Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: Republicans and Right-Wing Talk Show Hosts Beat Drums for US Grievance Convoys

February 22, 2022

Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash

While Fox News has led a steady drumbeat of support for the Canadian trucker convoy – now being removed from the streets of Ottawa -- many Republicans, including Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are salivating over the possibility that right-wing anti-vaxx and anti-mask trucker caravans might clog bridges, highways and streets in the homeland. Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have called the truckers “heroes” and “patriots.” 

Will the imminent ending of the Canadian convoy lead to the launching of U.S. Grievance Convoys?

According to The Guardian’s Sergio Olmas “DeSantis has thrown his support behind conservative trucker convoys using similar tactics to protest against vaccine mandates that for weeks have blocked roads between Canada and the US, stalling trade between the two nations and leading to disruptions to the global supply chain. He also announced Florida’s attorney general would investigate GoFundMe after it dropped the page for donations to Canadian truckers.”

 “I hope the truckers do come to America. I hope they clog up cities,” Sen. Paul told the Daily Signal, a publication of the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. Paul, who criticized Black Lives Matter protests, said: “Civil disobedience is a time-honored tradition in our country, from slavery to civil rights, to you name it. Peaceful protest, clog things up, make people think about the mandates.”

Sean Hannity recently hosted two protest organizers on his Fox News Channel program last week, telling them you “have a lot of support from your friends in America.” He added: “We have a movement in America that’s starting very soon.”

In light of recent right wing support for trucker blockades, it is ironic that several states, with Republican legislative majorities, have been crafting laws that allow “some level of immunity to drivers for hitting protesters blocking roads, … with Iowa, Oklahoma and Florida successfully putting those laws on the books,” Olmas reports on a Boston Globe investigation. These immunity laws were initiated following Black Lives Matter and related civil protests during the summer of 2020.

Olmas noted that “Bill Eigel, a Missouri state senator who sponsored a bill to crack down on protesters who block roads and grant some immunity to drivers who hit them, joined other Republican state legislators this month to speak at a rally promoted as a ‘freedom convoy’ to the capitol.”

Olmas reported that “over a hundred thousand social media accounts have participated in convoy groups, on Facebook and alt-tech platforms like Telegram, in a decentralized effort to organize a protest in the US.”

Convoy organizers and supporters are getting their news from right wing news sites and social media platforms. According to The Verge’s Ryan Broderick,  “arguably the single most important factor in the protests, and much of it originates in the fractured way information travels online. Convoy supporters are getting their news from a tangle of Facebook groups, Telegram channels, and random influencers, which is all then amplified and expanded by right-wing broadcasters like [Tucker] Carlson, The Daily Caller, or Canadian right-wing media network Rebel News. These channels promote a sanitized version of movements like the Freedom Convoy, amplifying its hashtags and turning its obscure extremist leaders into celebrities”

According to The New York Post’s Jesse O’Neill, “The Great American Patriot Project started the American Truckers Freedom Fund … and urged truck drivers to join three convoys to Washington, DC, next month. The political action committee said it was launching the motorcades in the first week of March. One would travel from California through the Southwest and Deep South to DC. Two others would originate in Ohio and end in the capital.”

The right-wing infrastructure is in place, and greased up enough to call for, and support, US Grievance Convoys should they materialize. Fox News has been amplifying the Canadian Convoy -- which actually involved only a small number of truckers -- with the apparent intent of mobilizing truckers in the U.S. It’s unclear whether US convoys will materialize? If they do get organized, how much of an impact will they have on major thoroughfares and cities? Will GiveSendGo again become a preferred fundraising platform or will organizers attempt to lure funders to their specific websites?

In a statement issued Friday, February 18, “the Capitol Police said local, state and federal law enforcement agencies as well as the District of Columbia National Guard are ‘aware of plans for a series of truck convoys’ arriving in the city around the time of Biden’s March 1 address and are coordinating security planning,” Fortune reported. According to Fortune, “Trucks and vans are prohibited from entering the area around Capitol complex without the delivery companies and drivers having letters on file with the Capitol Police.”