(Article republished from Revolver.news)
It was an incredible overreach. At the time, it felt difficult to imagine what could come after. Mass deplatformings, undisguised censorship, the calculated destruction of an entire political faction and any companies seen as enabling it. What more, realistically, could they do?
A lot more, it turns out, and Justin Trudeau is pointing the way. Four days after granting himself emergency powers in response to the trucker protest against vaccine mandates, Trudeau sent in police to smash the protest. Along with the physical escalation of its crackdown, the Trudeau regime also used its emergency powers to freeze the bank accounts of anyone lending financial support to the Trucker Convoy.
But the “emergency” part of the response has already been exposed as a lie. Refusing to let a crisis go to waste, the Trudeau regime is now racing to make its “emergency” powers permanent.
Trudeau promised that his emergency powers would be temporary. But as all eyes were trained on this week's police sweep of the Ottawa convoy, his government was quietly moving to make its expanded financial surveillance powers permanent.
My latest @NROhttps://t.co/o1SDtqFxk6
— Nate Hochman (@njhochman) February 20, 2022
Not only that, but the Trudeau government is also mulling a bill that would let people be sued or criminally charged for thought crimes. Incredibly, the bill would allow people to be targeted for allegedly “contemplating” a “hateful” act or statement.
On February 14th Mr Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in the law’s 34-year history.
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Mr Trudeau’s government has expressed shock that racist symbols were displayed during the protest. It appears to be planning to reintroduce an “anti-hate” bill that could lead to the imprisonment of people who use racist speech. This could include a clause which would allow individuals to take other people to court if they fear that they may be about to say something which falls under the definition of “hate propaganda”. They could also be charged for contemplating an offence “motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other similar factor”.
If you feel North America’s two great Anglo “democracies” have taken a dark, decisive turn in the last few weeks, you aren’t alone and you aren’t mistaken. The Globalist American Empire is crumbling, and as it crumbles it also trembles, shrieks, and lashes out. As Western nations abandon even the pretense of being free-societies, our corrupt ruling class will ever-more enthusiastically embrace the naked language of compulsion, intimidation, and force.
The way Trudeau treated the Trucker Convoy, you’d think they were violent arsonists or deadly killers. Police smashed up vehicles:
Police are breaking into vehicles in Ottawa. pic.twitter.com/wgRBbtZpZH
— Marie Oakes (@TheMarieOakes) February 18, 2022
Officers arrested citizen journalists for recording events:
About an hour ago the Youtuber ZOT was arrested by Ottawa police in the middle of a livestream. As he was being given a "last warning" by an officer, two others moved in and placed him under arrest before the stream cut out. #FreedomConvoy2022pic.twitter.com/exS8hlNQhN
— Cosmin Dzsurdzsa (@cosminDZS) February 18, 2022
By mid-afternoon Friday, at least seventy people had been arrested just in Ottawa.
70 people arrested in Ottawa today according to police.
— Ahmar Khan (@AhmarSKhan) February 18, 2022
During the three weeks of trucker protests, Trudeau and his allies smeared participants as racists motivated by “hate,” with an agenda of “antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia.” Truckers were accused of “threats” and “violence.” These calumnies were obvious lies.
If there was ever a “peaceful protest,” the trucker occupation of Ottawa certainly qualified. The most damning fact that The New York Times can muster against the truckers after more than two weeks of protesting is that, “during the first 11 days of the protest, truck horns blasted up to 16 hours a day, and some residents say they have been harassed on the street.” In reality, there was only honking for the first 11 hours of the protest because the truckers ceased when a judge ordered them to.
That was the extent of the trucker protest. Some residents in one of Canada’s richest, most privileged neighborhoods in the Imperial Capital heard a lot of honking for less than two weeks, roads were clogged up and a few people were allegedly harassed. Ottawa businesses didn’t even bother boarding up their windows, because why would they? Nobody expected any real chaotic violence from the protesters. In fact, the protest was so peaceful that street crime in Ottawa actually fell during the protests.
Compare this to the damage created by the BLM protests, which Trudeau supported:
Even today, BLM is celebrated and well-funded. In contrast, the Regime responds to the Trucker Convoy movement with a declaration of total war. Despite being entirely peaceful in its conduct and restrained in their demands, Trudeau crushed the convoy physically and banned protest leaders from doing so much as speaking in support of the cause. But perhaps most sinister of all is how banks, media, and (perhaps?) even the intelligence services were collectively enlisted to make even the most marginal financial supporter of the truckers entirely beyond the pale.
Just as Trudeau was announcing his new emergency powers, the “whistleblower” group Direct Denial of Secrets (DDoS) announced it had obtained a full list of all donors to the trucker convoys on GiveSendGo. The Antifa hacker group immediately shared the information with press outlets. The press itself soon played its part, directly contacting many on the donor lists and making it clear they could dox anybody they wished if they felt like it. You don’t want to end up like this café owner, do you?
The point of publishing donors’ hacked information was so the far-left’s henchmen can intimidate them.
A gelato cafe in Ottawa has closed after receiving threats of violence. The owner donated $250 to the Freedom Convoy & her info was hacked & published. https://t.co/QfVRGW6FZC
— Andy Ngô ???? (@MrAndyNgo) February 16, 2022
It gets even more sinister. In 2020, the Trump Department of Homeland Security claimed that DDoS is a “criminal hacker group.” Despite that, it enjoys IRS non-profit status. DDoS’s high-profile hacks have, almost without exception, targeted domestic dissidents against the regime, or its international enemies, rather than the regime itself. Besides doxing every GiveSendGo donor, DDoS’s other targets include Gab, Parler, local police departments, Russia, Myanmar, and right-wing chat groups online.
So much for speaking truth to power. By all accounts, DDoS speaks power to truth.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, DDoS’s leader is the “chronically ill” “they/she” transgender freak show Emma Best.
DDoS almost certainly works hand in hand with serious criminals, if it is not an outright criminal organization itself. Yet nobody is shutting down financial support for DDoS or seizing its assets. While Julian Assange awaits trial and, in all likelihood, life in prison for embarrassing the security state and the Hillary Clinton campaign, “Emma” Best (they/she) faces no serious efforts to stop his activities whatsoever. And why would he? He is among the most heroic tranissaries rendering an invaluable service to the Globalist American Empire.
The right to protest, publicly, is enshrined as a sacred privilege and marker of democracy. When the US backed the overthrow of Ukraine’s government in 2014, it was because President Viktor Yanukovych allegedly used force against “peaceful protesters” (in fact, they were not peaceful; they killed several police officers). The American Regime used the Chinese government’s use of force against “mostly peaceful” protesters in Hong Kong to justify more moral grandstanding. If a trucker protest just like the one in Canada had been suppressed and criminalized like those in Minsk, or Moscow, or Tehran, the State Department and US regime press would shriek about totalitarianism.
Now, the hypocrisy is too naked and blatant to ignore. The Canadian crackdown is a decisive “mask off” moment for the class obsessed with masks.
Canada is ordering banks to freeze accounts without court order.
And by granting broad immunity, they're formally deputizing financial institutions as digital police.
All pretense of "democracy" is gone. There's no consent of the governed. It's just wokes vs workers now. https://t.co/2GHXFtAWEm
— Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis) February 16, 2022
A similar “mask-off” moment is unfolding in America. Last week, the Biden Administration’s “intelligence officials” smeared Zero Hedge as a Russian intelligence operation for publishing articles critical of US foreign policy. A week before that, the administration claimed that dissident views on Covid-19 policies contribute to domestic terrorism. In the US client state of Ukraine, the mass banning of Russian-language TV stations is characterized as a “gift” to the Biden administration. Even MyPillow founder Mike Lindell is getting a Canada-style debanking because of his political activism.
BEATTIE: They are debanking Mike Lindell the same way the US Government using debanking against adversaries pic.twitter.com/w3j61VkeWF
— Jack Posobiec ?? (@JackPosobiec) January 18, 2022
Still, what is most interesting about the Canada development is not how evil it is, but how overt. Western governments seem to be abandoning even the pretense of existing as free societies. Even the press is admitting it.
Regime media attempting to stigmatize freedom, a thread ? 1/ pic.twitter.com/p7B8CspmvQ
— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) February 19, 2022
The good news is, it’s unclear how well this will work. The pretense of being a free society is central to the self-perception of Americans and Westernerns more generally. If a government shorn of moral legitimacy decides to rule by force instead, it is unclear that it will have the persuasive or coercive tools to make the change stick.
A year ago, in the early days of the Biden Administration, Revolver warned about America’s rapidly crumbling moral authority in a piece entitled, “With Zero Moral Authority Left, The Globalist American Empire is Doomed to Fail at Home and Abroad”:
In China, people tend to defer to state authority so long as the state is performing competently. There is no psychological need for the Chinese to think of their nation in “moral terms” as a “free society” that respects “human rights.” For better or worse, things are different in America. Being a “free society” is just as must an essential part of American self-identity as being a “global superpower.” America’s decline from global superpower status and its transition from a nation that at least pretends to be a free society to a more transparent and overt totalitarianism are mutually reinforcing tendencies that could strain the very special preconditions for American patriotism as we know it.
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It is far from clear that the American regime can complete this transition without dire consequences with respect to its standing globally, and to its own citizens right here at home. Patriots of all stripes should not view this as a consolation prize, but as a great opportunity.
That opportunity is now greater than ever before. The Globalist American Empire was low on legitimacy a year ago. Today, it is scraping the bottom of the barrel. It cannot win wars. It cannot prevent crime; in fact, it encourages it. It cannot keep shelves stocked or even consistently keep the lights on. It nakedly dispenses with bedrock American rights like freedom of association, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and equality under the law. It makes a mockery of the “democracy” it claims the sole right to represent. It shuts down your bank account while shrieking of “racism,” “homophobia,” and “fascism.”
And now, it fears being called out. The authorities in Canada lashed out because they were genuinely afraid. As Substack writer N.S. Lyons noted last week in a piece analyzing the clash between the Physicals and the Virtuals (those who engage in real-world economic activity versus those who use laptops):
When the truckers rolled their big rigs, which weigh about 35,000 pounds, up to the political elite’s doorstep, engaged their parking breaks (or removed their wheels entirely), and refused to leave until their concerns were addressed, this was like dropping a very solid boulder of reality in the Virtuals’ front lawn and daring them to remove it without assistance. And because the Virtuals do not yet actually have the Jedi powers to move things with their minds, the truckers effectively called their bluff on who ultimately has control over the world.
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To many of the Virtuals, this is existentially frightening. [The Upheaval]
This is the key weakness of the Globalist American Empire: Its most zealous adherents are not able to maintain the society they rule over. Though members of the “thinking class,” they are actually bereft of meaningful hard skills. They do not build roads, keep the lights on, or grow food, and if suddenly tasked with doing so they would be in a near-hopeless position. A handful of truckers getting uppity put their backs to the wall. A more meaningful, widespread general strike by even a few hundred thousand workers would immediately render their regime helpless. That is why they must threaten even the slightest deviation with maximum force, with threats to seize protesters’ entire life savings without due process.
With its hysterical reactions against all dissent, the Globalist American Empire prepares the way for its own doom. The Empire has no clothes. As it claims more power than ever, it is in fact closer than ever to losing it all.
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