Why interviewing online troll Lauren Southern was a waste of my time
JUST like there are some people who can’t be argued with, there are some who can’t be interviewed. Annabel Hennessy was tasked with interviewing controversial alt-right activist Lauren Southern — a task she didn’t enjoy.
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JUST like there are some people who can’t be argued with, there are some who can’t be interviewed.
Alt-right Canadian “activist” Lauren Southern falls into both of these categories.
The 23-year-old has made a Youtube career for herself through stunts which have included pretending to be a transgender person at a university rally and handing out flyers which stated “Allah is gay” in the UK.
I spent 13 minutes interviewing Southern on the phone yesterday after she arrived in Brisbane for her Australian speaking tour wearing a T-shirt which stated “it’s OK to be white”.
Southern claimed to be wearing the shirt because she wanted to show she has “no shame” in being white.
Exactly who is telling Southern she should be feel ashamed of her racial background is not clear.
When asked on Sky News by Rita Panahi if her skin colour made her superior. Southern said she could not assess racial superiority.
“I’m not the one who can judge what is, what isn’t superior,” Southern said.
The real reason Southern was wearing the shirt was because she knew it would grab a headline.
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While she has attacked the Black Lives Matter movement for “being divisive”, Southern’s entire brand is dependant on creating shock.
Her tour is being openly marketed as “the most controversial” Australia has seen.
This is what makes interviewing Southern a fruitless task, because her whole rhetoric is designed to create a reaction rather than examining individual issues.
When I asked Southern what she thought about the conversations that are happening around Australia’s gun control laws following the tragic West Pennant Hills shooting last week in which 68-year-old John Edwards killed his two teenage children, she said she thought it was America who had gun laws right.
She claimed people had a right to guns to “protect” themselves “from a totalitarian government”.
“Of course there are going to be horrific incidents that happen but they will happen even with strict laws all over the world,” she said.
While Southern claims to deal in “facts”, it’s important to note that Australia has had just one mass shooting — a domestic violence incident — since former Prime Minister John Howard banned semiautomatic and other military-style weapons in 1996. America has had 154 this year alone.
Southern was also gleeful to discuss the supposed “heavy handedness” she had faced from the Australian government when it came to applying for her working visa in Australia. She claimed they had intentionally delayed the process because of her views on Islam.
Given Southern had applied for the ETA visa, which is only for non-work purposes like tourists and business people travelling for a conference, and has since been let into Australia it’s difficult to see how she has been discriminated against by border authorities.