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March 23, 2024 - 2:00pm
Although Candace Owens’s departure from American Right-wing outlet the Daily Wire was abrupt, it was by no means a total shock. Anyone who had been paying attention would have noticed the tensions openly brewing between Owens and the Daily Wire’s editor and co-founder, Ben Shapiro, on the subject of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In November, Owens tweeted, implicitly referring to Israel’s war on Gaza, that “no government anywhere has a right to commit a genocide, ever. There is no justification for a genocide.” She also wrote in a separate post that “no one can serve two masters” and “you cannot serve both God and money.” Shapiro responded by calling her comments “disgraceful” and “disreputable”, and her analogy between Israel and the Jim Crow South “ridiculous”.
Owens is a creature of American Right-wing new media, and is the type of character who might seem extremely valuable to this political grouping. She’s a young black woman, combative, proficient at working across multiple platforms, and has a massive following. She appeared to be the perfect Right-wing provocateur, who could spread conservative ideas to a younger, more online literate audience. She could endure intense heat, whether for downplaying Kanye West’s antisemitism and going as far as wearing a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt alongside him, or for comments on Hitler, whilst still maintaining a vaunted position in the ecosystem of the Right.
Many of Owens’s colleagues would agree with her views on “wokeness”, immigration, Christian identity and transgenderism, but drew the line at Israel. Her openly lambasting Israel in highly moralistic terms is noticeable because it is often just assumed that to be on the Right is to be axiomatically pro-Israel or an ardent Zionist, since many American conservatives, whether through religion or occidental tribalism, see the country as “one of us”.
Of course, it isn’t unprecedented for a section of the Right to be cold towards Israel. Pat Buchanan long represented a paleoconservative, isolationist strain of American conservatism: dead set against anything smacking of liberal internationalism, or the idea of the US having a global presence. This tendency also has a history of antisemitism, trafficking in the idea that American statecraft is held hostage by an omnipotent Israel lobby or a shifty neoconservative cabal in order to do the bidding of the Jewish state.
This split within the contemporary Right goes much further than Israel. Many on the US Right take an “America First” position because they view the war as one waged by the Democrats on behalf of progressive liberalism, in which their money is being wasted on foreign adventures or feasted upon by shady, manipulative foreigners. Hence why Tucker Carlson would give a rather obsequious interview to Vladimir Putin. Owens herself has claimed that Ukraine didn’t exist as a nation until 1989, and has talked about how much she wants to “punch” Volodymyr Zelensky.
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SubscribeGosh. That last paragraph. I just don’t see how it followed from the rest.
Doubtless, there are anti-semites on the right but doesn’t that last paragraph imply that because Candace Owens doesn’t think America should be involved, she must hate Jews?
Oh er
It doesn’t seem to follow directly, but the ‘America First’ strain of politics flirted with fascism and open antisemitism during its last flowering in the 30s, so it makes a great deal of sense to be concerned our delightful modern incarnation may tend that way too.
The mainstreaming of antisemitism during the current conflict in Gaza on both sides of the political spectrum, and not merely the fringes, should concern anyone with a conscience and an understanding of history. Candace Owens may or may not be an example of this. Nonetheless, it appears many things we thought we’d moved beyond were merely hiding beneath the rocks of the Western psyche, waiting for the right time to slither out.
“last flowering in the 30s, so it makes a great deal of sense to be concerned” ???
How much time must go by for something to be in the not-relevant past? Which is more concerning with regard to antisemitism, those arguing for reduced American military intervention abroad, or those those cheering for Hamas and justifying 10/7?
The lunatic fringe on the right were chanting “Blood and Soil” at Charlottesville, just like those Nazis of old. So it’s not ridiculous to consider them severe antisemites, but be sure to realize they are a very tiny lunatic fringe.
The gas lighting is so overwrought by now that essays like this are almost satirical. There is a reason people are worried about the rise of antisemitism on the left. Hundreds of thousands of them are marching in the streets every week. Not every protestor is an antisemite, but many of them are. These beliefs are shared and supported by academic institutions, tolerated by the police, and ignored by politicians scared of political activists and threats of violence. Large chunks of cities across the globe are no-go zones for Jews. But carry on, keep warning us about right wing antisemites.
Hundreds of thousands are marching in the streets because of Israeli genocide – not becauae they are anti-semitic.
I think we have very different definitions of genocide. Speaking of genocide, take a gander at what’s happening in Sudan right now.
or Armenia
Ummm…. are you talking about volume? About 50 million people live in Sudan. There are less than 5 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Or perhaps you are suggesting the rape, torture, starvation, and deliberate murder and bombing of civilians and wholesale destruction of their homes, schools, and hospitals, does not meet your personal threshold?
It’s what happens in a war that you started by attacking civilians and murdering them and raping them to death. An attack which was celebrated by Palestinians by handing out candy to children, and cheering in the streets. Just like they did after 9/11.
Could you list some of these no-go areas for Jews in the UK please? How are they being enforced?
You wanna be a Jew taking a stroll in central London on a weekend? Why don’t you wear a visible Star of David and find out. In Toronto, for weeks the protestors marched at the intersection entering a mostly Jewish neighbourhood. Try wearing the Star of David there.
Take a walk through central London with a Star of David on any given weekend.
Well, would you go out on the street anywhere in London wearing a skullcap?
You beat me to this comment.
How ironic given Candace Owen’s sacking for her sympathy for the Palestinians that my comment noting that the hundreds of thousands marching are not doing so because they are anti-semitic but in protest at Israeli genocide should be censored.
The more anti-semitism is conflated with anti-Israel – as is now the norm thanks to the power of the Israeli lobby and propaganda, witness Unherd, witness the herd on Unherd – the more anti-semitism will tragically be inflamed.
Oh, and if anyone is interested in a typical moment of IDF droning unarmed young men, and then finishing off the job, I invite you to watch this:
https://x.com/snowden/status/1770936325996155290?s=46
It should of course be noted that the phrase “Israeli genocide” is an oxymoron. An ironic title indeed.
Israel was attacked, viciously. Denying the Israelis the right to respond is anti-semitic. THAT is what is going on with the leftists. And given the frequency of the attacks from Hamas, and their stated goal of eliminating Israel and Jews everywhere, the Israeli response is proportionate.
Right to “respond”????? Do you even know the full horrors being inflicted by the IDF in Gaza?? For a weeny glimpse, take a look at the link I provided. And then zoom out a little and think about the 15,000 women and children murdered. Have you no heart?
(I see my first comment has re-appeared.)
Japan did not surrender until Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
Palestinians consider every death as martyrdom, like
the Japanese considered kamikaze missions acts of honour.
We may not understand what we see, even if we are presented with facts.
Woke leftists are simpletons really. They see everything through a binary morality of “empathy for the underdog”, they’re sure one side is evil and the other, the saintly, are “oppressed”. That’s it, that’s their worldview. Hamas learned how to hack this simple worldview. Their strategy to eliminate Israel and the world’s Jews (both are their stated aims, as fanatical and violent Islamists) relies on manipulating sympathy in the “Arab street” and among woke Western leftists, whose ideology dominates Western institutions. Hamas ramps up the carnage deliberately by keeping civilians close to their fighters, then is ready to film the result. It’s their main tactic in their war against Jews, to manipulate a worldview that Israel is evil and they themselves are oppressed saints. They’ve even got silly Western leftists holding signs at demonstrations in Western cities, calling for ethnic cleansing (“from the river to the sea”). Hamas’s cynical manipulation of woke Western leftists has been brilliantly successful. Silly woke Western leftists are totally unaware of how manipulated they are, because their worldview is so simple and binary, there’s no possibility for them to see themselves in the mirror.
I’m mean yeah..what the hell is that about??! Who in their right mind would associate radical right-wing politics and antisemitism – or indeed any variety of racism or bigotry. Nuts. Those jackbooted academics and museum curators on the other hand – with their decolonizing book burnings and intersectional kristallnachts…
Just another grifter soaking the rubes while her 15 minutes last.
Why not say you just don’t like her ideas, CS as opposed to casting dispersions.
Easier to hate the person than to argue their ideas. Sign of a lazy mind.
Aspersions.
Scarcity is Abundance. Poverty is Luxury.
She needs to research ‘genocide’. Foolish girl.
But wait, there’s more: It wasn’t only a negative view of Israel. She also referred to the existence of a “sinister” Jewish “gang” in Hollywood and noted that a “fringe minority” Jews were being “evil Marxist on gaining “political power.” Worst, (and more recently) she liked a tweet accusing Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a longtime critic of Owens, of being “drunk on Christian blood,” (referring to the ol’ antisemitic blood libel conspiracy theory that has been used to defend the persecution and murder of Jews for centuries).
That’s an astonishing achievement by Zionism to equate itself with the Jewish people. This shuts down immediately any reasonable conversation about Israel, you’re only allowed to talk about it in glowing terms or unconditionally smear it
I think this is fair. I support Israel 100%, but it is not above criticism. Same with the U.S. It is still the beacon a democracy, but there is plenty to critique.
“Criticism of Israel” is not the issue. Attacks on “Zionism” as such
are attacks on the very basis of Israel’s existence.
So you don’t support it 100%. Maybe 96%.
Got me Rob -96% it is.
I would suggest supporting Israel’s right to exist and defend itself 100%, but their detailed actions on a case-by-case basis.
Equate itself with? That’s the comic-book leftist strawman version, meant to disarm the accusations that when they criticize “Zionism” they’re also dog-whistling antisemitism. You can tell when they’re dog-whistling because they’re altogether too angry and emotional to be simply critiquing a political philosophy. No, there’s something too visceral and tribal about their frothing rage. It looks like hate. I see it at their kaffir-bedecked rallies in the city.
Yes, the hate is palpable.
Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people deserve their own geographic state. Is this wrong?
I am sorry but what is this special evil ‘zionism’? Doesnt the world’s only jewish state have a right to exist?
Putting forth Candace Owens as representative of the American Right is trash journalism. She in no way represents the overwhelming majority of conservatives nor any subset deserving attention and you know it. She does serve well as a straw woman for those too lazy to offer credible arguments to cogent conservative positions. Why don’t you spend a few words on Niall Ferguson or Coleman Hughes? Because they threaten your simplistic notions of “the Right”.
Ya. That bugged me too. I tried listening to her podcast a couple times and totally turned off.
She was an interesting addition to the cultural debate when she first arrived on the scene and certainly provocative being a conservative black woman-she also perfected the art of performative indignation .I ‘ve had the impression for a while that she’s either slightly unhinged and/or self promoting on an industrial scale..
Coleman Cruz Coleman? The neo Candace Owens? The black Puerto Rican who filmed himself pole dancing in white underwear in a NYC subway car until he found his calling mocking Black American’s reparations claim?
Any article that classifies people as “radical right” or “radical left” seems to me very childish.
Whatever one thinks of Candace Owens, I suspect that her departure represents a tipping point. Support for Israel has become so reflexive for many Conservatives that it has become like a blank cheque. The tactics employed during the Gaza crisis have tested this unquestioning support. I suspect that in future we will see more scrutiny and debate about Israeli actions and strategies in conservative circles. The pro-Israeli camp has relied too much on vehemence and intimidation and needs to switch to more focus on rational persuasion. If Israel is to retain widespread support in America and Western Europe, it will have increasingly to earn it and not assume that it is automatically owed it. If this encourages more prudent Israeli policies, so much the better.
Israel’s basic problem in the current conflict is Hamas’s superiority in the theatre of total propaganda warfare. This superiority is screwing with almost everyone’s head. And Hamas knows it … the physical war was provoked by Hamas in order to ambush Israel in the propaganda war. So you have to bear that in mind when criticizing Israelis “tactics employed”. This was very much a set-up by Hamas, in order to elicit exactly that kind of observer commentary.
I agree that Hamas was seeking to provoke a forceful response from Israel with the immediate aim of rallying support and the longer term aim of ensuring Hamas / Palestinians had a voice in any settlement. (It is easy to forget that prior to the massacre there was considerable optimism around an Israel / UAE and SA rapprochement.) Whether they expected such a forceful response is less clear.
I think where the Israelis are making a mistake is in leaving many in the West in genuine doubt as to whether their aim is to dismantle the Hamas military infrastructure in the tunnels or to ensure the departure of the population from Gaza. The denial of food and water encourages the latter view; it is unnecessary if the objectives are purely military.
My suspicion is that the Israeli cabinet is split and that the root problem remains the power of extremist settler groups because of the PR electoral system. Personally, I do not think Israel has a coherent strategy but, in the meantime, they are increasingly getting the blame for what appears to outsiders to be a strategy of ethnic cleansing.
My main point, however, remains that Israel possessed considerable political capital which it has now dissipated. It will have to work harder in future to mobilise support. We have reached a tipping point.
“it is unnecessary if the objectives are purely military” — not really, because Hamas’ whole idea was to lead Israel into the trap of urban warfare, where Hamas can manufacture “genocide” by deliberately hiding in among civilians and keeping those civilians in the battle zones. This is to get the money shots of all the death and destruction onto world media, to generate outrage. That’s Hamas’ whole ultra-cynical point: it’s their main tactic in their propaganda warfare strategy. One way Israel can ameliorate Hamas’ tactic here is to force the population out of the battle zones.
Here’s Candace Owen – “Ukraine wasn’t a thing until 1989. Ukraine was created by the Russians. It was, you know, they speak Russian. So, it’s absolutely ridiculous. And, again, this entire episode has been exposing to you how ignorant people are about the goals of Vladimir Putin”.
Here’s Timothy Snyder in his – ‘On Tyranny and on Ukraine. Lessons from Russia’s War on Ukraine’:
“But if we deprive ourselves of history, everything is a surprise: 9/11, the financial crisis, the storming of the Capitol, the invasion of Ukraine. When we are shocked out of the everyday but have no history, we grope for reference points, and become vulnerable to people who give us easy answers. The past then becomes a realm of myth, in which those with power generate narratives most convenient to themselves…
…Should Ukrainians not believe that they were Russians, this was the nefarious work of outsiders. Putin not only said such things; he had memory laws passed to prevent Russians from being challenged by history, and even had the word “Ukraine” stricken from textbooks.
…If I can claim that Canadians are Americans because they speak the same language, or because we share a common history, that would strike us as an idiotic reason to order an invasion. When a dictator claims the power to define other people’s identity, then the question of their own freedom never arises. If identity is frozen forever at the whim of a ruler, citizens soon find themselves without choices…”
Timothy David Snyder is an American historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
BSnyder is a neoconservative propagandist. See the reviews of his work by Professor Richard Evans for details (and for a more partisan one see the WSWS).
I’m sure Ralph would not be ‘obsequious’ towards Putin. In fact if he somehow lucked it to get an interview, he would badger him with constant and murky accusations of being Right and have Right-wing views.
Very badly written, confusing and meandering article.
It’s right for the Right to be critical of the Democrats on both Israel and the Ukraine. One can do so while being a critic both of the neo-Fascism in both Hamas and Ukrainian ultranationalism. While I would support Israel to the death, I believe it’s courageous and intellectually consistent for Candace to strike out at both targets to note that there has been ethnic cleansing in Gaza as well as that perpetrated by both the Ukrainian and Russian sides in the Donbas.
Any proof of Israel doing ethnic cleansing, i.e. targeting Palestinian civilians? They are hunting Hamas fighters who hide behind their own people. Any ethnic cleansing is due to Hamas tactics, not Israelis, who take great pains to avoid civilian causalities. But given Hamas tactics, many will die.
There is a segment of black America that is distinctly anti-Jew. I’m not certain, in our overly race-conscious moments, if Candace is simply expressing anti-Zionism or if it goes a little deeper and a lot uglier. To equate her with the right and create a false equivalency with the astonishing level of left chaos is overly simplistic. Jason Riley, Eli and Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, and Coleman Hughes have a lot more credibility than Candace on these issues.
Yes, who can forget Jesse Jackson’s famous Hymietown quote.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/jackson.htm
I believe that many blacks have assumed (and maybe told in church) that Jews are more responsible for their woes than can be justified. Jews have become the scapegoat for black troubles.
No one had a problem with Candace Owens as long as she was directing her (self) hate toward Black Americans.
She was directing black Americans off the Democrat plantation. However some people will never leave, obviously.
Shame about the tired accusations of ‘isolationism’ and ‘antisemitism’ in this piece. Is the author pretending that there is no active Israel lobby in the US? I think that might need some supporting discussion if he is.
Candace Owens has been losing the plot in general, buying into weirdo conspiracies, including that Brigitte Macron is a man. Last few times I heard her speak she was gabbling at hyper speed- sounded manic.
Regarding Israel, she clearly hasn’t a clue and doesn’t particularly care to educate herself. Shame, she was sound on BLM.
I think what most of these guys (and by “these guys” I mean European Leftists who get a wild hair up their ***** to describe the American Right to American Rightists) get wrong is a function of their desire to be provocative instead of insightful. The Trump Fabulists who make up a majority of the new-breed GOP cuckoo birds were Obama voters. Yup. It’s true. The working-class white Trumpists are not conservatives and never were. Candace Owens is a life-long Democrat who found a clever way to increase her social media presence. You can tell she’s a Democrat at her core because she doesn’t have guiding principles so much as guiding ambitions.
It seems virulent anti-Semitism is where the lunatic fringe of the left and right meet. Horseshoe theory.