The YouTuber Who Gave Out Beers On Invasion Day Doesn’t Think The Backlash Is “Acceptable”
Luke Erwin claimed the free beers were just to "raise awareness for their day, for their rights and that," but eventually apologised while simultaneously promoting his OnlyFans.
Aussie YouTuber, Luke Erwin, has faced serious backlash over his decision to rock up to a Brisbane Invasion Day event just to hand out free beer to attendees.
Documented in his ‘Giving out cases of beers on Australia Day (got arrested)‘ video, Erwin filmed himself purchasing about “six hunge” ($600) worth of beer to give out at the rally in order to “raise awareness for their day, for their rights and that”.
At the bottle shop prior to the Invasion Day event, Erwin shared his master plan: “We’re gonna buy like, fucking, beers, beers and chuck ’em in the van, rock up and go ‘we’re giving back to you cunts, yeah, yeah yeah’.”
“It’ll be quick as fuck though, like ‘who wants free beers!’,” he continued. “Just giving back to the Aboriginal people, and if the cops shut us down they can suck my fucking dick.”
y'all see the bs of 'influencer' Luke Erwin rocking up with a van full of grog to hand out to mob at Invasion Day protests yesterday, then filming fights that happened for his instragram and youtube….
— Keeks (@keeks_1996) January 27, 2021
After purchasing the 14 cases of beer, Luke Erwin headed straight to the Invasion Day event and begun to hand out the slabs to Aboriginal people in the park. As he was handing out the alcohol, Erwin’s cameraman panned over to a brawl that broke out in the crowd, while an older Indigenous woman is heard telling the YouTuber to “get out of here, now”.
“Get out of here now, you fucking listen now. Get out,” the elder is heard saying as she forcefully shuts Erwin’s car boot. “Hey, [the boot is] automatic. Leave that. I’m just trying to give back to the people,” he ignorantly replies. “I don’t give a shit,” she says again.
Erwin eventually leaves the park after realising he is no longer welcome, but on his way out also urges attendees to follow him if they’re still keen for free alcohol. As he pulled onto the side of the road to continue passing out the beer, the oblivious YouTuber begun to question the “why the fuck are they so upset over there, bro?”
As the vlog continued, it showed that police eventually approached Erwin after they received reports that he had been handing out alcohol to minors. After denying these claims, Erwin again explained that he was just “raising awareness for their day… I’m raising awareness in the Australian history, and using my platform to do so — and I fucking can do that.”
After Luke Erwin shared his video to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, he rightfully faced backlash for just how insensitive his video was.
“You never did this ‘out of the goodness of your heart or trying to give back to the community’ you did this because you give zero fucks about Indigenous communities or their people. You done this for views,’ one comment read. “You have a huge platform – using it to highlight to our First Nations peoples voices. I don’t see any constructive activism in this video what so ever,” read another.
But most criticism focused on Luke Erwin’s choice to distribute alcohol, of all things, and his decision to share footage of the fight that broke out, which, as one commenter noted, just “adds to our stereotypes and stigmas that we are trying to break down and challenge.”
As Bizzi Lavelle writes in her ‘How To Be An Effective Ally On Invasion Day‘ article, a big part of being a good ally on Invasion Day is actually listening to what Indigenous people have to say.
“If you’re asked to do something by the organisers of the rally, do it. It’s important you listen to the Mob and their requests and fulfil them. The rally isn’t about you, or your comfort (or discomfort),” Lavelle writes. “If you show up to the rallies and do the opposite of what mob and organisers have asked, you are not going to be taken seriously as an ally, you will just be annoying.”
So if Erwin really wanted to use his platform to “raise awareness for the day”, he could’ve easily boosted Bla(c)k voices and shared links to donations on his social media. Or, if he really was keen on attending an event, Erwin could’ve easily taken part in the rally, joined a protest, or handed out essential items to the Indigenous attendees — like water and and food, not slabs of beer.
Having broken up a serious road rage incident the day prior, Erwin took to his Instagram story to vent his frustrations about the backlash he was receiving.
“What I wanted to share with you guys is that you can do something so good, get so much positive feedback, and then 24 hours later every cunt is having a sook about ‘the culture’, giving out fucking beers,” he complained. “Honestly, it’s not fucking acceptable.”
“Take the free piss, take the free money, and fucking enjoy it. I’m here to enjoy my life, I’m here to not make any cunt happy,” Erwin continued. “This is the moral of the story: You can’t make every cunt happy. If you’re trying to live life doing that, fuck that.”
Deleting those stories, the YouTuber then shared photos of similar stunts where he gave out alcohol and clarified that he has “never been racist” but is “standing by” what he did.
“I’m standing by what I did yesterday. Yeah there’s alcoholism, there’s troubles in the community,” Erwin said. “I’ve spent thousands of dollars of giving away shots to the public, cases of beer and stuff, and then I just get fucking turned on. Fuck every cunt.”
Finally settling on his final stance on the matter, Luke Erwin then finally apologised and acknowledged that what he did was wrong.
“Just here to apologise, just spoke to a few sports stars and high-up Indigenous people with big influences, learned a lot shit today and I just want to say I apologise for all the stuff,” Erwin said on his story. “It was a very big misunderstanding, but I’m gonna put my hand up right now and um, it was against the culture and I fucked up.”
However, while the YouTuber shared that he removed the videos from Instagram and Facebook, Erwin explained that he would be keeping the video up on YouTube “because I’m trying to build my algorithm up and it takes a lot of fucking work to do that”.
“We do fuck up in life. It was fucking misunderstood, and it was on a pretty important day. I’ve now got a lot more knowledge,” Erwin said before urging everyone to subscribe to his OnlyFans.
“To anyone I’ve offended, whatever it is, please fucking, take this apology. If not, all good,” he ended his apology. “Everyone have a good day and make sure you, fucking, like always, ‘like’ Luke Erwin always. Subscribe to my OnlyFans, link in bio.”
Junkee reached out to Luke Erwin for comment. He did not respond by time of publication.