The occupation of downtown Ottawa was a warning about extremism’s useful idiots

It was not an uncommon sight to see Conservative MPs, and a few senators, going to bat for the combined population of far-right extremists, grifters, conspiracy theorists and grievance tourists who occupied downtown Ottawa for three weeks last month, both before they arrived and right up until the police action that forced them out. These politicians desired to claim some aspect of this “movement” and use them for their own purposes—fundraising, energy, volunteers, shifting what’s called the Overton window by normalizing what had previously been considered radicalized discourse in a vain attempt to draw extremists into their orbit and extract their votes. But that relied on a whole lot of willful blindness and very, very selective engagement with the leadership of this occupation.

In spite of the ass-covering claims that later emerged about how the convoy and the subsequent occupation were “hijacked” or “infiltrated” by extremists, this was never the case. It was an event organized by far-right extremists, with the assistance of grifters and conspiracy theorists, and had been in the works for months—long before the issue of the vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers was on the table. When that mandate came down, the organizers used it as their catalyst, and a lot of useful idiots repeated the notion that it was about the mandates in a credulous fashion. Conservatives, who were trying to capitalize on the votes of the unvaccinated—even though that strategy cost them the last federal election—latched on to that narrative without any due diligence.

As has been extensively reported, the organizers of the convoy came into it with the intention of overthrowing democracy. They had drawn up a “memorandum of understanding” (MOU) that they intended to get Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to sign that would see his government resign and be replaced with a ruling junta consisting of a number of convoy organizers, plus some senators and the governor general. This junta would dismantle all of the pandemic public health measures across the country, never mind that the vast majority of them fall under provincial jurisdiction. A couple of weeks into occupation, the organizers were still insisting on the overthrow of the government, but were willing to settle for some kind of coalition with the Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Québécois with the goal still of dismantling public health measures and dissolving the Liberal Party of Canada entirely.

In spite of this, Conservatives played dumb and pretended that this MOU and the plan to overthrow democracy was non-existent or not serious. They pretended that the organizers weren’t far-right extremists, despite the fact that they had not only racist, antisemitic or Islamophobic beliefs, but also a long history of homophobic and transphobic ones as well. They tried to further a narrative that this was some kind of class warfare, that the Liberals hated working-class people, because it fits into how right-wing populism has been constructing itself in recent years as a contest between a “pure” population versus corrupt “elites” (without any real definition of just who qualifies as an “elite”). And yes, a lot of useful idiots parroted this narrative, offering succour and legitimacy to this occupation as though vaccine mandates were at the heart of their complaints when it was never really about mandates. It was about extremists proving that they could organize a large-scale event.

This is why we should be concerned about which Conservative politicians tried to ally themselves with this occupation. Pierre Poilievre was a big booster of the occupation, but was very careful to never take photos with the organizers—preferring instead photos of as many smiling faces in the crowd as he could, and every person of colour he could find to “prove” that the occupation couldn’t be full of racists (in spite of all evidence to the contrary). Leslyn Lewis, who has also declared her candidacy for the leadership, was also frequently seen among the crowds, and went to bat for them in the House of Commons. In fact, her speech from the Emergencies Act debate about respecting these occupiers and anti-vaxxers was featured in her campaign launch video.

It is also noteworthy that for the two queer MPs in the Conservative caucus, Eric Duncan and Melissa Lantsman, neither outright endorsed the occupation as many of their compatriots did nor denounced it, even after it became clear that the “peaceful protest” had become an illegal occupation. Both were actively urging the government to capitulate to the occupiers’ demands around ending vaccine mandates and other public health measures, Lantsman doing so under her role as the party’s transport critic.

Lantsman also took to social media and even Fox News to falsely claim that Trudeau accused her, a Jewish lesbian, of standing with swastikas and Confederate flags. (Trudeau had said in response to one of her questions that Conservatives could choose to stand with occupiers who flew those particular symbols whereas his government did not). But it is also worth noting that Lantsman has already endorsed Poilievre for the leadership, and was retweeting Poilievre’s insinuations that Trudeau was the real racist and not the occupiers. Duncan had initially declared himself neutral in the leadership race because he had a place on the organizing committee early on, but resigned that post when he was dumped from the caucus’ leadership team after Candice Bergen took over as interim leader.

There should be real concerns that the Conservatives have been aligning themselves with this occupation and by extension its far-right organizers, because we saw this play out in the United States when the Republican Party shifted further to the right to appease Tea Party organizers, and then became unhinged in the age of Donald Trump’s brand of right-wing populism. The Conservatives cannot simply play dumb and pretend that these extremist organizers don’t exist, or that this was just about the right to protest, or freedom of expression, or people’s choices around medical interventions. Our democracy is at stake, and we need to beware those who would be useful idiots to extremists for the sake of a few votes.