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“A group of QAnon believers over the weekend tried to conduct citizens arrests of police officers in the city of Peterborough, Ontario,” Raw Story reported on Wednesday, August 178, 2022 (read story here). They’re followers of this woman, who styles herself “Queen of Canada,” and “earlier this year declared herself to be the ‘Leader of the World’ during an event at a campground parking lot.”
This came about because she “instructed her supporters to arrest the Peterborough officers for enforcing COVID-19 pandemic restrictions such as mask requirements,” Raw Story said. They tried. One is charged with “two counts of assaulting police,” another with “mischief and resisting arrest,” a third with “a myriad of charges, including assaulting a peace officer with a weapon.” That one’s probably going to prison for a while.
The mayor said, “People have been asking me to comment on the events of the past weekend. … Here is my comment: fuck off, you fuckwads.” This is a voice of authority speaking.
Speaking of authority, anybody can be a king or queen; all you need is territory and followers. But as nearly all territory is already occupied, this usually means displacing another group of people and an existing government (e.g., the “lebensraum” concept, as detailed here), but then history is full of such examples; so far, no government has ever managed to be permanent (see, e.g., the Roman Empire). So, it’s doable; the Bolsheviks did it in Russia, Mao in China, and Trump is trying to do it in the USA.
Most royal dynasties, though, don’t launch themselves from a parking lot; and getting rid of the existing government, a necessary preliminary to installing a new one, generally requires having a better army than the incumbent has. Genghis Khan became ruler of vast swaths of Asia by consolidating the Mongol tribes into a single united military force under his competent generalship.
These fuckwads and their queen might become the government of Canada someday, but they still have a ways to go. For now, at least, the Peterborough police are the police, and they’re unsuccessful revolutionaries.