LOL ZOMFG it's harder to break the law without cash! Yes, this has been the point, lo these many, many years. But uhhhh it's also harder to get credit without banking history which has been fucking brown people - even in Utopian Canada - from the get-go. If it were an abuse of power then banks would be prevented from doing it to brown people for being brown. Instead this guy is upset because they're doing it to white people for celebrating their whiteness. Quick summary of the October Crisis - it was Canada's version of The Troubles or the Days of Rage. The answer to the question "what happens when a bunch of privileged white children attack privileged white men" is "you mobilize the army" unless you have a Posse Comitatus Act, which was passed to keep the federal government from interfering in state and local governments' prosecution of Civil War grievances against minorities and unions. Worthy of note: Canada's October Crisis lasted about 5 weeks. America's "Dage of Rage" officially lasted three days, but bombings continued throughout the United States for another ten years. The Troubles? Thirty goddamn years. Through the long lens of history, Canada's approach was demonstrably correct, as well as popular and efficacious. Turns out normies care about terrorism. Hahaha in which a bunch of white men write editorials about a bunch of other white men get treated like black men. "Invisible" is a curious adjective. Compare it to a period in which the military took to the streets to prevent cabinet ministers from being strangled and left in car trunks again. I mean... basic bitch Walden 101 is "do the crime, do the time." If you think they shouldn't take your money for paying truckers to screw up traffic, then you should pay truckers to screw up traffic and get your money taken away. Or is this like how everyone white knows exactly one half of one Martin Luther King quote? Yep it is literally that. LOL if you're a leftist you take pride in being arrested if you're a fascist you whine that it's happening to wypepo QEDWe need to adjust our assessment of government action to the realities of our new world. The government doesn’t need to break down your door anymore to effectively remove you from society. They can do it with the press of a button.
Doing this to someone—a small business owner in BC, a public servant in Winnipeg, a student in Halifax—who made a small donation to support the convoy is a clear abuse of power.
Doing it without due process is as despotic as Pierre Trudeau’s detention of left-wing professors and separatists without charge, trial, or access to legal counsel in 1970.
The government’s action is troubling enough, but what should really disturb us is the ease and invisibility with which it is being done.
When they work together—whether it is to financially de-platform fringe minorities or shut down disfavoured speech—there is literally no way to escape their reach, nowhere to hide.
The fact that weaponizing the financial system against nonviolent protestors and their distant supporters was the government’s tool of first resort should worry anyone who understands the role of civil disobedience in democracy.
I would like to think Minister Steven Guilbeault, who was once arrested for scaling the CN Tower to hang a Greenpeace banner, lost a little sleep when he considered that disrupting critical infrastructure is still a common tactic of his environmentalist comrades.
But one thing is already clear: in an interconnected digital world, our freedom depends more than ever on the wisdom, good intentions, and forbearance of government and big business. And that is a chilling thought.