When President Donald Trump pressed for military deployment to quell the violent riots overwhelming cities in 2020, the commander in chief was vilified by the corporate press as a fascist dictator who weaponized his office for political gain. When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanded his government invoke similar measures over a block party this week bringing the capital of Ottawa to a halt by those who demand medical freedom, it’s merely a government exercise to restore order.
In early June 2020, Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton sparked an uproar at The New York Times when the paper published an op-ed calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act at the height of the George Floyd riots. By the end of the two-week period following Floyd’s death, the political upheaval would leave behind the most expensive chapter of domestic carnage in modern American history with upwards of $2 billion in damage.
“The pace of looting and disorder may fluctuate from night to night, but it’s past time to support local law enforcement with federal authority,” Cotton wrote, warning some of the worst devastation would occur in poor communities, which it did. The editor responsible for publishing Cotton’s op-ed promptly resigned and the paper pinned a lengthy “editor’s note” to the piece.
Trump never invoked the 1807 law which was last requested and approved in 1992 amid L.A. riots over Rodney King. The president’s call on governors to deploy the National Guard, however, while mobilizing the military to ensure resources were available, was met with the hysterical routine coverage expected from the legacy press corps.
Below is how the Washington Post opened a story on Trump pledging military resources to states which need them, regurgitating the lie he tear-gassed protesters in the process (emphasis ours):
President Trump militarized the federal response to protests of racial inequality that have erupted in cities across America late Monday, as authorities fired tear gas at people protesting peacefully near the White House to disperse crowds moments before Trump staged a photo opportunity there.
Trump forced a brazen inflammation of the crisis convulsing the country by calling the nationwide demonstrations ‘acts of domestic terror,’ declaring himself the ‘president of law and order’ and taking the rare step of mobilizing the military to use force to quell the unrest.
In a move denounced by critics as authoritarian, the commander in chief threatened to deploy troops to ‘quickly solve the problem’ if state and local authorities did not immediately regain control of their streets, which he said had been overtaken by ‘professional anarchists’ and ‘violent mobs.’
And here is how the paper dedicated to chronicling democracy’s death in darkness opened a story Monday night of Prime Minister Trudeau actually invoking his government’s Emergencies Act:
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, under pressure to quell the chaos caused by demonstrations against public health measures that have eroded trust in public institutions and tarnished Canada’s reputation abroad, on Monday became the first Canadian leader to invoke the country’s Emergencies Act.
The law, which was passed in 1988 but never before used, will give police ‘more tools’ to bring order to areas where public assemblies ‘constitute illegal and dangerous activities,’ Trudeau said. Financial institutions, meanwhile, will get sweeping powers to halt the flow of funding to the self-styled ‘Freedom Convoy.’
The demonstrations began in Ottawa on Jan. 28 but soon rippled across the country, choking off several U.S.-Canada border crossings. Trudeau said it had become clear that, despite their best efforts, “there are serious challenges to law enforcement’s ability to effectively enforce the law.”
The coverage of Trudeau’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to crack down on demonstrators protesting the regime’s Covid mandates is far more mundane than the press’s focus on Trump’s comparable inaction two years ago.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) chastised “Trump’s bellicose rhetoric” in 2020 while Trudeau’s authoritarian suspension of civil liberties and charity theft is covered as trying to solve a crisis.
In 2020, Vox headlined, “The president is a danger to the US military.” Last week, however, the publication titled another piece, “The Canadian trucker convoy is an unpopular uprising.”
“The ‘freedom convoy’ that has besieged Ottawa isn’t a people’s revolt. It’s a fringe movement protesting its defeat,” the paper wrote as a news article while highlighting the occasional confederate flag present to smear the entire demonstration as one steeped in white supremacy.
There is no shortage of double standards when it comes to corporate media and Democrats’ conduct related to 2020’s summer of rage dubbed the “Summer of Love” by Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan. As Trudeau waves the fist of a true fascist, however, banning support for peaceful demonstrations with threats of fines and jail time, legacy press is certain to continue its shift in support for federal intervention to quell protests contradictory to the ideological interests of newsrooms.
