Why Candace Owens Is An Antisemite
It's not the content of what she says; it's the frequency with which for her the Jews can be blamed for all things - from imperialist wars to mass immigration.
The openly right-wing, Catholic political commentator, Candace Owens, has become quite infamous over the last couple of years. A longtime writer and host for The Daily Wire, Owens became the subject of controversy when she went on record as being staunchly anti-Israel from an ‘America-first’ perspective, or was it the other way around—’American first’ from an anti-Israel perspective?
Some of the more outrageous remarks she’s made feature suggestions and accusations that religious Judaism has a relationship with pedophilia. (Perhaps she was thinking of her own church?) She’s also taken flack for defending Kanye West. Owens has gone head to head with likes of Shmuley Boteach and Ben Shapiro—the latter of whom founded the Daily Wire. Because non-disclosure agreements were signed by Shapiro and Owens, neither side has officially gone on-record to comment on why Owens left last year, but public consensus is that it must have had something to do with Shapiro being a strong Jewish-Orthodox supporter of Israel, and Owens being the exact opposite.
Recently, Owens appeared on the Piers Morgan talk show Uncensored, where she posed the question: What good has Zionism ever brought for the United States?
Owens espouses a view that always goes back to Israel. She contends that all recent Middle East conflicts—which she attributes as the cause for poverty in America—were “at the behest” of Israel or “Bibi” Netanyahu. Even on the question of immigration, Owens quoted Free Press founding editor, Bari Weiss, on the Piers Morgan show, in which Weiss simply notes the historic relationship between the broader Jewish community and being advocates for immigrants.
Owens fails to notice, of course, that regarding the most recent conflicts in the Mideast to which she refers, the Ariel Sharon governments of the early 2000s actually opposed the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was even felt by the W. Bush Administration that the Israeli government should have nothing to do with the operations exactly so it didn’t seem as though they were operating at the behest of Israel. On the question of immigration, Jews aren’t the only group of people who have disproportionate amounts of representation in the fields of immigration advocacy—Latinos, Irish, Afghani and other communities with large diasporas, alongside Jews, are at the forefront of immigration advocacy.
Regardless of the topic, however, or the situation, it always comes back to Israel. This fact is perhaps the strongest evidence of Owens’ pathological antisemitism. Owens bats away antisemitism accusations by pointing to the substance of her supposed political observations. She acts as if she’s just making a political point. But the proof of her antisemitism lies not in the content of her claims, or at least not entirely, but in the need to attribute all ills to the Jewish people and their nation state born out of a genocide.
The Marxian and Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, argues that antisemitism is pathological because it’s all-pervasive. He gives the example of a suspicious spouse who becomes consumed with thoughts of infidelity on the part of his/her spouse. Zizek contends that even if the partner is being unfaithful, the obsession with infidelity on the part of the suspecting spouse is still pathological because the obsession itself becomes the all-consuming organizing principle of an individual’s psyche. Likewise, he admits that even though some stereotypical anti-Jewish prejudices have truth to them, antisemitism is still pathological because blaming the Jews or their reification in “Israel” for everything becomes the all-consuming principle, which is clearly the case for Candance Owens.
As I pointed out in an essay this week, the central question regarding Trump’s recent strike of Iranian nuclear facilities is whether you think allowing a clerical theocracy with explicit genocidal intentions gain nuclear weapons? Interestingly, on the question of ‘regime change,’ Owens maintains the only country that could benefit from it is Israel rather than Iran. In effect, what Owens is saying is that it’s okay if Iran nukes Israel, she may even prefer it. This is the essence of the right-wing anti-Israel view from Owens, to Tucker Carlson, and friends.
Is there anything else we need to know?