Canadian Politics Today

But this is the type of Populist Victim Politics that plague the Conservative movement now.

Trump's election validated it.

I don't really see people being mad about vaccine mandates as populism, I see it as people protesting for their civil liberties.  Some are being violent and that's wrong, and I cautiously support vaccine mandates as an unfortunate but necessary measure to ensure public safety, but there's nothing wrong with people peacefully protesting for their liberties even if you disagree.  Freedom of speech isn't there to protect the speech we all agree with, it's to protect the speech we and specifically the government disagrees with.

To label these protestors as simply tribal populist QAnon Trump supporters as a character assault so we can quickly  dismiss their concerns is not only fallacious but low brow.  They have a right to protest but no right to be violent or threatening.

What is concerning is that the more extreme members of these crowds believe in nutty covid conspiracies and are apt to get violent,  which does have a similarity to the Jan. 6 Trump nuts.