Shree Paradkar writes that the Right "have successfully co-opted a noble ideal of liberty for all into a vehicle for far-right grievances to mean the opposite: liberty for a few at the cost of many."
There are all kinds of symbols and outrages at this protest:
Let us for a moment, pretend that this is a protest that’s purely about freedoms. Let us pretend that the swastikas and white extremist flags that [Frank] Stronach denounced in his piece in the Star, but not in the Post, are just bad elements to be found at every protest.
Let’s pretend that HH at this rally truly stands for #HonkHonk and in any case, is cancelled out by the one guy who said on American TV that Canada’s mandates “were like Hitler’s Germany and we’re like the Jews, eh.” Let’s pretend that one of the funding organizers, Pat King, isn’t a known racist or doesn’t go on Islamophobic rants of a plan by non-white people to “depopulate Anglo-Saxons.”
Even if we ignore all these, what freedoms have been taken away?
What freedom is being eroded? Whose freedom? Those protesting say it can mean being asked for vaccine passports. Being shut in a lockdown. Being asked to wear a mask. Being asked to follow any public health measures at all. It all depends on whom you ask. But it looks like people who have the freedom to seek the dissolution of government, freedom to lay siege on the capital city and freedom to gather without fear of authorities feel they’re more hard done by than other Canadians.
When did science-based regulations for societal safety mean an unjustifiable lack of freedom? Are speed limits on roads government overreach? Being asked to drive on the right side of the street? Wearing seatbelts? Wearing helmets on bike rides?
When did freedom go from a humanitarian liberatory idea to a self-centred one? From an inclusive idea to a nationalist one?
The Right has been trying to rewrite recent history. Now they're trying to rewrite the dictionary.
Image: The Guardian
10 comments:
To paraphrase Wanda: "Aristotle was not Belgian, the principle of Buddhism is not 'every man for himself,' the London Underground is not a political movement, and freedom does not mean governments have to follow the views of angry, white reactionaries whether anybody else agrees with them or not. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up."
Cap
Spot on, Cap.
"The Right has been trying to rewrite recent history. Now they're trying to rewrite the dictionary."
While 'recent' events are truly shocking, there is nothing 'recent' (alas) about the corruption of language on a mass scale.
Propaganda. Thank Woodrow Wilson for that.
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
It's straight out of 1984, PoV.
All very true. And in typical missing-the-point Canadian fashion, the Emergencies Act actions are targeted at the dumb semi-literate folk in trucks, who wouldn't understand a logical argument if you gave them a two week course on it. But a slight trace of native wit remains, even so. The ones in Coutts AB fled for home once they realized a latecomer group of four wanted to run down Mounties and had prohibited weapons.
The real leaders of this insurrection aren't driving trucks nor have anything physical to lose. They're sitting pretty in plain sight in their command centre, relying on rogue ex-Mountie and ex-CSIS white supremacists to guide their campaign. Doing a fine job while the government flounders. So we're going to punish the body and tail of this insurrection with stopped bank accounts and so on, but leave the thinking head intact to mestasticize? Now that's rank stupidity. But oh so Canadian.
Why aren't our official spooks picking up the leaders for a "chat" behind closed doors? They should have been "disappeared" weeks ago. Do you think the Brits or Yanks would leave the leaders, the fang-gnashing bigoted haters directing the co-opted oafish truckers, to wander around in plain sight having pics taken with Bernier and his crew? Not likely! They'd have been picked up and grilled to find out the extent of their tentacled organization. Rendered silent and incommunicado. Without the brainpower directing the trucking apes, that latter lot would be easy to round up and send on their way to grouse about freedumb at home.
But this is Canada. So nobody thinks of the obvious. We expect the leading insurrectionists to have honour and ethics and behave and be polite. As if! What a sad naive show we present to ourselves and the world. Unprepared and unwilling to get really serious, so far as I can see.
The leaders behind this debacle should be charged with sedition, Bill, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Blogger Northern PoV said...
"The Right has been trying to rewrite recent history. Now they're trying to rewrite the dictionary."
In this semi literate, western, world it really strikes home Donald Trumps , I love the uneducated.
That being 'wilfully ignorant, proud of being uninformed has become a mark of excellence and sadly accepted by the MSM.
TB
When the ignorant refuse to admit what they don't know, all of us are in trouble, TB.
"Fake" used to be a terrible description of something we valued. Even if people were right wingers, I cannot imagine anyone would have said that ABC broadcasts or Labour politicians were spreading fake news. Now Clive Palmer in his _constant_ tv ads for the United Australia Party is saying that the government (Conservative) and opposition (Labour) are both spreading fake news.
We live in an environment, Hels, where people doubt everything and trust no one.
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