Right-wing pastor and radio host Jesse Lee Peterson was joined last week by far-right activist Lauren Southern, who agreed with him that anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela was an evil man and that the current government in South Africa is “doing such a poor job” that it makes apartheid look good.
During Southern’s interview on the July 5 episode of Peterson’s show to promote her new white nationalist propaganda film “Farmlands,” which, among other things, presents a whites-only town as a possible solution to violence in South Africa, the duo began discussing their disdain for Nelson Mandela and whether they believed South Africa was better before apartheid was undone.
“Nelson Mandela was an evil man and when they brought him here to our country presenting him as a good person, I was saying ‘No. Nelson Mandela is head of the [African National Congress]. He’s not a good man. Do you agree with me that Nelson Mandela was an evil man?” Peterson asked.
“Well the fact that he introduced his opposition with 57 public bombings and was part of the Communist Party, I don’t think that’s an opinion. I think it’s an objective statement. If he had been white, or even Asian, or anything but black and during the time he was in, I think that there would be far more criticism,” Southern responded.
Later in the interview, Peterson said, “It seems to me people were better under apartheid than they are with what’s happening now.”
Southern seemed briefly surprised before she eventually argued that apartheid may seem better because the government in South Africa is “doing such a poor job.”
“That’s something that, of course, I feel like I can’t even give my opinion on. I would say under apartheid—just because things were better under apartheid does not mean apartheid was good. What it means is that the government now is doing such a poor job and socialism is so bad that it’s literally worse than apartheid,” Southern said.
