In 2017, Canadian right-wing activist and filmmaker Lauren Southern joined a group of young European nationalists on a boat in Mediterranean waters. Their mission was to interfere with humanitarian groups that rescue migrants at sea. The next year, Southern released a documentary about the threat of “white genocide” in South Africa. She’s a proponent of the “great replacement” theory, which holds that white Europeans are being systematically supplanted by Muslim migrants.
On Friday, her public profile got a boost from Donald Trump when he retweeted her.
Last week, Facebook announced that it was banning a group of extremist figures from the platform. Among them were conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; Louis Farrakhan; and Paul Joseph Watson, a British former editor at large for Jones’ website, Infowars.
It was the latest wave of bans for Facebook, which last year kicked white nationalist Richard Spencer off the site. People on the far right have been incensed about losing access to technology platforms, and some, like Spencer, have been publicly angry that Trump hasn’t done more to help them.
As if to assuage this anger, Trump went on a Twitter tear on Friday night. He retweeted a squib from Southern jeering at establishment conservatives who aren’t concerned by the bans. Trump tweeted that he was surprised to see “Conservative thinkers” like Watson de-platformed.