Thread by @NoLore

Let's talk about this moment, and why Trudeau invoking the Emergencies Act is a mistake. A thread.

It's because the convoy isn't the enemy in and of itself -- it's a symptom. It's the vomiting caused by a different, more important health issue infecting our body politic.

I wrote this in 2018, in the shadow of the hatred I got from the Humbolt tweet stuff. It reads like I could have written it today. What drives people to extremist movements and ideology is systemic and cannot be dealt with in isolation.

nationalobserver.com/2018/04/26/opi…

It's the sum total of a collapsing social safety net, increasingly centralized and milquetoast media establishment, unregulated or not-enough-regulated capital, historic household debt crises and a complete fucked up housing crisis. These things cause widespread harm.

They create radicalizing conditions that produce both good (communal, solidaristic) reactions and also bad (atomized, anti-social, violent) reactions. IF want want to "fight the convoy" ... and that if is a big if as liberals benefit from their extremism ...

We cannot treat their issues or these individuals with individual responses and repression. It will not work. it will backfire. It will trick everyone into thinking that this is all that's necessary and not, you know, stuff like free higher education and tons of health supports.

In 2019, I wrote another piece about this violence, and the ways it expresses itself. Between 2018 and 2019, of course, nothing changed. Things have just gotten worse, and far right forces have gotten better at channeling this anger.nationalobserver.com/2019/12/05/opi…

And so here we are, two years and a pandemic later, and the best that our governments can convince us all we need is just a heavier hand. More ability to crush this fringe -- more gravol to try and stop the vomiting.

Rather than doing anything to help address the roots of radicalization and anti-social movements, we are told that more police, more powers for the state -- that's what's needed right now.

We are being duped.

Police cannot be the cause of and solution to all of society's problems. Don't let the narrative become this ridiculous Simpsons quote.

readpassage.com/invoking-the-e…

That was the first time I've ever tweeted a thread where only the first two tweets of the entire thing were published. I had to then copy and paste between browsers for the rest. Weird.