Washington Post Mocks Massive Canadian Trucker Convoy Protesting Vaccine Mandates, Labels Trucks ‘Fascism’
On Friday, Michael Adder, the political cartoonist for the Washington Post, mocked the Freedom Convoy of truckers crossing the breadth of Canada and heading for the nation’s capital, Ottawa, to protest against Canada’s vaccine mandate. Adder created a cartoon of numerous trucks, all labeled in capital letters “FASCISM,” adding the hashtags, “fascism” and “supplychain.”
Roughly five hours later, The Post printed an
opinion piece attacking the convoy. The author, David Moscrop, wrote, “The movement shares an affinity with Trumpist toxic authoritarianist politics.”
“Time and time again we learn the lesson, or at least come across it, that teaches us that rage-soaked antigovernment types can’t be reasoned with,” Moscrop continued. “This time around, the convoy has produced an incoherent ‘memorandum of understanding’ premised upon a misunderstanding of government and absurd demands. Of course, the memo should be ignored. It’s the product of a temper tantrum.”
Mocking the convoy as a “fringe group,” Moscrop charged, “They are driven by a generalized rage, misplaced anger about supply chain challenges and antigovernment sentiment.” He played the race card: “These types of groups are typically driven by attitudes, grievances and priorities of such a nature that they pose a particular risk to racialized folks and other groups that are traditionally the target of hate and violence.”
Moscrop then enunciated the classic tropes of the Left:
The convoy speaks of threats to liberty. It would be close to something if the participants weren’t so far off. Threats to liberty are rampant in Canada, but not because of vaccine mandates. Rather, it is income and wealth inequality; worker exploitation; gendered, religious, racialized and other forms of hate violence; ongoing settler colonialism; and other forms of structural marginalization and oppression that compromise liberty.