Extremists have published their outrage that Axiomatic.Events, an initiative of Luke Izaak of That Guy Media (YouTube) and me in cooperation with other conservatives & libertarians, is inviting Lauren Southern & Stefan Molyneux to our nation to discuss conservative ideas about important public issues. These are the kind of common sense ideas most Western democracies were built upon.
They are demanding she be banned and are dishonestly accusing her & Stefan of all kinds of character deficiencies and imaginary wrongs. They are afraid to the core of intellectually honest conversations about important public issues. In the absence of an ability to debate the facts and logic, the enemies of free speech can only resort to shutting down even the potential for debate, preferring baseless character assassination and effectively “no-platforming” them with incitement to violence against the people who might dare to dissent from their hypocritically intolerant authoritarianism.
UPDATE: In an unprecedented move, Australia has refused Lauren Southern’s visa application. After waiting an inordinate amount of time for her working visa to be processed, her Australian immigration legal team recommended she apply for an ETA (short stay tourist visa). This is not unusual, and allows Lauren Southern to at least travel to Australia as non-working tourist, and to experience Australian life and culture while the Department of Home Affairs and immigration bureaucrats continued to take their sweet time processing her 408 visa.
This comes just days after Auckland Mayor Phil Goff decreed that Lauren Southern & Stefan Molyneux would not be welcome to speak at any Auckland City owned venues, despite Axiomatic already having satisfied the assessments of and contracted with the Bruce Mason Theatre (council-owned). To justify his authoritarian dictate via Twitter, he took to mainstream media to defame Southern & Molyneux as “eugenics-loving, white supremacist, hate speakers.”
While stating venue security was his primary concern, it is clear from a quick reading of his past he has been willing to host Yassar Arafat, Fidel Castro and allow council property to be used in support of Hezbollah.
Further complicating the issue, the New Zealand Federation of Islam Associates president Hazim Arafeh has joined other hard left organisations in writing letters to their Immigration minister lobbying them to deny Southern & Molyneux entry into New Zealand.
As promoters of this tour, Luke Izaak & I are convicted that this is all about precedent. If we allow groups like the Socialist Alternative, Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF) and other extreme leftist bullies to succeed in this deplatforming, we have handed them the playbook for censoring every future conservative speaker from entering Australia and New Zealand with lies, defamation and character assassination.
Whether you are a classical liberal, libertarian, conservative or progressive liberal who is committed to the rights to freedom of speech and political expression, now is the time to stand up and fight back, before it is taken away for ever.
England’s Blasphemy Law
On a routine visit to England recently, Lauren Southern was detained for questioning when her passport was mysteriously flagged at the border while crossing from France to England via bus. She was remarkably denied the usual civil rights by police invoking the UK’s Terrorism Act, and subsequently denied entry, and banned for life. Why?
During her interrogation at the border in Calais, France, she was asked about a speech she gave to a nationalist group in Belgium, her political ideology, and her religion. She was asked if she was a “Christian extremist,” and how she would feel about someone driving a car or a truck into a group of people, Muslims particularly. The question was so ridiculous she reflexively laughed with incredulity. She answered that she obviously thought that would be a horrific thing. She invited them to check everything she’s ever published to confirm she has not once ever supported such a thing. She observed the police may have their priorities wrong, to which they replied, “We have a lot of problems with right wing terrorism… How do you feel about right wing terrorism?”
During three hours of interrogation, threats and lies by the police, they admitted multiple times she is not a terrorist and not suspected of being a terrorist. They eventually issued her with a letter claiming she had admitted distributing “racist material in Luton” – a claim she rejects outright. The material was not racist. The material was a social experiment designed to contrast the response by Christians to claims that Jesus was gay made in popular media (a Vice article and a Huffington post article) with the response by Muslims to flyers claiming Allah was gay. Police intervened in the distribution, seized the flyers, and gave her a move on order. She was not charged, and complied completely.
Effectively, Lauren Southern was detained under the Terrorism Act because she committed blasphemy against Allah in the UK. Because of this, the UK authorities claimed Lauren’s “actions whilst in the United Kingdom present a threat to the fundamental interests of society and to the public policy of the United Kingdom,” and she was refused entry. The ridiculousness of this exclusion is illustrated by contrast with a Muslim cleric, on record glorifying & inciting murder and banned from preaching in Pakistan because he’s so radical, who was recently welcomed into the UK to do a talking tour of UK mosques.
Jihadis welcome, classical liberal conservatives not welcome?
Watch the video below about the ridiculous censorship of unapproved opinions by the UK.
Sign the Petition
Sign the petition below supporting Stefan’s and Lauren’s visa applications, and let’s request the normal welcome to Australia every law abiding visitor with zero criminal record or charges should receive. This tour will contribute to the ongoing conversation about important public issues. Let’s emphatically reject all calls for banning libertarians/conservatives as manifestly anti-liberty, anti-democracy, and un-Australian.
