A French version of Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” hit the roads on Thursday, with hundreds of motorists headed for the capital. Most members oppose France’s vaccine pass, but some see the protest as a continuation of the Yellow Vest movement that rocked the country before the pandemic.
They have brought Ottawa to a grinding halt for almost two weeks and intend to stay put. Since January 29, hundreds of “Freedom Convoy” truckers have cut off access to the main roads of Canada’s capital city in protest at government-imposed pandemic restrictions. The blockade prompted local authorities to declare a state of emergency on February 6 and has forced car factories to shut down. Truckers have cut off access to US border crossings but since Sunday night, police have seized thousands of litres of fuel and are starting to immobilise the vehicles.
The movement first flared up when Canadian truckers crossing the border to the US were hit with a vaccinate-or-quarantine mandate. But now the “Freedom Convoy'' has transformed into a more widespread protest of Justin Trudeau’s government policies and has made its way across the globe from New Zealand to France, where vaccine pass protesters are forming a convoy to block access to the country’s capital this weekend.
Ghosts of a Yellow Vest past?
Galvanised by the occupation in Ottawa, motorists in southern France are organising what they call a “convoi de la liberté” (a direct translation of “Freedom Convoy”) and heading for Paris to demand an end to the country’s health pass programme.
Departures from other French cities are expected to take place on Thursday, but Parisian police authorities said they will bar the convoy from entering the city and prevent protesters from blocking the capital. In a press release, the police headquarters stated that due to the “risk of public order disturbances”, they have prohibited “such events” from Friday 11 to Monday 14 February included.
Social media outlets like Facebook have been buzzing with calls to join the French “Freedom Convoy” over the weekend, with some groups garnering up to 340,000 members in just a few days. Encrypted messaging groups on Telegram have brought together tens of thousands of supporters who exchange detailed maps for drivers heading to Paris motivated to protest French Covid-19 restrictions, according to the New York Times.
Some protesters have called for the convoy to continue into the heart of most European Union institutions, Brussels, after converging in Paris. But Brussels police have also placed a ban on protests to prevent the arrival of the convoy.
The mimicking of the Canadian movement in France has brought back memories of the Yellow Vests, a 2018-2019 grassroots movement that was ignited by a protest on rising fuel prices and evolved to include more general anti-government grievances. It has been kept alive by some organisers of the French convoy, like activist Rémi Monde (pseudonym), who took part in the Yellow Vest protests and has become one of the convoy’s more prominent voices. He is opposed to Covid-19 vaccines and uses Facebook to call on “all the Yellow Vesters” to swell the ranks of the convoy, imploring members to “reclaim their freedom”.
>> A year of insurgency: How Yellow Vests left ‘indelible mark’ on French politics
Parallels between the two movements have also been drawn by far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who offered her support for the “convoi de la liberté” and called it “another form of the Yellow Vest demonstrations” on French TV channel Europe 1.
It is tempting to compare the “Freedom Convoy” movement in Canada with the 2018-2019 Yellow Vest demonstrations in France. Both seek to occupy strategic roads and intersections, with French protestors targeting roundabouts and Canadians now blocking US-Canada land crossings (and France’s convoy seeking to block Paris). Both were largely organised online, almost exclusively on social media. Both movements can be traced back to a specific demand, like the withdrawal of the fuel tax in France or ending vaccine mandates for Canadian truckers, which then grew into general disdain for government policies. Both include members from across the political spectrum.
But Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” has a much smaller base than the Yellow Vests, according to some experts, and is “above all a QAnon affair”. According to Daniel Beland, political sociologist and director of McGill’s Institute of Canadian Studies, “The main organisers of the ‘Freedom Convoy’ come from the most extremist political fringe.”
The group behind the movement, Canada Unity, was founded by James Bauder, a conspiracist who has publicly supported the QAnon theory that a Satan-worshipping ring of paedophiles meddles in US (and global) politics. Bauder is also steeped in conspiracy theories about Covid-19, which he calls “the biggest scam in history”.
Still, these are not the only profiles found in the ranks of the convoy. The movement has also attracted a “fairly significant minority who want to express their frustration with the health and economic situation, without having any political commitments,” Beland told FRANCE 24.
So who are the members across the Atlantic in France, rallying support for and joining in on the “convoi de la liberté”?
Not just anti-vax
“I am here today with a certain number of citizens who are becoming aware that we’ve been at war with a virus since the beginning. We are being robbed of a lot of freedoms under pretexts that have nothing scientific and even less medical,” retiree Xavier Le Gregam, who is joining the convoy in Brest, told AFP. “This needs to stop, because otherwise the future is likely to look very bleak.”
Though it is highly popular within France’s anti-vax circles, many members of the French “Freedom Convoy” like Le Gregam are asking for a restoration of freedoms curtailed during the pandemic and an end to France’s vaccine pass. Some experts see it as a break from the Saturday rallies against Covid-19 restrictions that, at times, brought up to 100,000 participants to the streets of Paris.
But demands go beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. “They are not only anti-vaccine pass (or anti-vax). There are other grievances on the subject of individual liberties, as well as echoes of the Yellow Vest calls for a 'citizen’s initiative referendum' [to allow citizens to vet government policy proposals] and more general demands involving purchasing power,” Jean-François Amadieu, a sociologist and professor at Sorbonne University in Paris, told RFI.
Rooting Amadieu’s argument in reality, one partaker from western France insisted on the convoy not being called anti-vax. In an interview with Franceinfo, the member Sylvain de Rochettes said: “I am not against the vaccine, I’m against compulsory vaccination, the systemic aspect.”
The plurality of the movement is clear. Some organisers are opposing a spike in petrol prices, others a general increase in the cost of living. And aside from the hardline Catholic group Civitas, no specific unions or political parties are rallying behind the “convoi de la liberté” banner.
France’s government spokesman Gabriel Attal on Wednesday said he understood the public’s “weariness” with Covid-19 restrictions, though stressing that France was among the European countries with “the fewest restrictions infringing on citizens’ freedom.” He said the vaccine pass would be removed “as soon as there is a normalisation of the situation inside hospitals”, possibly at the "end of March, beginning of April".
Meanwhile, despite the police ban, members of the French "Freedom Convoy" are determined to reach the capital. "All the way to Paris, even if it's forbidden, we'll manage. We're going to go (...) without aggression," Olivier from Bretagne told AFP. "It's a question of freedom above all, of regaining our freedom, and having cohesion between people. We are together, it's magnificent!"
This article is adapted from the original in French.
