In conservative circles, just a handful of pundits are our intellectual heavyweights: cerebral, highly educated geniuses like Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, Victor Davis Hanson, Russell Kirk, and William F. Buckley. You may agree or disagree with their opinions, but they were almost always based on sound reasoning, history, philosophy, and logic.
Beneath this tier, you have the one-trick-ponies (like me!) who have specialized knowledge about one or two topics but lack the vast educational pedigree of the true luminaries. For example, I’m a PR expert. Ask me about PR, and I can chew your ears off a la Mike Tyson — and when I do, you should pay close attention because I know what the hell I’m talking about. Naturally, I also have opinions about history and politics, but I lack the depth of knowledge of a Sowell or a Hanson. I’m just a (fairly) smart guy who reads a lot and forms his own ideas, but I haven’t studied history on their level.
That doesn’t mean they’re always right and I’m always wrong. But it does mean that their opinions on history, politics, and economics are rooted in significantly more knowledge and context. So, their conclusions are derived from superior data.
Then, below the one-trick-ponies are the no-trick-ponies. These are the conservative commentators who lack the brains to ever be considered intellectuals but also haven’t bothered to master any niche categories or skills, so they focus instead on being the snarkiest, edgiest voice on social media.
I’m speaking, of course, of Candace Owens.
Originally, she was going to help black Americans step away from the Democratic Party. That was her celebrity-making moment. And today?
She’s still taking steps, but now they’re goose steps.
Candace Owens began her journalism career by trying to profit from Trump-bashing: She was CEO of an online publication that conducted an “investigation” of Trump’s penis size (spoiler alert: It was deemed lacking), and she blasted conservatives in 2015 — less than ten years ago — claiming it was “good news” that the “Republican Tea Party… will eventually die off…”
And then, in 2017, she suddenly switched positions and assumed the identity of a hardcore conservative and MAGA activist: “I became a conservative overnight.”
How heartfelt was her conversion a scant seven years ago? Don’t know and don’t care. But it’s probably wise to be wary of professional activists/commentators who flip sides, abandon core beliefs, and metamorphose into something completely contrary.
She’s not the first: It’s actually surprisingly common in political circles. Just a generation earlier, Arianna Huffington did the exact opposite evolution, going from such a strident, bomb-throwing conservative that she refused to support Bob Dole in ‘96 (favoring the “purer” Newt Gingrich) to flipping sides and launching a liberal version of the Drudge Report, The Huffington Post. (Today, alas, the liberal version of the Drudge Report is the Drudge Report.)
I’m not saying that political movements should turn their backs on new converts. A big tent should welcome everyone. But we ought to exercise caution before assuming everyone’s motives are on the level.
Only Candace Owens knows what’s in her heart, but what’s in her head is unimpressive, lightweight gibberish. She recently ran a YouTube episode entitled “Literally Hitler. Why Can’t We Talk About Him?” In addition to downplaying Nazi atrocities, she told her audience, “…we actually know nothing about [Hitler] other than the fact that we must fear him.”
No, Candace: The rest of us know a great deal about Hitler. See, we’ve read books (including “Mein Kampf”), learned history, gone to school, and done our homework. Many of us have even known World War II veterans — as well as Holocaust survivors. It’s Candace who knows nothing about Hitler, history, or anything else, as her language inadvertently exposed.
Today, Citizen Free Press became the latest conservative site to reject her, hosting a link to her ramblings with the headline, “Candace Owens has gone off the deep end, begins pushing Kanye Jewish conspiracies.”
Which was followed by another headline: “Candace Owens is losing it — claims Jews assassinated JFK.”
Look, I get it: There’s desperation in the GOP to attract new voters, and the idea of Candace Owens — a smart, brave black lady who saw the light and became a conservative — is more appealing than the reality of the individual. As a concept, Candace Owens is great! As a person, her ex-colleagues at the Daily Wire couldn’t wait to kick her out the door because she’s more harm than help for the conservative movement.
In less than a decade, she’s gone from the left to the right and then to the Reich.
Her current salvo in Jew-hatred is endorsing the idea that today’s Jews aren’t the “real Jews” and therefore have no true ties to the Holy Land. It’s an extension of the Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry, a pseudoscientific idea that was popular in Germany during the run-up to the Holocaust (can’t imagine why), but has since been discredited by modern DNA testing. There are roughly 16 million Jews in the world, so it’s not like their DNA is a mystery: Jewish genetics has been exhaustively studied. And we know, definitively, that today’s Jews can genetically trace their origins to the Middle East.
“I mean, I’ve read a ton of books, and I’ve figured it out, okay,” Candace assured us. “I’m just, like, so over the idea that Israel is our ally.”
Well, Israel is our ally. It’s Candace Owens who isn’t.
At this stage, if Candace truly wants to cosplay as a Nazi, she should grow out the rest of her mustache to complete the ensemble.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member