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Letter: Convoy leadership needs to be exposed, resisted and defeated

There is a well-organized far-right political movement behind the convoy politics across Canada.
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There is a well-organized far-right political movement behind the convoy politics across Canada.

Convoy leaders and their followers claim they are opposed to vaccine mandates. But these mandates are a necessary public health measure whose purpose is to limit the spread of a deadly disease. In the United States alone over one million have died. This is more deaths than the total number of all American soldiers from the time of George Washington, through the Civil War, the two world wars, Vietnam, right up to today.

During the Second World War, North American governments mandated that everyone living on the coasts had to have blackout curtains to prevent successful enemy aircraft attacks. This mandate was rigidly enforced. If you failed to draw your curtains at nightfall, the police would show up at your door. Generally speaking, people supported this mandate, and they supported government imposed rationing, even if it made their lives more difficult for a few years.

Just because the enemy in this case is a virus, that does not make it less of an enemy. Public health measures, including vaccines and masks, are vital in the struggle. If the Second World War generation could put up with government measures and rationing, surely we can put up with having to be vaccinated if we want to go into a restaurant or drive across a border.

People should not be fooled. The far-right is only using the vaccine mandate issue to further its cause.

These people wrap themselves in the flag to make them seem more acceptable. They carry signs saying they “love” us. But what kind of love is this that blares horns into the night, cripples wide sectors of the economy through border crossings and the occupation of cities and thereby denies working men and women their jobs? What kind of love is this that forces its way into schools terrifying children and teachers and blockades hospitals preventing the sick from getting the treatment they need? The convoy movement, its leadership, both open and hidden, needs to be exposed, resisted and politically defeated.

Read more: Ottawa anti-government convoy organizer Pat King denied bail

Read more: Police lay hundreds of charges in Ottawa blockades as city begins clean-up process

David Lethbridge



newsroom@saobserver.net
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