Justin Trudeau
© Imagen compuesta para BLes.com/Florencia ParradoJustin Trudeau
The actions of the Canadian PM and his cheerleaders towards the truckers' convoy constitute a threat to democracy

The F word gets thrown around a lot these days. Right-wing politicians get milkshaked for being "fascists" and opponents of critical-race theory are said to be enabling fascism by questioning white privilege - you're definitely a fascist if you think biological sex is real.

When it comes to Trump, commentators are more liberal with the F-word than a market full of fish wives. After the January Capital Riots last year, one columnist wondered, "if Trump looks like a fascist and acts like a fascist, then maybe he is one".

But as real, material authoritarianism raises its head in Canada, many of those same laptop bombardiers keen to call out fascism wherever they see it seem conspicuously silent. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau might not exactly be Mussolini, but his decision to invoke the Emergencies Act against protesters in the nation's capital is a watershed moment. With these new powers, Trudeau is effectively able to wage war on thousands of truckers and supporters camped out in Ottawa.


Deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland smiled and chuckled as she told reporters that the law change allowed banks to freeze the accounts of protesters without any need for a court order, adding that vehicle insurance for anyone involved in the convoy could also be suspended. The interim police chief in Ottawa told a press conference last night that the police were working with social services to "remove" children from the area - as many of the truckers are accompanied by their families (pictures of trucker-installed bouncy castles and play areas were circulating over the weekend).

In short, the Canadian government has granted itself the power to strip citizens of their money, their transport and their kids. Several organisers have been arrested, despite the fact that bar a few fringe incidents, the vast majority of the thousands-strong convoy has maintained a peaceful (if disruptive) approach to getting their voices heard.

Just imagine the uproar that would ensue if Trump had taken children from Black Lives Matters protesters who took to the streets after the murder of George Floyd, or Boris Johnson had used the banks to starve out the costumed climate-changer obsessives who took over Trafalgar Square before the pandemic. You don't even have to imagine it - when visiting Kenosha amid the riots and protests of 2020, Trump said "these are not acts of peaceful protest but really domestic terror".
CNN peaceful protest kenosha
© CNNCNN: 'Don't believe your lying eyes'
In response, CNN ran analysis which argued that Trump's naming of protesters who disagree with him as terrorists "puts him in the company of the world's autocrats". The T word might not have spilled out of Trudeau's mouth just yet, but his use of the Emergencies Act (last invoked by his father 50 years ago to combat a real terrorist threat) allows his government to broaden the Terrorist Financing Act, shutting down the fundraising sites used by the truckers' "Freedom Convoy".

But while the silence surrounding Trudeau's new measures is startling, his reach for such spectacularly authoritarian measures is no surprise. Trudeau's political career has been defined by superficial and self-serving PR moves. From taking the knee and whipping himself in public to atone for his past sins of blackface to stumbling over the latest LGBTQ2 acronym to prove his commitment to gender ideology, the thing that Trudeau cares most about is his popularity within international bourgeois identity politics.

Having gained online applause for labelling the truckers guilty of "antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia", Trudeau is attempting to turn a populist revolt against vaccine mandates, endangered livelihoods and coronavirus regulations into a Punch-and-Judy culture war between the enlightened prime minister and a bigoted rabble who should know better.

Many of those on the Freedom Convoy are truckers who worked throughout the pandemic - as it happens, many are vaccinated and argue that they followed restrictions at the time - who continued to cart around the goods and resources that Canadian society needed to stay afloat. Thanks to isolation and social distancing rules, many faced a lonely journey without rest stops or access to amenities that make the work of trucking bearable. Conversely many of those now labelling them "fascist" had the luxury of sitting at home waiting for their deliveries to arrive.

Like the gilets-jaunes' challenge to French green taxes and energy prices, or Brexit disrupting the status quo for the European elite, the trucker protest is making all the right people uncomfortable. No stranger to the F-word, Paul Mason's latest article not only described the truckers as "21st-century fascism", but challenged the Canadian government to "arm itself". Whether or not you agree with the truckers' aims, the hysterical response from Trudeau and his so-called liberal cheerleaders is the real threat to democracy.