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'Her conversion was Damascene.' Jason Davis/Getty Images
When Lord Farmer took to X to “put my own views on antisemitism and Israel’s current military campaign on public record” after “public comments from a high-profile member of my family”, I felt the same thrill as if I’d discovered that an indie band I’d followed for years was getting airplay on Radio 2. My niche interest had crossed into the mainstream — the niche interest in this case being Candace Owens, celebrity of the American ultra-Right and daughter-in-law to Lord Farmer.
For Farmer, this association has become a problem. He is the Christian deputy chairman of the Council for Christians and Jews. Meanwhile, his son’s wife is blaming Israel for the assassination of JFK; calling historical accounts of the Holocaust “bizarre propaganda”; and indulging in outright blood libel. (In a video, she claimed that “Catholics and Christians were going missing on Passover, then they would find bodies across Europe and they were able to trace them back to Jews.”)
Owens’s rhetoric is not new, but it has escalated since March, when she departed conservative outlet the Daily Wire after months of friction (and public spats with her Jewish co-host Ben Shapiro) over her alleged endorsement of antisemitic conspiracy theories. Not that the Daily Wire deserves much credit here: long before it hired her in 2021, her views were clear. At a 2018 event, Owens responded to a question about nationalism by saying: “Whenever we say nationalism, the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler… If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine.” She later claimed the quote was taken out of context, though it’s striking she didn’t bother to mention the Holocaust.
All this is revealing in its own right. But if, like me, you’ve been aware of Owens since her emergence into public life eight years ago, it’s also shocking because of how far she’s come: a one-time doctrinaire progressive turned radical rightist. A decade ago, Owens was an obscure figure who ran a liberal political blog in the punchy, snarky style of Gawker as-was or the Daily Show. In a 2015 blog, she had celebrated the “good news” that the “Republican Tea Party… will eventually die off”. Another article (not by her) vaunted a mock investigation into Donald Trump’s penis size.
None of this had won her much attention, though. Her first stint in the headlines came in 2016, aged 26, as the founder of an anti-online-bullying initiative called Social Autopsy. Like most such projects, this was broadly Left-coded. Anonymous abuse was associated with racism and misogyny, with the hate mills of anonymous image board 4chan and Gamergate (the broad collective of accounts that claimed to be mobilising for “ethics in games journalism”, but were in fact heavily focused on berating individual women in the games industry). It made sense that Owens — a black woman who had received a $37,500 settlement in 2008 over racist abuse she suffered as a high-schooler — would advocate against it.
But Social Autopsy was an odd and misconceived scheme from the outset. The idea, according to a promotional video Owens made, was to “attach [people’s] words to their places of employment, and anybody in the entire world can search for them”. In other words, it would have created an open-source doxxing database, and this was not a popular idea with anyone. Owens found herself criticised not only by the “trolls” she believed herself to be combatting, but also by the victims of online harassment who pointed out that attaching someone’s personal information to an accusation of trolling could be a very effective harassment tactic in itself.
Owens has never been a thinker, or someone who engages with ideas and arguments. She just spews out talking points that may or may not be relevant (or even true.)
Can you not distinguish coherent criticism from ad hominem attacks?
I’m talking about her, not some particular argument. She’s the subject of the article.
She doesn’t stack up, at all, to the best conservative thinkers. She’s a sort of right wing Owen Jones.
Blatantly unfair. Peterson is no raving zealot bent on “tearing the whole liberal edifice down”. He’s constantly striving to uphold freedom of speech and airing of opposing views, to stop cancel culture. Has the author any idea at all who Jordan Peterson is or what he represents?
She is the perfect far right heroine. Loud, dumb and bigoted. I believe she did an interview with Andrew Tate recently – the perfect conservative couple. With these clowns as your thought leaders no wonder you end up thinking Donald Trump would make a good president!
Sounds like a Columbia grad to me. That’s where all the hipster antisemites hang out.
This was of course a hit piece, particularly misrepresenting Owens’ views on Hitler, if not on Israel, though admittedly it’s impossible to side with people who side, even a bit, with Hamas’ barbarism.
There’s also some confusion about the term “liberal,” which in America can be synonymous with, or perhaps mistaken for, post-modern, progressive leftism.
Progressive leftism is of course highly illiberal, with its deep disdain for individual rights, its insistence on tribalism, and its loathing for free speech. The author refers to deeply illiberal, intolerant people as liberals. They are instead, of course, authoritarians, but of the hard left.
Owens needs to decide between the illiberal left’s antisemitism, or mainstream conservatism. The latter unabashedly supports Israel, and therefore supports Judeo-Christianity, the bedrock of Western societies.
This “alt-right” flirtation with fascism is incoherent – fascists also despised free speech, insisted on state controls, particularly economic ones, and were as indentitarian, in an “ein volk, ein Reich” way, as the most passionately “anti fascist” Transtifan progressive.
It also shouldn’t escape Owens’ attention that Transtifas and the fiery but peaceful looters of Buy Large Mansions have reappeared in full force to, inexplicably, champion the cause of radical Islam and the barbarity of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad.
But I suppose politics makes for strange bedfellows, your enemies’ enemy is at least temporarily your friend, and revolutionaries are often mixed and motley.
This is all flying well under her moral radar, so her allegiances are at least inconsistent, and essentially incoherent. Traditional western civilization and constitutional democracy can’t coexist, so to speak, with the Dark Ages theocracy of radical Islam.
My own take is that Owens looked a bit too long into the abyss, and is now lost. Or, perhaps, she simply has some confused mixture of sensible views, like her endorsement of nuclear families, and despicable ones, like her less than subtle anti-Semitism, like many others commonly have.
Were it not for her swing over to the “anti-Zionists,” she could’ve been an appealing voice for modern conservatism. Pity.
You’re a bully too. What don’t you like about her? Is it envy that she’s better at trolling? I’ve still yet to see you make an argument that wasn’t Ad Hominem. Socialism is devoid of substance and Champagne Socialism is an Orwellian contradiction.
Are you able to talk substantive policy or are you limited to personal attacks?
Imagine: he pays for a subscription just to sh*tpost. What a sad life he must lead.
I can only slightly disagree, or perhaps I do agree with you, on champagne socialism.
It’s probably an apt term for the wealthy who think that utopias can be created by the state.
In reality, state controls cause dystopias, which the 20th Century should have taught us.
There was little champagne in the USSR, or in Maoist China, or Venezuela, or Cambodia under the Khymer Rouge.
However, this doesn’t seem to be noticed by the very wealthy in New York City, San Francisco, or the City of London. You’d think they’d want others to flourish under free markets in the same manner, but it appears they only want to pull up the ladder behind them.
I’m not sure I get the point of this article. The author is writing a mini-biography of a current public figure, including some points of interest and not including other points, as is standard for biographies. Owens has apparently flipped once and then once more. It’s curious, and perhaps worthy of further analysis, but she isn’t a top news story, in my humble view.
i agree Samuel Ross. I found the article confusing and referenced small time people and organisations with which the writer assumed readers would be familiar.This to make a point about an alleged chameleon who wanders in and out of the headlines only when she is in a spat with someone as equally inconsequential.
Agreed with both of you. If she wasn’t an attractive black female, no one would pay any attention that her at all.
“The more extreme she became, the more she was rewarded.” Says it all.
Because she herself is an important culture war figure and the points about her reveal a wider truth about political polarisation, which is heavily driven by the way Big Tech operates. This is hardly a matter of minor interest; we have what is still the world’s foremost power being torn apart by this phenomenon, which, with the rise of totalitarian China, is a very unwelcome outcome for the world.
This is two stories on Owens in the last week. What gives? And who cares? I couldn’t bother reading it all. I do feel bad for her father-in-law.
This seems rather harsh and unfair. For all their faults, people like Jordan Peterson and Owens deserve credit for holding thought provoking views on important issues, and for sharing those views eloquently, in a way that has had a generally positive influence on their listeners. Some one may be steering dangerously towards extremism, and it’s OK to point that out… but why pick on her so viciously –and, while you’re at it, have a go at other completely unrelated figures you also happen not to like?
Replying to your points, Nanda, her points are not really able to be classed as thought provoking if they’re based on utter lies about horrendous human tragedy, like her Holocaust denial.
At that point she is nothing but a disgraceful antisemite who doesn’t even make sense as she rants through her total lies.
At least Peterson uses a basis of sensible thought and attempts to look at both sides. Owens is an horrendous person, simple as that.
Imagine if she falsely accused your religious/cultural group of killing others based on their religion or creed, how would you feel?
No, that is exactly not the point. There are no “horrendous people” based on their beliefs. There are horrendous people based on their actions. You call her a liar. How do you know she does not sincerely believe the record of events she has researched, even if vast numbers of people know that record to be viciously false?
Another example. Palestinian protesters believe that they were grievously wronged as a result of 1947 when the current nation of Israel was established. Israelis vehemently disagree. So far no one is hateful. But when one side calls for the extermination of the other, that is hateful. Believing a controversial version of history does not make you hateful. Calling for genocide, that is hateful.
Who is calling for the extermination? It is Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Quran than calls for genocide of Jews. The Quran is hate propaganda, plain and simple.
“Pick on her” – for arriving at extremist toxic, Holocaust denying anti-Semitism?!
I’ve watched Candace Owens over many years now. In general she has been provocative in a thought provoking way – thus a positive influence.
However she seems to have become unhinged when it comes to Jews and Israel, and it seems in direct proportion to her Christian evangelism.
She fits in well with the Christian stream who become unsettled at the realization that Christianity is basically Judaism with a Jewish Holy Ghost. The Holocaust was an act of mass envy and revenge. Owens, like some Christians, want to kill Judaism to supersede Judaism and replace it. It’s not surprising she fell out with Shapiro and has now become mentally and emotionally handicapped when it comes to Israel and Gaza.
Owens joins many prominent figures who are faced not only with the shaky ground of a faith that is based on the 2000 year old slander and bearing of false witness of deicide, but also the realization that Islam might be overtaking them both. Can Owens fathom that 78% of Gazans endorse the terrorism of Hamas? Owens, like many intelligent people today, are facing a terrible emotional crisis to continue facing the threat of Islam with no more than faith and words.
What a nasty and biased hitpiece, with an extreme yuck factor.
Over the past five years, Candace Owens has been more right than wrong, on a number of issues – the dangers of uncontrolled mass migration, the madness and injustice of Covid policies, to the folly of Climate Alarmism, all the way to the unreported persecution of Christians throughout the world, including in Palestine.
For someone whose business it is to be controversial and in the media daily, it’s certainly possible to cherrypick her feed and put together a string of unflattering quotes, and Sarah Ditum has done an admirable job. But if I had to get policy advice from either Ditum or Owens, I know who I’d turn to.
This is a very weak defense. Owens’ comments represent the crudest possible anti semitic propaganda. They are not being distorted or open to interpretation, and she has doubled down on them.
She could indeed have stuck to attacking and undermining the extremists of the progressive identitarian Left. Instead she chose to go down this extremist, reactionary anti Semitic rabbit hole. Unfortunately some figures on the Right seem particularly prone to this. If you think that helps the conservative movement more broadly then your judgement is way out. Perhaps you should talk to a few people not only on your own highly partisan side.
Who is this female voting for? Who did she vote for in the last 4 elections? Has she revealed that.
“extremist, reactionary, anti Semitic [sic] rabbit hole”
I have heard this before, but what I never seem to get are the receipts. I follow her on Twitter and read her tweets. So far, I haven’t read anything that can be described as extremist or “anti Semitic” [sic], although she does frequently ‘react’ to what others have said.
While I agree with you in the most part, Owens has become quite strange of late. I have followed her for some years and she has definitely become more extreme in some areas particularly antisemitism but many of her views have been spot on re anti abortion, Christianity, women’s rights and trans issues. I do think this article was a quite unattractive takedown – is it jealousy?
I agree CO has got carried away on a few instances – but I think anyone as immersed in it all as she would do likewise.
In regards to Ms Ditum’s motivation, I cannot help but think the basest of female motivations could indeed be in play. After all, Ditum makes a point of ‘noticing’ Owens’ ‘Barbie-doll’ good looks – apropos to nothing, really.
I completely agree. Her spite for Jews and her Holocaust denial are in direct proportion to her Christian zeal. She joins many who shield the Christian blood libel of deicide. Owens is quite intelligent. But without some reason for Christian supersession over Judaism, there just isn’t any reason for it. It’s emotionally and intellectually debilitating. I hope she will recover because she is otherwise, a very helpful voice for conservatism.
Christians are indeed persecuted in Pakistan, Indonesia, Africa, and many other Muslim countries. In the so-called Palestinian Territories Christians are definitely persecuted by the Muslims there. Check your copy of the Quran, bro. It defines Christians and Jews as kafir and dhimi.
Israel does not in any way persecute Christians. There’s a war going on because Gazans assist Hamas in holding over 100 hostages taken on October 7.
Check my reply above- I have followed Owens for years and have been a big fan. However lately she has become unhinged in proportion to her Christian zeal. The realization that her derivative faith, and the more sinister derivative faith of Islam continue to persecute Jews, and that fighting back is, yes, a very nasty business, has been emotionally and intellectually debilitating for Owens. Don’t follow her advice on this one. Check your premises.
What is not mentioned and is usually seen to be important in life is Ms Owens conversion to Catholicism when she got married. She wrote her normal political book just at the time of her marriage, when she changed to her husband’s faith. Then she stopped being normal.
Are you suggesting that becoming Catholic influenced her to make wild assumptions and assertions about Jews and the Holocaust? You cannot be serious.
In an earlier age narcissists became politicians (other motivations are available). Those seeking fame or adulation today find that the available slots for their narcissism to flower in are already full, so the value of controversy in the competition is increased, perhaps beyond rationality.
Long been known by psychologists that narcissists more prey to conspiracy theories. It’s a symbiotic relationship that feeds and self generates itself.
As Author conveys ideology not the driver here. It’s all about ‘me’.
Found this a weak and self indulgent piece of writing, but did raise one good point.
The anti Semites co opting of the Holocaust template for assumed victimhood for themselves is good
As for the rest, the casual drive by attacks on Peterson and Keane? .Silly.
Look. Candace is a young mum who, for reasons best known to herself has dug herself a real bear trap.
She was taken out of context re Hitler, so your restating this damages your cause.
She’s angry, self righteous and knows nothing of Israel and it’s history. Like way too many blowhards on the left.
She’s clearly got Christian roots, the likes of Sizer and Kanye have had their impact , I fear
But she’s a good kid who’s done some good stuff. Once she repents to Our Lord and God of Israel….as we all must….she’ll once more be a sheoherd and not a Jew baiting hireling.
Pray for her. And her family. And don’t call anybody right wing will you? Doesn’t exist. Theres fascism calling itself progressive and global. Nothing else.
You were doing okay till this statement: “Once she repents to Our Lord and God of Israel…as we all must…”
You repent if you want to; others may prefer to forego religio-ideology. It’s no better than any other mind-numbing creed.
What makes you so sure that you won’t meet God when you leave this earth? If you are right, then no foul has been committed. But if you are wrong…..?
And you are right because ….?
The article omits the fact that Ms Owens was converted to Catholicism when she married her British husband. This was just after she had published a fairly normal book praising Trump and Republican values. Isn’t that important in someone’s life?
The author forgot to mention the fact that she embraced religion when she married her new British husband. She had just published a normal book suggesting that the natural vote for black people was Republican. It seems that she went off the rails after her marriage.
I could not even get through this article. It seems like the ‘niche’ interest of the author is just hatred of Candace Owens and everyone who she describes as ‘alt-right’
I am no Candace Owens fan but to me she clearly seem to be suffering some form of mental illness – maybe bipolar disorder – but she is clearly delusional. I think the woman should have a psych eval and people should really stop listening to her. However, the author of this article clearly has a very nasty attitude towards anyone who doesn’t agree with her. I had to stop reading at the suggestion that there is something wrong and bigoted with anybody who even thinks or suggests that Caitlin Jenner is not actually a woman.
Clearly the author herself is ideologically captured if not delusional. Males do not become women just because they want to. They are not females trapped in a male body. This is such basic obvious biological reality that I have absolutely no time for reading the blathering of anyone who tries to assert that they can – or that we should all pretend that they can in order not to hurt the feelings of the delusional ones.
Spot on. The author’s extreme bias, and desperation to paint as bad a picture as possible, is revealed in the inclusion of the reference to ‘another article, not by her, …’
I also gave up on this article when she spouted that nonsense, although I read on to the end. I always see an article through even if I vehemently disagree with the author’s point of view, refusal to read, watch or listen is a habit of the metropolitan left, not of people who think.
Your point about Bruce Jenner is very appropriate, the fact that a “feminist” pretends she believes he’s now magically become a woman destroyed her credibility for me. Ditum pulled the rug out under her own feet with that bit of mental gymnastics.
The author didn’t say that; Candace Owens HAS make extremist anti-Semitic comments.
Incredible how figures on the Right behave exactly the same as those as the Left when one of their heros is criticised, however much evidence is provided.
You have to wonder if this article was about someone who was on the left, how many of these comments would be praising the author and saying great article. Talk about bias.
Yes, I was struck by the reference to Caitlin Jenner as being a woman in the context of Ditum’s statement: “But in Owens’s case, her information did not change”. Of course Caitlin Jenner is not a woman and what changed for Owen’s I suspect was the realisation that so much progressive ideology is built on such untruths. That actually Trump conducted himself as a fairly moderate although odd conservative in office rather than the imagined authoritarian ogre of progressive propaganda etc. She began to see through the fog of progressive lies so that her perception of the facts changed.
Unfortunately when you realise you have been fed a tissue of progressive lies and false statistics there is a danger that you start to believe that all sorts of conventional beliefs are equally untrue and become prey to improbable theories regarding the true sex of Macron’s wife and anti-Semitic propaganda. When you have been told with a straight face that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman why should you not believe slightly less improbable conspiracy theories that have been denied with as much passion as the idea that Caitlyn remains a man.
Perhaps it helps avoid becoming captured by weird ideas if you were never captured by progressive ideology in the first place.
How did you get to “I had to stop reading at the suggestion that there is something wrong and bigoted with anybody who even thinks or suggests that Caitlin Jenner is not actually a woman” from the pointedly ambiguous statement “Caitlyn Jenner continued to be a woman **in exactly the same degree** regardless of what was tweeted at Owens”?
Try again. Ask for help reading nuance if necessary.
She is pro-Palestine, that is why the whole media coming after her with all of these uncomfortable labelings.
Given ‘the whole media’ is pro-Palestine too, that’s clearly not the reason.
Her film exposing the corruption of the BLM org was much more likely to be it.
yes, I think Candace has a mental illness; no other explanation
Well that sure is an attempted character assassination all right! It is wholly typical of such critics to play the person and not the ball – including pretending they know their victims mind and motive. I can well imagine this author taking down Thomas Sowell in a similar fashion to this piece treats Owens and Peterson and I in turn would treat that with the same disgust as I do this rather ugly little hatchet job.
Very confusing article and rather over excited. What seems to be the baseline is that the lady is perhaps, how shall we say, not well, and might benefit from some rest and therapy.
The article does appear to mischaracterize Owens in my opinion. Is she really an opportunist who changed her political affiliations to further her career, or is she just a bit gullible?
I remember seeing her on a podcast some time ago – Russell Brand’s, I think? – where she insisted she didn’t believe in climate change, seemingly for no other reason than, well, if the Liberals believed it, it must be false. Elsewhere she has seemed to pretty much toe the line of standard conservative beliefs without much interrogation of them.
I’m more inclined to think her opinions are the result of a generally confrontational attitude coupled with, I suspect, a rather excessive amount of self-belief (to put it politely). A typical well-educated rich kid, in other words. The author paints all this as a cynical attempt by Owens to make a name for herself, which seems a bit unfair. However, she has been spouting an awful lot of nonsense lately (Owens, that is), which shouldn’t be overlooked.
Jordan Peterson was canceled as a professor for not repeating obvious falsehoods when ordered to. The author seems to imply he had no real reason to start throwing elbows.
Agree. Sarah Ditum has JP Derangement Syndrome big time.
Yes & ditto Posie Parker, whose whole philosophy has consistently been: girls & boys, women & men, should be allowed to be as non-conforming to gender stereotypes as they like, without having to mutilate themselves &/or deny basic biology.
Having spent a career doing theology and being a fan of Jordan Peterson I’d like to hear from you about his “idiosyncratic takes on theology.” To what are you referring?
I was surprised to read this. I haven’t seen anything about her for some time when I saw a few interviews with her. I thought she made a lot of sense and could be a potential president.
I’m surprised the writer didn’t once mention the money factor.. anyone who knows anything Americans knows they will do anything for money; and ego is very much secondary.. Trump is an except but then he has so much money his ego comes first.
Also the writer didn’t mention what a thoroughly unpleasant character Ben Shapiro is; frankly, anyone who shares a stage with him needs to be farsmarter than Owens, eg Bastani..
Ha, ha, Bastani.
Someone who believes that communism is a solution to humanity problems.
Never mind millions of deaths, misery and poverty saying otherwise.
I guess your father is toolmaker?
You are definitely a tool.
‘Americans will do anything for money.’
You are not a serious thinker LOM.
To underestimate LOM is not danger free.
A highly cynical piece of journalism. The author reduces actions to mere maneuvers by individuals seeking power and prestige. It seems the author harbors resentment toward Owens, likely due to her perceived apostasy from the Left.
The gist of this essay: she gets a “thrill” from hearing an obscure rock and roll band on pop radio, and reading about some armchair warrior opining about Israel reacting to a huge pogrom. What a loser. Typical Unherd slop.
I started skimming when I hit her simplistic and inaccurate characterization of Jordan Peterson. Peterson and Owens are miles apart. Owens does appear to be an grifter, pure and simple, but to see parallels to Peterson’s work is simply ignorance on her part.
This feels like a lazy hit piece. Not up to the usual UnHerd standard. Owen’s has spoken at length about her hitler comments & she’s under no obligation to mention the holocaust with every mention of hitler. No one is. She’s also endured some intense and prolonged bullying from various rabbis. Let her explore. Hers is a valuable voice.
I know nothing about Candace Owens, but I found the author’s psychological speculations about a mechanism whereby the particular excitement of going after victim-identified-bullies can evolve into rabid, “heroic” extremism, interesting.
Sarah Ditum: ‘Jordan Peterson was a professor with some moderate reactionary opinions (and idiosyncratic takes on theology) before rough treatment from the left convinced him that his own personal hero’s journey was to tear the whole liberal edifice down.’
Seems reasonable to me. Peterson is the man who stood up against the Liberal Establishment. Definitely a hero.
Sarah Ditum’s actual gripe with both Candace Owens and Jordan Peterson is that both are more successful in every way than she will ever be. Her jealousy has turned Ditum into exactly one of those ‘strange monsters’ she accuses Owens and Peterson of being. How ironic.
I will mildly criticize your last paragraph for the same reason I criticize the main article: it presumes to know the motives of the ones mentioned. In the case of the main article, it is textbook leftist M.O. In your case, maybe you know something about the author (“jealousy”) I don’t, and if so, Mea culpa.
Duplicate comment deleted.
The writer tries in vain to make the conversion of Owens from Leftist Collective useful idiot to Conservative individual thinker in a bad light. “Keynes reportedly said: “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions.” Candace Owens reportedly said, “I became a conservative overnight. I realised that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls,”. There is nothing unusual about this conversion. There are thousands of stories documented on YouTube of Progressive Left Think Liberals finally seeing the light and becoming Conservative.
Yes, the comparison to Keynes is invalid. Owens’ perspective changed, not the information.
Sounds like an AIPAC sponsored piece of dirty journalism. Shameful.
Not everyone who calls out this gifter bimbo is paid by AIPAC
Choose your Enemy Wisely, for you eventually become HIM. – Sun Tzu
Interesting article. Or maybe it just boils down to that reliable old standby: “just follow the money”.
Candace Owens has become a rabid anti-Semite. It’s disgusting.
Candace Owens has become a rabid anti-Semite. Her conspiracy theories and hideous claims are simply disgusting.
I’ve never met Candace Owens, and have learned (in fact learned it long before the advent of the internet) that someone’s public image is an unreliable guide to what he/she is like personally; hence, I have no opinion of Owens beyond the impression that she’s intelligent and articulate, an impression shared by the author. What I’ve equally learned to distrust are attempts like the author’s to pop-psychologize people from a distance, attributing to them motives which, however creative from a narrative point of view, aren’t logically inferable from their actions. The questionable judgment revealed by the author’s side-excursion swipe at Jordan Peterson (a classical liberal if ever there was one) further undermines what was a questionable project to begin with.
While it’s perfectly legitimate to take issue with public figures’ views, and to contest their statements, we gain nothing from imputing to them unflattering, even monstrous motives, a reliable insight into the complexity of which would require an omniscience we simply don’t have. ‘Analysis’ of this kind raises the question of how clear an understanding the author has even of her own motives, never mind Owens’ or Peterson’s–and her experience is directly accessible to her, while theirs is not.
Spot on. Theory of mind doesn’t appear to be Ditum’s strong suit.
“Though their politics are very different, what they share is more important. A desire to be the hero. A longing for the validation of their audience. A willingness to shape themselves into whatever wins the most reaction. Feed that psychology into an attention economy, and strange monsters get made.”
So then, she’s exactly like Taylor Swift or Bob Dylan or Al Pacino or any of these other ‘look at me, listen to me’ careerists. She’d have been happier in show biz – she has the looks for it
But that would take some kind of talent…
Good point that talking heads are showbiz but don’t Swift and Pacino have some talent for singing or acting? Dylan sounds like a cheesegrater, of course, but he writes songs that sound good sung by someone else.
I think it’s just where the money is.
She was the victim of racism when that got her a check. She shifted to the right because she made a useful token and that gets her checks now.
Anyone who has not seen the deterioration of Jordan Peterson over the last 5 years hasn’t been following him. It’s sad what’s happened to a once great thinker who now lives off the social media circuit.
Well, here is, not a subaltern, but a member of the PBI speaking. What is not said, can be as violent and produce as catastrophic a result as what is said, as when one says that the zionist state has the right to self defence but does not explain why. We are left to assume that there indeed are reasons or to make up our own. I can think of two justifications only: that the attack was unprovoked in which case one should expect a retaliation in the same way that when one needlessly punches somebody on the nose one should expect to be kicked in the ghoulies. Or, more dubiously, that Hamas are terrorists who deserve to be dealt with in an exemplary fashion, if not eliminated altogether. It seems to me that for either line of thinking to be held reasonable, one has to forget that the zionists have perpetrated 30 odd massacres, innumerable acts of terrorism and an ethnic cleansing on the people of Palestine. That being the case, it should be easy to judge that Hamas are the ones who are retaliating. And equally easy to wonder why Hamas are proscribed, but not the zionists.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-21/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/zionist-military-org-efforts-to-recruit-nazis-in-fight-against-the-british-are-revealed/00000188-d93a-d5fc-ab9d-db7ae0ea0000
Palestinian-Arabs have been committing atrocities on Jews since well before the creation of the modern state of Israel. The Salafist Muslim Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Father of Palestinian Liberation, began a campaign to ‘reassert’ Muslim rights over the
Jews’ holiest of sites in Jerusalem – places which predate both the Arab conquest of the region and the creation of Islam. He also incited the 1929 massacre of Jews at Hebron.
Husseini was paid by the Third Reich throughout WW2 to translate and spread anti-Jewish propaganda throughout the Middle East. He met with Hitler on 28 November 1941 to ask for help opposing the establishment of a Jewish national home at the height of the Holocaust. Apparently Hitler told him that, after Germany had ‘solved its Jewish problem’ with Europe, ‘Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power’. Browning, Christopher R. (2007). The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942.
There are photos of al-Husseini touring the actual concentration camps, in which millions of Jews were actually ethnically cleansed – very different to the fake ‘ethnic cleansing’ in which the Palestinian-Arab population has increased 5-fold in as many decades.
If the zionists really wanted to wipe out the Palestinian-Arabs, they could do it within the hour.
Trite and tired. It’s weird how personalities on the right become “news” subjects. Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson head the list of those who attract legions of negative stories that are just about them and how crazy they are. Do you think we can’t come to that conclusion on our own?
The converse just doesn’t much occur. I can’t think of a single far-left commentator who attracts such repetitive focused personality-based negative attention. There seems no shortage of outrageous characters on the left with outrageous messages but not much coverage of them as flawed individuals. I wonder why?
My theory is that journalists on the left (by definition the majority), who aren’t very good, just tend to choose the low road, the easy piece to write. It would be really challenging for a middling journalist to confront in print and on the record the intellectual heft of Douglas Murray, Niall Ferguson, or Coleman Hughes. So much easier to pick on poor nutcase Candace as so many have done before. Give it a rest.
Sarah Ditum is incredibly ignorant about Jordan Peterson. She has in a previous UnHerd essay demonstrated that she knows pitifully little about what he ACTUALLY says, but spends a good deal of time talking about things he is PURPORTED to have said. I suppose I could waste a few precious minutes trawling back to find the essay, but she’s really not worth it.
UPDATE: found it: a December 10, 2020 Unherd article by Ditum, equially vacuous, in which one commentator opines: “Sarah Ditum’s essay has raised the ire of many commentators here, and for good reasons, as are listed in the comments. For me, one of the most grievous of the faults in her article is the belittling of Peterson as an academic. She is simply and very plainly WRONG. Peterson’s many distinguished academic papers, his books, his chapters in books, and his countless other pieces of superb academic science, are searchable in the public domain. Ditum has simply ignored the evidence, or she is oblivious to it, which suggests poor research for a journalist. Peterson is constantly dismissed by people who have not listened to what he is actually saying.”
Peterson is what an academic should be: intellectually challenging, interesting, even.
And thank you for the update.
by making light of her “barbie doll” look (she looks like a healthy woman) really does a disservice to ALL the rest of your points. I can’t even believe anything else if you’ve decided to stoop so low and irrationally. Aren’t you a lefty woman who shames anyone who dares make a mockery of woman. Yet here you are doing this in your own damn article. It’s so dumb I just figure you’re actually trying to paint her as a real victim
Owens’ antisemitism is disgraceful. But this:
‘The specific beliefs are superficial; what they have is something deeper. Though their politics are very different, what they share is more important. A desire to be the hero. A longing for the validation of their audience. A willingness to shape themselves into whatever wins the most reaction. Feed that psychology into an attention economy, and strange monsters get made’
…is pure projection both from and about the world of journalism – such as it’s become.
Unfairly dragging Jordan Peterson and Kellie-Jay Keen into this is bizarre. And Caitlyn Jenner is not a woman. Author instantly brings credibility of her opinions into Q; which is a shame because Owens has indeed morphed into an anti-Semitic fruitcake.
People on the left have been banging on for years about Candace’s enormous and incredible swing from full on woke leftist to grifting, far right dog whistler.
It’s absolute nonsense. She wrote a small amount of stuff with a vaguely leftish theme for some vaguely leftish website before she started expressing her true views.
The author talks as though she has witnessed the workings of Candace Owens’ brain first hand. Her comments are in fact pure supposition.
“The cancellation to zealot pipeline is well established. Jordan Peterson was a professor with some moderate reactionary opinions (and idiosyncratic takes on theology) before rough treatment from the left convinced him that his own personal hero’s journey was to tear the whole liberal edifice down.”
This is an odd opinion to throw into an article about Candice Owens, but sadly consistent with what I so often find on Unherd – undisciplined and unfocused writing. Unless one has spent serious time interviewing the good Doctor P, and has the credentials to justify issuing a statement about JP’s specific motivations, one should expect to be regarded as an arrogant blowhard. I get the impression this was a first draft.
I should have stopped reading after the indie band analogy.
I disagree with the premise that cancellation leads to zealotry. I find it annoying actually.
Perterson isnt a zealot, he holds very common opinions but speaks out on them so that they become characterised as far-right / zealot. Anyone who isnt far left online is a nazi as we all know. The views and tweets he made which are quoted as evidence of zealotry are these;
Climate change activists are alarmists overstating the negative consequences. To people who challenge him on this and say the earth is over-populated and we need to intervene to change this, his response is perfectly acceptable to anyone who agree that climate activists are over-stating the probleml – do one then. This sentiment got him stripped of his license.
Trans activists are encouraging kids to have life altering surgeries. To the famous trans celebrity who proudly posted about her mastectomy to her followers, he thought, consistently with the view that kids should not have life altering surgery based on beliefs about her gender, that said celebrity should STFU. This sentiment led to millions of people accusing him of hatred.
He held both of these view in 2017 before he was famous and in 2024. There is absolutely no ‘cancellation to zealot’ pipeline since he is on record holding these views before he was famous.
‘Mythical head girl feminists’ seems like the word ‘mythical’ is doing all the heavy lifting to support the entire thesis of your article. Maybe ‘head girl feminists’ was just a clever riposte to signal the level of privelege in the ‘luxury beliefs’ of her online critics whose virtual signalling blinded them to a problem they would never need to face?
Anyway, its a poor hypothesis overall. The clearer headed hypothesis would take on board the evidence of the entirety of our current world and social media and put forward that such social interaction is leading, uncontroversially, to polarisation in debates, as people take sides and fight in synthetic intellectual spaces online. The entrenchment and hardening of positions within this social dynamic is a testable hypothesis.
Candace Owens’ unhinged views about jewish people need to be treated in their own light. However, i seriously dislike and object to your point of view that cancellation leads to zealotry, its reductive, poorly observed and lacks any clear form of evidence in this article. A hardening of a clear headed position on mastectomies for confused 11 year old girls is a sign of strength not zealotry.
What the hell gibberish is this? Lost the will to live by paragraph 4…
Not TL:DR but TI:DR (too incoherent: didn’t read!)
Erm… I think it’s a tad more simple. She became noticeably manic during her pregnancy. I think she is not at all well.
Sounds a bit deranged to me
This is clearly just a hatchet-job. Probably because Candace Owens believes that “Never Again” should also apply to Palestinians facing genocide by the extremists who are currently in charge of Israel.