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Ben Norton Profile picture
@BenjaminNorton
Feb 6, 2022 • 15 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
The trucker convoy in Canada is so obviously a rightwing operation astroturfed by conservative billionaires. It's absurd seeing some "leftists" pretend otherwise

This is Texas' far-right attorney general, a corrupt Tea Party pet project who tried to help Trump steal the election
It's clear as day that the Canada trucker convoy is astroturfed by rightwing oligarchs. Trump is promoting it, and single rich donors were giving them $215,000, which is how it got $10 million in 2 weeks

It's similar to a billionaire-funded rally Bolsonaro recently did in Brazil Image
In September, Brazil's far-right leader Bolsonaro and ultra-rich allies organized an astroturfed rally, which they marketed as "grassroots"

Corporate oligarchs paid to send many buses to the rally. Trump aide Jason Miller was in Brazil helping organize it
brasilwire.com/september-7th-…
Very informative thread here. The far-right is international, and Steve Bannon-adjacent networks are very active both North and South America, sharing tactics - and distributing lots of money
I can't believe how many people are falling for this. It's like Tea Party 2.0
The main organizers of the so-called "trucker" convoy are Canadian far-right extremists. It's not led by workers but petit-bourgeois owner-operators, financially backed by rich right-wingers — not exploited trucking workers, c. 90% of whom are vaccinated
readpassage.com/p/the-trucker-…
Excellent thread showing 20+ examples of how the "trucker" convoy in Canada is a rightwing bosses' rally of petit-bourgeois capitalists who exploit actual working-class truckers

Ironically many received Canadian gov't Covid-19 funding for their businesses
First Nations Leadership Council Strongly Condemns “Freedom Convoy” Movement Across Canada and its Spread of Misinformation, Racism, and Violence
First Nations Leadership Council: "First Nations have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic... In addition to dangerous public health and safety misinformation, the convoy is also amplifying hate speech and dangerous racist sentiments"
ubcic.bc.ca/fnlc_strongly_…
"The racist double-standard in policing in this country is on full display -- had these protesters been Indigenous, the police would have cleared them out in a heartbeat."
-First Nations Leadership Council
ubcic.bc.ca/fnlc_strongly_…
I've seen enough right-wing, foreign-funded, astroturfed "protests" in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Belarus, Hong Kong, etc. to immediately recognize one in Canada

Yes the neoliberal Trudeau gov't is awful, but allying with even more reactionary right-wingers against it is stupid
The largest trucker union in Canada, Teamsters, has openly condemned the convoy as a "despicable display of hate lead by the political Right" that "has served to delegitimize the real concerns of most truck drivers today"

90% of its workers are vaccinated teamsters.ca/en/blog/2022/0… Image
One of Canada's largest unions, PSAC, condemned the convoy as right-wing and anti-worker:

"These protestors do not represent the majority of truck drivers and do not have the right to bully, intimidate and physically harass residents, openly promote hate speech and racism" Image
In addition to the biggest truckers union condemning the convoy, the Canadian Trucking Alliance said it "does not support and strongly disapproves of" the right-wing protests.

It added, "The vast majority of the Canadian trucking industry is vaccinated"
cantruck.ca/canadian-truck… Image

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More from @BenjaminNorton

Ben Norton Profile picture
Aug 9
Samir Amin wrote in 2006: "I do want to see the construction of a multipolar world, and that obviously means the defeat of Washington’s hegemonist project for military control of the planet. In my eyes it is an overweening project, criminal by its very nature, which is drawing the world into wars without end and stifling all hope of social and democratic advance, not only in the countries of the South but also, to a seemingly lesser degree, in those of the North. In this connection, I wrote as long ago as 1991 of the emergence of an ‘empire of chaos’".

"... my idea of the multipolarity that is necessary today entails a radical revision of ‘North–South relations’, in all their dimensions. This revision must create a framework that makes it possible to reduce the power of forces within the system (the capitalist system, to call it by its name) that operate in such a way as to exacerbate the polarization of wealth and power. By calling into question the ‘imperialist’ tradition, or whatever one likes to call it, which governs core–periphery relations in the actually existing capitalist system (something quite different from the general market system dreamed up by mainstream economists), such a revision would automatically pose a challenge to the most fundamental aspects of capitalism".Image
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Samir Amin: "The analyses in [my] work are ‘geopolitical’, but I should stress that they are in no way inspired by the methods of conventional geopolitics. That discipline, which originated in the nationalist ruling-class thought of the imperialist countries, treats nation-states as homogeneous invariables, with ‘interests’ dictated by their geographical location and economic ambitions usually identified with those of the dominant sections of capital".
Samir Amin: The aim of the US ruling class "was not only to encircle the USSR (and China) but also to make Washington the worldwide master of last resort: in other words, to extend to the whole planet the Monroe doctrine that had already staked its claim to run the New World in accordance with its own ‘national interests’".Image
Read 4 tweets
Ben Norton Profile picture
Jan 15
As the US prepares to ban TikTok, many Americans are downloading RedNote / Xiaohongshu 小红书 and seeing the real China.

My experiences in China have been amazing. It's a beautiful country with very kind people. Everyone should try to visit

🧵 of videos/photos I took in China: Image
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Chongqing 重庆
Chongqing 重庆
Read 24 tweets
Ben Norton Profile picture
Oct 14, 2024
To understand the genocide in Gaza, it's important to recognize Zionism's roots in European colonialism.

Israel was not created due to the Nazi Holocaust. The British empire endorsed creating Israel in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, when Europe was colonizing the Middle East🧵Image
It's not a coincidence that the Balfour Declaration came immediately after the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, in which the British and French empires carved up the Ottoman empire's territory and established their own colonies in the Middle East (West Asia). Image
Zionism was directly modeled after 19th-century European colonialist movements.

Zionist "founding father" Theodor Herzl wrote a letter to Cecil Rhodes, the genocidal colonizer of Africa, asking for help to colonize Palestine.

Herzl boasted that Zionism was "something colonial". Image
Read 8 tweets
Ben Norton Profile picture
Aug 17, 2024
The neo-feudal corporate landlords at Apple are charging creators on Patreon a 30% fee for all new memberships registered using the iOS app.

It's the perfect symbol of the future of the economy -- neo-feudal rent extraction by corporate monopolies.

🧵This is how the scam works: Image
It all started with Big Tech corporations first offering supposedly "free" services (which were paid for by selling users' information).

Those "free" platforms soon became monopolies, and were so deeply embedded into the economy that they are now (privatized) digital utilities.
A 20th-century economy needed utilities like an electrical grid, water plants, sewage system, highways, etc.

These natural monopolies should be publicly owned, provided as public goods to prevent rent-seeking by corporate landlords (although neoliberals want them privatized too)
Read 8 tweets
Ben Norton Profile picture
Aug 8, 2024
🚨The US allows its athletes to cheat, including at the Olympics.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) says US agency USADA let athletes use steroids in exchange for spying on other violators.

This is the Rules-Based Order™ -- the US violates the rules whenever it's convenient.
Image
Russia was banned from the Olympics in 2019 due to doping. Now we know that the US has allowed athletes to use steroids (ie cheat) since at least 2011, with no punishment

Also, Russia was banned this year due to the war in Ukraine, but the US invaded Iraq and faced no punishment
What the US government calls the "Rules-Based International Order" is a global imperialist dictatorship, in which the US makes up "rules", and violates them whenever it's in its interests.

But then the US invades or sanctions foreign countries it accuses of breaking the "rules".
Read 4 tweets
Ben Norton Profile picture
Jul 31, 2024
The US State Department supported Nazism in the 1930s, saying genocidal fascism "must succeed", or communism would win.

The US charge d'affaires in Germany praised the so-called "more moderate section of the [Nazi] party, headed by Hitler".

These are objective historical facts.
Image
Before WWII even ended, the US government recruited genocidal Nazi monsters to launch its cold war on the Soviet Union.

Later, the CIA recruited Nazi spies like infamous criminal Reinhard Gehlen, Third Reich's spy chief on the Eastern Front, to continue Hitler's war on the USSR.

Image
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Many US corporations profited from investments in Nazi Germany, such as Chase Bank, Standard Oil, IBM, Ford, GM, Coca-Cola, and Kodak.

Hitler also got help from US Senator Prescott Bush, father of President George H W Bush, grandfather of George W Bush.
theguardian.com/world/2004/sep…
Read 4 tweets

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