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Freedom Convoy Protests Expose Canada’s Mainstream Outlets as Propaganda Machine for Ruling Party

Published: February 5, 2022
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Protesters hold up a sign as they condemn the mandates imposed by the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau near Parliament Hill on Feb.y 5, 2022 in Ottawa, Canada. Truckers continue their rally over the weekend near Parliament Hill in hopes of pressuring the government to roll back COVID-19 public health regulations and mandates. (Image: Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)

Commentary

As the Freedom Convoy protests in Canada’s capital stretch into their second week, Canada’s mainstream media outlets — including the state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), The Globe and Mail, CTV, the Toronto Star and Global, among others — have aggressively run disparaging pieces aimed at influencing Canadian citizens’ perception of the demonstrations in Ottowa. 

Canada’s grassroots media outlets including Rebel Media, True North, and The Counter Signal appear to be the only media outlets willing to cover the protests in a balanced way with Canada’s National Post being the outlier. The National Post, a Post Media news outlet, is owned in large part by American media conglomerate Chatham Asset Management.  

On Feb. 4 Global News Canada told its readership that they should be “worried about whether crowdfunding websites could be used to finance hate groups and other extremist organizations,” an attack on the protester’s GoFundMe campaign. Following the publishing of this piece, GoFundMe cancelled the “Freedom Convoy 2022” campaign by labeling the protests an “occupation” parroting talking points by the Trudeau liberal government. 

To date, the only violence that has emerged from the protests, after over a week of sustained dissent, occurred on the evening of Feb. 4 during a protest being held in Winnipeg, in support of the convoy, where a man wearing a sanitary mask driving a SUV hit four demonstrators. Three of the victims were treated for injuries on site and one was transported to hospital for care and has been released. 

Reports of violence by protesters at the Coutts border protest in Alberta were not verified by the local Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) who were on scene. 

The organizers of the main protest in Ottawa responded to GoFundMe cancelling their campaign (which raised over $10-million) by opening another campaign on the crowdfunding platform, GiveSendGo. The GiveSendGo site immediately went down due to what the site’s operators say was a massive influx of people attempting to donate to the fund as well as coordinated DDOS attacks.  

On Feb. 5 GiveSendGo tweeted, “We have been under heavy DDOS and bot attacks. In spite of all of this we still have managed to raise funds 5X faster than the gfm did. GFM raised 10mil in 3 weeks. GSG campaign has already raised over 1.1mil in just over 12 hours!”

Canada’s CBC, has published numerous articles parroting the Trudeau government’s talking points concerning the protests, while blasting the protests as racist and fascist. 

On Feb. 1 Trudeau tweeted, “Today in the House, Members of Parliament unanimously condemned the antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia that we’ve see on display in Ottawa over the past number of days. Together, let’s keep working to make Canada more inclusive.”

Also on Feb. 1 the CBC published a conversation with Helmut Harry Loewen, an Anti-Facist researcher and Associate of the Humanities at Simon Fraser University that characterised the “average protester” as a “white supremicisist” and “fascist.”

“What are your thoughts on the average participant, so to speak, in the Freedom Convoy?” Loewen was asked.

Loewen responded, “What I think we can say is that, what unfolded in Ottawa this weekend and in the weeks leading up to it was really a disgusting and gut churning display of white supremacy.”

Scenes on the ground in Ottawa stand in stark contrast to the media’s narrative. Reports from the main protest in Ottawa describe an environment where Canadians, from all walks of life and creed, have gathered, peacefully to assert their right to gather and protest what they say is government “overreach.”

Rupa Subramanya, a journalist with Canada’s National Post, told her over 123,000 followers on Twitter, “In authoritarian regimes, it’s the norm for the mainstream media to tow the government line when facing protests. Many journalists have been using the same terms/talking points as the Trudeau govt in referring to the protestors and that’s being noticed because Canada is not Belarus.”