Thread by @Lidsville

Hi @checkupcbc, it strikes me that your guests & callers are treating the convoy as a grassroots protest & not a highly orchestrated political strategy on the part of large interests. Sure, such interests easily harness free-floating anger, but their money & agenda come first.

@checkupcbc Yes, some are upset about the pandemic, some are racist & hate-motivated, others may have other grievances, but it looks as if they're all being easily recruited by good corporate strategists. I work as a strategist & I recognize the signs. There's money behind this. Follow it.

@checkupcbc In short, your frame of 'are the divisions in Canada growing more extreme' is a false frame. The frame should be 'how are large interests harnessing Facebook to create astroturf movements like Yellow Vests & the convoy to advance their own interests, usually resource extraction.

@checkupcbc In climate change and environmental work, we call this the "extractivist far-right." We already know which corporations/"institutes" are behind Canada/BC Proud, Yellow Vests and all kinds of other interlocking efforts - and often they mobilize members through racist scapegoating.

@checkupcbc Of course members of the convoy will immediately denounce this theory as false - they think they met up with others through Facebook, and in their view this is an organic movement. And to some extent that's true. They have no idea how this got orchestrated.

@checkupcbc I expect the public broadcaster which I and the rest of us support through our taxes not to legitimate this convoy as real or grassroots, but instead investigate its funding & obvious foreign involvement. Where's your expert guest on that?

This for eg:

https://twitter.com/ContextFall/status/1492601760329969664

@checkupcbc Right-wing corporate interests, not content with the degree to which they've captured govts, & perhaps interested in further dereg'n/subsidy of oil & gas, use these astroturf attacks as a way of warning govts: see what we can do? Give us what we want or it'll be worse next time.

@checkupcbc I think many Canadians were taken by surprise by this convoy. Most of us working on climate change/enviro/Indigenous rights issues were not. We've been strategizing re: the extractivist far-right for *years." Sample slides from a zoom mtg 2 yrs ago:

@checkupcbc And who's behind the convoy, Yellow Vests etc? Who's been helping harness and whip up racism, white supremacy and free-floating grievances in the service of corporate agendas? Who's turning these wheels? Let's get less naive about this, fast. #cdnpoli

@checkupcbc Lastly, a recent comparison of extractivist far-right vs progressive NGO expenditures on Facebook ads in 2019 over the rail blockades. See the disparity?
Far-right: 182 ads = $108,000
Progressives: 12 ads = $1,300.

@checkupcbc The solutions to some of these problems are obvious. I'll leave it to you to fill those in here.

But CBC? Get it together please.

@checkupcbc I'd also like to draw people's attentions to ResourceWorks - a kind of lobbying entity involved in this in BC. Watch their public palaver on #FairyCreek and other issues. They're like a mini Fraser Institute focused entirely on resource extraction in BC. Near top left.

The woman pictured in the middle of that diagram, one of the bridges between the funders on the left and the 'movements' on the right, is Vivian Krause whom we know has a relationship with oil and gas (regardless of denial)

Oh and I left out the most obvious point because it seemed too obvious, but perhaps it's worth saying: the pandemic and its mandates are just a pretext for the newest battle in a long-running war that long preceded the pandemic.

Some solutions: Tax the hell out of billionaires/ near billionaires. There's a dangerous quantity of cash sloshing around the global economy, large enough to buy govts.
Regulate Facebook & any other platform into a crater. They're allowing - & profiting from - this organizing.

Get some Canadian govt scrutiny on the money flowing from Canadian and other groups into these astroturf movements. Manning Institute and every other group in the diagrams above.

For added evidence that the convoy is backed by the extractivist far-right/oil & gas (thanks to @MSwaggernaut for this)

https://twitter.com/vickiejomorris/status/1493036853083074561

@MSwaggernaut This was from 2019, but see the similarities in the M.O?

"Fossil-Funded Pipeline Convoy Folds, Leaving Supremacist-Affiliated Yellow Vests in Charge"

theenergymix.com/2019/01/16/fos…

@checkupcbc Look, trolls responding to this: people would take you more seriously if you didn't call yourself "horse paste." Also:

https://twitter.com/TawasiSoce/status/1490067904884142080

@MSwaggernaut Here we go: one of the donors to the GiveSendGo for the convoy lists their address as the postal code of CNRL, @CanadianNatural Resources, one of largest oil and gas producers. cnrl.com

https://twitter.com/HandmaidAlberta/status/1493100754558615556

#ableg #bcpoli #cdnpoli

Final note: Conservative Party of Canada is clearly tied up in this convoy mess (as are many other players, incl many in US & beyond). But let's remember, even @BCNDP has poured fuel on this fire, using racism in the service of resource extraction:

https://twitter.com/Lidsville/status/1233883154764587009?s=20&t=mw0fpXSwJNk2viqwCE4-2A

#bcpoli

@bcndp And who was behind that use of anti-FN racism to abet logging, other than the Horgan-Meggs crew? That's right, Jimmy Pattison's Canfor.

https://twitter.com/Lidsville/status/1122618150581702657