Pop 89: Who’s Leading Here?

I scroll the internet for the gory details. And all the descriptive adjectives and adverbs are there. Such qualifiers serve no place in reporting. Yet ever since the internet and its hungry maw of a 24/7 news cycle, the airwaves are filled with sentences loaded with judgement and insult, alarm and disgust, praise and support. And it’s called reporting.

This form of so-called reporting doesn’t even attempt to be objective. Major news platforms have a select audience who apparently crave vituperative over facts, who prefer a biased, skewed and cherry-picked selection of interviews and images.

These past weeks have alerted me again to the fact that we need to realize how we are perceived by news corporations, how information is fed to us and how we consume it. We can’t allow algorithms to decide what we can see on our computers, and we need to listen to as many versions of a story we can. If we want the truth, that is.

Not all reporters are at fault. Many are unhappy with the restraints put on them. In my own desire to understand the trucker convoy-protest-occupation, I cast a wide net. It was necessary, but discombobulating. I watched my moods and viewpoints swift and sway like a bird-feeder in a blizzard.

For instance, I watched an interview with a woman who closed her restaurant after protesters used her patio as a place to drink, pee and defecate. I watched several residents say they were screamed at and spit on for wearing their masks. I wondered why so many shops closed but learned that some shop owners who wore masks didn’t feel safe around protesters, in their own shops. And there were also shop-owners who didn’t wear masks who didn’t feel safe around locals.

As a columnist, I have the luxury of interpreting the information I collect with the hopes of presenting an informed opinion, which the reader may or may not share. One of my goals is to provide readers a broader perspective to afford a deeper reflection. Above all, I try to act as a witness, because we all need witnesses. We need to know what it is we are looking at in order to be, as the psychiatrist Alice Miller called it, “an enlightened witness.”

I dug around and found the photograph of the Terry Fox Monument with a couple of “Stop Vaccine Mandate” signs planted in Terry’s arms. I found the video of a group of protestor-partiers banging on native drums and singing “Yaba Dabba Doo” over and over again. And I found a posting by Pat King, one of the organizers of the convoy, talking about his hopes to stage an “Every Child Matters” event, which would consist of springing kids from school. “Let’s go kids! Let’s go kids! Take off that mask! You don’t need it!” he was quoted as saying, oblivious to the meaning of the movement. A Twitter post led me to a Cree elder shocked to learn that, according to Pat King, she gave him a peace pipe. “I would never do that. I don’t even have a peace pipe!” she said.

The indignities mentioned above enlightened me a deeper layer of what I was looking at. King and his cronies portray themselves as heroes sticking up for all ignored Canadians, and yet they themselves ignore the very soul of what they appropriate. The assumption seems to be that all practices and monuments, every statue and drum, is aligned with their “cause.” Movements and cultural traditions with deep roots and sacred ties turn into party favours. Hey, you’re all invited, King hollers, to this great Canadian party. And that’s how frustrated and anxious populations unwittingly help legitimize darker causes.

So what is King’s “cause”? I viewed video posts with King claiming there is a “global plan to depopulate the Anglo-Saxon race.” You’ll be ok, he said, “if you speak Chinese, Mandarin or Hebrew or change your name to Ishmael.” I viewed photographs of him brandishing a variety of placards. All of them saying NO. The most common being NO to immigrants. One said NO Migration,” but I assume he meant immigration. Unless, perhaps he can’t stand the incessant honking of migrating geese.

King’s self-posts also boast of his willingness to beat up his kid’s teacher for making him wear a mask at school. And yet, in the world’s long history of disease and epidemics, masks have always helped. They’ve been a necessary inconvenience that, on average, has lasted 2-3 years. In the 2000s our lives are faster in all respects, and we unreasonably expect epidemics to move faster too, even though there’s billions of us. “I’ve just about had enough,” some of us say, echoing King. But he adds: “You have no idea what’s coming. Wait till the real bullets start flying.”

King is affiliated with Soldiers of Odin, an anti-refugee group, which is no longer extant in Canada but whose symbols and flags were worn and waved at the protest-occupation. Members of the Diagolon network, an “accelerationist group, bent on fomenting civil war,” were also present, according to Evan Balgord of the Canada Anti-hate Network. This group keeps an eye on the activities of hate groups in Canada. I’m not talking about “a few bad apples,” he said in an interview about the protest-occupation. “Every single hate group we monitor is involved in leading or participating in this convoy. What is actually lost here are the concerns of the actual truckers.”

To me, the most enlightening and frightening aspect of the Ottawa protest-occupation is that a collection of white supremacists (which is what someone is if they raise a call to arms over a lowering birth rate among white folk) had a large part in organizing the convoy. They didn’t latch onto it. They didn’t sneak into it. They lead it.

Are demonstrators who did NOT “make this our own Jan. 6” comfortable with being led by people with King’s agendas and legitimizing his stance?

Regardless of how the past weeks in Ottawa are perceived, a historical event is occurring. One that can create a positive paradigm shift regarding how we uncover the facts. Not just about the world, including the concerns of all overlooked and strained workers, but about ourselves. This past week can force us to discern the difference between what we are told we want and what truly gives us meaning.