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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, life and

culture. My name is Freddie Gray. I'm the deputy editor of the spectator.

I am very pleased to be joined by Lauren Southern, who is a documentary filmmaker.

And we're going to be asking if the alt-right ever actually existed.

Lauren, I think you are meant to be one of the leading figures of the alt-right.

But I have a pet theory that it never actually existed.

I think it was a thing that people talked about for a while.

In the years between 2015, 2017, you obviously became quite famous as a part of it, but it was more a online phenomenon.

Let me put that to you. Does the alt-right exist?

Yes, it's definitely interesting being given leadership status of a group that can't even be defined, nor did you

ever claim leadership status of. It does appear that I think the alt-right as a concept existed

in 2015, 2016, but it meant something very different than what it means today. It meant

alternative to the mainstream right.

And then it was taken on as a term and amalgamated into something no one ever meant it to be

when they were discussing it in 2015, 2016 by the mainstream media into essentially just

being a slur for the most fringe corners of the right wing. And the media appointed leaders

of it. They appointed members of it. They decided who were all, you know, the factions of this little

world they created and invented. And most people like myself found ourselves shocked and surprised to be

called leaders of this group that we didn't

even know, nor have membership to, nor felt to be leading ourselves.

Yes. Well, I suppose the person most associated with inventing the term the alt-right was

...