How Classics Made its Way into the “Freedom Convoy”
This article is a collaboration between Pharos and Professor Katherine Blouin, who first documented this material. She is one of the editors of Everyday Orientalism, a publication that “reflect[s] on how history and power shape the way in which human societies define themselves through the ‘Other’”.
The “freedom convoy” was a Canadian protest that took place in several Canadian cities and border crossings and led to a month-long occupation of Ottawa in early 2022. Demonstrators opposed Canadian and American requirements that cross-border truck drivers be vaccinated against COVID-19. The protest was primarily initiated by an organization described by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as an “anti-public-health-mandate group,” but prominent leaders included anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, and one former officer of a federal political party in Canada. Ordinarily we are only able to track the appropriation of Greco-Roman antiquity at such demonstrations if the demonstrators themselves invoke it publicly. But in the case of the “Freedom Convoy,” the work of public interest whistleblowers at DDoSecrets has revealed how those who privately support the convoy also take inspiration from the ancient world.
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