 For more videos and people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. On February 16th, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared a national emergency in response to ongoing right-wing truckers protests. The protests began towards the end of January against COVID-19-related restrictions and has been condemned as an expression of far right-wing politics which raises issues faced by working people to push a far more devious agenda. Incidentally, quite a bit of the support for this so-called freedom convoy has come from the United States. This is both in terms of financial support and ideological backing from the far right in the U.S. Plans for such protests are also off-foot in the country. What explains this kind of support and what are the sections in the U.S. backing the Canadian movement? Eugene Purir of Breakthrough News explains. You know, I think that's an important question and when you look at the so-called freedom convoy, so-called truckers protests, I think what you can see in terms of the money coming from the United States is it's coming from the far right, not just the money, the support. I mean, it's people like Ted Cruz, supporters of the so-called MAGA movement, the Trump movement, and others who are supporting it because the organizers of this event in Canada are essentially the Canadian versions of that. I mean, you have the bulk of the leadership being people coming from the so-called WEXIT movement that wants to secede the western part of the country in order to be able to pump out more fossil fuels. You have people with Maxine Bernays, People's Party, which is a far right pro-Trump Party that is anti-immigrant, that wants to take an axe to the universal healthcare inside of Canada, that wants to reduce taxes on rich people, that wants to deregulate and privatize large portions of the Canadian economy, including the Postal Service, by the way. And also the Maverick Party, which is a similar version of that. The far right section of the Conservative Party, which actually toppled their leader for not being significantly pro-convoy enough. And so, you know, what we're seeing is that undoubtedly there are all sorts of people who are there for many different reasons, but the leadership of it is the same leadership of far right movements here in America, they're the Canadian adjunct of the sort of Trump-adjacent and Trump-inspired far right forces who have, as one of their stock in trades, trying to a mislead working class people to promote a very conservative pro-business, pro-capitalist agenda, and B, to create the perception, a false perception that the majority of support for these sorts of far right policies are in fact working class people. And that ultimately is the connection between the U.S. and Canada in terms of the financing, in terms of the support from the far right, and in terms of the organization of the events themselves. Protests against COVID-19 related restrictions have not just been seen in Canada, but also in the U.S. and Europe. Many of these have been led by the right-wing too. How has the right sought to use politics around the vaccine and the pandemic to mobilize and what have been its aims? Well, you know, it's being used as a Trojan horse to erode the idea that the state should take any sort of measures to help people. I mean, when you look at the context of those who are aggressively pushing against vaccine mandates, against mask mandates, I mean, they aren't demanding other forms of support for working class people. I mean, millions of people in just the past couple of weeks, you know, lost some period of their work because they had the coronavirus or they were caring for someone who had the coronavirus. Millions of people did not go to work and lost employment because they were 3.2 million people. In fact, worried about getting or spreading the coronavirus. So you have, you know, well over 10 million people in the United States in just the past two weeks who were unable to work because of having the coronavirus, caring for the coronavirus, being worried about the coronavirus, either getting it or spreading it. And you don't see those who are pushing against vaccine and mask mandates asking for stronger unemployment insurance. In fact, you see them being the number one forces who are against the expanded unemployment insurance who said, let's reopen the economy. Let's get rid of all the different things that were helping people. I mean, you've had 3 million women pushed out of the workforce in the United States during the pandemic because of the lack of childcare. Well, where was the support from those who are against the vaccine mandates and the mask mandates for an expanded child tax care credit? So what you see is that the issue around mandates, some of the issues around mandates, which are, you know, certainly legitimate in terms of people's concerns about what are going on, whether or not that is why they should happen or not, you know, it's another question, but certainly there are legitimate concerns. But the reality is, is the crux, the thrust of this movement is actually to oppose any sort of public health measures whatsoever. It's not just to say we're against mandates, but before this, I mean, obviously, when you have a huge number of workers in this country who have said over time, and amongst the small number who are relatively small number who are saying they're still on the fence about getting vaccinated now, you know, one of the main concerns, of course, is having to take time off work because of the potential side effects and so on and so forth. And I don't see any of these people demanding that there be, you know, more strong paid sick days off. So it's not like it's really a battle between two various different perspectives about how the pandemic should be addressed. But you have a far right movement that's trying to use people's legitimate anger with the shambolic response to the pandemic in the United States, it's really been criminal, quite frankly, to push a pro capitalist, libertarian style agenda where there really shouldn't be any public health measures and where the capacities of the state should be hollowed out. So it's a Trojan horse. Unfortunately, it is confusing and tricking some people. But it's, you know, right there in black and white, I think, in terms of the reality of it. Many of these protests take place amid a lackluster and even bumbling response by the US government to the pandemic, starting from the time of the Donald Trump administration. How have federal and state authorities failed to properly address the pandemic, giving rise to widespread concerns which the right seeks to use today? I think people are right to be deeply upset. And I think that we have to remember that a huge amount of why we're having any of these conversations is that the US government refused to take the pandemic seriously from day one. It was abundantly clear, I mean, certainly to the government, although maybe not to the rest of us in January, February, and certainly I'd say halfway through February and certainly into March for the majority of people that this was relatively serious, that a huge country like China was shutting down whole cities to prevent it spreading because it was, you know, viewed as so dangerous. And the US government under the Trump administration chose to take essentially no action. I mean, the same thing, quite frankly for many Democrats, the now-disgraced governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, just a couple days before his lockdown said, oh, no one really has anything to worry about unless you're an elderly person or, you know, you're immunocompromised, it's all going to be fine. And so you saw the public officials refuse to put in place the types of measures that we've seen in countries, you know, as varied as China to Venezuela to New Zealand to Vietnam that were willing to take, yes, very strong measures very early on to reduce the spread so that you don't have these challenges. And of course, if you'd had just that situation in and of itself, you wouldn't be having many of these conversations because we would have almost no COVID. But then on top of that, there were really no significant mitigation measures put in place once it did become more serious to try to find a way. I mean, you know, most of the so-called lockdowns in the United States were a joke because there was no significant income supports for people. Many people were still forced to go out and to work, no matter how scared they were about getting the coronavirus or how potentially susceptible in terms of their own health care, because a huge portion of the economy never did close down because a number of people were forced to work for those who could stay home in the bifurcated nature of the capitalist economy. There wasn't really anything done in a serious way to allow especially the lowest wage workers to be able to take time off work, to be able to stay at home. I mean, there was no attempt like there was in many other countries to try to find a way to again, to slow down or to stop the spread. And also, you're dealing with the legacy issues of the capitalist destruction of health care in the United States. I mean, why were ICUs filling up? Why were hospitals filling up? Well, it's the profit motive over the past decade that said, well, you don't need any excess capacity in hospitals because that's not profitable. So get rid of beds that you don't use on a regular basis. So there was really no backstop that existed. You didn't have any real backstop or existence or stockpiles of personal protective equipment. And not only that, you can't even make it in the United States because of the hollowing out of manufacturing and supply chains and the rise of just-in-time production. And so really both from a legacy perspective, the devastation of neoliberalism of the past 40 years, the just unbelievable denialism from the Trump administration and, quite frankly, many Democrats in the first several months and the inability to break with the capitalist norms of society and provide real social supports that would allow people to take measures to protect themselves, protect their community and hopefully arrest the spread of COVID-19 to the best of the degree possible so that we could turn things around. None of that really happens. And I think we can lay it squarely at the feet of the capitalist class that by and large has promoted a one-shot view of this, that all that needs to be done is vaccines, the pharmaceuticals are making huge amounts of money, and all of the extra things that needed to take place alongside of that to really address this have not been done because the ruling class in the United States does not want to actually address the fact that capitalism is killing people and that the profit motive makes it impossible to really care for people's needs over private profit.