EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: Wait, we have TOO MUCH freedom? I thought we’re in the middle of an authoritarian dictatorship! ‘No Kings,’ right?
An Australian political sociologist who discussed the recent “third alleged” assassination attempt against Donald Trump apparently unknowingly(?) threw a monkey wrench into the whole “No Kings,” etc. narrative that the U.S. under our 45th/47th president is an authoritarian nightmare.
Josh Roose of Deakin University, “an internationally recognised authority on the role of masculinities and ideologies in violent extremism and terrorism” and “extreme-right, violent misogynist, anti-democratic movements,” claimed the week-old attempt to off Trump is just the latest in the U.S.’s “long history with political violence” — because we have too much freedom.
The violence that has resulted in the deaths of four American presidents over the last 250 years and attempts on others (including an “unusual” number against Trump) is linked to the country’s first two amendments to the constitution, according to Roose.
“We’re talking here about a long history of it, but also a willingness to accept it because the constitution won’t allow meaningful reform on gun laws,” he said.
Roose (pictured) added that the First Amendment’s right to free speech has enabled “polarising and aggressive” political discourse.
He also repeated the claim that, “in particular,” right-wing violence has long been an issue in the U.S., while such from the left is relatively new. (Of course, one has to dig into the actual definitions; for example, all antisemitic acts are “right-wing,” but pro-Palestinian “attacks on Jewish individuals or institutions” are excluded as “ethnonationalist”?)
This begs the question: How is a country that allows private firearms ownership and greater free expression rights than virtually anywhere else on the planet, even one governed twice now by Donald Trump, on the verge of an authoritarian dictatorship led by a “king”?
If you want to make a liberal look really silly (especially at a “No Kings” protest since a dictator or king wouldn’t allow such protests), ask them this.
If Prof. Roose is interested in liberty and democracy, he ought to zero in on his own country’s stance on the freedoms codified in our first two amendments.
Australia’s already pretty much abrogated the second, and although it currently enjoys greater free speech protections than the nation which birthed both our countries, consider its ridiculously draconian COVID policies from just a few years ago (especially given what we now know), and how some (like Roose’s Deakin U. peer Greg Barton, linked by one of his articles on how the right “came together” over, ironically, COVID) want “tighter legal constraints” on “hate speech.”
According to his faculty page, Roose is the author of (among other works) “Young Masculinities and Right-Wing Populism in Australia,” “The new demagogues: religion, masculinity and the populist epoch,” and “Supreme Men, Subjected Women: Gender Inequality and Violence in Jihadist, Far Right and Male Supremacist Ideologies.”
MORE: Teachers union president calls for Australia-style solution to gun violence
