Petro-masculine Soundscapes: Music, Sound, and Violence at the 2022 Ottawa “Freedom Convoy”
In January 2022, a series of truck convoys organized by right-wing activists converged on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada’s national capital, demanding that the federal government end all vaccine mandates and public health protocols related to COVID-19. While never a unified movement, opposition t...
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| الحاوية / القاعدة: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/transposition, |
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| المؤلفون الرئيسيون: | , |
| التنسيق: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| اللغة: | Anglais |
| منشور في: |
Transposition
2025
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| الموضوعات: | |
| الوصول للمادة أونلاين: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| الملخص: | In January 2022, a series of truck convoys organized by right-wing activists converged on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada’s national capital, demanding that the federal government end all vaccine mandates and public health protocols related to COVID-19. While never a unified movement, opposition to pandemic-related mandates became a rallying cry that brought together an assortment of right-wing groups. Coalescing around ill-defined notions of freedom, the self-proclaimed “Freedom Convoy” occupied ten square blocks in downtown Ottawa for nearly four weeks. The sound of trucks honking, engines revving, air horns, train horns, and amplified music put many residents under extreme duress, yet also drew people to the area. Music and sound were key characteristics of the occupation. The Convoy’s mainstage became a platform for a wide range of amateur singers, songwriters, rappers, and DJs, and supporters pointed to dance parties in the streets as evidence of the occupation’s peacefulness and popularity. The constellation of beliefs, behaviours, and attitudes that produced the Convoy’s thunderous soundscape is readily captured in Cara Daggett’s concept of petro-masculinity. Petro-masculinity articulates the historic relationship between fossil fuels and white heteropatriarchy, and describes a hypermasculine identity based in racism, misogyny and climate denial that has become prevalent in right-wing movements in North America and elsewhere. This paper examines how music was used to provide a veneer of multiculturalism and widespread support, playing into nationalist myths of Canadian liberalism and tolerance while evincing a kind of cultural extractivism that resonates with the logics of fossil fuel capitalism and settler colonialism. |
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