Truckers in Canada protesting about Covid-19 vaccine mandates have come together in a so-called Freedom Convoy and parked themselves outside the government building in Ottawa, to the chagrin of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
What does this have to do with The Simpsons?
Well, it turns out that just as the much-loved animated series has predicted everything from the presidency of Donald Trump, to Disney buying 20th Century Fox, to the winners of Super Bowls XXVI and XXVII (the Redskins and the Cowboys, if you know your grid-iron), so did it foresee the Freedom Convoy.
Hold up – The Simpsons predicted Trump?
They did indeed. In Bart To The Future, episode 17 of series 11, Lisa Simpson has become leader of the Free World and at one point quips: “We inherited quite the budget crunch from President Trump”. That episode aired in March 2000, 16 years before Donald Trump gained the keys to the White House.
And Disney?
At the end of an episode in series 10 you see written beneath the 20th Century Fox logo the words: ‘A division of Walt Disney Co’. Perhaps tempting fate, the Mouse House did buy Fox in 2018, 20 years after the episode aired.
And now the Freedom Convoy?
Yes indeed, but also not really. A clip from an episode of The Simpsons which is circulating online appears to show Homer and Bart in the cab of an 18-wheeler leading a convoy of trucks followed by a scene in which Justin Trudeau screams and escapes head-first out of a window. The trouble is it’s actually scenes from two episodes which aired 21 years apart spliced together to make it look as if The Simpsons have once more gazed into the crystal ball and divined the future. In 1999, when the first episode aired, Trudeau had just left university and was a teacher at a secondary school in Vancouver, making him an unlikely subject for The Simpsons.
But the Freedom Convoy is real?
Oh yes. The truckers’ grouse is with a federal law stating that unvaccinated Canadian drivers returning from cross-border trips have to quarantine, but the protest has since attracted others who disagree with any and all vaccine mandates as well as those who want an end to all Covid-19 restrictions. The protest has grown so large that on Monday police asked Ottawans to avoid the downtown area and many shops and restaurants closed. Meanwhile there has been criticism of protestors using Nazi symbolism to try to draw comparisons between the pandemic restrictions and the persecution experienced by Jewish people during the Second World War. Mr Trudeau said: “Freedom of expression, assembly and association are cornerstones of democracy, but Nazi symbolism, racist imagery and desecration of war memorials are not.”
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