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if-you-fan-a-fire · 2 years

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“I watched some Freedom Convoy livestreams on YouTube and some news media interviews with the many white folks wrapped in Canadian flags cheering for the unvaxxed truckers (a minority of truckers) now blasting their horns on Parliament Hill.Here are some themes in the Freedom Convoy discourse:

*free markets good; government bad;

*individual freedom to do whatever one wants regardless of consequences for others, good; restraint on individual freedom for a greater social good, bad;

*freedom from vaccines in Canada, good, safe; freedom to be vaccinated by government, bad, dangerous;

*Covid-19 conspiracy theory-disinformation, good for Canada, trustworthy, the Truth; COVID-19 'expert'-scientific information bad, untrustworthy, Big Lies;

*unvaxxed folks resisting vaccine mandate, good enlightened patriots; vaxxed folks following vaccine mandate, bad-sheeple "Trudopes";

* unvaxxed folks participating in FreedomConvoy, ordinary rebel hero People fighting for Canadian peace and unity; vaxxed normies, unwitting dupes-pawns of corrupt Big Gov-Media-Science Elite, fomenting hate and division in Canada.

* Canada is greatest country in the world, but it is being-has been corrupted by Liberal PM and Federal government overreach; the great freedom-loving people of Canada are taking Canada back, saving Canada, freeing Canada from tyranny, etc.

Well, the 'national popular' is clearly not dead in Canada (but what would Gramsci do with it? What to do with it?)

When asked what they want, many Freedom Convoy people say they want Canada to be free of the vaccine mandate and free from public health restrictions. One first-time protester said she wants to "get back her individual freedom to go shopping again whenever she wants to, and to travel across the border to visit her friends in the United States." So, the wish is for a restoration of the pre-pandemic neoliberal capitalist status quo: freedom to work for wages and to then go shopping, to enjoy the conveniences of the market unhindered by the 'inconveniences' of responsibly abiding public health guidelines in a global pandemic. Others-many middle aged white dudes-speak of themselves as 'victims' of Justin Trudeau and describe the PM as a 'dictator', 'tyrant', 'authoritarian', 'Communist' and 'Nazi'. They seem to believe Trudeau is pushing them and Canada down the road to 'serfdom', the 'gulag', even to the 'camps'!

These white guys represent themselves as at once the 'oppressed' and the 'enlightened vanguard' of a national liberation movement that aims to emancipate the People in 'Canada' from the Elite and restore to 'Canada' the 'Freedom' taken from them by the Federal Government and the Liberal Party. They make lots of macho death threats against the PM and jubilantly declare a desire to kill the PM to punish him for 'his crimes'' against Canadians. Though the provincial governments are at helm of making and enforcing public health mandates, the Freedom Convoy people aren't calling for the death of Doug Ford.

All this reminds me of Tea Party propaganda and protest and the Far Right populist rhetorical frames crafted and operationalized by Trumpism. Much sounds a lot like what Jordan Peterson has been prattling on about to his millions of fans, for years. After all, Peterson described the splatter of COVID-19 rules as a 'totalitarian' threat to freedom. "The thing that surprised me the most," says Peterson, "was how rapidly we stampeded to imitate a totalitarian state in the immediate aftermath of the release of COVID." After the booster shot was encouraged, Peterson tweeted: "Over my dead body you totalitarian wannabees."

As such, the Freedom Convoy's demand for Freedom is a reactionary one. It draws water from the well of mainstream and fringe conservativism. Simply put, the Freedom Convoy demands nothing more for society than a return to free-market capitalism, where individuals freely pursue their self-interest in the market, unhindered in any way by the State. The demand is to go back to 'business as usual', minus Trudeau, but likely plus Bernier or O'Toole. The Freedom Convoy does not demand freedom for everyone from the realm of necessity; it makes no demand to free anyone from compulsory, precarious and alienating waged work; it advances no demand on the State to enhance our freedom by maximizing resources for universally provisioning necessities like public healthcare, education, welfare, daycare, transit, communications and more, for one and all!

The Freedom Convoy's understanding of Freedom stems from an impoverished political imagination, one in sync with the old political-economic status quo, that fails to contemplate its problems, and cannot take us beyond what was.

The Freedom Convoy's future-oriented political horizon points backwards to the myth of a better past. It is the Canadian far Right trailing behind the American far Right (and as one meme put it, "with much lower production values"). After all, the Freedom Convoy is organized by Alberta seperatist Wexit Party people (Tamara Lichsome), People's Party of Canada people (Benjamin Dichter), Yellow Vest Canada people (white nationalist Patrick King), No More Lockdowns people (anti-vaxx and anti-BLM organizer Jason LaFace), and Action 4 Canada - Canada Unity people (Islamophobic anti-LGBTQ haters) and some other far Right ghouls and goons. These folks know how to organize an effective social media campaign, and to reach out, fundraise and recruit through the Internet and digital platforms. Whatever is going on in the minds of the mix of people in this FreedomConvoy milieu has been given shape and given direction by the digital media environment.

It is this environment that the far Right utilizes to move people that might otherwise go Left, to the far right. The digital media environment, as created, manipulated and mobilized by political actors, plays something of a determining role, when it connects to people's real material conditions and experiences. It is the 'ISA' of our conjuncture, not public education, not the legacy news media, and not the old culture industry. The material conditions people live are given meaning, are made meaningful, with the social problem and political solution identified, framed and explained, within and by the digital media environment. I think the far Right is just so much better than the Left at using these tools, because many Lefties are still just trying to be good public educators, not propagandists.

Anyway, the far Right's Freedom Convoy movement was launched on the Internet and has taken off, gone viral, become a material force, connected with and captivated many many thousands of hearts and minds, won more people to far Right anti-vaxxer ideology and integrated them into far Right disinformation networks. The media spectacle accompanying the big event is commented on, shared, captioned, memed, retweeted, and streamed far and wide, across the Internet by lots of far Right folks all around the world, especially in the US.

Donald Trump praised the FreedomConvoy for "doing more to defend American freedom than our own leaders by far." Donald Trump Jr. cheered: "When we push back against the insanity, we can win, and that’s how all this ends...This is a genius idea. We need to see more of this in the U.S." Ben Shapiro tweeted support: "Canadian truckers are rightfully demonstrating against authoritarian vaccine mandates." Fox News pundits like Sean Hannity praise the protests: "TRUCK YEAH: Canada Forms Freedom Convoy of 10K Trucks to Protest Vax Mandates, ‘Overreach is Over.’” Celebrity Joe Rogan declared "Canada is a country in revolt" and billionaire Elon Musk also approved.

The Freedom Convoy has also been taken up strategically at the national level by Maxime Bernier's People's Party and some in Erin O'Toole's Conservative Party, with each trying to ride the Freedom Convoy to increasing electoral returns.I would not claim that every person swept up by the Freedom Convoy's social media momentum was a willing collaborator with the far Right white nationalists who organized this campaign. Nor will I claim that every person who is exhausted, scared, angry and stressed out by the pandemic and nostalgic for some pre pandemic situation or wishing for some post-pandemic era to come identifies with the far Right. I do, however, claim that noxious far Right groups coordinated and catalyzed Freedom Convoy to influence the working class, to take advantage of people's fears and hopes, to turn truckers into a popular symbol of the Right. They have been effective at pushing and pulling people into their hateful ideological milieu.

At the same time, many people that chose to participate in this campaign, online, along highways, and on Parliament Hill, know very well what they are doing, the type of politics they are supporting and why they are doing what they do.

But why are all the thousands of folks targeted by this far Right Freedom Convoy campaign so receptive to its messages and imagery? Not all started their day identifying as or with the far Right, so what made them so open to its influence? Can anything be learned from this mass event? Structurally? About the conjuncture? About our opponents' strategy and tactics? About how to counter those and win people to a better and different kind of Freedom?

H/T to Steve Maher for earlier discussion and encouraging these types of political questions. I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do share John Clarke 's overall assessment: "it is deeply alarming that a fascist core can find the means to rally such numbers and execute such a serious initiative. The confidence, resolve and sense of purpose this will give them is far more dangerous than the immediate event. Only an equally serious and ongoing working class mobilization can neutralize this threat."”

- Tanner Mirrlees, January 29, 2022.

#convoy nonsense #canadian far right #reactionary politics #neoliberalism #business as usual #trumpism #astroturfing #politics of protests #political protest #neo-fascism #antivax #conspiracy theorists #covid19 #negative freedom #canadian politics

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raayllum · 8 months

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i think one of the main reasons i can't shake the "possession is not how callum is going to be play into aaravos' hands" (or at least not solely, i.e. doing something vile or dangerous in the name of love that leads to a renewed possession) is because like...

listen, as much as it'd be kind of weird for a "Master Manipulator" like aaravos to reveal his final play two seasons in advance from a character standpoint, it absolutely make sense from a story standpoint. you couldn't just whip that out of nowhere in a plot relevant moment without having your audience feel cheated, so it had to be established earlier on. now instead of surprise, you get to cultivate a nice feeling of dread. (although i've said before that there were other ways to cultivate said feeling of dread / set up the possibility of possession, i.e. callum learning that its possible out of a book when he was canonically reading about dark magic, him having nightmares or premonitions that aaravos is tethered to him, etc. it didn't have to be so blatant so quickly.)

those are, however, neither of the points i want to get at today, because like - if it is JUST the possession, and there is no choice that leads to it directly before or after in regards to helping aaravos...

Then why the absolutely, continually ramped up Viren-Callum parallels?

Cause like, as of S5, absolutely none of this is Necessary. Callum doesn't necessarily have to exist as a contrast to Viren at this point, given that Viren himself has changed his mind and disavowed dark magic and Aaravos; Callum finally freeing himself from Aaravos (and dark magic?) will likely now have more parallels to Viren's arc, rather than the two being disparate. He'll be following in Viren's footsteps, but in a positive way.

None of this is required for the possession plot line, either. That got kick started all the way back in 2x07, like, seasons ago. If anything it'd be kinda more 'tragic' if Callum really had never touched or been tempted by dark magic again, but he couldn't (or wouldn't) take back his prior choices. A consequence of being controlled by forces well beyond your conceptualization and a price you had no choice but to pay, literally, if they're going the removal of agency arc (which has its own merits) / leaning into the eldritch horror aspect of it all.

Like if it's just possession... Callum does not have to be like or be compared to Viren, in either similarities or contrasts, like - at all. Viren and Callum are both characters who have a relationship with destiny (Viren tended to believe in pre-determined destiny, but Callum decidedly didn't as of S2; even if that still started to change in S4, that alone is not enough of a singular parallel to warrant all the rest) but they're not the only ones, nor is that exclusively related to Aaravos - even if their parallels between each other are constantly circling him, their families, and dark magic / justification(s).

Which makes me think there's two main avenues they could be taking this with:

1) S7 endgame is Callum walking Viren's path regarding the rise, but in a more literal, dramatic sense. Again, Callum proving that he's not like Viren doesn't really need to happen as much now that Viren is 1) no longer a villain and 2) will be a parallel for Callum's positive growth as well. So it's still about similarities, but positive ones: "No matter what you've done, no matter where you are on the path, every step forward is a choice" (cue Callum literally regaining agency) "I am free, and so are you." This is also the avenue where it being mostly just the possession > a choice that leads to Aaravos getting out (choice made before that leads to possession, or choice post-possession) would make more sense, but just the Rise doesn't account for the well, ominous foreboding of all this, lmao.

2) S6 and S7 are working together with S6 being Callum mirroring Viren's Fall (whatever you want that to constitute) / helping Aaravos regardless of the possession - taking an understood risk for love that leads to the possession, or post-possession due to another form of coercion/susceptibility - and S7 being the Rise. It gives the ominous foreboding of it all, particularly highlighted in S5 / 5x02-5x04 and 5x08 somewhere to go, while also providing Callum with a balanced negative and ultimately positive character arc. It ties in the possession then as a plot element / vehicle to explore their similarities and differences but keeps everything tied together with choices/agency (rather than solely removing it), which is what Viren and Callum have both reaffirmed ("No choice? You made the choice you always have" etc) in S5 in particular. It also explains why and how all these forces - the parallels, the patterns, both their individual arcs, and their connections to Aaravos, his plans, and the possession plot line could be brought to fruition, and why they've all been included.

#it was just red #arc 2 #tdp callum #in the name of love #wouldn't you want to tell it kinder if you could #tdp #the dragon prince #mini meta #analysis series #s6 speculation #s7 speculation #tag ramble #predictions #why did this get capitalization halfway through? your guess is as good as mine boyo #like imo (and i'm prepared to eat my words / whatever canon executes i think will be great/good)#but like. if it's not based on callum making Choices. if it's Just the possession plot line and nothing else he does that leads to #fucking disaster (power or freedom or both for aaravos) as a conscious choice or risk that didn't turn out #then there's no reason for viren's atonement arc or for callum to now be able to parallel him #both 'negatively' and 'positively' and the show's just. way too smart for that to be nothing tbh #like s7 will be rise regardless in some ways #but like. it just makes sense that s6 is the fall esp when you want characters to have a lowest point anyway

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