'The Canadian Truckers' Protest and the Case Against Left Populism' - Rachael Grimmer

'The Canadian Truckers’ Protest and The Case Against Left Populism' - Rachael Grimmer

The BBC reported the ideology of the Canadian Truckers protesting throughout January and February as it was articulated by trucker Harold Jonker: “We want to be free, we want to have our choice again, and we want hope - and the government has taken that away”. Such a declaration only confirms the speculation of opposing trucker, Lovepreet Singh Gill, “I wouldn’t call it a truckers’ protest […] It has nothing to do with trucking.” The so-called ‘Freedom-Convoy’ travelled throughout Canada, ultimately blockading significant areas of the country’s capital, Ottawa, for almost a month. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided to call a state of emergency, the country’s first in fifty years. Originating in protest against vaccine mandates, what initially appeared to be industry strikes devolved into a confusion of disillusioned agitation, righteous anger, and outright abhorrence.

This entropy was a cluster of every imaginable public expression of anger, from ‘public urination’ and vocal opposition to the on-duty police, through to the presence of “confederate flags […], swastikas and other Nazi imagery”. The protests thus contained the disparate entirety of populist trademarks, with every possible symbol of hatred and every possible method of protest converging to discredit and taint all valid union activity. Unsurprisingly, the Canadian Truckers’ Alliance, the largest truckers’ union in the country, alongside the Teamsters Union, the largest trucking union internationally and the oldest union in the United States, did not hesitate to renounce the protests. Within this vacuum of leadership, a clearcut, organized protest style became usurped by the chaotic, uncontrollable mass seen throughout the streets of Ottawa. The unions, so often considered the unshakeable mediators of labour’s outcries, have all-but admitted their own failure. The Canadian protests exemplify a new kind of populist penetration, wherein the labour movement becomes co-opted by extremism; the new leadership of the protest dramatically overrepresents officials within the separatist Maverick Party. The populist infiltration has misdirected the anger of an unrepresented, voiceless working class movement, and scattered potent, proletariat anger into a cacophony of violence and vitriol. This disappointment of popular energy has been felt ubiquitously, with The Independent declaring ‘‘Protesting Canadian truckers aren’t having a ‘working class revolution’ — the truth is a lot more strange’, and the New York Times identifying an imported “American style of protest”. This “American Style” may simply represent the inwardness of American journalism, however, the image of an angry white working class forming a populist mob has become too easy of a journalistic shorthand to remain unexamined. The origins of the protests in Canada in vaccine hesitancy indicate yet another channel through which populist groups can derail scepticism of the impositions of an unrepresentative government into ‘bigotry and ignorance’. The protests homogenised striking union members, the ‘anti-vaxxers’ and truly abhorrent bigots in the public imagination. Such a tactic only entrenches an othering conception of a supposed working-class ignorance.

The core tenets of populism, “distrust, destruction and dealignment”, might make disillusioned groups easily identifiable, however they provide no means for their increased representation, rather only the concentration of a directionless resentment. The notion of a ‘left populism’ is often presently encouraged as a means of directing energy toward class-consciousness. However, the Canadian Protests act as a cautionary tale about the potential destructiveness of misdirecting public outrage, regardless of the origins of such outrage. Whilst populism might easily harness a potent public energy, the Canadian strikes indicate the fine line between the exploitation of anger crucial to populism and the representation of indignation crucial to class consciousness. The distinction drawn is that between the masses and the mob, or the people and the horde.

[Rachael Grimmer is a second-year English student at University College]