The Patriot Post® · Candace Owens Teeters Toward Anti-Semitism Once Again

Candace Owens has been through some tumultuous changes these past few months. She had her third baby in November and left The Daily Wire in apparent disgrace in March. Both of these big life changes are enough to hinder the judgment of any woman. Unfortunately, Owens has a habit of putting her foot in her mouth, and it seems that she has done it once again.

Owens, a maverick, is famous for referring to herself as a questioner of the accepted stories and narratives. That is what made her such an influence with the #Blexit movement (blacks leaving the Democrat Party) and as a documentarian for The Daily Wire. But being a loose cannon also has gotten her in hot water with both consumers and her former employer, and the questions she was asking on a podcast episode last week regarding the experiments of Nazi physician Josef Mengele (known as the Angel of Death) brought her close to the precipice.

In her podcast last Tuesday, Owens’s subject matter was, “Literally Hitler. Why Can’t We Talk About Him?” She also effectively asked these questions: Why aren’t we allowed to talk about the atrocities committed by both sides in the World War II conflict? And what makes us, the victors, any better than the Nazis?

Leftists already love to use examples of atrocities in war as a reason why America is a terrible place and should be destroyed, and here Owens seems to follow suit, happily painting the Allies with the same brush as the Nazis in terms of war crimes. If one cannot make a distinction between the Nazis and the Allies, then perhaps you need to do a deeper dive into history.

Here is the excerpt that got her excoriated: “‘The Nazis experimented on innocent people.’ Some of the stories, by the way, sound completely absurd. They just cut a human up and sewed them back together? Why would you do that? Literally, even if you’re the most evil person in the world, that’s tremendous waste of time and supplies. That just sounds like bizarre propaganda.”

Owens seemed to be referring to Nazi SS “doctor” Josef Mengele, whose experiments have been well-documented by both his writings and eyewitness accounts from survivors and captured compatriots. Is her comment technically a form of Holocaust denial? It is, at the very least, downplaying the atrocities committed against the Jewish people.

She goes on to talk about similar monstrosities committed by Salomon Morel, who oversaw a post-WWII Polish camp for the Germans, whom he proceeded to torture. Morel, a communist and a Jew who had family members killed by the Nazis, did what he did for revenge. He was wrong, too, of course, and Owens is upset that he was never prosecuted for his crimes because Israel protected him when he was indicted by international courts for war crimes.

Owens forgot to tell the other half of the story, though. Mengele — whom she brought up as an example of “bizarre propaganda” — also didn’t face the justice of the international criminal courts. He got to live out his life miserably in Brazil, constantly afraid that he was going to be discovered and extradited. According to The Guardian, “Mengele’s diary reveals a man who was unrepentant about Nazi actions during the second world war.” Why isn’t Owens equally outraged by this man getting away scot-free?

Now to the postmortem on Owens’s grave error in podcast presentation. Why did she feel like this was a subject she needed to tackle? Why did she present it in such a mocking way?

Here are some theories:

• Perhaps she’s in need of clicks since she is now an independent commentator. Looking at her podcast titles, the shock value seems perfectly obvious. More clicks means more potential income.

• Perhaps it’s a hangover from her days as a hardcore leftist. Maybe she still sees value in the view that Jews are more privileged and don’t really deserve any pity when it comes to Israel’s existence because the Zionists are the “oppressors.” This seems to stem from the notion that Israel is just as bad as apartheid South Africa. This is close to a point that she made earlier in her career when she talked about visiting Israel and noticing that some sections were for Arabs and some were for Jews. But her read on this is wrong. Arabs can go anywhere and live anywhere. It is the Jews who have to be leery of the Arab sections. The Israelis are routinely attacked and killed for wandering into the Arab sections (not the other way around).

• Perhaps discussing this subject is a subversive attack on The Daily Wire. Owens parted ways with the Wire in March after significant values disagreements with cofounder Ben Shapiro bubbled to the surface in the wake of the October 7 attack on Israel. She is against Zionists. Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, vehemently disagrees with Owens’s opinions of Israel and the Jews, particularly her “Christ is King” commentary that was interpreted as anti-Semitic.

Should Owens be canceled? In this author’s opinion, no, though that’s for each individual to decide. Owens does, however, deserve heavy criticism for her approach to this subject matter because it was antagonistic and not balanced. She was targeting Israel, and to what end? The Jewish people didn’t provoke a Holocaust against them. The Israelis didn’t provoke the October 7 attack. Is she saying that Jews don’t have a right to defend themselves? She is teetering on the line of anti-Semitism and appears hungry for a reason to discredit the suffering of the Holocaust by presenting an argument that asserts, “The Allies were no better.”

One thing that conservatives consistently do really well is denounce fringe ideas from commentators when they cross a line. So when an influential host like Candace Owens taps the line with her toes, she should expect pushback.

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(Image credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.)