What Happened Today: February 23, 2022 – The Scroll

While much of the world is focused on the conflict in Ukraine, The Scroll is publishing a special edition today devoted entirely to the showdown in Canada. We believe that the coordinated effort by the Canadian government and the financial establishment to target protestors is the most significant event in the world right now for the citizens of Western democracies who have been mostly quiescent through two years of having their accustomed freedoms abridged in the name of a COVID-19 emergency.

If recent events are a fair indicator, the willingness of Canadians and Americans to follow ever-changing COVID-19 rules may be at an end. And in both the United States and Canada, we are seeing governments use frameworks built during the global war on terror to prosecute citizens with unsanctioned political beliefs. 

The weeks-long trucker protests in Canada against COVID-19 vaccine mandates have demonstrated how a small opposition group can leverage control over critical resources and online network effects to disrupt an advanced society. No doubt the protests were a nuisance to many ordinary Canadians, but they were also contrary to the claims made in press reports that focused on a handful of people carrying Confederate flags a peaceful movement led by working-class truckers whose livelihoods have been jeopardized by the COVID-19 policies they assembled to protest. Precisely because the protests were effective and challenged the mandates of Canada s ruling party, they triggered an unprecedented reaction from the government. By invoking the never-before-used 1988 Emergencies Act a statute that was intended exclusively to address threats of existential violence Canada s ruling party has tested new methods of population control that involve subcontracting the duties of government to private corporations operating outside the scrutiny and strictures of the law. 

According to Canadian constitutional scholar Ryan Alford, the full, radical implications of the Emergencies Act are still being worked out. While the Emergencies Act clearly authorizes the government to punish thousands of Canadian citizens who donated money to the Freedom Convoy by ordering their financial institutions to freeze their accounts, it s not yet known whether that would also apply to individuals who donate to causes related to protesting the Emergencies Act itself. If you were to go to Parliament Hill right now with a sign that says, Revoke the Emergencies Act, you would be subject to being arrested, charged, and imprisoned under the Emergencies Act for the act of protesting. The fact that what you re protesting is the Emergencies Act itself is immaterial, Alford told The Scroll. We don t know if that same rationale would be invoked with respect to financial support, but we very much need to know.

It is no surprise that U.S. officials have backed their Canadian counterparts, with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg encouraging Canadian authorities to crack down on protestors. The new playbook in Canada with private corporations disenfranchising citizens at the behest of government officials and ideological activists has been active in the United States since the rise of Donald Trump. The Biden administration has declared domestic extremism a top priority of the national security establishment while stretching the definition of that label to include ordinary Trump supporters and others whose views are deemed to contribute to misinformation or disinformation.  

It sounds like dystopian science fiction, but it s here, happening now.

via thedailyscroll.substack.com

Astonishing.