The Nazi, Confederate, and Three Percenter flags paraded through downtown Ottawa in the early days of the occupation, combined with the paramilitary tone and efficiency of the occupiers’ supply and logistics camp, set up in a baseball stadium parking lot six kilometres from Parliament Hill;
By the time the convoy rolled into town January 28, The Canadian Press had already connected some of its main organizers to a fossil-funded white supremacist event three years ago, where hundreds of trucks mobilized by the Yellow Vest movement came to town for a much shorter, more temporary Parliament Hill protest that drew then-Conservative leader Andrew Scheer as a speaker. “The convoy is mainly organized by a movement known as Canada Unity, which launched on Facebook in February 2019, when the United We Roll convoy protested on Parliament Hill , demanding more oil pipelines and an end to the carbon price,” CP wrote.
Press Progress, a news site maintained by the Broadbent Institute, has compiled a comprehensive list of the “extremists and social media influencers” behind the occupation. The list includes:
• Canada Unity founder and “memorandum of understanding” co-author James Bauder, a Yellow Vest supporter and apparent adherent to the massive QAnon conspiracy theory, last seen targeting workers on a picket line outside an oil refinery in Alberta;
• Benjamin Dichter, a failed Conservative and People’s Party of Canada candidate who Press Progress says welcomed the Confederate flag to Ottawa, and is said to believe the federal Liberal party is “infested with Islamists”;
• Far right broadcaster Pat King, who frets about “depopulation of the Caucasian race” and joined the convoy with the prediction that “the only way that this is going to be solved is with bullets”;