Background and career
Lauren Cherie Southern (born 16 June 1995) is a Canadian YouTuber, influencer and political activist who rose to prominence through alt-right political commentary. Southern worked for Rebel Media until March 2017, when she began to work independently. In May 2017, Southern supported Defend Europe in their efforts to obstruct search-and-rescue operations of refugees from North Africa in the Mediterranean Sea. Southern was briefly detained by the Italian Coast Guard for blocking a ship embarking on a search-and-rescue mission. Consequently, crowdfunding website Patreon removed her from the platform, accusing her of engaging in activity "likely to cause loss of life". Some academics and journalists have described Southern as a white nationalist for her promotion of the Great Replacement and white genocide conspiracy theories, though she has denied being a white nationalist. Southern promoted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory via her YouTube video of the same name, released in July 2017; the video was reported to have helped to promote the white nationalist viewpoint, having garnered over 600,000 views by March 2019. She has been described as an advocate of the white genocide conspiracy theory for her documentary Farmlands (2018), in which she suggested the imminence of a race war in South Africa in response to South African farm attacks. In July 2018, she visited Australia for a speaking tour with Stefan Molyneux; that August, the pair visited New Zealand intending on continuing the speaking tour, but this was cancelled after local government withdrew its permission to use a government-run venue. Southern announced her retirement from political activism on 2 June 2019, but returned to YouTube on 19 June 2020. As of 2021, she is a contributor for Sky News Australia. She has rejected the "far-right" label and said she is not a racist, preferring to be described as a conservative. In 2019, when making such denials to a journalist from The Times of London, Southern "end[ed] their conversation by predicting a race war."
Southern was born in Surrey, British Columbia. She studied political science at the University of the Fraser Valley, but Southern left after two years. On 18 October 2015, Southern was a candidate in the 2015 Canadian federal election representing the Libertarian Party in the district of Langley–Aldergrove. She was briefly removed by the party as a candidate but was reinstated with support from Breitbart News and The Rebel Media. The election was won by Conservative candidate Mark Warawa. Southern finished last, receiving 535 votes, or 0.9% of the total.
Southern has been described as conservative, right-wing, alt-right, and far-right. Some academics and journalists have described Southern as a white nationalist, which she has denied. Southern also rejects the label "far-right", preferring to be described as a conservative. The Southern Poverty Law Center has characterized Southern's videos as "anti-feminist, xenophobic, Islamophobic diatribes" which "tiptoe at the precipice of outright white nationalism". She was interviewed by the London Times in 2019: "When we speak, Southern flatly denies being racist or even far right, then ends our conversation by predicting a race war and quoting Enoch Powell."
Before she left university, The Rebel Media founder Ezra Levant met Southern at a conference. He had been impressed by the questions she had asked the speakers and asked her to audition. She moved to Toronto to work in the website's offices. Her first video, "Why I Am Not A Feminist", appeared on the website in April 2015. She worked regularly with Milo Yiannopoulos and Faith Goldy while at Rebel Media and made multiple videos with both of them. In October 2016, Southern had some documentation of her gender legally changed to male as part of a video produced for The Rebel Media to show the ease of Ontario's new gender ID laws. In December 2016, Southern self-published a short book Barbarians: How Baby Boomers, Immigrants, and Islam Screwed My Generation. In the book, she wrote: "As far as I'm concerned, Hitler was just a SJW who happened to get freaky amounts of power and actually implement his #KillAllJews (the predecessor to #KillAllMen) worldview". According to her, Hitler "fawned over Muslims more sycophantically than Justin Trudeau." Barbarians gained a cover endorsement from Ann Coulter. In March 2017, Southern announced she would be leaving The Rebel Media. In the same month, she gained access to White House press briefings. She has appeared on Lana Lokteff's program Radio 3Fourteen. On 2 June 2019, Southern announced her retirement from political activism on her website. She stated that her reasons for leaving were that she needed to move on and find fulfillment in a more private capacity. On 19 June 2020, Southern announced in a YouTube video her return and new plans, expressing some remorse for her previous hardline stances. Daniel Lombroso, in his article for The Atlantic, was skeptical of her change, stating: "She kept telling me she had grown more 'compassionate,' but whenever I asked her pointedly if she regretted her past work, I got obfuscation and tactical apologies." She was interviewed by Tucker Carlson for an April 2023 film advocating for a US invasion of Canada. In September 2024, two Russian state media employees were charged with secretly funnelling almost $10 million to a Tennessee company for the production of political videos to benefit Russia by influencing the United States. The company's description matches that of Tenet Media, which had employed Southern and several right-wing influencers, although the Justice Department didn't allege wrongdoing by any of Tenet's influencers. Southern's content for Tenet focused on topics such as anti-white sentiment, residential school grave sites and Canada's housing crisis, as well as anti-LGBT content.
Southern is against multiculturalism. Her public statements vilifying immigrants caused controversy during her 2018 tour in Oceania. Southern has called the Black Lives Matter movement a "terrorist organisation", and a "divisive, violent movement that has fascistic tendencies". Influenced by the French political writer Renaud Camus, Southern promotes the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which posits that non-white immigration of Muslims will lead to a genocide of white Europeans. She released a YouTube video under this title in July 2017, which was credited with helping to promote a white nationalist viewpoint. By August 2020, the video could only be accessed privately on Southern's home channel. She has described the theory as: "You have one people and in the space of one generation you have a different people". Southern has defended the American neo-Nazi Richard B. Spencer, who has advocated for violence against non-whites on multiple occasions. Southern has said "Richard Spencer is not a white supremacist, he is a white nationalist. He believes in a white ethnostate, he doesn't believe in whites being superior." Spencer has praised Southern's videos. Southern has been described as a proponent of the white genocide conspiracy theory. In 2018, Southern produced a documentary called Farmlands which falsely claimed that racially motivated farm attacks in South Africa may represent an impending genocide, a common talking point for white nationalists. While producing the documentary, Southern worked with Charlottesville Unite the Right rally attendee Simon Roche, a spokesperson for the ethnonationalist (Völkisch) Afrikaner organization Suidlanders, an organization which predicts a race war. In August 2018 she was interviewed by Michael Savage where they discussed the topics raised by her documentary and her travels to South Africa.
In May 2017, Southern, along with Martin Sellner and Brittany Pettibone, took part in an attempt organized by the Identitarian group Génération identitaire to block the passage of an NGO ship, the Aquarius (co-owned by SOS Mediterranée and by Doctors without Borders), which was leaving Sicily for a search-and-rescue mission for ship-wrecked refugees and migrants off the shores of Northern Africa in the Mediterranean Sea. Claiming that the goal of the activists "was to stop an empty boat from going down to Libya and filling up with illegal migrants", Southern was briefly detained by the Italian Coast Guard. NGO ships often rescue migrants and refugees, who embark from Libyan shores on unsafe makeshift rafts, and bring them to Sicily. Regarding her actions, Southern stated: "if the politicians won't stop the boats, we'll stop the boats." Southern supported similar actions by Defend Europe, which chartered a vessel to track and stop what it claimed was collusion between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and human traffickers. In July 2017, Southern reported Patreon had deleted her account citing concerns about her "raising funds in order to take part in activities that are likely to cause loss of life". Southern denied these allegations, stating that Defend Europe's actions were likely to save lives and that none of her funding went towards the group. In November 2018, Southern released a video that appeared to show an NGO worker admitting that she had coached asylum seekers on how to speak to immigration officials in order to gain refugee status. BuzzFeed News reported that a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson said: "Greece has rigorous asylum procedures in place, within a robust legal framework." In May 2019, Southern released a YouTube documentary, Borderless, about the refugee and migrant crisis. The film was temporarily taken down by YouTube.
