Far-Right Speakers Given a Perch at Vancouver’s Web Summit

Vancouver’s Web Summit is usually a pretty corporate affair. The glitzy tech conference has in the past attracted speakers like the founders or CEOs of companies like Bluesky and Grammarly. Cultural speakers in the past have included author Dan Brown and tidiness guru Marie Kondo.

But this year the conference included Canadian YouTuber Lauren Southern, who has an extensive past in far-right media and activism that led to her being prevented from entering the United Kingdom and Australia.

Curtis Yarvin, a commentator who has argued for U.S. democracy to be replaced with a corporate surveillance state, was also invited and appeared in a debate that columnist J.J. McCullough described as “one of the conference’s most mediocre events” because Yarvin failed to entertain.

Also appearing with Southern on a panel discussing the growth of podcasts was Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist (and podcaster) who helped falsely popularize using ivermectin to treat COVID and used his time at the conference to claim that vaccines are dangerous.

In separate sessions, B.C.’s premier, David Eby, and Canada’s minister for AI and digital innovation, Evan Solomon, also spoke at the conference.

Solomon’s staff declined to comment for this article. Eby’s office did not respond to Tyee queries.

Gil Durán, a journalist who has documented and warned about Yarvin’s appeal to tech elites in the United States, told The Tyee he was invited to debate Yarvin at the conference — but declined. Durán said organizers then asked him to appear in a different format, but the participation of Yarvin “left a bad taste and I lost interest.”

“I'm in the middle of finishing a book about tech fascism, and Yarvin turned down multiple interview requests. Why would I fly to British Columbia to frolic with him in a circus?” said Durán.

“I was then told that Yarvin's appearance wouldn't be advertised. That sealed my decision to stay away. If you're too ashamed to publicize your guest, why invite him?”

‘Examining every corner of the tech debate,’ says organizer

The Tyee asked Web Summit organizers about Durán’s account.

“We continuously update our editorial lineup,” Katherine Farrell, vice-president of communications for the conference, told The Tyee. “Yarvin appeared on our schedule and speakers page ahead of his debate with Ramesh Srinivasan, professor at UCLA.”

Regarding far-right speakers being invited to speak at the conference, Farrell told The Tyee the conference organizers believe “in having the courage to hear from everyone impacting the future of tech — those building technology, those deploying it, and those influencing how it is used. The tech world cannot and should not hide from examining every corner of the tech debate.”

Durán said extreme ideas like fascism, eugenics and racism are being “cleverly marketed through ‘debate’ and ‘just asking questions’ journalism,” and he questioned whether Yarvin was truly challenged on his authoritarian ideas at the conference.

“Yarvin recently gave an interview where he envisioned a future Africa where every human being is under 24-7 surveillance like cattle and breeding is limited. Was he asked about this at Web Summit?” Durán asked.

No apologies from Southern

Southern appeared on a panel alongside Weinstein and Michael Tracey, a writer who has cast doubt on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and previously expressed skepticism on X about Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The three discussed the pros and cons of the growth of political podcasts.

Tracey told The Tyee it would be unfair for readers to infer, based on one X post “which was wildly misconstrued,” that he is sympathetic to Russia or promotes disinformation.

“The tweet related to Bucha was a criticism of American media for uncritically repeating and broadcasting material that was fed to them directly from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, without any independent corroboration,” Tracey said.

He added he spent most of his time on the panel pushing back against Weinstein’s statements. He and Southern later posed for a photo together, which Southern posted on her X account.

Southern has recently re-entered the public sphere after revelations that she accepted money from Russian state media — she says unknowingly — to make videos about immigration, assisted dying and federal government overreach for a company called Tenet Media. The company was the subject of a 2024 U.S. Department of Justice indictment.

Carmen Celestini, a lecturer at the University of Waterloo who studies religion, extremism, conspiracy theories and politics in North America, noted that recently Southern has been trying to renounce some of her past associations with the far right.

But in an interview with Canadian Affairs, Southern dismissed the idea that she should apologize for her past behaviour, which included taking part in a far-right European group’s attempt to block aid to migrants who were trying to cross the Mediterranean. In the interview, Southern said apologizing would be “performative.”

“She's made zero amends, and she’s back YouTubing, she’s back on X,” Celestini said.

In 2025, Southern wrote a memoir in which she alleges she was sexually assaulted by manosphere influencer Andrew Tate in 2018 and later had to leave what she describes as an abusive marriage, leading her to reassess her assumptions about the far right’s view of how women should behave.

But the book does not include the same reassessment of her previous involvement in anti-immigration and anti-Islam activism. Celestini also pointed out that Southern’s 2016 book Barbarians: How Baby Boomers, Immigrants, and Islam Screwed My Generation is still for sale on Amazon.

“There is no acknowledgment of the harm she has created and continues to create, because that work is still available,” said Celestini.

In a March 2024 video, Southern said she’d been frequently interrogated while travelling because of her past associations with far-right Austrian activist Martin Sellner and, more closely, with his wife, Brittany Pettibone, who shares Sellner’s anti-immigrant advocacy. Sellner has proposed deporting “‘millions’ of foreigners and Germans of foreign origin deemed undesirable to a ‘model state’ in North Africa,” according to the French newspaper Le Monde.

Southern told The Tyee she does not agree with Sellner's idea of mass deportations and has not spoken with him in eight years.

In 2025, Southern testified at a parliamentary committee, where she made comments about “mass immigration removing the culture in certain areas.”

She told MPs: “I think you could ask people in Brampton or Surrey what they think about the language being spoken around them, whether it’s a Canadian language whatsoever, whether they feel that the culture is being preserved.”

In her memoir, Southern also blames immigration for making her feel disconnected from her history and culture while growing up in B.C.’s Lower Mainland.

Southern told The Tyee she didn’t discuss far-right topics at her Web Summit appearances. She said her comments to the parliamentary committee continue to represent her views, and that her concerns about the “rapid demographic change” brought about by immigration “in certain communities” are now held by many Canadians. She also said she’s currently working on several projects with mainstream media that will focus on manipulative online information campaigns.

“I think you’d be hard pressed to find recent work of mine, including anything I said at Web Summit, that could meaningfully be described as ‘far-right,’” Southern told The Tyee. “In fact, over the past few years I’ve openly criticized elements of the dissident and alternative media ecosystem, including in my recent book examining corruption and incentive structures within that space. That position has made me fairly unpopular in some right-wing circles, who now view me as a traitor.”

Southern said her appearance at Web Summit “was focused on media, public discourse and online culture — not ideological advocacy.”

Mainstreaming with no accountability

Celestini said Southern’s appearance at the tech conference is part of the mainstreaming of far-right ideas and figures that is becoming more common in Canadian society.

With far-right ideas gaining so much traction across the globe, Celestini said she can understand the desire to accept a “redemption arc” for Southern.

“But we can't follow this sort of redemptive idea for these individuals if there isn’t accountability nor acceptance of the victims they've harmed,” Celestini said.

“The world is so chaotic that we're looking for that redemptive story. We're looking for something hope-filled. But we can harm ourselves or harm others by hoping for this redemption.”

---

This article is part of The Tyee’s reader-funded Reality Check project exposing and explaining the rise of digital disinformation. Join Jen St. Denis, Rachel Gilmore and other journalists battling lies on the web at the May 21 event Tyee Reality Check LIVE.