Greg Wycliffe - Reacting to JJ McCollough's analysis of the Trucker Convoy

00:00:00.000 All right, I'm a Canadian. My name's Greg. Let's get into this.

00:00:03.160 We're going to be reacting to this video from J.J. McCullough.

00:00:10.380 And you know what? I really like J.J. McCullough.

00:00:12.520 I like his content. I've seen his content.

00:00:14.760 A lot of Canadians have probably seen his content.

00:00:17.660 He has certainly made great informative videos about Canadian politics, Canadian history.

00:00:23.260 Quite frankly, J.J. McCullough has probably taught me more about some aspects of Canadian history than I have learned in public school.

00:00:33.560 So, shoutouts to him.

00:00:35.040 Hello, friends.

00:00:36.220 Hello, friends.

00:00:38.620 Let's get into it.

00:00:40.020 This is J.J. McCullough's Candace Trucker Protest, a fair and objective analysis.

00:00:45.220 My name is J.J., and I am finally back home after spending an entire month in fabulous Washington, D.C.

00:00:52.120 In a truly bizarre twist of fate, I wound up going on my big month-long holiday,

00:00:56.700 the first substantial holiday I have taken from this channel in many years,

00:01:00.480 during the one month that Canada has made more international news than it has in at least a decade.

00:01:06.360 I refer, of course, to the Great Truckers' Protest of February 22.

00:01:10.340 During the last month, I was subject to an endless flurry of requests,

00:01:14.260 both from you guys and people in the mainstream media who wanted to hear my take on the whole

00:01:19.560 thing, which was very flattering because I know I have established this reputation as

00:01:23.780 Mr. Canada over the years and in ordinary circumstances.

00:01:28.060 I mean, I guess certainly on online circles, I have a whole lot to say about how there's this

00:01:35.500 sort of class of people who are like representing Canada. There's this other guy on TikTok who like

00:01:42.040 makes all these skits about the different provinces and it's like ho ho yeah that's what

00:01:46.880 that's what canada is you know ho ho ho all the stereotypes of the different provinces

00:01:51.720 and it just seems like such a cheap lame cop-out uh of what i actually think canadian canadians

00:01:59.540 are and canada is you know uh not to say that again not to try and rip on the guy but it's like

00:02:06.440 you're you're the best we got jj like you're you're mr canada okay all right i gotta stop

00:02:12.500 getting sidetracked here let's get into this let's let's get into the stances canadian affairs are

00:02:16.840 indeed my favorite thing in the world to talk about but it proved a uniquely challenging thing

00:02:21.040 to do amid all of the travel and the various other projects i had going on in dc and frankly

00:02:26.120 just my desire to take things easy for a bit but anyway i am now finally back in canada and the

00:02:31.800 trucker protest is basically over which i guess i can spin as actually being the perfect time to

00:02:37.460 talk about the issue because we are now a bit further removed from it so let us get into it

00:02:42.340 i i i think i would disagree with that saying that because he published this in nine months ago

00:02:49.520 march 5th uh the best time to talk about it there's still so much stuff that's happened since

00:02:56.580 then that still is not even like settled uh like there was an inquiry recently um and more

00:03:04.060 importantly this was before the arrests started there was all these arrests i guess sorry that's

00:03:08.600 not that's not entirely true there are arrests for a lot of people obviously out the convoy

00:03:12.100 but you know this is before um i think this was chelsea you're in chat was this before randy was

00:03:18.500 charged when was randy charged there's a lot of stuff that happened after the convoy and has been

00:03:24.660 ongoing still that is part of the that i think is part of the convoy equation because this this

00:03:30.560 isn't just about uh the trucker convoy this is about like the sort of slow rise or acceptance

00:03:37.060 of this authoritarian government that we have in canada right um but i do want to also comment

00:03:43.440 on the fact that this guy was out of the country you know jay mccullough was out of the country

00:03:49.220 and we're going to find out later that this analysis of the trucker convoy

00:03:53.500 is really just not necessarily a fair and objective analysis,

00:03:58.380 but more of like a, I read the headlines when I was out of the country analysis of the convoy.

00:04:06.820 But anyway, let's get into it here.

00:04:08.620 ...fin as actually being the perfect time to talk about the issue

00:04:11.920 because we are now a bit further removed from it.

00:04:14.560 So let us get into it.

00:04:16.380 Okay, so for anyone who needs a quick refresher,

00:04:19.440 on january 28th 2022 hundreds of truckers in big rigs comprising something they called the

00:04:25.780 freedom convoy descended upon the city of ottawa which is the capital of canada at the protests

00:04:32.060 peak there were over 500 trucks occupying this so-called red zone which is the downtown core

00:04:38.400 of the city around many of the most important government buildings including the parliament

00:04:43.660 of canada the down 500 trucks can we get a fact check on that wasn't it at the inquiry they said

00:04:50.300 it was over 700 vehicles the longest convoy and then also the other thing there is what about all

00:04:56.160 the trucks that were not in the red zone there was there was trucks lined up in all sorts of

00:05:01.360 other areas uh not just in the red zone so um but you know then again he wasn't he wasn't even in

00:05:09.280 the country when this happened he's just kind of like reading the headlines from cbc or ctv or

00:05:13.560 whatever so there you go a ruined many of the most important government buildings including

00:05:19.440 the parliament of canada the downtown occupation in turn choked off many other streets including

00:05:25.520 commercial and residential areas making a significant chunk of the city all but inaccessible

00:05:31.380 there is currently a significant chunk is making a significant chunk of the city all but inaccessible

00:05:41.000 That is definitely not accurate. Pretty well, most streets, there was a through street where you could drive. The only exception to that was Wellington. Unacceptable views does a great kind of debunking of that near the beginning of that documentary.

00:05:59.060 So, again, misinformation.

00:06:02.320 It sounds like a lot of this analysis is basically regurgitating misinformation that JJ has consumed while out of the country, reading the headlines.

00:06:10.860 And I got to emphasize, too, he doesn't even mention, I watched this earlier today, so I'm really livid about it.

00:06:17.840 He doesn't even mention the misinformation around the trucker convoy.

00:06:23.940 All the things that came up, desecrating the war memorial, desecrating the Terry Fox statue, there's so many things that the media did to try and make the larger population hate the convoy.

00:06:40.080 And what's totally missing from JJ's analysis here, spoiler alert, he doesn't talk about the role that the media played in this whole protest.

00:06:51.040 you know like he doesn't talk about the misinformation and the and the lies from

00:06:56.540 public officials there's so many things that he misses in this video but we'll keep going we're

00:07:00.420 only like we're not even two minutes in so let's let's keep this moving there is currently a class

00:07:04.320 action lawsuit of local businesses affected by the blockade claiming over 306 million dollars

00:07:10.280 in damages the trucker occupation lasted it really sucks sorry to pause it again but it really sucks

00:07:17.580 how like even JJ who's supposed to be this like conservative is not going to like look at the

00:07:25.000 economic damage in the greater context of restrictions from lockdowns you know like I

00:07:32.040 get I get it when a mainstream media person does that I totally understand when a mainstream media

00:07:36.260 person does that you know they're paid by Justin Trudeau obviously they're not going to talk about

00:07:40.600 the economic damage that lockdowns cost uh but it's like you're a you're a conservative youtuber

00:07:46.600 And, like, you're not going to mention that anyway.

00:07:49.640 I guess he's supposed to be fair and objective, right?

00:07:52.520 For three weeks and quickly assumed a carnival-like atmosphere.

00:07:56.360 There was music and a bouncy castle and a hot tub and barbecues and all the rest of it.

00:08:01.960 And lots and lots of honking.

00:08:04.460 My God, the honking.

00:08:06.140 There was actually a whole other class action lawsuit just to get them to stop.

00:08:10.020 In short, the truckers were incredibly obnoxious.

00:08:13.200 And that's not just me passing judgment.

00:08:14.600 this was a protest so the goal was very much always to be loud and annoying both to get

00:08:20.380 attention and also to have something to use as leverage with the authorities well so uh the

00:08:26.740 honking did stop a lot of the honking stopped after i think it was the first weekend i think

00:08:32.860 it was the first wednesday after the i might have to fact check on this but the first wednesday

00:08:38.020 after the um after the protest started they decided that they will stop honking basically

00:08:46.180 all throughout the day and they would only honk during the day if i'm not mistaken so there was

00:08:51.040 some sort of negotiations there so the idea that it was like you know the truckers were obnoxious

00:08:55.920 the whole time for three entire weeks that's not that's not accurate and there's a lot to say like

00:09:00.720 was it a positive that that the truckers stopped honking like was that a good thing a lot of people

00:09:07.200 were like oh yeah we want to get along with ottawa and like you know be better but uh i don't know

00:09:12.440 this is a whole other discussion a whole other video like you know did the protest kind of be

00:09:16.960 weak when we got there did we kind of continue to kind of like lessen our position lessen our

00:09:21.700 position not be as aggressive not be as aggressive um because really to get what we want like should

00:09:27.540 we not kind of escalate in a certain respect but that's a whole other conversation but to say that

00:09:32.460 we were obnoxious the whole time that's certainly misleading um because after the first week there

00:09:38.280 was not honking all the time it was only during certain hours uh during the day if i'm not

00:09:42.260 mistaken so uh yeah the truckers in ottawa got most of the attention it is worth noting that

00:09:48.740 there were smaller coffee cat protests in other parts of canada as well the most notable was a

00:09:53.800 trucker blockade that was set up on the ambassador bridge for seven days the ambassador bridge being

00:09:59.340 the busiest point of cross-border trade between Canada and the United States. There was also a

00:10:04.260 similar border crossing protest in Coots, Alberta, and one in Emerson, Manitoba, plus lots of smaller

00:10:10.280 solidarity rallies in scattered cities across the country. All right, so now let us get to the

00:10:15.860 10 million dollar question. What were they protesting? This is a question I tend to be

00:10:21.580 pretty cautious about when it comes to large-scale protest movements. So the answer to this is like

00:10:28.620 very it the answer to this is so cut and dry that even a recent c i'm switching videos here for a

00:10:34.580 second the answer to like what they were protesting is so cut and dry jj that even cbc in a recent

00:10:41.400 report actually got the answer to that question right and protesters all here in opposition to

00:10:47.500 vaccine mandates vaccines themselves and prime minister justin trudeau's government well okay

00:10:53.340 that's not entirely correct but it yeah you know against the mandates against the mandates

00:10:58.940 people getting their jobs back um it's it's it's this was why the protest was so massive it was an

00:11:08.360 idea ending these mandates the bodily autonomy that's what it comes down to so the next part

00:11:17.860 of this video is like so so goofy but anyway so this is jj this is jj's analysis fair and objective

00:11:24.260 analysis of why the biggest protest in recent canadian history happened this is what the

00:11:29.140 protest was about guys according to jj cautious about when it comes to large-scale protest

00:11:34.980 movements not just in canada but in other countries too i visited santiago a few years

00:11:40.360 ago when they were in the midst of a very intense protest movement of their own and in the ensuing

00:11:45.180 video I made I tried to emphasize how these protests weren't really about a single thing

00:11:50.540 per se, but rather a sort of broader expression of left-wing malaise towards the perceived

00:11:56.540 corruption and indifference of the Chilean system more broadly. I think the Canadian Truckers

00:12:02.060 protest is best thought of in a similar way. It is perhaps best understood as a movement of broad

00:12:07.500 right-wing malaise towards the perceived oppressions that Canada's governments have imposed on the

00:12:12.540 the public during the covid 19 pandemic no dude like no you're just you're just flat out wrong

00:12:19.440 like does this person look like a right this is someone who i interviewed there's a paramedic that

00:12:23.980 got laid off does this look like does this does this person speaking does this sound like right

00:12:29.280 wing malaise to you someone told me that you are a paramedic that's right yeah yeah it was yeah i

00:12:34.980 was with toronto and what happened uh they basically they terminated me uh because of

00:12:41.580 mandates and i'm a single mom i'm trying to figure out what to do with my life and i don't

00:12:46.780 really have that much support and you know because this issue has dividing families and friends even

00:12:52.300 further it's like you have limited resources to reach out to so i think it is a way of like phasing

00:12:58.860 people out and and kind of canceling people all together right if you don't go along uh you seem

00:13:04.700 very calm cool and collected yeah yeah jj it was it was right wing it was right it was right with

00:13:12.580 right wing malaise that's that's why the protest was happening it's like dude people are getting

00:13:19.180 laid off because they didn't want to take an injection one that is turning out it turns out

00:13:25.220 that this injection is uh i'm not going to talk to the science because we're on youtube and facebook

00:13:29.280 right now but uh it turns out this injection yeah the people who questioned it had every single

00:13:36.200 right to question it and to not take it i am so tired of this perspective of like oh dude they

00:13:44.600 wanted to overthrow the government why were the people there protesting it's like dude bodily

00:13:49.520 autonomy they got the no feeling they didn't want to get injected with this product and they were

00:13:55.480 losing their jobs they couldn't bring their kids to like regular activities like couldn't even go

00:14:00.700 to a restaurant and while we're on the topic another thing that uh jj does not bring up is uh

00:14:07.260 you know how things were really hitting a fever pitch right before the convoy this is january 19th

00:14:12.820 2022 so like 10 days before it started more than one in four canadians support jail time

00:14:19.120 for the unjabbed like that's that's kind of where we were at right before the convoy started

00:14:27.520 right-wing malaise like fuck off dude fuck off part of my language but like man right-wing malaise

00:14:36.040 give me a give me a break imposed on the public during the covid19 pandemic in theory the spark

00:14:42.340 that triggered everything was prime minister trudeau's decision in early january to require

00:14:47.180 Are all truckers returning to Canada from the U.S. to be fully vaccinated?

00:14:50.980 Truckers will have to be fully vaccinated to enter Canada.

00:14:54.680 Come Saturday, new rules mean unvaccinated truckers entering Canada

00:14:58.400 will be subject to testing and quarantine.

00:15:00.900 Everyone, every trucker entering into Canada

00:15:04.260 or every Canadian or American trucker transiting to Canada must be vaccinated.

00:15:09.640 The tighter restrictions put an estimated 10,000 truckers off the road,

00:15:14.060 but the actual number is likely much higher.

00:15:16.500 Prior to that, truckers had been exempt from the vaccine mandates because they were considered an

00:15:21.800 essential service. And the Trudeau decision was accordingly quite unpopular with the trucking

00:15:26.560 industry. Unvaccinated drivers have been delivering loads since March of 2020 because

00:15:30.960 as essential workers, they've always been able to go. But that said, it quickly became clear that

00:15:35.560 the vaccine mandate was really just the pretext for a much more wide scale protest against the

00:15:41.080 idea of covid restrictions more broadly so it was just covid restrictions more broadly

00:15:48.460 i don't think that's accurate i think it's more like and everybody else who had mandates imposed

00:15:56.060 upon them and didn't like the mandates imposed upon them you know like this is another ongoing

00:16:01.620 thing that more hate to say it but like more mainstream media people mainstream media types

00:16:07.620 have this idea of like oh it was just the truckers protesting it was just about the

00:16:12.620 mandate for the truckers no it was about the all the other mandates happening like you couldn't

00:16:17.540 even go to like people were kicked out of university were they not like there were so

00:16:20.920 many other mandates that applied in so many different industries some of them still are

00:16:24.960 around today and just to say oh yeah the covid restrictions it's like no man people people

00:16:31.540 couldn't get into restaurants people couldn't leave the country that doesn't even come up

00:16:37.300 that doesn't even come up in this video jj like come on bro oh my god just oh just some it was

00:16:43.300 just restrictions that you know these right wingers were complaining about fair and objective analysis

00:16:48.800 yeah okay for a much more wide-scale protest against the idea of covid restrictions more

00:16:56.120 broadly a manifesto posted on the freedom convoy facebook page and signed by the two people usually

00:17:02.740 described as the ringleaders of the protest, listed four key demands, an end to vaccine passports and

00:17:09.440 all other obligatory vaccine contract tracing programs, an end to vaccine mandates, cease the

00:17:15.240 divisive rhetoric attacking Canadians who disagree with government mandates, and cease to limit debate

00:17:20.980 through coercive measures with the goal of censoring those who have varying or incorrect

00:17:25.700 opinions or as a fellow in a viral video summed it up the hawk it will continue until freedom

00:17:32.080 improves simple as that yo shout outs the ferryman's toll the meme lord himself

00:17:41.500 i love how that made it in um yeah but yeah it's so funny he's like oh we don't know what

00:17:51.160 the protests are about uh it was a right-wing malaise and then he lists off the what the

00:17:57.920 protest was about like what the main organizers you know so like why did you have that whole dt

00:18:02.520 tour on right-wing malaise anyway um yeah it's it's and it's ending mandates that's the main

00:18:09.860 part that was number one ending mandates the ferryman's toll the fonking will continue have

00:18:16.280 varying or incorrect opinions. Or, as a fellow in a viral video summed it up,

00:18:21.400 The hawking will continue until freedom improves. Simple as that.

00:18:26.740 From the start, the truckers singled out Prime Minister Trudeau as their main enemy,

00:18:30.760 with F***ing Trudeau flags, a particularly ubiquitous presence. This gave the protests

00:18:35.460 a pretty partisan tint, but it also made them an important symbol of the broader drift of

00:18:40.220 right-wing politics into a more populist direction, as explained in this quote from

00:18:45.420 before we even get into that like again to say that anybody who was upset at trudeau is right

00:18:51.420 wing that seems really dumb just to say that anyone who was upset at trudeau at that point

00:18:57.940 is just a right wing person you know like that's that's so like oversimplified and and just and

00:19:05.140 just the, I don't know, like, like you, like you couldn't be, I, I, my regret is I wish

00:19:14.620 when I was at the convoy that I would have asked people like what, what they thought

00:19:18.820 their politics was, because there's a lot of people who I talked to who is like, this

00:19:22.900 person seems like a liberal person.

00:19:24.300 This person seems liberal as fuck.

00:19:25.860 That person's like probably NDP.

00:19:28.140 That person's a hippie.

00:19:29.520 That person's, you know, that person's apolitical that person's, you know?

00:19:33.960 And so, again, I kind of reject this idea that it was a right-wing pro.

00:19:38.760 Sure, there's probably a lot of right-wing protests,

00:19:41.000 and there's probably a lot of people who, of course, hated Trudeau,

00:19:44.060 who piled on, a lot of conservatives who piled on,

00:19:46.440 a lot of right-wingers who, of course, piled on.

00:19:48.460 But this idea that, like, that was all it was?

00:19:51.820 No, dude.

00:19:52.440 The reason it was so big is because people wanted to oppose mandates, period.

00:19:56.800 And for somebody who is very in tune with Canadian politics

00:20:01.080 and loves to talk about it.

00:20:03.220 JJ, something that happened down there

00:20:05.300 that was magical was the unity

00:20:07.620 between Quebecois and Anglos.

00:20:10.620 This is, everybody was talking about this.

00:20:13.280 How Quebecers were feeling Canadian

00:20:15.460 for the very first time.

00:20:18.000 The very first time.

00:20:19.520 It was a beautiful thing.

00:20:21.360 And it wasn't because they wanted to

00:20:23.140 overthrow the government.

00:20:24.480 It was because they wanted to end mandates, man.

00:20:26.660 It's very, very, very simple.

00:20:28.760 I feel like a broken record here.

00:20:30.020 from Rich Lowry, who's a famous American political commentator.

00:20:34.460 The sense now is less, the government is bankrupting us, and more, these out-of-touch,

00:20:38.820 self-appointed experts are telling us what to do because they have too much power and

00:20:42.840 like lording it over us with the press, social media, corporations, and non-profits all on

00:20:48.000 their side.

00:20:48.620 Because it was such a large protest, however, there were other factions and other arguments

00:20:52.720 being made as well, embodying other strains of right-wing thought, a particularly prominent

00:20:57.380 one being conspiracism.

00:20:59.580 people sometimes ask me here we go here we go so i just want to interject here for a quick minute

00:21:05.240 like there's such a perspective from jj's analysis here that is of the the journalist class of the

00:21:14.600 sort of like not necessarily the ruling class no yeah kind of the ruling class because it's it's

00:21:18.800 you know all in that sphere of journalism and it's this kind of like haughty toddy sort of i'm in my

00:21:24.820 ivory tower let's see how this will benefit the conservatives let's see how this will benefit the

00:21:29.380 liberals let's look at this from like a a war room perspective of paul it completely leaves the

00:21:35.280 actual people like out of the conversation entirely you know uh like so much of this

00:21:41.120 analysis just is is for journalists for the kind of like political class nothing to do with actual

00:21:48.140 you know working canadians whatsoever that's why he kind of brings up all these he is a columnist

00:21:53.360 for the washington post so that kind of explains it but anyway let's keep this moving here

00:21:59.380 me if there are any uniquely popular conspiracy theories in Canada, and I usually reply by

00:22:04.680 calling attention to the so-called sovereign citizen type stuff, which is when people put

00:22:09.200 forward these theories that because, you know, the Canadian constitution was signed the wrong

00:22:13.580 way in 1921 or whatever, all of our laws are actually illegitimate, and the government doesn't

00:22:18.640 actually have any power to arrest you if you break one of their phony laws and so forth.

00:22:23.580 Early on in the protest, there was a petition circulated by a certain faction of the truckers

00:22:28.500 and signed by over 320,000 online...

00:22:31.960 I don't think I ever heard about this.

00:22:34.100 Citizens of Canada Committee.

00:22:36.940 But as JJ just said,

00:22:39.480 apparently 300,000 people,

00:22:41.820 300,000 online signatures signed it.

00:22:44.320 I never heard about this,

00:22:45.680 which is pretty interesting.

00:22:47.540 But...

00:22:48.780 320,000 online supporters

00:22:52.080 that offered a fairly bizarre interpretation

00:22:54.760 of the Canadian political system

00:22:56.420 in which the Canadian Senate

00:22:58.040 and governor general were called on to assert powers they do not have and create a weird new

00:23:03.720 interim government for Canada that would then repeal all of the COVID restrictions. The governor

00:23:09.380 general in particular, who is the representative of the British queen in Canada, became a particular

00:23:14.560 subject of fascination by this set and was bombarded around the clock with demands to

00:23:19.720 fire Prime Minister Trudeau. I think what's noteworthy here is that he'll bring up the,

00:23:26.300 JJ will bring up this like whole conspiracy angle to the convoy, which I don't think most

00:23:31.140 people there have even heard of yet.

00:23:34.140 He doesn't even bring up in, in this video, the fact that people had their bank accounts

00:23:38.440 frozen for donating to the convoy.

00:23:41.760 Uh, like that's a whole saga of the money that got donated towards the convoy.

00:23:47.680 He, he mentions how it might've been majority American and I'm pretty sure that was bad

00:23:52.300 information that he's working on, but that was right after the convoy.

00:23:54.900 so you can't really blame them but um the convoy regardless raised more money than uh major

00:24:01.680 political parties like that's such a big factoid that the trucker convoy raised more money than

00:24:08.420 the uh than the largest political parties in our country um and they were freezing bank accounts

00:24:14.780 they were freezing bank accounts like when when that seems kind of like a noteworthy thing to

00:24:20.180 mention uh jj but sure once again like the canadian news media let's uh scrutinize the

00:24:27.780 protesters harder than anybody else and oh look i found a conspiracy document amongst all these

00:24:33.260 protesters yeah they're crazy how about the fact that the government is free freezing bank accounts

00:24:39.020 for a lawful protest in a democratic country are you do you want to bring up that jj is that

00:24:45.400 noteworthy is that part of your fail fair and objective analysis of the trucker convoy

00:24:50.140 when's the last time that happened bank accounts being frozen also not remotely within her

00:24:56.380 authority to do but crazy theories about the power of the crown often play a prominent role

00:25:01.880 in canadian conspiracy theories of this flavor now regardless of how persuasive or not you find any

00:25:07.600 of this stuff in many ways the much more significant thing about the truckers protest

00:25:11.720 was just that it involved truckers leaving aside the question of how representative a convoy of a

00:25:17.740 A few hundred trucks was of the interests or opinions of Canadian truckers in general, who are a huge and diverse community.

00:25:24.740 The most relevant variable explaining why it had the impact that it did was just that it used trucks.

00:25:32.000 Parking gigantic trucks in a city's downtown core,

00:25:34.980 Very true.

00:25:35.800 designed to cause maximum obstruction and frustration,

00:25:39.360 was undeniably an extremely creative and unprecedented tactic that proved remarkably effective, at least in the short term.

00:25:46.540 On February 7th, the CBC published a good piece that described in considerable detail

00:25:51.660 how towing a giant truck is difficult or almost impossible without the driver's cooperation,

00:25:57.880 and even harder still when the tow truck companies themselves are refusing to

00:26:01.540 offer their services out of solidarity or fear.

00:26:05.120 Several independent contractors and companies have publicly supported the convoy

00:26:09.940 and are refusing to tow trucks in the protest.

00:26:13.120 Those who have offered assistance are being threatened.

00:26:15.920 We could very easily make a whole other video just analyzing the power of the protest from this sort of technological logistical perspective.

00:26:22.500 So I need to interrupt here because there's so much that JJ doesn't cover.

00:26:28.960 Yes, obviously the trucks were epic.

00:26:32.120 Big agree.

00:26:33.560 You know, he praises a CBC article saying it's going to be so hard to move these trucks.

00:26:38.100 Another thing, another huge point that he does not talk about.

00:26:40.920 he mentions earlier in this video how the honking is a way to kind of like impose or sort of uh you

00:26:49.300 know put pressure put pressure on delegates to try and like you know increase negotiations or

00:26:55.200 like increase pressure to try and get what you want you know be obnoxious as protesters to try

00:27:00.040 and get what you want like as in there's going to be some sort of negotiation that's going to happen

00:27:04.280 as in there's going to be some sort of reconciliation that happens

00:27:08.040 and that never happened you know there there was trudeau did not talk to anybody and on top of

00:27:15.400 that he said he had oh sorry i got covet 19 i can't talk to you guys right now uh well he didn't

00:27:22.200 even say that he just said he had covet 19 he refused to talk to the protesters and relied upon

00:27:27.140 once again the misinformation that the mainstream media was saying about the trucker convoy saying

00:27:32.400 that were a bunch of racist misogynist blah blah blah and uh they never came to talk to us jj they

00:27:40.580 never came to talk to us after three weeks dude you know and yes we had a strong position with

00:27:46.460 the trucks everywhere but like the fact that there was no negotiations that happened despite

00:27:52.780 it being a massive protest a massive occupation for three weeks again kind of feels like a

00:27:58.560 noteworthy thing to have in your fair and objective analysis the fact that the prime minister of the

00:28:03.880 country did not even acknowledge our existence aside from the fact that we're a bunch of like

00:28:07.980 deplorables who just need to be uh you know dealt with but i think it is probably a pretty

00:28:15.780 underrated angle of their success overall so what gave the truckers such an innovative idea some

00:28:21.320 pundits such as david from the famed canadian american political comment here we go again man

00:28:27.200 Here we go again with this, like, oh, let's have this haughty-taughty analysis.

00:28:32.020 Let's have David Frum's analysis.

00:28:33.820 Like, nothing to do with the working-class people, but here we go.

00:28:37.560 Peter has speculated about this a fair bit, and I think his argument is pretty persuasive.

00:28:42.220 The prelude to a lot of what happened in Ottawa was a year and a half where, through 2020,

00:28:48.220 there were increasingly intimidating acts of interruption of essential services, pipelines, and rail

00:28:54.120 by other kinds of protesters farther from urban Canada.

00:28:57.920 And the federal government of Pierre Trudeau,

00:28:59.860 or sorry, Justin Trudeau, largely looked the other way.

00:29:02.960 And that set the table for what has happened here.

00:29:07.400 What he is describing is something

00:29:08.620 that I am very intimately familiar with,

00:29:10.640 living here in the province of British Columbia,

00:29:13.120 which has been the site of enormous anti-oil

00:29:15.720 and anti-gas activism over the last few years.

00:29:18.940 Even during the trucker protest itself,

00:29:20.660 there was a fairly violent protest

00:29:22.500 in the northern part of this province at a natural gas site where mass protesters smashed up a bunch

00:29:28.720 of property in an effort to disrupt the project so wow so i'm really glad that he brought this up

00:29:34.800 um protesters smashed things up and destroyed property yeah um how many of them were thrown

00:29:45.780 in jail how many of the like did they have their bank accounts frozen did they get beaten up by

00:29:50.700 the cops did this even like hit the news cycle nearly as hard as uh you know the vilification

00:29:58.040 of the people who just wanted mandates to end you know like it's uh it totally lopsided coverage

00:30:05.700 he does kind of speak to that again but once again kind of in this week sort of like

00:30:10.300 here we go the conclusion would be that there has been a slow normalization in canada

00:30:15.960 of the politics of, I guess we would call it like physicality for lack of a better term. The idea of

00:30:23.540 using physical blockades and physical obstruction and even physical destruction as a means in which

00:30:29.080 a minority faction can get their political views across. And as Frum alluded to, there's also a

00:30:34.840 kind of jealous both-sidesism going on, wherein the Canadian right perceives the left as having

00:30:41.860 gotten away with these sorts of tactics for too long and are now willing to call the government's

00:30:46.640 bluff by using them themselves all right so now well and once again it's like you know there

00:30:53.460 wasn't one smashed window at the convoy until the cops showed up there wasn't one sort of violent

00:30:59.480 act caught on camera anyway until uh until the cops showed up um so the both sides ism is is

00:31:09.760 real you know like like it's it's totally lopsided it's totally unfair there was no emergency act

00:31:15.460 called when they blocked a main railway out in bc which disrupted supply chains and all of that

00:31:22.040 no one was saying oh my god these indigenous people blocking the railway it's causing so much

00:31:27.340 economic destruction what are we going to do about it they basically try to act like nothing

00:31:32.160 was even happening when that happened so uh you know the bias is real the lopsidedness is totally

00:31:38.200 real and at this point to like not emphasize that or to act like that's not real i don't know it's

00:31:46.180 it's it's totally dishonest um and yeah once again jj like you totally don't cover uh how the media

00:31:54.300 covered this and really tried to vilify the convoy protesters as these right-wing monsters

00:31:59.400 when uh that obviously was not the case it was obviously just people who wanted to end mandates

00:32:05.720 let us talk a little bit more about the whole partisan angle to this thing the angle of the

00:32:13.080 truckers protest as a symbol of the poisonous polarization of left versus right politics that

00:32:19.100 is becoming so ubiquitous everywhere these days i wrote a few columns about the protests in my

00:32:24.540 capacity as a columnist at the washington post and in this one there it is say he's a columnist

00:32:31.540 at the washington post i mean how conservative can you be really if if you're uh working for

00:32:38.480 the washington post the honest question i like i'm i'm honestly curious like how can

00:32:45.080 like if you work at the washington post jj are you allowed to say that there's only two different

00:32:49.620 genders or will you get fired for saying that genuine question i might i might tweet that at

00:32:54.760 you but i don't think you check your twitter often that the truckers had a uniquely traumatizing

00:32:59.560 effect on people on the canadian left or even center because of the way they embodied such a

00:33:06.280 galling rejection of what had previously been assumed to be pretty solid public support for

00:33:11.560 canada's covid policies as i put it well before he says this yeah like we pop the bubble of the

00:33:18.200 mainstream media bubble everybody's living in this mainstream media bubble and it's like nope nope

00:33:25.240 That's only like a small percentage of the country actually watches and believes that stuff.

00:33:30.940 There's a lot of people who just wanted to end mandates, you know.

00:33:34.780 A festival of partisan division and anti-government bombast in the nation's capital

00:33:38.920 is a painful unraveling of presumed consensus when the country's politicians and journalists

00:33:44.120 have leaned so heavily on confident rhetoric of cooperation and unity to get through the pandemic.

00:33:49.940 Canadian covid. It's almost like it's almost like the Canadian news media is subsidized by the federal government and it's become a propaganda machine.

00:34:03.540 It's almost like all that propaganda has, you know, completely destroyed the sort of like honesty and what's actually happening in this country.

00:34:14.560 And, of course, when you have the dishonesty in the mainstream media and you're taking people's fundamental rights and freedoms away and taking their bodily autonomy away, there's going to be consequences to that.

00:34:25.580 And in this case, it was the trucker convoy.

00:34:27.260 It's really not that hard to figure out.

00:34:29.300 Policies have not been the strictest rhetoric of cooperation and unity to get through the pandemic.

00:34:35.380 Canadian COVID policies have not been the strictest in the world.

00:34:39.640 Any stretch?

00:34:41.840 Really?

00:34:43.240 Really?

00:34:44.560 did you just say that hold on and journalists have leaned so heavily on confident rhetoric

00:34:50.700 of cooperation and unity to get through the pandemic canadian covid policies have not been

00:34:56.100 the strictest in the world by any stretch but they have how many different countries

00:35:00.880 had the arrive can app jj how many different countries had an app like arrive can where

00:35:08.740 essentially you have to give all of your personal information to uh to enter canada you have to

00:35:14.540 give your address this and that and the other you know typically just for those who don't you know

00:35:19.280 don't realize this back in the good old days or not even back in the good old days if you refuse

00:35:24.440 to download the arrive can app you don't even have your home address on your passport you just

00:35:29.260 have your birthday and that's that's all that's on your passport that's all the government needs

00:35:33.700 to know about you in that respect uh but with arrive can it's like here's my email here's my

00:35:39.200 phone number here's my address you know all that stuff um not not not the strictest by by a really

00:35:47.980 i i i think you're gonna have to fact check that one my friend uh who else had curfew

00:35:54.280 there's curfew in quebec who else had curfew and like to say that it's like not not by far

00:36:01.120 not the worst covid restrictions in the world did i mean curfew is pretty bad how much worse

00:36:08.400 does it get than curfew bro yeah i've been fairly uniform across the country with basically every

00:36:16.180 province having a similar regime of mandatory masking and vaccine passports and targeted

00:36:20.720 shutdowns regardless of what party was in charge there was like uh i i just i just hate the yeah

00:36:27.100 and like those were the rules yeah those were the rules here in canada notice how the rules uh

00:36:32.700 aren't here anymore by the way uh how some of those rules uh do not exist anymore and in many

00:36:39.140 cases it happened right not many cases but in some cases it happened right after the convoy

00:36:43.900 uh more on that later likewise a lot of coverage in the canadian press that presented such policies

00:36:51.560 as not only broadly popular but patriotic easy and natural for canadians to follow because

00:36:58.220 Canadians supposedly are just inherently passive people who love doing what they're told. The line

00:37:03.620 I will always remember was from this 2020 editorial from the Toronto Star, Canada's biggest

00:37:09.180 newspaper, declaring at core our national DNA favors the collective during a crisis that has

00:37:15.600 demanded collective action, mutual sacrifice, looking out for the other rather than insistence

00:37:20.780 on personal liberty and pursuit of happiness i'm so tired i am so tired of hearing people in their

00:37:32.200 ivory tower tell me what being canadian is i am so tired of hearing all these journalists and all

00:37:41.260 these politicians saying i'm gonna tell you what being canadian is at core our national on dna

00:37:47.640 favorites like and the thing is i think there's actually truth to that to this this quote

00:37:55.340 looking out for the other rather insistence on personal liberty and pursuit of happiness i mean

00:38:01.840 i don't know this quote the what bothers me about this quote is that it's from the toronto star and

00:38:10.420 it's obviously trying to craft a narrative right you know the people at the convoy were certainly

00:38:15.160 looking at looking out for each other because they had personal liberties and the opportunity

00:38:21.960 to have a pursuit of happiness taken away from them so in this quote they kind of like put it

00:38:27.340 they pitted against each other right it's either it's either you're looking out for each other

00:38:30.900 or uh you care about freedom right which is a false dichotomy i ah man i i hate the fact

00:38:38.800 that anyone is like going to like prop up a quote from a editorial in toronto star and it's a fair

00:38:45.040 an objective analysis of the trucker confoy yeah right man and pursuit of happiness at one time

00:38:53.300 this sort of thing was being published everywhere alongside plenty of america bashing which of

00:38:58.260 course is always hard to escape in this country the idea being that while americans were acting

00:39:03.880 like wild yahoos screaming about freedom and refusing to wear masks canadians were obediently

00:39:10.100 whipping out their vaccine passports to visit their local library or whatever but then the

00:39:16.620 truckers happened and suddenly a lot of progressive Canadians were aggressively reminded that this

00:39:21.340 country does indeed contain plenty of people flamboyantly opposed to vaccine mandates and

00:39:27.200 all the rest of it liberal columnists good good damn right man we're out here we're the real

00:39:35.200 Canadians by the way we're the real Canadians okay not these not these

00:39:39.740 Toronto Star editorial editorialists from praising our national DNA to writing

00:39:45.680 gross things like light no more the world sees Canada very differently now

00:39:51.100 or the Canadian flag as a national symbol has been critically injured you

00:39:56.080 know cringe oh because the truckers waved it although I will note that one

00:40:01.200 popular cope to all of this was casting the truckers as being fundamentally foreign which is

00:40:06.880 to say american either by calling attention to how much money they were getting from americans

00:40:12.160 which one study suggested was almost half of their fundraising a study a study suggested not

00:40:18.000 the actual facts right it was a study that suggested this or by making more chauvinistic

00:40:23.040 arguments about how canadians had been radicalized by their proximity to american politics and media

00:40:29.360 For example, here is a piece from the New York Times that quotes a man named

00:40:33.440 Gerald Butz, who was, and I suppose still is, one of Prime Minister Trudeau's closest advisors.

00:40:39.680 For two years, Canadians have been largely stuck at home, and many have spent more time in front

00:40:44.400 of the screen than ever. As they did, they absorbed the American culture war being played out from

00:40:50.720 Fox News to Reitbart, and Trumpian ideas took root in Canada, said Gerald Butz, a long-time

00:40:56.560 friend of mr trudeau's and his former there you have it folks there you have it in jj mccullough's

00:41:04.680 fair and objective analysis of the trucker convoy we have gerald butts quoted as being a a fair and

00:41:14.320 objective voice to uh what happened at the trucker convoy like you gotta be you gotta be kidding me

00:41:22.200 bro you gotta be kidding me bro and this is the thing like i've said it's not that deep it's not

00:41:28.700 that deep as as you know it's it's so it pisses me off so much this perspective from gerald butts

00:41:36.840 too it's like oh the only reason people were complaining about lockdowns is because they

00:41:42.100 were stuck in their home and they had to watch fox news nothing to do with people killing

00:41:48.800 themselves nothing to do with people you know being more drug addicted than ever nothing to do

00:41:53.300 with like all of the terrible things that people had to endure during lockdowns and during mandates

00:41:59.900 and restrictions and all the small businesses that were destroyed all all the jobs that were lost

00:42:04.400 livelihoods ripped away from people all the social division that happened because of the propaganda

00:42:08.660 no it was because of fox news it was because people were inside watching fox news that's the

00:42:15.000 only reason that uh people got radicalized by fox news nothing to do with the terribly irresponsible

00:42:22.020 socially and economically destructive decisions that the government of canada made nothing to do

00:42:27.900 with that right no it's because they're they're inside watching fox news like holy crap that's

00:42:37.360 such a garbage take from gerald butts and i cannot believe that jj mccullough is like yeah this is

00:42:44.180 what gerald butt says this is my fair and objective analysis trucker convoy man and once

00:42:52.340 again like to my earlier point like it's these people in ivory towers like jj mccullough is it

00:42:58.540 kind of like in it's he's in the journalist class i guess so they're just talking about well this is

00:43:04.420 what this is going to mean for the conservatives or the liberals or blah blah blah you know like

00:43:08.760 it has nothing to do with the actual working people it's actually nothing to do with with

00:43:13.340 the actual you know canadians of this country um it's like i don't know it's part of this like

00:43:19.780 it feels very elitist uh to be talking about things like this and and the whole premise of

00:43:26.300 the video i was on vacation trying to enjoy my vacation when this happened i couldn't go on

00:43:31.640 vacation jj because i wasn't jabbed so i couldn't leave the country

00:43:36.860 now as the weeks went on and the city provincial and federal authorities looked more and more

00:43:45.740 helpless to remove the protesters from ottawa more and more attention came to be focused on what i

00:43:51.380 would call the q anon faction of the movement initially prime minister trudeau had sought to

00:43:57.180 denounce the truckers by focusing on their supposed bigotry characterizing the movement

00:44:01.460 as fundamentally racist and sexist and so forth conservative party members can stand with people

00:44:07.000 who wave swastikas they can stand with people who wave the confederate flag and while some truckers

00:44:13.820 did indeed infamously wave confederate or even nazi flag i don't have to make a comment here

00:44:20.460 we know that this is you know the ccis essentially who is supposed to investigate uh ideologically

00:44:28.500 motivated violent extremist groups which would fall under a nazi flag or a confederate flag

00:44:35.740 they have no they have no information on these people despite the despite even having the uh

00:44:42.960 what's i'm gonna call it visible and while some truckers hold on indeed infamously wave confederate

00:44:48.680 you can see the license plate number here and when csesis was questioned about the license plate

00:44:55.420 number they under under oath at the emergencies act inquiry they had nothing to say so this is

00:45:02.240 supposed to be our intelligence agency in canada hey you're investigating ideologically you know

00:45:07.320 violent extremist groups did you investigate this person they had nothing to say which leads people

00:45:12.920 it supports the theory that these were literal false flags uh these were like literally planted

00:45:19.520 to try and make um the protest look bad and once again back to a point that jj misses entirely

00:45:27.220 is uh the misinformation or this sort of mischaracterization of this protest from the

00:45:33.500 beginning from the mainstream media to make us look like these right-wing monsters uh kind of

00:45:38.240 a big part of the equation um because as i said this isn't just about the convoy this is about

00:45:42.820 like the rise of an authoritarian regime in canada not even the rise more just kind of like them

00:45:48.660 taking their mask off and being like yeah we're an authoritarian regime bro welcome to canada uh

00:45:53.760 we're gonna lie in the media we're gonna freeze your bank account we're gonna beat you up with

00:45:57.400 police horses and not talk to you uh this is canada now even nazi flags trudeau wound up

00:46:04.580 getting a fair bit of pushback from the press and public for this particular line of rhetorical

00:46:09.940 attack i suspect because it struck a lot of people as a somewhat gratingly tendentious take from

00:46:15.680 Trudeau. Gratingly tendentious take. Oh, these simpletons don't understand. I am a columnist

00:46:26.560 for the Washington Post. You see, it's such a... I digress. Talk this way about everything. To most

00:46:35.420 people, the worst thing about the truckers was just how horribly obstructive they were. And

00:46:39.880 Trudeau's numbers have accordingly taken a bit of a dive recently as he shoulders a fair chunk

00:46:44.640 of the blame for not moving swifter to deal with them not moving swifter also once again jj not

00:46:51.720 even talking to the protesters not even talking to them saying he was sick instead of talking to

00:46:58.300 them it lasted three weeks man three weeks in the dead of winter and and he didn't want to talk to

00:47:05.380 us again seems like an important fact to bring up but the prime minister did move swiftly in the end

00:47:11.720 On St. Valentine's Day 2022, Prime Minister Trudeau invoked a very controversial piece

00:47:17.620 of legislation known as the Emergencies Act that gave him short-term emergency powers to

00:47:23.280 quell a public order emergency. The federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act

00:47:31.540 to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations.

00:47:38.920 no canadian prime minister had done this sort of thing in more than 50 years the last one actually

00:47:43.700 being justin trudeau's father pierre elliot trudeau who had proclaimed a national emergency

00:47:48.420 to deal with a flare-up of french canadian separatist violence in 1970 i would say that

00:47:54.540 the younger trudeau uh you should probably mention the fact that uh politicians were

00:47:59.440 if i'm not mistaken kidnapped and assassinated or killed uh that like that's when this war

00:48:06.000 measures act was called last um and nothing even close to that is comparable to to the convoy um

00:48:14.300 and i suppose again you're out of the country jj you're relying on like

00:48:19.100 cbc and toronto star articles so i guess i can't blame you

00:48:23.080 for not for not knowing you know the disparity there those emergency was probably less controversial

00:48:30.320 than the old man's only because the scope of government's emergency powers have been

00:48:35.340 considerably watered down post 1970 and the truckers had become so broadly disliked by this

00:48:41.340 point that the poll suggested the public was open to just about anything to get rid of them

00:48:45.940 but yeah why and why were they disliked why were they broadly disliked because of the disingenuous

00:48:53.560 headlines man the disingenuous coverage like it's it's such a fair and objective analysis

00:49:01.560 More about that later.

00:49:02.600 In any case, as I said, to justify this unprecedented move,

00:49:06.060 the Prime Minister and his people shifted to playing up the fear

00:49:09.780 that the truckers actually posed a significant threat to Canadian democracy.

00:49:13.980 Growing attention was given to the allegation that they wanted to

00:49:16.640 overthrow the government in particular,

00:49:18.900 which, as we discussed earlier, there was at least some theoretical interest in.

00:49:23.380 But the day the Emergency Act was invoked also brought a bit of a darker tone

00:49:27.500 to something that had previously been easily dismissed

00:49:29.940 as just a kind of crankish, crackpot conspiracy theory

00:49:33.540 after the police seized a large cache of weapons

00:49:36.440 from one of the copycat protests at the Alberta-Montana border.

00:49:40.180 The government claimed that this was proof

00:49:41.600 of the real and present danger of the protests.

00:49:44.700 What we're beginning to see emerge now

00:49:46.640 are the hallmarks of a sophisticated and capable organization

00:49:51.180 of a small number of individuals,

00:49:53.640 but with a steel resolve,

00:49:55.080 driven by an extreme ideology that would seek to create to overthrow the existing government and

00:50:02.900 create some kind of parallel structure looking back over the course of the number last number

00:50:08.160 of weeks and more importantly seeing the developments of the arrests and seizures

00:50:13.820 that have been made this past week there's there's a real danger in trivializing and

00:50:20.720 diminishing exactly what's going on here the emergency deck yeah so um once again i was it

00:50:28.460 evident that marco mendocino was lying so many times about uh during the convoy um like and

00:50:37.260 that's i once again jj like you had the police chief lying about things about like about throwing

00:50:45.800 a bicycle in front of a police horse you know you're not covering that you're not you're not

00:50:50.780 covering the like the dishonesty from our public officials to essentially you know there's the

00:50:56.280 whole like fake arson story like there are so many fake made-up stories um that the mps lied about

00:51:04.300 and of course they were trying to blame the emergencies act here on a meme country if that

00:51:10.200 wasn't clear um like it's it's it's it's crazy man I'll bring up this article just for Diagalon

00:51:20.380 is a time-traveling cocaine addicted goat Tom Marazzo facts that's fact that's that's real

00:51:26.640 but uh of course for some reason Diagalon did not make it into uh J.J. McCauley's video it was

00:51:33.520 talked about in the hostile commons it was talked about in the senate it is worth mentioning here

00:51:38.980 in a fair and objective analysis of the trucker convoy.

00:51:42.740 They tried to blame the Emergencies Act on a meme country,

00:51:46.860 and they threw a little, well, I'm not going to comment on where

00:51:50.560 this stash of weapons may or may not have come from, but

00:51:54.220 again, that information is

00:51:58.840 still up in the air, what, nine, ten months later?

00:52:03.240 So, I won't comment on that, but to kind of

00:52:06.820 just, again, JJ's video here is very much like, you know, normie tier, mainstream media tier

00:52:13.420 analysis, in my opinion. The declaration was popular with the public, but polarizing among

00:52:20.300 the political class. When Prime Minister Trudeau eventually asked the parliament to extend his

00:52:24.720 emergency powers beyond the initial seven-day window, he could proclaim unilaterally, the

00:52:29.720 liberal and NDP parties voted in favor, while the conservative party and separatist Bloc Quebecois

00:52:35.560 voted against i i just i just want to emphasize again here like you know he's coming from the

00:52:40.280 perspective that you are a politician or you are a political analyst or you work in ottawa or you

00:52:46.940 work for a political party in ottawa like so much of the analysis is that of somebody who is in the

00:52:52.840 political bubble the elite political bubble nothing to do with the actual canadian people

00:52:58.880 and as we'll see later this is somebody jj worships the polls he loves the polls the polls

00:53:06.200 have never been wrong it's like hey the poll said this that's how the public thinks okay moving on

00:53:11.440 polls have never been manipulated ever i suspect that the bloc voting against had a lot to do with

00:53:18.320 lingering animosity over the way that emergency powers were used to round up french canadian

00:53:24.020 nationalists in 1970, which remains a sore spot with Quebecers to this day. In any case, the

00:53:30.140 emergency powers pretty much worked. Once they were invoked, the government was able to basically

00:53:34.820 just declare the truckers' protest illegal and arrest anyone participating in it. They could

00:53:39.800 also finally legally compel those indifferent towing companies to remove the trucks and force

00:53:45.040 the truckers to cooperate under penalty of serious fines or prison. In all, 196...

00:53:51.480 again all of this to not have a conversation about mandates protesters were arrested 115

00:53:57.600 trucks were towed and over 3700 fines were levied i wonder how many of those fines actually went

00:54:05.060 through and a lot of those arrests are not even real arrests most of them are just like hey we

00:54:09.700 handcuffed you and drove you around the corner uh yeah so not not really real arrests just just

00:54:16.780 kind of staged arrests for show and over 3,700 fines were levied the emergency powers have now

00:54:23.380 been revoked Ottawa is back to normal and Canada's brief moment well it wasn't uh back to normal right

00:54:29.740 away it was actually Ottawa was even less inaccessible and it was even more inconvenient

00:54:36.000 to drive around in Ottawa right after the the police occupied it they had fences up everywhere

00:54:43.340 they had checkpoints everywhere uh it was even less accessible uh once once the cops showed up

00:54:50.120 but anyway if if you're only consuming mainstream moves you wouldn't you probably wouldn't know that

00:54:55.360 as a subject of global curiosity and pity has ended the truckers quickly became right-wing

00:55:02.340 folk heroes to many canadian conservatives because they are heroes the truckers are heroes

00:55:09.700 And, you know, actually, that's something that I didn't emphasize before.

00:55:13.440 Like, another misconception is that it was just the truckers protesting for the truckers' mandates.

00:55:19.800 And what the truckers did is the truckers were the ones to lead the charge.

00:55:24.540 But every single trucker I talked to there were like, we're not just doing this for us.

00:55:28.920 We're doing this for everybody else.

00:55:30.300 This is about everybody else.

00:55:32.720 Like, they all had the exact same attitude.

00:55:35.460 because they're they're actually such like humble hard-working amazing you know salt of the earth

00:55:43.120 people just like the best the best people uh some of the best people in this country without a doubt

00:55:49.280 and um to say that it's like that it was just them protesting is it's it's so so silly um

00:55:57.720 but yeah sorry i got i got distracted there let's keep going truckers quickly became right-wing

00:56:03.540 folk heroes to many canadian conservatives most of whom don't live in ottawa and thus had the luxury

00:56:09.700 of observing the protest primarily as a grassroots pro-freedom movement that had arisen in opposition

00:56:16.180 to a prime minister they hated many conservative politicians again it's not necessarily hating

00:56:21.460 trudeau it's it's like this simple rule dude it's the simple mandate rule that's that's such a

00:56:27.300 that's such a yeah such a cop-out keen to try to cozy up to the truckers arguing that they

00:56:35.660 shared their concerns with the oppressive nature of covid restrictions during the heat of the

00:56:40.860 protests the conservative governments of saskatchewan and alberta both announced that

00:56:45.800 they would be repealing all of their covid restrictions the following month a move that

00:56:50.400 was probably on track to happen anyway uh probably on track to happen anyway that's exactly what some

00:57:00.000 of the canadian news headlines said oh you know what we took the restrictions away but this had

00:57:06.000 nothing to do with the trucker convoy we took all the restrictions away it had nothing to do with

00:57:11.060 the three-week-long protests that really intimidated and made uh politicians wet their

00:57:16.700 pants it had nothing to do with this massive uprising of blue-collar workers driving from

00:57:22.240 all across the country to honk on our front doors no no that was on track to happen anyway

00:57:27.520 yeah break but was nevertheless framed on both sides as a sop to the trucker's influence it

00:57:36.480 starts with truckers but it goes far beyond truckers some of the leaders i mean i mean

00:57:41.680 So this doesn't even make sense by his own logic because he's essentially saying, oh, this was going to happen anyway, but Saskatchewan and Alberta made a nod to the truckers, but I thought the country didn't like the truckers.

00:57:59.400 You were saying that on average, the majority of the country didn't like the trucker protests.

00:58:05.080 So why would these provinces repeal the restrictions and say they report the truckers?

00:58:10.580 wouldn't they say that they will repeal the restrictions and it does nothing to do with the

00:58:15.720 truckers doesn't add up yeah your respective doesn't add up there jay the trucker convoy

00:58:23.280 had also made the explicit demand that aaron o'toole the moderate head of the conservative

00:58:28.980 party be fired uh if they were smart they would pull aaron now right now get him out of there

00:58:36.060 and on february 2nd this happened to the whole stuff around the trucker convoy i think just

00:58:42.300 added to the pressure and showed just what a weak leader he he was so again many might say that this

00:58:49.160 was probably just gonna happen anyway like really dude really hey you know the convoy didn't do

00:58:58.880 anything i'm telling you this would have happened anyway yeah okay man okay dude the new acting

00:59:05.560 leader of the party and the guy who everyone suspects is likely to be the next permanent

00:59:10.000 leader have both been far more aggressive in their opposition to covid restrictions than o'toole ever

00:59:15.600 was i that's only the case because erin o'toole was hardly aggressive at all i don't i don't know

00:59:22.320 how much more aggressive uh candace burgeon and uh small pp truly were to uh to mandates especially

00:59:31.220 when it mattered sure he he's gotten aggressive he's gotten all he's pp's gotten all piped up

00:59:36.680 now that all these uh trucks have shown up to support him but i don't think he was really that

00:59:41.340 aggressive beforehand governments have taken advantage of covid to try and take away our

00:59:47.180 freedom and give themselves more power and case in point i don't think he has really been that

00:59:54.140 aggressive talking about this because is jj's has all these mainstream media clips is this really

00:59:59.840 the best clip you have of pp saying something like this this this kind of like you know cell

01:00:05.820 footage of him like you know in a parking lot somewhere right next to the trucks right only

01:00:12.240 once the convoys happened do you have a clip from the house of commons uh months earlier when

01:00:18.440 mandates were cracking down when uh when we were saying that one in four people support jail time

01:00:25.020 for the unjabbed was uh was pp speaking out against that earlier in january or was he only

01:00:30.380 speaking about that in the freaking parking lot of the trucker convoy once it was politically

01:00:36.200 expedient to do so but he was much more aggressive against mandates yeah okay

01:00:41.800 way our freedom and give themselves more power the fact that the conservatives have chosen to

01:00:47.160 interpret the truckers as basically the heroes of this story has some observers wondering whether

01:00:52.540 this is particularly good politics for the canadian right given that the truckers were never

01:00:57.360 particularly well liked by the broad canadian public once again why is that it's because

01:01:03.020 it's because of the misinformation it's because of the horrible propagandists in this country

01:01:09.420 subsidized by the liberal government to try and make us look bad to try i'm not going to go over

01:01:15.560 you guys already know this you guys already notice but but again the fact that this doesn't come up

01:01:21.140 at all in your fair and objective analysis of the convoys is is kind of laughable at this point

01:01:26.140 conservatives in turn respond by calling attention to recent polls showing that canadian public

01:01:31.820 opinion has turned sharply against covid restrictions meaning the truckers cause

01:01:36.580 might still be a winner even if the truckers themselves are not

01:01:39.960 ah like once again once again wow the the the opinion sharply turned against restrictions

01:01:51.140 during the trucker convoy but the convoy wasn't popular it's like huh the the opinions on the

01:01:58.820 restrictions changed during the trucker convoy why you know well it wasn't because of the convoy

01:02:05.280 it just happened to be a coincidence

01:02:07.000 you know they weren't popular at all

01:02:09.460 it's so

01:02:11.300 schizophrenic in a way

01:02:12.860 it's so schizophrenic how these

01:02:15.100 people are like yeah

01:02:16.640 people's opinions on restrictions changed

01:02:19.640 during the convoy had nothing to do

01:02:21.580 with the convoy had nothing to do with this massive

01:02:23.500 protest though I don't

01:02:25.220 understand how people can hold both of those

01:02:27.680 those ideas in their head at the same

01:02:29.660 time it's crazy I'm trying to find

01:02:31.560 the article there was an article

01:02:33.480 though in in some canadian uh newspaper that basically said like hey guys we're appealing

01:02:38.280 restrictions and in brackets but it had nothing to do with the convoy which totally puts it you

01:02:43.800 know summarizes the absurdity of it given that prime minister trudeau's popularity has taken

01:02:49.960 quite a hit from his perceived mismanagement of the protest the conservatives are mostly feeling

01:02:55.560 empowered by how things have played out and talking of polls lastly i just want to call

01:03:01.160 your attention to some rather stark numbers regarding how the canadian public thinks that

01:03:06.440 unruly protesters should be handled i think this gets at one of the most under-reported aspects of

01:03:11.480 the canadian public which is just how much support there tends to be in this country for harsh

01:03:16.440 treatment of troublemakers there's been a lot of under-reported things in this video jj but please

01:03:22.920 continue a maru poll found 64 of canadians supporting the idea of using the army to remove

01:03:30.520 the truckers from the capital city a solution considerably more extreme than anything trudeau

01:03:35.080 actually did even with the emergency powers uh well they did consider uh getting tanks right

01:03:41.960 they were texting each other about getting tanks we discovered during the inquiry so that's i mean

01:03:46.760 a tank that that sounds like the military i think 67 agreed with the statement it's time to clear out

01:03:53.320 the protesters in ottawa even if it means people who will not leave may get hurt or worse this

01:03:59.320 This tracks quite closely with the sort of polling data that we've seen in response to some of the

01:04:03.960 environmental protests of the past that so irritated David Frum, suggesting that the

01:04:08.600 relevant issue in the eyes of most Canadians is the fact that people are protesting in an

01:04:13.460 obstructive or disruptive manner rather than the cause that they're protesting for. It strikes me

01:04:19.080 as a reflection of just how rigidly order obsessed the broad Canadian middle class tends to be.

01:04:24.580 i mean all this call what gets called into question here is like how accurate are these

01:04:30.420 polls first of all but let's assume that they are you know more canadians are acting pro-authoritarian

01:04:38.340 you know that's the creepy thing that's the creepy kind of revelation uh that's happened

01:04:45.220 not even during the convoy but before the convoy all these people who are okay with the mandates

01:04:49.320 all these people who are okay with all these restrictions that's messed up that's messed up

01:04:54.340 what is wrong with canadians out there who are essentially okay with like daddy government

01:05:00.260 telling them what they can and cannot do oh i love having curfew in quebec i love it when my

01:05:04.800 premier says i can't leave my house after 10 p.m like i'm a prisoner yeah it's it is messed up

01:05:11.180 and well we'll finish that i think there's more stats he wants to show here a tendency that i do

01:05:16.200 feel we should all keep an eye on because it can go in some rather dark places if left unchecked

01:05:21.340 For instance, a different Maru poll offered up this option.

01:05:24.940 Regardless of my politics, I would vote for a strong-willed person

01:05:28.600 to have enforceable law and order

01:05:31.060 in what I think was obviously supposed to be a testing of the water,

01:05:34.220 of the authoritarian instincts of the Canadian public.

01:05:37.740 Yeah, and it got 71% in favor.

01:05:40.580 Protests do have the capacity to change politics,

01:05:44.360 just not always in the way that the protesters themselves expect.

01:05:48.940 so i think he's trying to imply there that the convoy made more canadians pro-authoritarian

01:05:58.640 and well actually maybe that's actually maybe that is an insight to take away because my

01:06:08.460 takeaway from the convoy having been there and having experienced everything was that the mask

01:06:13.980 for the trudeau regime had fallen off and it's like oh you're an authoritarian scumbag

01:06:18.860 who doesn't care about my freedoms at all you care about power and uh yeah but you're right

01:06:26.500 these polls that he shares at the end are quite creepy because it reflects on the canadian public

01:06:31.520 being okay being all right with this with this authoritarianism um uh i'm getting distracted

01:06:40.760 here super chat from meh mechanics 20 he says merry christmas thank you mechanics i appreciate

01:06:49.420 it um what else is there to say about this video he didn't talk about the misinformation

01:06:54.960 in the canadian news media completely vilifying the protesters it's too bad that someone like jj

01:07:03.000 mccullough just is kind of echoing everything that we've seen in the canadian news media

01:07:09.180 you know it's it's it's too bad it's too bad that he's going to kind of just you know quote

01:07:16.720 quote jerry butts and say like yeah this this is an important part of the analysis

01:07:23.380 here it's certainly the perspective of somebody who uh did not consume alternative media did not

01:07:31.560 consume anybody who was on the ground i mean he's not even going to mention bank accounts being

01:07:36.340 frozen he's not gonna he's not gonna mention people getting arrested he's not gonna mention

01:07:41.460 a sitting politician randy hillier getting arrested and all the trumped up charges that

01:07:45.740 happened there like you're not you're not gonna make like you're gonna talk about the people

01:07:50.000 being authoritarian and having an authoritarian sensibility at the end of the video here but

01:07:56.040 you're not gonna talk about the government acting authoritarian jj you don't think that's relevant

01:08:03.480 to bring up you don't think it's relevant to bring up the the once again the fro the frozen

01:08:07.820 bank accounts and and all the other things that have happened with it with the propaganda news

01:08:12.420 media it's it's uh it's unbelievable guys it's unbelievable someone said bearded mcnasty said

01:08:19.880 spam jj's comments telling him to watch this everyone i okay i appreciate that bearded mcnasty

01:08:28.280 uh whatever you do just just don't don't make don't make fun of them okay don't don't don't

01:08:34.480 send any hateful comments that doesn't help me that doesn't help us at all um but uh yeah

01:08:41.460 yeah uh i'm really glad i got got this off my chest because this video is really really bothering

01:08:47.020 me if you if the video was jj mccullough's perspective on the canada trucker protest

01:08:52.620 i wouldn't even really care i probably would have even reacted to it but it's the fact that

01:08:57.420 he calls it a fair and objective analysis, a fair and objective analysis while he was

01:09:04.140 outside of the country when it happened.

01:09:06.740 And he's bringing up mainstream news article after mainstream news article.

01:09:10.800 It's like, come on, dude.

01:09:13.100 Come on, man.

01:09:15.220 I mean, he didn't really emphasize the fact that it came from all across the country.

01:09:19.620 Like that's kind of a pretty epic thing.

01:09:21.780 The fact that Quebecers and English speakers were getting along for like probably the first time in a long time is amazing.

01:09:31.040 Bank accounts being frozen didn't get brought up.

01:09:34.440 And all the mischief charges that happened, the Diagalon, that's something that like not nearly enough people know in general.

01:09:42.540 But, you know, oh man, even I try to forget, even I try to forget what it was like a year

01:09:51.820 ago, more than one in four Canadians support jail for the unjabbed, you know, and, and,

01:09:58.940 and that's alongside, you know, the headlines from Toronto star saying, uh, you know, well,

01:10:05.540 we all know that Toronto star front page where it was just like, I don't care if unjabbed

01:10:09.840 people die basically right you know things were hitting a fever pitch people needed a solution

01:10:16.340 people wanted the pressure was cracking down on us you know and that's why the convoy happened

01:10:23.860 to fight these mandates but anyway i'm just rambling on here thank you so much for watching

01:10:29.660 guys make sure you like share and subscribe you can become a member here on youtube and facebook

01:10:35.120 you'd really be helping me out

01:10:37.300 you'd also send a donation if you really like me

01:10:39.420 shoutouts to Chelsea Hillier

01:10:40.980 thanks for watching

01:10:43.460 but

01:10:45.300 we're going to talk to you guys soon

01:10:46.680 and I love you all

Greg Wycliffe - December 14, 2022

Reacting to JJ McCollough's analysis of the Trucker Convoy

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