Where to now for the protesters who have no truck with reality?

Police and protesters clash near the entrance to the National Library in Canberra. Picture: NCA/Gary Ramage

The Millions March Against Mandatory Vaccination’s Convoy to Canberra otherwise known as the Canberra truck convoy without trucks is over.

ACT Police have removed protesters from their makeshift campsite this morning. The truck protest without trucks nor any discernible objective is over for now.

One sov-cit doomsday prepper who set up a GoFundMe for the truck convoy without trucks had the bulk of donations frozen by the online crowdfunding company but still managed to rattle a bucket around the camp with no trucks to squeeze a bit more coin from the chronically deluded.

Most of the activity was filmed by a small army of clout chasers who provided a bird’s eye view of Monday’s shouting at a parliament without politicians. On Tuesday, protesters gathered outside the National Press Club to shout at the Prime Minister’s security convoy. On Wednesday we were shown ACT Police making several arrests while protesters shouted at them.

It was all captured on camera.

One of the visual highlights showed a seemingly rational person talking to a cameraman about why he had come to the camp. He was worried for his future, he said, concerned about the vaccines. It was all perfectly reasonable until a woman behind him started screaming, “Paedophiles! Paedophiles!” Whom she was accusing of dark crimes was not immediately clear. Indeed, it was difficult to tell if she wanted fewer paedophiles or more. She was simply screaming “Paedophiles!” over and over.

One protester contacted the wonderful group Sikh Volunteers Australia to beg for free meals. Another activist sought the assistance of Orange Sky, a group of volunteers across a large part of the country who provide laundry services for homeless people. It’s a valuable service providing practical support for the homeless. But these people aren’t homeless. They have voluntarily left their homes for a brief but ultimately failed sojourn, the entire point of which they were unable to articulate in any rational way.

Vehicles involved in the Convoy to Canberra. Picture: NCA/Gary Ramage

For all the crowdfunding dollars donated, for all the lazy pineapples tossed into a bucket, I counted just two port-a-loos across the campsite. No showers. No running water. Cholera in a coffee mug. Urination behind a tree for freedom.

Music was played loudly across the camp through Bluetooth speakers. We were able to glean that the DJs among the protesters use Spotify, but they don’t subscribe to Spotify. Thus, the Aussie song list of hits and misses from the 1980s played on rotation was interspersed with bank ads.

This morning, the ACT Police commenced the casual kettling of the crowd. Kettling is a law enforcement manoeuvre designed to compress a mob into a small space to drive them away, but this was different. It was a grab for territory so that vehicles that remained parked in the camp could be towed away. Patient police allowed vehicle owners every chance to come and retrieve their cars and drive them away but a stubborn few refused. Tow truck companies arrived and started carting these vehicles away.

Hats off to the ACT Police. They were invariably generous, gentle and communicated to protest leaders the obvious point that the mob doesn’t have to go home but they can’t stay here.

What was it all about? What were the demands of the mob?

Let me give you a brief rundown directly from their mouths.

“We want the police to investigate what’s in those vaccines and then put the government on charges.” Due process defenestrated. Let’s have an investigation that leads unwaveringly to vague criminal charges of the old western movie standard of having a fair trial before we hang ‘em in the morning.

“All the prime ministers get these Zionist awards. Scott Morrison got it. Julia Gillard got it. Kevin Rudd. Even John Howard. They all get million-dollar awards from Israel.”

It is an enormous waste of time to fact check these characters’ claims. They routinely just make things up or vomit up conspiracy theories. Perhaps the protester was referring to the Herzl Award handed out by the World Zionist Organisation in recognition for “exceptional efforts on behalf of Israel and the Zionist Cause.” Winston Churchill won the inaugural award in 1954. No Australian political leader has received the award. Not Scott Morrison. Not Julia Gillard. Not Kevin Rudd nor John Howard.

Police detain a protester. Picture: NCA/Gary Ramage

Recipients receive a plaque but no cash. The Nobel Prize comes with a cash payment but that is doled out in Sweden (all prizes except the Peace Prize) and Norway (the Peace Prize only). So, the conspiracist was wrong on every count. But the allusion to Israel and Zionism is critical because the conspiracy theories anti-vaxxers swallow and regurgitate bulimically are often dripping in anti-Semitism.

Another suggested vaccines were “biomedia warfare”, a previously unheard-of portmanteau of dark collusion between the mainstream media and pharmacies. Cameramen and reporters were routinely jostled and abused by protesters at the camp over four and a half days and often referred to as paedophile protectors. It is canon to anti-vaxxers that the mainstream media lies while only Facebook, Telegram and Instagram can be believed.

Then there were the denunciations of the dark lords of pro-vaccination, Bill and Melinda Gates. Bill’s dad, Bill Sr., was “a eugenicist” according to one protester. He was actually a highly regarded lawyer well before Bill Jr. and Windows became a thing. The reason he figured in the invective was that he co-chaired the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation until his death in 1994. His son, Bill, according to another camp conspirator is “Lex Luthor in real life” who had “released 750,000 genetically modified mosquitoes.”

McDonalds and Hungry Jacks were in on it, too, but then I started feeling hungry and as the last of the vehicles were being scooped up, I turned the sound off.

What the doomed Truck Convoy without Trucks proved is that the halcyon days of the anti-vax movement are largely over. The big numbers aren’t there anymore. Those who remain are becoming weirder, more militant and more disconnected from reality.

A survey in Canada taken two weeks ago showed 37 per cent of respondents wanted the unvaccinated to pay for their own medical treatments when they presented to a hospital with Covid-19 infection. I imagine that figure would be roughly similar in Australia. I don’t support it. We can’t have a universal public health system that picks and chooses its patients.

But the concern is that a lot of these people’s brains will need to be unscrambled, deprogrammed and finally detached from the tenets of misinformation they believe is gospel. Who’s going to pay for that?

Perhaps we could set up a crowdfund.