Lauren Southern is one of the alt-right’s nastier pieces of work, a troll who tells white people there is a plot to replace them with immigrants who will undermine the foundations of civilization and who is prone to doing repugnant, idiotic things like handing out flyers that say “Allah is gay,” or saying Hitler “fawned over Muslims more sycophantically than Justin Trudeau.” She is something of a specialist in anti-Muslim bigotry. Southern insists she is not a racist, but even the conservative Times of London seemed skeptical of that, saying after an interview that “Southern flatly denies being racist or even far right, then ends our conversation by predicting a race war and quoting Enoch Powell.” An Atlantic profile (please, for the love of God, stop profiling these people) followed her as she interviewed desperate refugees and then cherry-picked their stories to portray them as opportunistic, in order to whip up public animosity toward them, while she herself “[raked] in considerable cash” from the effort. 

I therefore find it hard to muster much, or any, sympathy for any troubles in Southern’s life. Perhaps if she stopped actively using that life to hurt others, it would be easier for me to care after she herself had been hurt. But, without presenting her as in any way a sympathetic figure, I do think that comments she has made recently are useful in buttressing the case in favor of the very “woke social justice ideology” she has dedicated her life to eradicating.