House Republicans cheer on Canadian anti-vaxxers who 'desecrated' national monument

House Republicans have been tweeting their support of a group of Canadian truck drivers who are protesting their country’s COVID-19 safety rules.

As part of the Canadian government’s effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is requiring truck drivers entering Canada to be fully vaccinated or face testing or quarantine requirements. Canada’s new safety rules went into effect on Jan. 15

According to Trudeau, more than 90% of Canadian truck drivers are already vaccinated and thus are exempt from the new rule.

That hasn’t stopped the Canadian anti-vaccine protesters, who call themselves the “Freedom Convoy,” from protesting the decision by obstructing the U.S.-Canada border, stopping traffic on highways, and vandalizing national monuments honoring Canadian heroes.

These anti-vaccine protesters have been holding ongoing rallies in Ottawa — Canada’s capital city — where they have forced businesses to shut down, damaged city vehicles, held up swastika flags and even attempted to force an Ottawa homeless shelter to feed them.

“I am sickened to see protesters dance on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and desecrate the National War Memorial,” Canada’s Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre tweeted on Saturday.

On Sunday, the Ottawa Police Service announced it had opened “several criminal investigations” into the “desecration” of two Canadian monuments: the National War Memorial and a statue honoring the late athlete Terry Fox.

“Several criminal investigations are underway in relation to the desecration of the National War Memorial/Terry Fox statute, threatening/illegal/intimidating behavior to police/city workers and other individuals and damage to a city vehicle,” the police service tweeted on Sunday.

On Saturday, anti-vaccine protesters hung a sign reading “MANDATE FREEDOM” on the statue of Fox, a Canadian athlete and cancer activist whose leg was amputated and who in 1980 ran 3,339 miles across Canada using a prosthetic to raise funds for cancer research. Fox died of lung cancer in 1981 at the age of 22.

Brad West, the mayor of Port Coquitlam, Canada, shared his outrage over the protesters’ actions.

“I’m the Mayor of Terry Fox’s hometown,” West tweeted on Saturday. “He’s our city’s hero, national inspiration and a unifier. Whatever your cause, you don’t get to appropriate his legacy and you don’t touch his statue. Ever. This should be removed immediately.”

The anti-vaccine protesters’ vandalism of national monuments apparently hasn’t bothered House Republicans — quite the opposite.

“The patriots of America support Canadian truckers,” Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) tweeted on Saturday in response to the Ottawa anti-vaccine rallies.

“RT if you stand with the freedom-loving truckers in Canada protesting tyrannical vaccine mandates,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) tweeted on Monday.

“Canadian truckers are doing more to defend freedom than Democrats in Congress,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted that same day.

The House Judiciary Committee Republicans’ Twitter account shared a video of a convoy of trucks stopped on a Canadian highway with the word “Freedom!”

“Incredible,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) tweeted in response to the video.

Many of the same House Republicans who are cheering on the Canadian truckers’ protests were quick to criticize anti-racism protests in the United States, including the anti-racist protesters’ efforts to take down monuments honoring Confederate Army leaders.

Boebert and many other self-proclaimed “law and order” House Republicans who are now cheering on the unruly protesters in Ottawa were quick to condemn the protests that arose across the country following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.

At the height of the protests following Floyd’s death, Boebert said the efforts to take down statues honoring the white men who fought to keep Black people enslaved were “not about what the Confederates did, it’s about trying to erase what the Democrats did.”

“The statue thing has nothing to do with racism, progress, Democrat or Republican. It’s all about Marxism,” Boebert tweeted in June 2020.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.