For over a month, Canada has been rocked by a “Freedom Convoy†of demonstrators and vehicle blockades that ultimately converged on the capital city of Ottawa in protest of COVID-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions. Having garnered support from conservative media, some members of Canada’s parliament, and prominent online voices like Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson, the convoy quickly became a cultural and political flashpoint that revealed both how the far right is mobilizing and how the left needs to respond. In this segment of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Canadian journalists Emily Leedham and Dru Oja Jay about their experience covering the convoy, the mix of organic and astroturfed grievances that were on display, and what the demonstrations say about the terrain of right-wing politics in Canada today.
Emily Leedham is the Prairies Reporter for PressProgress, an award-winning non-profit news organization in Canada that focuses on holding the rich and powerful accountable, exposing unfair and unhealthy working conditions and shining a light on hate and bigotry. She has been reporting on the “Freedom Convoy†for PressProgress and Jacobin. Dru Oja Jay is the publisher of The Breach, an independent Canadian media outlet producing critical journalism mapping a just, viable future. He was also the publisher of The Dominion paper and a co-founder of the Media Co-op. Along with Nikolas Barry-Shaw, he is the co-author of the book Paved with Good Intentions: Canada’s Development NGOs from Idealism to Imperialism.

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Read the transcript of this interview: https://therealnews.com/how-should-the-left-respond-to-the-freedom-convoy
Pre-Production/Studio: Dwayne Gladden
Post-Production: Stephen Frank, Dwayne Gladden
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Gee… You REALLY want to go there? The "LEFT"… That's an OXYMORON as they "think" they are right (as in correct) on EVERYTHING! The ENTIRE ideals of what the "LEFT" used to be has now become nothing more than a BREEDING GROUND for COMMUNISM – PLAIN & SIMPLE! It's funny tho that those in POWER (democrats I mean) around the nation all seem to be getting RICHER each and every DAY while the common person is getting POORER & POORER at the same time (your current Speaker of the House is a PRIME example of this just as is Crazy Maxine). The LEFT seems to actually HATE THE CONSTITUTION and they ACTIVELY TRY TO CHIP AWAY ALL OF OUR FREEDOMS and it's been this way now for almost 4 DECADES!!! The ACLU no longer will represent ANY person who identifies as a CONSERVATIVE NO MATTER WHAT yet they will TRIP OVER EACH OTHER to represent an AXE MURDERING DRUG DEALER just as long as that person in question has "VOTED BLUE NO MATTER WHO" and THIS WILL NEVER GET ANY BETTER just as long as the LEFT continues to get away DAMN NEAR EVERYTHING (and most times ILLEGAL!)!!! And I think while you (your channel TRNN) may well be trying to actually change things in this country for the better you still right off the bat will DISCOUNT anything that stems from the ideals of the conservatives in this nation. The Conservatives & Libertarians are the ONLY PARTY'S that still believes in our CONSTITUTION in the LITERAL SENSE while the left could care less just as long as they live (and die) by the CURRENT LIBERAL IDEOLOGY in FULL!!! It's time I think your channel takes a GOOD HARD LOOK AT YOURSELVES – WHAT YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE IN and WHAT OUR COUNTRY WAS FOUNDED ON. And DON'T jump right into the same old tired topic towards the SLAVERY issue, that was for the MOST PART (like 98% of the OWNERS the Democrat Party) and ONLY ONE SIDE WHO WAS KEEPING THE SLAVERY ISSUE ALIVE for almost 100 years and beyond after the Constitution was written!!! This was your Parties SIN and no matter how hard the LEFT tries to wash that stain off themselves we KNOW the REAL TRUTH – from the Civil War & the KKK all the way to MANY PRESIDENTS (all Democrat btw), this was ALL YOUR SIDES DOING… PERIOD!!! The left has tried to make the public "think" that the tables have been turned to the point that now some people actually think that the Conservatives are now the RACE HATERS etc. but just look at who your local police chiefs are and what party are they are members of – you'll find that in many parts of the nation "JIM CROW" is STILL BEING "JUST THE WAY THINGS ARE" and sometimes even WORST… As I've said many times in the past, the REAL PROBLEM is that person in the mirror, until you actually do some REAL & HONEST self-reflection and STOP JUST BELIEVING WHAT YOU ARE BEING TOLD do nothing, NOTHING will EVER change. Think on this why don't you…
If you are a black lesbian woman that believes that the west is not extremely racist year 2022 and that there are only 2 genders then according to the left you are a homofóbic racist white supremecist
Im a lefty to my core; I unsubbed from trnn a few years ago primarily for their ouster of their founder Paul Jay, but also in large part to the slanted, inflammatory, paper thin reporting of this gentleman right here, Marc Steiner. He wasn't too bad when he first started, but quickly went down the rabbit hole of Russiagate conspiracies. I have resubbed since Chris hedges is doing a show here after the closing of RT, in large part due to the environment on the left that was created by people exactly like Steiner. And here he is again, playing the culture war while pretending to have concern for workers. TRNN isn't worth the reputation it used to have, and it's sad because it still has many good voices who should go the route of Aaron Maté and just leave.
I stopped playing this after your opening sentence. You've basically served up the same tired narrative that your network proports to be trying to battle against.
Easy solution – drop the vaccine mandates. 90% of those truckers are upset about the vaccines and the specter of more surveillance. Drop the mandates, and most will go home. They have little interest in joining political organizations.
Why don't you do a story on vaccine adverse events, and how the medical community is responding to the injured parties?
Stop consuming so much soy , salad and cake. It has stripped your brains from myelin and now it works like live stripped electrical wires in a metal bucket .
You are sooo wrong.
It's interesting to see this thinking style on such bold display: guilt by distant association, demonization and division. It's so poisonous.
I wonder how they might characterize the "near right". I suspect that for them this category doesn't exist
"Far right actors & small business owners". Really lady? Spoken like a true corporate leftist. Did you not see the woman trampled by a police horse? This isn't a far right movement. There is only violence from the left authoritarian Trudeau government . Mr. "Black Face" himself. There is no right or left anymore. By his own words in his speeches, Martin Luther King would be considered a far right lunatic by today's left.
How? get the ignorant "leftie hippie" useful idiots to call them inflammatory names then have them cheerlead a 3rd world war for far the right in Ukraine according to Max Blumenthal and others. Good plan warmonger libs.
The King's of the earth waxed fat off the Whore of Babylon!Left and right are wondering after the beast and false prophet.Marc, you speak truth and no matter what the truth will set you free!
"It's not just vaccine mandates, it's lack of protective gear, it's low minimum wage" …yet hard working front line nurses got fired by the 100s every week over VACCINE MANDATES. They didnt quit over pay. They didnt quit over PPE. But they got fired for not taking the vaccine. The majority of the unvaccinated in Canada are Liberals by the way (35%) – only 25% are conservative. I find this so appauling. I'm left wing but this is exactly why you guys are losing people.
Medical apartheid is wrong. Period.
I almost subscribed to this channel. Whoops! You folks are the problem. Do you report directly to Biden?
Prices of commodities are getting higher and interest rate will also get higher this year but do the ordinary people notice? they may have but they seem to be diverted to some "more" important issues, "FREEDOM convoy, Russian invasion, and yeah, the pandemic.
Canada – Prior to the Freedom Convoy, the Left(NDP) in Canada had been jockeying for their position on the Right. It started with Thomas Mulcair and continues with Jagmeet Singh. The irony in all of this is that the Trucking Industry in Canada is 20% Sikh.
The "Liberals" have lost the plot.
Liberals are in bed with the banks, big pharma, militarized police, the elite, and tyrannical government.
Fortunately,. the People are waking up.
What a shameful display from all three… " they had bad connections, are not our type of people, there is a danger they may 'gain the Right' more supporters, they did not say what we wanted them to say… blah blah divide et impera works blah " .
This is joke coverage
Wow. What a bunch of outright lies, but I guess that's to be expected from Press Progress.
Unsubscribed.
I subscribed to get away from corporate news. If you're just going to repeat their talking points, there's no point to this channel except further misinformation.
Blame it all on the loonies on the right. Nothing to take seriously here.
Wow…..so many lies in one segment……….also, thought this channel was all about "police accountability" yet you are against the freedom protestors who are being beaten and trampled by police horses and threatening business owners that they will break down their windows for denying them service…yet y'all are silent.. it's clear that many lefties are ok with violence and police brutality when it's committed against those who the left hates and disagrees with.. and you guys smearing these protestors as "far right" also exposes your bias and inconsistency……. I'm tired of all the lies. The world is waking up to you leftist frauds
What trash propaganda is this? This is total BS total lies and total propaganda.
Real Communist-Fascist-Nazi pro-pagan-da right out of "Real" News Network.
You call yourselves "the Real News Network?" Complete joke.
What???
I was a Democrat for many years and then i learned that it was because of the Democrat Party that we were being left behind. Democrats didn't allow me to defend myself…going against Americans who wanted to have weapons for self defense. They allowed themselves to be swayed on something they have no knowledge of. One day i asked myself, if i'm about to be attacked what would i prefer…call the cops and waite 7 minutes and hope or would i rather have a weapon i can use right now? The answer was easy for me….yet, my fellow Democrats at the time had a hard time choosing the weapon. The Republicans on the other hand were against a woman getting an abortion. I found these two arguments to be idiotic….both political parties telling FREE Americans what they could and couldn't do. I was confused…to me these were easy choices to make. To me it was just common sense choices…yet these two groups of people were twisted in knots!
So, i decided to go my own way. Today i'm a Socialist Democrat who believes in the following….a living wage instead of a minimum wage, pro guns, pro marriage between men and women, against cops, pro US Constitution and against all forms of religion! Freedom is what i want to see in this country.
Defining fascism on the go — “GRIDLOCKED: THE FREEDOM CONVOY AND THE NEW CANADIAN POPULISM" (6:41) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrksSPPEweY
MASSIVE fail. You sound like someone who DIDN'T go there and speak to the people peacefully and rightfully protesting for their rights as protected by The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Your opinions melt in the face of HUNDREDS of hours of YouTube live streamer's footage and interviews. Vivafrei, Ottawalks, Zot. You're a hack. Think deeper.
Shame on you Marc. Is your memory that poor? Do you not remember the recent BLM protests and how the establishment falsely painted all protesters as arsonistic anarchists? Now the conservatives are protesting against authoritarian overreach and you are cheering on the establishment falsely painting them all as nazis, what the hell is wrong with you. Do you not see that the auhoritarian powers you are siding with will most definitely be used against the left, most likely sooner than later.
I am starting to seriously wonder if channels like yours, The Serfs and Beau of the 5th Column have just been establishment plants all along, meant to derail the left and deepen the divisions to strengthen their tried and true "divide and conquer". Either that or you all are just simply shallow tribal-minded idiots that are foolishly tools of oligarchy and plutocracy.
Either way, shame on you!
It's unfortunate that you guys keep calling this is a far right movement, insisting that they aren't workers, and that they're all antivaxers. That is not the case. Also you guys are really good at twisting things 👠👌
This is called Propaganda. 🗑
There is no Left anymore. The so called "Left" does things like this. Painting a movement as the Right as those people are fighting for sovereign rights. They have shown us how so called independent media like this smears them and tries to discredit what they are fighting for. These are just ShitLibs who can't stand anyone fighting for rights or things they don't agree with. With this video I can see what you are doing an unsubscribing. Thanks to clowns like this the Left is dying. R.I.P. to Democracy thanks to clowns like this.🗑🗑🗑🗑🗑
just follow the money, this "freedom convoy" movement is right wing. puttin freedom on the name is a red flag, all those in the comments saying unsubscribed, thank you, stay with the right wing media.
Piss in the gas tank
Call it out for what it really is. A right wing movement disguised as a workers movement. The Canadian media has done a great job in exposing the leaders of this right wing movement in Canada by investigating their past like their ties to extremist groups like white nationalist groups for example, which meant the leaders of this movement relied upon social media and the ignorant American media whom in some instances thought Canada had the same laws as the USA does including a 1st Amendment which Canada does not. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada gives the federal government sole authority to impose restrictions on rights and freedoms of Canadians if it is deemed in the national interest, that doesn't exist in the American Constitution.
However the USA is known around the world as being one of the largest police states so there would never be a repeat of what happened in Canada's capitol which is Ottawa, Ontario in the U.S.A. The 21 day siege in Ottawa, and the reluctance of Ottawa police to move in on a largely white crowd of anti-vaxxer protesters who were keeping people awake 24/7 with loud music, honking of horns and the harassment of citizens who lived nearby because they were wearing masks by anti-vaxxer protesters was in stark contrast to the immediate response police have had on Black Lives Matter protesters and Indigenous protesters and environmentalist protesters.
Canada's population has a 90% fully vaccinated rate, meaning 90% of the population in Canada has had at least 2 vaccine doses and 90 % of all truckers in Canada are fully vaccinated. No these anti-vaxxers weren't protesting for higher wages or for better work benefits, important thing worth fighting for.
Great post ! so happy to see the Real News turn their gaze Northward to Canada for a change. As a Canadian, I would say the Ottawa Freedom Convoy was a most Contradictory and Misguided protest ! It was full of entitled and resentful Euro Canadian men, all crying "Freedom", wanting to (mis) represent themselves a "oppressed" and "victimized", while toting Right leaning and White nationalist symbols and rhetoric. Yes, there were a few Nazi and Confederate flag wavers out there. That protestors placed their anti vaccine / Public Health protest and Labour struggles on the same ideological platform as Jim Crow while comparing PM Justin Trudeau to Segregationist Eugene "Bull " Connor was plain ridiculous as it was disingenuous.
yet, a handful of Religious Conservative Blacks (Rastafarians) and misguided First Nations Indigenous people threw their support behind the protest, failing to recognize that these Populist / Right Wing / White Nationalist truckers were the same folks who generally had no empathy for their Racialized struggles against Police Brutality, and systemic racism / exclusion in Canadian society !
Did she just say Jordan Peterson is right wing? Yeah, no.
Saying it is not a working class movement is absurd, as MOST PEOPLE ARE the working class…. and this many people cannot be blamed on racists and random organizations.
Like any protest, it matters not who is in it, but the intention and needs of the protestors.
People are pissed. So they are making it known.
Are all the BLM protests negated because the organizers made off with a lot of cash, bought millions in property and never gave the money to the communities they claimed to be protecting?
No, of course not. I was there. For my own reasons, including police injustice, among many others.
I was tear gassed, shot at by rubber bullets while I tried to film and participate. I am not right wing by ANY stretch, but now, as a liberal, stand accused by my 'left' peers as a racist, or an idiot, for standing with truckers, or listening to Rogan.
The left, and yes, there is a far left, has lost its mind over the last few years.
MOST people had a legitimate issue, and were speaking out.
So all protest should be accepted as working class, regardless of what we want to believe. People don't stand in the snow for a month because they just 'heard it from some racists'
The media spin on this one is beyond me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl1gTLv3q6o
These two cannot be against imperialism if they work for imperialist like The koch brothers they have many tentacles
We should call the working class domestic terrorists and racists, and throw all of them in solitary confinement for 5-10 years for peacefully protesting…..
Just kidding. Unsubscribed to your bootlicking neo-fascist youtube channel. You should be ashamed of yourselves. You are on the wrong side of history. Try educating yourselves for once – time to grow up – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl1gTLv3q6o
For of love spirit brother got me some good TRUTH out of it y3 ty ty spirit sister n spirit brother love most all 🌳🌱â¤3
"Azov Special Operations Detachment, often known as Azov Detachment, Azov Regiment, or Azov Battalion, is a right-wing extremist and Neo-Nazi "
Sure brought out the authoritarian streak in the left.
Trudeau took all of our rights.
Don't get sucked into the mainstream media coverage of this.
You guys deal with the state.
When has it ever treated you fairly?
Meanwhile Trudeau funds Neo-Nazi's in Ukraine.
If you are on Trudeau's side, YOU are supporting Nazi's.
Shame.
Don't be a shill, or a dupe.
Go search for "Protesters singing national anthem to the police, the RCMP"
I hope to see a bit about the police brutality that happened in Ottawa by Taya, a foremost voice on police corruption.
When an American was killed by police, during the lockdown of the pandemic, in 2020 Justin Trudeau spoke at a protest.
Maybe it's time someone started comparing the two events.
"Global News
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined demonstrators on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Friday who were protesting against systemic racism and police brutality in Canada."
Now we trust the cops?
Truly ironic is he is putting his knee on the necks of Canadians he calls Nazi's, at the same time he is funding real Neo-Nazi's in Ukraine.
"Canadian officials who met with Ukrainian unit linked to Nazis …https : / / ottawacitizen . com › national › defence-watch › c…
Nov 8, 2021 — A year before the meeting, a Joint Task Force Ukraine briefing on the Azov Battalion acknowledged its links to Nazi ideology."
"Azov Battalion
Military unit
Azov Special Operations Detachment, often known as Azov Detachment, Azov Regiment, or Azov Battalion, is a right-wing extremist and Neo-Nazi Ukrainian National Guard unit, based in Mariupol, in the Azov Sea coastal region."
The CBC can't investigate it's own, up to their neck corruption, let alone anyone else.
I want my money back.
Illegal lock downs led by a cabal of "world leaders".. Nuremburg 2022, when folk find out there is HIV in that oh safe "jab" I hope you folk live long enough to stand trail.. P.S. Unsubbed, but just saved this to be used at your trial.. Sure was a lot of lying "news folk" hung the first time, and I so hope you live to stand trail.
Really good to hear this perspective
Thank you for this
The "left" is now associated with authoritarianism due to the COVID psyop, thanks to neoliberals. If you buy into fear and suppressing rights, you're a useful idiot for "elites".
Should have had Prof Richard Wolf on the show. He would have explained why the left should be supporting the truckers on this one. Vaccine mandates are authoritarian and wrong.
Does the "Left" represent workers anymore? Do I need to be a woman, gay or transgender to even be considered for membership? Your lame attempt to exclude the CA Truckers from consideration as workers is really disgusting. You end up supporting increasing moves towards totalitarian government that is using extra judicial means to suppress dissent.
Humans are ALL facked in the head. Haven't learned a damn thing from history. Repeating the same stupid mistakes over and over and over, while finding new mistakes to make. Tired of the stupidity of this society. Look forward to death now.