Candice Owens, a Symptom of The Times

Candice Owens, a Symptom of The Times

By: Ron Jager

Candice Owens rose to prominence as a Black conservative commentator, a MAGA supporter, and a fierce critic of the Black Lives Matter movement. It was during the 2016 Presidential campaign, when she first gained widespread national attention by embracing conservative values and aligning herself with Donald Trump. Trump’s vocal and non-stop criticism of the progressive legacy media complimented her own personal experiences and first hand exposure to the difficulties faced by black-Americans. Owen’s support for Trump at the time, particularly as a young, intelligent, and articulate Black women yet belonging to a political movement that was accused of inherent racism in the past had made her a unique persona, facilitating her natural ability to build a substantial following among Americans. Owens has millions of followers on various social media outlets, including YouTube, X and Instagram, as well as her own podcast.

At the time, Owen’s enthusiastic and public support for Trump resonated with many of her followers, particularly on issues such as the bias of the legacy media, patriotism, and the inherent racism of the progressive agenda. Owen’s combative style complemented Donald Trump’s own straightforwardness and eagerness to challenge the progressive political establishment that had lost contact with the common sense of much of the American public. Owen’s stand on abortion was especially enlightening. She spoke of the progressive support and availability of elective abortions as a silent genocide against black-Americans. She presented a convincing argument against abortions in general, especially among black women. According to Owen, 40 % of all abortions in the City of New York are among black women; more black babies are aborted than born alive. She further claimed convincingly that since 1973, 18 million abortions were performed on black women nationally and had they not, the population of black Americans would be double today.

Despite her success, Owens has no legitimate education, or expertise in politics, or public policy. She is just a person who says things. Her status is solely built on the oxymoron of a Black woman who is unapologetically against the Black Lives Matter movement. So, despite her meteoric popularity and success, the Hamas massacre on Oct 7th of last year affected Owen’s in a manner that no one could have imagined or anticipated. After the barbaric massacre of 1200 innocent men, women, children, and infants in the communities of southern Israel, Owens came to routinely promote anti-Semitic tropes and spew anti-Semitic rhetoric on her podcast and social media channels to her millions of followers. Her embracement of Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism over the past year, despite the surging level of incitement and violence against Jews on the campuses and streets of America has become counterintuitively a visible marker of the times.

In her remarks, we can get an inside glimpse into today’s anti-Semitic thinking; Owens equates Jews with Marxists who want to “rewrite” history. She claims that the “media” has tried to convince people that Stalin and Lenin were anti-Semitic but were actually “part of the Jewish cabal.” Owens has 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 has 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 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 and added that Israel has “taken over” the U.S. “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.

On August 18, Owens held a live broadcast on X titled “The Truth About Zionism”. In the broadcast, 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.” Owens has 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 and falsely 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,: “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 July she was criticized for minimizing the Holocaust after calling Mengele’s experiments on Auschwitz prisoners “bizarre propaganda”.

Candice Owens has moved from one conservative outlet to another after leaving or being forced to leave, yet 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. Much of her anti-Semitic rants are reminiscent of what’s written in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination”, published in 1903. The “Protocols” are deeply imbedded in the mindset of today’s Jew hating, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian coalition of white supremacists, progressive-leftist activists, and Muslim-Americans. Candice Owen has joined this blood-thirsty crowd of Jew haters by giving them the platform to espouse ideas that have fueled this past year’s declaration of war on the Jews of America, and is very much a symptom of the times.

Ron Jager grew up in the South Bronx of New York, making Aliyah in 1980. Served for 25 years in the IDF as a Mental Health Field Officer in operational units. Prior to retiring was Commander of the Central Psychiatric Clinic for Reserve Solders at Tel-Hashomer. Since retiring has been involved in strategic consultancy to NGO’s and communities in the Gaza Envelope on resiliency projects to assist first responders and communities. Ron has written numerous articles for outlets in Israel and abroad focusing on Israel and the Jewish world.