Lindsay Lohan took to Instagram late Friday to show her followers a strange, apparently drunken encounter with a supposed refugee family that resulted in her facing accusations of attempted child abduction.
In a live video of the incident, Lohan can be seen approaching a family of four she described as Syrian refugees who had apparently been spending the night on the street in what seems to be Moscow. “Hey everyone, I just want to show you a family that I met, a Syrian refugee family that I’m really worried about. They really need help,” she said.
What happened next sent Twitter into an uproar over what many saw as Lohan’s “white savior complex,” with many questioning whether the family’s brown skin was the only thing that led her to label them “refugees.”
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Lohan, at times appearing to slur her words and attempting to speak Arabic, which the family did not understand, went from offering to put the children up in a hotel for the night, to suddenly accusing the family of “trafficking children” once they declined.
“You should not have them [your sons] on the floor, you should be a hard-working woman and you should be doing what you [can] for your children, so they have a better life,” she lectured the mother. “If someone is offering them a home and a bed, which is me at the moment, give it to them. They will come back to you,” she said.
As the family began walking down the street to try and escape her, she apparently tried to lure the children away from the parents she had now deemed “traffickers.”
“I won’t leave until I take you. Now I know who you are. Don’t fuck with me,” she can be heard saying in the video as she follows the family down the street. “You’re ruining Arab culture,” she tells the parents, presumably because they would not allow a strange white woman to take their children to an unknown location. “I’m with you, boys. Don’t worry,” she told the children.
The actress’s misguided “rescue” attempt only ended when the mother apparently had enough of the harassment.
As soon as Lohan appeared to get close enough to one of the children to grab them and said, “Give me your hand,” the mother turned around and socked her. Lohan then began crying into the camera and said, “I’m, like, in shock right now.”
Twitter users were almost unanimous in saying Lohan deserved what she got.
“Everyone’s cracking jokes about Lindsay Lohan trying to steal two Syrian refugee kids from their parents & getting punched in retaliation live on Instagram—but I’m actually outraged at her blatant white saviorism,” journalist Ghazala Irshad wrote. Lohan “generally exploits them to make herself feel better & look good to those watching,” Irshad wrote.
Arabic-speaking Twitter users were quick to note that whatever language Lohan was speaking was “gibberish,” not Arabic.
Others urged Lohan, who has a history of drug-related arrests and rehab stints, to “get help.”
As of Saturday afternoon, the actress had not yet commented on the incident.
Read it at The Independent
