#Southern - Lauren

[inthefallofasparrow]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

DOJ Indicts Russian Nationals in $10 Million Scheme to Spread Covert Propaganda to U.S. Audiences

Brett Meiselas at MeidasTouch:

The Department of Justice has unsealed an indictment charging two Russian nationals, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, with conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and money laundering in a scheme to covertly influence U.S. audiences. Both Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva remain at large, according to the DOJ’s announcement today. The indictment reveals that Kalashnikov, 31, and Afanasyeva, 27, who were employees of Russia's state-controlled media outlet RT, played pivotal roles in funneling nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based online content creation company, referred to in court documents as U.S. Company-1. The content company, unbeknownst to its viewers, was funded and directed by RT to produce pro-Russian videos aimed at American social media users. This company is believed to be TENET Media, who touts right-wing hosts Lauren Southern, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and others, as part of their roster.

[...] Since its launch in November 2023, U.S. Company-1, believed to be TENET Media, has posted nearly 2,000 videos across platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and X, garnering over 16 million views on YouTube alone. The DOJ notes that while the content appeared to offer commentary on domestic issues, it was aligned with the Russian government's goal of weakening U.S. opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The defendants are also accused of deceiving two U.S.-based online commentators with large followings into producing content for U.S. Company-1 without disclosing RT’s involvement. The DOJ alleges that RT used a fictional persona named “Eduard Grigoriann” to conceal its role as the company’s true financial backer. Within the indictment lies a troubling sequence involving directives from Elena Afanasyeva, alias "Helena Shudra," to manipulate content creation at U.S. Company-1, aiming to tailor videos to specific agendas. Notably, in early 2024, Afanasyeva orchestrated the creation of tailored content that included a video featuring a "well-known U.S. political commentator," who MeidasTouch can identify as Tucker Carlson, during an bizarre visit to a Russian grocery store in which Carlson said he was "radicalized" by how low the prices were in Moscow.

The DOJ handed down indictments to two Russian nationals Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva for violating FARA.

The two helped funnel nearly $10M into creating a right-wing pro-Russia propaganda outfit called TENET Media founded by Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan. TENET Media has right-wing pundits Lauren Southern, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson in their stable.

See Also:

The Guardian: Russia accused of trying to influence US voters through online campaign

Nashville Banner: Nashville Media Company Appears in U.S. Indictment of Russian Propaganda Efforts

Mother Jones: New Indictment Alleges Conservative Media Company Took Millions of Kremlin Cash

[sher-ee]

Story here ⬆️

The well known far-right personalities: ⬇️

[almaprincess66]

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A YouTube network that features a former Langley political candidate as one of its primary contributors has been accused of being funded by Russian operatives in a US Justice Department indictment. Surrey-raised Lauren Southern, who ran as a Libertarian candidate in the Langley-Aldergrove riding in 2015, was one of the content creators for a right-wing YouTube channel called Tenet Media. Between Nov. 6 last year and July 31 this year, Southern created 94 videos for the site. The indictment filed in the Southern District of New York targets two Russians, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afansyeva, with violations of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, and with conspiracy to launder almost $10 million that funded the YouTube network. 

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[the-sartorial-journey]

Alfa Romeo

[papirouge]

This is the same moid who went full on conspiracy when Andrew Tate got arrested for sexual trafficking and said he was "FrAmEd"

I don't want to hear a confused man thinking he's a woman lecture people about democracy when (by his own logic) his behavior regarding the Tate case enables human trafficking and rape

[thingstrumperssay]

It turns out that somebody who keeps trying to push women into becoming "tradwives" hates being a tradwife.

Who knew that being in an abusive relationship where you don't get any help with the chores or kids wasn't great?

[world-of-celebs]

Gorgeous English cricketer Lauren Bell

[halo-eater]

heartwarming: white nationalist admits that she was personally victimized by an oppressive misogynistic culture that she got rich and famous promoting so now she realizes that it's bad, but only kind of. she publishes this statement in a far right publication, using extremely coded language about gender and slavery and throwing in indicators of her ongoing far right beliefs in every three sentences. she is still a white nationalist who is a direct cause of material harm to people with less privilege than her. she thinks that her ult-right woman groupchat is 'like the underground railroad' btw

[shoujoboy-restart]

By Mary Harrington, May 6 2024.

[...] Canadian Right-wing firebrand Lauren Southern, whose early video content regularly challenged liberal feminist orthodoxy, and promoted domesticity. Our stories are symmetrical in some respects: both of us embraced radical politics in our early twenties, me on the Left and Southern on the Right. Both of us embraced ideologies that felt inspiring in the free-floating world of the internet. And both of us, albeit in different ways, have course-corrected back toward reality in part via the fiercely practical experience of caring for a child.

Southern has attracted vitriolic criticism from the Right, for speaking openly about how “tradlife” went wrong for her. She, however, sees speaking out not as betrayal of her own “side”, but as continuous with her earlier willingness to challenge progressive consensus on topics such as immigration. “I’m not worried about saying the things I’m saying right now, that are getting me so attacked online. Because I’ve dealt with this, with South Africa. I’ve dealt with this with mass immigration, I’ve dealt with this with my critiques of feminism. And every single one turned out: oh, maybe she was onto something.”("sure I was wrong about trad life, but my racism is still right you will see")

For, she tells me, she’s not alone. She tells me she knows many other women still suffering in unhappy “tradlife” marriages. One of her WhatsApp groups, she says, “is like the Underground Railroad for women in the conservative movement”. Some of these are prominent media figures: “There are a lot of influencers who are not in good relationships, who are still portraying happy marriage publicly, and bashing people for not being married while being in horrendous relationships.” She hopes that in speaking out she can reassure “all of these women who are thinking in their heads: I’m uniquely terrible, and I’m uniquely making a mistake” that no: something is more generally amiss.

There were warning signs from early on. “If I ever disagreed with him in any capacity he’d just disappear, for days at a time. I remember there were nights where he’d call me worthless and pathetic, then get in this car and leave.” But she didn’t see them, thanks to the simplified anti-feminist ideology she’d absorbed and promoted: “I had this delusional view of relationships: that only women could be the ones that make or break them, and men can do no wrong.” So she didn’t spot the red flags, even as they grew more extreme. “He’d lock me out of the house. I remember having to knock on the neighbour’s door on rainy nights, because he’d get upset and drive off without unlocking the house. It was very strange, to go from being this public figure on stage with people clapping, to the girl crying, knocking on someone’s door with no home to get into, being abandoned with a baby.”

But as she tells it, the nightmare began in earnest when he was offered a work opportunity in his home country of Australia, a few weeks after the birth of their baby. She did not want to leave her support networks behind. But he used the political and religious importance she placed on lifelong marriage as a lever to force her to agree: “Whenever I wouldn’t do something, he would say: I’m going to divorce you.” So, feeling she had no other option, she assented.

He also insisted she should publicly quit work. His work required a high level of government security clearance; she was a Right-wing provocateur who had faced deplatforming, state investigations, and was even banned from entering the UK. In their early, giddy romance this had felt manageable. But “when we moved back to Australia, he really wanted to get back into his old work”. And Southern was a “hardcore liability”, so the pressure was on: “It was like: Lauren, you gotta hire lawyers. You’ve got to disavow everything. You’ve got to never talk publicly again.”

So, in 2019, she announced that she was leaving media and activism altogether. As Southern tells it, she was trying sincerely to put into practice the ideology she’d promoted in her videos. “I believed I had a certain role in my relationship,” she told me. “And it was to be the more submissive one that supports my husband’s dreams.”("if I don't give up of my constitutional rights, which I keep claiming the left.wanta to take away, my husband will be so sad tho" like damn ma' you

“I was told daily that I was worthless, pathetic. Deadweight.”

Then, thousands of miles from friends and family, she reports becoming “the closest thing to a modern day, Western slave”. With no income of her own, she had to do everything: “The lawns, the house, the cooking, the baby care, his university homework. And I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t have any support. There was no help changing diapers, there was no help waking up in the night with the baby. I’d still have to get up, to make breakfast before work. I’d be shaking and nervous, for fear I’m gonna get yelled at.” Then he’d berate her for spending all her time on tasks other than earning money: “I was told daily that I was worthless, pathetic. Deadweight. All you do is sit around and take care of the baby and do chores.” When Covid shut down all real-world public life, her situation became “hell on earth”. It was, she said, “the only time in my life where I idealised dying.”

“He was so much kinder, sweeter and more pursuant of me when I was this ‘boss babe’ travelling the world working. It seemed like becoming a mother made him lose respect for me. It was shocking to me, again, because the traditional view preached the opposite — that men love you more when you stop working and become a wife and mother.” In her experience, though, this was “very much not the case”.

Talk about imperfect victim, right?

Lauren should be criticized and reprimanded for her racism, bigotry and general alt-right fuckery. But obviously no one deserves to suffer domestic violence and abuse from their partners, I hope she fully wakes up and realises part of the reason she even got herself in a lifestyle that is a catalyst for abuse is because part of her mindset was the need for a "strong (white) man to care for her and protect her (from them immigrants)" she was also sold while fear mongering immigration.

Again, she should be criticized and reprimanded for her divisive ideology, not mocked for thinking she would be a exception to the actual reality of trad life.

I'm hoping she never has to experience this sort of abuse ever again in her life no matter what, hoping she also becomes a better person and leaves behind these regressive bigoted ideals of her too.

[sincerelytennessee]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alex Kaplan at MMFA:

Rumble — an extreme right-wing video-sharing platform that has boasted Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance as an investor — has promoted multiple videos in its “editor picks“ section from Tenet Media, a right-wing media operation allegedly funded by the Russian government to spread propaganda. On September 4, a federal indictment was unsealed that alleges “a Tennessee-based online content creation company" received “nearly $10 million from employees of Russia Today (RT), a Russian state-backed media company.” Reporting has subsequently identified the content creation company as Tenet Media, which employed prominent MAGA influencers. Attorney General Merrick Garland said it was part of “a scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.” The indictment also alleges that the founders of Tenet Media, right-wing influencer Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan, were aware of their funding source and that RT staff was “involved in the firm’s editorial efforts.” 

YouTube removed Tenet Media and Chen’s channels following the indictment, saying the action was part of the platform’s “ongoing efforts to combat coordinated influence operations.” Tenet Media also reportedly shut down. As of publication of this article, Tenet Media and its content are still available on Rumble.  A Media Matters review also found that Rumble promoted Tenet Media multiple times in recent months, featuring videos from the company’s channel in its “editor picks” section. In its source code, the platform describes its “editor picks” section as “the absolute real best” of Rumble.

Right-wing YouTube alternative Rumble repeatedly promoted TENET Media content in their “editor picks” section.

[hang-on-lil-tomato]

[davidaugust]

Being too foolish to realize you are sharing propaganda for the Russians doesn’t make you better than someone who willfully spreads propaganda for the Russians.

Betraying your country is betraying your country, whether or not you were a fool too.

[the-sartorial-journey]

Sunday drive...