Trump comes to Ottawa

A populist protest fed by social media and conspiracy craziness in Canada isn’t really surprising. Overlap is inevitable from the U.S., where Trump and the far-right have managed to use lies and fear-mongering to tap into Americans’ anti-establishment mania and obsessive individualism to build an anti-vaxx revolt into a powerful wedge issue.

Trucker convoy protesters are pictured in downtown Ottawa on Jan. 30. Misguided, down-the-rabbit-hole thinking is being seen on a wider basis in the Ottawa trucker demonstration, including calls by convoy organizers to use some kind of far-fetched legal process to remove Trudeau from office, writes Les Whittington.The Hill Times photograph by Sam Garcia

Opinion

BY LES WHITTINGTON

January 31, 2022

OTTAWA—The crowd of agitators, dissidents, right-wing extremists, and conspiracy dupes in Ottawa didn’t actually take over the Capitol (building) on the weekend as they did briefly last year in Washington, D.C., in an attempt to overthrow the 2020 election result. But the thousands who poured in...

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