The Growth of the Far Right During Covid

Liam McCrorie

Though the right has been on the rise for a while now the Covid-19 pandemic really sped things along. The Covid-19 pandemic opened a lot of people’s eyes to the faults in our system of government in society, it was a major shift in the way things were run and how things operate, but it also opened up the governments of all nations to criticism over how things were being run. This pandemic damaged a lot of people’s relationship with the government, because of a number of reasons, such as lack of transparency, many people started to begin to believe their government was lying to them which pushed people to seek out groups which agreed and validated them. With waves of misinformation, it was hard what to believe on one hand the government was trying to vaccinate people, but a number of notable people spoke out against vaccines, and pushed alternatives. From celebrities like Joe Rogan spreading tons of misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines, to Donald Trump suggesting that people should inject a disinfectant as a cure people really didn’t know what to believe.

            But all this led to large groups of people abandoning their trust in the government and seeking groups which spoke out against the government and spoke to people who wanted a change in leadership. I’m sure everyone in Ottawa remembers the Freedom Convoy which was a far right led protest against Covid mandates and travel restrictions. Many people who might not typically be far right were supporting this far right movement because they masqueraded as a workers movement. I personally knew a lot of people who supported this movement which came to Ottawa and held up downtown Ottawa for what seemed like forever. This movement led to similar organizations trying todo the same thing all over the world. But this is just one far right group which gained traction.

Many other far right political parties gained traction over the pandemic promising to fix economies and the countries that have been ruined by the liberal governments in charge, when in reality the whole world is going through hard times because we just went through and are still somewhat going through a global pandemic