Global 'Freedom Movement' - A Carnival Of Crank & Conspiracy - and Very Dangerous: Democracy Threat
- Thousands of convoy protestors marched through Canberra, Australia to Parliament House.
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- The Guardian, 2.12.22. Ed. - I spent a year undercover in QAnon. Dont let the ridiculousness distract from the threat. -
The far right trucker convoy that has paralysed Ottawa might be singularly shocking, but what disturbs the most is its not unique. Freedom protests similar in form & simultaneously nebulous in broadly anti-vax/anti-mandate political goals have materialised in Britain, France & New Zealand. A convoy claiming to originate from across Europe is making its way towards Brussels. An ongoing gathering that locals alternately describe as Spring Break for QAnon or Camp Covid is encamped outside Australian Parliament House in Canberra. Across these countries, protestors appear as a wild herd of sovcit, anti-vaxxer, QAnonner & more nefarious fellow travellers, alongside some more ordinary people.
Sometimes its hard to tell whether social media content about these events has been gathered by extremism monitors, or comedians. Participants unwilling to be injected with a free vaccine safely used on hundreds of millions of people further advise each other that drinking ones own wee is curative & somehow camel urine deals with cancer. Monitors observe attendees costumed as paramedics, pilots & deceased Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Someone really wears a tinfoil hat. In New Zealand, the monitors themselves hijacked the Telegram and Zello channels the protestors use to organise.
Theyve sown chaos and crammed the convoys Spotify playlist with songs like Redneck Piece of White Trash, Why Dont You Get a Job and Dumb Fuck.
In Canada, protestors have used their vehicles to blockade entire Ottawa neighbourhoods, erecting jumping castles & even saunas. Participants stiffly stage ceremonies to anoint one another faux powers of police. Amid the carnival of crank it all reads like character-based black comedy.. but this investment in a parallel reality is not satire. Its not performance. Its complete. Its terrifying. Wherever this freedom movement manifests, a similar cast of characters emerges. Light-in-the-eyes zealots holler conspiracy theories. Grifters solicit to camera like a roll of tabloid clickbait. Burly, closed-mouth types appear to be handling secretive logistics. Around them are impassioned, often inarticulate- & poorly-costumed- clowns.
Dont let the ridiculousness distract from the threat.
I spent a year undercover in the broadly QAnon mvmt. researching a book; I understand well why democratic citizens may struggle to take seriously the crossed streams of alien lizard aficionados, drink-your-own-wee health enthusiasts & those people who believe democrats eat childrens faces. Even while besieged in his capital & struggling to contain the protests, Canadian PM Trudeau hasnt yet called in the army...Whats now happening in Ottowa is both driven by the cultural narratives of the American right & simultaneously serving a propaganda function as a proxy battlefront for it. The trucker protest has been sustained by American money pouring into it by the millions...
- More,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/12/the-global-freedom-movement-is-a-carnival-of-crank-and-conspiracy-and-very-dangerous
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- BBC: Australia's former parliament building in the capital Canberra was briefly set alight on Thursday by protesters during a demonstration for Aboriginal sovereignty, police said. Dec. 30, 2021,
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-59824914
- Grid: The hacked account and suspicious donations behind the Canadian trucker protests. The jumble of misinformation, online fundraising groups and amplification from right-wing political figures suggests theres more to these protests than meets the eye. Feb. 8, '22,
https://www.grid.news/story/misinformation/2022/02/08/the-hacked-account-and-suspicious-donations-behind-the-canadian-trucker-protests/
ymetca
(1,182 posts)more social media cat herding for profit in chaos. It appears we are still in the adolescent phase of global direct messaging systems, with some well-healed players attempting to skew the results in their favor, followed by a bunch of wannabe unabashed self-promoters attempting to cash in.
The only problem with attempting to create a new messiah is that by the time you get a sufficiently sized mob on board with the agenda the only thing they want to do is kill and eat the king.
czarjak
(11,191 posts)Truckers gonna show 'em?
Response to appalachiablue (Original post)
stopdiggin This message was self-deleted by its author.
stopdiggin
(11,092 posts)The excessive (and irresponsible) promotion of 'freedom' - will be countered by an embrace of authoritarianism.
(and some of the boobs will, initially, think they're on the same side - and lend vociferous support)
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wnylib
(21,146 posts)Brownshirts Without Borders.
Or just BWB.