Tucker: Canadian truckers are being treated like a terror group
‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ host argues leaders are trying to intimidate truckers for speaking out.
Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. That's from Karl Marx, of course. He wrote that famous phrase in 1848. The weird thing is, it's pretty likely that Marx himself never met an actual worker.
Wait a second. He didn't spend a decade in a cotton mill, witnessing the oppression firsthand. No. Karl Marx never spent a moment in a factory. He was a rich kid who became a journalist. Of course he was. But for more than 150 years, Karl Marx inspired generations of other rich kids who also became journalists to repeat his line or variations of it.
Over time, workers became working men or working class and then with feminism, working people or working families, but the idea itself never changed. Ordinary people, wage earners, are getting shafted, so they've got to unite. They've got to come together for protection and for dignity. This was the idea, of course, behind the organized labor movement, and every Democratic president from Andrew Jackson until now has made the very same point over and over again. "The noble people of Scranton..." You hear it even today. So, Democrats have repeated that line often enough. You would think they really mean it.
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Do they really mean it? Let's take the test. Here's how you know. Watch what happens when actual workers, working people from working families who constitute the working class, actually come together as a group to protest how things are going.
What happens then? Does the intellectual class greet these workers as heroes? Throw a parade? Listen intently to their stories? Does NPR do a sympathetic feature on them? Or, do self-described progressives recoil in revulsion and horror at the grubbiness of the people who as we used to say, work for a living? Do liberals immediately denounce them as Nazis and call for their suppression by force? That's the question. What's the answer? We'll ask Trump voters what happens. They'll know.
Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, during a news conference from the National Capital Region in Canada on Monday, Jan. 31, 2022. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Or consider what's happening right now in Canada. Thousands of truck drivers have descended on Ottawa, the capital city, to protest the tyranny of Justin Trudeau's government. Justin Trudeau does not like truck drivers. He thinks they're revolting. Justin Trudeau likes private equity barons and tech moguls, the only people who give him money. Trudeau is not in Ottawa right now. In fact, he and his family fled when the truck drivers arrived and they've been in hiding ever since. So when the revolution he has been calling for finally arrived, Justin Trudeau wasn't there to see it. He ran away in terror, kind of sad.
So instead, in his place, his friend Mark Carney has been speaking for him. Carney is a former Goldman Sachs executive who many believe will replace Justin Trudeau if Trudeau ever decides to give up power. In a recent op-ed, Mark Carney vented his rage at the impudent truckers in Ottawa and anyone who sent them money on the internet.
"Anyone sending money to the convoy should be in no doubt," Carney wrote. "You are funding sedition. Foreign funders of an insurrection interfered in our domestic affairs from the start."
Got it? That is not a protest. It's sedition. It's an insurrection. Clearly, Mark Carney's been watching a lot of CNN up there in Canada and that's why he's concluded the truckers should be crushed by force.
"Those who are still helping to extend this occupation must be identified and punished to the full force of the law." People who sent the money should be prosecuted. If they're not prosecuted, Mark Carney fears, "the constant blaring of horns at all hours will bankrupt our businesses."
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Are you laughing yet? So, the very same finance ghouls who cheered lockdowns for two solid years are now deeply concerned that small businesses might be hurt by the trucker protests. Hilarious. It'll be interesting, by the way, to pull small business owners in Ottawa to see what they think. How did they feel about the truckers? Some of you know exactly what those results would be, but no one's doing that poll, of course. Instead, they found an easier way.
Justin Trudeau has just ordered police to shut the whole thing down. How do you do that? How do you stop a truck protest? Simple. You seize their fuel. That's exactly what police in Canada are doing.
TWITTER VIDEO: So, in fact, yes, they are taking fuel right away for people as they attempt to fuel their vehicles.
OK, so we are, through much practice, connoisseurs of irony. So, let's pause a moment to savor the irony here. The very same people told us we had to defund the police are now telling the police to seize fuel from working-class Canadians who are trying to stay alive in Arctic temperatures.
As they used to say in the 1960s, "scratch a liberal, and you will find a fascist." That was a Black Panther slogan, actually. They weren't entirely stupid. In fact, in this case, they were absolutely right.
According to Justin Trudeau, possessing gasoline in the city of Ottawa is now a crime. Now, to be clear, Ottawa didn't declare the state of emergency because the truckers lit a courthouse on fire or shot someone or leveled a church. BLM did all of those things, but Justin Trudeau strongly supports BLM.
He reaffirmed to support the other day. Here's the problem. We're going to let the mayor of Ottawa explain why peaceful truck drivers pose an imminent danger to Canada.
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OTTOWA MAYOR: It's disturbing when you see the protests turning into what looks like some kind of a fun carnival where they've got bouncy castles and hot tubs and saunas, a complete insult to the people who are putting up with this nonsense for the last seven days, and it shows a great deal of insensitivity.
They've got bouncy castles for kids, growls the childless mayor of Ottawa, let's hurt them. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's a dark scene in Truckistan tonight. The kids are on the bouncy castles. Of course, at the same time, their parents are flaunting the authority of the people in charge and that is the crime. One protester, a clear White supremacist, explained his motives for protest.
TWITTER VIDEO: Where the hell were you? You weren't there? But, now you want to come out in the freezing cold to oppose my fundamental human rights and freedoms. I'm not going to have it. I'm a Black man standing beside my brother right here. This is my brother right here and none of you have the right to tell me who to associate with and who not to associate with me because you did not come out and voice your concerns for the fact that Justin Trudeau banned me from leaving this country because of my medical decision, because I made a decision that he did not like.
Shut up, racist. Go back to Jamaica with your White supremacy nonsense. By the way, no one in Canada's government or the media in Canada, which is mostly controlled by the government, is engaging with any of the arguments of people like that. Instead, they've gone directly to force as crumbling regimes always do. They don't have an argument to make. All they have is police power and they're using them. Officials in Ottawa just threatened to criminally investigate the California company GoFundMe because truckers raised about $10 million on the platform. Here's Ottawa's police chief bragging about stealing that money:
CHIEF PETER SLOLY: We have, through the efforts of deputy.... who know the mayor and his staff, we've been able to shut down the GoFundMe program. That's a temporary reprieve because the funds are already moving in different directions. We are now going after supply and fuel coming into the area through investigations and intelligence operations and interdictions, all of which were underway yesterday, fully underway today.
Intelligence operations? This is a peaceful, political protest. No one has shown any evidence to the contrary. It's not a drug trafficking or human trafficking operation. It's not Al Qaeda. These are Canadian citizens who drive trucks for a living, but they're being treated like a terror group. GoFundMe announced it would redirect the $10 million raised by supporters of the truckers to charities of its choice, presumably BLM, which it has supported since the very beginning. In other words, GoFundMe planned to steal that money.
They were stopped from doing this, by the way, by a number of American attorneys general who threatened to sue the companies. So the company backed off and they're going to refund the money, supposedly. But still, the truckers, the people for whom this money was intended, will not get it. So, in the absence of GoFundMe doing what it's supposed to do, others are filling the gap. An alternative crowdfunding website called Give Send Go has stepped up and raised already more than $5 million for the truckers. How long till they try to shut that down too?
Some Canadians are clearly worried about that. They're turning to cryptocurrency. Tally Coin, for example, is a small crowdfunding service that uses Bitcoin. It's not controlled by banks. That's the point. They're hosting a fundraiser for the truckers. Now, why is this appealing? No one can steal the money. No government can pressure anyone to turn the money over because governments don't control crypto. Bitcoin goes from person A to person B and all the intermediary does, the company, is connect the two.
It's pretty appealing and you can imagine the long-term consequences here. If the people in charge, in this country and in Canada, want to make the U.S. dollar irrelevant, they'll keep acting like this and soon, it will be.
Either way, it's becoming very clear that the only way around the stranglehold the technology has on our human rights is decentralization. That doesn't apply just to crowdfunding, but more than anything to communication. You can't organize if you can't talk to other people. So Facebook, for example, to shut down the "Convoy to D.C. Group," which had amassed 134,000 followers in just two days. No one's allowed to promote the organization anymore. Facebook, all day today, has been suppressing positive articles about the truckers in Canada. Of course they are. That seems like a story, but our media have ignored it. Instead, everyone in New York and D.C. and Los Angeles is cheering on the national security state and its alliance with Silicon Valley as they come together to crush a human rights movement. It makes sense.
CNN REPORTER: Those with the so-called Freedom Convoy say they're staying put until vaccine mandates are dropped, the masks come off and life returns to the way it was.
PROTESTER: This whole event has gone beyond just vaccines and it is now about the entire ordeal.
PROTESTER: We're asking for our freedom. That's all we want.
So, they've been free, free to park big rigs right next to the prime minister's office, free to set up camp in front of the country's national parliament. Ottawa police say they have learned much in the past week, especially after reports of assaults, intimidation and allegations of hate speech and symbols.
SLOLY: This remains, as it was from the beginning, an increasingly volatile and increasingly dangerous demonstration.
CNN REPORTER: and it is spreading like a contagion itself right across the country.
It's spreading like a contagion. Now, you knew that CNN was the praetorian guard for our ruling class. Did you know they serve the same role in Canada and what other countries? How much money to CNN take from the government of Canada? That'd be worth finding out.
Truckers carry jerrycans to refuel as truckers continue to protest vaccine mandates against Covid-19, in Ottawa, Canada on February 7, 2022. (Kadri Mohamed/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
They described what's happening in Ottawa as a, "violent and dangerous demonstration." Really? Where's the violence coming from? The only people getting injured or have been injured so far are the protesters, the truckers.
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In Winnipeg on Friday, an anarchist called David Zegarac drove his jeep into four people who were protesting vaccine mandates. Zegarac didn't stop after hitting the people he fled. Police were legally arrested him. Of course, police are treating the incident like a hit and run. Nothing political. It's not domestic terrorism or anything. David Zegarac, his views, they agree with. He's a progressive, a true believer. How much is he a true believer?
If you look closely, you'll notice that Zegarac has his mask on driving alone in his car during the assault, prima facie evidence of mental illness, something you see in this country all the time, and it makes you wonder: if you're driving alone with a mask on, do you pose a danger to pedestrians? Entirely possible. Someone should fund a study on that. That seems like a big story, especially since it's happening just an hour from our own border, all of this.
The question is: How long before protests like this come here? Clearly, our media are worried about that. Watch the morning news anchors on MSNBC. They're deeply, deeply concerned about these uppity working-class people. Watch.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Where were these protests when people were required to give their children five vaccines?
MIKE BRZEZINSKI: They were in the doctor's office getting vaccines.
SCARBOROUGH: They were in the doctor's office getting vaccines and they were making fun of left-wingers on the West Coast for being loopy anti-vaxxers. Now, they have met the enemy and the enemy, their enemy, is themselves because they've become what they hated. It's a cult.
So here you have Joe and Mika sneering from their studio in Florida at the freezing wage earners stuck outside in Ottawa in February because they want their human rights. Screw them! Well, Joe Scarborough say that to their faces? Probably not.
Scarborough's famously tough on young female employees. Some say he's an absolute killer in the office, but it's hard to imagine Scarborough talking like this if there was an actual Canadian trucker in the room. Truckers in this country are watching all of this, and you wonder: what do they think about it? What would happen if American truck drivers decided they'd had enough of people like Joe Scarborough and went on strike? What would happen then? Well, this country would stop immediately, no more deliveries of anything.
Over time that would mean starvation for people in the cities, but even in the short term, there would be profound suffering in this country. For example, and this is something that too few people outside of television even consider, the world's entire supply of Botox is manufactured on the west coast of Ireland. That's a long way from here. In fact, it's a 4,000 mile long supply chain from the Allergan plant in Westport, Ireland to Jupiter, Florida.
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Now, people at MSNBC might not be aware of this, but our country has no domestic Botox production, along with vitamin C and antibiotics. It's one of the lifesaving pharmaceutical products we have recklessly offshored. So if the trucks stop delivering, the Botox stops coming and suddenly your morning television anchors are going to look like they're 58 years old, which actually they are.
Could that happen? Is it impossible? No, it's not impossible. The people in charge aren't really thinking this through. Most of the time, trends start the United States and they move north to Canada, but this time, the opposite could happen.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the February 7, 2022, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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