John Stapleton, editor of the fine online journal A Sense of Place Magazine, has now published two books on Australia’s experience of Covid totalitarianism. The first, Unfolding Catastrophe, chronicled Australia’s descent into policy madness over two miserable years. His latest, Convoy to Canberra, focuses on the extraordinary popular uprising in February 2022 in which possibly half a million disgruntled protesters from all across this wide brown land descended upon the Capital City to vent over Covid mandates. In particular, over vaccine mandates. For a week or so, Canberra’s population doubled. You might say that, for the first and perhaps only time in its history, Canberra was at least half full of normal people.
Stapleton’s two books join a growing international mini-literature detailing the crimes and madness of the Covid era. The most prominent truth-tellers include Australia’s lockdown warrior Gigi Foster (and colleagues), Alex Berenson, Scott Atlas, Mattias Desmet, Laura Dodsworth, Sucharit Bhakdi, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Naomi Wolf, Shari Markson, Matt Sanjeev Sabhlok and CJ Hopkins. In time, their works will become indispensable chronicles of a time without compare, a time when the world lost its sense of reality and perspective and its moral compass.
Convoy is an up-close, on-the-ground account of what might well be the biggest, the most counter-cultural and the most extraordinary public protest in Australia’s history. Not least, extraordinary, because it was all but totally ignored by the political class. This was to be expected, because in the era of ideology, top-down politics and narrative-shaping, the people massed in Canberra did not suit the prevailing storyline. They were, and are, inconvenient outsiders. And we know what becomes of outsiders in the age of enlightenment. They are ignored, silenced or ridiculed. Cancelled. Yes, we have new media (like Tott News, the Cauldron Pool and Rebel media), independent “citizen-journalists”, bloggers and freedom parties. But the danger is that Covid dissidents will become a ghetto, an echo chamber, without channels to mainstream voices to whom the great, tuned-out masses of the Covid-duped might listen. Hence the critical importance of books like this by experienced, credible journalists with links to normie-world.
Australia now has its own Canadian truckers’ movement, its own Dutch farmers’ protest (perhaps not quite January 6, though), that demonstrates to a world that had perhaps concluded otherwise, that we were up for showing resistance to tyranny.
In the spirit of the protest movement, itself a flowering of the democratic spirit, in Convoy the author hands over much of the writing to the protesters themselves. It draws heavily upon the motivations and stories of participants, interspersed with some heartfelt and searing commentary on the policy madness of the day.
There are some memorable lines and vignettes that go well with the many photographs in the book.
Look out Canberra, we’ve arrived.
Communist Australia. You’ve masked for it.
The threat of unemployment is not consent.
Beathing, working, travelling, hugging loved ones. Extremist?
Maskerade over.
Hands off our kids.
Real men don’t wear masks.
My kids are not lab rats.
Make a stand, while you can.
I’m doing a ScoMo (man sitting on the toilet).
Wake up rise up Australia.
Jesus Wins.
Quite a diverse crowd, then. The book is an immersive experience, with participants happily named despite the risks of this in Australia’s emerging surveillance state.
Several character traits emerge in relation to the protesters. No, Canberrans, they are not bogans. They are from all backgrounds. There are poets, fire fighters, police, doctors, a pilot. They love their flag. Patriots, then. And their music. Woodstock without the drugs or the mud, as Stapleton observed. “This is Australia” was a recurring anthem. These days, there are two Australias, though. And that is the point.
They have a visible Indigenous presence. They are peaceful and friendly, but angry. They loathe politicians. They are outsiders. They are principled. Neither left nor right in the tunnel-visioned, yesterday-thinking sense that corporate journalists would attempt to define this. They are activists now, but mostly weren’t always so. They are hurt and aggrieved. They have been materially damaged by the Covid State, and many have lost much. They have a sense of pride in an Australia that they now find difficult to locate. And, above all else, they are mostly in it for their children and grandchildren, for whom they genuinely hold fears for the future.
And why wouldn’t they be fearful?
There are continuing mandates here and overseas, despite some mealy-mouthed policy backdowns over some of the more reprehensible policies – in an election year, it must be said. But there are tell-tale signs of political support for other authoritarian measures, there has been no admission of any wrong being done in dealing with Covid, at least some of the emergency powers are still firmly in place, and at least some of the worst political offenders in Australia might feel emboldened to re-enact their fascism in future as a result of electoral rewards for their dark deeds. The cageyness of the political class over Covid – never explain, never apologise, never admit mistakes – should itself give rise to fears for the future, despite the recent loosening of the reins. And there are still all of those third parties out there enforcing ongoing aspects of the Covid regime. A short time back, around a fifth of private sector employers were said to be insisting on vaccination as a condition of employment. This is sinister, and largely hidden. And at least some of the institutions that are inviting back the unvaccinated they previously had shafted are (blatantly) only doing so to relieve their 2022 staff shortages. Not from guilt or principles like justice. What would stop them doing it all again?
Apart from the sheer bravery and commitment of the Convoy participants, it is their fear for the future and their suspicion that if they didn’t act, no one else would, that should engage readers the most. If they hadn’t taken the already impressive and mounting protests in the State capitals to a whole new level, emboldened, fascist-leaning leaders might well have simply assumed that most Australians, as per the polls and the elections, did really accept, even admire, their brutality. The masses out in force on the streets in Canberra reminded them, and us, that there is an opposition party out there. For this reason alone, we owe them and their very able chronicler, John Stapleton, a mighty debt.
Convoy affirms a still rampant Aussie spirit which many of us might have assumed had completely ebbed away in a period of blind acceptance of policy barbarism with facile and limp-wristed excuses such as “roll up your sleeves for Australia” and “we are all in this together”. The book confirms that the Covid dissidents among us are not a tiny minority, despite the propaganda and lies of the legacy media. It wasn’t just the half million who went to Canberra. There were tens of thousands more who cheered them on, on the highways and byways, and yet more who supplied them with food and other provisions. And the laptop warriors who reported their deeds on new media and social platforms. It didn’t much matter that the bought-up old media didn’t show up. Nor, of course, did the shameful Lib-Lab duopoly politicians. Better to seem not to have noticed that their own town had doubled in size. The ignoring of the convoy by our political betters is yet more evidence of one of the key strategies deployed by the Covid State. Ignore. Silence. Demonise. Ridicule. Propagandise. After all, it worked brilliantly for two years. Why not keep it going? The other media strategy was in play as well with the convoy. Play the crowd numbers game and minimize the damage by going low.
Other Covid State strategies were in play, with scenes reminiscent of Hong Kong and of Tianamin Square. Let them have their fun for a short time, then brutalise them with police savagery. The book has some horrific tales of Daniel Andrews-style community policing, including the possible use of the very latest in crowd-control techno-devices of dubious morality. So, after days of peaceful protest, and no doubt given their politicised orders by the ACT government, the police moved the protesters off the parliamentary triangle to the outskirts of town, then out of the ACT itself.
The author takes heavy aim at Scott Morrison – known fondly to at least some readers here as “Scotty from Astra Zeneca” – and attributes much of the blame for Australia’s Covid hysteria and nightmarish outcomes to the now departed and largely unlamented ScoMo. There is no objection from me on this score. But Morrison wasn’t alone, and wasn’t the worst of our leaders to have driven stakes into the hearts of their voters. It was a Lib-Lab job that was done on us, and the Nuremberg Two sentencing that we might fantasise over in our minds covers the broad range of political actors (and others). Many of ScoMo’s Covid crimes were crimes of omission and cowardice, while others were off the page with malice and hatred of the outsider class. There has not been a single apology from anyone in office over Covid, as the author notes. Not one. Not from our new prime minister, who was there the whole time and who, like most leftist opposition leaders globally, simply whimpered that not enough butchery was visited upon the citizenry, and not soon enough. Hardly an indicator of a more reasonable and respectful treatment of the citizens of Australia if/when a similar situation arises.
The key question for me is, what did all this efflorescence of activism, goodwill, camaraderie, and authenticity achieve? And did Australia “change forever”? The protesters thought, “this is history in the making”. Was it? To answer these questions, we need to look at impact, both short term and longer-term. And, impact on whom? The Convoy, in other words, needs to be placed in context.
The leftist press batted away the Canberra events in the blink of an eye, with the unthinking, convenient, default characterisations of the protesters as conspiracy theorists and so on. The sneering Canberra Times, effecting tolerance for the underclass while stifling a yawn, suggested on 12 February:
Protesters: you've had your say, now go home.
Unstated – “and leave us to running the country”.
The then Prime Minister issued the usual talking points – endorsement of the right to protest, an appeal for peacefulness and a dig at the States who he (correctly but irrelevantly) identified as the perpetrators of vaccine mandates. So, the convoy elicited few signs of panic among the political class.
What about policy impacts? The NSW Premier, much maligned since and with good reason, had actually moved on some of the more confronting Covid measures in December 2021, and did not engage in further wind-backs in response to the protest movement. Daniel Andrews continued with vaxx mandates for workers till later in the year, with an eye on the coming election. Likewise, the other premiers. It would be hard to make the case that the politicians were cowering after the protests, much as it hurts to say so.
What about the May Commonwealth election? Here there are plenty of green shoots for the freedom fighters, though on the face of it a new Labor Government with Greens and Teals flapping about everywhere doesn’t portend much hope. But … a third of voters either didn’t vote at all or voted against the major parties. The FFMPs (freedom friendly minor parties) scored well over a million first preference votes, though not many seats at all. Whether the message resonates that many loathe the Covid Class parties will depend partly on whether the Canberra Convoy participants and supporters are able (or perhaps even want) to transform the sheer excitement of the Convoy and their bold reaction to specific threats to their freedoms into a more permanent, coordinated political commitment and longer-term effective actions. There is a precedent and it doesn’t suggest optimism. This was Cory Bernardi’s attempt to turn the same-sex-marriage protest movement of 2017 into a political party (the Australian Conservatives) that would win enough seats to influence policy outcomes. Never took off.
Currently the FFMPs are split in similar ways to the reported differences that emerged among Canberra protest leaders in the dying days of the “February revolution”. There were arguments over tactics and direction, and some of the “leaders” simply vacated the capital and went home. This doesn’t augur well. As is the case with the right-of-centre protest parties, which still consist of at least half a dozen disparate, micro-groupings with nary a seat in parliament to be found, and little indication of consolidation ahead.
While I don’t necessarily trust the polls taken in relation to the views of Australians about the appropriateness of lockdown and other Covid policies, it seems the case that the majority have thought their totalitarian masters did a good job. Whether this cheer-squadding remains the case now that the vaccines have been widely shown to be unnecessary, ineffective and dangerous is another question. But there is little evidence that the events in Canberra had a marked effect on the way Australians generally view the Vaxx State.
There is another way of looking at impact.
Why not ignore the mainstream political process just as the Convoy movement largely ignores the corporate media, and find alternate paths to redemption and prosperity. Difficult to do when you don’t have a job. But there may be hope in the emerging parallel societies movement championed by Brendan Moloney and others. I wonder how many of the “new family” described by Stapleton still keep in touch, still attend protests together, still engage in new politics-type activities. There are ways of avoiding the Covid State. Take off the masks (of course). Advertise your views with what you wear. Engage with all media. Meet. Support warriors like Craig Kelly and George Christensen. Persuade recently departed Coalition good guys – I know there aren’t many – to follow you down the rabbit hole, and away from conventional views about vaccines and other elements of the Covid narrative. Cleverly the politicians tip-toed away from the big-ticket items of Covid brutality and maintain less harsh fear weapons now. This inevitably will have taken some steam out of the protest movement. Likewise, the politicians have efficiently hidden the worst actions they committed whose ongoing effects (like unemployment and ruined businesses) are still felt.
The worst thing of all is, perhaps, the dawning recognition that the whole Covid pandemia seems to be a classic example of the “issue attention cycle” made famous by the late American economist, Anthony Downs.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/is-covid-madness-on-the-wane-because-we-are-bored-with-it/
After all the excitement of Covid – and, sadly, for many it was exciting – many Australians have simply now forgotten about it and have moved on to new issues. Floods and war in particular, and now, a new Government with its own, equally elitist agendas that are utterly irrelevant to most normal people. Very cleverly, too, the political class has been able, so far, to explain the coming world recession in terms other than being the result of their own Covid madness and their use of the magic money tree.
The Canberra Convoy must move beyond an “event” and become a movement. Otherwise, its capacity to change the nation “forever” with be miniscule, and the excellent work done by John Stapleton in telling the great Convoy story will not live up to the lofty hopes of its sub-title.
Paul Collits
15 August 2022
🔥👍 THIS👇🏻
“The Canberra Convoy must move beyond an “event” and become a movement. Otherwise, its capacity to change the nation “forever” with be miniscule…”
Paul,you have nailed the problem in the last paragraphs.There needs to be a change of direction.
It is possible that some progress could be made through the courts. There is certainly no shortage of litigants if they are supported.