In the Name of Freedom From Personal Grievance to Collective Dissent in the Freedom Convoy

Abstract

This dissertation explores the emergence of politicized collective identity among participants of the Freedom Convoy in Canada. Initially framed as a protest against federal vaccine mandates, the Convoy rapidly evolved into a broader populist challenge to state authority, institutional legitimacy, and liberal democratic norms. Through a qualitative methodology grounded in life-history interviews, this study examines how participants transformed personal grievances into political agency. Drawing on the Politicized Collective Identity (PCI) framework, the research investigates the emotional, social, and biographical processes that catalyzed identity transformation among individuals often excluded from conventional political discourse. Hence, the thesis introduces the concepts of narrative hybridity and digital identity to describe the ideological bricolage and platform-mediated subjectivities that characterized the movement. Participants blended libertarian legalism, evangelical prophecy, wellness-spirituality, and conspiracist thinking into personalized worldviews animated by distrust in institutions and a deep yearning for sovereignty and truth. Special attention is given to gendered experiences and emotional repertoires. As a result, this research addresses critical gaps by centring the lived experiences and affective motivations of participants, often overlooked in analyses of right-wing populism and extremism. It reveals how digital media ecosystems, and moral storytelling converge to produce politicized identities in conditions of epistemic crisis and social fragmentation. Ultimately, the dissertation contributes to political sociology, and populism studies by offering a multidimensional account of dissent in the age of post-trust. It challenges binary framing of the Convoy as either extremism or legitimate protest, and instead foregrounds the complex interplay of belief, and belonging in shaping contemporary political subjectivity.