Lauren Southern’s Borderless Premieres Despite Censorship Efforts

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borderless

Canadian right-wing journalist Lauren Southern has premiered her latest documentary Borderless about the European migrant crisis. It has been released online for free with the documentary being crowdfunded by Southern’s supporters with viewers only asked to make a donation.

It is Southern’s second documentary after the release of Farmlands on the white South African farm murders. After her tour of Australia in July 2018, Southern announced that she was moving away from day to day commentary and focusing on producing documentaries.

Like Farmlands, Borderless was released on YouTube for anyone to readily view. However, after less than 24 hours online, YouTube then told Southern that the video was still processing even though it had already been viewed by the public on the site.

Southern uploaded a backup copy to YouTube which at the time of writing can still be accessed by the public. It is speculated that YouTube may be wanting to affect the view count of documentary through this unusual action. Farmlands had been viewed 2.3 million times on YouTube.

YouTube has not released an official statement regarding this bizarre glitch and has not stated they purposely took down the documentary because of hate speech or because it was against community standards. If that were the case the emergency backup would have also failed to process.

Southern has faced online censorship previously when she was banned from crowdfunding platform Patreon in July 2017, also to do with her work covering the European migrant crisis. She has since set up a personal website to manage her supporter subscriptions and other donations.

Southern’s choice of the European migrant crisis for her next documentary project was because “The migration crisis is one of the greatest debates facing Europe today. Yet it seems mired in dishonesty, cover-ups, and pre-scripted narratives. Is this for the good of Europe? Or has our inability to discuss this conditionless invitation to Europe led to disaster for the very people it was purported to help, disaster for the people it was imposed upon, and chaos for the future of an entire continent?’.

Borderless exposes an NGO director encouraging migrants to lie to EU border officials about their reasons for entering Europe. It also features interviews with the human traffikers facilitiating the illegal boat arrivals.

Despite it being out of the news cycle, migrants from the Middle East and North Africa are attempting boat journeys to the European mainland, as there has not been a collective effort by European nations to deter illegal boat arrivals. However, the crisis has seen many nations elect nationalist leaders and parties promising to accept no more migrants coming by boat.

While Borderless will probably be ignored by the mainstream media the power of the internet will ensure that it is seen and talked about throughout the world.

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