Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday made the outlandish remark that secular societies, based on nothing more than his observations, are “always the most oppressive.”
Carlson’s sweeping claim came at the tail end of a segment in which guest Jason Whitlock claimed that part of the reason why Canadian truckers have resorted to protesting vaccine mandates is because of the fall in church service attendance in the country.
“What’s going on in Canada with the truckers is bad, but we have the same style things going on here in America: the opposition to the left and their secularization of American society [and] the demonizing of freedom,” said Whitlock, who is the host of a TV show on the conservative Blaze network.
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“All of this—freedom, opportunity, and self-determination—all of that goes hand-in-hand with Christianity, Tucker,” a breathless Whitlock asserted. “And if you go look at Canada, and in the 1950s and 1960s…like 65 percent of them went to church regularly on Sundays. They dropped that down to about 10 percent now.”
In 2019, according to a state-sponsored study released last year, 23 percent of Canadians said they participated in a group religious activity at least once a month. Thirty percent did their own religious or spiritual activity at least once a week.
At one point, Whitlock drew a comparison between the trucker protest and the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, even claiming that “they assassinated” rioter Ashli Babbitt. Babbitt was shot by a Capitol police officer, who was absolved of any wrongdoing, as she and others tried to breach the House chamber.
Whitlock then urged that “those of us who love freedom, opportunity, self-determination and Jesus Christ” should keep an eye on the protests in Ottawa. Carlson responded: “It’s funny that secular societies have a very tough time preserving human rights. They talk about human rights constantly, but they are always the most oppressive societies, I have noticed.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to invoke the country’s Emergency Act in response to the protests against public health measures has drawn plenty of ire from Carlson, who declared on Monday’s broadcast that Canada has become a “dictatorship.”
