First came the farmers’ protests in the Netherlands, then the Freedom Convoy in Canada. Now the farm protests have reached Germany. The background is simple: On 15 November 2023, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the budgetary manipulations of the Scholz government unconstitutional,
I know this is an unfair comparison, because America and Germany are different countries, but it's the same demo of bougie cosmopolitan international types who hold these opinions in both countries so I'll say it anyway
> Then they – and everybody else - remembers how intimidating paramilitary vehicles like combine harvesters can be when they when they travel in convoys on the motorway or fogs up city centres with subsidised agricultural diesel …
Does anyone remember 2020 when for 3 months almost every major city in the US descended into violence every night and billions of dollars worth of property was burned down and ~35 people were murdered? Does anybody? Like, not fake pretend hypothetical threats of violence that effete urban liberals hallucinate when they see the vehicles that produce their food, but actual violence involving fire and blood? The "mostly peaceful" "protests"?
Yeah fuck this guy. I wish the farmers protesting were half as violent as he thinks they are. He deserves it
the problem of course is the opposite. the farmers are too nice; they're likely to drive home at the end of their protest week, believing that they have taken the ritualistically necessary steps to bring politicians to their senses.
It's a similar problem to that which I have with some irl conservative friends: they still, fundamentally, believe in the system, they just think it's currently controlled by bad people.
They still think that if we vote and argue and protest hard enough, we will magically undo all of the terrible things that have befallen our society. But it won't work like that.
I'm not convinced that protesting was _ever_ real but it sure as hell isn't now. Protesting is a kayfabe. Left-wing protesting is just astroturf, part of the elites' process of manufacturing consent. _Approved_ right-wing protesting is completely ineffective, causes absolutely no change in society, and exists as a pressure-relief valve to neuter the right before it can bring any actual pressure. And real, effective right wing protesting? I will remind you that Trudeau declared literal martial law to deal with the truckers, he suspended all civil rights (selectively) in Canada for two weeks, he sent SWAT bros to curbstomp veterans, he imprisoned hundreds of them, and he gave himself the power to just take all the money in your bank account without due process if he doesn't like your internet friends.
That kind of shit is what happens when your protest is "real" and has an actual ability to change things, and until the people protesting are willing to Do What Needs To Be Done to overcome such authoritarian tactics, nothing will change. I don't think anybody has the balls to do that. I sure don't; I love not being ***** in prison, and plan to keep it that way way
that’s the problem i have with all the afd, wagenknecht, maassen fans. they run in circles believing jumping trice instead of twice this time is gonna do magic.
dare you point out that the election system is fully fraud and made to self-contain… oh dear. you’ll see some heavy stockholm syndrom.
we’ll never get out of this. not peacefully. that’s why i just left everything and only lurk around here. people are hopeless sheep. i let them jump.
But basically, protests don't work unless the are able to get the cops or military on their side, or unless, like Sri Lanka, the protestors start attacking politicians and burning down government buildings...
I have an English nephew who has a teaching job in Sri Lanka. I worried for him and his wife who is a native Sri Lankan and their little son during this time. He reassured me that he and his family were alright and would remain that way as he and his wife are both teachers at the same school for international students and earn high wages so they could continue to buy food and petrol despite the prices for both skyrocketing and a black market with outrageous prices! But he said there were many of the poorer Sri Lankans that were hit terribly hard and could not afford food nor petrol, so were starving hence they started attacking their politicians and burning down their government buildings.. they were desperate and had nothing left to lose. You are right, it is going to have to get much worse here in Canada, and there in the US, and in Germany and other European countries before people get hungry and desperate before real change can occur because the people have nothing left to lose.
This alludes to something Brett Weinstein brought up with his Tucker Carlson interview. Terrorist is now a legal term which means you have no rights. We have seen this play out up to the point of indefinite detainment and torture for the US. Nazi and far right are additional weaponized identity labels though not at the level of legal status.
This was the reason why the Trudeau government was so desperate to change the identity of the trucker protesters to nazis and terrorists.
Hey, that was mostly peaceful arson and rioting, and obviously, those right thinking defenders of justice didn't have any paramilitary combine harvesters.
(It's a damned good thing this is text, because I certainly wasn't able to type that with a straight face.)
> "The recoil bruised my shoulder, which can happen if you don't know what you're doing. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions -- loud like a bomb -- gave me a temporary form of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable."
Yes that sounds so reminiscent of the “trauma they endured from those obnoxiously terrible loud honking horns” and the “threat of VIOLENCE they felt when they had to walk by some of the BIG THREATENING rigs and trucks to get to their local grocery stores or to get to work…” All based on their “feelings” not an actual physical threat of physical violence! One Ottawa gov worker, a Chinese chick got together some of her neighbours in a high rise apartment or condo building to drop frozen eggs down onto the heads of the truckers walking below on the sidewalk in retaliation for the honking and their unwelcome presence in “their city.” She did not see this as physical violence however, she was smug and laughing about it feeling dropping hard frozen eggs from a great height onto people’s heads was kind of funny and perfectly acceptable under the circumstances. Never mind Ottawa is Canada’s capital city so if you want to protest the actions of the federal government THAT is the place to do it inconvenient or not!
I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying
The people in the federal government are all child rapists. You think you can go to their home, and _offend their sensibilities_, and they're just sit there? They rape children. They're the most evil people on the planet. They will kill you and kill your family over that.
It's horrible. It's not acceptable. But it's How It Is, and you have to factor that in to your protesting plans if you want to live.
Ottawa is the capital city of all of Canada and where the federal government rules from so that’s where to go if you want to protest policies and laws and acts made by the government in power that you disagree with. Ottawa is all Canadians capital city and we all have a right to protest there. I am prepared to lose my life for standing up for the principles I believe in, my principles ARE me and I don’t value life AT ALL and ANY COSTS as many do. I will fight to my last dying breath for what I believe in because I’m not afraid to die
Also can't believe I didn't pick up on this when this meme was current but
LOL THE RECOIL BRUISED YOUR SHOULDER? BRO AR-15s have like the lightest recoil of any rifle I've ever fired. It's much much lighter than pistols too. The only thing I've ever fired with less recoil was a CZ Skorpion
All weekend I was in a weird online argument with people who insisted America had an insurrection after Biden won. We didn't, but millions are convinced that we did. The people in my discussion refused to compare what happened in DC with BLM riots, Portland riots, or even the DC riots after Trump won the previous election. They refused to acknowledge the difference between a riot and in insurrection, and when I pointed out that the vast majority of people there just marched and went home, and the vast majority of the people who went into the Capitol weren't rioting, and that the vast majority of people who rioted didn't do anything after they got in, people told me "just because they weren't good at it doesn't mean they weren't engaged in one." One woman told me anyone there deserved to rot in jail for life. How is conversation possible with people like this?
The rules about running for office after participating in an insurrection were written after our Civil War. I told one guy if he wants to compare a riot with states seceding and fighting a four-year war that killed more than 600,000 people, he certainly can, but he doesn't look very intelligent.
My sense is that it is a highly sophisticated immersive alternate reality with a central narrative that mimics other, older liberal narratives. It is a propaganda sarcophagus, and it includes weaponized empathy pseudo-therapeutic articles on how to cope with a fellow traveler who has gone down a rabbit hole, as if we'd gone full on QAnon. I live with this. The advice columns used to suggest confronting those descending into the rabbit hole, now the advice is to ignore them and perhaps they'll wake up. I infer this from what I hear. The motte and bailey is very severe. Wokeism, according to this suffocating bubble of nonthought, the motte,is just being kind. My friend was once an old school liberal, and he at least has something of an excuse in that the beginnings of cognitive impairment are upon him at 75, I just think its important not to underestimate the psyop. It is an entirely false reality.
I live in the Blue Bubble here in the USA and there is simply no getting through to the tribalized brain jacked up on social-media narratives. It is either obey the sacred dogma or be denounced as a bigoted heretic, no other option—and this from our supposed thinking class!
As a (recovering) Democrat, I think that poll is way off. None, absolutely none of my card-carrying liberal Democrat friends believe that Trump should be disqualified from any ballot. We are all too aware of how the elites in our own party used the selection process to exclude Bernie Sanders, a popular progressive, in favor of that odious neocon witch. That said, I'm the only one (so far) to actually admit support for Trump.
It's not conversation, it's disruption. At least that's what I call it. You have to disrupt their echo chamber wherever you can. And all you can do is offer dissent and hope at some point they wake up. You can't force it, coerce it, and why would you want to? It was that force and coercion and 24/7 propaganda manipulation that got them to this point.
This is not to say humor is not in order. We need to be be absurd to point out absurdity. I did a cartoon months back which showed a reporter in a grocery store with bare shelves behind him and he is talking about "mostly full shelves."
That's pretty much what I do. Many people never hear a dissenting opinion, and are surprised that any exist. And in an online forum, you never know who else will see something and think "wait, that's TRUE!"
Joe Biden is on record making a comment about the impossibility of citizens defending themselves against the US military in an attempt to dismiss one of the arguments for gun ownership to protect against tyranny. So, if well trained gun owners with assault rifles would stand no chance against the US military in open conflict, how was a bunch of people with no guns or explosives an insurrection?
I live in Portland OR. I remember. I was the only one in my wide group of former friends who smelled the ratty smell of it....my ex's own kid was downtown, tearing up stuff, being trained to destroy livlihood, buildings and statues in the name of Racism. Just change one letter, it was and is Facism. I am still an outlier here and trying to leave.
That protests are usually ineffectual is practically a proverb on the right. It's generally true, but not always. The Canadian trucker convoy effectively ended covidian policies worldwide. A large enough protest can deliver sufficient shock to the system to change things. It's just that almost none of them exceed this threshold.
The trucker protest made a big impression on me. I think a big part of its effectiveness was the completely over-the-top reaction by Trudeau and the government. Streisand effect.
I'm going to stake out a position that is perhaps controversial here:
The Trudeau reaction was proportional to the threat.
A few random foods for thought:
First: the trucker protest caused meaningful harm and hardship to the people who run the federal government. Federal governments _always_ overreact in this way when they feel _personally_ threatened. Duncan Trussel was on Rogan a few weeks ago and when they were talking about January 6th he made this point. He said, look, I'm an old school hippie. We protested things all the time. But we understood that you never protest in DC, because those people are evil and violent, and if you poke the tiger in the eye, what do you think will happen?
Second: If you paid close attention and read between the lines, there was some serious, almost paramilitary organization behind the trucker protest. I don't say this to slander them, in fact I think this is the main reason why they were as effective as they were. I wasn't quite sure of this at first, but one very specific thing clued me in. Remember when they set up "warming shelters" a few blocks from Parliament? Yeah, that wasn't about warming. That was about stockpiling a bunch of very explosive and flammable tanks of propane right where police might try to shoot at them, as a deterrent. That's why the government freaked out so hard about those, and the fact that the truckers did this (and had such a brilliant cover story for it) tells me that at some level they knew what they were doing
Third: It is significant to keep in mind that the Trudeau government took a very light touch to the truckers until they blockaded the ambassador bridge. The ambassador bridge carries 25% of all of the trade between the US and Canada. Blockading that bridge is a de facto act of war against the United States, and responding to it with _the military_ would have been appropriate. After all, from the United States' perspective, it's either the Canadian government doing it, or the Canadian government allowing it to happen, and both of those are unacceptable. In fact, it came out in the inquiry, the White House personally called Trudeau and told him he had to deal with them, and that's why he declared martial law. He didn't do it, until the supreme commander of the United States military told him to do it, or else.
The Trudeau reaction was horrendous and authoritarian, but it wasn't unexpected or disproportionate.
It was certainly over the top in that Trudeau could have, you know, *met* with the protesters. Instead, he ran away, cracked down, and closed donors' bank accounts.
He was asked repeatedly or any member of his government to meet with Tamara Lich and Chris Barber and even the last living signatory former premier of Newfoundland and member of parliament to the amendments of our Constitution Act Brian Peckford who was a Progressive Conservative at the time and who is extremely knowledgeable about our government and our Constitution, when,why,who, what was their intent in drafting these amendments, what was their original intent etc. Trudeau bailed like the coward that he is, conveniently “caught covid” right when the trucker convoy arrived 🙄 but he couldn’t hide forever. All they wanted was an opportunity to air their grievances and concerns and to be heard, Trudeau wasn’t for allowing them to speak or to debate his unjust policies nor to send any other Liberal members in his place, and the Conservatives and NDP well crickets. Tells you everything. I have never disrespected or hated someone as much as I do Trudeau and many other Canadians feel the same way and want him GONE, he and his party are also tanking in the polls as he has by now angered and alienated much of the population with his far left policies and disowned a great number of us too when his job is to represent ALL Canadians whether you agree with them or not!
I agree, in the sense that I fundamentally side with the truckers and don't understand why the government cared so much about vaccine passports at the border.
But given the specific actions the truckers took in the protest, the government's response is not unexpected, is my only point
I’m Canadian, I watched daily any and all live streams throughout the entire protest and I watched the entire inquiry lead by Judge Rouleau an old school big supporter and former member of the Liberal party into the invocation of the Emergency Act formerly known as the War Act but renamed. I couldn’t disagree with you more, all donations were small, mostly Canadians but lots from Americans too, NO paramilitary involvement, perhaps you are referring to the one crazy guy leading The Diagolon Movement who had absolutely nothing to do with Chris Barber and Tamara Lich who planned this protest? IF there had been any paramilitary involvement of any kind Chris Barber and Tamara Lich would most definitely be up on much more serious charges like sedition and treason rather than mischief and counselling to commit mischief! Trudeau’s out for blood, wants vengeance for being made to look like the incompetent fool that he is and laughing stock on the world stage is all. He’s a vindictive little psychopath and narcissist that’s all, and he wants revenge! We have 4 more political prisoners, the Coutts men set up by the RCMP (think FBI and CIA)for weapons and sedition charges just like Jan 6 political prisoners these four men have spent 18 long months and counting behind bars without even being given due process while a guy who mowed over a few people with his truck killed one and seriously injured two others I believe was charged, offered bail, and was back out on the streets before you could blink an eye! We are experiencing the identical soft authoritarian regime that the US and Germany and all western countries are living with, it’s called the Globalists Playbook to seek world power!
As soon a I heard about the banking thing, I took the last ~$5000 I had in my canadian accounts and transferred it across the border. I donated to the trucker protests, or at least, tried to until the payment processor forcibly reverted the charge. That right there is, per the law, all they need to just say "lol, all that money is ours now"
I disagree, but upvoted you anyway because your post is articulate, well reasoned, and makes a fair point. I think Trudeau could (and should) have used the military to open the bridge without cracking down on the rest of the protest. Honestly, though, a far better solution would have been to concede and lift the restrictions.
Are these the Coutts Four? Trish Wood did a podcast with some of the family/friends of these men. They are in a terrible spot - same as many of the J6 protestors.
The Ambassador Bridge Blockade was ended by Doug Ford and the OPP 2 days BEFORE Dictator Trudeau Implemented the Emergencies Act, as was the Blockade at Coutts.
No, Trudeau was mad about Ottawa and was proving a point.
When these effete men overreact, they do so by calling out their own "paramilitary". I saw the men sent to Ottawa and they were no joke - hardened military types, not your typical police. This is their weak spot, as they trust these enforcers even less than their "real man" subjects. A man like Trudeau cannot ever personally give commands to men like these, as they would eventually despise him. They are only held in check by money and oaths of office, but the effete politicians know how little an oath means, or how fleeting power is. The effete emperors of Rome were right to fear the Praetorian guard, as they eventually assumed the emporers power.
That reminds me of an article I read five years ago or so, in which a speaker at one of the elite conferences (Davos or Aspen, whatever) was asked by several billionaires to have a private consulting session. The speaker agreed, assuming they wanted to talk privately about financial issues, which was his area of expertise. Turns out, to the speaker's great surprise, that the billionaires wanted his opinion on how they can protect themselves from their own bodyguards and staff turning against them in a "grid down, end of the world as we know it, chaotic situation," when the billionaires may be ensconced in their own bugout compounds. The speaker didn't know how to respond and had no advice on that issue. lol.
Yes, I've heard that one as well. I also heard about a security specialist who met with tech moguls to advise them about the same thing. One tech idiot-savant asked if they could control their security guards by implanting chips in their brains. The security consultant was shocked, buy finally replied that such an action was most likely to get the techie a bullet to his own brain.
The "effete' men of which you speak are a byproduct of runaway feminism and the feminization of society writ large. This is where the fixation on "being nice" and the demonization of "anger" comes from, in addition to the recoil away from violence as a means to end and instead thinking some kind of rational debate will actually dissuade those who essentially want to kill you.
But please note, they demonize anger, but they are not devoid of aggressiveness. It is just that their style of violence is passive-agressiveness, indirect.
Another way to characterize our current situation is "the triumph of the talkers over the doers". That gets riskier for the talkers as civilizational consensus evaporates--hence things like the frightened billionaires asking how to protect themselves from their own bodyguards. (Jeff Cooper's brief volume _Principles of Self Defense_ has some words about ultimate impossibility of that.)
A defining moment for me, to see that no one in my life grokked what the Canadians were doing, what they were calling out. I blasted their honkhonks to the ire of my housmates.
Some of us Kiwis were donating from NZ and posting updates of the truckers' protest on our local NZ Gab.com accounts, to inspire Kiwis to be less like sheep in relation to their own globalist Prime Minister "Comrade" Jabcinda Ardern. "We're all Canadians now."
I asked this question in another part of this thread and got mostly crickets. I fail to see the material difference between this German trucker protest, the Canadian trucker protest, AND the (pro-Palestine) protests that blocked bridges and tunnels into NYC this week, AND the [place virtue-signaling cause here] protests that blocked bridges into Seattle a little while back, and the (climate change) protests that blocked the roads leading to and from Burning Man months back. Holding people hostage for your political aims, no matter how noble, is tantamount to terrorism, is it not? Or are we experiencing the truism, "the difference between terrorist and freedom fighter is a matter of which side you're on"?
"Thanks once again for making the insane palatable"
Whoa, If that's really the result of Eugyppius' efforts then he's a failure. It seems to me, rather, that he's writing to make the insanity more visible.
"Convincing the farmer, as a traditional keeper of the tried and tested, of the need for progressive change is no easy task. … What we will see over the next few days is the escalation of a communication problem. Problems are solved in meeting rooms, not on ferry docks or in marketplaces. "
I am so fucking fed up of this attitude. All this means is that one side is better at meeting room arguments than the other. It has absolutely nothing to do with who is right. Of course these professional managers want disputes to be solved in the arena of the manager - the fucking meeting room, according to their own rules. Rules Based Order
I sit on a couple of corporate boards and have had countless "meeting room wars". In actuality, the war is won outside the meeting room, you just negotiate terms if you've done things right.
The protests show that resistance to the regime will only happen when people's pocketbooks are hurt.
Anything else, like say the total destruction of our society, is taken without much grumbling.
The farmer's protest also shows that only a well organized group with some physical power - like large machinery you can block the roads with - is able to stage any viable resistance.
Once the farmers get what they want - more money - they will disperse again. And this will happen quickly, as our political caste will give in to any demand to stop them. And they are far too weak or dare the open viciousness as Trudeau did with the truckers.
For the normal citizen remains the slim hope that his voting behavior will change anything.
The AfD, and before them the Greens, show that any real political change via voting takes about 20 years to have any effect.
I keep having a problem with people who claim the AfD is a "right-wing" party. How can a party harbor right-wing thoughts if said party is led by a German lesbian married to an African woman??? Germany has yet to hit bottom. As Russian foreign minister Lavrov recently said, "I refuse to believe European civilization has come to an end. At some point, I believe Europeans will return to normalcy. I have to believe this." I hope he is right.
"How can a party harbor right-wing thoughts if said party is led by a German lesbian married to an African woman???" Are you perhaps confusing politics with mores?
Are you confusing healthy societies with libertine degenerate ones? Degenerates belong in the closet, not front and center as "role models". Pull your head out.
“Unlike train drivers or doctors, farmers do not go on strike. They “take” their protest “to the streets” and literally spill their dung there like other people spill their hearts out. Then they – and everybody else - remembers how intimidating paramilitary vehicles like combine harvesters can be when they when they travel in convoys on the motorway or fogs up city centres...”
Lol... the farmers should broadcast this widely. It’s as stunning a gift as Hillary’s deplorables comment. Whenever the gold medal for sneering elitist contempt is awarded, this journalist will certainly be a contender.
Brillant as usual. When my eyes 1st landed on this sentence " What we will see over the next few days is the escalation of a communication problem" it 1st registered in my brain as 'What we will see over the next few days is the escalation of a communism problem'. Over here we have John Kerry saying we need to stop farming 'cause global warming you know. & to think I was upset because Kerry didn't win the 2004 USA election!
I was relieved that he (and Gore) lost, even though I hated the Bushes. It was like me wanting to send phony CIA plant Obama flowers for beating Hillary.
That's going to be hard for them, Mesopotamians and members of the Indus Valley Civilization were undoubtedly melanistic, which is like kryptonite for leftists.
I´m not sure what exactly to make of these protests. On the one hand, the sheer scale and energy is very impressive. It appears that the farmers´ themselves are not amused at all and there is a lot of sympathy for their concerns from the man on the street. On the other hand, at least the spokesmen for the farmers´ still operate within the approved paradigm, as evinced by the quote in the article. I also noticed that the press doesn´t appear to be quite as rabidly hostile to oppositional protests as in the covid days of yore. Which raises the question for me whether the protests will be used for a containment maneuver one way or another. For example, I could see people from the "Christian" "Democrats" swooping in to lead the charge against the "traffic light". Surprisingly, that has not appeared to have happened yet.
It's at least very significant that the press don't feel able to denounce the protesters as right-wing extremists; rather, they say they're being infiltrated or instrumentalised by the right wing. I think this is a backhanded acknowledgement that they command a lot of middle class support and they can't be demonised in the usual way, at least not yet.
I agree with that observation. For a successful containment operation, I´d venture that somebody has to deliver at least a small political win. For example, a certain prominent politician from your home state ("beloved" during the covid era - come to think of it, I haven´t heard anything from him in a while) could ostensibly raise a big fuss in the upper chamber and get at least some concessions from the "traffic light". Without delivering such a token victory, the farmers may politically begin to leave approved territory.
I know this is an unfair comparison, because America and Germany are different countries, but it's the same demo of bougie cosmopolitan international types who hold these opinions in both countries so I'll say it anyway
> Then they – and everybody else - remembers how intimidating paramilitary vehicles like combine harvesters can be when they when they travel in convoys on the motorway or fogs up city centres with subsidised agricultural diesel …
Does anyone remember 2020 when for 3 months almost every major city in the US descended into violence every night and billions of dollars worth of property was burned down and ~35 people were murdered? Does anybody? Like, not fake pretend hypothetical threats of violence that effete urban liberals hallucinate when they see the vehicles that produce their food, but actual violence involving fire and blood? The "mostly peaceful" "protests"?
Yeah fuck this guy. I wish the farmers protesting were half as violent as he thinks they are. He deserves it
the problem of course is the opposite. the farmers are too nice; they're likely to drive home at the end of their protest week, believing that they have taken the ritualistically necessary steps to bring politicians to their senses.
It's a similar problem to that which I have with some irl conservative friends: they still, fundamentally, believe in the system, they just think it's currently controlled by bad people.
They still think that if we vote and argue and protest hard enough, we will magically undo all of the terrible things that have befallen our society. But it won't work like that.
I'm not convinced that protesting was _ever_ real but it sure as hell isn't now. Protesting is a kayfabe. Left-wing protesting is just astroturf, part of the elites' process of manufacturing consent. _Approved_ right-wing protesting is completely ineffective, causes absolutely no change in society, and exists as a pressure-relief valve to neuter the right before it can bring any actual pressure. And real, effective right wing protesting? I will remind you that Trudeau declared literal martial law to deal with the truckers, he suspended all civil rights (selectively) in Canada for two weeks, he sent SWAT bros to curbstomp veterans, he imprisoned hundreds of them, and he gave himself the power to just take all the money in your bank account without due process if he doesn't like your internet friends.
That kind of shit is what happens when your protest is "real" and has an actual ability to change things, and until the people protesting are willing to Do What Needs To Be Done to overcome such authoritarian tactics, nothing will change. I don't think anybody has the balls to do that. I sure don't; I love not being ***** in prison, and plan to keep it that way way
that’s the problem i have with all the afd, wagenknecht, maassen fans. they run in circles believing jumping trice instead of twice this time is gonna do magic.
dare you point out that the election system is fully fraud and made to self-contain… oh dear. you’ll see some heavy stockholm syndrom.
we’ll never get out of this. not peacefully. that’s why i just left everything and only lurk around here. people are hopeless sheep. i let them jump.
SPOT ON! i bet they paid their maut on the way…
But basically, protests don't work unless the are able to get the cops or military on their side, or unless, like Sri Lanka, the protestors start attacking politicians and burning down government buildings...
I have an English nephew who has a teaching job in Sri Lanka. I worried for him and his wife who is a native Sri Lankan and their little son during this time. He reassured me that he and his family were alright and would remain that way as he and his wife are both teachers at the same school for international students and earn high wages so they could continue to buy food and petrol despite the prices for both skyrocketing and a black market with outrageous prices! But he said there were many of the poorer Sri Lankans that were hit terribly hard and could not afford food nor petrol, so were starving hence they started attacking their politicians and burning down their government buildings.. they were desperate and had nothing left to lose. You are right, it is going to have to get much worse here in Canada, and there in the US, and in Germany and other European countries before people get hungry and desperate before real change can occur because the people have nothing left to lose.
Remember when a Canadian parliament member said the peaceful trucker protest slogan “honk honk” was code for “heil Hitler? I member!
This alludes to something Brett Weinstein brought up with his Tucker Carlson interview. Terrorist is now a legal term which means you have no rights. We have seen this play out up to the point of indefinite detainment and torture for the US. Nazi and far right are additional weaponized identity labels though not at the level of legal status.
This was the reason why the Trudeau government was so desperate to change the identity of the trucker protesters to nazis and terrorists.
Was it Freeland?
No. Ya’ara Sacks: https://www.foxnews.com/world/canadian-mp-claims-honk-honk-code-heil-hitler
Hey, that was mostly peaceful arson and rioting, and obviously, those right thinking defenders of justice didn't have any paramilitary combine harvesters.
(It's a damned good thing this is text, because I certainly wasn't able to type that with a straight face.)
I know, right?
"intimidating paramilitary vehicles like combine harvesters"
Probably written by someone who has never seen an actual cow.
Reminds me of that meme article written about rifles a while back
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gersh-kuntzmans-ar-15-ptsd
> "The recoil bruised my shoulder, which can happen if you don't know what you're doing. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions -- loud like a bomb -- gave me a temporary form of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable."
Yes that sounds so reminiscent of the “trauma they endured from those obnoxiously terrible loud honking horns” and the “threat of VIOLENCE they felt when they had to walk by some of the BIG THREATENING rigs and trucks to get to their local grocery stores or to get to work…” All based on their “feelings” not an actual physical threat of physical violence! One Ottawa gov worker, a Chinese chick got together some of her neighbours in a high rise apartment or condo building to drop frozen eggs down onto the heads of the truckers walking below on the sidewalk in retaliation for the honking and their unwelcome presence in “their city.” She did not see this as physical violence however, she was smug and laughing about it feeling dropping hard frozen eggs from a great height onto people’s heads was kind of funny and perfectly acceptable under the circumstances. Never mind Ottawa is Canada’s capital city so if you want to protest the actions of the federal government THAT is the place to do it inconvenient or not!
I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying
The people in the federal government are all child rapists. You think you can go to their home, and _offend their sensibilities_, and they're just sit there? They rape children. They're the most evil people on the planet. They will kill you and kill your family over that.
It's horrible. It's not acceptable. But it's How It Is, and you have to factor that in to your protesting plans if you want to live.
Child rape is a common predilection of people who want or achieve power everywhere.
Ottawa is the capital city of all of Canada and where the federal government rules from so that’s where to go if you want to protest policies and laws and acts made by the government in power that you disagree with. Ottawa is all Canadians capital city and we all have a right to protest there. I am prepared to lose my life for standing up for the principles I believe in, my principles ARE me and I don’t value life AT ALL and ANY COSTS as many do. I will fight to my last dying breath for what I believe in because I’m not afraid to die
Also can't believe I didn't pick up on this when this meme was current but
LOL THE RECOIL BRUISED YOUR SHOULDER? BRO AR-15s have like the lightest recoil of any rifle I've ever fired. It's much much lighter than pistols too. The only thing I've ever fired with less recoil was a CZ Skorpion
Damn sure a lighter shoulder bump than a 12ga...even firing #8 skeet shot!
Paramilitary combine harvester LMAO
Better feet first into a wood chipper.
All the dogs, three-legged from following hay mowers I've seen repelled me. But sure, one-armed pressitutes may deter the others.
All weekend I was in a weird online argument with people who insisted America had an insurrection after Biden won. We didn't, but millions are convinced that we did. The people in my discussion refused to compare what happened in DC with BLM riots, Portland riots, or even the DC riots after Trump won the previous election. They refused to acknowledge the difference between a riot and in insurrection, and when I pointed out that the vast majority of people there just marched and went home, and the vast majority of the people who went into the Capitol weren't rioting, and that the vast majority of people who rioted didn't do anything after they got in, people told me "just because they weren't good at it doesn't mean they weren't engaged in one." One woman told me anyone there deserved to rot in jail for life. How is conversation possible with people like this?
Exactly. 82 % of democrats believe that not only was it an insurrection but believe Trump should be disqualified to run as POTUS.
Make no mistake the Left is hellbent on authoritarianism.
The rules about running for office after participating in an insurrection were written after our Civil War. I told one guy if he wants to compare a riot with states seceding and fighting a four-year war that killed more than 600,000 people, he certainly can, but he doesn't look very intelligent.
These people can not be persuaded by facts. They are blinded by feelings.
My sense is that it is a highly sophisticated immersive alternate reality with a central narrative that mimics other, older liberal narratives. It is a propaganda sarcophagus, and it includes weaponized empathy pseudo-therapeutic articles on how to cope with a fellow traveler who has gone down a rabbit hole, as if we'd gone full on QAnon. I live with this. The advice columns used to suggest confronting those descending into the rabbit hole, now the advice is to ignore them and perhaps they'll wake up. I infer this from what I hear. The motte and bailey is very severe. Wokeism, according to this suffocating bubble of nonthought, the motte,is just being kind. My friend was once an old school liberal, and he at least has something of an excuse in that the beginnings of cognitive impairment are upon him at 75, I just think its important not to underestimate the psyop. It is an entirely false reality.
"propaganda sarcophagus" !! sweet
I live in the Blue Bubble here in the USA and there is simply no getting through to the tribalized brain jacked up on social-media narratives. It is either obey the sacred dogma or be denounced as a bigoted heretic, no other option—and this from our supposed thinking class!
See Mark Cuban for the “just being kind” take on DEI. Got schooled on X but who knows if he’s capable of emerging from blue bubble land.
As a (recovering) Democrat, I think that poll is way off. None, absolutely none of my card-carrying liberal Democrat friends believe that Trump should be disqualified from any ballot. We are all too aware of how the elites in our own party used the selection process to exclude Bernie Sanders, a popular progressive, in favor of that odious neocon witch. That said, I'm the only one (so far) to actually admit support for Trump.
I'm right with you, except I don't support Trump. I would like to see as many options as possible on the ballot.
It's interesting. All of my liberal friends believe anything is justified when it comes to Trump.
But then again my liberal friends are for the most part from CA.
Did you not look up the definition of "patriotically and peacefully protest?" It's a synonym for "insurrection."
It's not conversation, it's disruption. At least that's what I call it. You have to disrupt their echo chamber wherever you can. And all you can do is offer dissent and hope at some point they wake up. You can't force it, coerce it, and why would you want to? It was that force and coercion and 24/7 propaganda manipulation that got them to this point.
This is not to say humor is not in order. We need to be be absurd to point out absurdity. I did a cartoon months back which showed a reporter in a grocery store with bare shelves behind him and he is talking about "mostly full shelves."
That's pretty much what I do. Many people never hear a dissenting opinion, and are surprised that any exist. And in an online forum, you never know who else will see something and think "wait, that's TRUE!"
Joe Biden is on record making a comment about the impossibility of citizens defending themselves against the US military in an attempt to dismiss one of the arguments for gun ownership to protect against tyranny. So, if well trained gun owners with assault rifles would stand no chance against the US military in open conflict, how was a bunch of people with no guns or explosives an insurrection?
It’s not possible.
I live in Portland OR. I remember. I was the only one in my wide group of former friends who smelled the ratty smell of it....my ex's own kid was downtown, tearing up stuff, being trained to destroy livlihood, buildings and statues in the name of Racism. Just change one letter, it was and is Facism. I am still an outlier here and trying to leave.
I wish you great success on your journey out.
So real estate could be built better was an explanation.
'Professional shithead'
Plague Chronicle: come for the thoughtful analysis, stay for the cherry-on-top brilliant put-downs.
Nailed it.. wish I'd thought of that line!
Personally I prefer to use kakokephalic (adj) or kakokephalos (subst. adj)
This is literary gold…
Yep...the suspense waiting to reuse that one is killing me.
That protests are usually ineffectual is practically a proverb on the right. It's generally true, but not always. The Canadian trucker convoy effectively ended covidian policies worldwide. A large enough protest can deliver sufficient shock to the system to change things. It's just that almost none of them exceed this threshold.
The trucker protest made a big impression on me. I think a big part of its effectiveness was the completely over-the-top reaction by Trudeau and the government. Streisand effect.
The trucker protest effectively ended COVID - both in Canada and the U.S. We are all in their debt.
I'm going to stake out a position that is perhaps controversial here:
The Trudeau reaction was proportional to the threat.
A few random foods for thought:
First: the trucker protest caused meaningful harm and hardship to the people who run the federal government. Federal governments _always_ overreact in this way when they feel _personally_ threatened. Duncan Trussel was on Rogan a few weeks ago and when they were talking about January 6th he made this point. He said, look, I'm an old school hippie. We protested things all the time. But we understood that you never protest in DC, because those people are evil and violent, and if you poke the tiger in the eye, what do you think will happen?
Second: If you paid close attention and read between the lines, there was some serious, almost paramilitary organization behind the trucker protest. I don't say this to slander them, in fact I think this is the main reason why they were as effective as they were. I wasn't quite sure of this at first, but one very specific thing clued me in. Remember when they set up "warming shelters" a few blocks from Parliament? Yeah, that wasn't about warming. That was about stockpiling a bunch of very explosive and flammable tanks of propane right where police might try to shoot at them, as a deterrent. That's why the government freaked out so hard about those, and the fact that the truckers did this (and had such a brilliant cover story for it) tells me that at some level they knew what they were doing
Third: It is significant to keep in mind that the Trudeau government took a very light touch to the truckers until they blockaded the ambassador bridge. The ambassador bridge carries 25% of all of the trade between the US and Canada. Blockading that bridge is a de facto act of war against the United States, and responding to it with _the military_ would have been appropriate. After all, from the United States' perspective, it's either the Canadian government doing it, or the Canadian government allowing it to happen, and both of those are unacceptable. In fact, it came out in the inquiry, the White House personally called Trudeau and told him he had to deal with them, and that's why he declared martial law. He didn't do it, until the supreme commander of the United States military told him to do it, or else.
The Trudeau reaction was horrendous and authoritarian, but it wasn't unexpected or disproportionate.
It was certainly over the top in that Trudeau could have, you know, *met* with the protesters. Instead, he ran away, cracked down, and closed donors' bank accounts.
He was asked repeatedly or any member of his government to meet with Tamara Lich and Chris Barber and even the last living signatory former premier of Newfoundland and member of parliament to the amendments of our Constitution Act Brian Peckford who was a Progressive Conservative at the time and who is extremely knowledgeable about our government and our Constitution, when,why,who, what was their intent in drafting these amendments, what was their original intent etc. Trudeau bailed like the coward that he is, conveniently “caught covid” right when the trucker convoy arrived 🙄 but he couldn’t hide forever. All they wanted was an opportunity to air their grievances and concerns and to be heard, Trudeau wasn’t for allowing them to speak or to debate his unjust policies nor to send any other Liberal members in his place, and the Conservatives and NDP well crickets. Tells you everything. I have never disrespected or hated someone as much as I do Trudeau and many other Canadians feel the same way and want him GONE, he and his party are also tanking in the polls as he has by now angered and alienated much of the population with his far left policies and disowned a great number of us too when his job is to represent ALL Canadians whether you agree with them or not!
I agree, in the sense that I fundamentally side with the truckers and don't understand why the government cared so much about vaccine passports at the border.
But given the specific actions the truckers took in the protest, the government's response is not unexpected, is my only point
We get each other's points, which are slightly different :-)
I’m Canadian, I watched daily any and all live streams throughout the entire protest and I watched the entire inquiry lead by Judge Rouleau an old school big supporter and former member of the Liberal party into the invocation of the Emergency Act formerly known as the War Act but renamed. I couldn’t disagree with you more, all donations were small, mostly Canadians but lots from Americans too, NO paramilitary involvement, perhaps you are referring to the one crazy guy leading The Diagolon Movement who had absolutely nothing to do with Chris Barber and Tamara Lich who planned this protest? IF there had been any paramilitary involvement of any kind Chris Barber and Tamara Lich would most definitely be up on much more serious charges like sedition and treason rather than mischief and counselling to commit mischief! Trudeau’s out for blood, wants vengeance for being made to look like the incompetent fool that he is and laughing stock on the world stage is all. He’s a vindictive little psychopath and narcissist that’s all, and he wants revenge! We have 4 more political prisoners, the Coutts men set up by the RCMP (think FBI and CIA)for weapons and sedition charges just like Jan 6 political prisoners these four men have spent 18 long months and counting behind bars without even being given due process while a guy who mowed over a few people with his truck killed one and seriously injured two others I believe was charged, offered bail, and was back out on the streets before you could blink an eye! We are experiencing the identical soft authoritarian regime that the US and Germany and all western countries are living with, it’s called the Globalists Playbook to seek world power!
Those truckers showed us how weak the authoritarians truly are.
Diagalon! That story and that guy are very interesting.
Well said!
Good points. Also, the de-banking afterwards created a whole lot of sympathy – at least it sure did for me.
I am a Canadian who lives in the US.
As soon a I heard about the banking thing, I took the last ~$5000 I had in my canadian accounts and transferred it across the border. I donated to the trucker protests, or at least, tried to until the payment processor forcibly reverted the charge. That right there is, per the law, all they need to just say "lol, all that money is ours now"
I’m a Canadian in the US as well.
The punishments at home continue - read on
https://open.substack.com/pub/autonomoustruckers/p/the-lawfare-archipelago
And people continue to give to GoFundMe accounts. Secondly, that organization by its very name is an imperative command.
I disagree, but upvoted you anyway because your post is articulate, well reasoned, and makes a fair point. I think Trudeau could (and should) have used the military to open the bridge without cracking down on the rest of the protest. Honestly, though, a far better solution would have been to concede and lift the restrictions.
And those 4 main guys at the border are still being held in prison without bail--no trial yet--for nearly two years.
Are these the Coutts Four? Trish Wood did a podcast with some of the family/friends of these men. They are in a terrible spot - same as many of the J6 protestors.
Yes. Thanks for the podcast suggestion! Druthers also keeps me posted on them. They are political prisoners.
The Ambassador Bridge Blockade was ended by Doug Ford and the OPP 2 days BEFORE Dictator Trudeau Implemented the Emergencies Act, as was the Blockade at Coutts.
No, Trudeau was mad about Ottawa and was proving a point.
Explains it, sure. Doesn't excuse it. Shame on Trudeau.
When these effete men overreact, they do so by calling out their own "paramilitary". I saw the men sent to Ottawa and they were no joke - hardened military types, not your typical police. This is their weak spot, as they trust these enforcers even less than their "real man" subjects. A man like Trudeau cannot ever personally give commands to men like these, as they would eventually despise him. They are only held in check by money and oaths of office, but the effete politicians know how little an oath means, or how fleeting power is. The effete emperors of Rome were right to fear the Praetorian guard, as they eventually assumed the emporers power.
That reminds me of an article I read five years ago or so, in which a speaker at one of the elite conferences (Davos or Aspen, whatever) was asked by several billionaires to have a private consulting session. The speaker agreed, assuming they wanted to talk privately about financial issues, which was his area of expertise. Turns out, to the speaker's great surprise, that the billionaires wanted his opinion on how they can protect themselves from their own bodyguards and staff turning against them in a "grid down, end of the world as we know it, chaotic situation," when the billionaires may be ensconced in their own bugout compounds. The speaker didn't know how to respond and had no advice on that issue. lol.
Yes, I've heard that one as well. I also heard about a security specialist who met with tech moguls to advise them about the same thing. One tech idiot-savant asked if they could control their security guards by implanting chips in their brains. The security consultant was shocked, buy finally replied that such an action was most likely to get the techie a bullet to his own brain.
They can't. Unless they are real leaders capable of persuading people to follow them, they wouldn't rule their bunkers for long.
Maybe some charismatic personality like Elon Musk could stand a chance. But people like Jeff Bezos, Suckerberg and Bill Gates? no way!
The "effete' men of which you speak are a byproduct of runaway feminism and the feminization of society writ large. This is where the fixation on "being nice" and the demonization of "anger" comes from, in addition to the recoil away from violence as a means to end and instead thinking some kind of rational debate will actually dissuade those who essentially want to kill you.
But please note, they demonize anger, but they are not devoid of aggressiveness. It is just that their style of violence is passive-agressiveness, indirect.
Another way to characterize our current situation is "the triumph of the talkers over the doers". That gets riskier for the talkers as civilizational consensus evaporates--hence things like the frightened billionaires asking how to protect themselves from their own bodyguards. (Jeff Cooper's brief volume _Principles of Self Defense_ has some words about ultimate impossibility of that.)
A defining moment for me, to see that no one in my life grokked what the Canadians were doing, what they were calling out. I blasted their honkhonks to the ire of my housmates.
Some of us Kiwis were donating from NZ and posting updates of the truckers' protest on our local NZ Gab.com accounts, to inspire Kiwis to be less like sheep in relation to their own globalist Prime Minister "Comrade" Jabcinda Ardern. "We're all Canadians now."
Yes they played right into the convoy's hands. There are advantages to being ruled by idiot children.
I asked this question in another part of this thread and got mostly crickets. I fail to see the material difference between this German trucker protest, the Canadian trucker protest, AND the (pro-Palestine) protests that blocked bridges and tunnels into NYC this week, AND the [place virtue-signaling cause here] protests that blocked bridges into Seattle a little while back, and the (climate change) protests that blocked the roads leading to and from Burning Man months back. Holding people hostage for your political aims, no matter how noble, is tantamount to terrorism, is it not? Or are we experiencing the truism, "the difference between terrorist and freedom fighter is a matter of which side you're on"?
"You say you like winning but I've noticed you like it when we lose, kind of hypocritical no?"
Who/whom is the enemy's standard, therefore it is also mine. Principled losers lose.
May the farmers break the climate cult Nazis into little pieces.
“Hijacked by rightwing extremists”: the state media standard go-to for non-astroturfed protests.
In the USA this is now the constant refrain. Everything and everyone to the right of Pol Pot is a right wing maga extremist.
They know that constant repetition works to convince the sheeple. Safe and effective. Safe and effective. Save and effective.
'Professional shithead Arno Frank'
- my days would be far more colorless and missing extra laughter without your writing.
Thanks once again for making the insane palatable
"Thanks once again for making the insane palatable"
Whoa, If that's really the result of Eugyppius' efforts then he's a failure. It seems to me, rather, that he's writing to make the insanity more visible.
it would be so refreshing if these movements openly didnt give a shit about being labelled "extreme right".
i hope they dont capitulate
Exactly. Reject the framing.
"Convincing the farmer, as a traditional keeper of the tried and tested, of the need for progressive change is no easy task. … What we will see over the next few days is the escalation of a communication problem. Problems are solved in meeting rooms, not on ferry docks or in marketplaces. "
I am so fucking fed up of this attitude. All this means is that one side is better at meeting room arguments than the other. It has absolutely nothing to do with who is right. Of course these professional managers want disputes to be solved in the arena of the manager - the fucking meeting room, according to their own rules. Rules Based Order
I sit on a couple of corporate boards and have had countless "meeting room wars". In actuality, the war is won outside the meeting room, you just negotiate terms if you've done things right.
Meeting rooms are where effective action goes to die.
The protests show that resistance to the regime will only happen when people's pocketbooks are hurt.
Anything else, like say the total destruction of our society, is taken without much grumbling.
The farmer's protest also shows that only a well organized group with some physical power - like large machinery you can block the roads with - is able to stage any viable resistance.
Once the farmers get what they want - more money - they will disperse again. And this will happen quickly, as our political caste will give in to any demand to stop them. And they are far too weak or dare the open viciousness as Trudeau did with the truckers.
For the normal citizen remains the slim hope that his voting behavior will change anything.
The AfD, and before them the Greens, show that any real political change via voting takes about 20 years to have any effect.
I keep having a problem with people who claim the AfD is a "right-wing" party. How can a party harbor right-wing thoughts if said party is led by a German lesbian married to an African woman??? Germany has yet to hit bottom. As Russian foreign minister Lavrov recently said, "I refuse to believe European civilization has come to an end. At some point, I believe Europeans will return to normalcy. I have to believe this." I hope he is right.
Shouldn't there be scare-quotes around "married", too?
Regular quotation marks will work just as well.
"How can a party harbor right-wing thoughts if said party is led by a German lesbian married to an African woman???" Are you perhaps confusing politics with mores?
Are you confusing healthy societies with libertine degenerate ones? Degenerates belong in the closet, not front and center as "role models". Pull your head out.
“Unlike train drivers or doctors, farmers do not go on strike. They “take” their protest “to the streets” and literally spill their dung there like other people spill their hearts out. Then they – and everybody else - remembers how intimidating paramilitary vehicles like combine harvesters can be when they when they travel in convoys on the motorway or fogs up city centres...”
Lol... the farmers should broadcast this widely. It’s as stunning a gift as Hillary’s deplorables comment. Whenever the gold medal for sneering elitist contempt is awarded, this journalist will certainly be a contender.
If farmers actually went on strike, the shelves at the market would be empty. They should be glad that slinging dung is all they do.
Great post. And I think a taste of what is to come in every western democracy immersed in deficit spending.
Brillant as usual. When my eyes 1st landed on this sentence " What we will see over the next few days is the escalation of a communication problem" it 1st registered in my brain as 'What we will see over the next few days is the escalation of a communism problem'. Over here we have John Kerry saying we need to stop farming 'cause global warming you know. & to think I was upset because Kerry didn't win the 2004 USA election!
I was relieved that he (and Gore) lost, even though I hated the Bushes. It was like me wanting to send phony CIA plant Obama flowers for beating Hillary.
Glad you have come to your senses.
With age comes wisdom. In 2004 you were twenty years younger.
I can't wait for the attacks on proto-Europeans who invented agriculture.
That's going to be hard for them, Mesopotamians and members of the Indus Valley Civilization were undoubtedly melanistic, which is like kryptonite for leftists.
What--you expect honest attributions?
I dunno, that's a tough one. That'd mean they were taking credit for an achievement away from a PoC.
No no! Agriculture bad! Hunter-gathering good! Starvation better! Extinction best! Humanity bested by bullshit!
I´m not sure what exactly to make of these protests. On the one hand, the sheer scale and energy is very impressive. It appears that the farmers´ themselves are not amused at all and there is a lot of sympathy for their concerns from the man on the street. On the other hand, at least the spokesmen for the farmers´ still operate within the approved paradigm, as evinced by the quote in the article. I also noticed that the press doesn´t appear to be quite as rabidly hostile to oppositional protests as in the covid days of yore. Which raises the question for me whether the protests will be used for a containment maneuver one way or another. For example, I could see people from the "Christian" "Democrats" swooping in to lead the charge against the "traffic light". Surprisingly, that has not appeared to have happened yet.
It's at least very significant that the press don't feel able to denounce the protesters as right-wing extremists; rather, they say they're being infiltrated or instrumentalised by the right wing. I think this is a backhanded acknowledgement that they command a lot of middle class support and they can't be demonised in the usual way, at least not yet.
I agree with that observation. For a successful containment operation, I´d venture that somebody has to deliver at least a small political win. For example, a certain prominent politician from your home state ("beloved" during the covid era - come to think of it, I haven´t heard anything from him in a while) could ostensibly raise a big fuss in the upper chamber and get at least some concessions from the "traffic light". Without delivering such a token victory, the farmers may politically begin to leave approved territory.
They can hardly wait to begin conflating the two.
BRAVO FARMERS!