Lauren Southern, aged 29, is nostalgic for the great outdated days.
In a 17-minute video posted by Tenet Media 5 months in the past titled “My Home Town’s Been Destroyed,” the Canadian-born darling of sure far-right corners of the web takes viewers to Surrey, B.C., illustrated by hovering drone photographs of single household properties backdropped by the Fraser River. Mentally, Southern invitations them again to the idyllic mid-Nineties when, as she recollects, the famously various Vancouver suburb nonetheless had immigration, “but you know, we all spoke the language — generally integrated,” she says.
“There were still pockets you could live in, where it was a real community,” she says.
The video is a product of the model Southern has been steadily constructing for years out of plaid, woodsy photoshoots and excessive takes on Canada, packaged in shiny influencer seems. She’s used her expertise as a Canadian to place herself as an skilled on the nation’s demise, after which using that gig to some fairly severe far-right success. However she’s not the one one to seemingly notice that whenever you’re below the gun to supply countless hours of content material, Canada’s descent right into a “hellscape,” as one researcher put it, is straightforward shorthand.
An enormous highlight has been placed on the now-defunct Tenet Media channel following allegations in a U.S. Justice Division indictment that the corporate took cash from Russia to fund a secure of right-wing YouTubers — that included Southern — who then recorded movies that infected social dysfunction and favoured the Russian view of the conflict in Ukraine. However because the world grappled with whether or not these influencers — a who’s who of the far-right influencer world — had ties to the Kremlin, researchers seen one thing else about their geopolitical leanings. They don’t appear to love Canada a lot.
In fact, opinions about Canada’s demise will differ, however for some influencers — Canadian and American — it appears to transcend making an argument. In some instances, Canada appears to operate as an idea, a cautionary story, a funhouse mirror for an American-leaning viewers; it’s a helpful goal for taking goal in any respect the perceived ills of left-wing politics. The technique is clearly a knock on Canada’s popularity overseas, however because of an more and more borderless right-wing media area, it additionally signifies that a distorted model of the nation sloshes again into real-world Canada, probably shifting Canadians’ views of their very own nation.
Because the lone Canadian within the supergroup, Southern’s movies concentrate on Canada probably the most straight. In her Surrey video, the footage shortly shifts to scenes of non-white protesters yelling, taking pictures off fireworks and burning flags. Two males in turbans stroll down a sidewalk. As a ham-handed criticism of a sure sort of non-white immigration, it’s not precisely delicate.
Southern’s viewers is probably going predominantly American, researchers say, and the way in which she drops within the odd explainer of Canadian ideas for People suggests she is aware of it, too. Nonetheless, as a Canadian who has risen quick within the on-line far-right world, considered one of her particular areas of experience is, properly, Canada.
“Their videos will talk about what is happening in Canada, like the U.S. has to be careful so that it doesn’t fall into the same course of action,” Eviane Leidig, creator of “The Women of The Far Right: Social Media Influencers and Online Radicalization”, says of each Southern and fellow Canadian and Tenet founder Lauren Chen. Elevating the alarm about their dwelling nation has been a successful technique with regards to breaking into the bigger, and rather more profitable, American-centric far-right media area. “They also tend to play up what are some differences in Canada, as a warning for their U.S. audiences.”
As a rustic that has, in recent times, labored to construct a worldwide popularity on friendliness and feminism, it “offers an excellent boogeyman, an example of what happens when those policies are pursued,” says Aengus Bridgman, the director of McGill College and the College of Toronto’s Media Ecosystem Observatory. To not point out, “Canada is the country that Americans are most familiar with, other than their own.”
Whereas Southern didn’t reply to the Star’s requests for remark, she rejected the concept that her movies for Tenet — and Tenet’s work basically — had been notably involved with Canada whereas testifying earlier than a Home of Commons committee in late November. “I was the only Canadian commentator and the only host that consistently discussed Canadian issues,” she informed the MPs who had summoned her to reply questions on her position, if any, within the alleged scheme cited within the U.S. indictment.
“In fact, if the company had any creative control over me, which they didn’t, they probably would have asked me to stop making Canadian videos, since they didn’t perform very well.”
However as half of a bigger dive into Tenet’s output, Bridgman and his workforce grew to become all in favour of how usually Canada was introduced up by its three largest influencers. That included Tim Pool, David Rubin and Benny Johnson, all American heavyweights within the right-wing podcasting world, with social media followers within the low thousands and thousands throughout a number of platforms and a excessive stage of on-line engagement.
Seems Canada was a sizzling subject of dialog. To determine simply how sizzling, Bridgman and his workforce not too long ago collected and transcribed the 1,951 podcast episodes produced by Pool, Rubin and Johnson on their very own channels over the course of just about two years, ending in late September 2024, simply after the U.S. indictment charged two staff of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet.
The workforce then seemed for any point out of Canada, locations in Canada or Canadian politicians, to try to get a way of their common notion of the Nice White North. What they discovered was that conversations coalesced round a predictable record of matters and had a “high degree of negativity.”
In line with their evaluation, roughly 1 / 4 of the episodes examined talked about Canada, for a complete of 1,115 “distinct discussions” associated to the nation, nearly half of which have been deemed adverse. Whereas the influencers and their visitors “only rarely” have something good to say, it’s notable, the evaluation says, that “discussions about Canada in relation to immigration and social justice issues are overwhelmingly negative in tone.”
The largest fish at Tenet might have been Benny Johnson, one of the crucial prolific right-wing podcasters within the U.S., says Bridgman. Johnson is a former author for Buzzfeed who made a popularity for having a nostril for viral information earlier than getting fired for plagiarism. He then rebounded as a contributor to conservative web sites and his podcast, the Benny Present, hovers across the high 100 on the Apple politics podcast charts in each the U.S. and Canada.
Within the lead-up to the election, Johnson took to his podcast to muse whether or not Kamala Harris’ temporary childhood stint in Montreal ought to disqualify her as a presidential candidate.
The truth that Harris had been raised with “Canadian standards” could possibly be a legal responsibility, his co-host, Canadian YouTuber David Freiheit, responded. “It might explain why she wants to come and import some of that Canadian stuff and get your mandatory buy backs of guns in America, which is also known as confiscation,” he added.
“She’s importing Commi-Canadian principles of firearm ownership.”
One other influencer with Tenet was Dave Rubin who has constructed a profession as a former lefty who noticed the sunshine — he now classifies progressivism as a “mental disorder,” in a tweet from 2020.
On a Could episode of his podcast, the Rubin Report, which manufacturers itself as “smart and honest conversations about current events, political news and the culture war,” Rubin brings up Jordan Peterson, the psychologist turned on-line commentator who’s arguably probably the most well-known Canadian far-right influencer.
Peterson, Rubin says, was mad a couple of Canadian invoice that might punish folks for utilizing the fallacious pronoun — “meaning, if you’re walking down the street and you say ‘hello, sir,’ and it turns out to be a woman, you could be fined or put in jail.” (Whereas Invoice C-16, handed in 2016, means you’ll be able to’t discriminate primarily based on “gender identity or expression” below the Canadian Human Rights Act, most specialists say incorrect pronoun use is unlikely to rise to the extent of against the law.)
“The line I often quote with Jordan on this is that Trudeau lies about everything,” Rubin says within the YouTube video, stabbing the air with a black sharpie pen for emphasis. “It’s very similar to Gavin Newsom,” he continues, evaluating Trudeau to the democratic governor of California, a historically progressive stronghold.
“Everything about him is a lie, he is an avatar that is here to push in authoritarian evil under the guise of progressive goodness.”
Then there’s Tim Pool, a former host who lined protests around the globe for Vice earlier than branching out along with his personal podcasts which have veered into conspiracy with matters like election fraud and the deep state.
Final 12 months, Pool introduced on his podcast that he wished to debate the Toronto principal who had allegedly died by suicide after launching a lawsuit in opposition to the Toronto District College Board claiming it didn’t assist him when he was accused of racism throughout a coaching session. “There’s this woke principal who just took his own life because a woker person accused him of not being woke enough and thus he was racist,” Pool defined it, sporting his trademark black toque.
“I’m not sure that enough people are sort of paying attention to what happens north,” the co-host says, pointing on the ceiling. “It trickles down, if it hasn’t already got to New York state, California, but it’s madness in Canada and it’s not clear that people in the States are very aware of it.”
The concept Canada is a “horrible place to live” is vaguely associated to the extra mainstream “Canada is broken” messaging widespread in some political circles, argues Nate Erskine-Smith, the Liberal MP for Seashores—East York says. However Southern’s content material, which focuses on what she describes because the harms attributable to immigration in Canada, takes it additional.
Southern, for instance, performed a giant position in mainstreaming the good alternative principle, says Leidig, the author who researched girls on the far proper. Whereas the assumption that white folks have been being intentionally changed was as soon as thought-about a fringe concept, it has since metastasized right into a supply of inspiration for right-wing assaults in locations like Christchurch, New Zealand and Buffalo, New York.
The concept has additionally dug in nearer to dwelling. In 2022, Abacus Information performed a ballot that discovered that 37 per cent of Canadians surveyed agreed with the false assertion that “there is a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native born Canadians with immigrants who agree with their political views.”
(When pressed on this perception on the committee listening to, Southern stated she didn’t suppose it was an “insane concept,” including that “I think you could ask people in Brampton or individuals in Surrey what they think about the language being spoke around them, whether it’s a Canadian language whatsoever, whether they feel that their culture is being preserved.”)
The concentrate on immigration helps clarify why there appear to be a disproportionate share of Canadians lively in far-right media circles, she provides, because it appears to supply a aggressive benefit when it comes to talking to the tradition conflict that grips the far proper. Early of their careers, each Southern and Chen have been speaking about how Canadian society was, of their view, simply “so polite and unwilling to see the pitfalls of diversity.”
However whereas the far-right on-line ecosystem may be funded and dominated by People, the concepts it promotes about Canada nonetheless have a means of trickling again throughout the border, because of the shared tradition between the 2 nations, specific the place younger folks and social media are involved.
Being inundated with content material that makes use of Canada for example of failure impacts how we see ourselves, says Stephanie Carvin, an affiliate professor at Carleton College and former nationwide safety analyst. Persons are extra more likely to assign xenophobic causes to immigration points, she says, pointing to the current uptick in anti-South Asian racism.
“I’m not saying that all of that is from the Americans, or that there isn’t an internal hate movement in Canada,” she says. However among the arguments in opposition to immigration really feel acquainted, she says. She factors to the current anti-immigration rally in Hamilton, the place a small group of masked protesters held up banners studying “mass deportation now” outdoors a downtown mall.
“That’s a good example of the carry-over.”
Erskine-Smith says fringe concepts on-line are beginning to have an effect on actual Canadians. He factors to theories just like the World Financial Discussion board is corrupt or that the elites are attempting to make folks eat bugs as examples of conspiracies that have been born in fringe web circles however have made their means into the actual world, and have now been pushed by politicians.
Whereas he stresses it’s essential for folks to have freedom of speech, there’s a distinction between that and what he calls “freedom of reach.” In different phrases, folks ought to be capable of say what they need, however they aren’t entitled to a social media algorithm that reinforces concepts which are extra emotional or inflammatory within the hopes of boosting advert income.
He factors to a John Quincy Adams speech about how rhetoric can be utilized for good or evil: “Rhetoric is simply a tool, it can be used for good, it can be used for terrible ends,” he says. Should you imagine that somebody is utilizing speech for dangerous functions, the reply is to not police it, however to get higher at utilizing it as a software for extra optimistic outcomes, he argues. Within the digital age, when extra individuals are residing life on-line, which may appear like constructing higher on-line areas with higher neighborhood requirements, he says.
However because the stays of Tenet Media proceed to be sifted by means of for any clues as to what proper influencers are saying and why — to not point out, why Russia might have taken discover — Southern is undeterred.
“I think I speak for the majority of Canadians,” in her look earlier than Canadian lawmakers. “I think I speak for people who don’t have a voice in this government. I think I speak for people who feel they have been censored and shut up for too long by the mainstream media,” she stated. “I’m proud of it.”
