Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley is being mocked after he attacked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for cracking down on a convoy of largely American-funded “truckers” who shut down a major bridge between the two nations and with it crippled trade for days.
Not only is Fox News’ promotion of the so-called “Freedom Truckers” extreme, Turley’s suggestion that those who fought for actual civil rights – not the “right” to not wear a mask or not be vaccinated – during the Jim Crow era were never physically attacked or arrested by police is just plain false.
“I thought it was quite excessive,” Turley declared of Trudeau’s decision to invoke emergency – but not military or martial law – powers, on Fox News. “This was an act of civil disobedience,” he said of the truck protestors.
Turley called the protest “a standard tactic of groups, going back to the Civil Rights era.” He even quoted the late Democratic U.S. Congressman John Lewis’s “good trouble” remarks.
“By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights Movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King,” Turley declared.
Fox News has clearly been on the side of the protestors.
Pushback against Turley was swift.
“Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested 29 times,” noted HuffPost senior front page editor Philip Lewis.
“This is what happens when you ban teaching history in our schools,” wrote popular economist David Rothschild.
Historian Peter Manseau warned, “This is beyond dumb — but don’t fall for the trap of participating in any comparison between people fighting for civil rights & people fighting against public health. Answering this with ‘But they did arrest MLK!’ only invites the response ‘So the truckers are just like him…'”