Chen Yanan
Canadian Trucker Parade: U.S. Right-Wing Politics "Export" North
In recent days, the parades and occupation movements in the streets of Ottawa, canada's capital, have attracted media attention. The incident began in mid-January, when the Canadian government required cross-border truck drivers to comply with the epidemic prevention requirements, either to be vaccinated or quarantined at each entry. This provision removes the exemptions previously granted to truck drivers. Subsequently, on January 15, a group of drivers launched an occupation campaign against the Trudeau government's epidemic prevention policy, driving trucks to block roads in the capital Ottawa and protesting in the streets.
Truck drivers continue to protest against mandatory vaccination orders in Ottawa, Canada, Feb. 10, 2022.
The protests then added more elements of right-wing politics in the United States and Europe, garnering more media attention. The Guardian reported that documents circulating among truck drivers and other protesters showed they were spreading conspiracy theories that "the rich are using the pandemic to destroy the world.". More symbols appeared in the protest movement – such as the Confederate flag representing the American South.
The US "Foreign Policy" magazine recently published an analysis of Canadian truck drivers besieging the capital. The author is Taylor C. Noakes, a Canadian columnist living in Montreal. In the article, Noyaks argues that the marches and capital blockades that began on Jan. 15 have now turned into a "big tent campaign." Although its initial goals and demands were against forced vaccinations and anti-epidemic policies, the crowd then joined a variety of demands, such as the downfall of the Trudeau government, such as the "QAnon" conspiracy theory and neo-Nazi claims in the United States, in addition to a mixture of various groups such as the Quebec independence movement.
Some politicians in Canada's Conservative Party, who are leaning toward the radical far right, are testing the conditions for a far-right social movement in Canada by testing the water temperature with support for the movement. He also pointed to a section of mainstream Canadian conservatives who have also begun to turn more right, expressing sympathy for the movement, such as former Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer.
Noyaks believes that the movement has a certain support base in Canada. According to a poll, more than 30 per cent of Canadians see similarities between themselves and protesters in "how to see things.") And 57 percent of Green Party supporters in Canada and 46 percent of Conservative party supporters (neither of which is a far-right party) have expressed some support for the movement. In addition, the campaign has raised more than $8 million on Canadian fundraising platform GoFundMe. All this proves that Canadian society has a certain basis for right-wing politics.
Under the effects of this movement, the Conservative government is shifting the political spectrum to the far right. Conservative Party leader Erin O'Toole recently resigned. Before his resignation, there were already people in the party urging him to support the protest movement launched by truck drivers. Among those Conservatives who believed they should support the movement was Candice Bergen, who later temporarily acted as party leader.
But others argue that the protest movement is not that important. Canadian writer Stephen Marche is the author of America's Next Civil War. In an article he wrote for The Atlantic, he mentioned that some form of social chaos he had predicted had emerged in Canada. In the book, for example, he envisions whether one day a group of right-wingers will occupy a public facility, such as a road or bridge, and then the contradiction will intensify. As a result, "my imagination has recently become a reality, but it doesn't happen in the American countryside." In the article, Marche said that these groups of people have similarities with Trump supporters — full of anger and believing that they belong to a socially excluded group. But he doesn't think it's important to take these people too seriously. On the contrary, the Canadian government's more restrained approach, not using force to disperse, is appropriate to wait for these protesters to make their own mistakes.
As a Canadian, Marche claimed that the actions of these truck drivers were exaggerated by the U.S. media. According to poll data, six out of ten Canadians thought the protest was offensive and meaningless. The data shows that the protests were only 8,000 at their peak, which is not a very large number. By comparison, 88 per cent of Canadians over the age of 4 have been vaccinated, and 85 per cent of truckers have been vaccinated.
Politically, Marche also looks down on the possible impact of the movement. He argues that the Conservatives are already calling on these people to return home, proving that right-wing politics is not very viable in Canada. In particular, he pointed out that many media reports that the demonstrators raised the Nazi flag, but they were accusing Trudeau of adopting "Nazi policies" to force them to vaccinate. He said the context of Canada is different from that of the United States. The right-wing marches in the United States are anti-Semitic, but not in Canada.
But whether it is an analysis of the seriousness of the situation or a judgment that the situation is not serious, different authors have pointed out that in this protest movement, external intervention from the United States played an important role. Peter Sloly, the head of the Ottawa police force, said there was "scale" of external factors from the United States involved. And the voices that support truck drivers online are also mostly Americans — not only by right-wing Netizens in the United States, but also by former President Trump and wealthy businessman Elon Musk.
Fifty years of 'Bloody Sunday' in Northern Ireland: "The most shameful page in modern British legal history"
This past January 30 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday. "Bloody Sunday" refers to an incident that took place on January 30, 1972. On the same day, at an Irish Catholic nationalist march in the city of Londonderry (also known as Derry or "Delhi"), British troops opened fire on unarmed Northern Irish civilians, killing 13 people.
On January 30, 2022, people commemorate "Bloody Sunday".
The 50th anniversary sparked a lot of discussion. An article by columnist Sean O'Hagan in the mainstream newspaper The Guardian discusses author Julieann Campbell's new book on Bloody Sunday: A New History of The Day And Its Aftermath. In the book review, the author notes that Campbell's new book restores the rich details of the events through numerous interviews. After entering the 21st century, the call for responsibility for Bloody Sunday has continued. In 2010, then-Prime Minister David Cameron apologized on behalf of the government in an official statement, acknowledging that the killings on Bloody Sunday were a mistake made by the government. The families of the victims have been trying to bring the British military personnel involved to court.
However, taking a look back, the indiscriminate shooting of civilians by British paratroopers on Bloody Sunday was interpreted in the first few decades as a legitimate act of self-defense by the British army.
The Leftist Magazine Jacobin in the United States wrote that "the British nation has never been responsible for Bloody Sunday.". In the article, the author points out: Since the facts of Bloody Sunday are clear, why can the British soldiers involved not have to pay any price? In this regard, the article mentioned that although the British media has always called itself the "fourth right", after the "Bloody Sunday" incident, the British media actually played a very disgraceful role for a while. The Guardian's editorial board, for example, rejected eyewitnesses from frontline reporters and wrote an editorial of its own, excusing the paratroopers and accusing Catholics of illegal marching. The Times argued that "those who incite Catholics to the streets are well aware of the consequences of their actions." Londonderry tasted the consequences last night. The dead are their witnesses". Even more embarrassing, the Sunday Times received a "Bloody Sunday Report" from journalist Murray Sayle at the time, but the editorial board suppressed the article revealing the details of the incident. It was not seen until 30 years later, when it was officially published in the London Review of Books.
In particular, the article focuses on a commission of inquiry appointed by the British government in 1972, headed by Judge John Widgery. In the spring of 1972, the commission issued their report on its investigation, which determined that the paratroopers had sufficient precautionary reasons to shoot at the marching crowd. The report was later called "the most shameful page in modern British legal history" by New Zealand judge Peter Mahon.
Social activist Joseph Healy wrote in the online magazine Tempest detailing the ins and outs of Bloody Sunday. He cites a poem written by the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella after the incident: "Here was a rogue / A pig came and scared him away / Here is a man with a soak of blood and bones / He died of being thrown from a stone". Fifty years ago, the young author Heaty was so impressed that the Irish were so dissatisfied with the British repression that took place in Northern Ireland that tens of thousands of people had gathered to storm the British Embassy in Dublin, and there were many voices from the people calling for the Irish army to march into Northern Ireland.
Healy's analysis said that these angers actually accumulated for fifty years after Ireland's independence in 1921. When Ireland became independent, three of the nine cantons in Ulster, where Northern Ireland is located, were classified as Catholics in the Republic of Ireland, while six Protestant majorities remained in the United Kingdom by vote to become Northern Ireland. Until the 1960s, Northern Ireland was ruled by proxy – London granted rule to the UnitedIst Protestant elite in Northern Ireland to ensure that Northern Ireland remained in the United Kingdom. The Unification politician, Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Craig from 1921 to 1940, said Northern Ireland was a place of Protestant rule. Protestants, on the other hand, imposed a model of rule similar to apartheid and caste system against Catholics, who made up a smaller share of the population of Northern Ireland and were more inclined to join the Republic of Ireland, accompanied by a variety of political blows and pressures.
In the 1960s, with the civil rights movement in the United States and various waves of protests in Europe, Catholics in Northern Ireland also launched their own civil rights movements. This period was dominated by moderate nationalists, many of whom had a Social Democratic background. Yet they were seen as a serious threat by the Protestant-dominated Authorities of Northern Ireland. In 1969, the rebels of the IRA, who had been out of sight for years, also re-emerged, and the situation in Northern Ireland began to become tricky for London. The question of Northern Ireland implies the image of the nation, especially in the presence of the United States , which, after all, has a large Irish-American elite. With this in mind, British troops were sent to Northern Ireland, with the intention of creating a barrier between Unity Protestants and Catholics to prevent ethnic conflict. But in fact, the presence of British troops exacerbated the deterioration of the situation, especially since the British Army had been engaged in repression in various colonies of the British Empire. This, in line with the "detention without trial" policy launched by the Northern Irish authorities, has greatly intensified the original contradictions.
Healy argues that the British Empire's usual approach to such incidents was to set up a commission of inquiry to get the results that the London authorities wanted in a seemingly neutral manner. The Commission of Inquiry, led by Sir Vigery, set up after the events of 1972, was entirely in the military's shoes to justify the firing of paratroopers. Its findings concluded that the paratroopers were threatened by IRA snipers and bombs, giving them a reason to fire to protect themselves. This conclusion was later proved to be completely unsubstantiated by more detailed investigations.
In an article written by The Irish Times, Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole lamented that fifty years ago, Bloody Sunday, began more than 20 years of bloody violence in Northern Ireland, killing more than 3,500 people. "After Bloody Sunday, the pattern of responding to rage with rage and responding with brutality was established and will continue for the next 20 years."
O'Toole also sees the investigation report led by Sir Wiggerry as a major stain on the British authorities. He noted that there were two "Bloody Sundays". The first was a street crackdown in 1972; the second was a sir Wiggerry report three months later. The report said: "Strongly suspect that some people ... Shooting with a weapon or with explosives ... Others are closely supportive of them."
Combing through history, O'Toole points out that when the Conflict in Northern Ireland first broke out in 1969, British troops were sent to the streets of Northern Ireland, when Catholics welcomed the presence of British troops, believing that they could help separate Protestants from inciting and orchestrating ethnically conflicting civil society. In addition, they considered the British to be more neutral and professional than the Royal Ulster Constabulary and B-Specials, who were extremely disgruntled by catholics. However, the subsequent actions of the British army proved that they were more of a civil rights movement that helped suppress Catholics. Beginning in 1971, the Northern Irish authorities adopted a policy of "detention without trial" in an attempt to suppress a growing number of IRA attacks, but this intensified more violence, and IRA attacks became more frequent and violent after the birth of the "untried detention" system. The repression by the military and police has also been more direct. Prior to Bloody Sunday, there had been numerous instances of British attacks and killings of civilians.
During the January 30 demonstration, Northern Ireland police and the British military adopted tactical tactics to prevent demonstrators from reaching their intended locations. O'Toole pointed out that back at the scene, people will not understand why the paratroopers opened fire directly, after all, the military and police are actually equipped with sufficient riot protection facilities and weapons such as water cannons and tear gas. The paratroopers, however, attacked forward, firing more than 100 rounds of ammunition from front to back, and no one on their side was injured.
After Bloody Sunday, political trust between the local area of Northern Ireland and London was destroyed. "The combination of brutality and cover-up ... A discourse that in turn fights to the death has a market. In the face of Northern Ireland's unavoidable political complexity, it is all too easy for people to lose patience and turn to a primitive logic – 'kill them before they kill us'. "Many young nationalists abandoned their original moderate stance and joined the IRA in favour of engaging in armed conflict. Since then, there have also been indiscriminate attacks by the IRA on innocent Protestant civilians. They orchestrated the July 1972 Bloody Friday attack in Belfast that left more than 100 people injured and nine dead.
In the 21st century, the Saville Inquiry, promoted by the Blair era, lasted twelve years and finally released the conclusions of the investigation, pointing out that the British military did not have sufficient reasons to open fire in the "Bloody Sunday" incident. IRA participation was not seen in the march. In other words, it was innocent people who were shot. However, this conclusion was not accompanied by a procedure to hold the soldiers who fired the gun at the time accountable. The remembrance of the victims does not open the door to sorting out and judging responsibilities. As noted at the end of the Jacobin magazine article, efforts to make the truth about Bloody Sunday public in the early 2000s were met with considerable political pressure. By the end of the 1990s, the British government and Northern Irish nationalists had reached a compromise, and in a more peaceful political situation, London was not willing to admit the mistakes of the past, preferring to ignore the existence of this history. Until today, fifty years later, "accountability" has not been achieved.
bibliography:
1. "Paranoia and Alarmism: Canada Truckers’‘Intelligence Reports’ Hint at Mindset", The Guardian, 20220210
2. "Why Are Canadian Protesters Flying Confederate Flags?", Taylor C. Noakes, Foreign Policy, 20220209
3. "When the Rage Came for Me", Stephen Marche, The Atlantic, 20220212
4. "On Bloody Sunday by Julieann Campbell review", Sean O’Hagan, The Guardian, 20220130
5. "The British State Has Never Been Held Responsible for Bloody Sunday", Daniel Finn, The Jacobin, 20220130
6. "Bloody Sunday - 50 Years of British Injustice in Ireland", Joseph Healy, The Tempest, 20220201
7. "Bloody Sunday, the 10-minute Massacre that Lasted Decades", Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times, 20220130
Editor-in-Charge: Wu Qin