Convoy to Canberra protest has its origins in Trump’s falsehood-fuelled campaign

What a lot of people seem to be angry about vaccine mandates, right? Thousands have descended on Canberra. But all is not what it seems. This cacophony of colourful flags, car horns, trucks, protest signs, and undoubtedly buckets of viral Omicron load is the end product of deliberate disinformation campaigns fuelled by social media and seeded by shadowy forces with suspect motives.

Those gathered are a true melting pot: “sovereign citizens” voicing obscure medieval legal theories, QAnon conspiracy theorists hoping to free imaginary enslaved children, militant anti-vaxxers, ethno-religious fascists and the newly unemployed airing their resentment at the pandemic or the public health rules it spawned. But they all have one thing in common: they came together in groups on social media, from where they planned and launched their assault on our nation’s capital.

‘Convoy to Canberra’ protesters on the lawns between Parliament House and Old Parliament House in Canberra.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Here comes the twist: the organisers of many of the private Facebook groups co-ordinating these convoys have fake accounts, run from overseas. The groups themselves may have also lived many lives, with name changes to suit the crisis of the day. Many have links to content mills pumping out “disinformation for hire” in Eastern Europe and south-east Asia.

Investigative reporters from the United States even managed to get a hold of one account admin on the phone – in Bangladesh. He admitted being paid $30 a day by someone in Canada to promote pages for Canadian protests against a vaccine mandate. in that country: its capital, Ottawa, is similarly in a state of emergency right now as truckers blockade it over its vaccine mandate. Crikey likewise traced Canberra Convoy admins back to Bangladesh and found others whose profile pictures were faces generated by artificial intelligence. The same operators are pulling strings across at least three continents.

Ultimately, they all trace back to Donald Trump and his falsehood-fuelled campaign for US president — not just similar in terms of insidious social media propaganda, but in some cases literally the same Facebook groups migrating from crisis to crisis with name changes to mask their origins.

Trump was elected on the shoulders of an elaborate network of disinformation I have labelled the “MAGAphone”. It’s a hyperconnected army of commentators, content farms, cable news, private groups, conspiracy websites and shock jocks. It cleaved America in two before sending one side over the battlements of the US Capitol in a deadly carnage of insurrection.

Donald Trump’s campaign was fuelled by misinformation.Credit: AP

In its totality, it is capable of creating its own parallel information universe that is impenetrable by facts. Its lasting gift to the world was to systematise and monetise a way to sever large chunks of society from any shared reality, and thrust them into bubbles hostile to outside thought (ie. the truth).

We see the spirit and substance of the MAGAphone manifested in the Canberra convoy. We are dealing with the same disinformation infrastructure. Trump social media supporter groups began in the basements of Russian intelligence agencies in 2016, grew through two US elections, then turned their attention to anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine sentiment once Trump retreated to his golf course. At every point, they were monetised to make those controlling them rich off the proceeds of outrage.

But it is in spirit that the MAGAphone is much more deadly. One of the most common sights to see in the Canberra protests were red baseball caps and “Trump 2024” flags. Trump is the global standard bearer for those who have detached themselves from fact-based reality. He is shorthand for angry disenchantment.

Our society is now governed by a non-traditional media landscape that favours the sensational and the irrational. This information disorder paved the way for Trump and the MAGAphone. The way we view reality has been fundamentally disrupted, and we are now living with the consequences. Those camped in the streets of Canberra have been led there by these forces, with a helping hand from fringe politicians and some foreign opportunists.

We owe it to these people to find ways to welcome them back into the society on which they have so dramatically turned their backs. Fed a diet of unhealthy information, on platforms geared to sensationally radicalise them, their loss of perspective was a tragic inevitability. Lest their journey end in violence too, we need to reclaim a shared reality.

Ed Coper is the author of Facts and Other Lies: Welcome to the Disinformation Age, published by Allen & Unwin, and leads the disinformation practice at Populares.co