Public Health Policy Reviews 49:
VALKYRIES 9 – Lauren Southern and Media Depictions of Black Crime, Across Time.
Lauren Southern in 2016. The photo image is courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Donald Trump knew what he was doing when he began making direct and desperate appeals for votes from White suburban women during his 2015, 2016, and 2020 US Presidential campaigns.
In 2015, Mr. Trump began tapping into the economic uncertainty and extreme fear from US voters created by demographic changes to the ethnic makeup of the American population because of decreasing birth rates amongst White citizens and rising minority immigration rates from countries like Mexico. Trump used his media savvy to build the political base of his MAGA movement amongst the remnants of the former American “Tea Party” movement.
The Tea Party was a far-right coalition of political activists and organizers united by their fierce dislike of former President Barack Obama from 2008 to 2015. Using the national media to generate and magnify racial and gender social divisions became an essential aspect of Donald Trump’s political and media strategies.
Like former President Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump started to call himself the “law and order” candidate during his first presidential campaign.
**********
Photo by Oscar Gray on Unsplash.
As a public advocate for “law and order,” perceptions of rising crime from Mexican immigrants and in African American communities eventually became a winning campaign strategy for Mr. Trump in 2016.
Many liberals and left-wing progressives in America are reluctant to admit that violent crime is a public health issue. Experiencing violence not only can cause devastating physical injury or death. Violent crime can also cause profound emotional and psychological trauma that can affect victims for a lifetime.
There has been an epidemic of violent crime and domestic violence in poor and minority American communities since the 1970s – over five decades. Unfortunately, the only media sources that focus on crime in urban and minority communities and regions are politically conservative and right-wing media outlets and journalists.
Someone who has focused on the effects of violent and politically motivated crime is a prominent international independent journalist from Canada named Lauren Southern.
Lauren Southern began her career as an activist and “gonzo” journalist in 2015, right after Donald Trump launched his first US presidential campaign.
**********
Lauren Southern in 2016. The photo image is courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Lauren Southern returned to social media in June 2020 after a one-year hiatus.
Ms. Southern’s exile was self-imposed. In the interim, Lauren Southern married, moved to Australia, and had a child. She claims to have immersed herself in learning to be a mother and caring for her mental health and wellness.
Southern moved back to Canada in June 2023 after separating from her husband and accused him of being extremely emotionally abusive and neglectful toward her. Before her brief respite into what she thought was the domestic bliss of “trad-wife life,” Lauren Southern was a prominent member of the “alt-right.”
Her politics and advocacy tagged her as a White nationalist. Southern’s notoriety came in part via her promotion of The Great Replacement.
The Great Replacement is a White nationalist conspiracy theory based on the idea that cultural elites in Europe are plotting to slowly replace the White European population on the continent with ethnic groups from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
**********
Promotional poster for Lauren Southern’s Crossfire. Image courtesy of Lauren Southern: https://laurensouthern.net/.
On December 30th, 2020, Southern released Crossfire, her third of five documentary films highlighting domestic and international policy issues important to right-wing activists in South Africa, Western Europe, and North America.
Crossfire focuses on law, order, policing in America, police brutality, race, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and ANTIFA movements. Like Donald Trump, Lauren Southern’s political theories often have a shaky intellectual framework akin to a house built of sticks and straw.
However, the real-life cultural, social, and economic issues Ms. Southern addresses sometimes have a solid brick-and-mortar foundation. Her first two documentaries–Farmlands (2018) and Borderless (2019), helped her gain international notoriety. Unfortunately, her Crossfire documentary is the only media program that seemed interested in the mental health issues American police officers face.
Lauren Southern’s hubris makes her work relevant. She is willing to fearlessly address cultural conflicts, social problems, and financial anxieties that the mainstream media is content to ignore.
**********
Lauren Southern in Winnipeg City, Manitoba, Canada, in 2015. The photo image is courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
The violence, social stratification, and moral depravity in contemporary American cities traumatically affect many US police officers.
Thus, civilian police officers often face severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and mental illness issues. Lauren Southern is the producer and lead narrator of Crossfire. She separated the documentary into seven parts. They are as follows:
· Lauren Southern’s Narrative Introduction
· Part 1 — Once Upon a Crime in America
· Part 2 — The Beat Cop
· Part 3 — All Cops Are Bastards
· Part 4 — Black and Blue
· Part 5 — Fascists’ Lives Don’t Matter
· Lauren Southern’s Narrative Summation
The plethora of issues inherent in Ms. Southern’s film makes it complex. Crossfire’s overarching message is that contemporary crime statistics justify the punitive “law and order” approach to crime in African American communities. The online promotional videos for Crossfire featured American police officers suffering the debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
As a result, we believed Crossfire to be an amateur documentary film dedicated to providing the public with a deeper understanding of mental health struggles.
**********
Lauren Southern in 2018. Image courtesy of Twitter.
However, Crossfire is something much different than what Ms. Southern advertised.
The Southern Strategy was an electoral tactic used by racist White American politicians to gain support from White voters in the 1950s and 1960s. Southern Republicans accomplished their political aims by demonizing African American social and economic progress during the civil rights era.
The Crossfire film’s esthetics and core message evoke themes of war. It opens with a quote from the Bible—Ecclesiastes 3:8: “There is a time for peace and a time for war.” Upon viewing Crossfire, we thought Lauren Southern used the Bible quote for shock value.
Yet, after some thought and discussion, we realized that the Bible quote is essential in framing her core message in the documentary. Not only does the documentary start with a Bible verse, but while on the comeback trail from her year-long sabbatical, Ms. Southern emphasizes the importance of her Christian faith.
Lauren Southern adopted Southern Strategy rhetorical tactics and visual imagery to call White Christians in the United States to battle.
**********
Theatrical release poster for The Birth of a Nation (1915). The cinematic illustration is courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Ms. Southern wants to start a Holy War against urban crime and left-wing politics in America.
When we analyzed Crossfire’s overall audio and visual presentation, sinister images flashed across our minds. The spectacle reminded us of legendary director D. W. Griffith’s classic 1915 silent film ode to the Ku Klux Klan, The Birth of a Nation.
We would not be surprised if Ms. Southern watched Mr. Griffith’s film for inspiration and influence. Much like Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, Lauren Southern’s Crossfire is a clarion call to American Evangelical Christians. The scenes and themes of Crossfire seemed transported through time directly from The Birth of a Nation.
Lauren Southern ends Crossfire with a summary promoting traditional conservative personal responsibility propaganda. She asks, “Is poverty really a cause of crime?”
Crossfire is a film about the breakdown of “law and order.” Donald Trump refers to himself as the “law and order President.”
**********
However, it is disheartening that Lauren Southern did not have to artificially manufacture any images or scenes for content for her film, as D.W. Griffith did.
African American neighborhoods and urban areas are currently in such a dismal state that some Black people are now mimicking fictional depictions of abhorrent behavior created in the minds of historical racists like D.W. Griffith. Two of the biggest stories in the national news cycle last week featured young Black men causing carnage and chaos on the streets of California cities.
On July 5th, a mob in Oakland crashed through the door of a 76 Gas Station and looted the shop owner of thousands of dollars of merchandise and $22,000 in cash from the ATM. News reports say it took police officers nine hours to arrive on the scene.
Three days earlier, in Newport Beach, three men killed a 68-year-old tourist from New Zealand while robbing her and her husband at a Barnes and Noble bookstore.
**********
Leroy McCrary, 26, of Compton, Jaden Cunningham, 18, of Lancaster, and Malachi Darnell, 18, of Los Angeles, attempted to rob Patricia and Doug McKay at gunpoint.
The three suspects fatally ran down Mrs. McKay in a hit-and-run tragedy as they fled in their getaway car during the incident.
Mike Cernovich, a right-wing social media influencer interviewed by Lauren Southern, ends Crossfire by saying, “America is in a civil war.” Jack Posobiec, another right-wing republican Party activist, says the war is between “Strong men of God versus weak men of nothing.”
If the United States is in a civil war, Donald Trump is the leader walking us directly into the conflict. Lauren Southern is simply another one of his many frighteningly effective media propagandists.