I was curious to know if there would be a repeat performance of last weekend’s Freedom Convoy protest in Toronto. However, on Saturday when I got to Bloor and Avenue Road, it was apparent that the police had assembled a more comprehensive grid of road blocks. At Bloor & Avenue Road, there was a lone protester waving a flag: Trudeau is a dick tater. Further confirmation of my general thesis that whatever else one might say about these protesters, they suffer no lack of immaturity. The man told me that everyone was gathering down by the statue in Queen’s Park. In other words, there would be no Freedom Convoy in Toronto, only the usual Saturday gathering that has been doing its conspiratorial rabble rousing since March, 2020 when Doug Ford declared a state of emergency for the first time during the pandemic. The weekly protest is now in its 24th month, producing what I assume has become a tight knit community of mutual support in the face of what must seem daunting opposition. Opposition may be the wrong word. Ridicule?
As I arrived, the speaker was quoting something the noted psychic, Edgar Cayce, had foreseen which spoke directly to their present circumstances. Bear in mind that Edgar Cayce died in 1945. I don’t remember precisely what he is supposed to have predicted. It doesn’t matter. I’m sure if you were to sift through the psychic’s collection of statements, you could find words sufficiently general that they could be applied to predict my current case of jock itch. It’s called confirmation bias. The fact is: in the anti-vax thought world, it is plausible that you could seek authority in the words of a dead psychic.
This week, my aim was to get in close, work in the crowd instead of around its periphery, and hope I don’t get infected. According to these people, even if I do get infected, it won’t really matter. Either the virus isn’t real. Or it is real but comes with overstated risks because, you know, the government has been lying to us. Or getting sick will be a good thing because it will help boost my natural immunity. Because natural is the way god intended me to get my immunity. In fact, surveying the signs in the crowd, I think it’s fair to say that there are as many views on display here as there are people. The fact that many of these views are mutually contradictory doesn’t seem to bother anybody.
There were the usual suspects. There were the anti-government deep state paranoiacs who nevertheless drape themselves in the flag and cheer at all the worst of the patriotic jingoism. Curiously, many of these types are equally hostile towards the federal liberals and the provincial conservatives since both governments have, at various times throughout the pandemic, implemented laws/regulations/protocols that have restricted the freedoms of ordinary citizens. I say curiously because one would think that at least premier Doug Ford would have some respect in this place given that his own daughter, Krista Haynes, is an unapologetic conspiratorial whack job.
There were the religious right types with signs quoting John 3:16 and Galatians 5:1 and Luke 19:10 as if their spiritual touchstones speak for everyone and justify everything. Some of this verged on the outright lunatic, signs suggesting Trudeau is Margaret’s love child from a fling with Fidel Castro, and numerology deriving the number of the beast from the word corona. You can produce the same result using the word retard, but that would be impolite, wouldn’t it? Then again, that doesn’t really matter in this space since political correctness is the one form of public discourse that has no play here; it represents the regulation of speech and therefore curbs my freedom to be an asshole.
The Dark Side of Intersectionalism
Despite the usual tropes, there were a few others I hadn’t noted during last week’s survey of the crowd. One is what I have taken to calling the dark side of intersectionalism where protesters graft other concerns to a primary subject of concern. Here, the primary concern has been the temporary imposition of public health measures (masking, social distancing, vaccination, quarantine) at the expense of personal freedoms. Protesters describe government authority using words like tyranny and authoritarianism and totalitarianism and then draw comparisons to other more obvious forms of tyranny. They protest on our behalf to save us from these more serious outcomes which will inevitably follow if we don’t oppose these less serious limits on our freedoms. Covid-19 protocols are just the wedge in the door.
And so a woman walks through the crowd carrying a sign saying “Nuremberg 2” as if to suggest that the Canadian government is teetering on the brink of a slip into neo-Nazism. Public health protocols warrant a comparison to the Holocaust. Another woman waves an orange flag with the “Every Child Matters” tagline that came to prominence last summer with the location of unmarked grave sites at residential schools: if the government can’t be trusted with indigenous children, how can it be trusted to care for our (white) children? This question assumes the belief that the government might force all children to be vaccinated and non-compliance might result in the removal of children from their homes. No one seems to notice the degree of racism necessary even to entertain these thoughts.
Changing Narrative
What happens when the pandemic peters out? What happens when the government lifts vaccine mandates and all the other public health protocols that have prompted these protests? Where does this sense of disaffection go when its primary object fades into the background? Speakers at this protest have changed the narrative to accommodate these questions. They acknowledge that the government will inevitably lift the vaccine mandates. But we shouldn’t let that lull us into complacency. You can be certain that this has been a great experiment in sowing social division, and even after one opportunity has vanished, the government will find other opportunities to drive wedges between people. We must be vigilant; our struggle is only beginning. Yada, yada, yada.
Perhaps more significant than a changing narrative is a changing tone. In his observations of an increasingly disenfranchised American middle class, Chris Hedges noted a rise in what he termed proto-fascism. His observations are readily transferable to the anti-vax anti-mandate movement … with one exception. What he didn’t anticipate is the element of playfulness that people bring to these events. When Hedges invoked the idea of proto-fascism, I think he imagined a grim-faced militia obsessed with conspiracy theories. While there is a little bit of that in these gatherings, especially amongst the older participants, overwhelmingly people behave as if this is a tailgate party. Bring the kids, share some food, have fun, play music (a dance mix of Hotel California has forever ruined Glenn Frey for me).
Post-modernism has finally found its place in the world, and that place sits solidly in the midst of far-right extremist gatherings like this. When you hold up a sign that says “My Body, My Choice” you do it with a wink, or with air quotes, to signal that you understand you’ve co-opted a slogan from a progressive movement. You don’t seriously believe there’s an equivalency between the second wave feminist demands for abortion rights and your anti-vax views. Mostly, you want to provoke a reaction. It’s fun to watch liberals turn apoplectic when you mince their sacred cows into burger meat. It’s fun to own the libs.
While post-modernism may have had its roots in a descriptive exercise conducted by French academic elites, it has become a prescriptive approach to working a crowd. The elites described how modernism has made it impossible to ground authority. The demagogues take that to heart and use it. A speaker explicitly used the phrase “crisis of authority” at yesterday’s event: we can’t trust government anymore; we can’t trust academic elites; we can’t trust medical experts; we can’t trust researchers working for Big Pharma; we can’t trust mainstream media to tell the truth; we can’t trust any of the traditional expressions of authority.
Out-Orwelling Orwell
To my way of thinking, one of the most fascinating examples of convoluted thinking appeared yesterday on a sign which co-opts Orwell in the service of fascism: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. This was Orwell’s Newspeak from the Ministry of Truth in his novel 1984. Under totalitarian regimes, words come to mean their opposite. Writing under the nom de guerre, George Orwell, Eric Blair was a fierce anti-fascist who thought deeply about the machinations of unregulated power. It is safe to say he wrote his words as a critique of the sentiments expressed at gatherings such as this. However, Blair could not have anticipated that, in a world unmoored from its usual authorities, gatherings such as this might seize his words and turn them back against his own kind: the intellectuals, the well-read, the well-traveled, the well-informed. But it’s all offered with a nod and wink. We’re just kidding. All we really want to do is make you feel that you’re walking on shifting sands, or, since this is Toronto in the wintertime, shifting snows.
