Candace Owens

Key Points

• Candace Owens is a right-wing public figure and political commentator who has come to embrace and promote antisemitic tropes and anti-Israel rhetoric.
• She also espouses conspiracy theories related to the LGBTQ+ community and has downplayed the impact of slavery and racism on the Black community.
• Owens began gaining recognition in 2016-2017 as a MAGA supporter and critic of the Black Lives Matter movement.
• She developed a large following while working for Turning Point USA, and later the Daily Wire, a conservative outlet co-founded by Ben Shapiro.
• She departed the Daily Wire following escalating antisemitic rhetoric and public disagreement with Shapiro.
• Owens has millions of followers on various social media outlets, including YouTube, X and Instagram, as well as her own podcast.

Introduction

Candace Owens is a right-wing public figure who has come to espouse explicitly antisemitic, anti-Zionist and anti-Israel views, notably following the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel.

Owens rose to prominence as a Black conservative commentator, a MAGA supporter, and a fierce critic of the Black Lives Matter movement. She has a history of making troubling remarks about Jewish influence in world affairs, the Holocaust and Hitler’s plans during the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, as well as pushing conspiracy theories about the power of Jewish philanthropist George Soros. She also famously defended rapper and producer Kanye West (also known as Ye) following several antisemitic outbursts from him in recent years.

After the 10/7 attack in Israel, Owens came to routinely promote antisemitic tropes and spew antisemitic rhetoric on her podcast and social media channels.

Owens’ antisemitic trajectory

In August 2024, following months of disturbing remarks, Owens engaged in some openly antisemitic musings posted to X (formerly Twitter) and hosted questionable personalities for conversations on her podcast and later in a live X broadcast that veered firmly into antisemitic territory.

On August 14, she posted an interview with Tristan Tate, a British-American ex-kickboxer and internet personality who, along with self-proclaimed misogynist brother Andrew Tate, is facing trial in Romania on allegations of rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal enterprise. In the interview, the pair discussed a range of issues including gender identity, masculinity, the Weimar Republic, Israel and the global Jewish community.

In her remarks, Owens equated Jews with Marxists who she said wanted to “rewrite” history. She implied that these Marxists were Jews and argued that they assassinated the Czar in Russia in the 1880s “under the guise of pogroms.” She said the “media” has also tried to convince people that Stalin and Lenin were antisemitic and then agreed with Tate that the two Russian leaders were actually “part of the Jewish cabal.”

Owens also claimed that Judaism was a “pedophile-centric religion that believes in demons...[and] child sacrifice ...” She added that she is “waking people up to the fact that pedophiles are in power.”

Owens also said Sigmund Freud used psychoanalysis to tell women (presumably female Jewish patients) who revealed that they were raped as children that it was just an attraction to their father. “No, they were being raped when they were seven years old because that’s what you do when you worship the Kabbalah,” she said.

She then argued that people who questioned information about Kabbalists (presumably Jews) were silenced and labeled insane and insinuated that some were even killed. “They’ve realized the voices that cannot be controlled have to be shut up.”

Owens also spewed bizarre anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracy theories about “gay” leaders of Western nations and then veered into anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and false accusations, declaring that French President Emmanuel Macron was gay “and married to a trans man who molested him as a child.”

Three days after this interview, on August 17, Owens posted a roughly one-minute video to X in which she accused Israel of being behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy and warned that criticizing Israel could result in being killed.

“Do you think it’s normal...that basically, every person who speaks about Israel has to basically say a statement that... ‘you know I don’t want to get killed’?” she ranted in the video, which circulated widely on X. Later she added that Israel has “taken over” the U.S.

A video posted to X by Candace Owens on August 17, 2024 in which she suggests links between Israel and the JFK assassination. (Screenshot/X)

On August 18, Owens held a live broadcast on X titled “The Truth About Zionism” with the Tate brothers, Dan Bilzerian, a poker player and social media influencer who has made antisemitic remarks, Dave Smith, a comedian, and Andrew Meyer, an independent journalist.

In the broadcast, which Owens claimed received over a million views, she began by presumably talking about Jews, declaring: “There is ...a group of people in this country who can just keep lying on people …trying to ruin people’s lives and there’s just no accountability, because then you just get to flip it and say oh, it’s antisemitism.”

She then turned her focus on Israel. “It's the fact that when things happen on our soil and we find out that there is potentially Israeli involvement we are basically hushed up, called crazy,” she added, going on to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories about the destruction of the USS Liberty, an American warship mistakenly struck by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, and Israel having advance knowledge about the 9/11 attacks. 

Owens also promoted the “blood libel” conspiracy, the false charge that Jews used the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes, which in past centuries led to Jews’ being violently attacked. She claimed that the family of Leo Frank (a Jewish man lynched in 1913 by a mob in Georgia after being wrongfully accused of murdering a young girl who worked at his factory) believed in pedophilia and incest “as the sacramental rites and they would commit these acts, things that would normally be termed blood libel were actually happening.”

In a July 2024 podcast episode, Owens engaged in Holocaust distortion and denial, and faced significant backlash to which she responded: “The reason why this particular episode is so detrimental to Zionism is because they have polluted American minds to believe that we must defend Israel out of morality and the evils of the Holocaust.”

In June 2024, Owens criticized the Antisemitism Awareness Act that was passed by the House a month before, which she said violated individuals’ First Amendment rights and claimed, “If you even accuse someone who is Jewish of having more allegiance to Israel than they do to America, you are going to be in trouble.” Owens added that Christians “better be very careful if you're going to talk about how the Jews played any sort of role in [Jesus’] persecution,” which she said was part of Christian doctrine.

Owens’ attacks on Israel and promotion of conspiracy theories about Jews reportedly led to discord between her and Ben Shapiro, the co-founder of the Daily Wire. Owens then left the media outlet in March 2024, after being employed there since late 2020.

A history of concerning comments about Jews

Before embracing virulent antisemitic views after the events of October 7, Owens had made several disturbing remarks regarding the Jewish community.

Prior to 2023, Owens did not publicly express blatantly antisemitic views, but her comments offered a preview of what was to come. In October 2022, she initially defended Kanye West after he made several antisemitic comments and a threatening remark about Jews. After Jewish friends expressed disappointment with Owens’ support of West, she acknowledged he had hurt Jews with his escalating antisemitic rhetoric. But a month later, in November 2022, Owens retweeted a post by anti-Israel blogger Max Blumenthal who downplayed antisemitism and said that “White American Jews are living through a golden age of power, affluence and safety, “and that this “welcome reality threatens the entire Zionist enterprise.” 

In October 2021, while speaking to Tucker Carlson on "Tucker Carlson Tonight,"  Owens promoted an antisemitic trope about Jewish philanthropist George Soros, claiming that he helped fund the Black Lives Matter Movement to destabilize America. 

An early example of Owens’ offensive comments came to light in February 2019, when she appeared to defend Adolf Hitler while she was the communications director for Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a conservative student organization.

Owens’ past liberal outlook and growing public recognition

Owens did not always identify as a conservative. In 2015, she and a co-worker established a marketing agency for which Owens wrote a blog where she, at times, expressed liberal political views and made negative commentary about conservatives.

Her beliefs changed in 2016 after founding the site SocialAutopsy.com, where Owens said she intended to “expose” online bullies. Numerous online users, including a woman who had been attacked in the 2014 Gamergate incident (where male gamers bullied female gamers who demanded equality in the gaming industry) criticized Owens’ idea. Owens and her family were subsequently doxed and she blamed the female gamer who had criticized Social Autopsy and other “progressives.” This brought her support from right-wing males who were associated with the early alt-right movement, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, and were promoters of Gamergate. 

“I became a conservative overnight,” Owens said in a 2017 interview.” I realized that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls.” She soon began promoting conservative views on YouTube, calling herself “Red Pill Black,” a reference to having been “red-pilled” about the Democratic Party, which she has accused of treating Blacks as if they were still on the plantation, a subject on which she published a book in 2020. 

Her views caught the attention of Charlie Kirk, who founded TPUSA, and he hired Owens to become an urban engagement specialist for the organization in 2017. Soon afterward, she became TPUSA’s communications director.

After several viral videos, including one in which Owens dismissed the 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones invited her to co-host some of his InfoWars shows. She also appeared on Fox News as a commentator.

In 2018, Owens began promoting Black conservatism and ”Blexit,” a campaign to encourage Blacks to leave the Democratic Party. She is currently the “Chair of Blexit” for TPUSA.

Her views became increasingly right-wing and she regularly attacked the Black Lives Matter movement, the LGBTQ+ community, particularly transgender individuals, and the “Me Too” movement against women being sexually harassed and assaulted.

Promotion of conspiracy theories and controversies

Since becoming a right-wing public figure, Owens has been mired in controversies and conspiracy theories.

In August 2017, following the deadly white supremacist Unite the Right rally where a female counter-protester was killed, Owens reacted to the media coverage with a controversial YouTube video titled “I Don't Care About Charlottesville, the KKK, or White Supremacy.” In the video, she ridiculed the idea that Black people should be afraid of white supremacy.

Owens has often downplayed the impact of slavery and racism on the Black community. In January 2019, she claimed in an interview that Blacks were worse off economically in the country than they were under Jim Crow and that they were better off the first 100 years after slavery ended than they are now.

Owens continued to criticize the Black community the next year, when protests erupted following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020. Owens criticized Black Lives Matter, the group behind many of the protests, and referred to Floyd as a criminal and “a horrible human being.” Owens also posted a video on Periscope in which she said that racism “doesn’t exist as a problematic thing in this country,” and that “the only thing we’re doing disproportionately in America is committing crimes.”   

In October 2022, Owens appeared with Kanye West at a fashion show in Paris where the two wore matching shirts from Ye’s clothing line that read “White Lives Matter,” a slogan popular with white supremacists.

A screenshot from a tweet with an image showing Candace Owens and Kanye West wearing shirts with the words "White Lives Matter" -- a slogan popular with white supremacists -- at a fashion show in Paris, October 2022. (X)

Owens also regularly promoted conspiracy theories about the LGBTQ+ community. In March 2022, she referred to the Walt Disney company as “child groomers and pedophiles” after the company objected to Florida’s passage of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Two months later, in May 2022, after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Owens joined other right-wing commentators promoting the conspiracy theory that the shooter "was a trans individual.”

Owens continued to ramp up her anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, particularly against the trans community, to the point where YouTube suspended her channel in September 2023.  She was back on YouTube to promote her “Candace Owens Podcast” show just two months later, in November 2023.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Owens also promoted the theory that it was a “social experiment” through which the government could take away individual liberties in the U.S.

Owens’ platform and the mainstreaming of her views

Owens has moved from one conservative outlet to another after leaving or being forced to leave, and still maintains her fan base. She has a huge social media following, with over 5 million followers on X and Instagram each, and over 2 million followers on YouTube.

During her time at the Daily Wire, she was estimated to be making $1.1 million per year for her “Candace Owens Podcast” show, which began airing in March 2021.

Owens has also continued to be invited as a featured speaker for TPUSA at universities and colleges nationwide – appearing with TPUSA’s Charlie Kirk on American campuses as recently as March 2023 --and is still listed in TPUSA’s list of media personalities for its “Speakers Bureau.”

In addition, Owens was invited to attend numerous Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPAC) as a keynote speaker between 2019 and 2023, and attended right-wing conferences hosted by other groups.

She now hosts her show “Candace” on YouTube, where she often promotes products for various companies.

One of Owens' biggest public platforms was at a 2019 Congressional hearing on white nationalism in Washington, D.C. where she was invited to speak by some Republican members of Congress. (A representative from ADL was also there to give testimony).

In her combative appearance before Congress, Owens dismissed white nationalism as a threat and said Democrats were talking about white nationalism as a tactic to win elections. She also blamed violence in the Black community on “black-on-black crime, the breakdown of family...a social environment that is hostile towards men" and said the top issues facing Black communities include "father absence, the education system, the staggering abortion rates, as well as illegal immigration."