I cover the far right for a living. This is why I wasn’t surprised to find Canadians embedded in an alleged Russian propaganda scheme
Posted on September 16, 2024 in Governance Debates
Source: TheStar.com — Authors: Luke LeBrun
TheStar.com – Opinion/Contributors
Sept. 8, 2024. By Luke LeBrun
Canadians often worry about Trump-style politics crossing our southern border and interfering with our elections, but readers may be surprised to learn a number of Canadians are actually at the centre of an alleged foreign plot targeting the 2024 U.S. Presidential vote.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a bombshell indictment alleging two employees of the Russian state-controlled media outlet RT were secretly “funding and directing” a far-right media organization in the United States to sow divisions and “manipulate American public opinion.”
The indictment alleges two Russian state actors covertly funded a “network of heterodox commentators,” including several high-profile right-wing media personalities, some of whom now deny any knowledge of where their six-figure per week paycheques were really coming from.
Around $10 million in Russian money was allegedly funneled through shell companies to the outlet, later identified as Tenet Media, and, perhaps more surprisingly, to a Canadian corporation based in Hudson, Québec. Both corporations are registered to a Canadian millennial YouTuber who goes by Lauren Chen, and a second Canadian, Liam Donovan, who, according to social media posts, is Chen’s spouse.
Chen, whose YouTube channel had over 500,000 subscribers before it was pulled down last week, is a C-list figure in the right-wing mediasphere. She occasionally appears on outlets like Rebel Media, Fox News, Blaze TV and the Daily Wire. Between 2021 and 2022, she was a regular contributor to RT.
As I recently reported for PressProgress, in addition to seeking to manipulate American public opinion, Tenet Media produced at least 51 videos this year focused on Canada that were viewed half-a-million times.
Most of these alleged Russian CanCon videos feature Canadian Lauren Southern, one of Tenet Media’s star personalities and a former Rebel Media correspondent known for her extreme views on race and immigration. In 2018, Southern actually travelled to Russia to create videos with Alesandr Dugin, a neo-fascist philosopher who is considered an influential ally of Vladimir Putin.
Southern’s Tenet Media videos focused on hot button cultural issues, including immigration, crime, gender and sexuality, as well as “anti-white” sentiment, unmarked residential school graves, and economic grievances about grocery prices and housing affordability. Other videos appeared designed to introduce North American audiences to key figures in the European far-right.
Most Canadians have probably never heard of half the people or websites in the transnational far-right media ecosystem. For many Star readers, this piece may be the first time they’ve ever read the names “Tenet Media” or “Lauren Chen.” But millions of Canadians are regularly consuming content from these sources and that’s something we can’t ignore. It is bad for our democracy when a significant slice of our population is being deliberately misled and even radicalized.
There are no easy solutions here. The fact is, many Canadians rely on low-quality information from social media to stay informed, whether because they can’t afford to pay for expensive subscriptions or because they feel alienated from what they see in the mainstream.
Policymakers might talk about creating foreign agent registries or regulating social media platforms. But this content resonates for a reason.
Some of the millions consuming it might be hateful bigots. Some may have real material grievances they don’t see being addressed by governments, others may have personal trauma or mental health struggles for which they receive little support. But in any case, real people are being influenced by this content and they aren’t going away.
We also can’t ignore the allegation that Canadians were at the centre of a Russian plot to interfere in American politics. Canada, of course, has a proud history of sending our best and brightest to Hollywood. But in recent years, our country has become an exporter of a new kind of celebrity — far-right influencers.
In 2019, the New York Times ran a front-page story titled “The making of a YouTube radical” that featured 25 photos of top right-wing YouTube personalities — 40% of the photos were of Canadians.
It cannot be a coincidence that so many far-right influencers are getting their start in Canada. One reason: there is already a sizable audience in Canada willing to open their pockets to people who indulge their grievances, whether real or imaginary.
So when Canadians worry about ‘far-right populism’ or Trump-style politics, remember this is not exactly a foreign threat. The calls are coming from inside our own house.
Luke LeBrun is the editor of PressProgress. His reporting focuses on federal politics, right-wing media and far-right extremism.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/i-cover-the-far-right-for-a-living-this-is-why-i-wasnt-surprised-to/article_56042920-6c7c-11ef-aa82-9302cac8f9d3.html
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