When a small number of mostly U.S.-funded truck drivers demonstrated their ability to block critical border crossings and snarl traffic in the Canadian capital of Ottowa recently, idling thousands of workers on both sides of the border, they didn’t launch their attack without some advance PR work. Right-wing media has pounded the word “caravan” into the ground for years by associating that term with groups of immigrants seeking refuge in the United States—complete with chyrons about the potential for crime and lots of scary music. So the truckers resurrected the term “convoy,” harking back to 1970s songs about sneaking past ol’ Smokey and “truckin’ on through the night.”
As the sad, sorry attempt to replicate this action south of the border continues somewhere out there in America, Republicans are still trying to make associations between what’s happening in Ukraine and what happened in Canada. If Americans really want to fight against fascism, say Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene, they should look north to where Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed the heinous act of … arresting people who were blocking traffic and refusing to move, and ignore what their pal Vladimir Putin is doing.
But the term convoy may be the best link. Over the last four days in Ukraine, Russia has launched a series of convoys containing tanks, supply trucks, troop transports, missile launchers, and more as they seek to gain control of Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine. Again and again the ultimate fate of these convoys has been to become the stars of videos as their stranded, abandoned, smoking, or simply smashed into unrecognizable bits are seen along Ukrainian roads.
When fascist convoys roll in against democracies that have the tools to deal with them, it ends badly for the convoy. Something to keep in mind on both sides of the Atlantic.
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