I’ve always seen Lauren Southern (X, Substack) as the original right-wing egirl. While they are a dime a dozen today, and the act has grown pathetically stale, a decade ago it was a fresh thrill to be an online rightoid and see a pretty young girl telling you what you wanted to hear about feminism and Muslim immigration. There had been Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, but they were a bit older and more established, and their relationships with the conservative audience were mediated by TV networks and book publishers. The egirl was directly yours. You could like her posts, leave comments, and, if so inclined, even harass her with non-stop DMs. The audience’s reaction was embedded in the creation of her work.
Lauren eventually dropped off my radar, though I would occasionally see right-wingers seethe about something she said or did. When her memoir This Is Not Real Life was released, I heard good things and decided to check it out.
Though I was involved with a more intellectual crowd, I ended up seeing parallels between her story and mine. If you’re a thoughtful person with a conscience, you eventually realize that conservative politics and media are corrupt to their core. Lauren writes about low journalistic and fundraising ethics, how English street thugs framed their activities as “defending Western civilization,” and even how her old friends didn’t seem to care when she was allegedly raped by Andrew Tate. Her story is a reminder that they were like this before Trump, though he has obviously made it much worse.
Today, Lauren joined me for a livestream where we discussed all that and more. I ask how she’s holding up now, how much what is said online bothers her, the fears she had of going to jail during the Tenet media investigation, and whether her realization about the flaws of right-wingers has made her question the wisdom of right-wing political views.
I was particularly entertained hearing her describe the story of Tommy Robinson. Here is an English hoodlum who once sold cocaine out of his tanning salon, and by making up things about local Muslims, including an underage boy, he would be championed by Elon Musk and other prominent right-wing figures as a persecuted dissident. After Lauren’s experience with Tate, she became the target of attacks, including by Milo Yiannopoulos, who was paid by Tate to go after her and say that she was sleeping with men so they would write articles for her.
I enjoyed the part of our conversation where I asked Lauren whether her experiences made her more sympathetic to feminism. Everywhere she appears to go, men in right-wing spaces are either trying to sleep with her or engaging in attacks related to her sexual behavior. She mentions growing up in an Evangelical background, amidst a high-trust community where she felt safe around men. I reflected on how different this sounds from the way that leftists portray the culture of conservative Christians, where they assume abuse and hypocrisy are rampant but hidden. I also bring up the story of Roger Ailes, as reported on in The Loudest Voice in the Room (review here). It almost seems as if the entire conservative movement at the top is just predators and grifters sucking up and victimizing the most naive members of the public.
It was a fun discussion, and, despite the setbacks she has faced, I hope that Lauren’s time as a public figure isn’t over yet.
Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.
