Lauren Southern

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.[2][21] Her first video, "Why I Am Not A Feminist", appeared on the website in April 2015.[23] She worked regularly with Milo Yiannopoulos and Faith Goldy while at Rebel Media and made multiple videos with both of them.[21][27]

In October 2016, Southern had 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.[28][29]

In December 2016, Southern self-published a short book Barbarians: How Baby Boomers, Immigrants, and Islam Screwed My Generation.[27][30] 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."[27] Barbarians gained a cover endorsement from Ann Coulter.[23]

In March 2017, Southern announced she would be leaving The Rebel Media to become an independent journalist.[31] In the same month, she gained access to White House press briefings.[32][33]

Southern is against multiculturalism.[34] She has called the Black Lives Matter movement a "terrorist organisation", and a "divisive, violent movement that has fascistic tendencies", which she has (falsely) claimed has caused more deaths in 30 years than the Ku Klux Klan.[35]

She has asked whether a multicultural society would require "witch doctors" at medical conferences,[36] and has claimed that "multiculturalism will inevitably fail unless 50 per cent of the population believes in Western culture".[37] New Matilda reported that the core theme of her 2018 speaking tour of Australia was the claim "multiculturalism doesn't work".[38] On the tour, she caused controversy for publicly criticizing an "Asian only" room-share advert that she had photographed and called it "extremely tribalistic".[39] This was an attempt to highlight the supposed failure of multiculturalism, by suggesting that it produced a form of "segregation".[39]

Influenced by the French political writer Renaud Camus, Southern is known for her promotion of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which posits that non-white immigration of Muslims will lead to a "genocide" of white Europeans.[7][9][14][15][40][41] She released a YouTube video under this title in July 2017[7] which received more than 686,000 views[42] and was credited with helping to promote a white nationalist viewpoint.[7] By August 2020, the video could only be accessed privately on Southern's home channel.[8] She has described the theory as: "You have one people and in the space of one generation you have a different people".[27]

Southern has defended the American neo-Nazi Richard B. Spencer, who has advocated violence against nonwhites 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."[11][23][43][44] Spencer has praised Southern's videos.[2]

Southern has been described as a proponent of the white genocide conspiracy theory.[14][15][16][45] 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.[46][47][48][25] While producing the documentary, Southern worked with Charlottesville Unite the Right rally attendee Simon Roche,[49] a spokesperson for the ethnonationalist (Völkisch) Afrikaner organization Suidlanders,[50] an organization which predicts a race war.[51]

In May 2017, Southern, along with Martin Sellner and Brittany Pettibone,[52] took part in an attempt organized by the Identitarian group Génération identitare 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.[4][11] 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 disembark from Libyan shores on unsafe makeshift rafts, and bring them to Sicily.[11][53] Regarding her actions, Southern stated: "if the politicians won't stop the boats, we'll stop the boats."[11][27]

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".[54][55] 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.[56]

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."[57] In May 2019, Southern released a YouTube documentary, Borderless, about the refugee and migrant crisis.[6] The film was temporarily taken down by YouTube.[58][59]

Southern said transgender people have a "genuine delusion" adding "It’s body dysmorphia and that is a mental illness".[60] She criticised legal recognition for changing one's gender, because people doing so might be "dishonest".[35]

Southern has spoken in opposition to feminism[61] and has said that women are "not psychologically developed to hold leadership positions",[46] and "not going to be as great being CEOs".[60]

In June 2015, Southern reported on the Vancouver SlutWalk, a protest march of sexual assault survivors, for The Rebel Media. She said her protest sign stating "There Is No Rape Culture in the West", was torn up.[62] She shouted to the protest in response: "Go to Africa and you will see a real rape culture!".[2][63][64] In third world countries, she said, "men can get away with rape". According to Southern: "It's insane to focus on this one issue and say that we are living in a rape culture. Men are getting fired from their jobs just for making rape jokes - not raping". A protestor from a Canadian rape crisis centre told her fewer than an estimated 10% of rapes are reported.[62] In White Noise (2020), a documentary on the white nationalist movement, she says: "Gang rape is an inherently democratic process. It’s nine people voting against one and what they want to do".[44]

In February 2018, Southern, along with Pettibone and Caolan Robertson, distributed flyers in the English town of Luton describing Allah as "gay", as part of a "social experiment" video.[75]

In March 2018, Southern was denied entry to the United Kingdom while waiting in Calais. It was reported that Southern was due to meet Austrian Martin Sellner and his American partner, Pettibone, both far-right activists, while the three of them were in Britain; the couple were deported from Britain a few days earlier.[27][76] Southern was questioned under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.[75] Her denial of entry was due to her intentions during her visit.[75][76][77][78][79]

Tucker Carlson of Fox News, describing Southern and the others as "reporters", invited Katie Hopkins onto his programme to defend them against supposed political correctness responsible for their non-admission.[80][81]

Before her period of residency in Australia during her brief retirement and afterwards, Southern planned a speaking tour of Australia in July 2018. Australia's Department of Home Affairs denied Lauren Southern an Electronic Travel Authority visa, saying it was "not a working visa".[82] She intended to charge $79 for a basic ticket and up to $749 for an "intimate dinner".[83] The Australian government allowed her to enter the country once she had the correct visa.[84] Arriving at Brisbane airport, she was wearing an "It's OK to be white" shirt.[61][85]

When she asked people on the street in Melbourne "Should we kill Lauren Southern?", many had never heard of her.[86] A speaking event in Melbourne was opposed by more than 100 protestors.[87]

There were no protestors at her event in Sydney, where ticket holders were notified of the venue by receiving a text on the day.[88] The Sydney event included a $200 meet-and-greet, a $500 VIP meet-and-greet and a $750 dinner.[89]

In Brisbane, Southern mentioned bombing the Australian city of Melbourne, citing and expanding upon the Bible story about finding good people in Sodom and Gomorrah. She ended: "We did find a few hundred good ones there — there is a silent majority I believe in Melbourne so we can’t nuke it yet guys I’m sorry."[90] She was opposed by around 60 protesters.[91]

In July 2018, Southern applied for a travel visa to visit New Zealand for a speaking tour with Canadian podcaster and YouTuber Stefan Molyneux. Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway described their views as "repugnant", but said they met immigration character requirements and cleared their entry.[92] The pair had not secured a venue, as Auckland Council had cancelled their initial booking, citing health and safety concerns.[93] The pair briefly cancelled and then resumed the tour over difficulties with the venue.[94][95][96] The subsequent booking of a private venue was revoked by its owners.[97] In retaliation, their venue was vandalised.[98] The failure to find a venue was celebrated by around 1,000 protestors, who said the planned event had nothing to do with freedom of speech. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said New Zealand is "hostile" to the views of the speakers and, "I think you'll see from the reaction they've had from New Zealanders that their views are not those that are shared by this country, and I'm quite proud of that".[99]

In August 2018, the Mayor of Auckland Phil Goff tweeted that Council venues should not be used to "stir up ethnic or religious tensions", and that "we've got no obligation at all" to provide a venue for hate speech.[13][100] For agreeing with the cancellation, an MP received threats of violence.[101]

Tāmaki Anti Fascist Action spokesperson Sina Brown-Davis said her group feared "dehumanising depictions of indigenous people" in New Zealand.[102] Molyneux had called Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people "the lowest rung of civilisation".[103]

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson added, "Aotearoa does not stand for your messages of racism, hatred and especially white supremacy".[104] Justice Minister Andrew Little said the speakers "clearly have misled people" in trying to secure the venue.[36] TV personality Te Hamua Nikora said the pair were against multiculturalism, unlike New Zealand.[105] The minimum ticket price for the cancelled Auckland event was $99.[106]

On 2 June 2019, Southern announced her retirement from political activism in her website. She stated that her reasons for leaving were that she needed to move on and find fulfillment in a more private capacity.[111] On 19 June 2020, Southern announced in a YouTube video her return and new plans, expressing some remorse for her previous hardline stances.[6] Daniel Lombroso, in his article for The Atlantic, was skeptical of her change saying "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."[2]