The purportedly homegrown display of economic sabotage currently unfolding in Canada and on the U.S.-Canadian border has garnered a large share of right-wing supporters in this country, primarily among those who oppose COVID-19 restrictions, decry the use of vaccines, and generally revel in performative gestures against what they consider government “overreach.” Fox News—probably the most visible spigot of anti-vaccination disinformation—has, for example, lent its support to the protesting truck drivers as they wreak havoc against Ottawa citizens and disrupt the flow of commerce. As a result of this support by right-wing media, we can almost certainly expect similar astroturfed protests to occur in the U.S., probably within the next few weeks.
According to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, the Canadian protests represent the views of only a small minority of Canadian truck drivers, and in fact have little if anything to do with trucking or truckers, most of whom are vaccinated or support vaccine requirements. Rather, they are being organized and funded largely by right-wing, anti-government hate groups, including several groups "espousing Islamophobia, antisemitism, racism, and incitements to violence.” Much like their counterparts in the U.S. and other countries, the Canadian protests have been punctuated by such groups and the individuals aligned with them through death threats and violent rhetoric.
The use of trucks as objects of political intimidation represents a significant and menacing escalation in these group’s tactics. But when you separate the trucks—large, imposing, generally immovable objects in their own right—from the protests themselves, what you have left are ordinary, right-wing foot soldiers, many of whom are cut from the same basic cloth of those who committed the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The prosecution of various Jan. 6 insurrectionists over the last year has revealed that a substantial number of these people tend to exhibit rather distinct qualities. Many are exceptionally violent and dangerous, but many are also (to a large extent) extraordinarily stupid. As reported by Jake Epstein for Insider, a 20-year-old man from Akron, Ohio, appears to fit this pattern.
A man living in Ohio tried to divert Canadian police in Ottawa with a bogus bomb threat to show support for truckers in the country who are protesting COVID-19 restrictions.
Instead, the unidentified 20-year-old man actually called police in Ottawa, Ohio—a village in Putnam County, roughly 50 miles southwest of Toledo.
After he allegedly made his bogus bomb threat (to the wrong police department) this individual then followed up and called them again, falsely claiming he’d been shot. Upon being advised that his call would have to be forwarded to the authorities in Canada, a light bulb must have suddenly gone off. He sheepishly admitted to the police that he hadn’t been shot and that he was simply trying to “divert the attention of Ottawa, Canada police.” According to Epstein, after realizing he had just made a bomb threat to an Ohio police department instead of one in Canada, the man then acknowledged he didn't really have a bomb and was "just trying to waste their time and resources because [he didn't] like their mask mandates.”
Forget for a moment the plain malevolence of attempting a swatting tactic to disrupt law enforcement activity already besieged by a crisis; forget the stupidity of attempting to do so without bothering to check the area code of the number you are calling; forget even the incalculable serendipity of actually screwing it up so badly you mistakenly call a law enforcement agency in your home state—not once, but twice. All of those things are equally stupid, in fact, incredibly so.
But the truly, gobsmackingly stupid was still to come:
When [police] called the man back to let him know that he may face charges, the man apologized, admitting his mistake. The man then tried to defend himself by saying his threat was for a different country—not the US.
According to CBC News, the individual has now been arrested. The sheriff’s office of Ottawa, Ohio, is preparing a report to the prosecutor recommending consideration of swatting charges.