Background and career
Steven Blake Crowder ( ; born July 7, 1987) is an American-Canadian Christian Conservative comedian, political commentator, and media host. Early in his career, Crowder worked for Fox News and posted videos on conservative media platforms. He then began hosting Louder with Crowder, a daily political podcast and YouTube channel with commentary segments. It includes a recurring segment called Change My Mind, in which Crowder invites passers-by to converse. In December 2012, Crowder, present alongside Americans for Prosperity, was punched in the face at a demonstration in Michigan concerning the state's recently passed right-to-work law. Crowder's YouTube channel has been demonetized twice, first in 2019 after repeated use of racist and homophobic slurs. His channel was re-monetized after YouTube said Crowder addressed his behavior and content, and it was demonetized again in March 2021, with uploads suspended for a week, after violating YouTube's policy against advancing false claims about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. YouTube suspended the channel again for two weeks in October 2022 for violating its harassment, threats and cyberbullying policy. Crowder's show is on Rumble.
Crowder was born on July 7, 1987, in Detroit, Michigan, United States. He has an older brother named Jordan. His mother is French Canadian, and at the age of three, his family moved to Greenfield Park (now incorporated into Longueuil), a suburb of Montreal in Quebec, Canada, where he would live for the rest of his childhood. Crowder attended Centennial Regional High School in Greenfield Park, and at the age of 18, he moved back to the United States. Crowder attended two semesters at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont.
At age 12, he worked as a voice actor. His most well-known role was as the character Alan "The Brain" Powers on the children's television series Arthur, for its fifth and sixth seasons. He began performing stand-up comedy at age 17. He then acted in a number of films, including the role of Doug Moore in the 2009 movie To Save a Life. From 2009 to 2012, Crowder worked for Fox News. By 2009, Crowder regularly posted videos on politically conservative media, including Pajamas Media and later at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood. Crowder served as the master of ceremonies at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and generated some controversy with a rap video he premiered at CPAC 2012.
At a December 2012 protest, Crowder was punched repeatedly in the face by a union member who claimed he was acting in self defense after being pushed to the ground. Crowder and members of Americans for Prosperity were at a demonstration in Michigan concerning the state's recently passed right-to-work law. The incident began with an attempt by union activists to tear down the Americans for Prosperity tent, which was eventually successful. During the altercation, Crowder was punched several times by a union activist. Crowder posted an edited video of the incident to his YouTube channel that cut footage of the alleged assailant being pushed to the ground and getting back up, right before throwing the punches at Crowder. However, Fox News' broadcasts of the incident included footage of the man being pushed. The New York Times stated, "The same footage also shows that Mr. Crowder had his hand on that man's shoulder just before he tumbled to the ground, but, while the camera does not capture the whole sequence of events, it seems likely that the man was knocked to the ground as members of the two sides pushed against one other, not shoved down by Mr. Crowder." Crowder later released an unedited copy of the video. An AFL–CIO spokesman, Eddie Vale, stated that the organization did not condone the tearing down of the Americans for Prosperity tent or the violence against Crowder and his group. In March 2013, Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III declined to press charges against anyone involved in the December 2012 altercation. According to Dunnings, his office was originally sent an edited version of the video of Crowder's altercation. However, upon reviewing the unedited version, the prosecutor's office decided not to pursue the case because the union member had acted in self-defense.
In October 2013, Fox News ended its relationship with Crowder. This was announced shortly after Crowder made negative statements about Fox News host Sean Hannity and about Fox News. In 2017, the Louder with Crowder program, featuring mainly comedic content and political commentary, became a daily program featured on Conservative Review's new streaming service, CRTV. On December 3, 2018, CRTV merged with Glenn Beck's TheBlaze, where Crowder was hosted until December 2022, alongside his YouTube channel, which has existed since 2009. "Change My Mind" is a regular segment conducted by Crowder in which he sits at a table with a sign including the phrase "Change My Mind" and invites people walking by, often students at a university campus, to change his mind on a controversial subject. A photograph of Crowder seated behind a sign in February 2018 reading "Male Privilege is a Myth | Change My Mind" outside the Texas Christian University campus became an Internet meme. Variations of the meme often feature humorously controversial statements in place of "Male Privilege is a Myth", such as "Pineapple goes on pizza". In 2018, Rebecca Lewis wrote a piece for Data and Society asserting that Crowder (and several other Rightist online personalities) were part of an online social network radicalizing people to the Far Right known as the Alternative Influence Network. Crowder and Carl Benjamin made a response video to Lewis’s piece. Francesca Tripodi, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that Crowder is "very popular, especially among young, conservative voters". Lewis told Bloomberg News that while Crowder does not directly express white nationalist views, his channel "has some of the most overt racism of any of the shows I've looked at". Crowder's channel faced similar criticism after he described CBS reporter Betty Yu's face as "aggressively Asian", with CBS and KPIX-TV condemning what they described as the "horrific, racist comments" and "demeaning Asian stereotypes" on his show.
Crowder's show has also seen success on Apple's podcast list, having remained on the top 100 list over the course of 2020. On YouTube, the Louder with Crowder podcast has 5.94 million subscribers and his secondary channel CrowderBits has approximately 1.21 million subscribers. In January 2022, Crowder accused Wikipedia of being biased towards the Left. On September 11, 2025, Crowder claimed to receive a leaked e-mail from an officer at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that the gun casings of Charlie Kirk's shooter had "engraved wording on them expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology." He would later report that his company was being subpoenaed over the leak from ATF. In July 2026, Crowder released a video entitled “The Case for Fascism”. In the video, Crowder said fascist violence throughout history has been necessary to force elected socialists and communists out of office. Crowder claimed that Augusto Pinochet “cleaned up [Chile]” economically and that under Pinochet's rule, “If you weren’t a communist, you weren’t at great risk.” Crowder said that fascism was an appropriate response to the spread of communism, and suggested that the United States needed fascism to stop communists from “trying to destroy the country.” Crowder additionally said “And just to be clear, this does not mean that I am supportive of or justifying everyone in the fascist response. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m trying to provide you with some historical context.”
