Description
This paper examines discourses of (white, male) innocence and insecurity mobilised around military atrocity crimes and how these relate to wider questions of militarism and ontological security. It explores how narratives of heroic and warrior military masculinity are drawn upon and called into question in conjunction with ideas of white innocence, male war duty and national sacrifice as a reaction to high-profile, alleged atrocity crimes committed by military personnel. It examines the case of Ben Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most decorated soldier, currently suing the newspapers that accused him of war crimes in a major libel suit. Through an analysis of public online spaces, evidence and testimony from the trial, as well as media and elite political narratives around this case, the paper explores the weighing up and potential discarding of warrior masculinity as anachronistic, brutal and no longer part of national mythmaking while at the same time the framing of militarised masculinity in relation to victimisation. It suggests that this duality is key to the wider politics of Australia’s war-making as well as to ideas about ontological (in)security in the liberal mode.
