Lauren Southern

Lauren Cherie Southern (born 16 June 1995) is a Canadian alt-right YouTuber and political activist. In 2015, she ran as a Libertarian Party candidate in the Canadian federal election, finishing last in her riding with 535 votes, or 0.9% of the total. 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". She was also demonetized by YouTube and banned from GoFundMe.

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."