Lockdown PRISONS and Destruction of The Church and The West ｜ Lauren Southern
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Summary
Lauren Southern is back, and she's back with a unique perspective on the burning down of churches across Canada. She joins me on The Michael Knowles Show to talk about what happened to Indigenous people in the past, and why we should care.
Transcript
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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It's been a tough couple of years. The lockdowns, the malaise, all the election nonsense that we
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lose Trump, we get this guy who's half asleep and destroying the world. And it's just been,
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and one of the worst aspects of it all was the disappearance of Lauren Southern. I always really
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loved watching Lauren's commentary. And then she made the fair enough decision to go off,
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start a family, pull back a little bit from public life. I understood she did what she had to do.
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Well, you know what? She's back. She is back, and she has a unique perspective because she left one
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hellscape in the Anglosphere, Canada, America's hat, for apparently another one, which is still
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locked down, even down under. Lauren, thank you very much for coming on.
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Thanks for having me. I was really enjoying my hiatus, my family, all of it, but you guys
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really dropped the ball. Things have just gone sideways the last year and a bit.
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And you felt much like Pacino in Godfather Part 3, just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in,
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and they did. And so it's gone really crazy. I want your perspective on two stories that I think
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Americans don't really know very much about. I don't even know where to begin. Let's begin at
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America's hat, your former country. They're burning down churches all throughout Canada,
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and no one's really talking about it. Yeah, other than a brief mention from Trudeau
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weeks after it started happening. And we're not talking about just one or two churches here.
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We're talking about dozens of organized arson and vandalism attacks against churches. One evening,
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there were 10 attacks against churches in one province. And all of this is happening because
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there have been mass graves that were discovered of indigenous people in Canada. Now, we don't
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actually have much information on these mass graves. We've just found graves. We haven't investigated
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why they were there, whether they occurred because there was a disease outbreak. In fact,
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one of the mass graves found in British Columbia, which resulted in churches being attacked,
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was discovered to just be an overgrown graveyard that they knew was a graveyard. But the media just
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went off with it. Mass grave, this is a genocide with no further investigation or professionals looking
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into it. And of course, people are saying that these attacks are justified. This is revenge against
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the Catholic Church who ran residential schools that indigenous people went to in the 1800s and
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earlier 1900s to essentially assimilate them to the English culture when they came over. I don't think
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the residential schools were a good thing, but is hate crimes today the right reaction to hate crimes
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Well, I want to pause you there just for people because I'm not particularly familiar with this either.
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So there were these residential schools that were largely run by the church to assimilate
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the Native American, not Native American, the Native Canadians, the indigenous first peoples
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to the dominant Canadian culture. And so I understand that, by the way, in principle. I'm not even opposed
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to assimilation in principle. If you're going to have a country, you need people to assimilate into that
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country. But this is somewhat controversial because what? Because of First Nations sovereignty and the
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the Canadians stole our land. Is that the argument?
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Well, the idea that they were forcing them out of their traditional cultures. And of course,
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there was abuse also found at some of these residential schools, whether it be sexual or
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physical abuse. But also something that should really be understood by people jumping up and down
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about this is most boarding schools at that time in history were rife with abuse, no matter who was
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going there. I mean, I was just reading Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis, and he went to a really wealthy
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boarding school where he talks about abuse occurring. But I mean, he was a bit too pale for us to care
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about that. Right. And yeah, so people are burning down churches as revenge. And the shocking part,
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too, is some of these churches aren't even like Anglo-Catholic churches. A lot of them are on
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residential indigenous land. So they are actually indigenous churches. So not only did some of these
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people have to be descendants of family members who were in residential schools, but now they have
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woke people today burning their churches down to try to, I don't know, save them from past. It makes
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no sense. It makes no sense. And you have verified checkmark liberals all over Twitter saying they love
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this, saying they support this. So you have the sort of pro-native Canadian first people's arson
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against the churches. At the same time, you've got the government going in because of the COVID police
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shutting down churches, shutting down services. There was a very famously, this Polish-Canadian
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pastor, Pawel Pawlowski was his name? Or no, Arthur Pawlowski.
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You pronounce Polish last names. Yes. No, he, and he was tremendous. And he yelled,
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he said, get out, you Gestapo. Out of this property, you Nazis. Out. Out. Gestapo is not
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allowed here. And there are now suggestions that religious freedom in Canada and the ability to
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practice Christianity is being threatened as it is in other nefarious countries like communist China,
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for instance. So you've got this threat. And I can't help but notice, no matter who the radicals
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are, whether they're radical indigenous activists, whether they're radical leftists in the government,
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whether it's the Jacobins, whether it's the communists, whether it's, they always seem to go
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after the churches throughout history. What's that about?
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Absolutely. First, I want to point out these radical indigenous activists,
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in a lot of cases are actually white people claiming they stand up for the indigenous.
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There have been videos that have come out and it's like 22 year old white women privileged
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attacking these churches. It always is, isn't it?
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Saying they stand for, stand for the indigenous people who are actually the chiefs in Canada are
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begging people to stop this. But the white kids have to stand up for them and save the day by
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burning down their churches, of course. But yeah, it's, it's this attack against Christianity
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because Christianity is the antithesis of everything they stand for. In my opinion,
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they stand for, uh, absolutely no restrictions on our personal desire, no morality to constrict
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what we want to do, no matter how sinful or how harmful to other people. They stand for cancel
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culture so that people should just be cut off from society, cut out, irredeemable. Christ and
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redemption is quite literally the antithesis of cancel culture. Good point.
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And they can't have that. They need conservatives. They need Christians. They need these people to be
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irredeemable, separate from them so that they can be seen as the saints and the heroes. They are the good
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ones fighting against the irredeemable Nazis in our society. And also they're out of Nazis. I mean,
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I'm sure they exist somewhere, but they're in swamps in Alabama and they don't have any power in
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society. So they keep having to find new things to label the ultimate enemy. And right now that is
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the church and it is the perfect enemy because it is the one thing that is a mirror to their
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immorality and a mirror to the wrongdoing they have been inflicting on the West.
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It's a great point. And I've long seen this radical leftism as just an inversion of Christianity
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throughout, even up to its ultimate sacrament, which is abortion, which I think it was Peter
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Kreeft who made the point, even uses the language of the Eucharist, this is my body, as a way to
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defend this antithesis of the gospel in the destruction of the baby. This is my body. This is my choice.
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So I certainly see that inversion. I do have to correct you though, when you say that there are
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only a few Nazis running around Alabama. That's not, there are very many Nazis. They all work for
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the FBI. They're all informants. They're just feds, fed Nazis, spying on other fed Nazis. So it's a
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totally contrived issue, but there are many of them running around. And so you've got this problem in
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Canada, obviously part of the Anglosphere, and you fled. You fled Canada wisely, I think. And now you're
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down under, you're about as far away from Canada as one can possibly get. I always thought Australia
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was a good, virile, tough, manly culture, but you inform me the lockdowns there are just as bad as
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they are anywhere else. Oh, Australia is a lovely country, but I just came at the absolute worst time,
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apparently. I thought I would be riding crocodiles and fighting off giant spiders, but I've just been
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locked in my house the entire time because yeah, there are some of the worst restrictions in the
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world here in Australia. We're in the 700 lockdown at the moment. All the States, um, not allowed to
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leave your house unless you have to go buy essential goods. And even so it's only one person at a time
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just today, they banned browsing stores. So if you need to just grab some food and you don't need
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mayonnaise for that food, you're not allowed to go down the mayonnaise aisle. That is illegal at the
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moment. Um, only 10 people are allowed at a funeral at the moment. You can't travel interstate. It's
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masks everywhere. When you go out, you know, we've even had restrictions for the times you can go out.
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So like from, you can only leave your house from 8am to 8pm in Victoria. Of course, COVID is far more
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dangerous in, uh, in the middle of the night. We know this. It gets much worse. There's no question
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about it. It obviously gets worse in the middle of the night, which I should note is when you were
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talking to me right now because of this time difference. Yeah. A young mother, uh, we are such
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sadists here at the daily wire that we're, we're having you wake up in the middle of the night and,
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but greatly appreciate it because I, I think there were a lot of people who believed that the COVID
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lockdowns were all just about getting Trump out. And I, I think I still largely think that was true,
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but as a result, they believed that once Trump was gone, once the big bad guy was kicked out of
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the Oval Office, then everything would, would go away. I started to question that as the election
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got closer because I thought, you know, this was a big power grab and, and people don't generally like
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to give up political power once, once they have taken it. So what's going to happen? We're now in the
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longest 15 days in recorded history. We still apparently haven't slowed the spread. We're going
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to be slowing it for a long time. What is the end game here? Are we just living in, in mask world
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for the rest of our lives? Oh, I have been asking this question for a long time, especially if you
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look at the UK right now that have some of the highest back vaccination rates worldwide. I think
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they're, they're well over half the population vaccinated at the moment and they're going through
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a COVID spike. So we know we have been informed. You still have to wear a mask. We still have to
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do these lockdowns even when you're vaccinated because you can still get COVID when you're
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vaccinated. So yeah, I guess we're doing this forever. I guess this is the forever lockdown.
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And you know what, if, if it does get to a point where they realize, okay, we're still having this
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spread with over half the population vaccinated, they're going to have to make the decision.
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We have to open up and we have to let it run its course so that we just get herd immunity.
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And how punishing will that be? How, how many stories for two years will you have a people
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who've missed their mother or father's death, the birth of their child, the funerals, the weddings
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that I think there is going to be a reckoning if that happens. And I also think that's why the
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government have held out this long in doing these lockdown strategies is because it's like
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chasing bad money. They can't admit they were wrong because if they admit they were wrong,
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people are going to have a bone to pick. Like everyone, everyone has missed some massive event
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in their life that has catastrophically impacted their mental health. I actually know more people
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who have killed themselves this year than have died of COVID.
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Wow. I suppose I do too. Yeah, I suppose I do as well. I mean, and I, you know, I suspect,
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I suspect that's true of a lot of people. You've seen deaths of despair spike, not just suicide,
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but drug overdoses, all of those sorts of things. And the eggheads did it, right? I mean, this was
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the public health tyrants, Dr. Fauci, the high priest of progressivism, the pontiff of our
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scientific state. Whatever he decrees seems to go. And this raises a real question of how we fight
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back because we seem to be arguing on the left's terms. What the left goes out there and says,
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they say the science mandates that we close all your churches. The science mandates that we keep
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the marijuana dispensary open, but we shut down the local church. The science mandates that you're
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not allowed to go outside, even if you're at statistically like zero risk of facing grave consequences
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from this virus because of your age and your circumstances. And so the science is mandating a
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whole lot of things that were formerly held in the realm of the political, you know, that it's
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actually not up to these eggheads to determine how I would like to make prudential judgments and live
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my life. But I notice a lot of conservatives then arguing from those premises and saying, no,
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the science says this, or no, the science says that. And my view is, who gives a damn what the science
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says? What does the politics say? What does the ethics say? What do the people say? Because last time I
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checked, we still had a right to control our country. Right. I think this does touch into that larger
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question of basically, do we have a right to be completely safe from disease? Do we have a right
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to be basically in these hamster wheels of protection and, you know, fluff all the time,
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never facing any harm whatsoever? We have a completely harm averse society. And is that now the government's
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duty to create that? Because we know that there will be another virus after this, perhaps an even
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worse virus or less, you know, a less severe virus. But then what what question is it? What degree is
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it? Because with COVID, everyone said, well, if it just saves one life, if I wear a mask. So now every
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flu season, do we lock down because that could potentially save just one life? Why didn't we lock
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down during the swine flu? Why didn't we? There are so many questions of just general philosophical
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debate, political debate that come from this that I do not think the left have answers for. I do not
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think the people who have put us through this for nearly two years now have answers to these questions.
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I really think that another aspect of this, them chasing bad money, I also think is the tail wagging
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the dog. The media are controlling the government by making all of these politicians terrified of
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getting a headline that says this politician killed your grandma. This politician is the reason 50,000
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people died. And so they are only doing these, even though they have numbers, guys, that would tell
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them this lockdown is going to kill way more people than it's going to save just based on economic
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follow. Look at the third world. Oxfam put out a report saying literally millions are going to
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die of starvation due to economic fallout from this. But these politicians know that's not going
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to be an article during their election season. That's going to be five years from now. So,
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all right, best thing to do, lock everyone in their houses and save myself from a bad New York
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Times story. This was terrifying stuff. This was why Trump was in this impossible situation where
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I think his gut told him, don't lock down. If you're going to lock down, don't let them surpass the
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two or three weeks. They're never going to give up this power. But he was in this position where
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had he not gone along with whatever Dr. Fauci told him to do, and he already was blamed for every
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single death, but every single death of pneumonia from a 99-year-old would have been blamed on him
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because of his callousness on COVID. So it's a very difficult position and the threat of the media is
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big here. And I like your point on this philosophical issue. It kind of brings me
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to a great point that I saw you make just a few months ago. You know, our pal Ben Shapiro has this
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very famous slogan, facts don't care about your feelings. It's obviously true when you're talking
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about, say, Bruce Jenner. Bruce Jenner feels like he's a woman, but he's not really a woman. He's a man,
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and the reality of that doesn't care about his feelings. You made this point in a terrific video.
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You said, it's also true feelings don't care about your facts, that politics has quite a lot to do
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with feelings. I actually made the same point in my recent book. It doesn't negate Ben's perfectly
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obvious observation, but it does add another aspect here. And I think this gets to the problem that
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conservatives have had for not just a few decades, but actually a few centuries, going back to that
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jerk David Hume, where we don't have the confidence any longer to derive moral truths from the world.
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We seem not to be willing to say that you should do this and you shouldn't do that. But we're stuck
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in this scientific culture where the eggheads rule, because all we're allowed to know is that,
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for instance, this is a Tumblr. And I know that this is a Tumblr, but I'm not allowed to derive any
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metaphysical truth from the Tumblr. I can't know, for instance, that the Tumblr is for drinking.
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I can't know, for instance, that my body parts have various purposes and they shouldn't be put
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to other purposes. We seem to have surrendered the basis of politics. As Cardinal Manning says,
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all human conflict ultimately is theological. But do conservatives ever make those arguments
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anymore? No. They only ever seem to defend free speech in the abstract. They never say anything
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really concrete in theory. And the only thing they ever managed to push for of substance and politics
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is another tax cut, I guess. But beyond that, we seem to have lost our moral reasoning. And the
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left sure has. And I see the left making moral arguments all the time. Yeah. You know, a lot of
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people talk about the fear they have of us becoming these nameless, faceless, genderless, nationless,
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gray check marks on a government data book if we embrace the leftist theology. But I fear us just
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becoming breeding, coal mine working, corporate machines, just consumers also just on a business
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checkbook if we go the way that conservatism is going at the moment. We are human beings with souls.
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Our purpose is not politics. Our purpose is not conservatism. I've had people, I remember
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meeting them over the last few years when I was engaged in all of these political events. And
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the one thing driving them was the cause, whether it be Trumpism or conservatism. And I'm like,
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that is all wrong. You've got it backwards. I am a mother first. I am a Christian first. I am
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a part of my community first. And then I am only a conservative because I care about these things.
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And I think it will make these things better in my life. And I love these things irrationally.
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I love my child irrationally. I don't care if the odds of saving my son's life were a million to one
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and I would maybe die if I did something. I would take those odds every time, even though the facts
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didn't tell me that. We are motivated by feelings. We are motivated by beauty in life and morality in
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these deeper, non-tangible themes that you were just talking about. And we really do need to tap
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back into that as conservatives. We need to tap into our artistic side, the side that communicates
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to the soul. Because there's that great quote, I think it was actually from a billboard advertisement
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that said, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
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Yeah. We have to show people why they need to care about this data.
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By the way, it's not just a subjective feeling. Your calculation, million to one odds to save your
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son, but you might have to incur some personal risk in that. That's not just a subjective feeling
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or preference or passion. It is a moral fact that you're talking about. I mean, when you say we're
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real human beings and we're about more than just consuming random cheap goods made in China,
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and we're about more than just ticking up GDP for a little bit, that is not merely a passion of yours
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and a preference and a feeling. That is a fact. And I just think we are understanding as a culture of
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what is real, what is a fact, what is scientific, has become so shallow and atrophied. And it's not
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just the left that has done this. The right has given into this as well. And I just think we need
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a much realer kind of politics, a more authentic politics. We're stuck between these false dichotomies
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of big government or the individual or a free speech and censorship. And I just think
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real life is about more than that. It's about standards. It's about purpose. It's about what
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we're here for. I mean, all the cheap Chinese goods in the world, all the things we can consume in the
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world don't mean anything unless we know what they are for. And ultimately, we need to know what we are
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for as well. Right. Absolutely. And I think that also comes down to a problem with modern conservative
00:22:12.320
pursuit of hyper individualism. We are just the individual. It is just about how much you can achieve
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and how much money you can earn and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. No, actually, we have a duty
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to our community. You are born helpless and we die helpless. And I do not want to live in a community
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where a 90-year-old grandma with no one to help her just dies because she wasn't strong enough to
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pull herself up by her bootstraps. I believe in a duty to each other. I believe in, and maybe that
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makes me a communist, a socialist. I don't think it does. I think that's that false dichotomy.
00:22:49.880
Yeah. I think that's that false dichotomy you're talking about where it's not just individualists
00:22:55.020
versus communists. There's complexity. There's living in this tension of facts and feelings,
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living in this tension of duty to each other, but also personal responsibility. But that's a hard
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conversation because it's not simple. It's not just a tweet. It's not just a slogan.
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And it's not clear. You know, my friend, Father George Rutler, has this observation when people
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say, I want a clear ideology. I want clear religion. And he says, shallows are clear. Shallow thinking is
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clear. Deep things are profound. They're a little murky. You've got to kind of work with them. And
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I see in this false dichotomy between, you know, the individualist and the collectivist. I think
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they're two sides of the same coin. The way that the collectivists collectivize is by breaking down
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society into a bunch of individuals that they can more easily bundle up together. And really,
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the opposite of collectivism is not individualism. It's the family. It's community. It's society.
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Even the way that we talk about our political order, everyone's just talking about rights.
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You hear the left talking about the positive rights or the human rights to health care or
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whatever. And you hear the right talking about the negative rights or the natural rights, which is,
00:24:09.600
I think, a more serious conversation. What about that word that you just used, Lauren? What about
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duty? What about the fact that I'm not just born into this world entitled to a bunch of rights,
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but I'm also born with duty, duty to my family, duty to my community, duty to my God. And I'm not
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free in this radical self-ownership to just do whatever I want. That's not even what our founding
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fathers thought liberty was. They thought liberty was the right to do what you ought to do, not just
00:24:37.920
the freedom to indulge in any sorts of appetites and abuses that you want.
00:24:42.720
Yeah. And I think that's really the core of what we're hitting on here is the both conservative
00:24:49.940
movement and the progressive movements are now based on human selfishness. And we're never going
00:24:56.120
to get anywhere on both sides, just arguing over what do I deserve? What do I deserve?
00:25:02.860
There's a complete and utter moral sickness at the core of both movements, in my opinion. And until we
00:25:09.220
get back, and I know a lot of people won't like to hear this, and it's not an easy thing to say,
00:25:13.460
because there are a lot of wonderful atheist conservatives out there. But until we get back
00:25:17.960
to a core of Christianity that believes in the idea we are a broken world, we are broken individuals,
00:25:23.400
we are not ubermensch or perfectly feeling individuals, and all my feelings are valid.
00:25:29.220
No, no, no. We are broken individuals that need redemption, that need to work towards love,
00:25:34.260
that need to work to support each other and let go of selfishness. And until we do that,
00:25:38.800
the only thing that is going to happen in politics, left and right, is going to be human
00:25:43.960
sickness, corrupting the money given to it, corrupting the platforms we have, corrupting
00:25:48.720
the fame and ego and power. How the power is used if it is entirely based around human desires and
00:25:57.200
selfish desires and nothing higher, because we don't believe in a God anymore. We don't believe in
00:26:01.900
anything higher anymore than just capitalism or socialism. It will all be corrupted. And that's
00:26:08.340
this downward spiral we're in right now. We're just spiraling into oblivion with Twitter arguments.
00:26:15.400
And I truly believe when I look at everyone walking around with masks and everyone just
00:26:19.780
screaming at each other in Twitter, I'm like, did I die and go to hell? Am I in purgatory right now?
00:26:24.860
Well, I forget if it was Moliere or Shaw. I'm getting my quotes mixed up, but who cares? It's
00:26:31.920
one of, it's some old dead guy who said that hell is the place where you have nothing to do but amuse
00:26:37.180
yourself. And that's kind of what you're describing. And this cult of selfishness has really taken hold,
00:26:42.540
not just on the left, it was always there on the left, but it took hold on the right, especially in
00:26:47.220
the 1970s and 80s. Coincidentally, I just managed finally to make it through possibly the worst book
00:26:55.300
ever written, though it gained a lot of currency on the right, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I mean,
00:27:01.400
it's unbearable. It's funny that conservatives came to embrace it to some degree, because when it first
00:27:07.120
came out in National Review, which was the conservative publication at the time, ran a scathing
00:27:12.500
article. Bill Buckley said he had to flog himself to read it. He called it a thousand pages of
00:27:17.780
ideological fabulism. Whitaker Chambers, the ex-communist, one of the great writers of the
00:27:22.060
20th century, he wrote a really tough review, but he didn't just knock the horrific prose and the
00:27:29.080
stupid ideas. He made the observation that has really weakened the right, I think, because they've
00:27:35.560
embraced Ayn Rand and those sorts of selfish ideas, selfishness is virtue. He said,
00:27:40.700
Ayn Randian man, like Marxian man, is the center of a godless universe. He puts man at the center
00:27:50.660
where nothing means anything beyond our own pleasure. And so, to give Ayn Rand credit, what
00:27:55.920
she and the defenders of the virtue of selfishness on their right, what they say is, no, no, this won't
00:28:01.460
descend into hedonism. This will be the sort of Nuchean ubermensch. We're going to just pursue our
00:28:07.480
own excellence and what we want in this higher way. But as I look at reality, that doesn't seem
00:28:14.180
to be what has happened. We just seem to have descended into decadence, not just on the left,
00:28:20.080
but on the right as well. So how, Lauren, in our remaining minute or two, how do we get out of it?
00:28:29.380
We all did. We all loved Ayn Rand for a spell and thankfully we woke up.
00:28:34.720
Yes, I grew up. I graduated. I swear by my life and my love of it, I will never live for another
00:28:42.080
man nor let another man live for mine, was the famous quote from that book. And I just know
00:28:47.200
that all, any inclination that that quote might be right disappeared when I looked into my child's
00:28:54.120
eyes. And I think the more, the more people we have, the more young people we have having children,
00:28:59.540
the more they will learn to not be selfish. It is a complete and utter turnaround in your life
00:29:06.140
of just, my life is now about another person and I need to learn to live for other people. And
00:29:13.520
I think just right now, all we can do is promote the family, promote God and hope that we can get out
00:29:20.600
of this hell spiral we are in. And I think you're doing good work on this show with that.
00:29:24.860
Well, thank you, Lauren. I actually just occurred to me as you read that quote, the famous John
00:29:32.380
Galt oath from Atlas Shrugged, I'll never live for another man and no man will live for me.
00:29:36.580
It is an inversion. I mean, so much of that book is an inversion of Christianity, the explicit denial
00:29:42.440
of original sin, the insistence by one of the main characters that money and love of money is not
00:29:48.780
the root of all evil. It's the root of all good, a total, total inversion of Christianity. And so
00:29:54.340
I'm reminded that Cardinal Manning was right. All human conflict is ultimately theological.
00:30:00.400
And I have to tell you, even though I missed you during your hiatus, I was really pleased to see
00:30:05.380
you do it because I thought, man, I knew this chickie was smart, but she's got her priorities
00:30:09.860
in order. And I'm glad that you're back now with all of these priorities in order. And I would
00:30:13.500
encourage people to go follow you if they're not doing that already. Where can people find you,
00:30:19.700
Yeah, you can find me on the hell site, Twitter at Lauren underscore Southern. Just look up my name,
00:30:25.460
Lauren Southern on YouTube, and I'm around there, Instagram, all those terrible sites that are
00:30:30.020
wastes of your time. But I try to provide a brief break from the chaos on my pages.
00:30:36.080
A brief break where, you know, you go, you worship your Lord, you raise your kids, you do your job.
00:30:41.260
And then there's that, when you do want to dip your toe into politics, you can go follow Lauren
00:30:45.280
there. I really appreciate it. Thank you for staying up all night. Kiss your kid on the head
00:30:49.300
for us and look forward to chatting with you again soon. Thanks for having me. Will do.