Coronavirus Authoritarianism Is Getting Out of Hand

Coronavirus Authoritarianism Is Getting Out of Hand
By DAVID HARSANYI
April 13, 2020 3:28 PM

“Reality check,” writes Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian in Axios, “Citywide quarantines, travel restrictions and obsessive public health checks aren’t authoritarian. They’re the kind of total mobilization that happens during major national crises such as war, regardless of the system of government.”

This position, often repeated, is utter nonsense. For one thing, we aren’t at “war.” There are no coronavirus spies and no coronavirus sabotage. Affixing “war” to societal problems — the war on drugs being the most obvious example— is typically a justification for expanding state power. Also, authoritarianism isn’t defined as “strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom except when there is a pandemic.” Your declarative sentences and forceful feelings do not transform the meaning of either authoritarianism or freedom. Though if we dump our principles every time there’s a crisis, they might as well.

　戦争のときと同じで、営業の自由、集会の自由、移動の自由を制限しても構わないんだ、という人がいるが、コロナ対策は戦争ではない。麻薬との戦争とか、コロナとの戦争とか、戦争という語を後ろにつければ、私権が制限できる、というものではあるまい、と。権威[独裁]主義とは、個人の自由を犠牲にして、国家の権威に服従すること、であって、「但し、パンデミックの場合はのぞく」などという定義はおかしい、と。


ーーー面白いのは、国際的には極右とされる安倍ちゃんが、日本では強権をふるえない、と言っているところだね。