Hegemony, Hate and the Freedom Convoy (2)
More links, and more evidence from Alexa Lavoie @Rebel News
Added 05 Nov 2023: Who were these guys?
Added 18 Apr 2023: A tweeted video from Candice Malcolm: https://twitter.com/CandiceMalcolm/status/1487884262531551239, and I have a second picture of the same flags at the same time. None of this alters the conclusions below.
Added 15 April 2023: Former CBC journalist Rodney Palmer adds new information about the one Nazi flag, along with evidence that the photographer was associated with the Liberals, on Trish Wood’s podcast, starting at 01:14:00 (to about 01:23:00).
I wrote here about the media, the Freedom Convoy, and empty charges of hate, based upon three photographs of Nazi and Confederate flags:
As might have been expected, Alexa Lavoie of Rebel News got there first: https://www.rebelnews.com/whats_the_backstory_of_the_inappropriate_signs_spotted_during_the_first_days_of_the_freedom_convoy
See esp. 05:00 for the Confederate flag story, and 0:7:35 for her Nazi flag investigation.
The link seems to be outside the paywall. Even so, supporting Rebel News is a good idea. Diversity, as we are so incessantly reminded, is good.
Ms. Lavoie is a journalist of enquiring tenacity. She has identified the camera angles from which the problematic pictures were taken, and interviewed a party staffer who was there. She adds information, and makes a number of good points that I did not catch:
The three much-reprinted photos of the Confederate flag all come from the same angle, and were taken by well-known photographers.
Lavoie interviews a People’s Party of Canada staffer who was there with PPC leader Maxime Bernier. The staffer says the fully masked Confederate flag man was trying to get himself photographed with Maxime Bernier. The staffer also says the Confederate man was not with the Freedom protesters. The video here reinforces this account:
The one Nazi flag was photographed from a single angle, taken from a place not publicly accessible.
The flag itself was only present on a short stretch of path, next to the Chateau Laurier. The Chateau Laurier was full of police. Did they not see or identify the Nazi flag carrier?
The Nazi flag photograph was tweeted out by CBC and Globe and Mail journalist Justin Ling, tweet here. Ling did not inquire into where the swastika photograph came from, who took it, or why.
Point 1 (multiple photographers) may point to a plant, or not: the photographers may have been there at a major event anyway.
Point 2 certainly reinforces the probability of a plant. The full face mask, when no one else was masked for any reason (it wasn’t that cold) makes it likely the man was a plant.
Point 3 (inaccessible camera angle) is suspicious, because it suggests that the photographer was in an unlikely place, implying pre-arrangement.
Point 4 implies not that the police were complicit (that have would required the cooperation of an improbable number of officers) but that the flag was shown for only a few minutes.
Point 5 questions the incuriosity of Justin Ling, especially given his hostility to the Freedom Convoy.
Ms. Lavoie, who comes from the oppositional Rebel News, has done much legwork. By contrast, Ling is an establishment figure who writes for the Globe and Mail, and is often on the CBC. He presents himself as a questioning, inquisitive investigative journalist, and has developed a reputation as an expert on conspiracy theories, populism and the Freedom Convoy. A really curious and skeptical journalist would have wondered at the agenda that produced the swastika photograph. Such a journalist would ask why there was one and only one photograph.
Ling is hostile to the Freedom movement, which he sees as a social pathology. Such questions might be for him uncomfortable, if they enter his mind at all. Questions would also reduce the number of stories Ling was able to place in the mainstream media, and freelancers live from one pitch to the next. The important point concerns not one man but the ideological context in which he has to work. There is an approved narrative, and it has the resources to ensure conformity.
I came across the Rebel News story on the following Rumble of former CBC reporter Rodney Palmer, addressing COVID coverage, but moving onto the Freedom Convoy starting at 40:45: https://rumble.com/v2fs7u2-rodney-palmer-full-interview-day-1-toronto-national-citizens-inquiry.html?mref=1sktjm&mrefc=12 .
Mr. Palmer speaks on the video to a number of truckers, of varied ethnic and racial backgrounds, who were with the Freedom Convoy on Wellington Street. His reporting would have refuted the Angry Racist White Men narrative perpetuated by Ling and his bosses.
The narrative of hate has, as I wrote in the first post above, congealed into official history. That history is now used to justify repression. It needs to be refuted.
The Freedom Convoy was, more than any other recent "event" in Canada than I can recall, the unintentional application of a very hot mustard poultice on the Laurentian Elite. It was unintentional, yet it produced the expected media outpourings of vile musings, as you have so eloquently outlined in your writings.
From where I sit, we get to witness this hourly/daily out here in the Colonies. (Exhibit 1: The Just Transition.) Add to this the lengthy, drawn out, Kafkaesque incarceration of Tamara Lich, who will again face trial in the fall, and one must pinch oneself daily. I am waiting for the Stasi to press-gang me into reporting on my neighbours.......
We are well on our way.