theatlantic--2020-10-16--The Racist YouTube Star With No Regrets

The Racist YouTube Star With No Regrets

McInnes watched stonily as Southern joined the men .
“ Are you ever gon na have kids , give birth , are you going to be a mother ?
” he asked her .
“ Then I ’ ll give them my seat.
” The men laughed , and Southern , submitting to the last-minute ministrations of a makeup artist , laughed along—just one of the guys , with long , stick-straight blond hair and an off-the-shoulder , floral-print dress .
McInnes wasn ’ t quite finished yet .
“ If you ’ re not making humans , then fucking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who was joining him to talk about her documentary Farmlands , which focuses on the alleged persecution of white farmers in South Africa , gasped in faux horror .
Southern ’ s reporting for Farmlands had rippled through right-wing media—Trump would order Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “ closely study ” the issue—and McInnes , now finished with his commentary on gender roles , had Southern discuss her revisionist history .
In the 19th century , the Zulu people took the land that is now South Africa from another ethnic group , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just as responsible for apartheid as whites .
When McInnes brought the conversation closer to home , noting that white “ self-hatred ” is so rampant that he can ’ t even find South African wine at his local bar , Southern nodded .
“ The word racist just means nothing to me anymore , ” she said .
“ It ’ s been so overused , I just have no respect for the term.
” Southern finished on set and ordered an Uber to the airport for her flight home to Toronto @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phone rang .
It was McInnes .
Southern listened to him closely for a few seconds .
“ We shouldn ’ t be talking about this at all , ” she said , laughing uncomfortably .
Then her face tightened .
“ See , the thing is , because my moral compass tells me you have a wife and kids , it ’ s not even in my realm of consideration.
” McInnes , according to Southern , had just reiterated an offer he ’ d made the night before , when she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a group of other far-right friends : “ You know you want to fuck me , I ’ m your childhood hero.
” With a grimace , Southern hustled him off the phone .
She was speechless for a moment .
“ Send help , ” she said feebly .
“ Help.
” By the time Southern went on McInnes ’ s show , I had been following her for nearly a year .
I was making a documentary for The Atlantic about the white-nationalist movement , called White Noise .
I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Southern made to stay within a movement whose hatreds are prolific .
( Southern denies being a white nationalist . )
And I ’ d already become her confidante of sorts , too—I kept feeling compelled to remind her that I was a reporter .
“ Hey Daniel , in your honest opinion am I a little crazy ?
” she texted me once .
“ Do you think I ’ m irredeemable and can ’ t go back to a normal life ?
” Read : Four years embedded with the alt-right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It wasn ’ t the first time she ’ d expressed disenchantment with the alt-right , or at least some parts of it .
But it was always hard to know what Southern was really thinking , or how deeply committed she was to anything at all .
Her misgivings mostly revolved around the harassment she received from other members of her movement .
Signs of empathy for others flickered only intermittently .
“ You have to keep playing the game until you ’ re out of it , keep up the charade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the McInnes taping .
But it seemed likely that she was trying to play me , as well .
When I first got to know her , Southern was among YouTube ’ s most effective and sophisticated extremists—an alt-right propagandist who masqueraded as a run-of-the-mill influencer .
In one June 2017 post titled “ Ad Friendly Makeup Tutorial , ” she walks viewers through her skin-care routine , as electro-pop plays over cherry-colored graphics .
“ You want to use a beauty blender … and cover up all of your face ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ All right , we ’ re looking gorg.
” As she applies the finishing touch , red lipstick , her hand drifts from her mouth to her right cheek .
“ F … U … C … K , ” she slowly writes .
She switches to the left : “ I … S … L … A … M. ” She tosses back her blond hair and smiles : “ You ’ ve got this cute , ad-friendly makeup look , it ’ s super flirty.
” Her 7,000 commenters were thrilled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on fire !
” gushed a faceless avatar .
An admirer who went by “ Hubert ” jumped in : “ Trolling level : Elite Grandmaster.
” Southern , I came to learn , was also an adept troll in person .
In another YouTube video viewed nearly 3 million times , she pushes to the front of a crowd of sexual-assault survivors and activists in June 2015 in downtown Vancouver and lifts a Sharpie-painted placard : “ There is no rape culture in the West.
” As the marchers protest , Southern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and you will see a real rape culture !
” Janice Atkinson , a former far-right British member of the European Parliament—which Southern would be invited to address seven months after her appearance on McInnes ’ s show—told me that the young woman ’ s tools , among them a quick wit and good looks , made her the best spokesperson for the nationalist cause .
“ She can sell it better to my sons than I can sell it , ” Atkinson said .
Richard Spencer , the neofascist writer who coined @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , among other things , parsimony in praising his comrades , was also a fan of Southern ’ s videos .
“ They ’ re touching on that hot stuff , ” he told me once .
From the June 2017 issue : How Richard Spencer became an icon for white supremacists Southern was born in Surrey , British Columbia , one of Canada ’ s most racially and ethnically diverse cities .
In her private Christian elementary school , many of the students were ethnically Chinese , she told me , though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much attention to race .
Her father , though , began to feel like an outsider in his community , she said .
While Southern called her dad “ the least racist person I know , ” she said he felt frustrated walking into coffee shops to find that his Asian neighbors wouldn ’ t address him in English .
So when Lauren was in middle school , her father moved the family , which included her mother and her older sister , to Langley , one of greater Vancouver ’ s whitest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ middle-class upbringing .
One of her Bible-study friends , Kenzo Nishidate , who is half Japanese , described her as both nerdy and popular .
She ’ d go to weekend house parties with the cool girls from volleyball , then show up at school on Monday in a Marvel graphic T-shirt , excited about the latest League of Legends update .
Southern never cared much about her education .
She spent much of her free time reading the fantasy novels of J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert Jordan .
“ My grades @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I was always more interested in whatever book that I had picked up from the library than the one I was assigned in class.
” She says she was diagnosed with ADHD , but her parents didn ’ t want her to go on medication .
She planned to join the military after high school .
But then , as she described it , she found a fight worth waging , right at home .
One day in her social-justice class , the teacher asked everyone to separate by race and gender @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on one side , Black and brown on the other ; boys on one side , girls on the other .
The teacher turned to the female students of color : “ You ’ re oppressed.
” She pointed to the white kids—including Southern—and said two words that changed the course of her life : “ You ’ re privileged.
” ( Her teacher denies that this ever occurred . )
Southern told me she was incensed .
Her paternal grandfather had immigrated to Canada from Scandinavia with little money or knowledge of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ orphan .
Sure , her parents had raised her in one of Vancouver ’ s wealthiest suburbs , but they had earned it through “ hard work ” and “ assimilation.
” Plus , she was surrounded by “ rich Asian kids , ” who she believed enjoyed far more privilege than white girls like her .
Southern felt scapegoated when the class discussed topics like slavery or the ethnic cleansing of Indigenous Canadians .
Around the same time , her father turned her on to right-wing radio on their morning drives to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jock Michael Savage say things like Barack Obama was “ the most divisive , hateful president in American history .
He has isolated and marginalized the white male like never before.
” Southern began to read more widely , devouring books by Ann Coulter and Ayn Rand .
At night , she watched McInnes on her favorite late-night show , Fox ’ s Red Eye , where he expressed particular animus toward those who say they are victims of sexual harassment .
“ If your boss grabs your ass , and it doesn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t like it , quit , ” he asserted on one panel , which featured another guest , future National Security Adviser John Bolton .
Southern started to challenge her teachers about feminism , immigration , and Islam .
She gave an anti-global-warming presentation .
For a class assignment , Southern and a Jewish friend dressed up as Hitler and Mussolini , respectively , and afterward they went over to his house in full dictator regalia .
“ Good times !
” she recalled , laughing about this incident with another childhood @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being a contrarian .
She didn ’ t necessarily believe the things she said or did , she told me , but the power of making her teachers squirm was intoxicating .
Her rise to social-media stardom was meteoric .
Trump ’ s nativist presidential campaign coincided with the explosive expansion of the far-right media ecosystem .
The premiere outlet at the time , Breitbart News , was run by the future White House chief strategist Steve Bannon , and the Canadian media executive Ezra Levant had set out to create an equivalent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it Rebel Media and asked Southern to audition after meeting the young firebrand at an energy conference where she peppered the speakers with questions .
Southern , struggling at college while working as a cocktail waitress at a casino , seized the opportunity .
She raced back to her high school , paid a student from A/V class a few hundred dollars , and worked with him to record her first viral hit : “ Why I Am Not a Feminist.
” Sporting the red lipstick and fake lashes that became her defining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ popular belief , feminism is not , in fact , a synonym for equality.
” To her shock , the four-minute video took off , reaching 1.2 million viewers on YouTube and another 30 million on Facebook .
After a drink , the couple loosened up a bit .
Southern told Hutcheson that she dreamed of graduating from short videos to feature-length films .
Sure , her direct-to-camera videos offered strong arguments and reached a lot of people , she said , but they were starting to feel derivative .
If she could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hollywood-level soundtracks , sweeping drone shots , and high-resolution cameras—she thought she could tell more powerful stories .
Hutcheson looked uneasy as his girlfriend continued to talk about her career ambitions .
“ All of us Europeans have the responsibility to reproduce , ” he interjected .
Southern looked down at her plate .
“ That ’ s a very cold way of putting it , ” she responded .
“ Do you want to have a family for the sake of love or just because it ’ s a duty thing ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ war is to men , ” her boyfriend replied stolidly .
“ I want to serve my nation.
” Southern ’ s eyes glazed over as Hutcheson kept talking .
Finally , the waitress arrived with the bill .
Hutcheson gestured for Southern to grab it .
“ Okay , cool .
I ’ ll make it a business expense , ” she whispered .
Earlier , she ’ d told me that her boyfriend leaned on her financially .
( Hutcheson did not respond to our request for comment . )
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was subdued .
She was feeling burned out , professionally and personally , she told me .
Two months before , I ’ d trailed after her to Moscow , where she ’ d planned to interview oligarchs , Kremlin sycophants , and other far-right influencers for a documentary she hoped would be a corrective to what she saw as America ’ s irrational fear of Russia .
But to her consternation , she found Putin ’ s Russia to be alienating .
The food was unappealing , the taxi drivers invented rates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the street had little interest in being interviewed .
And few of them spoke English .
She spent most of her nearly two weeks there in her hotel , drinking lattes and refreshing her Twitter feed .
Back in Toronto , she sounded almost wistful about her past , recalling the days when she and her far-right friends had stayed up all night eating burritos and making videos for Rebel .
“ I discovered it gets much darker and much scarier when you stay in it long enough , ” she said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Her ostensible allies frequently attacked her as a “ tradthot ” —an alt-right term for single women who support “ traditional ” values but don ’ t live them .
( If you look up tradthot in the Urban Dictionary , the first thing you see is a video clip of Southern . )
She seemed to sincerely share her movement ’ s views about the female temperament and women ’ s rightful roles ; at the very least , she was adept at parroting them .
She told me that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” and that “ it sucks being a girl in a feminist world.
” “ We ’ ve got an ambition problem as women in politics—we ’ ve seen so much and experience so much , will we be able to be a housewife ?
” she said another time .
Still , she felt so besieged by the insults directed at her by the alt-right men that she made a response video called “ Why I ’ m Not Married.
” She was 22 at the time .
While the alt-right ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her place , they simultaneously venerated her as a goddess—although this often collapsed into crude come-ons on social media and in person .
The movement grew , in part , out of the “ manosphere , ” epitomized by Cernovich , a onetime sex blogger .
The headlines on his website ranged from “ What Is Rape ?
” to “ How to Cheat on Your Girlfriend ” to “ When in Doubt , Whip It Out.
” Read : To learn about the alt-right , start with the ‘ manosphere ’ Then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of verbally and physically abusing his now ex-wife .
“ The only language women understand is violence , ” he told his former spouse , according to their divorce filings .
( Spencer denied the allegations . )
One of Spencer ’ s colleagues , Matthew Heimbach , co-founder of a fascist organization called the Traditionalist Worker Party , squeezed his wife ’ s cheeks until they bled after she confronted him about having an affair , according to a police report .
In 2016 , I ’ d attended a Spencer-led conference @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a speaker described women as “ reptilian ” animals who should be left to hang naked in the public square should they ever have sex with a Muslim man .
We need to “ flush disloyalty from our gene pool , ” he announced to the roughly 200 men and 10 women in attendance .
Southern ’ s attitude about her own sexualization was convoluted and contradictory .
She knew her audience would respond to a cleavage shot .
“ Like you see girls that do a political video , and if they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ ll get 500,000 extra views .
It ’ s clickbait .
It works , ” she told me .
She didn ’ t do that , she added , but she also rarely appeared on camera without being fully made up .
Still , she would express anxiety , if not fear , about the ugliness and aggression of the men who were drawn to her .
She told me about an email folder labeled “ nutjobs ” where she deposited notes from fans asking for sex .
Her mother had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s face onto a body being penetrated , she said , and one man messaged her saying he hoped she was “ raped ” to the point of having her “ face destroyed , ” so she could never benefit from her looks again .
In the evening , we decided to set out in search of a restaurant that served French fries with hamburgers or steak—she wasn ’ t a culinary white supremacist like Hutcheson , but she was a picky eater .
She didn ’ t say much as we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Then she began to cry .
A former fan had become a sex-crazed stalker , messaging her numerous times a day and posting personal information about her family and friends on social media .
She was so worried about getting hit on by far-right figures that she refused to attend fund-raising meetings without a chaperone .
Even McInnes had not stopped sending flirtatious messages to her , she said .
She didn ’ t know what to do , or whom to tell .
If her father found out , it would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He was a huge fan of conservative pundits like McInnes .
If everything was so awful , I asked , why had she embarked on this new film ?
She offered the same explanation I ’ d heard many times before : She didn ’ t want Europe to be overtaken by Islam .
I responded with familiar arguments .
Europe ’ s Muslim population , for example , was a mere 5 percent and was expected to increase to only about 11 percent by 2050 .
Even in France , where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of whites , Muslims don ’ t make up more than 10 percent of the citizenry .
By the time we sat down to dinner , she was calmer and told me she had some exciting news .
She ’ d met someone special .
Catholic .
Tough .
He made her feel safe .
She smiled with what looked like genuine pleasure .
And then , with some hesitation , she told me her new crush wasn ’ t white .
“ Race isn ’ t everything , ” she said , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ face .
“ What matters is happiness , not race.
” The next morning , as we walked the empty chateau grounds , Southern still seemed jittery , and kept tugging at her beige trench coat .
“ We have almost the same symptoms as addicts , ” she declared , apropos of nothing , clutching her phone .
I thought back to an interview I had with her in Russia , where she first mentioned her “ addiction ” to celebrity .
“ You get a little high when you get all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get all those shares when all these people are talking to you .
It ’ s a crazy sensation and feeling that I never had psychologically prepared for.
” She vowed again that she was going to quit YouTube , as soon as she finished Borderless .
Her new boyfriend gave her a real reason to get out .
Several days later , at an Airbnb closer to Paris , Southern ’ s video team reassembled , including two Brits : Caolan Robertson , the director , and George Llewelyn-John , the cameraman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me—and had dated for five years .
Soon we were joined by Southern ’ s latest man .
Shirtless and clutching coffee , he conferred with her in whispers , before turning to me : He wanted to remain anonymous .
Southern chimed in to add that I was prohibited from reporting on his specific ethnic identity , trying to manage a detail she ’ d already revealed .
She later clarified over text that she didn ’ t want him used as a prop to accumulate “ not racist ” points .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
With the assistance of Robertson , a marketing man by trade , Southern was making good on the aspirations she ’ d outlined to the grumpy Hutcheson : The DIY aesthetic of YouTube was no more .
Southern had revamped her wardrobe , purchased Netflix-quality documentary gear , and stopped making references to white nationalism on her Instagram account .
Instead , her crew helped her use the platform to release slow-motion videos of her posing in front of the Eiffel Tower , as if in an ad for French Vogue .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ seemed to be having the desired effect .
She had gotten word that the European Parliament wanted to premiere Borderless once it was complete .
Read : Instagram is the internet ’ s new home for hate The team climbed into a gray van and headed toward Paris ’ s infamous migrant neighborhood , Porte de la Chapelle .
But migrants were thin on the ground .
Southern checked her Facebook in a familiar nervous twitch .
“ ‘ Hi Lauren , you ’ re hot , tell me if I can fuck @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out .
“ Go on , Lauren , give him that blow job , ” Llewelyn-John deadpanned .
After more than an hour of hunting , Southern ordered her driver to stop .
She had spotted a campsite under a highway overpass .
We would all go in together , she said , but her security guard , who had served in the military , stopped her .
To gain genuine access , they should first try to build some kind of rapport with the people living there .
He would do it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cluster of makeshift dwellings alone , and eventually emerged to beckon us in .
He had lied and told the migrants he was a Chechen asylum seeker who had met some well-intended journalists interested in their stories .
He warned us that the men were hungry , so things might get tense , but it also gave Southern a little leverage .
“ Half the pizza now , half after the interview , ” Llewelyn-John said , only partly joking .
( He and Robertson have since renounced their association with the far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were used to further Southern ’ s anti-immigrant agenda . )
Read : The women behind the ‘ alt-right ’ We ran across a highway , through some bushes , and settled under the overpass .
The migrants graciously made room for us closer to their fire .
“ Hi , I ’ m Alex , ” Southern introduced herself , using one of her stage names .
She started to pass out chocolate and cigarettes .
“ I want to know your story .
I want to know why you came to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the men warmed their weathered hands over the flames , they told of fleeing bloodshed and gang violence .
Mostly from Mali and Sierra Leone , they had escaped via a treacherous route across the Mediterranean that has left an estimated 19,000 people dead or missing since 2013 .
When they had finally made it to France , they discovered that they were prohibited from working and could wait nearly a year to have their asylum claims heard .
• The Making of an American Nazi Their chances of ever being admitted to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In 2015 , Hungary ’ s nationalist prime minister , Viktor Orbán , was the first leader to shut his borders , calling the migrant crisis an “ invasion.
” But in Europe as a whole today , close to two-thirds of asylum applicants are rejected , according to the Eurostat .
Before we left , one of the younger men , hiding beneath a shy grin and layers of dirty overcoats , raised his hand to speak .
Maybe something good could come of telling his story to the world , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Italy , and then into France , which he imagined to be “ El Dorado ” for a French speaker like himself , he told Southern .
“ We didn ’ t come here to steal , ” he emphasized .
It had been six months since he ’ d arrived , and not only couldn ’ t he find work , but the French shunned him , and the police destroyed his temporary encampments , keeping him on the move .
“ I have no hope left , ” he said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Southern walked back to the van contemplatively .
“ There ’ s no denying they had shitty lives , ” she said .
“ I can have cookies with these people and hear their life story .
That doesn ’ t mean we suddenly—just because I feel bad in that moment—we need to destroy all borders and allow everyone to come in here.
” The finished documentary would portray asylum seekers generally as opportunists looking to get rich , and would pluck from this campfire interview quotes that emphasized the migrants ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than the dire circumstances from which they had fled .
That night , coming back from filming , I asked Southern if she was proud of the work she was doing .
A smile broke out on her wind-chapped face .
“ I ’ ve really come a long way , ” she said .
In January 2019 , Southern screened excerpts of Borderless at the European Parliament in Brussels , and was feted like a visiting head of state .
Junior staffers rushed to take pictures with her .
Right-wing parliamentarians extended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to feature Southern on their social-media accounts .
With nearly a quarter of the European Parliament now controlled by the far right , and much of its center pandering to that group ’ s anti-immigrant base , Southern faced no opposition inside the hall .
“ Lauren is beautiful , ” David Coburn , a Scottish politician who was then a member of the Parliament , told me twice .
“ [ She ] makes me feel that the future is maybe in safe hands.
” She told me about her life in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
She had re-enrolled at the University of the Fraser Valley to study philosophy .
She was particularly taken by Saint Augustine and his treatise The City of God , which criticizes a society consumed by vanity .
In the evening , she played in a community volleyball league .
Her new friends had no idea about her past , and Southern , it appeared , didn ’ t dwell on it much herself .
Clutching a book on Christian spirituality , Thirsty for God , Southern was eager to tell me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Catholic faith .
Most nights were spent cooking with “ hubby ” and watching Netflix .
“ I couldn ’ t be happier , ” she said .
I had seen Lauren Southern challenge sexual-assault survivors , turn back refugee boats , exploit desperate migrants for political gain , and rake in considerable cash—all to the benefit of an insurgent racist right .
The day after I landed in Belgium to see her give her speech at the European Parliament , I ’ d learned that my grandmother , a Holocaust @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family gathered in Israel to lay Shulamit Lombroso to rest , I ’ d watched the parliamentarians applaud their brightest young star .
Now Southern was acting like none of this had ever happened .
Having thrown her bombs , she had , indeed , simply gone back to a normal life .
The 2010s saw dozens of lethal terror attacks by white nationalists , including Anders Breivik ’ s murder of 77 of his fellow Norwegians to protest Europe ’ s growing diversity , and the American extremist Dylann Roof ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of igniting a race war .
Between the time Southern entered politics and the time she left , far-right extremists had murdered 11 Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh , 51 Muslims at a mosque in New Zealand , and 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso , Texas ( in an effort to target Mexicans ) .
More than a hundred smaller attacks had occurred worldwide .
Many of the killers were radicalized on YouTube , and some echoed the kind of anti-immigrant rhetoric Southern liked to use .
I asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this surge in hate .
She responded briskly : “ If anything I ’ ve said has contributed to that , it was because someone misinterpreted me.
” What about her ridiculing of rape culture ?
“ I still stand by the points today.
” And what about her partner , who is part Asian—what does he think of her politics ?
Southern started to speak , then stopped , before recasting my question : “ My arguments about family and focusing on community , I believe it ’ s true .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hard to personally follow something that is , quite frankly , an ideal.
” 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 .
“ I regret letting myself get as cold as I did ” is the most she would offer during our last in-person interview .
This past summer , Southern moved with her husband and her son to Australia , where she has returned to activism .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Crossfire , which she promises will bring “ nuance ” to political discourse .
It is centered on “ policing , brutality , [ and ] race , ” according to the trailer , and it will “ expose the reality for those caught in the crossfire of lawless protest and crime.
” She also frequently appears as a commentator on the country ’ s Sky News channel , inveighing against COVID-19 restrictions and “ cancel culture.
” There was never going to be a reckoning .
No accountability , only retreat .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ one young person with a knack for social media can do .

White Noise, the debut feature film from The Atlantic, is in theaters now and will be available to rent in the U.S. starting October 21. Find more information here
Lauren Southern could spew racist propaganda like no other. But the men around her were better at one thing: trafficking in ugly misogyny.
Updated on October 20, 2020, at 10:20 a.m. ET
Gavin McInnes took a swig of whiskey from a bottle on his talk show’s on-set bar before bringing Lauren Southern onstage. It was June 2018, in Washington, D.C. Southern was only in her early 20s, but she had already emerged as the alt-right’s most influential woman. Her fellow guests were all men: an Army veteran, a Washington think tanker, and a radio shock jock. There was no chair for her. The men rushed to reshuffle. “This is the patriarchy right here,” Southern bantered. “Men get seats at the table.”
McInnes is a founder of Vice magazine and of the Proud Boys, an all-male, neofascist group that promotes violence against its political opponents. Last month, debate moderator Chris Wallace asked President Donald Trump to condemn the Proud Boys and white-supremacist organizations. “Proud Boys—stand back, and stand by,” Trump replied, only semi-ambiguously.
From the November 2020 issue: Right-wing militias are bracing for civil war
McInnes watched stonily as Southern joined the men. “Are you ever gonna have kids, give birth, are you going to be a mother?” he asked her. “Then I’ll give them my seat.” The men laughed, and Southern, submitting to the last-minute ministrations of a makeup artist, laughed along—just one of the guys, with long, stick-straight blond hair and an off-the-shoulder, floral-print dress. McInnes wasn’t quite finished yet. “If you’re not making humans, then fucking stand up, bitch.” Southern, who was joining him to talk about her documentary Farmlands, which focuses on the alleged persecution of white farmers in South Africa, gasped in faux horror.
Southern’s reporting for Farmlands had rippled through right-wing media—Trump would order Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “closely study” the issue—and McInnes, now finished with his commentary on gender roles, had Southern discuss her revisionist history. In the 19th century, the Zulu people took the land that is now South Africa from another ethnic group, she said, and therefore Blacks are just as responsible for apartheid as whites. When McInnes brought the conversation closer to home, noting that white “self-hatred” is so rampant that he can’t even find South African wine at his local bar, Southern nodded. “The word racist just means nothing to me anymore,” she said. “It’s been so overused, I just have no respect for the term.”
Southern finished on set and ordered an Uber to the airport for her flight home to Toronto. Partway through the ride, her phone rang. It was McInnes. Southern listened to him closely for a few seconds.
“We shouldn’t be talking about this at all,” she said, laughing uncomfortably. Then her face tightened. “See, the thing is, because my moral compass tells me you have a wife and kids, it’s not even in my realm of consideration.” McInnes, according to Southern, had just reiterated an offer he’d made the night before, when she’d been out with him and a group of other far-right friends: “You know you want to fuck me; I’m your childhood hero.”
(When reached for comment, McInnes stated, “As a married man, I have never sexually propositioned Lauren Southern or any other woman.”)
With a grimace, Southern hustled him off the phone. She was speechless for a moment. “Send help,” she said feebly. “Help.”
By the time Southern went on McInnes’s show, I had been following her for nearly a year. I was making a documentary for The Atlantic about the white-nationalist movement, called White Noise. I’d already become accustomed to the accommodations Southern made to stay within a movement whose hatreds are prolific. (Southern denies being a white nationalist.) And I’d already become her confidant of sorts, too—I kept feeling compelled to remind her that I was a reporter. “Hey Daniel, in your honest opinion am I a little crazy?” she texted me once. “Do you think I’m irredeemable and can’t go back to a normal life?”
Read: Four years embedded with the alt-right
I did not know the answer. It wasn’t the first time she’d expressed disenchantment with the alt-right, or at least some parts of it. But it was always hard to know what Southern was really thinking, or how deeply committed she was to anything at all. Her misgivings mostly revolved around the harassment she received from other members of her movement. Signs of empathy for others flickered only intermittently. “You have to keep playing the game until you’re out of it, keep up the charade,” she said the day of the McInnes taping. But it seemed likely that she was trying to play me, as well.
When I first got to know her, Southern was among YouTube’s most effective and sophisticated extremists—an alt-right propagandist who masqueraded as a run-of-the-mill influencer. In one June 2017 post titled “Ad Friendly Makeup Tutorial,” she walks viewers through her skin-care routine, as electro-pop plays over cherry-colored graphics. “You want to use a beauty blender … and cover up all of your face’s imperfections,” she says. “All right, we’re looking gorg.” As she applies the finishing touch, red lipstick, her hand drifts from her mouth to her right cheek. “F … U … C … K,” she slowly writes. She switches to the left: “I … S … L … A … M.” She tosses back her blond hair and smiles: “You’ve got this cute, ad-friendly makeup look, it’s super flirty.” Her 7,000 commenters were thrilled. “Omfg. This girl is on fire!” gushed a faceless avatar. An admirer who went by “Hubert” jumped in: “Trolling level: Elite Grandmaster.”
Southern, I came to learn, was also an adept troll in person. In another YouTube video viewed nearly 3 million times, she pushes to the front of a crowd of sexual-assault survivors and activists in June 2015 in downtown Vancouver and lifts a Sharpie-painted placard: “There is no rape culture in the West.” As the marchers protest, Southern screams back, “Go to Africa and you will see a real rape culture!”
Janice Atkinson, a former far-right British member of the European Parliament—which Southern would be invited to address seven months after her appearance on McInnes’s show—told me that the young woman’s tools, among them a quick wit and good looks, made her the best spokesperson for the nationalist cause. “She can sell it better to my sons than I can sell it,” Atkinson said. Richard Spencer, the neofascist writer who coined the term alt-right and is known for, among other things, parsimony in praising his comrades, was also a fan of Southern’s videos. “They’re touching on that hot stuff,” he told me once.
From the June 2017 issue: How Richard Spencer became an icon for white supremacists
Southern was born in Surrey, British Columbia, one of Canada’s most racially and ethnically diverse cities. In her private Christian elementary school, many of the students were ethnically Chinese, she told me, though back then she didn’t pay much attention to race. Her father, however, began to feel like an outsider in his community, she said. While Southern called her dad “the least racist person I know,” she said he felt frustrated walking into coffee shops to find that his Asian neighbors wouldn’t address him in English. So when Lauren was in middle school, her father moved the family, which included her mother and her older sister, to Langley, one of greater Vancouver’s whitest towns.
She had a comfortable, middle-class upbringing. One of her Bible-study friends, Kenzo Nishidate, who is half Japanese, described her as both nerdy and popular. She’d go to weekend house parties with the cool girls from volleyball, then show up at school on Monday in a Marvel graphic T-shirt, excited about the latest League of Legends update. Southern never cared much about her education. She spent much of her free time reading the fantasy novels of J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert Jordan. “My grades were garbage,” she said. “I was always more interested in whatever book that I had picked up from the library than the one I was assigned in class.” She says she was diagnosed with ADHD, but her parents didn’t want her to go on medication. She planned to join the military after high school.
But then, as she described it, she found a fight worth waging, right at home. One day in her social-justice class, the teacher asked everyone to separate by race and gender, according to Southern: white kids on one side, Black and brown on the other; boys on one side, girls on the other. The teacher turned to the female students of color: “You’re oppressed.” She pointed to the white kids—including Southern—and said two words that changed the course of her life: “You’re privileged.” (Her teacher denies that this ever occurred.)
Southern told me she was incensed. Her paternal grandfather had immigrated to Canada from Scandinavia with little money or knowledge of English. Her maternal grandmother was an orphan. Sure, her parents had raised her in one of Vancouver’s wealthiest suburbs, but they had earned it through “hard work” and “assimilation.” Plus, she was surrounded by “rich Asian kids,” who she believed enjoyed far more privilege than white girls like her. Southern felt scapegoated when the class discussed topics like slavery or the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Canadians.
Around the same time, her father turned her on to right-wing radio on their morning drives to school. She heard the American shock jock Michael Savage say things like Barack Obama was “the most divisive, hateful president in American history. He has isolated and marginalized the white male like never before.” Southern began to read more widely, devouring books by Ann Coulter and Ayn Rand. At night, she watched McInnes on her favorite late-night show, Fox’s Red Eye, where he expressed particular animus toward those who say they are victims of sexual harassment. “If your boss grabs your ass, and it doesn’t hurt, and you don’t like it, quit,” he asserted on one panel, which featured another guest, future National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Southern started to challenge her teachers about feminism, immigration, and Islam. She gave an anti-global-warming presentation. For a class assignment, Southern and a Jewish friend dressed up as Hitler and Mussolini, respectively, and afterward they went over to his house in full dictator regalia. “Good times!” she recalled, laughing about this incident with another childhood friend. Southern found that she loved being a contrarian. She didn’t necessarily believe the things she said or did, she told me, but the power of making her teachers squirm was intoxicating.
Her rise to social-media stardom was meteoric. Trump’s nativist presidential campaign coincided with the explosive expansion of the far-right media ecosystem. The premier outlet at the time, Breitbart News, was run by the future White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, and the Canadian media executive Ezra Levant had set out to create an equivalent site in his country. He called it Rebel Media and asked Southern to audition after meeting the young firebrand at an energy conference where she peppered the speakers with questions.
Southern, struggling at college while working as a cocktail waitress at a casino, seized the opportunity. She raced back to her high school, paid a student from A/V class a few hundred dollars, and worked with him to record her first viral hit: “Why I Am Not a Feminist.” Sporting the red lipstick and fake lashes that became her defining aesthetic, Southern asserted, “Despite popular belief, feminism is not, in fact, a synonym for equality.” To her shock, the four-minute video took off, reaching 1.2 million viewers on YouTube and another 30 million on Facebook.
Southern dropped out of college and relocated to Toronto, where Rebel’s offices were located. Each week, her videos seemed to grow more inflammatory and offensive. She converted her state-registered gender to male as a critique of Canada’s “lax” policy toward gender transition; she traveled to a refugee camp in France to prove that the asylum seekers there were “economic migrants,” not Syrian refugees as the mainstream media reported. Mike Cernovich, a far-right activist and fake-news purveyor whose maxims—Conflict is attention and Attention is influence—form the bedrock of the alt-right philosophy of provocation, told me that Southern’s videos were more extreme than he was used to seeing, even among denizens of his world. Southern will “end up, you know, probably getting killed,” he predicted after she visited a town in England with a large Muslim population to hand out flyers claiming, “Allah is gay.” This particular stunt caused the authorities to ban her from the United Kingdom.
Lauren Southern sits for an interview with Gavin McInnes in 2018. (Daniel Lombroso / The Atlantic)
A few weeks after McInnes’s show, in July 2018, I went to visit Southern in Toronto, where she lived in a high-rise in the city’s downtown district. Her spotless one-bedroom condo looked more like a showroom than a home—the walls were bare, except for a YouTube plaque congratulating her on gaining 100,000 subscribers.
We were sitting together in her living room, while she scripted a video, when her new boyfriend emerged from the bedroom. George Hutcheson, who was 30 at the time, runs a Canadian group called Students for Western Civilization, which works to “advance the interests of European peoples.” Her most recent boyfriends had also been adherents of far-right ideologies. She had nearly gotten engaged to a prominent conspiracy theorist, and had had an on-again-off-again fling with a Croatian neo-Nazi. “Maybe I’m too picky,” she’d mused before Hutcheson joined us on her IKEA couch. In appearance, Hutcheson is the caricature of the Aryan ideal. His undercut haircut, known in the alt-right as the fashy (short for fascist), and his fit, thick, soldier-like frame give him a Teutonic air. He and Southern decided to go out to dinner, and to let me film them. Hutcheson refuses to eat food originally from nonwhite countries, such as ketchup, whose origins are in China, so the two, facing limited restaurant options, chose the British-style Oxley Public House in Toronto’s Yorkville neighborhood.
From the December 2017 issue: Angela Nagle on the young men of the alt-right
Boisterous diners were enjoying one of summer’s first long evenings on the restaurant’s patio, but Southern and Hutcheson mostly sat in silence, scrolling on their phones. Southern dipped into a red sauce next to Hutcheson’s burger. “That tastes non-European, are you allowed to eat that?” she asked sardonically. “Yeah, tastes non-European,” he confirmed, without a hint of irony.
After a drink, the couple loosened up a bit. Southern told Hutcheson that she dreamed of graduating from short videos to feature-length films. Sure, her direct-to-camera videos offered strong arguments and reached a lot of people, she said, but they were starting to feel derivative. If she could pursue longer narrative projects—brought to life with Hollywood-level soundtracks, sweeping drone shots, and high-resolution cameras—she thought she could tell more powerful stories.
Hutcheson looked uneasy as his girlfriend continued to talk about her career ambitions. “All of us Europeans have the responsibility to reproduce,” he interjected.
Southern looked down at her plate. “That’s a very cold way of putting it,” she responded. “Do you want to have a family for the sake of love or just because it’s a duty thing?”
“Motherhood is to women as war is to men,” her boyfriend replied stolidly. “I want to serve my nation.”
Southern’s eyes glazed over as Hutcheson kept talking. Finally, the waitress arrived with the bill. Hutcheson gestured for Southern to grab it. “Okay, cool. I’ll make it a business expense,” she whispered. Earlier, she’d told me that her boyfriend leaned on her financially. (Hutcheson did not respond to our request for comment.)
In the condo the next day, Southern was subdued. She was feeling burned out, professionally and personally, she told me. Two months before, I’d trailed after her to Moscow, where she’d planned to interview oligarchs, Kremlin sycophants, and other far-right influencers for a documentary she hoped would be a corrective to what she saw as America’s irrational fear of Russia. But to her consternation, she found Putin’s Russia to be alienating. The food was unappealing, the taxi drivers invented rates depending on their mood, and people on the street had little interest in being interviewed. And few of them spoke English. She spent most of her nearly two weeks there in her hotel, drinking lattes and refreshing her Twitter feed.
Back in Toronto, she sounded almost wistful about her past, recalling the days when she and her far-right friends had stayed up all night eating burritos and making videos for Rebel. “I discovered it gets much darker and much scarier when you stay in it long enough,” she said.
Southern had a Phyllis Schlafly problem. Her ostensible allies frequently attacked her as a “tradthot”—an alt-right term for single women who support “traditional” values but don’t live them. (If you look up tradthot in the Urban Dictionary, the first thing you see is a video clip of Southern.) She seemed to sincerely share her movement’s views about the female temperament and women’s rightful roles; at the very least, she was adept at parroting them. She told me that “women biologically hate the stress of work” and that “it sucks being a girl in a feminist world.” “We’ve got an ambition problem as women in politics—we’ve seen so much and experience so much, will we be able to be a housewife?” she said another time. Still, she felt so besieged by the insults directed at her by the alt-right men that she made a response video called “Why I’m Not Married.” She was 22 at the time.
Video: An excerpt from White Noise
While the alt-right’s men were forever putting Southern in her place, they simultaneously venerated her as a goddess—although this often collapsed into crude come-ons on social media and in person. The movement grew, in part, out of the “manosphere,” epitomized by Cernovich, a onetime sex blogger. The headlines on his website ranged from “What Is Rape?” to “How to Cheat on Your Girlfriend” to “When in Doubt, Whip It Out.”
Read: To learn about the alt-right, start with the ‘manosphere’
Then there was Spencer, who was accused of verbally and physically abusing his now ex-wife. “The only language women understand is violence,” he told his former spouse, according to their divorce filings. (Spencer denied the allegations.) One of Spencer’s colleagues, Matthew Heimbach, co-founder of a fascist organization called the Traditionalist Worker Party, squeezed his wife’s cheeks until they bled after she confronted him about having an affair, according to a police report.
In 2016, I’d attended a Spencer-led conference, in Washington, D.C., where a speaker described women as “reptilian” animals who should be left to hang naked in the public square should they ever have sex with a Muslim man. We need to “flush disloyalty from our gene pool,” he announced to the roughly 200 men and 10 women in attendance.
Southern’s attitude about her own sexualization was convoluted and contradictory. She knew her audience would respond to a cleavage shot. “Like you see girls that do a political video, and if they put their boobs up and out, they’ll get 500,000 extra views. It’s clickbait. It works,” she told me. She didn’t do that, she added, but she also rarely appeared on camera without being fully made up. Still, she would express anxiety, if not fear, about the ugliness and aggression of the men who were drawn to her. She told me about an email folder labeled “nutjobs” where she deposited notes from fans asking for sex. Her mother had discovered deepfake porn videos juxtaposing her daughter’s face onto a body being penetrated, she said, and one man messaged her saying he hoped she was “raped” to the point of having her “face destroyed,” so she could never benefit from her looks again.
From the May 2018 issue: The era of fake video begins
I asked Southern in Toronto what advice she had for women entering the alt-right world. She hesitated. “Don’t,” she said.
Left: Lauren Southern live-streams during a 2017 rally for free speech in Berkeley, California. Right: Southern speaks to a crowd at the rally. (Josh Edelson / AFP / Getty; Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP)
Southern decided to abandon the Russian documentary, but by the fall of 2018 she had a new project: Borderless, about the migrant crisis in Europe. When I joined her in October, she had already been on the road for more than a month. We met at a chateau an hour outside Paris, which she’d booked to recharge while her crew was off shooting around Europe. I’d been the one to suggest the chateau, where I was also staying, and which was far enough outside of Paris to be relatively affordable.
Not that money was a tremendous issue for Southern. Thanks to the proceeds from her work, Southern could afford not only a retreat in the French countryside, but expensive cameras and other gear that made a professional journalist’s equipment look amateurish by comparison. She was bringing in more than $6,000 a month in donations. Her father printed and sold Lauren Southern–branded merchandise, and her mother ran her email and accounting (for a fee).
At the chateau, it was eerily quiet. Behind 15-foot gates, the vast estate’s only other inhabitants seemed to be horses, goats, and a Polish guest worker. We chatted in one of the chateau’s bedrooms as Southern gave herself a manicure. “This is the small luxury I get on the road, and I just can’t get it perfect,” she said, blowing on her fingertips.
In the evening, we decided to set out in search of a restaurant that served French fries with hamburgers or steak—she wasn’t a culinary white supremacist like Hutcheson, but she was a picky eater. She didn’t say much as we passed a series of bucolic dairy farms. Then she began to cry. A former fan had become a sex-crazed stalker, messaging her numerous times a day and posting personal information about her family and friends on social media. She was so worried about getting hit on by far-right figures that she refused to attend fund-raising meetings without a chaperone. Even McInnes had not stopped sending flirtatious messages to her, she said. She didn’t know what to do, or whom to tell. If her father found out, it would “break him,” she said. He was a huge fan of conservative pundits like McInnes.
If everything was so awful, I asked, why had she embarked on this new film? She offered the same explanation I’d heard many times before: She didn’t want Europe to be overtaken by Islam. I responded with familiar arguments. Europe’s Muslim population, for example, was a mere 5 percent and was expected to increase to only about 11 percent by 2050. Even in France, where right-wing philosophers warn of a grand remplacement of whites, Muslims don’t make up more than 10 percent of the citizenry.
By the time we sat down to dinner, she was calmer and told me she had some exciting news. She’d met someone special. Catholic. Tough. He made her feel safe. She smiled with what looked like genuine pleasure. And then, with some hesitation, she told me her new crush wasn’t white. “Race isn’t everything,” she said, as I strained to keep a poker face. “What matters is happiness, not race.”
The next morning, as we walked the empty chateau grounds, Southern still seemed jittery, and kept tugging at her beige trench coat. “We have almost the same symptoms as addicts,” she declared, apropos of nothing, clutching her phone. I thought back to an interview I had with her in Russia, where she first mentioned her “addiction” to celebrity. “You get a little high when you get all those likes on YouTube, when you get all those shares when all these people are talking to you. It’s a crazy sensation and feeling that I never had psychologically prepared for.”
She vowed again that she was going to quit YouTube, as soon as she finished Borderless. Her new boyfriend gave her a real reason to get out.
Several days later, at an Airbnb closer to Paris, Southern’s video team reassembled, including two Brits: Caolan Robertson, the director, and George Llewelyn-John, the cameraman. The two were partners—another surprise for me—and had dated for five years. Soon we were joined by Southern’s latest man. Shirtless and clutching coffee, he conferred with her in whispers, before turning to me: He wanted to remain anonymous. Southern chimed in to add that I was prohibited from reporting on his specific ethnic identity, trying to manage a detail she’d already revealed. She later clarified over text that she didn’t want him used as a prop to accumulate “not racist” points. This was true love, after all.
With the assistance of Robertson, a marketing man by trade, Southern was making good on the aspirations she’d outlined to the grumpy Hutcheson: The DIY aesthetic of YouTube was no more. Southern had revamped her wardrobe, purchased Netflix-quality documentary gear, and stopped making references to white nationalism on her Instagram account. Instead, her crew helped her use the platform to release slow-motion videos of her posing in front of the Eiffel Tower, as if in an ad for French Vogue. This pivot away from explicit alt-right propaganda seemed to be having the desired effect. She had gotten word that the European Parliament wanted to premiere Borderless once it was complete.
Read: Instagram is the internet’s new home for hate
The team climbed into a gray van and headed toward Paris’s infamous migrant neighborhood, Porte de la Chapelle. But migrants were thin on the ground. Southern checked her Facebook in a familiar nervous twitch. “‘Hi Lauren, you’re hot, tell me if I can fuck you please?’” she read out. “Go on, Lauren, give him that blow job,” Llewelyn-John deadpanned.
After more than an hour of hunting, Southern ordered her driver to stop. She had spotted a campsite under a highway overpass. We would all go in together, she said, but her security guard, who had served in the military, stopped her. To gain genuine access, they should first try to build some kind of rapport with the people living there. He would do it, he said. He entered the cluster of makeshift dwellings alone, and eventually emerged to beckon us in. He had lied and told the migrants he was a Chechen asylum seeker who had met some well-intended journalists interested in their stories. He warned us that the men were hungry, so things might get tense, but it also gave Southern a little leverage. “Half the pizza now, half after the interview,” Llewelyn-John said, only partly joking. (He and Robertson have since renounced their association with the far right and expressed regret that their skills were used to further Southern’s anti-immigrant agenda.)
Read: The women behind the ‘alt-right’
We ran across a highway, through some bushes, and settled under the overpass. The migrants graciously made room for us closer to their fire. “Hi, I’m Alex,” Southern introduced herself, using one of her stage names. She started to pass out chocolate and cigarettes. “I want to know your story. I want to know why you came to Paris for a new life.” As the men warmed their weathered hands over the flames, they told of fleeing bloodshed and gang violence. Mostly from Mali and Sierra Leone, they had escaped via a treacherous route across the Mediterranean that has left an estimated 19,000 people dead or missing since 2013. When they had finally made it to France, they discovered that they were prohibited from working and could wait nearly a year to have their asylum claims heard.
Their chances of ever being admitted to any country in Europe were shrinking. In 2015, Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, was the first leader to shut his borders, calling the migrant crisis an “invasion.” But in Europe as a whole today, close to two-thirds of asylum applicants are rejected, according to the Eurostat.
Before we left, one of the younger men, hiding beneath a shy grin and layers of dirty overcoats, raised his hand to speak. Maybe something good could come of telling his story to the world, he said. He had crossed from Libya to Italy, and then into France, which he imagined to be “El Dorado” for a French speaker like himself, he told Southern. “We didn’t come here to steal,” he emphasized. It had been six months since he’d arrived, and not only couldn’t he find work, but the French shunned him, and the police destroyed his temporary encampments, keeping him on the move. “I have no hope left,” he said, as rats scampered near our feet.
Southern walked back to the van contemplatively. “There’s no denying they had shitty lives,” she said. “I can have cookies with these people and hear their life story. That doesn’t mean we suddenly—just because I feel bad in that moment—we need to destroy all borders and allow everyone to come in here.”
The finished documentary would portray asylum seekers generally as opportunists looking to get rich, and would pluck from this campfire interview quotes that emphasized the migrants’ failure to assimilate into French culture rather than the dire circumstances from which they had fled. That night, coming back from filming, I asked Southern if she was proud of the work she was doing. A smile broke out on her wind-chapped face. “I’ve really come a long way,” she said.
In January 2019, Southern screened excerpts of Borderless at the European Parliament in Brussels, and was feted like a visiting head of state. Junior staffers rushed to take pictures with her. Right-wing parliamentarians extended invitations to upcoming events, or asked to feature Southern on their social-media accounts. With nearly a quarter of the European Parliament now controlled by the far right, and much of its center pandering to that group’s anti-immigrant base, Southern faced no opposition inside the hall. “Lauren is beautiful,” David Coburn, a Scottish politician who was then a member of the Parliament, told me twice. “[She] makes me feel that the future is maybe in safe hands.”
Southern considered her appearance a rousing success, but five months later, she finally did what she had told me she was going to do so many times. She quit her life as an activist. In the post announcing her decision, titled “A New Chapter,” Southern announced to her hundreds of thousands of supporters that she needed space to focus on her “soul.” Her departure fueled intense speculation in the alt-right community. Milo Yiannopoulos claimed in an “exposé” that Southern ran a fraudulent operation trading sex for professional favors and wanted to escape accountability. Internet sleuths guessed that she was locked up in Turkey or had settled down with a “sugar daddy.” The real story is more mundane.
Watch: Rebranding white nationalism
I met Southern in Vancouver’s Stanley Park shortly after her retirement. Waves crashed against the peninsula’s rocky belt. Southern greeted me wearing a large knitted sweater and a floral top, much looser than her usual attire. I set up my camera and prepared to roll.
“Well, we haven’t even established that I’m married yet,” she announced, turning to face me and revealing a slightly protruding belly. She was about five months pregnant by the boyfriend she’d introduced me to in France. They’d wed about a month before I arrived for this visit—the alt-right’s avatar of femininity had conceived a child out of wedlock. “I got married and, um, now my husband and I are expecting our first little one,” Southern said, with the careful cadence of an actress working through her lines for the first time.
She told me about her life in Vancouver. It was idyllic, she said. She had re-enrolled at the University of the Fraser Valley to study philosophy. She was particularly taken by Saint Augustine and his treatise The City of God, which criticizes a society consumed by vanity. In the evening, she played in a community volleyball league. Her new friends had no idea about her past, and Southern, it appeared, didn’t dwell on it much herself. Clutching a book on Christian spirituality, Thirsty for God, Southern was eager to tell me about how she had embraced her partner’s Catholic faith. Most nights were spent cooking with “hubby” and watching Netflix. “I couldn’t be happier,” she said.
I had seen Lauren Southern challenge sexual-assault survivors, turn back refugee boats, exploit desperate migrants for political gain, and rake in considerable cash—all to the benefit of an insurgent racist right. The day after I landed in Belgium to see her give her speech at the European Parliament, I’d learned that my grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, had died. As my family gathered in Israel to lay Shulamit Lombroso to rest, I’d watched the parliamentarians applaud their brightest young star. Now Southern was acting like none of this had ever happened. Having thrown her bombs, she had, indeed, simply gone back to a normal life.
The 2010s saw dozens of lethal terror attacks by white nationalists, including Anders Breivik’s murder of 77 of his fellow Norwegians to protest Europe’s growing diversity, and the American extremist Dylann Roof’s killing of nine black worshippers in hopes of igniting a race war. Between the time Southern entered politics and the time she left, far-right extremists had murdered 11 Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, 51 Muslims at a mosque in New Zealand, and 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas (in an effort to target Mexicans). More than a hundred smaller attacks had occurred worldwide. Many of the killers were radicalized on YouTube, and some echoed the kind of anti-immigrant rhetoric Southern liked to use.
I asked Southern if she took any responsibility for this surge in hate. She responded briskly: “If anything I’ve said has contributed to that, it was because someone misinterpreted me.” What about her ridiculing of rape culture? “I still stand by the points today.” And what about her partner, who is part Asian—what does he think of her politics? Southern started to speak, then stopped, before recasting my question: “My arguments about family and focusing on community, I believe it’s true. It’s just, it’s hard to personally follow something that is, quite frankly, an ideal.” 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. “I regret letting myself get as cold as I did” is the most she would offer during our last in-person interview.
This past summer, Southern moved with her husband and her son to Australia, where she has returned to activism. She is working on a new documentary called Crossfire, which she promises will bring “nuance” to political discourse. It is centered on “policing, brutality, [and] race,” according to the trailer, and it will “expose the reality for those caught in the crossfire of lawless protest and crime.” She also frequently appears as a commentator on the country’s Sky News channel, inveighing against COVID-19 restrictions and “cancel culture.”
There was never going to be a reckoning. No accountability, only retreat. It’s chilling how much damage one young person with a knack for social media can do.


Trump Is Scared

Read : What Donald Trump doesn ’ t want to hear It ’ s hard to gauge whether Trump ’ s thinking was impaired .
One measure that doctors use to spot changes in a patient ’ s behavior is deviations from the baseline .
But Trump ’ s ordinary conduct is , “ let ’ s say , charitably , unusual , ” Robert Wachter , the chairman of the department of medicine at UC San Francisco , told me .
Or , in the nonclinical and wholly unscientific assessment of the ex–White House official : “ There ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this pig .
The guy is nuts.
” In fundamental ways , Trump ’ s recent behavior isn ’ t all that different from his conduct in other moments of personal stress ; the stakes are just massively higher .
In his book Trumped , Jack O ’ Donnell , a former Trump hotel-casino executive , describes how his boss lashed out about the installation of a new VIP lounge at one of his hotels in Atlantic City , New Jersey , in the late 1980s .
Trump liked high ceilings , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ room for the pipes connected to hot tubs in the suites above .
Inspecting the space one day , Trump swore , jumped up , and “ punched his fist through the tile , ” leaving one of his top executives feeling shaken and humiliated , O ’ Donnell writes .
Watching the news after Trump ’ s hospitalization , O ’ Donnell told me , he questioned the “ people who supposedly know him who were acting like this behavior is a result of the steroids .
While I think it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this is classic Donald Trump that you ’ re seeing.
” Michael Cohen , Trump ’ s former lawyer and fixer , was struck by a moment in 2009 when Trump berated his eldest son , Donald Jr .
He describes the scene in his book , Disloyal .
Donald Trump was about to appear at a World Wrestling Entertainment event in Green Bay , Wisconsin , when his namesake asked him if he was nervous .
“ I ’ m going in front of millions of people .
What kind of stupid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of here , ” Trump snapped , according to Cohen .
( The White House has assailed Cohen ’ s credibility , along with his book . )
Right now , the pressure Trump may be “ feeling , knowing that he ’ s going to lose the election , is intensifying everything that we ’ re seeing and putting him in a hyper-agitated state , ” Cohen told me .
After all , Trump has pumped out baseless attacks before , sent unfathomable tweets before , accused opponents of criminal acts before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump sprayed attacks with all the precision of 52 playing cards flung into the wind .
He slammed Pelosi ( “ she ’ s got a lot of mental problems ” ) , Joe Biden ( “ he ’ s mentally shot ” ) , New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ( “ incompetent ” ) , antifa ( “ scum ” ) , former FBI Director James Comey ( “ a corrupt person ” ) , and the news media ( “ the enemy of our people ” ) .
Referring to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ she , ” he said that the Democratic governor wants “ to be a dictator in Michigan .
”

He seemed as if he might be delirious. He blasted out bewildering tweets in all caps. Sick and infectious, he circled the perimeter of the hospital in an armored SUV, waving to supporters. He demanded the arrest of his opponents.
After doctors treated Donald Trump with a steroid last week, following his COVID-19 diagnosis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, other Trump critics, and national-security experts questioned whether the drug had warped his judgment. “Roid rage” started trending on Twitter. His condition revived talk about invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. A Stanford University law professor who had taken the same drug tweeted that she couldn’t be “president of my cat” when under its influence.
Those suspicions miss the point: Trump is belligerent when sick, just as he’s hostile when well. He sees plots when he’s dosed with dexamethasone and conspiracies when he’s gulping Diet Coke behind the Resolute desk. Days have passed since he apparently stopped taking the drug, and he sounds every bit as unmoored.
What’s been driving him in the final stretch of the campaign isn’t a medication that messes with his mood. It’s dread, people who’ve worked with him throughout the years told me. There are less than three weeks to go in a campaign that appears to be heading the wrong way. “He’s down and he’s likely to lose,” a former White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk more freely, told me. “This is fear.”
Read: What Donald Trump doesn’t want to hear
It’s hard to gauge whether Trump’s thinking was impaired. One measure that doctors use to spot changes in a patient’s behavior is deviations from the baseline. But Trump’s ordinary conduct is, “let’s say, charitably, unusual,” Robert Wachter, the chairman of the department of medicine at UC San Francisco, told me. Or, in the nonclinical and wholly unscientific assessment of the ex–White House official: “There’s no way to put lipstick on this pig. The guy is nuts.”
In fundamental ways, Trump’s recent behavior isn’t all that different from his conduct in other moments of personal stress; the stakes are just massively higher. In his book Trumped, Jack O’Donnell, a former Trump hotel-casino executive, describes how his boss lashed out about the installation of a new VIP lounge at one of his hotels in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the late 1980s. Trump liked high ceilings, but this one was set low to leave room for the pipes connected to hot tubs in the suites above. Inspecting the space one day, Trump swore, jumped up, and “punched his fist through the tile,” leaving one of his top executives feeling shaken and humiliated, O’Donnell writes.
Watching the news after Trump’s hospitalization, O’Donnell told me, he questioned the “people who supposedly know him who were acting like this behavior is a result of the steroids. While I think it’s ratcheted up a little bit, this is classic Donald Trump that you’re seeing.”
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, was struck by a moment in 2009 when Trump berated his eldest son, Donald Jr. He describes the scene in his book, Disloyal. Donald Trump was about to appear at a World Wrestling Entertainment event in Green Bay, Wisconsin, when his namesake asked him if he was nervous. “I’m going in front of millions of people. What kind of stupid fucking question is that? Get out of here,” Trump snapped, according to Cohen. (The White House has assailed Cohen’s credibility, along with his book.)
Right now, the pressure Trump may be “feeling, knowing that he’s going to lose the election, is intensifying everything that we’re seeing and putting him in a hyper-agitated state,” Cohen told me.
After all, Trump has pumped out baseless attacks before, sent unfathomable tweets before, accused opponents of criminal acts before. Speaking to Fox Business yesterday morning, Trump sprayed attacks with all the precision of 52 playing cards flung into the wind. He slammed Pelosi (“she’s got a lot of mental problems”), Joe Biden (“he’s mentally shot”), New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (“incompetent”), antifa (“scum”), former FBI Director James Comey (“a corrupt person”), and the news media (“the enemy of our people”). Referring to Gretchen Whitmer not by name but by “she,” he said that the Democratic governor wants “to be a dictator in Michigan.”
Read: The unraveling of Donald Trump
“The people can’t stand her,” he added, just days after the FBI revealed that Whitmer was the target of an alleged kidnapping plot.
None of this behavior especially surprises those who’ve heard Oval Office rants dating back to the start of Trump’s presidency. “In terms of his current behavior, to me it looks like just another day at the office,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, told me. “He doesn’t need steroids to behave this way.”
In Oval Office meetings, John Kelly, the president’s ex–chief of staff, would clear the room of lower-level aides when Trump grew irate. “His face would get contorted and red, and you could see spit flying out of his mouth because he would get so mad about something,” Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, told me. “Sometimes he’d get mad about something that wasn’t even the topic of the meeting.”
Taylor remembers an instance when Trump berated him for taking notes at a meeting. “What the fuck are you doing? Are you fucking taking notes?” Trump looked at him and said, Taylor recalled. “And then he waited and he just stopped, and I closed my notebook.”
“I don’t think the so-called roid rage was all that remarkable,” added Taylor, who’s become an outspoken Trump critic.
It might all get worse. As Election Day nears, Trump’s dread may only grow, and his outbursts may only become more desperate. He may step up attacks in hopes of staving off a loss that he’d see as an intolerable rebuke. For someone who craves adulation and can’t ever seem to get enough, defeat could leave a hole that no treatment can remedy.


theatlantic--2020-10-16--Listen: Is COVID-19 a Preexisting Condition?

Hamblin : And the initial challenge to the ACA in the Supreme Court was over the mandate being unconstitutional ?
Katherine Wells : Yeah , I thought we already went through this .
Didn ’ t the Supreme Court already say the law is fine ?
Pollitz : It did , but the argument is that the Supreme Court ruled that because there were penalties tied to the mandate , that the mandate was really a tax provision .
And Congress clearly has authority under the Constitution to levy taxes , so that was okay .
Now the plaintiffs are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , so it isn ’ t a tax anymore .
They say there ’ s a mandate—albeit with no penalty—but that ’ s still unconstitutional , and so the whole law has to come down .
A lot of legal scholars look at this—even conservative legal scholars—and say that ’ s kind of ridiculous on its face .
But that is the case that is before the Supreme Court now .
Wells : Is the likely outcome that the Supreme Court just says , “ Okay , sure , we can ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ isn ’ t unconstitutional ” ?
Pollitz : I certainly won ’ t say what a likely outcome is—2020 ’ s been quite a year .
And now , with the Supreme Court makeup changing , nobody knows what the outcome is .
At the one end , the Court could agree and invalidate the whole thing .
At the other end , they could say this is stupid on its face , and dismiss the case .
In between , they could say the mandate now is unconstitutional , but there ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whole law doesn ’ t have to go , but what would have to go with it ?
Earlier briefs by the Trump administration in memos to Congress suggested that those market reforms would have to go , because the mandate was gone .
So the individual market could go back to turning me down because I ’ m a cancer survivor .
Group health plans at work could go back to excluding your preexisting conditions .
Group plans did that before the ACA .
So that severability argument lies in between the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nobody knows with a new Court how this might work .
I think there are arguments about the constitutionality of laws that the Congress enacts , what these laws can and can ’ t require , and how they have to be crafted ... All of that is wrapped up in this case right now , but for people , it just feels kind of scary .
I mean , 20 million people could lose their coverage if this law gets erased .
And a whole lot of us—over 50 million of us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : There ’ s such a focus on the ACA this week with the Senate confirmation hearings , because if the new justice is confirmed before oral arguments in November , she gets to be part of the decision ?
Pollitz : Right .
This is the third trip to the Supreme Court for the Affordable Care Act , and it ’ s been upheld twice before by a vote of 5–4 .
Now the expectation is that 5–4 is going to be harder to achieve this time .

Many Americans have relied on the Affordable Care Act during the pandemic, but an upcoming Supreme Court case may invalidate it. With worries about the ACA looming over Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings, staff writer James Hamblin and executive producer Katherine Wells are joined on the podcast Social Distance by Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. An expert on the landmark health-care law, Pollitz gives them a refresher on what the ACA did—and what could happen if it goes away in the time of the coronavirus.
Listen to their conversation here:
Subscribe to Social Distance on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or another podcast platform to receive new episodes as soon as they’re published.
What follows is a transcript of their conversation, edited and condensed for clarity:
James Hamblin: What is in jeopardy now with the case before the Supreme Court?
Karen Pollitz: The case that was filed challenges the whole Affordable Care Act. Republican state officials and the Trump administration have filed briefs saying, Now that the individual-mandate penalty is gone, you have to throw out the entire law. All of it: the Medicaid expansion, the market reforms, the subsidies, the insurance standards. There were tons of changes across our health-care system in the ACA. And the case that’s before the Court says all of that is invalidated because this one provision no longer has a penalty.
Hamblin: And the initial challenge to the ACA in the Supreme Court was over the mandate being unconstitutional?
Katherine Wells: Yeah, I thought we already went through this. Didn’t the Supreme Court already say the law is fine?
Pollitz: It did, but the argument is that the Supreme Court ruled that because there were penalties tied to the mandate, that the mandate was really a tax provision. And Congress clearly has authority under the Constitution to levy taxes, so that was okay.
Now the plaintiffs are saying that the tax penalty is gone, so it isn’t a tax anymore. They say there’s a mandate—albeit with no penalty—but that’s still unconstitutional, and so the whole law has to come down. A lot of legal scholars look at this—even conservative legal scholars—and say that’s kind of ridiculous on its face. But that is the case that is before the Supreme Court now.
Wells: Is the likely outcome that the Supreme Court just says, “Okay, sure, we can’t have a mandate, but the law isn’t unconstitutional”?
Pollitz: I certainly won’t say what a likely outcome is—2020’s been quite a year. And now, with the Supreme Court makeup changing, nobody knows what the outcome is. At the one end, the Court could agree and invalidate the whole thing. At the other end, they could say this is stupid on its face, and dismiss the case. In between, they could say the mandate now is unconstitutional, but there’s this severability argument. Maybe the whole law doesn’t have to go, but what would have to go with it?
Earlier briefs by the Trump administration in memos to Congress suggested that those market reforms would have to go, because the mandate was gone. So the individual market could go back to turning me down because I’m a cancer survivor. Group health plans at work could go back to excluding your preexisting conditions. Group plans did that before the ACA. So that severability argument lies in between the two extreme outcomes and, honestly, nobody knows with a new Court how this might work.
I think there are arguments about the constitutionality of laws that the Congress enacts, what these laws can and can’t require, and how they have to be crafted ... All of that is wrapped up in this case right now, but for people, it just feels kind of scary. I mean, 20 million people could lose their coverage if this law gets erased. And a whole lot of us—over 50 million of us adults—could be again labeled uninsurable.
Wells: There’s such a focus on the ACA this week with the Senate confirmation hearings, because if the new justice is confirmed before oral arguments in November, she gets to be part of the decision?
Pollitz: Right. This is the third trip to the Supreme Court for the Affordable Care Act, and it’s been upheld twice before by a vote of 5–4. Now the expectation is that 5–4 is going to be harder to achieve this time.
Wells: We’ve talked about preexisting conditions. Is COVID-19 a preexisting condition?
Pollitz: It could be. It absolutely could be. Twenty years ago, I did a study of health-insurance companies that sold individual health insurance. We presented them with hypothetical applicants with a variety of heights, weights, ages, conditions, diagnoses, medications, etc. And we asked them: Would you sell these people coverage?
At the one extreme, we had a young man who had HIV, and he got turned down every time. At the other extreme, we had a young woman who was in excellent health, except she had seasonal hay fever. And she got turned down several times. She was offered coverage most of the time. But in all but a few of those offers, she was offered a policy at a surcharge premium. Okay, we’ll sell you coverage, but you’re going to pay 50 percent more than the advertised price. She got offered policies that excluded her allergies. She also got a couple of policies that excluded her entire upper respiratory system, policies that excluded the drug benefit. Medical underwriting was pretty fussy in those days. Crosswalk that to COVID-19: It’s a little trickier. This is still a new condition, and uncertainty is something that medical underwriters just hate. They don’t want to sign on and promise to pay all your claims if they’re not sure what you might need.
For now, in the first six or so months of COVID-19, we know that for most people, it’s an awful infection and uncomfortable, but it’s relatively mild. But we also know there are some folks, they may continue to have symptoms for an extended period of time and they could be severe, with long-term serious damage to the lungs, the heart, the immune system ... I think insurers would worry about that, and certainly if they saw a recent case of COVID-19, I think underwriters could act on that.
Another thing they might worry about would be people who just test frequently. Maybe they drive an Uber or they’re a cashier at a store or they deliver groceries. They’re in contact with the public a lot. They’re exposed. And they’re worried about getting sick. Just being at elevated risk for COVID-19, I think, is something that insurers would look at. In addition to being uninsurable for your health condition, insurers also had lists of uninsurable occupations. I was just looking at one of the old underwriting manuals, and on that list was “taxi driver.”
There was “coal miner” and “logger”—dangerous jobs, of course—but way before COVID-19, “taxi driver” was on the list, just because you get exposed to a lot of things. So, yeah, I think in a medically underwritten insurance market, COVID-19 could make it harder for you to get insurance. And if you were able to buy it, if you’re at risk, you may well be offered a policy that just excludes all treatment for anything related to COVID-19.


theatlantic--2020-10-16--Inside the Mind of an Anti-vaxxer

Inside the Mind of an Anti-vaxxer

Today , Hamm believes the pharmaceutical industry is corrupt , and that it ’ s attempting to spin up a coronavirus vaccine too quickly .
( The latter is a worry of the scientific community too , stoked by President Donald Trump ’ s ceaseless chatter about having a vaccine ready before Election Day—and the very name of the government ’ s vaccine project , Operation Warp Speed . )
Though Hamm fears contracting COVID-19 , when the coronavirus vaccine becomes available , he intends to avoid getting immunized .
People like Hamm might be the missing piece to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Developing a safe , effective coronavirus vaccine will be a monumental achievement , but it might not be enough .
Encouraging people to actually get the vaccine might be the real battle , and people are even less predictable than viruses .
If the coronavirus vaccine is 75 percent effective—which would be excellent , considering that the flu shot is only about 50 percent effective—roughly two-thirds of the population would need to be vaccinated , according to Paul Offit , the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enough to reach herd immunity—the level at which everyone is protected because there are not enough vulnerable people for the virus to pass between .
Unfortunately , in some polls , far fewer than two-thirds of Americans say they are interested in getting a coronavirus vaccine .
Though this number might change as we learn more about the vaccine ’ s effectiveness and side effects , at some points only about 50 percent of Americans have said they plan to get the vaccine when it becomes available .
Some reports suggest that Facebook @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about vaccines have switched to more vociferous anti-vaccine views in recent months .
Convincing people like Hamm that the vaccine is safe and effective will be a thorny and complicated task , for which experts say there is no one best approach .
It ’ s something the United States government should start preparing for now—but isn ’ t .
It ’ s hard to pin down just who , exactly , the vaccine-hesitant are .
White adults are more likely to be vaccinated than Black adults are , perhaps because the latter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and decades of maltreatment have eroded their trust in the medical establishment .
Anti-vaccine groups have also targeted Black people .
About a decade ago , anti-vaxxers in Minnesota invited the discredited researcher Andrew Wakefield , who falsely tied vaccines to autism , to give talks to the state ’ s Somali immigrant community .
Vaccination rates among Somalis plummeted , and a few years later , the community suffered a large measles outbreak .
Otherwise , experts told me , there ’ s a loose correlation between being Republican and questioning vaccines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and believing in conspiracy theories or having a lower level of education .
But in general , vaccine skepticism spans from Goop-reading Californians to the ultra-Orthodox Jews of New York .
In some ways , being anti-vaccine is a deeply American sentiment : It ’ s the stubborn belief that individuals know better than the government .

The majority of Americans will need to take the coming COVID-19 vaccine. Here’s how to persuade those who won’t want to.
Sometime in the coming months, our prayers will have been answered. The researchers will have pulled their all-nighters, mountains will have been moved, glass vials will have been shipped, and a vaccine that protects us from the novel coronavirus will be here. We will all clamber to get it so we can go back to school, work, restaurants, and life.
All of us, that is, except for people like Marcus Nel-Jamal Hamm. Hamm, a Black actor and professional wrestler, is what some might call an “anti-vaxxer,” though he finds that term derogatory and reductive. Since about 2013, he’s been running a Facebook page called “Over Vaccination Nation,” which now has more than 3,000 followers. One recent post is a video by the anti-vaccinationist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wrongly suggesting that mercury-laced vaccines are shipped to predominantly Black communities.
Hamm’s wariness of vaccines began when he took his son, who is now 10, to get vaccinated as a baby. He asked the pediatrician whether the boy could be exempted from the standard vaccine schedule because he has relatives with multiple sclerosis and autism. According to Hamm, the doctor treated him like a criminal just for asking.
The experience left Hamm in a fog of unanswered questions: Do doctors have a quota of vaccines they have to fulfill? Why do some kids have bad reactions to vaccines? Is there something they’re not telling us? He started to distrust the accepted wisdom about vaccines, doubting that the official narrative is the true one.
Today, Hamm believes the pharmaceutical industry is corrupt, and that it’s attempting to spin up a coronavirus vaccine too quickly. (The latter is a worry of the scientific community too, stoked by President Donald Trump’s ceaseless chatter about having a vaccine ready before Election Day—and the very name of the government’s vaccine project, Operation Warp Speed.) Though Hamm fears contracting COVID-19, when the coronavirus vaccine becomes available, he intends to avoid getting immunized.
People like Hamm might be the missing piece to the puzzle of ending the pandemic for good. Developing a safe, effective coronavirus vaccine will be a monumental achievement, but it might not be enough. Encouraging people to actually get the vaccine might be the real battle, and people are even less predictable than viruses.
If the coronavirus vaccine is 75 percent effective—which would be excellent, considering that the flu shot is only about 50 percent effective—roughly two-thirds of the population would need to be vaccinated, according to Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. That number is enough to reach herd immunity—the level at which everyone is protected because there are not enough vulnerable people for the virus to pass between.
Read: A new understanding of herd immunity
Unfortunately, in some polls, far fewer than two-thirds of Americans say they are interested in getting a coronavirus vaccine. Though this number might change as we learn more about the vaccine’s effectiveness and side effects, at some points only about 50 percent of Americans have said they plan to get the vaccine when it becomes available. Some reports suggest that Facebook groups formerly dedicated to merely asking questions about vaccines have switched to more vociferous anti-vaccine views in recent months.
Convincing people like Hamm that the vaccine is safe and effective will be a thorny and complicated task, for which experts say there is no one best approach. It’s something the United States government should start preparing for now—but isn’t.
It’s hard to pin down just who, exactly, the vaccine-hesitant are. White adults are more likely to be vaccinated than Black adults are, perhaps because the latter have less access to medical care, and decades of maltreatment have eroded their trust in the medical establishment.
Anti-vaccine groups have also targeted Black people. About a decade ago, anti-vaxxers in Minnesota invited the discredited researcher Andrew Wakefield, who falsely tied vaccines to autism, to give talks to the state’s Somali immigrant community. Vaccination rates among Somalis plummeted, and a few years later, the community suffered a large measles outbreak.
Otherwise, experts told me, there’s a loose correlation between being Republican and questioning vaccines, and also between harboring vaccine skepticism and believing in conspiracy theories or having a lower level of education. But in general, vaccine skepticism spans from Goop-reading Californians to the ultra-Orthodox Jews of New York. In some ways, being anti-vaccine is a deeply American sentiment: It’s the stubborn belief that individuals know better than the government.
Jennifer Reich, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Denver, views vaccine skepticism as an outgrowth of the societal push for people to take personal responsibility for their health. People are told “they should count their calories, count their steps, monitor their health,” she told me. Some people take it a notch further, deciding that they can train their bodies to fend off diseases without the help of vaccines. Vaccine-hesitant parents want to do everything exactly “right” for the health of their children, including personally choosing what substances are injected into them.
Other vaccine-hesitant people, like Hamm, suspect that the pharmaceutical industry is in cahoots with doctors and the government, in a dark cycle of profit and secrecy. This fear of nefarious medicine is perhaps understandable in a world where drug companies actually did, through lies and greed, spark an opioid epidemic that has killed nearly half a million people. Vaccines are not actually very profitable for doctors, but the otherwise bafflingly opaque and extremely expensive health-care industry does not inspire confidence.
Experts are divided as to whether it’s better to try to change anti-vaxxers’ minds about vaccines or to simply push them to get vaccinated anyway, without worrying about how they feel.
Foremost among the strategies researchers have devised to break through misgivings about vaccination is, essentially, scaring people into doing it. In 2015, Zachary Horne, a psychology professor at Arizona State University, divided 315 participants into three groups. The first group read a story about a child who contracted measles; looked at a picture of a child with measles, mumps, or rubella; and read warnings about the importance of vaccination. The second simply read statistics showing there is no link between vaccination and autism. The third read about an unrelated topic. The group exposed to the vivid anecdotes were more likely to change their attitude toward vaccines than the other two. Vaccine skeptics often tell frightening personal stories of injury; Horne did the same thing, but for diseases.
Read: A vaccine reality check
This approach might prove effective when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine. Americans tend to be more interested in personal security than the collective good, so emphasizing how the virus could harm you, specifically, could drive people to vaccination, experts told me. Doctors could, for example, show skeptics grim pictures of intubated patients or damaged lungs. In a similar study that came out last year, vaccine-hesitant college students were assigned to interview people who had vaccine-preventable diseases, such as polio. Afterward, nearly 70 percent of them became pro-vaccine.
For those who are afraid of injecting unnatural substances into their bodies, some pediatricians and advocacy campaigns are trying to sell vaccines as a way for the body to mount a “natural immune response” to an unnatural invader. “Basically, we flip the logic on its head,” says Matt Motta, a political-science professor at Oklahoma State University. “You know what else is a foreign substance that enters the body and can potentially do harm? Diseases themselves. And vaccines are the single best way to prevent these violations of bodily sanctity.”
In his own studies, Motta has found that for people who are concerned about contamination and uncleanliness—as many vaccine-hesitant people are—hearing measles symptoms described in depth leads to a 10 percent decrease in their acceptance of vaccine misinformation. In another study currently undergoing peer review, he found that reading messages emphasizing the personal and collective health consequences of not vaccinating slightly increased peoples’ intention to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
But other experts say adjusting attitudes is a fruitless exercise. Some evidence shows that giving people —including the vaccine-hesitant—correct information actually causes them to double down on their resistance, in a psychological concept known as the “backfire effect.” In a study similar to Horne’s, another group of researchers found that images of sick children only worsened parents’ misperceptions about the vaccine-autism link, and did not boost their intent to vaccinate their children.
Instead, this camp endorses a strategy called “direct behavior change.” Pediatricians might, for example, simply tell parents which vaccinations they’ll be performing during their child’s appointment, rather than ask them whether they’d like to vaccinate. According to research, parents are much more likely to avoid vaccinating if the pediatrician says something like, “What do you want to do about shots?” as opposed to, “Well, we have to do some shots.”
Many schools already do a form of this by barring kids who haven’t received their childhood vaccinations. Once a coronavirus vaccine exists, some schools and workplaces will likely require it too. Other research-tested methods in this bucket are phone calls and postcards reminding parents to get their children vaccinated, especially if these reminders include the practice’s name. “Most people are open to vaccinating, and they just need to have the path to vaccination simplified,” says Noel Brewer, a health-behavior professor at the University of North Carolina.
Direct behavior change is not foolproof, though. As Horne points out, the rise of “religious exemptions” to vaccine mandates show how parents try to get around vaccine rules. Before long, some denomination might claim that the coronavirus vaccine is offensive to their god.
It might be worth listening to people who have already switched from the anti-vaccine to the pro-vaccine camp. For Kristen O’Meara, it happened in 2015, when her three young daughters came down with a brutal bout of rotavirus. The girls projectile-vomited and leaked diarrhea in their sleep. As they recovered, O’Meara had the sickening realization that there’s a vaccine for rotavirus. She picked up books by Offit and others, which extolled vaccines’ benefits. Eventually, she could formulate counterarguments to the points made by the anti-vaccine groups she was once part of.
She thinks vaccine advocates should recognize that the vaccine-hesitant, like most people, want to be heard, not mocked. “It is not crazy to wonder about all these unpronounceable, scary-sounding ingredients that are in vaccines,” O’Meara told me. Their concerns should be addressed without implying, Oh, you’re just some nutball, crazy anti-vaxxer.
Read: Paging Dr. Hamblin: what if the vaccine works only half the time?
Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Hamm whether anything might reassure him about the safety of vaccines. “It needs to be unbiased, it needs to be apolitical, and come directly from the sources,” he responded.
Herein lies the problem: Unbiased information on vaccine safety already exists. The Vaccine Education Center, where Offit works, is just one example. But Hamm dismissed these types of websites as “one-sheet pamphlets” and “cute pictures of a cartoon doctor giving a kid a shot.”
Talking with him, I got the sense that converting the most hardened vaccine skeptics will take the kind of tireless public-education effort that U.S. officials have so far failed at during the pandemic. Despite ramping up vaccine production, the federal government has devoted scant resources to counteracting reluctance toward getting the COVID-19 vaccine, according to a recent report by a nationwide task force of epidemiologists and behavior specialists.
Maybe Offit and his ilk could profile every child who has ever had side effects after a vaccine, and describe exactly how the symptoms were (or more likely were not) related to the immunization. Maybe a news site could walk laymen through every debunked vaccine-injury study, showing precisely why, down to the P values, they don’t show what vaccine skeptics think they show. Maybe doctors could take a cue from the measles studies and encourage people to imagine choking on a ventilator tube as their spouse videochats them in a hospital bed.
Maybe they could do all of the above. As Motta told me, “you need to have lots of different strategies aimed at reaching lots of different people. And if you can move a couple of percentage points here and a couple of percentage points there, ultimately you put something together that gets us the herd immunity.”