general comportment of what people are doing around those livestreaming (who are almost all clearly marked).
What you aren't seeing or being exposed to in this way are the countless complaints of harassment, death threats, and rape threats the people living in this area are facing on a routine basis, even when the person being threatened was trying to help the protestors.[1][2][3][4]
As I've mentioned in other places, there's a lot of protests in Ottawa. It's the nation's capital and it's often a symbolic target if nothing else. Ottawa's citizens are familiar with protestors. This is a whole different ballgame.
In terms of it being working class, I think that's also a disingenuous label. As you can see in this walk through of the stopped convoy, there's VERY FEW actual big rigs participating, and the people here are largely driving recent pickups.[5] These are not put-out truckers, these are anti-vax/anti-mandate people from across the spectrum, and not a lot of them.
[1]: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ottaw-tow-truck-op...
[2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/moo-shu-ice-cream-empl...
[3]: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/unruly-protesters-prompt-earl...
[4]: https://globalnews.ca/news/8594809/covid-freedom-convoy-otta... -> Multiple sources in first paragraph.
[5]: https://mobile.twitter.com/Gray_Mackenzie/status/14929139048...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-protest-blocka...
I’m not familiar with Canadian law on the subject, so I don’t know if possession of the items in question is unlawful or if there was some other cause for the arrests.
That's the crux of this - their weaponry was way out of line according to Canadian law.
For example, remember the recent election in Virginia where there was a ton of media retweets of a picture of a handful of 'white supremacists' in front of the tour bus for the Republican candidate. The media made a huge deal about it and the reporter who was on the scene made all kinds of absurd tweets about things she 'overheard' them say. However it didn't take long before people found pictures of the 'White Supremacists' working for the Democrat candidates campaign. One was even driving the tour bus!
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/10/29/busted-multiple-part...
That was a almost absurdy poorly executed attempt at a political smear but it really opened my eyes to how easy it is to insert bad actors into an event - especially when you have a complicit media.
I assume you are talking about Klein's statement regarding Tucker?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involvin...
Isn't it convenient how all contradicting evidence is dismissed by evidence-free conspiracy theories?
https://www.wired.com/video/watch/why-you-can-never-argue-wi...
And the evidence from the leak is fully testable and falsifiable! You could literally just email people who donated and ask them.
Individual donors
36,975 Canadian
55,870 Foreign
92,845 Total
Amount donated
$4,311,287 Canadian
$12,532,326 Foreign
$16,843,613 TotalAnd while it could be that foreign governments have donated with false identities over GSG, it is more likely that they would send in people to figure out who is really capable of moving things, and contact them with cash, tips, and resources.
(I am not commenting on the envoy, as so far have only seen it in news outlets [such as CNN & NYT on the left and Fox on the right] who have not earned my trust - so I do not know what is really happening.)
Canada is not part of the USA.
Trump was a President of the USA not Canada; the Confederacy was made from the bits of the USA furthest away from Canada; and while a literal interpretation of the word “America” in the initialism “Make America Great Again” would refer to the entire continent, it is usually understood as specifically just the USA and not Canada (and definitely not Mexico or Cuba let alone the rest).
Flags are widely used as a symbol of identity. Could be an (excuse the term, I can think of none other that fits) false flag, but there’s a reason why that term exists.
When hiring, we get a ton of resumes from Canada to transfer to the US but the reverse almost never happens.
Adjusting for population sizes (USA has ~9 times the population), a random Canadian is about 4 times more likely to go south than a random American is to go north.
But there’s a reason I was focusing on just the symbolism, and that’s that I know how limited my knowledge is in this instance.