Ryan Wright stood around a campfire in Lupton, Arizona, a town on the Navajo reservation where members of an American trucker convoy protest were resting for the night. As the fire flickered he discussed a conspiracy myth about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he proffered, was a distraction. “I’m not the only one that feels this way,” Wright said. “But I feel like it’s a big fat smokescreen to keep everyone distracted on what is really going on in the world.”
Certainly the break out of a new land war in Europe had dealt Wright and his fellow trucker protestors a serious blow. Their attempt to replicate the Canadian trucker protests – which had closed borders and brought chaos to Canada’s capital city – had won wide support from Republican politicians, Fox News and rightwing social media.
Surely, the same could happen in the US, whose political divides are so much starker than Canada’s.
But Putin’s invasion had wiped the convoy’s progress off the media map. Having left Barstow in California amid honking horns and cheering supporters, the line of truckers was crossing the entire breadth of the US in a convoy and headed to Washington DC to protest Covid-19 vaccine mandates and a roster of other mostly conservative causes.
But now – with Ukraine dominating airwaves across the globe – no one was paying much attention to the American truckers. Especially, perhaps, as the convoy was promoting “freedom” against restrictions in the US that have largely been lifted already as the pandemic has ebbed recently and weary politicians have focused on the economy.
Another trucker, wearing an American and Canadian flag as a cape, nodded in agreement with Wright that it was all a plot. Others around the campfire too agree with the conspiracy myth that the outbreak of war in Europe is an attempt to divert attention away from this trucker convoy, which is currently about a couple hundred people parked in the desert of the American southwest.
Around a hundred cars and several dozen semi-trucks that made up “the people’s convoy” had left California midweek with the aim of arriving in Washington just after Joe Biden’s delivery of the annual State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. Mindful of the possibility of a repeat of the chaos in Canada, the Pentagon had approved the deployment of 700 National Guard and 50 tactical vehicles to bolster Capitol police ahead of their expected arrival.
But in the long distances the convoy has so far driven across the vast expanses of the American West, the convoy has had too few vehicles to make an impact on traffic or “clog up cities”, as right-wing Senator Rand Paul had declared he hoped they would.
In the western United States, where most people drive cars rather than use public transportation, far larger queues of vehicles have been seen at the opening of an In-N-Out burger, for example.
Most US states have also already rescinded many pandemic restrictions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced last week they would lift their recommendation for many Americans when it came to wearing masks. Now most Americans live in places where healthy people, including school kids, can go mask-free.
Meanwhile, despite the truckers’ ire, America’s vaccine mandates, like the one Biden proposed, were never implemented after being struck down by the US courts. In the end, vaccine mandates were only put in place for certain healthcare workers participating in federal programs.
But around the blazing campfire in Lupton the nation-wide easing of restrictions had not deterred the demonstrators. Some kept their distorted views of mandates that did not exist or simply did not believe Covid-19 was killing as many people as reported.
“I haven’t got my shot and I don’t want to, there’s nothing wrong with me,” said Harrison Yazzie a member of the Diné Nation, the traditional name for the Navajo, and a local resident that came to greet the convoy. “But every day they say ‘Oh this many people got Covid, that many got Covid.’ But where I live, among the native people I don’t see no sirens, you know, running back and forth picking up people dying of Covid.”
The facts say otherwise. Reporting by Native American news website IndianZ found that “in mid-2020, the Navajo Nation had the highest per-capita infection rate of Covid-19 in the US”. Though those rates have dropped as tribal leaders have promoted vaccines and encouraged masks.
But not everyone was despondent or seeing conspiracy. Some saw the chance for comradeship and a road trip.
After the 300 mile journey from the previous stop in Kingman, Arizona, some locals who came to greet the convoy prepared a dinner of shredded elk barbecue and fry bread. Melissa Applin said she had never been to anything like this before. “It’s beautiful, it’s freedom I love it. I’ve made new friends.” Applin drove two and a half hours from her home to meet the convoy. “I’ve been helping cooking and smoking meats,” she said.
Others were less bothered by the pandemic and more bothered by other American politics.
For some, this convoy was just the latest in a series of demonstrations springing from their support for Donald Trump. Eric, who declined to provide a last name, said he attended multiple rallies for Trump and “Stop the Steal” rallies in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He is convinced – wrongly – that the election was stolen and the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol was “staged”.
But despite some of the far-right and conspiratorial views of convoy participants, the demonstration has been peaceful with no indication it will escalate toward violence. Organizers have made an effort to exclude the violent elements like the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers militia which have been promoting the convoy on some far-right tech platforms.
The harsh, sometimes hateful attitudes found in these online groups, were often softened around the campfire in the cold Arizona desert. In many ways the convoy seemed to mostly reflect a real thirst for community, as people with like-minded politics found themselves connecting on other things – like camping beneath the stars.
Eric brought his 14-year-old son Wyatt, who also declined to provide a last name, on the road for the convoy. The father and son duo have attended Trump rallies together and said they enjoy spending time together this way. Asked what it was like attending political protests with his dad, Wyatt responded: “Its fucking awesome.”
But there is no getting away from the fact that the journey of the truckers – far from being a threat to anyone – is more of a Don Quixote-like quest tilting at rightwing windmills in their own minds. After all, in the 550 miles they’ve traveled so far, none of the gas stations, restaurants or hotels along the route have asked for their vaccine status or required masks indoors.
