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The anatomy of a right wing protest

Demonstrators walk downtown as truckers and their supporters continue to protest coronavirus vaccine mandates, in Ottawa. Blair Gable/Reuters

(February 19, 2022) At the end of January, The Charity Report’s contributing editor Kathleen Adamson, decided to go to a right wing protest, ostensibly anti-vax protests that have been happening on a weekly basis in Montreal and attended by an increasing mix of white supremacist, right wing extremist, anti-government protesters. She writes about her experience for The Charity Report.

On January 29, convoys of cars and trucks flooded into Ottawa in the highest profile ring wing protest in Canada’s history. Benjamin Dichter, also known as BJ Dichter, is a truck driver and podcaster who describes himself as vice-president of the Ottawa convoy. He says the goal of the protest is to end all vaccine mandates and passports within Canada. Its other goal, unspoken but even more obvious, is to unify and amplify the Canadian extreme right. As of today, February 19, Ottawa is still filled with protestors, many of whom have shown no signs of leaving.) On February 6, the city had put a state of emergency into place- police armed with sniper rifles seized supplies of fuel from protestors, and dismantled shelter structures that they had built. Ottawa police have also stated that there is American money behind the protests. 

Ottawa police have been criticized for their lukewarm response to the protestors. It’s been reported that they hired an ‘elite crisis-management firm’ to handle their public messaging. 

Now, the Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly, the former deputy chief of police of the Toronto Police Services, and the city’s first Black chief, has resigned. Diane Deans, the chair of the Ottawa police services board was also ousted. She says it’s because she disagreed with the mayor negotiating with the protesters in secret, using a former staffer for Premier Doug Ford as an intermediary. 

The chief of the federal government has evoked the National Emergency Act, giving it special powers, especially around financial seizure of the bank accounts belonging to protesters and people donating to the protest.  The police are in the middle of what could be a weekend-long stand-off to end the protest and remove the protesters.

By way of history, On January 22, the first truck convoy departed from Prince Rupert, BC. On that day, we walked through Parc Lafontaine in Montreal to find another anti-restriction protest. The park was a postcard of white hill and winter sport, snow packed hard and smooth, squeaking underfoot. At first, other than a single officer leaning on a car, there is no sign of any protest. We fall into conversation with a group of white women, who are also looking for the protest. They asked the police officer for directions. Everyone is friendly, talkative. One woman told us that she has driven almost an hour to be here.  “Of course, you are not vaccinated?” she asked us and seems surprised, but not hostile, when we told her that we were. She tells us that she and her daughter are not vaccinated, but that her son and husband are, and that “they have not argued about it.” She has come with like-minded friends from a Facebook group called the Holistic Collective. (There are enough Facebook groups with this name or a similar one that, looking it up later, it’s difficult to tell which one she means.). Together, we approached the street the police officer directed, and from our right, we saw more police, blue flags and a crowd of people approaching. (Photo: Daniel Crawford)
The January 22 march took up about 5 densely packed city blocks. Seven large cruisers followed the march, and every intersection along the march route was blocked by officers, parked cars, and bicycles.  Maxime Bernier and representatives of the PPC had been present at an earlier protest, on January 8, but I see no sign of them today.  (Photo: Daniel Crawford)
I do see blue ‘Trump 2020’ flags and I see a familiar yellow flag, with a segmented snake on it- ‘DON’T TREAD ON ME.’  Another sign reads “UNVAXXED LIVES MATTER”, and another, “MY BODY, MY CHOICE”. There are Canadian flags being waved, and a couple of American ones too. I see three people carrying generic ‘A VENDRE’’ (FOR SALE) signs, with ‘NOTRE SANTE’ (OUR HEALTH), and there are a few other hand-drawn French signs, but overall, there are more signs in English than in French at this protest. A few times it’s hard to tell if we’re hearing chants of ‘Liberte’ or “USA.”  (Photo: Daniel Crawford)
It strikes me that the slogans displayed by the most vocal and obviously extreme right protestors are either American in origin, (DON’T TREAD ON ME) or snarky twists on ‘left-wing’ slogans (UNVAXXED LIVES MATTER) or both. Without Bernier, who himself is heavily influenced by French and American right-wing ideology, the representatives of the Canadian extreme right that attended this sizable protest seem to be regurgitating or copycat-taunting American phrases and symbols. And the Americans are taking advantage of it- it’s clear that the motivation for convoy endorsers like Donald Trump Jr. and Fox News is the temporary publicity boost they can get from tagging along with Canadian unrest, which they can then channel into a short-term fundraising/advertising campaign that will go nowhere but their own pockets. While we share many problems and interests with the USA—not to mention the world’s longest peaceful border- our identity as a country has many different priorities, strengths, and weaknesses. (Photo: Kathleen Adamson)
The consistent presence of American symbolism and messaging is a serious ideological weakness in the extreme branches of the Canadian right wing. But it doesn’t seem to have slowed them down. Of course, the convoys that have set up shop in Ottawa are draped in maple leaf flags, eternal symbols of Canadian pride. Following the various hashtags on Twitter, you can see videos of white women preparing sandwiches for truckers while singing the Canadian national anthem, crowds standing on overpasses holding Canadian flags, men preaching from their (sometimes moving) truck cabs while staring hard into their TikTok audience’s eyes. Occasionally, in this forest of propaganda, people speak up claiming to be convoy ‘moderates’—vaccinated people who are anti-mandate, who are not members of these extreme groups, who are fed up with Canadian handling of the pandemic in general. I wonder if these people are real, if they are bots or paid trolls, if they have any physical presence at the convoy protests. But overwhelmingly, the voices of bigotry are shouting the loudest. It’s impossible to avoid.
(Photo: Kathleen Adamson)
The Canadian Anti-Hate network is covering the groups behind the signs, and where some of the Canadian money is going.  A GoFundMe spearheaded by Tammy Lich, who has worked as an organizer for the Yellow Vests, a Canadian branch of a French extreme-right movement, raised about $10 million before GoFundMe froze the campaign and refunded donations, citing the threats of harassment and violence from the convoy. Before the fundraiser was cut off, Benjamin Dichter, a prominent mouthpiece for the toxic values of the People’s Party of Canada was added as a second ‘organizer’ for the raised funds. In Ottawa, the list of neo-Nazi speakers, like Faith Goldy and Pat King, continues to grow.  As the Ottawa protests continue, even inspiring protests in other countries, the extreme right continues to dominate the conversation.  Tammy Lich was arrested on February 18. (Photo by Daniel Crawford)
What does it mean to display a Confederate flag alongside a Canadian one? The historical parallels are tenuous, and the blatant bigotry is troubling. As we go into the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadians from all ideological backgrounds are exhausted and fed up. Dissent is a necessary part of any democracy. So, why are bigots the only people shouting? It should be possible to criticize the deployment of certain pandemic measures without being considered a menace to society. At the January 22 protest in Montreal, we also saw signs like the ones below- signs carried by protestors who, when we spoke to them, claimed no allegiance to right wing groups. Photo: A. Troster; M. Gray (Twitter)
But overwhelmingly, the most vocal and physically active dissenting groups in Canada are parroting American slogans, exchanging funds and endorsements with American right-wing groups. They have created a state of emergency in our capital city, harassed and assaulted charity workers and thrown rocks at emergency vehicles, and they show no signs of being ready to leave. Canadians enjoy a lot of American imports, but right-wing propaganda should not be one of them. It has gone from social media, along with disingenuous disinformation, directly into the hearts and minds of our countryfolk, polluting our collective consciousness, obscuring the possibilities for meaningful disagreement. If only some of these preaching truckers could see that their ‘Canadian pride’ has about as much patriotic integrity as a cold Big Mac. 

The ugly face of right-wing extremism in Canada September 2, 2021

Trumpism in Canada January 11, 2021

Right wing extremist groups growing in Canada: Muslims and the prime minister key objects of their scorn June 21, 2020