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August 17, 2024 - 5:00pm
Candace Owens spent the past half-decade becoming a poster child for young conservatism. She had raw talent and used it, amassing millions of followers, headlining the Right’s largest conferences and sitting down with its most prominent figures, such as former president Donald Trump.
Yet the commentator has taken a turn since leaving the Daily Wire earlier this year. In an interview this week, Owens claimed that Joseph Stalin was Jewish and part of a cabal that is now “occupying” America. Recently, she staked her “professional reputation” on Brigitte Macron secretly being a man. And she has revised the Second World War to be a tale of Allied powers targeting Catholics across the globe. And this week, during an interview with Andrew Tate, she equated support for Israel with “defence for paedophilia”. What happened?
Until last year, Owens was a skilful and forceful communicator. During the BLM era, she challenged liberal shibboleths on police brutality and white supremacy, and along with other conservatives was subsequently vindicated when policies such as “defund the police” were slowly rolled back.
But as the news turned toward Israel last year, Owens’s persona changed. After 7 October, she started referring to a “ring” or mafia of Jews operating in Hollywood and Washington. She discussed at length why history’s demonisation of Adolf Hitler ought to be reconsidered, and progressively questioned or denied elements of the Holocaust, referring to it as “an ethnic cleansing that almost took place” and calling historical evidence of horrific Nazi science experiments “bizarre propaganda”.
She fixated on Second World War history, claiming America should not have involved itself. She has also argued that Russia’s Bolsheviks were Jews building “Christian death camps”. Owens even said that ethnic Jews should have been held accountable.
When the online backlash swiftly followed, even from some of her former colleagues, it was a confirmation for Owens that she was questioning the right things. “What they didn’t want people to see is now being seen,” she wrote on X last month.
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SubscribeWhere does freedom of speech end and damaging misinformation begin? It’s an intriguing dilemma that has been explored at length on this very website.
The article appears to be suggesting that the boundary has been crossed and that Candace Owens should expect to be either silenced, reprimanded or ignored.
The answer to the question appears to be arbitrary however, since there is plenty of content on Unherd that has crossed that boundary.
Free speech can be under the category of damaging misinformation, but it’s only a fraction as damaging as the denial of the freedom of speech is.
Because if freedom of speech goes, then you can be sure that there are true things that those in power over you will find troublesome if it get’s repeated and believed, and then you’re screwed, because they really won’t need your consent for anything anymore. They really won’t need you anymore at all. So where do you think that is going to leave you? So, allow all kinds of speech that offends you and everyone else. It’s by far the lesser of two evils.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
Absolutely this. The solution is not rolling back free speech. The solution, as RK alluded to, is ignoring her, or exposing her deluded beliefs, as this essay does.
There are also lots of facts – truths – in the world, they often seem to conflict with one another because we have imperfect understanding, so it’s often a question of priorities. What the state would do is to pick a narrative backed up by some truths then shut down other ideas supported by other truths. For those shut down, the only way to remain true to their beliefs becomes violence.
Yes, totally agree.
I would need you to cite examples of anything on Unherd even remotely crossing lines like calling historical evidence of horrific Nazi science experiments “bizarre propaganda”.
I didn’t get that from the article. It sounded like he’s genuinely perplexed about what’s happened to her. Brain tumor? Taking topomax?
Choosing to ignore the drivel from Candace Owens is not a free speech violation. I also have freedom to NOT listen, and I regularly exercise that when it comes to this newest version of Candace.
Agreed. The ordinary vernacular of the typical Democrat or its Globalist Sister Party in other Nations speaks almost entirely in hyperbolic misinformation.
Luckily, if you’re a Democrat or “Ally” you can speak complete inaccuracy without any risk of censorship or deplatforming. And really that’s been good for the world because it promotes Consensus. Far Right bad. Far Left doesn’t really exist. There’s no need to play bothsideisms or engage in reciprocal dialogue. We can never have an honest conversation but we don’t need to. The lived experience of those who speak on behalf of the “Oppressed” is good enough!
It’s fine to ignore her.
It’s a pity, she made lots of good points. I recall her interviewed at a Congressional hearing when she very firmly put a woke, racist senator back in her box for her patronising attitude to black people.
Freedom of speech is literally without border. The right to talk about ideas is fundamental to a free society.
There is a classical liberal concept, that can be phrased as “the marketplace of ideas”: you’re free to buy what you want; it’s up to you. That’s different from a mob of screaming violent “students” shutting that marketplace down because it’s “harmful to oppressed minorities”. And further, if you want misinformation, UnHerd is slim pickings: just tune in to any regime-approved outlet — climate, gender, race, epidemics, you name it — you’ll be served up a rich vein of heavily-controlled narrative monoculture, where all circumspection is “far right wing” and driven by the darkest of evil motives.
Testing
She may have the right to say such things, and I defend her right to say them, but just because you have the right to say such things, does not mean you’re protected from any consequences of saying them. If you say something that alienates or offends certain persons, They are within their right to ostracize you, avoid you, if not become socially hostile to you. In her case she said some pretty repensible things about the Jews, why would they want to continue to associate with somebody who not only defends but excuses the likes of Hitler and the Nazis, your average Jew would be pretty disgusted and repelled by such a person who says such things. You can say the same about any person in a more mundane situation, such as if someone called your wife fat and ugly, would you really want to associate with let alone defend such a person who was doing that to you. Candice Owens did cross boundaries, but not a legal boundary but a social and moral boundary. She is suffering for consequences of her own actions, and it’s entirely her own fault.
You chose particular example of person saying something you consider wrong.
What about wider context?
Like shutting down discussions about covid policies, efficacy of covid vaccines, mass immigration, transgender issues?
What she said, assuming it is true is terrible.
However, people say openly they are Cimmunists or Marxists and don’t suffer the same consequences.
Why?
Mr Fazi of this parish claims to be Marxist.
So killing Jews is terrible but killing hundreds of millions of other people is just fine.
Footnote of history.
One of my aunts was Jewish and another one died in Auschwitz, so do not come up with usual fascist, blah, blah reply, please.
Obtuse will do just fine, no need for fascist.
Leftists are surprised by black conservatives, I am surprised by black Neo-Nazis
She’s not a Neo-Nazi. She’s just incorrect on many topics because she takes contrarianism to its radical extreme. She takes it to its radical extreme because she was unnecessarily attacked when she had sensible positions. She’s rebelling. Keep in mind she was an Occupy Wall Street Socialist at one point.
There’s a larger point that she’s hinting at but missing due to her tangents which is that many historical (including WW2 narratives) are sanitized to the point of being inaccurate. There’s a danger in inaccurate narratives because they don’t capture history. But it’s better to engage with the inaccuracies of contrarians than just attack their character.
Why do people dive down the rabbit hole of deluded conspiracy theories? I’m sure there’s a bunch of reasons and I’m not sure it matters. The important thing is expose this nonsense, or otherwise ignore it. The worst thing we can do is ask the state to protect us from such delusions.
It’s simple, unresolved, simmering, anger and resentment. Something happened to them in their life in which their gravely wounded their self-esteem combined with disappointment with things not turning out the way they wanted to, which eats at them and eventually completely consumes them and which comes to define them as a person and thus how they see the world. They turn to fringe ideas because rational explanations are unsatisfying to them and because they don’t provide the answers that they find satisfying or provide or closure that they find fulfilling. The result they turn to conspiracy theories because they provide outlets of which to vent their personal frustrations upon as well as provide scapegoats for their problems, and they allow them a blank slate to project aspirations and frustrations In which they can live out a delusional reality in which to act upon them and avoid truths that they find unpleasant. It’s further strengthened by the fact that other people like them do the exact same thing and often congregate in desperation with each other, which results in them feeding off each other and sustaining each other’s delusions and validating each other’s choices.
Would Marx fit this description?
Absolutely!
You make some very good points but it’s very interesting the way right wing people seem to be particularly easily led down this rabbit hole. For example although I completely disagree with the ideology, a lot of quite normal people think that “transwomen” should have full rights be able to access women’s toilets and changing rooms etc.
It’s difficult on the other hand to think of any normal person who thinks that a Jewish paedophile cabal is running the US or whatever. This is insanity not only on a high-scale but also totally counted productive to a political cause.
Silly. There isn’t a Jewish pedophile cabal running the US. Miserable, childless cat ladies are running the US.
There’s a saying along the lines of: “Conspiracy theories allow morons to think that they’re intellectuals.’
I upvoted this.
But let’s remember that idea that covid virus escaped from Chinese lab and that covid vaccines did not work as we were told were conspiracy theories only few years ago.
It is inevitable I think in today’s communication age for there to be wild, off the wall conspiracy theories eg, Stalin was Jewish, floating about, and perfectly rational suspicions based on sound evidence that there is a conspiracy, eg, Covid escaping the Wuhan lab, or post office workers being unjustly convicted of crimes to hide a flawed technical system.
We need to educate our children as well as we can, get them reading books, not articles about books, help them think critically but not cynically.
The subpost office scandal is a good example of my diagnosis above of the difference between conspiracy theory and intellectually respectable speculation. The technical flaw conjecture was a much simpler explanation than the theory that hundreds of non-mutually acquainted minimally tech-savvy subpost office workers were independently defrauding the post office.
The difference between conspiracy theories and intellectually respectable speculations is that the former always involve infractions of the principle of inference to the simplest explanation. The speculation that the Covid virus escaped from a lab did not involve infraction of this kind.
It’s usually a combination of narcissism and boringness – inadequate little nonentities trying to make themselves seem more interesting than they actually are.
I use to listen to her. Too bad she bought into Jew hate.
IDK. I always found her a bit hyperbolic – long before her antisemite ramblings.
Candice Owen I’m afraid lost it a while ago. I remember a few years back her saying she thought the moon landing was faked and happened in film set somewhere. Whilst that was mild compared to her more recent nonsense it shows she has had problems for a while.
I never liked her persona after listening to her rumblings few times.
I think people like the idea of black Conservative intellectual or politician so much they ignore reality.
Kemi Badenoch anyone?
What’s wrong with Kemi Badenoch?!?
She’s been bonkers for years. You people are just catching up with the rest of us!
Totally agree, for once…
The author is ill-informed. Anyone paying attention to the online world or familiar with what was once called the IDW, will have encountered Candace Owens as a hack, and a thick one at that, barely capable of rational thought. Right when she first emerged, there were interviews with the likes of Coleman Hughes, and I seem to remember, Jordan Peterson that exposed her shallowness and lack of intelligence. She’s no media Icarus.
Sounds autobiographical
Meanwhile, Yvette Cooper is planning to classify ‘extreme misogyny’ as terrorism. Depends what you mean by ‘extreme’, I suppose, and what the consequences might be; but while you can ignore Candace Owens’ weird and repellent ramblings, you won’t be able to ignore Ms Cooper and her parliamentary draughtspeople….
What about misandry, Ms Cooper?
Nothing, does not exist.
Sorry to see a once talented woman lose the plot.
The answer to this and many other issues is paranoia.
The common usage of the word paranoia is “delusions of persecution” or “unjustified suspicion and mistrust of other people”, but that is not the whole story. Paranoia stems from a deep sense of “badness” inside the individual which can only be assuaged by finding someone or something outside oneself to hate and fight against.
It starts like this:- the tiny child is helpless and totally dependent on the parents. The child knows nothing, and the parents know everything. If a parent punishes the child or is cruel, the child concludes that he/she is bad and deserves this cruelty. Over time, the child comes to believe he/she is an innately bad person. The feelings are so painful that they are unconscious, deeply buried in the psyche and unacknowledged. But the painful feelings are acted out in later life by finding outside objects or persons to hate even more than oneself. This is paranoia. This is neurosis.
So the paranoid has to find someone or something to hate. And of course the internet makes it so easy to do. The extreme Labour left is populated with paranoids. They’ve chosen socialism, so Britain and the USA as the bastions of capitalism are the perfect target for their hatred. The same reasoning explains extreme Woke activists and IRA terrorism, extreme right-wing and left-wing parties; extreme climate activists; anti-vivisectionists; Hamas’s policy to wipe Israel off the map; etc, etc. They are all based on paranoid irrational hatred.
As a corollary to the hatred comes an abnormal identification with the oppressed. So paranoids will, for example, identify with the Palestinians as the oppressed, with Israel as the oppressor. Never mind that the Palestinians are arguably oppressed mainly by their Hamas leadership who do not want a solution, because this is irrational stuff, and logic is not involved.
Paranoids will infiltrate existing organisations and distort their purpose to achieve their fix. So Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter may have started with worthwhile aims and methods, but become distorted by extremist infiltrators. And because the infiltrators are driven by strong neurotic forces they are convincing and influential.
Paranoids can also distort good causes. For example, climate warming is undeniable, but governments climate policies seem to be driven more by paranoid ideology and guilt than rational debate about options and the costs of these options.
Let’s be clear – this is not to criticise these people, it is to try to understand them. They are damaged neurotic people. They can’t be reasoned with or negotiated with, because neurotic behaviour is irrational and not receptive to negotiation.
Nobody has a perfect childhood, and we all get mildly abused by our parents from time to time as well as being loved, praised, encouraged, etc. So we are all perhaps mildly paranoid, but for most people it is assuaged by, for example, going to a football match and shouting at the other side, or the referee, or….
Fortunately, paranoids are not very successful overall. Their extreme views are not very persuasive to most people. And because they cannot trust anybody, they find cooperation difficult, and extreme groups often break up into factions. That is why there are dozens of extreme political parties, both left and right.
Paranoids are unhappy people, fighting to save their sense of self all the time. They can be helped, but maybe only by analytic psychotherapy, which can be long-term. And before finding help, they first have to recognise that they have a problem, and that may only happen when they have a mental breakdown.
The psychoanalyst Alice Miller, in her great book “The drama of being a child”, states that “all criminal behaviour is retribution for cruelty received in childhood”. Frightening stuff, and closely related to paranoia behaviour.
My thoughts entirely. I think she needs some time out.
Very Freudian, but Freud was wrong about a lot of things.
Why do so many Jews persist in labelling anyone antisemitic as “far-right”?
Are Hamas far-right? I don’t get the impression that their Western supporters see themselves that way.
The term ‘far-right’ is a lazy slur. When it is used, it demonstrates that the user is lazy and prone to using slurs.
The left gets a softer ride than the right because Britain portrayed Stalin as “Uncle Joe” during and after WW2. Give Uncle Adolf a break. He was a gent to Unity.
Yes. My home town in the UK has a Stalin Road.
Anti-semitism seems like more of mental illness than a garden variety ethnic hatred. But of course that doesn’t explain how it happens.
Perhaps there will be a pill for it someday.
She had A Jones on the other day whom (imo) correctly identified a ‘Manchurian candidate’ as responsible for the Trump assassination – the latest activ(ated) member of the CIA’s updated MK-ULTRA program, formerly run by the US military in the 1960s.
Personally, I think it’s good to get that info back into the public realm; the federal government has suppressed all information on the Trump shooter.
This is amusingly crazy.
Says the guy totally in love with the simulacrum.
I think Candace Owens has crossed into mental illness with delusional thinking and as someone else said, this has been happening for a while.
“Until last year, Owens was a skilful and forceful communicator.”
Unfortunately, she still is. As the article demonstrates, she’s been consumed by a whole variety of conspiracy theories, especially the anti-Semitic ones, but she hasn’t lost the charisma that made her eminently watchable. She has five million followers and over two million subscribers, who are, as one can see from the comments they leave, are completely on board with her beliefs.
Emanuel Macron is married to a man. Id sayshe’s right about that & it’s definitely worth looking into, so what else could she be right about?
So in short Ms Owens has some strongly held, what most would call decent ethical beliefs and some of them are fact based – eg in the absence of the rule of law chaos reigns, or Demrats are racists who judge not on character but on skin color. BUT she is also daft enough to believe insane unfalsifiable pseudo-thinking on subjects like Stalin and Jews. Well its not a crime to be not thoughtful enough to know she’s not thoughtful enough – eg Sara Palin, but she should admit her limits when it comes to syllology, epistemics etc. Otherwise she is simply playing into the hands of nuts and cranks like Stalin, Starmer, eco-freaks et al.
There was a foretaste of this nonsense a couple of years ago, when Candace Owens turned up at a fashion show with Kanye West, both wearing “White Lives Matter” t shirts – which was great – but for some unfathomable reason Owena also bought into Kanye West’s manic depressive antisemitic lunacy.