Elon Musk has compared Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the genocidal dictator Adolf Hitler in an incendiary meme criticizing his crackdown on Freedom Convoy protests.
Musk, the world’s richest man and a cryptocurrency advocate, posted the meme on Twitter early Thursday, responding to reports that Mounties are seeking to freeze crypto wallets tied to the protests.
The image depicts the Nazi dictator Hitler with the text: ‘Stop comparing me to Justin Trudeau… I had a budget.’ The reference to a ‘budget’ is unclear and suggests the meme is recycled from some prior controversy over Canada’s government spending.
Musk was responding to a report from CoinDesk indicating that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have ordered Canadian exchanges to cease facilitating any transactions from 34 crypto wallets tied to the protests.
Elon Musk has compared Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the genocidal dictator Adolf Hitler in an incendiary meme criticizing his crackdown on protests
Musk, the world’s richest man and a cryptocurrency advocate, posted the meme on Twitter early Thursday, responding to reports that Mounties are seeking to freeze crypto wallets
After invoking the Emergencies Act this week for the first time in 50 years, Trudeau now has extraordinary powers, which include seizing assets such as bank accounts without judicial review or ordinary due process.
Trudeau ‘s justice minister has warned that people who donated to support the Freedom Convoy ‘ought to be worried’ about having their bank accounts frozen, saying they are part of a ‘pro-Trump movement’.
Justice Minister David Lametti made the remark in an interview with CTV News Channel on Wednesday night, where host Evan Solomon pressed him on whether average citizens who donated to the protests should be worried about account seizures.
‘If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars, and millions of dollars to this kind of thing, then you ought to be worried,’ said Lametti.
Lametti defended the government seizure of bank accounts tied to the protests against vaccine mandates as a simple ‘extending’ of the procedures used to stop ‘terrorist financing’.
About 44 percent of the nearly $10 million in contributions to support the protesters originated from US donors, according to hacked donor files. Some 92,800 individual donors are listed in the leaked files.
After invoking the Emergencies Act this week for the first time in 50 years, Trudeau now has extraordinary powers, which include seizing assets such as bank accounts
Canada’s Justice Minister David Lametti has warned that people who donated to support the Freedom Convoy ‘ought to be worried’ about having their bank accounts frozen
In Wednesday’s interview with CTV, Lametti faced tough grilling over what recourse average citizens would have if their bank accounts were wrongfully frozen.
‘We already do this with respect to terrorist financing, we already do this with respect to money laundering,’ he responded.
‘What we are doing is extending the same kind of principles and procedures to this situation,’ explained Lametti.
Lametti said that the process relied on the ‘reasonableness’ of investigators, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in order to identify bank accounts for seizure.
The donor list to a GiveSendGo campaign that raised more than $8.6 million to support the protest is now public information after hackers stole the information and released it.
Numerous protest organizers have reported freezes on their bank accounts, but it is unclear whether Trudeau’s government has moved to seize the assets of ordinary citizens who simply donated to the protests.
An Ontario Provincial Police vehicle is parked by the ongoing trucker blockade protest in Ottawa on Thursday. Hundreds of truckers clogging the streets of Canada’s capital city in a protest against COVID-19 restrictions are bracing for a crackdown
Ontario Provincial Police officers walk in front of the ongoing trucker blockade protest in Ottawa on Thursday
Crew adds more fences to Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, as truckers and supporters continue to protest there on Thursday
Under the Emergencies Act, Mounties have already requested freezes on more than 30 cryptocurrency wallets thought to be connected to the protests, multiple Canadian exchanges told the Financial Post.
The RCMP called on exchanges to immediately disclose ‘any information about a transaction or proposed transaction’ connected to the wallet addresses.
‘It is unfortunate that the Emergency Economic Measures Order is indiscriminately targeting the whole cryptocurrency ecosystem,’ the Toronto-based exchange CoinSmart said in a statement. ‘We will cooperate with the OPP and the RCMP and fulfill our obligations, if any, under the Emergency Economic Measures Order.’
Meanwhile, Trudeau faced his own controversy related to Nazi comparisons.
Trudeau was reprimanded in Parliament on Wednesday when he accused a Conservative Party MP Melissa Lantsman, who is Jewish, of ‘standing with people who wave swastikas’ after she criticized his handling of the Freedom Convoy protests.
This is the second time Trudeau has claimed swastikas are being waved by protesters, and he smeared them as being ‘swastika-wavers’ in the first week of protests. A flag incorporating the Nazi symbol was spotted in the initial days of the protests, but a DailyMail.com reporter has not seen any at the protest in Ottawa.
Lantsman on Wednesday night demanded an apology from Trudeau.
‘He has not apologized, and I expect an apology,’ Lantsman said in an interview with Fox News. ‘I think the division in this country is growing and it’s growing because of the prime minister’s rhetoric on this.’
