Coalition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said last week Labor should block her visa to avoid the spread of “hateful messages”, while Burke said he had always taken a hard line on hate speech and had spoken to Jillian Segal, the Australian antisemitism envoy, to prepare a brief on the Owens matter.
In her interview with 2GB host Ben Fordham – an employee of Nine Entertainment, owner of this masthead – Owens aired discredited claims about voting irregularities in the US, saying Americans “don’t have faith in our election process”.
Australia’s special envoy on antisemitism Jillian Segal.Credit: Kate Geraghty
She added that she didn’t care about any of the criticisms of her claims.
“I’ve just been used to the media intentionally taking something I say and re-presenting it. Like ‘she hates black people’ or for COVID, ‘she wants your grandma to die’,” she said.
Fordham, a high-rating a Sydney presenter, repeatedly plugged the website selling tickets to Owens’ events and suggested claims of antisemitism against Owens related to one set of remarks.
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“Because it mentioned the word Hitler, someone at a later date then grabbed that piece of audio, they turned it into a story, and ever since you’ve had this allegation chasing you around, right?” Fordham asked.
However, Owens left the Daily Wire, the website founded by conservative Jewish commentator Ben Shapiro, in March, with Shapiro saying she had been “disgraceful” in her commentary on Israel.
Well-known US neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes said this week Owens was weakening the far right’s anti-Israel movement because she was “getting a lot of the facts wrong”.
Source Agencies
