Meet the right-wing Canadian influencers accused of collaborating with an alleged Russian propaganda scheme
Tenet Media founder Lauren Chen allegedly took funds from pro-Moscow outlet
The social media accounts of two of Canada's most vocal far-right pundits have fallen unusually silent after U.S. officials accused them of being collaborators of a covert Russian propaganda campaign.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment against two Russian nationals, accusing them of setting up a conservative media outlet as a front for pro-Kremlin propaganda.
The media outlet was unnamed in the indictment, but it was clear from details within that the charges referred to Tenet Media, founded in 2023 by the Canadian influencer known as Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan.
Among the people they hired last year was Chen's longtime friend and occasional collaborator Lauren Southern, another Canadian far-right influencer with a massive social media following.
In the few short months it operated, the outlet produced a steady stream of content favourable to Donald Trump, including an appearance by his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
Since the indictment was made public, several Tenet Media collaborators have come forward to claim they were unaware of how the company was funded.
"These allegations clearly show that I and other commentators were the victims of this scheme," Dave Rubin, a right-wing pundit with 2.45 million YouTube subscribers, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
But Southern and Chen have yet to speak publicly. Reached by phone on Thursday, Chen told CBC News, "We're not commenting at this time." Southern did not respond to email.
Neither has posted anything online since the indictment was made public.
Neither Chen, Donovan nor Southern are the subject of criminal charges, and none are named in the indictment.
But the allegations have jeopardized their standing within right-wing circles.
Chen has already been fired from another conservative website, The Blaze, which was founded by pundit Glenn Beck. Her YouTube channel, which had more than 572,000 subscribers, was terminated on Thursday. And her bio page on the website for Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump campus activist group, has been deleted.
YouTube also removed Tenet Media's channel on Thursday, saying "it violated our community guidelines."
'Broader conservative apparatus'
Born in Quebec and raised in Hong Kong, Chen rose to fame as a YouTuber under the moniker Roaming Millennial.
She was an outspoken supporter of Trump in the 2016 election and an eager soldier in the early years of the culture wars.
"She's situated as part of this broader conservative apparatus that seeks to instill social and cultural values that align with certain interests concerning anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQ rights and anti-feminism," said Eviane Leidig, who studied both Chen and Southern for her book Women of the Far Right, released last year.
As her subscriber base grew into the hundreds of thousands, Chen began making appearances on popular conservative outlets such as Fox News and the Daily Wire.
In the indictment, Chen appears to be referred to as Founder-1 and is said to have begun working for the parent company of RT — the Russian state-run news outlet — in the spring of 2021.
RT was forced to stop operating in both the U.S. and Canada as part of government-imposed sanctions in response to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
But in the timeline laid out by U.S. officials, Founder-1 began recruiting conservative personalities with lucrative offers in 2023 for a new media outlet, all while being paid to do so by RT operatives.
From the details provided in the indictment, Chen was allegedly billing RT in part through Roaming Millennial Inc., a company registered in the Montreal area, where her mother lived.
Tenet Media was eventually registered in Tennessee as a subsidiary of Chen's Canadian company.
When Tenet Media launched in November, the RT operatives are suspected of having directed the two founders how to cover certain stories and what content to circulate on social media.
Among the examples listed in the indictment, the operatives instructed Chen to produce content that blamed the U.S. and Ukraine for the March 2024 terror attack in Moscow that was claimed by ISIS.
Southern helped popularize extremist theory
Since Tenet Media began publishing content, Southern has produced several videos for the outlet focusing on Canadian issues.
Their titles range from "Canada Is Becoming A COMMUNIST HELLHOLE," which compares Canada to the U.S.S.R., and "Mean Tweets = Life in PRISON in Canada?!" which criticizes the proposed Online Harms Act.
"If you think naively that the Russians don't care as much about influencing Canadian thought, penetrating the Canadian government at all levels — I'm here to tell you they care deeply about shaping how you think, how you vote and sowing chaos and discord," said Richard Fadden, former director of CSIS.
Southern, who grew up in British Columbia, was one of the early stars of the alt-right movement, known for her videos in which she confronted progressive activists.
She also travelled widely and made connections with far-right movements in Europe, South Africa and Australia, helping circulate extremist ideas more widely.
Southern was an early proponent of the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, which holds that white majority populations are being replaced by racialized migrants and has been been cited by several far-right terrorists.
The theory was "seen as very fringe, as something that you would, might only find in the dark corners of the internet," said Leidig.
"But today it has become quite a mainstream and to some extent, popular idea."
Canadians targeted too
On Thursday, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said the government was working with the U.S. "on this serious matter."
"Any Canadians who illegally assist in Russia's persistent attempts to use disinformation, criminal and covert activities, and corruption to undermine our sovereignty and democratic processes will face the full force of Canadian law," he said in a statement.
Intelligence experts say the details in the indictment were a further indication of the scope of Russian efforts to influence the American election.
"We have not seen an adversary attempt to influence an American election to this degree ever before," said Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence.
Fadden warned that, despite the focus on the impact of Russian propaganda on the U.S. election, Canadians are not immune to the influence of disinformation campaigns.
"The Russians' overarching objective is to increase the level of discontent in our institutions — and institutions in all of the Western countries," he said. "There is no rational reason that I can think of why Canada would be exempted."
Corrections
- The spelling of Liam Donovan's name has been updated.Sep 07, 2024 1:21 PM EDT
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With files from Zach Dubinsky and Rhianna Schmunk