Lauren Southern

Lauren Southern
Southern in 2016
Born
Lauren Cherie Southern

(1995-06-16) 16 June 1995 (age 29)
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Alma mater
OccupationPolitical activist[1]
Political partyLibertarian[needs update?]
Children1[2]
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2015–present
Subscribers711k[3]
Total views50 million[3]
100,000 subscribers2016
Last updated: August 31, 2024
Websitelaurensouthern.net Edit this at Wikidata

Lauren Cherie Southern (born 16 June[4] 1995) is a Canadian alt-right[a] YouTuber, political activist and commentator. In 2015, she ran as a Libertarian Party candidate in the Canadian federal election,[5] finishing last in her riding with 535 votes, or 0.9% of the total.[6] Southern worked for Rebel Media until March 2017, when she began to work independently.[2]

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.[7] Southern was briefly detained by the Italian Coast Guard for blocking a ship embarking on a search-and-rescue mission.[7] Consequently, crowdfunding website Patreon removed her from the platform, accusing her of engaging in activity "likely to cause loss of life".[8] She was also demonetized by YouTube and banned from GoFundMe.[9][10]

Some academics and journalists have described Southern as a white nationalist for her promotion of the Great Replacement and white genocide conspiracy theories,[b] though she has denied being a white nationalist.[2][11] Southern promoted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory via her YouTube video of the same name, released in July 2017;[12][13][14] the video was reported to have helped to promote the white nationalist viewpoint, having garnered over 600,000 views by March 2019.[12][15] 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.[16][17][18][19]

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.[20] Southern announced her retirement from political activism on 2 June 2019, but returned to YouTube on 19 June 2020.[2][21][22] As of 2021, she is a contributor for Sky News Australia.[11] She has rejected the "far-right" label and said she is not a racist,[23] preferring to be described as a conservative.[24] In 2019, when making such denials to a journalist from The Times of London, Southern "end[ed] their conversation by predicting a race war."[23]

  1. ^ Warren, Rossalyn (28 July 2017). "Europe's far-right pirates of the Mediterranean are targeting refugee rescue missions". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 26 August 2017. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
  2. ^ a b c d Cite error: The named reference lombroso was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b "About Lauren Southern". YouTube.
  4. ^ Southern, Lauren [@Lauren_Southern] (16 June 2017). "It's my birthday so the only thing I want to see in my notifications today are pictures of your pets or anime versions of politicians. TY" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 27 July 2017. Retrieved 27 July 2017 – via Twitter.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "Official Voting Results | British Columbia, Langley–Aldergrove | Forty-second General Election, 2015". www.elections.ca. Archived from the original on 15 August 2016. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  7. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Claxton2017 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ "Why Lauren Southern Got Banned From Patreon". Canadaland. 28 July 2017. Archived from the original on 25 January 2021. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference :3 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference :4 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ a b Hurst, Daniel (4 March 2021). "Mehreen Faruqi rejects request by far-right commentator Lauren Southern to apologise for tweet". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 28 March 2021. Retrieved 27 June 2021.
  12. ^ a b Williams, Thomas Chatterton (4 December 2017). "The French Origins of 'You Will Not Replace Us'". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 14 August 2019. Retrieved 7 August 2019.
  13. ^ Wilson, Jason (9 August 2020). "Lauren Southern is on the comeback trail, and Australian conservatives are all too happy to help". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 25 December 2020. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  14. ^ Robison-Greene, Rachel; Greene, Richard (2020). Conspiracy Theories: Philosophers Connect the Dots. Open Court. p. 88. ISBN 978-0812694833. Archived from the original on 5 April 2023. Retrieved 21 March 2023. Camus's notion of the Great Replacement has been spread by right-wing and white nationalist figures across the world. In July 2018, Lauren Southern, a Canadian alt-right figure posted, a video titled 'The Great Replacement' on YouTube that got over 250,000 views. (Punctuation error in the original.)
  15. ^ Miller, Nick (19 March 2019). "'The Great Replacement': an idea now at the heart of Europe's politics". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 24 January 2020. Retrieved 4 April 2019.
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYT20190506 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ Cite error: The named reference Indy20190316 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  18. ^ Gordon, Glenna (13 December 2018). "American Women of the Far Right". The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on 8 January 2021. Retrieved 6 January 2021. Southern made a film about 'white genocide' in South Africa, a conspiracy theory that was picked up by Tucker Carlson on Fox News and led President Trump to tweet about the subject.
  19. ^ Barthélemy, Hélène (12 April 2018). "Far-right YouTuber Lauren Southern banned from the U.K. speaks at European Parliament, spreads narrative of white genocide in South Africa". Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived from the original on 8 January 2021. Retrieved 6 January 2021. Southern has become a figurehead of the South African 'white genocide' narrative, after traveling to the country to produce a documentary on the murders of white farmers in the country.
  20. ^ Hatton, Emma (6 July 2018). "Far-right pair banned from speaking at Auckland Council venues – Phil Goff". Radio New Zealand. Archived from the original on 10 July 2019. Retrieved 9 July 2018.
  21. ^ Southern, Lauren (2 June 2019). "A New Chapter". Archived from the original on 3 June 2019. Retrieved 3 June 2019.
  22. ^ Graham, Ben (21 June 2020). "Alt-right activist Lauren Southern appears after a year offline, saying she's changed". The New Zealand Herald. Archived from the original on 21 June 2020. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  23. ^ a b Whyte, Lara (28 September 2019). "The women flying the flag for Generation Identity and far-right politics". The Times. Archived from the original on 24 February 2020. Retrieved 28 January 2022. 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.
  24. ^ Cite error: The named reference Metz was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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