YouTube activist Lauren Southern says she has received online rape threats after landing in Australia
ALT-right activist Lauren Southern claims she has received online rape threats after being photographed following her arrival in Australia sporting a T-shirt that said, “It’s okay to be white.”
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
AN alt-right activist deemed too racist to enter the UK has landed in Australia and already has plans to have dinner with Pauline Hanson.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Saturday Telegraph, Canadian YouTuber Lauren Southern yesterday revealed she thought America was right on gun control and Australians should be allowed to own guns to protect themselves against a “totalitarian” government.
She also claimed she had received online rape threats after being photographed in Brisbane yesterday sporting a T-shirt that said, “It’s okay to be white.”
The 23-year-old is in Australia for a week-long speaking tour, billed by its promoter as “the most censored and controversial” the country has seen.
Ms Southern told The Saturday Telegraph she would focus on her problems with multiculturalism during the tour, but she expected gun control to “come up” in her media appearances.
MIRANDA DEVINE BLOG: WHY SOUTHERN WAS BANNED FROM COMING TO AUSTRALIA
“I think the Americans have it right. The idea of having guns is essentially to protect yourself from a totalitarian government,” she said.
“You can see that, for example, in Paris — where they have horrific shootings and terrorist attacks, the theatre attack, the Charlie Hebdo attack. They have some of the strictest gun laws in the world in France yet these horrific attacks and shootings still happen. Unfortunately there will always be bad people and bad people don’t follow the law.”
The comments come after the NSW Government revealed it was investigating tightening gun laws after 68-year-old John Edwards shot dead his two teenage children in West Pennant Hills.
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.
Ms Southern said she had spoken to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and hoped to have dinner with her.
“Hanson said she felt quite bad for how I was being treated by immigration and that she would like to meet for dinner,” she said.
Ms Southern, a friend of confessed troll Milo Yiannopoulos, said there would be heavy security at her shows to protect herself from “crazy protesters”. She said she regularly received death threats.
“I was just reading the comments on the article that came out about the ‘It’s okay to be white shirt,’ and someone was saying, ‘I hope she gets raped,’ ” she said.
UK Border Force denied Ms Southern entry earlier this year, saying it had “the power to refuse entry to an individual if it is considered that his or her presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good”.
It had been reported she was planning to meet members of white supremacist group Generation Identity.