The government cited government-controlled CBC reports as part of their justification for imposing the act.
Circular logic or circular reasoning is one of the classic logical fallacies.
Here’s how the Encyclopedia Britannica describes it:
“(4) The fallacy of circular argument, known as petitio principii (“begging the question”), occurs when the premises presume, openly or covertly, the very conclusion that is to be demonstrated (example: “Gregory always votes wisely.” “But how do you know?” “Because he always votes Libertarian.”).”
Using that kind of argument is either an honest mistake, or a deliberate attempt to deceive and manipulate.
When a government uses such reasoning to ‘justify’ a power grab, we can be confident it’s the latter, and isn’t a simple mistake.
That brings us to how the Liberal government sought to justify their use of the Emergencies Act.
Liberal ministers like Marco Mendicino and Chrystia Freeland often referred to ‘news reports’ about foreign funding of the Freedom Convoy. Freeland even called it a ‘foreign-funded’ movement.
Many of those stories on supposed foreign-funding were generated by CBC, itself a government-controlled entity.
In effect, a government-run institution ran stories that the government then referred to in order to justify the Emergencies Act, falling into the circular logic fallacy:
“We need the Emergencies Act because the Freedom Convoy is a dangerous foreign-funded movement.”
“But how do you know the Freedom Convoy is a dangerous foreign-funded movement?”
“Because government-funded news stories reveal the Freedom Convoy is a dangerous foreign-funded movement.”
The government ended up referring to itself as the justification for invoking the act.
Now, those stories are being retracted:
“CBC has retracted another Freedom Convoy story.
“On Feb. 10 in a report about the protest convoy, CBC Radio’s The World This Hour incorrectly said GoFundMe ended a fundraiser for the protesters over questionable donations to the group,” the network said in a statement, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
CBC News said at the time it had completed an analysis of Freedom Convoy donations and discovered suspicious contributions from foreigners.
In a Feb. 10 website story under the headline ‘Convoy Protest Received Hundreds Of Donations That Appeared To Be From Abroad,’ CBC reporter Elizabeth Thompson wrote: “The donations identified by CBC News are likely only a fraction of all the donations made by people outside of Canada.”
A second website story that same day, also by Thompson, said: “An analysis of GoFundMe donations by CBC News has revealed at least one third of them had been made by donors who chose to remain anonymous or who listed names that were obviously fictitious or political commentary.”
On Feb. 3, the CBC corrected a Jan. 28 TV story when host Nil Koksal on Power And Politics claimed “there is concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows or perhaps even instigating it from the outside.”
“A clarification note was added,” the CBC said in a statement.”
Remember, through much of the time the convoy was active the Liberal government was referring to these news stories as the reason they saw protestors as illegitimate, or ‘extreme,’ and then used those reports to push for the use of the Emergencies Act.
As we know, the Emergencies Act culminated in a serious expansion of government power at the expense of individual rights and freedoms, with the government even seeking to go after the bank accounts of protestors.
It was a deeply un-Canadian response by the government, going against the historical value of freedom upon which our country is supposed to be based.
The danger of state-run media
In the era of mass media, it’s no coincidence that when revolutionaries overthrow the old order the first thing they do is seize control of the media.
It’s also no coincidence that in authoritarian states like Russia and China, independent media doesn’t exist (the last vestiges of independent media have been wiped out in Russia amid Putin’s war against Ukraine).
If you can control the media, you can control the information battlespace, and whoever controls that can control the country.
Thus, we see how social media and independent media are seen as a threat to those in power – even in democratic countries – because it tilts the balance of power in favour of regular people rather than those at the top of the government.
It’s why we see the Liberal government trying to restrict social media and restrict independent media with legislation like Bill C-11.
It’s also why the Liberal government has sought to expand the funding and reach of CBC, while giving more government funding to much of the establishment press.
In many ways, it’s like a stealth nationalization of the media, as year after year more of the press becomes dependent on taxpayer funding, and are thus more likely to spread the government narrative and oppose politicians (usually conservatives) who would cut that taxpayer funding.
This is quite dangerous, because the more centralized the media becomes, and the more it’s dependent on the government, the more our country will resemble a non-democratic state.
A free and independent press that holds the government accountable and speaks truth to power has been essential to the development of the free and democratic world.
All political parties and politicians feel the temptation to expand their power the more they are in office, and what separates us from anti-democratic states isn’t the goodness of those in power but the structures – including the free press – that constrains them.
If that constraint is gone, and if the free press becomes government dominated, we will see more circular logic and manipulative appeals where the government first puts out their propaganda message, and then refers back to that propaganda message to ‘justify’ expanding their own power over us.
Even now, we are watching as authoritarian states like Russia demonize any critics as a ‘fifth-column’ or foreign traitors, and they can get away with it because of the state controls all the media.
When we see some in Canada who want to move our country in that direction, we must stand up and defend the freedom of the press before it’s too late.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – YouTube
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