‘Non-Violent Dangers,’ or ‘Their Violence Is Speech; Our Speech Is Violence’

 

The Canadian truck drivers’ protest against authoritarianism has included no assaults against police officers, no lootings of businesses, no arsonist fires, no destruction of police stations … all of which were well-represented in 2020 riots corporate media labeled mostly peaceful. This has been a source of frustration to the corporate media. Disappointed by the lack of real violence in the trucker protest, leftists have resorted to the “McAuliffe Maneuver” of sending activists to discredit the movement through white supremacist cosplay.

The Washington Post published an editorial cartoon bizarrely equating a working-class protest against authoritarian Government as “fascism.”  But still, the truckers have persisted in remaining nonviolent. According to the Toronto Globe and Mail, the mere presence of truckers who could potentially hold the wrong opinions is traumatizing to the sort of people who are perpetually traumatized.

Catherine McKenney, the councillor for Ottawa’s downtown, said the protests have been very disruptive for local residents, adding many have also found them disturbing.

“They’re also seeing the images that we’re all seeing, of very right-wing extremist messages: the flags that display the swastika, confederate flags, images of a prime minister being lynched,” McKenney said. “I’m not sure that I would continue to call this peaceful.”

McKenney, who is non-binary, said they aren’t sure they would be safe venturing downtown.

Other sensitive types have complained that the protests are “disruptive.” Not because the protesters are hurting anyone, or burning any buildings, or violently threatening anyone, or looting any businesses; but because they are protesting for the “wrong” cause. Their violence, it seems, is speech, but our free speech is violence.

Note: Lefties in Florida are also using the McAuliffe Maneuver.

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  1. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    Victor Tango Kilo: McKenney, who is non-binary

    Surprise.

    • #1
  2. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    I wanted to add something pithy. I don’t got it. 

    • #2
  3. WI Con Member
    WI Con
    @WICon

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    Victor Tango Kilo: McKenney, who is non-binary

    Surprise.

    Everyone there is triple layered and in snowmobile suits, how the hell would anyone know? 

    Nice to see some “diversity” of flags rather than the rainbow one for a change.

     

    • #3
  4. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    I wanted to add something pithy. I don’t got it.

    The modern left defies satire.

    • #4
  5. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    McKenney, who is non-binary

    It’s an utterly irrelevant aside, like noting that a politician opposed to two-stroke engines for lawn maintenance is left-handed. Except it’s not. The implication is that the fascists in the trucks, most of whom have wiled away the hours in the convoy listening to Mein Kampf on audiobook (read by Joe Rogan), harbor harmful ideas which endanger anyone who defies the archaic gender binary, and their presence constitutes literal violence. If someone who professes psychological anomalies blessed by the new arrangement of society feels disturbed, it shuts down any arguments. 

    Disturbed! Any time spent in any downtown these days yields all manner of disturbation, if that’s a word. (It’s not. It should be.) Imagine someone during the riots of 2020 complaining that the presence of anti-cop graffiti made them feel disturbed – they’d be read the Mostly Peaceful Protest Act for not realizing how their discomfort was necessary.

    I’m sure it’s also disturbing to realize that your comfortable existence depends on these rude and rough-handed men, but that can be waved away once your realize that this is privilege on display, writ large. The very gall to think that trucks can roam at will in a city, instead of backing up with timorous beeps to loading docks in the outskirts, to dump their lot before slinking back to the shadowlands. 

    Here’s what the McKenneys might not realize: their contempt for the unwashed is passive and rote. The unwashed’s contempt for them is active. It has the spirit of a spontaneous awakening that bores down through the progressive permafrost and taps something in the national character that built the nation in the first place. 

    Maybe. I could be wrong. 

    • #5
  6. Victor Tango Kilo Member
    Victor Tango Kilo
    @VtheK

    James Lileks (View Comment):
    they’d be read the Mostly Peaceful Protest Act for not realizing how their discomfort was necessary.

    “Mostly Peaceful Protest Act” is a phrase I will be appropriating for the Common Good. 

    • #6
  7. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    The workers are uniting. 

    I though the Left liked that?

    Oh wait, they are in power already. 

    • #7
  8. Paul Stinchfield Member
    Paul Stinchfield
    @PaulStinchfield

    James Lileks (View Comment):
    Here’s what the McKenneys might not realize: their contempt for the unwashed is passive and rote….

    James, you should invite Victor Davis Hanson to recount examples of this contempt that he has personally witnessed. (A complete recitation, however, might take many hours.)

    • #8
  9. GlennAmurgis Coolidge
    GlennAmurgis
    @GlennAmurgis

    Ironic – the Post who want more central control are calling those who want freedom Fascist – democracy dies in irony 

    • #9
  10. Paul Stinchfield Member
    Paul Stinchfield
    @PaulStinchfield

    GlennAmurgis (View Comment):

    Ironic – the Post who want more central control are calling those who want freedom Fascist – democracy dies in irony

    Liberals have been peddling that lie for a long time.

    • #10
  11. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    Paul Stinchfield (View Comment):

    GlennAmurgis (View Comment):

    Ironic – the Post who want more central control are calling those who want freedom Fascist – democracy dies in irony

    Liberals have been peddling that lie for a long time.

    And still it is believed and become the truth…..

    Every fking time…..

    • #11
  12. Paul Stinchfield Member
    Paul Stinchfield
    @PaulStinchfield

    Fake John/Jane Galt (View Comment):

    Paul Stinchfield (View Comment):

    GlennAmurgis (View Comment):

    Ironic – the Post who want more central control are calling those who want freedom Fascist – democracy dies in irony

    Liberals have been peddling that lie for a long time.

    And still it is believed and become the truth…..

    Every fking time…..

    Because many kids, in their formative years, never hear anything but the lies. Conservatives can spend lifetimes refuting the left’s lies, but that will not lead leftist schoolteachers and professors to stop telling those lies. I wonder, for example what fraction of kids now believe that Cleopatra really was black and the Greeks stole their philosophy from the Egyptians (who, according to this lie, were black.)

    • #12
  13. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    McKenney, who is non-binary

    It’s an utterly irrelevant aside, like noting that a politician opposed to two-stroke engines for lawn maintenance is left-handed. Except it’s not. The implication is that the fascists in the trucks, most of whom have wiled away the hours in the convoy listening to Mein Kampf on audiobook (read by Joe Rogan), harbor harmful ideas which endanger anyone who defies the archaic gender binary, and their presence constitutes literal violence. If someone who professes psychological anomalies blessed by the new arrangement of society feels disturbed, it shuts down any arguments. 

    James, you’ve given this more thought than I did. I was simply observing that those who self-identify as “non-binary” (whatever the hell that means when referring to a mammal) are telegraphing that they aren’t serious people, in much the same way as is a man who goes to work every day wearing a clown face.

    • #13
  14. Misthiocracy got drunk and Member
    Misthiocracy got drunk and
    @Misthiocracy

    If you’d like to watch the Trucker Rally live, this YouTube channel is your source.  The guy that runs it has been tirelessly steaming the events downtown.  Not 24/7, but still extensively.

    https://www.youtube.com/Ottawalks

    • #14
  15. Misthiocracy got drunk and Member
    Misthiocracy got drunk and
    @Misthiocracy

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    McKenney, who is non-binary

    It’s an utterly irrelevant aside, like noting that a politician opposed to two-stroke engines for lawn maintenance is left-handed. Except it’s not. The implication is that the fascists in the trucks, most of whom have wiled away the hours in the convoy listening to Mein Kampf on audiobook (read by Joe Rogan), harbor harmful ideas which endanger anyone who defies the archaic gender binary, and their presence constitutes literal violence. If someone who professes psychological anomalies blessed by the new arrangement of society feels disturbed, it shuts down any arguments.

    Disturbed! Any time spent in any downtown these days yields all manner of disturbation, if that’s a word. (It’s not. It should be.) Imagine someone during the riots of 2020 complaining that the presence of anti-cop graffiti made them feel disturbed – they’d be read the Mostly Peaceful Protest Act for not realizing how their discomfort was necessary.

    I’m sure it’s also disturbing to realize that your comfortable existence depends on these rude and rough-handed men, but that can be waved away once your realize that this is privilege on display, writ large. The very gall to think that trucks can roam at will in a city, instead of backing up with timorous beeps to loading docks in the outskirts, to dump their lot before slinking back to the shadowlands.

    Here’s what the McKenneys might not realize: their contempt for the unwashed is passive and rote. The unwashed’s contempt for them is active. It has the spirit of a spontaneous awakening that bores down through the progressive permafrost and taps something in the national character that built the nation in the first place.

    Maybe. I could be wrong.

    While there is some low-income and community housing, the majority of folk who can afford to live in McKenney’s ward make a very good living off the spoils of the federal government, either as federal bureaucrats, contractors, political staff, journalists, union executives, or NGO executives and lobbyists. She knows her audience.

    (The Wikipedia entry for Somerset Ward is woefully out-of-date.  There is NO WAY the average income is still only C$38,000. However, I cannot find an updated figure on the City of Ottawa’s website. Their most recent statistics are from the 2016 census, and they do not appear to list average income by ward. The median family income for all of Ottawa in 2016 was C$102,000.)

    • #15
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