candace owens
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promoted to 2nd; pioneer? reboot? trifecta
MERRI OK
oddly not crm? not wh influencer?
hit woman on harris vp // faulkner fox
misogyny --> VOTER SUPPRESS
SEE TUCKER
see bak
html crotch
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glorifi fail thiel?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/anti-woke-right-wing-bank
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AN 9 26
MAGA darling berates 'crackpot ghouls' ruining the movement
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MMA
8 26
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MMA
Right-wing media have been arguing for decades that fewer Americans should have the right to vote
Repealing the 19th Amendment, disenfranchising welfare recipients, and requiring a civics test — right-wing media are full of ideas about how to restrict voting
Written by Jack Winstanley
Research contributions from Jack Wheatley & Zachary Pleat
Published 08/10/26
With the midterms approaching, the Trump administration and its allies seem desperate to suppress the vote. The president has pressed Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a package of legislation that experts say would create new barriers for voters and potentially disenfranchise millions. He has signed executive orders restricting mail voting and pushing for proof of citizenship in voter registration, and there has been significant chatter about sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling locations, which analysts say would be illegal.
The executive orders have been struck down, and the SAVE America Act faces an uphill battle in Congress.
President Donald Trump’s efforts to suppress the vote have a significant ideological precedent. For decades, right-wing media have advocated restrictions on voter eligibility, laying the groundwork for Trump and his allies to undermine the upcoming midterms and push for policies that would make it harder for some Americans to vote. In a review of our archives, Media Matters found that primetime hosts, podcasters, columnists, and the like have attacked women’s right to vote, encouraged limiting the vote to property owners or heads of household, and advocated civics tests as a voting eligibility requirement. Some have outright stated that they only want people who share their political beliefs to be eligible to vote, or suggested kicking recipients of government assistance off the voter rolls.
More recently, right-wing media figures and online influencers have claimed that opponents of the SAVE America Act “want to steal elections” and “want the illegals to be able to vote,” continuing a years-long campaign of misinformation about mass election interference and widespread fraud. In light of this supposed fraud and interference, some commentators and election deniers have advocated more policies that could suppress voter turnout: restrictions on mail-in voting, getting “rid of” voting machines, or sending ICE agents to “surround” polling places. Others have called on Trump to sign an executive order declaring a “national emergency” to give himself “king-like powers” over the midterms.
Below we’ve compiled a survey of right-wing media arguing that fewer Americans should vote, going back to 2004.
Right-wing media figures have criticized individual voting, called for a single household vote, or argued that only property owners should be allowed to vote
- Streamer Asmongold, whose real name is Zack Hoyt, argued in favor of “mass disenfranchisement,” adding that land ownership should be a requirement for voting “because you have a direct, immediate, observable, tangible buy-in to the American future.” He continued: “Ask George Washington. Ask Thomas Jefferson. That's why. You got skin in the game.” [YouTube, Asmongold, 6/1/26; Media Matters, 7/10/26]
- In a clip uploaded to Instagram, Christian influencer Savanna Stone said: “My ideal voting system would be a one family vote, so my husband and I would vote together.” She went on, adding: “Traditionally, like, the husband would ultimately decide but again, like, I believe that a wife and husband should have the same political views, the same religious views. That’s how the marriage works.” According to CBC, “Stone is a rising star in the online conservative community, with some 800,000 followers across her platforms. She mainly posts Christian relationship advice, but is also highly critical of feminism, advocating for traditional gender roles.” [Instagram, The Pocket Podcast, 3/10/26; CBC, 6/12/26]
- On The Dinesh D’Souza Podcast, Calvin Robinson, a conservative British commentator and cleric, stated, “This is why universal suffrage has harmed us as a society, because it's meant that there's no longer a vote for the household, for the family.” He added, “The husband votes, and then the wife goes out and undermines his vote. And so, they're literally canceling each other out now — the man and the wife.” [YouTube, The Dinesh D’Souza Show, 12/5/25; Prospect Magazine, 3/29/24]
- Nick Fuentes argued that “people that own property” were one of the groups of people he “would entrust” with voting. He stated, “An 18-year-old that is renting an apartment and never had a real job and is basically, their parents are paying for everything. They don't have a car. They really have no way of knowing how the world works, and they also have no skin in the game.” [YouTube, Jack Neel Podcast, 11/24/25]
- Evangelical author Nancy Pearcey told Alex Clark on The Spillover that “it's been a net negative to go from the household vote to the individual vote.” [YouTube, The Spillover, 2/2/24]
- Josie Glabach, known online as The Red Headed Libertarian, said: “The founders felt like it was more like one family, one vote.” [OAN, In Focus with Addison Smith, 3/17/23]
- Former Pittsburgh radio host Jim Quinn: “Originally, if you didn't own land, you didn't vote, and there was a good reason for it: because those without property will always vote away the property of other people unto themselves, and that's the beginning of the end.” He argued, “If I don't own anything, what kind of a problem do I have with voting for a measure — a tax, a law — that takes somebody else's property and gives it to me? I have no stake in personal property ownership because I don't have any.” [Clear Channel, The War Room with Quinn and Rose, 10/21/08]
Right-wing media figures have called for a repeal of the 19th Amendment or otherwise attacked women's right to vote
- During a panel debate on The Michael Knowles Show, conservative influencer Priya Patel argued that repealing the 19th Amendment “would be better for the country overall.” She added that, short of repealing the 19th Amendment, “We could go back to something in terms of, I don't know exactly how you'd structure this, but something of a single family vote.” [The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 4/18/26; Yahoo News, 3/28/26]
- Michael Knowles argued that “only married women living in rural and maybe suburban areas [should] get to vote.” He added, “They actually get two votes,” arguing that “they get the right to vote of the women who are single and in the urban areas.” [The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 12/19/25]
- When asked what he'd do as president, Nick Fuentes stated that he'd “for sure” take away women’s right to vote. Later, while describing who he believes should be “eligible to vote,” Fuentes stated that only “people with children, people that own property, people that are of a certain age, people that have had military service, people that speak English” should vote. [YouTube, The Jack Neel Podcast, 11/24/25]
- Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld, replying to co-host Harold Ford Jr.’s comments about women’s suffrage, said that we “shouldn't have given them the right to vote.” He added, “Everything went downhill a hundred years ago.” [Fox News, The Five, 11/17/26]
- On Timcast IRL, Fresh and Fit host Myron Gaines stated, “I think we need to repeal the 19th Amendment.” He argued, “If we had to rely on the female vote, Kamala Harris would be in office right now. … Because women are single-issue voters. And that's a big problem.” [Rumble, Tim Pool IRL, 10/9/25]
- Guest Terry Schilling on The Charlie Kirk Show claimed: “Every goal of the feminist movement — ever since they got, you know, the right to vote — after that, it all went downhill.” He also argued that the movement for women's equality has “always just been about tearing down men and removing them from society.” [Rumble, The Charlie Kirk Show, 8/2/24]
- On LFA TV’s America First Live, host Alan Jacoby stated, “My wife literally thinks women should not vote. I tend to agree with her a lot.” [LFA TV, America First Live, 12/19/23]
- On BlazeTV, Todd Erzen replied to a post criticizing the 19th Amendment: “Yes, it should be repealed.” [Blaze TV, The Steve Deace Show, 11/15/23]
- Right-wing podcaster Candace Owens stated, after asking her audience if society had improved since the passage of the 19th Amendment, “I’ve realized that right now, women in this society are allowing very bad things to take place because we’re too nice.” She went on: “We are willing to allow evil to take place over and over again. We’re allowing evil to go as far as it possibly can simply because we don’t want to upset anybody. We don’t want to make people feel bad." [The Daily Wire, Candace, 7/14/23]
- On OAN, above the chyron “Josie makes case for abolishing 19th amendment,” Josie Glabach claimed the “19th Amendment itself, it’s an infringement on the 10th Amendment.” [One America News, In Focus with Addison Smith, 3/17/23]
- Steven Crowder questioned when the military “had to become inclusive,” adding, “I think that this went wrong with women getting the right to vote.” He went on to claim, “Men didn't have the right to vote unless they were a part of mandatory draft, they had to pay taxes, mandatory bucket duty, you had to show up if there was a fire. If you didn't do these things, you weren't allowed to vote. Voting was a privilege for men, and then women said well, we want the right to vote, and they said OK, so part of the draft, and they said no.” [Rumble, Louder with Crowder, 9/20/21]
- Right-wing author Ann Coulter: “I used to think women just shouldn’t be able to vote, now I think at least liberal women should not be able to hold office.” [Media Matters, 10/23/14]
- Former Fox host Tucker Carlson: “You want your government run by people whose favorite show is Say Yes [To The Dress]?” On Fox News' Outnumbered, Carlson criticized a Republican ad encouraging young women to vote by casting doubt on whether or not the people targeted by the ad should vote, adding, “I don't think as a general matter you should be encouraging people who don't know anything about what they're voting for to vote. That's what the Democrats do, giving Newports to the homeless to get them to the polls. That's literally true. Republicans shouldn't follow suit on that. You shouldn't pander to people.” [Media Matters, 10/2/14]
- Radio host Rush Limbaugh stated that “when women got the right to vote is when it all went downhill.” He added, “That’s when votes started being cast with emotion and maternal instincts that government ought to reflect.” [Media Matters, 7/5/12]
- Coulter: “If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president.” As quoted by the New York Observer, Coulter added: “It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.” [Media Matters, 10/4/07]
Right-wing media figures have argued that voters should have a “minimum level of knowledge” of civics or political issues, with some suggesting a test requirement or barring people they disagree with from voting
- After Fox Business host Jackie DeAngelis claimed young voters supporting the Democratic Socialists of America are “brainwashed,” guest Steve Milloy suggested “we need to raise the voting age back to 21,” adding, “They have votes that are as good as mine and I'm sorry, that's just not right.” [Fox Business, The Bottom Line, 8/6/26]
- Daily Wire host Matt Walsh argued that “we should drastically curtail the right to vote, across the board” and advocated for passing a “fifth grade civics exam” in order to vote. He said: “immigrants should not be allowed to vote in our elections until they've been legal citizens in this country for, say, 10 years. … Voting is not or shouldn't be a universal right granted to everyone. … I also think all voters should be required to complete and pass a fifth grade civics exam, which will be administered in English, by the way. … And we should disenfranchise everyone on welfare, even if they're American citizens.” [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 4/29/26]
- Right-leaning streamer Asmongold endorsed “as many barriers to voting as possible,” including a “regular citizenship test” or a “logic test.” He stated: “I think that having just the masses of uneducated retards voting causes a lot of problems.” He added, “If you can’t finish the logic test you can’t vote.” [YouTube, Asmongold, 11/5/25]
- After reading results of a survey measuring Americans' civics knowledge, Walsh argued that people lacking civics knowledge “should not be allowed to vote.” Walsh continued: “And when it comes to voting, they have the same power that you do. Their vote counts equal to yours.” He added: “These people should not be allowed to vote. I mean, you hear people say that in a half-joking way, I can't believe these people can vote. But really, they shouldn't be able to. Like, actually, they should not be able to vote.” [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 9/21/23]
- Fox host Jesse Watters endorsed a civics test requirement for voting. After guest and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy spoke about his idea for a constitutional amendment for younger Americans to pass a civics test in order to vote, Watters said: “I agree with you 1,000 percent, Vivek.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/10/23]
- Fox News host Greg Gutfeld argued that people who move from Democratic-run states to Republican-run states “shouldn’t be allowed to vote.” [Fox News, The Five, 7/6/23]
- Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro argued that the right to vote should require “some sort of minimum level of knowledge” of U.S. civics. Shapiro added: “The basic idea that you should be able to have basic, not, as you say, fake poll test, literacy test designed to exclude Black people or something — the idea that you would have to have, like, a basic knowledge of America's Constitution, for example, to vote, I don't see that as a horrible idea. I really don't.” He continued: “I mean, I think that you should actually have to jump through the hoop of having to take the time and effort to vote, because if you're not willing to do that, then why should I take your vote as seriously as somebody who is willing to take voting seriously?” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 2/3/20]
- Former Des Moines radio host Jan Mickelson, who stated he is in the “voter repression business,” said, “I want people not to vote unless they agree with me.” He also said being uninformed “should exclude you from being part of the process,” and suggested a “civics test” should be implemented “in order to qualify to vote.” [Media Matters, 6/8/15]
- On Fox & Friends, Ann Coulter argued that “there is nothing unconstitutional about literacy tests” during a Fox & Friends segment that ran with a chyron reading, “Should citizens pass a civics test to vote?” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/15/15]
- Talking about civics tests, then-Fox host Elisabeth Hasselbeck said: “What about if we took it one step further … into voting?” She added: “When you look at how many people get those answers wrong, how concerning is it to you that those very people are voting?” [Media Matters, 10/23/14]
- After airing a montage of man on the street interviews asking people what the debt limit is, former Fox Business anchor John Stossel stated that “people who don’t know what the debt is shouldn’t vote.” He added: “Why should dummies vote?” O’Reilly joked that Stossel should “have a little bumper sticker:‘If you’re dumb, stay home on election day.’” [Fox News, The O’Reilly Factor, 7/26/11]
- In National Review, Jonah Goldberg argued, “It’s about time we toughened up the requirements for voting.” He added, “Indeed, I would be more comfortable having newly naturalized immigrants decide the future of this country at the ballot box than leaving it up to, say, typical white 18-22 year-olds. I know that the immigrants can pass a civics test. I have no such confidence in the kids at my local malls.” [National Review, 1/13/04]
Right-wing media claim Americans receiving government assistance shouldn’t have the right to vote
- Matt Walsh stated: “If you're living off of taxpayer money, you shouldn't get to vote.” He said: “We could transform our country overnight with a few tweaks. … Disenfranchise, take the vote away from anybody on welfare, number one.” [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 10/21/25]
- Former Washington Times columnist Ted Nugent: “Let's also stop the insanity by suspending the right to vote of any American who is on welfare.” He continued: “Once they get off welfare and are self-sustaining, they get their right to vote restored. No American on welfare should have the right to vote for tax increases on those Americans who are working and paying taxes to support them. That's insane.” [The Washington Times, 12/3/12]
- Talk radio host Michael Savage: “Do you think a person on welfare has the right to vote? I don't.” He added: “Why should a welfare recipient have the right to vote? They're only gonna vote themselves a raise.” [Talk Radio Network, The Savage Nation, 10/22/08]
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MMA
LAURA LOOMER CALLS FOR THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO INVESTIGATE TUCKER CARLSON AND CANDACE OWENS
06/15/26
https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-loomer/laura-loomer-calls-trump-administration-investigate-tucker-carlson-and-candace-owens)
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AN 5 26
President Donald Trump was the first reality TV star to become president, but when it comes to tabloid entertainment entering the White House, he may not be the last — at least according to one expert.
After discussing how former President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden recently appeared on Candace Owens' podcast to discuss the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, America’s relationship with Israel and the Charlie Kirk assassination, The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell, an expert on tracking voting patterns, argued that Owens may soon run for president in her Monday post.
To illustrate her point, she quoted a number of voters, such as a Biden-to-Trump North Carolina voter named Mycal who said “I think Candace Owens is great. I would vote for her in a minute.”
Another Biden-to-Trump North Carolina voter, Daniela, wrote that “if we would’ve swapped out Candace for Kamala, they would’ve had this in the bag.”
Similarly a Trump-voting Gen Z woman, Kim from Virginia, adopted the popular far right mantra of claiming persecution for their beliefs.
“ I’m sure I’ll catch a lot of flack for this one, but I am a Candace Owens fan,” Kim told Longwell. “I think she’s a very smart lady. I would be interested to see her give it a shot for sure.”
Meanwhile Nancy from Minnesota said that “ I think Candace Owens would be an awesome president, and if she were to run, I think it would take a lot for me to not vote for her. I would love to see someone like Candace in office.”
Longwell noted that Owens has said that she'll run for president, possibly with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) as her running mate. Yet it is unclear if she is simply trolling or being sincere, although Longwell pointed out that regardless of her intentions, the mere plausibility of her candidacy is instructive.
“It’s become clear in these groups that she is trading some of her mainline MAGA listeners—the kind who supported Trump for his stance on low taxes and traditional gender roles—for the more generally conspiracy-brained,” Longwell wrote. “Anecdotally, there are multiple people in my office whose apolitical family members and friends tune in to Owens for her reality TV takes, and get exposed to her whack-job political analysis in the process. But one person’s whack-job is another person’s fearless truth-teller.”
She added, “The conclusion to draw from my hundreds of focus groups with Trump voters in recent years, is this: Owens has moved from a hero of the ‘MAGA establishment’ to an avatar for a more sprawling and more exotically crazy coalition. Trump’s 2024 victory was largely built on wedding establishment MAGA types who wanted tax cuts, judicial appointments, and mass deportations with the conspiracy theorists who defy neat political categories. That was the reason he allied with RFK Jr. and the MAHA movement. Owens at one point seemed like one of the few figures who could maintain that marriage. And maybe she can. While there are signs that establishment MAGA fans are moving on from her, if she ever chooses to run for office, the exigencies of an election may very well bring them home again.”
After praising Owens for being articulate, savvy in building her base and capable of demonstrating independence from “MAGA proper,” Longwell concluded that Owens’ popularity shows America may one day have Trumpism without Trump.
“We might just end up trading the MAGA movement as it’s currently constituted for an even more deranged and conspiracy-addled one,” Longwell wrote.
Longwell is not the first to note Owens’ rising star power. Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye wrote in March that Owens has capitalized on the assassination of Charlie Kirk to spread conspiracy theories about his widow, Erika Kirk.
"With Kirk's assassination at a Turning Point USA event in Utah last September, the MAGA movement faced a genuine tragedy," Tesfaye wrote. "His widow, Erika Kirk, stepped in to lead the organization. But within weeks, before the grief had even begun to settle, Owens began publicly questioning the circumstances of Kirk's killing and spinning conspiracy theories on her podcast…. What started as insinuation soon metastasized into a serialized spectacle: 'Bride of Charlie,' a multi-episode YouTube series targeting Erika Kirk personally…. In the series, which is still ongoing, Owens hints that Kirk's murder was an inside job, suggests foreign agents may have been involved and implies that Erika Kirk has 'ulterior motives' in leading TPUSA."
Tesfaye added that although "the conservative establishment has, belatedly, tried to fight back against Owens' accusations” against one of their movement’s leaders, they "have largely failed to land a blow.” She added that “the real reason right-wing media cannot stop Candace Owens is that they built her. And, more importantly, they built the engine that fuels her: the machinery of conspiratorial media, which is immune to the tools that might once have contained it.”
Tesfaye concluded, “For decades, conservative media has thrived on a business model that monetizes outrage and distrust. The more outrageous the claim, the greater the engagement. The more distrust sowed toward institutions — universities, media, elections, public health, the FBI — the more loyal the audience becomes."
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MMA BEEF KAYFABE?
Candace Owens on Nick Shirley: “He is being pushed upon us for some reason. … I find everything about him to be suspicious”
Owens: “They're not even giving us good psyops anymore”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 05/13/26
Video
Citation
From the May 11, 2026, edition of Candace, posted on YouTube
CANDACE OWENS (HOST): And so I don't understand the purpose of Nick Shirley. I didn't know that there was this huge scandal. I then subsequently found out that people, you know, think he's fed jacketed. I wasn't trying to hit upon that. I just watched the video and had a reaction to how stupid it was that they're trying to sell it. They're not even giving us good psyops anymore.
...
I have family reunions Nick Shirley couldn't infiltrate and survive. That's just the reality. Like, so this whole, like, tough boy, because they don't leave their basement, you sound sheltered. You sound sheltered that you think that because I podcast today, that I didn't live a lot more yesterdays. Way more aggressive yesterdays than you've ever lived in your entire life. That's why I laughed, Nick, because it's so implausible that you did that.
...
He's up here crying about a little remark about favela. Like, okay. It didn't happen. So take that or leave that. He is being pushed upon us for some reason. I don't know what that reason is. By the way, he's now going to Cuba, guys. No connections. He's just going to Cuba. He claims he he went to Cuba. He was almost taken hostage. Man, this is the bravest kid in the entire world.
...
And we all know the CIA is involved in Cuba at this moment. So I don't find the timing of Nick Shirley — I find everything about him to be suspicious. I would say to everyone, look at these videos with some degree of caution. Because that, none of this is natural.
//
03/09/26 11:16 AM EDT
03/26/26 10:41 AM EDT
04/22/2
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Joe Kent is a cautionary tale.
When Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center to protest the Iran war, critics of the conflict — especially opponents of President Donald Trump — quickly cast the decorated military combat veteran as a principled dissenter. Superficially, that tracks. And yet those tracks are laid on quicksand.
Kent risked his life for the U.S. for decades: He served in the Army Special Forces in Iraq and as a paramilitary officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. Kent’s first wife, Shannon, also wore the uniform and was killed in Syria by a suicide bomber in 2019. Those experiences led Kent, a Republican, to turn against the war on terrorism and overseas military operations. And like many voters who grew suspicious of projecting American power abroad after years of fighting in the Middle East, Kent found a political champion in Trump.
The 45th and 47th president has staked three White House campaigns, in part, on resisting so-called forever wars and regime-change wars. What better example of the unraveling of the Trump coalition and — from the naysayers’ point of view — the shaky premise of the Iran war than Kent’s defection? A couple of lines from his resignation letter to Trump:
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,” Kent wrote, adding: “Until 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.”
Except that Kent, 45, is a conspiracy theorist of such questionable character that he lacks almost all credibility, rendering him useless as an avatar for foes of the Iran war and Trump. This shouldn’t necessarily be a revelation. Kent was twice rejected by the voters of Washington state’s 3rd Congressional District. They chose Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez over Kent for the swing seat in 2022 and opted for her again in their 2024 rematch.
Maybe Kent was spurned because he was (and is) an outspoken proponent of Trump’s stolen election conspiracy theories.
Kent echoed claims that former President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was illegitimate and, as The New York Times reported, referred to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as an inside job. Or maybe Kent lost because during one of his congressional campaigns, he played footsie with Nick Fuentes, the antisemitic and racist influencer who recently sat for a friendly interview with Tucker Carlson, and others of that right-wing ilk.
That brings us back to the folly of lionizing Kent as a conscientious objector to Trump and the president’s hawkish foreign policy as of late.
In his resignation letter, Kent also said, “It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby” and that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your (Trump’s) America First platform.”
It’s perfectly fine to criticize the Israeli government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the policies coming out of Jerusalem. I have, and do, frequently. But this sort of conspiratorial blarney that Israel and its paid domestic agents (i.e. lobbyists) are puppeteers of the American president is the mother’s milk of an age-old philosophy best described as antisemitism. (Many political observers who might have lauded Kent have, in fact, rebuked him for this line of thinking and cooled to him as some sort of heroic MAGA defector.)
And of course, where did Kent run to bask in his newfound notoriety? Carlson, a stoker of animosity toward Israel and Jews.
During an appearance on his show last week, Kent hinted that the Jewish state was behind the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Kent also sought refuge with Candace Owens, a blatantly antisemitic influencer on the far right, and her podcast audience. Kent also appeared at a Washington gala of Catholics for Catholics, where he was celebrated — and where Owens delivered a keynote speech. The group has been dismissed as a fringe organization by mainstream Catholic leaders.
Regardless of opinions on Kent personally, might his resignation signal a crackup of Trump’s Make America Great Again base inside the Republican Party? At the very least, might these voters be on the cusp of abandoning the president because he turned into one of those so-called neocon warmongers he swore he wasn’t? Well — no.
“Beyond MAGA,” a project completed earlier this year by the research initiative More In Common, explored Trump’s unique coalition in depth and identified four types of voters: MAGA Hardliners, Anti-Woke Conservatives, Mainline Republicans and the Reluctant Right. Stephen Hawkins, More in Common’s global director of research, told me about an online community of a “couple of hundred” GOP voters his organization keeps an eye on. In a recent surveying, “MAGA Hardliners” were the most supportive of the Iran war. In fact, Hawkins said none of the voters in this cohort voiced opposition to the war.
“Among American voters, the critics (of the war) seem to be coming from the groups that are already critical of Trump,” Hawkins told me. “The alignment, support and enthusiasm seem to be echoing from the same groups that were already supportive of him, so it’s continuity, not change — as opposed to breaking open a new fissure.” (These findings mirror the other public polling since the Feb. 28 start of the Iran war.)
Given Kent’s quackery and his lack of a constituency other than some very loud podcasters sympathetic to his worldview, it might be worth asking Trump why Kent was hired for such a plum position. The president now claims he knew Kent was essentially unqualified for the job. Indeed, it might be worth asking Republican senators why they confirmed Kent, rather than demanding the administration nominate more equipped personnel.
LIKE PULTE? ONLY CRITERIA IS LOYALTY
David M. Drucker is a columnist covering politics and policy. He is also a senior writer for The Dispatch and the author of “In Trump’s Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP.”
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an 4 26
Although she commands a substantial following that continues to grow, far-right podcaster Candace Owens is a highly divisive figure in U.S. politics — even among fellow MAGA Republicans. Owens is claiming, without evidence, that Turning Point USA's Erika Kirk was somehow involved in the death of her husband, Charlie Kirk. And tensions between Owens and Erika Kirk's allies are escalating.
In an article published on April 30, The Bulwark's Will Sommer describes the coalition of MAGA Republicans who are united against Owens. Sommer notes, however, that within that coalition, MAGA influencers aren't shy about making "vicious" attacks against one another.
Sommer, for example, points out that Jessica Reed Kraus cannot stand fellow MAGA influencer Laura Loomer. While Kraus has described Loomer as "insane," Loomer once called Kraus an "insufferable c––." But according to Sommer, Kraus and Loomer have some common ground in their disdain for Owens.
"In the vicious factionalism of the MAGA movement — where character assassination has become both theology and an art form — there is one thing on which even bitter enemies can find common ground: the need to take down Candace Owens," Sommer explains. "In a post on Monday, (April 27) Kraus revealed that she was letting bygones be bygones and falling firmly behind Loomer's kamikaze campaign to destroy Owens. 'Only crazy can match crazy,' Kraus wrote. 'No one besides Loomer is equipped for this battle.'"
Sommer notes that Owens and Loomer have been "trading insults" on X "for weeks." In an April 20 tweet, for example, Loomer posted, "God hates you. Look in the mirror and internalize how much God hates you. We all hate you. Humanity hates you. And you are irredeemable."
"Insults are par for the course for these two," Sommer says of Owens and Loomer. "But by even their venomous standards, the back and forth has been a lot…. The goal here is to inflict emotional pain. And Owens herself has already demonstrated that family isn't off-limits in this fight, so goose, gander and all that."
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joe kent boost bs? kirk assass israel
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Tim Pool: "I'm entirely convinced Candace Owens is an op" | Media Matters for America
mma 3 26
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an 3 26
Despite being inundated with criticism, far-right podcaster Candace Owens is doubling down on her attacks on Turning Point USA's (TPUSA) Erika Kirk. Owens is suggesting, without evidence, that Erika Kirk was somehow involved in the fatal shooting of her late husband Charlie Kirk, who founded the MAGA youth organization.
The criticism is coming from both the left and the right. Conservative media figures like The Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro (who Owens used to work for) and The National Review's Rich Lowry are calling her out, and liberals and progressives are saying that while they vehemently disagree with Erika Kirk's politics, Owens' YouTube video series "Bride of Charlie" (a play on "Bride of Frankenstein") is a mean-spirited smearing of a widow who lost her husband to gun violence.
Salon's Sophia Tesfaye, in an article published on March 4, argues that "Bride of Charlie" not only underscores Owens' willingness to promote unhinged conspiracy theories — it is also an indictment of right-wing media's business model.
"With Kirk's assassination at a Turning Point USA event in Utah last September, the MAGA movement faced a genuine tragedy," Tesfaye explains. "His widow, Erika Kirk, stepped in to lead the organization. But within weeks, before the grief had even begun to settle, Owens began publicly questioning the circumstances of Kirk's killing and spinning conspiracy theories on her podcast…. What started as insinuation soon metastasized into a serialized spectacle: 'Bride of Charlie,' a multi-episode YouTube series targeting Erika Kirk personally…. In the series, which is still ongoing, Owens hints that Kirk's murder was an inside job, suggests foreign agents may have been involved and implies that Erika Kirk has 'ulterior motives' in leading TPUSA."
Tesfaye notes that although "the conservative establishment has, belatedly, tried to fight back against Owens' accusations" against Erika Kirk, they "have largely failed to land a blow" — as the first episode of "Bride of Charlie" received "nearly 5 million views."
"The real reason right-wing media cannot stop Candace Owens is that they built her," Tesfaye emphasizes. "And, more importantly, they built the engine that fuels her: the machinery of conspiratorial media, which is immune to the tools that might once have contained it. For decades, conservative media has thrived on a business model that monetizes outrage and distrust. The more outrageous the claim, the greater the engagement. The more distrust sowed toward institutions — universities, media, elections, public health, the FBI — the more loyal the audience becomes."
Tesfaye continues, "In December, even as Owens was deep into Charlie Kirk assassination trutherism, Erika Kirk was urging TPUSA audiences to be tolerant of disagreeable views. By the time the right decided Owens had gone too far, she had already built a fully independent operation. The movement that once shielded Owens is now discovering that monsters raised on grievance do not recognize fences. The conservative movement no longer has credible gatekeepers."
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AN 2 26
Far-right conspiracy theorist Candace Owens continues to double down on her attacks on Erika Kirk, leader of Turning Point USA and widow of the MAGA youth group's late founder Charlie Kirk. Owens, who served as TPUSA's communications director from 2017-2019 before working for radio host Dennis Prager's PragerU and Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire (which fired her for comments Shapiro considered antisemitic), is claiming, without evidence, that Erika Kirk was somehow involved in her husband's murder.
Owens has plenty of critics, who range from liberals and progressives to right-wing Never Trump conservatives. Yet within the MAGA movement, she still enjoys a large following — which, according to conservative National Review Editor-In-Chief Rich Lowry, is a big part of the problem.
In a scathing op-ed published on February 27, Lowry laments that promoting ugly and baseless conspiracy theories isn't decreasing the size of her audience.
"Joe McCarthy was famously undone by the rhetorical questions at a 1954 congressional hearing, 'Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?,'" Lowry argues. "If the same queries were directed to Candace Owens at such a forum, she'd sail on unperturbed — since she has no idea what 'decency' means. The conspiratorial podcaster has embarked on an investigative series on Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk. In this context, 'investigative series' means a loosely stitched together collection of sewerish falsehoods and innuendo smearing Erika Kirk. ... And what is more demented than portraying the wife of the victim of a shocking assassination as a black widow?"
The National Review editor-in-chief continues, "Whereas most have seen in Erika Kirk a Christian woman bearing up under an intolerable burden and stunningly forgiving the alleged murderer of her husband, Owens purports to see Clytemnestra, the mythical Greek figure who betrayed her husband, Agamemnon, upon his return from the Trojan War."
Owens is describing her anti-Erika Kirk series as "Bride of Charlie," a play on "The Bride of Frankenstein." And she is calling for Kirk's widow to "be dragged into a police precinct for questioning."
"As a so-called investigator," Lowry argues, "Candace Owens is like Perry Mason if the fictional attorney had been a schizophrenic high on crack…. It is a symptom of our time that such malevolent buffoonery is rewarded with a huge audience. It is impossible to discredit Owens because she is not in the credibility business to begin with. In the attention economy, denunciations are just as useful as praise, especially if a media figure is posing as a brave truth-teller — so brave that, in this case, she's willing to drag through the mud a mother of two who saw her beloved husband murdered less than six months ago. It's not just that decency is not necessary in the Candace Owens business model; it would be an obstacle."
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MMA
02/24/26
02/24/26
02/24/26
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an 2 26
A recent meeting of President Donald Trump's Religious Liberty Commission rapidly devolved into a shouting match between commission members over the issue of antisemitism.
That's according to a Tuesday article by MS NOW's Ja'han Jones, who wrote that several conservative Christian members of the commission got into a "fit of infighting" when discussing antisemitism on college campuses. Commission members Carrie Prejean Boller (who was Miss California U.S.A. in 2009) and Seth Dillon — who is the CEO of conservative satire site The Babylon Bee — battled over far-right commentator Tucker Carlson and whether MAGA influencer Candace Owens is antisemitic.
"I have not heard one thing out of her mouth that I would say is antisemitic," Boller said of Owens, despite Owens being named "Antisemite of the Year" in 2024 by advocacy group StopAntisemitism.
Boller also argued loudly with several Jewish commission members over the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, the latter of which is typically defined by support for the modern state of Israel (though it is also seen as a coded attack on Jewish people). Boller, who is Catholic, proclaimed "Catholics do not embrace Zionism," and garnered boos from the crowd when condemning Islamophobia.
Now, Boller is facing calls from within the MAGA world to either resign for the commission, or for her to be removed if she refused to step down. This includes far-right commentator Laura Loomer (known as Trump's informal "loyalty enforcer") who called Boller's comments "disgraceful."
"The Trump administration should not reward individuals who openly spread anti-Jewish propaganda," Loomer tweeted.
Trump convened the Religious Liberty Commission last year, whose members include Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick (R) and Dr. Phil McGraw, as well as former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Rev. Franklin Graham, Pastor Paula White and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, among others. Their commission itself is set to disband on July 4 of this year, unless Trump chooses to extend it. Jones wrote that given the outburst at its latest meeting, the commission may likely sunset this summer.
"That MAGA world is engaged in this kind of circular firing squad over antisemitism is no surprise and, one might argue, the natural outcome for a political movement fueled by bigotry of varying sorts," Jones wrote.
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RWW
01/27/2026
by
- Ryan Bort @ Rolling Stone: Trump, Noted 2nd Amendment Champion: ‘You Can’t Have Guns’
The president and his administration are once again dismissing the Constitution to score political points.
- Andrew Howard @ Politico: Gun rights groups blast Trump over Minnesota response
Gun ownership advocates are pushing back against the Trump administration over its response to the killing of Alex Pretti on Saturday.
- Eric Levitz @ Vox: Trump’s deportation forces finally went too far
A baby-step back from the brink.
- Radley Balko @ The Watch: Two cities under siege
Remarkably similar scenes from Boston and Minneapolis, 260 years apart, show a federal government betraying its founding principles.
- Alex Galbraith @ Salon: “I aspire to earn your forgiveness”: Ye apologizes for antisemitism, blames actions on brain injury
The rapper formerly known as Kanye West took out an ad expressing his hope to get better.
- Will Sommer @ The Bulwark: Candace Owens Has a Serious New Legal Headache
There might be consequences to accusing people of abetting murder . . . maybe.
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an 1 26
The hopes many conservatives had for a revitalization of the MAGA youth movement following the death of pundit Charlie Kirk have taken a turn, according to a new profile by New York Magazine, with the space becoming overrun by "darker forces" and "conspiracism."
The piece, published on Wednesday, explores numerous groups and individuals jockeying for influence following Kirk's death, but while his organization, Turning Point USA, has seen a surge in popularity in some parts of the US, the overall youth movement has become "engulfed" in the same "antisemitism and conspiracism" that has taken over much of right-wing politics. While Kirk's death was initially met with an "overwhelming show of unity," it has since "devolved day by day into something more like civil war."
Among those leading the conspiracy charge, author Simon van Zuylen-Wood noted, is Candace Owens, a long-time far-right activist and pundit who emerged as an "assassination truther," suggesting that Kirk's death was part of a large scheme orchestrated in some way by Israel. While this has made her a pariah in some corners of the MAGA movement, she has seen a rise in popularity overall, with her podcast creeping into the Spotify top 10 this past fall.
Speaking with Lesley Lachman, TPUSA chapter president at the University of Mississippi, van Zuylen-Wood said she "jokingly shushed" questions about her Jewish lineage and stressed that she was "staying away from Candace right now." She was also, however, "a conspiracy buff" who had become enmeshed in "a conservative political culture in which the thirst for conspiracism is bottomless."
The piece also relayed the story of another would-be college Republican activist, Auburn University freshman Brilyn Hollyhand, who faced "an ambush" of questioning after bringing his "One Conversation at a Time" show to the University of Mississippi. Attendees grilled him over "not being right wing enough" and seemed critical of his unwillingness to denigrate "immigrants who hoped to enjoy the American Dream by the book," in addition to "illegal" immigrants.
He also faced intense scrutiny for his support of the US-Israel relationship, as the audience at the event supported a complete end to the partnership in pursuit of an "America First agenda." Hollyhand was left "baffled" by the reactions, the piece explained, "as if the whole world had shifted underneath his feet in the few weeks since Kirk’s death."
The piece also details the increasing influence of Nick Fuentes over the MAGA youth movement: an avowed antisemite who has frequently called out everyone from Kirk to Donald Trump for not being right-wing enough. The encroachment of darker strains of conspiracy and antisemitism into the movement, the piece argued, was a mirror of earlier conflicts between TPUSA and Fuentes' supporters.
"The consensus among students I interviewed is that Fuentes is in everybody’s feed and there is no point in denying his influence," van Zuylen-Wood wrote.
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AN 12 25
After Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk was fatally shot on September 10, his widow, Erika Kirk, became the organization's new leader. Many MAGA Republicans were quick to blame liberals, progressives and Democrats for the murder — even though countless Democrats, from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) to former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, wholeheartedly condemned it. But MAGA figures also attacked each other.
In an article published on December 15, Salon's Amanda Marcotte examines the feud between Erika Kirk and far-right MAGA podcaster Candace Owens.
"The swift anointing of Charlie Kirk's widow Erika as the new head of TPUSA did nothing to prevent the explosion of infighting that has been rapidly consuming the world of online MAGA media in the months since her husband's killing," Marcotte explains. "If anything, it's backfired. As I predicted, (Erika) Kirk is turning out to be a weak and ineffectual leader, persuading even more people in the very online right that now is their moment to get ahead in a crowded field. The rhetorical slugfest is growing increasingly ugly to watch. But in the process, MAGA is revealing what is likely the movement's biggest weakness: It's dominated by hustlers who are more interested in making money and growing their brand than they are in MAGA as a political project."
Owens is a major conspiracy theorist, and Marcotte notes that she has been "generating a seemingly endless number of conspiracy theories" about Kirk's death.
"Owens' rhetoric about Erika Kirk has grown increasingly personal," the Salon journalist observes. "Most shockingly, she keeps implying Kirk was involved in her husband's murder, and accusing her of defrauding TPUSA donors. Last week, Owens released a video saying Kirk doesn't have the strength to lead TPUSA, which follows pointed comments she made in early December about how 'in love' Charlie Kirk had been with a woman she says he dated before meeting his wife. The success Owens is having with this behavior is causing a lot of rifts."
Marcotte continues, "Tucker Carlson, who has long believed the future of MAGA is in getting ever-nuttier, has sided with Owens, going on the popular show hosted by Theo Von to insinuate the FBI is lying about who killed Charlie Kirk…. Right-wing podcaster Tim Pool, who typically loves spreading disinformation, turned on Owens, calling her a 'degenerate C-word' and an 'evil scumbag.' Even white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who hated Kirk when he was alive, has claimed he wants to 'expose' Owens, and has unleashed racist and misogynist abuse at her."
Marcotte argues that the "blizzard of conspiracy theories pushed by Owens and Carlson" has "destroyed the ability of GOP leaders to exploit Kirk's death in the manner they had intended."
"Owens is a classic case of a Frankenstein's monster, turning on the very people who created her," Marcotte writes. "Although it's a shame to see so many Americans continue to follow her down the rabbit hole, if it's causing the MAGA movement to turn on each other, then that’s a result all democracy-lovers can cheer."
*Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.
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Who’s afraid of Candace Owens?
A movement built to support Donald Trump can’t cordon off conspiracy theories
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 12/11/25
Long-simmering feuds among right-wing influencers reached a boiling point this week when Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika used an appearance on Fox News to denounce people she said were “making hundreds of thousands of dollars” by pushing conspiracy theories about her husband’s killing. Her plea for those individuals “to stop,” obviously intended for her husband's former colleague, the popular streamer Candace Owens, triggered an outpouring of criticism on the right against “extremists” promoting “hateful conspiracy theories” who had somehow been allowed into the movement.
But in a sign of the durable position such conspiracy theorists hold within the movement — and the immense demand for their work — many of the high-level pundits trying to lay down guardrails did not mention by name either Owens or her primary ally in the MAGA schism, Tucker Carlson.
“The Right’s media apparatus is how the Right teaches its followers how to think, and it’s currently getting consumed by conspiracy, psychodrama, and tabloid conflicts,” The Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo said in one such salvo. “If left unchecked, it will turn the audience into the equivalent of a Third World click farm.”
Can you imagine?
It is patently absurd to claim that right-wing media figures injecting deranged lies into their audience is somehow a new phenomenon. The right is dominated by President Donald Trump, the poster child for “conspiracy, psychodrama, and tabloid conflicts.” And Rufo’s ilk were happy to foster such insanity as long as it was pointed at the left in the service of electing Republicans.
But now the same tools are being turned inward, against other right-wingers, and while they’re furious that this is happening, the apparatus they helped build is so powerful that they are unable to name their foes.
A fight over Charlie Kirk’s legacy — and the Jews
Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel caused a split in a right-wing commentariat otherwise united around Trump. One side includes conservative Jews like Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer, who supported Israel’s subsequent brutal campaign in Gaza and traffic in anti-Muslim invective. On the other side are “America First” figures like Owens and Carlson who both opposed the campaign and used it as an opportunity to revive noxious antisemitic conspiracism. The divide has repeatedly made headlines, particularly in November when Carlson gave a friendly interview to Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist streamer who regularly rails against “the Jews,” who he has claimed “are destroying this country.”
Owens has been claiming since Charlie Kirk’s tragic killing in September that at the time of his death, he was coming around to her view of Israel. Based on that premise (which Kirk allies deny), she has speculated that Kirk may have been assassinated by pro-Israel henchmen worried that he was turning on them, perhaps with help from elements within TPUSA and the U.S. military. These sorts of wild claims are typical of Owens’ oeuvre: She is currently being sued for claiming that the first lady of France is secretly a transgender woman, and has told her followers that she has been targeted for death by an assassination squad composed of French law enforcement and “at least one Israeli.” Her claims have been denounced by the likes of Shapiro and Loomer, but cheered on by Carlson and fellow traveler Alex Jones.
Erika Kirk appeared on Fox’s Outnumbered on Wednesday to address in part what host Harris Faulker described as “hate” and “conspiracies” in the wake of her husband’s death.
“Come after me, call me names, I don't care,” she said. “Call me what you want, go down that rabbit hole, whatever. But…when you go after the people that I love and you're making hundreds of thousands of dollars every single episode going after the people that I love because somehow they're in on this? No.”
“My message to them is to stop — to stop,” she concluded.
Neither Erika Kirk nor Faulkner mentioned Owens’ name. But Owens immediately recognized that the segment had been “about me.” And rather than stopping at the widow’s request, she doubled down.
The Fox segment encouraged other right-wing pundits who typically avoid weighing in on intramovement controversies to speak out — albeit without mentioning who they were talking about.
Fox star Sean Hannity used his radio show on Wednesday to call out online commentators for “saying the most incendiary, outrageous, bizarre, conspiratorial, in some cases, outright racist, white nationalist, virulent antisemitism, and they make money off the, quote, clicks that they can then monetize because, you know, people like the shock value of it.” After praising Erika Kirk’s Fox appearance, he lashed out at “people with no evidence spreading the most vile, hateful conspiracy theories about Charlie's assassination,” calling them “grifters” who are “not MAGA.”
The hosts of Fox & Friends likewise aired Erika Kirk’s remarks and criticized unnamed persons pushing conspiracy theories about her husband’s death on Thursday. “People are making money. They have unsubstantiated theories and are running with it,” Brian Kilmeade said.
MAGA slop king Benny Johnson also posted the video of Erika Kirk going “absolutely SCORCHED EARTH against evil people monetizing Charlie Kirk's death and attacking her family and the families of those close to Charlie and TPUSA,” adding: “Thank God we are finally here. The Demons are Screaming.” He has not mentioned Owens by name on X since posting in April 2024 about a potential Owens/Shapiro debate over antisemitism.
For Fox contributor Hugh Hewitt, meanwhile, this is a tempest in a teapot. Responding to a discussion started by Rufo’s post on Wednesday, he claimed that such (unnamed, of course) “grifters” only have the “illusion of influence,” while “center-right to conservative media is flourishing.” Citing podcasts with relatively small audiences and Fox’s Special Report, “the most watched news show by serious people in the country,” he commented, “A handful of extremists cannot pollute the sea of offerings but it’s still best just to ignore them.”
It is certainly possible in a fractured media environment for a Republican apparatchik with intellectual pretensions to find some voices who will make him feel good about the choices he’s made. But Owens and Carlson both host podcasts on Spotify’s top-10 list, and the latter spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention after shepherding the selection of JD Vance as the next vice president.
The guardrails are gone and all the conspiracy theorists are here
The MAGA movement that everyone on both sides of the divide supported during the 2024 presidential election worships a notorious fabulist who emerged in GOP politics thanks to his role as the nation’s chief birther, reshaped his party around the twin lies that he actually won the 2020 election and that the ensuing January 6 riots by his supporters were righteous, and is constantly lifting up the most noxious online slop imaginable.
Trump’s emergence speaks to both the willingness of mainstream right-wing institutions to accept a conspiracy theorist at the highest level of power, and the eagerness of the right-wing audience to buy the sort of lies he was selling. And his ascension has made it virtually impossible for the resulting movement to draw lines and fully cut loose people who promote deranged falsehoods and bigotries.
Owens and Carlson became right-wing stars by promoting the same types of feverish claims while climbing established institutional pathways. New York magazine detailed Owens’ conspiratorial habits of thinking all the way back in 2016, before her tenure at TPUSA, her nearly 200 appearances on Fox weekday shows over a five year span, or her time as Shapiro’s colleague at The Daily Wire. And Carlson had spent years mainstreaming white nationalist talking points as a Fox host before the network finally showed him the door. The pair assembled loyal audiences thanks to those right-wing institutions, which have found themselves able to take away their jobs but not able to stop viewers from following them to their new spaces.
And Carlson and Owens profited not in spite of their conspiracy theories, but because they fit neatly within a right-wing echo chamber that seemed purpose-built for their generation and propagation. People like Rufo and Hannity were happy to play along with bullshit about Haitian immigrants eating pets or the Democrats assassinating a party staffer when they could use such claims for the benefit of Trump and the GOP. But now that the same habits of mind that made a swath of the right into QAnon adherents are turned inside the tent, they are deeply concerned.
Meanwhile, neither Trump nor Vance seem at all interested in trying to reestablish guardrails. Indeed, their administration is filled with conspiracy theorists seemingly picked for that very reason, indicative of a political movement that is marbled through with crackpots and extremists. And the worst is surely yet to come.
MMA
//
11/14/25 11:40 AM EST
03/22/24 3:27 PM EDT
11/21/23
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RWW
12/10/2025
by
- Joshua Haymes declares that Black Americans must abandon "ghetto Black culture" and "assimilate into Anglo-Protestant culture."
- Nick Fuentes vows that if an upcoming Turning Point USA livestream responding to the wild allegations being made by Candace Owens regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk does not expose Owens as a complete fraud, he will do so himself.
- Andrew Torba claims that the far-right is taking over and cannot be stopped: "We’re enjoying the memes and the camaraderie and the sheer absurdity of watching a dying regime flail against the inevitable. We’re having fun, because why wouldn’t we? God is on His throne. History is turning. The future belongs to those who show up for it. Their world is ending. Ours is just beginning."
- Montana state Rep. Lukas Schubert asserts that "Derek Chauvin was lynched by a radical leftist court under pressure from a violent mob of BLM activists."
- Finally, Rick Green says that he is not a fan of government subsidies but he is willing to support President Donald Trump's plan to spend $12 billion bailing out farmers because this is "a mess that he's inherited." In actual fact, Trump is spending billions to rescue farmers who are being devastated by his own policies.
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an 11 25
Far-right commentator Candace Owens has been accused of spreading conspiracy theories about the killing of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk since his public murder on a Utah college campus in September. One journalist recently appeared to get her to admit on camera that her claims are not based in fact.
Owens has repeatedly stated on her podcast that Kirk — who founded conservative group Turning Point USA (TPUSA) — was rethinking his previous staunch support of Israel in the weeks leading up to his death. She alleged that Kirk had a dust-up with pro-Israel billionaire donor Bill Ackman at a retreat he hosted in the Hamptons over Kirk's refusal to disinvite former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to a TPUSA event, given Carlson's reputation as one of the loudest conservative critics of Israel and his friendliness toward anti-semitic voices like Nick Fuentes. (Ackman has denied any confrontation with Kirk over Israel.)
Owens also published text messages from Kirk (which were later confirmed by TPUSA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet) in which he stated that his group lost a $2 million donation due to his refusal to disinvite Carlson. Bulwark reporter Will Sommer said in October that "there's kind of this implication [from Owens] that Israelcommitted the assassination."
In an interview released Friday, CNN reporter Elle Reeve spoke with Owens about her claims that alleged killer Tyler Robinson didn't act alone. Owens acknowledged that while Robinson may have been "involved" in the shooting, there were "financial reports" that were going to be released in the coming weeks that would prove her claims. When Reeve pressed Owens on how she knows Robinson didn't act alone, Owens pointed to messages between Robinson and his roommate that she claimed were manufactured by the FBI "that had no time stamp and were written like they speaking in 1822."
Elle pressed Owens on whether she had definitive proof the messages were concocted by the FBI, and reminded her that such a claim could be "easily proven." When Owens insisted that there was no timestamp on the messages and that messaging platform Discord said they had no record of the exchange, Reeve reminded her that the conversation wasn't on Discord, but conducted via text message.
"I actually did not read that they were text messages," Owens conceded.
The conservative influencer maintained that federal agents typed up the messages themselves and attributed them to Robinson and his roommate. When Reeve asked her if she had FBI agents confirming that the messages were fake, Owens said: "I have leaks."
"But has anyone said to you, even off the record, like, 'yeah, we faked these,'" Reeve pressed.
"I have very strong sources everywhere, on both sides," Owens said.
"Well, I look forward to seeing evidence of that," Reeve said.
Owens then scoffed at whether "mainstream media" would broadcast evidence that the messages were leaked if they had definitive proof. Reeve gave Owens the opportunity to share any confirmation with her, saying, "that would be a hot story!"
"If the FBI, if I had a source telling me, like, if I had proof that the FBI faked those messages, that would be an enormous story," Reeve said.
"Yeah, I kind of feel like we live in a post-Epstein world, and we know how stories get shut down," Owens said.
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an 10 25
Politico reports Australia’s highest court has refused to grant MAGA influencer Candace Owens a visa, claiming she failed a “character test” according to that nation’s standards.
The Australian Constitution does not explicitly protect free speech, reports Politico, and High Court Justices Stephen Gageler, Michelle Gordon and Robert Beech-Jones jointly ruled that implied freedom of political communication “is not a ‘personal right,’ is not unlimited and is not absolute.”
In its unanimous decision, the court added that Australia’s Migration Act, which covers temporary and permanent visas, protects the Australian community from visitors who might “stir up or encourage dissension or strife on political matters.”
“Ms Owens’ … submissions should be emphatically rejected,” High Court Justice James Edelman said in a separate judgment.
Owens, who has claimed the wife of French leader Emmanuel Macron is a man, among other assertions, applied for a visa to enter Australia last year as part of a speaking tour. However, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke rejected her application through the character requirements clause of the country’s Migration Act.
Owens petitioned the country’s High Court to reverse Burke’s rejection, arguing that Burke’s determination went against the Australian constitution.
Politico reports that Australia’s Department of Home Affairs defines “good character” as showing “enduring moral qualities of a person.” And in his decision, Burke said Owens had made “extremist and inflammatory comments towards Muslim, Black, Jewish and LGBTQIA+ communities which generate controversy and hatred.”
“In the current environment where the Australian community is experiencing heightened community tensions, as per the advice of Australia’s security apparatus, I find that there is a risk that [Owens’] controversial views will amplify grievances among communities and lead to increased hostility and violent or radical action,” Burke said, according to Politico.
Read the full Politico report at this link.
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MMA
10/01/25
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haiti eats cats ok to make up story --> mma 9 24
09/17/24
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AN 9 25
How a far-right influencer is using religion to plunder Charlie Kirk’s 'legacy'
OWENS
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AN 7 25
A civil war is breaking out in the far-right media ecosystem, with some of the most popular MAGA podcasters now setting their sights on each other rather than Democrats.
In a Monday essay, Salon's Sophia Tesfaye delved into the right-wing podcast wars in which MAGA mascots like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes are all taking a scorched-earth approach in their criticisms of each other. Tesfaye likened it to "watching the MAGA snake eat itself," calling it "one of the few silver linings in the Trump era."
Tesfaye began by recalling Carlson's most recent podcast episode, in which he interviewed Owens for approximately two hours. Both notably attacked Ben Shapiro, who is the co-founder of the far-right Daily Wire website, for his support of Israel's ongoing offensive in Gaza. They also attacked pro-Israel donors for revoking their support of certain universities in response to pro-Palestinian campus protests, saying they were being hypocritical for not doing the same following Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
READ MORE:(Opinion) Don't 'have any other choice': Outrage grows in the midwest as political crisis spirals
Owens also lobbed shots at neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes — another MAGA-aligned podcaster who was once invited to dine with President Donald Trump and rapper Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago — during her interview with Carlson. Even though Owens invited Fuentes to her home studio for an interview on her podcast, she described her encounter with the Holocaust denier and white supremacist as "entirely fraudulent."
Fuentes, [VID]
calling her a "DEI hire" and an "Uncle Tom token Black" who "thinks she's some kind of boss b——." He added that he was "done with all the Uncle Toms," including conservative media pundit Jason Whitlock, saying that they "built their career on a grift that is now dead."
The invective against the Jewish community and the pro-Israel lobby prompted MAGA influencer Laura Loomer — also known as President Donald Trump's unofficial "loyalty enforcer" — to observe that while she previously thought antisemitism was confined to the left, she "never realized how bad it was on the right until last year." Loomer also called Carlson a "liar and a propagandist, adding that "deep down, he’s a Trump hater too."
Tesfaye wryly noted at the end of her article that watching MAGA voices snipe at each other was somewhat cathartic: "There is some fleeting comfort in knowing how much the people who hate everyone also hate each other," Tesfaye wrote. "It’s kind of like 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians.' But at least that family’s wealth provides an aesthetically pleasing background."
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rww
07/24/2025
by
- Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling @ The New Republic: Trump’s Relationship With Epstein Further Exposed in Bombshell Video
In resurfaced video testimony, Jeffrey Epstein was asked if he and Donald Trump ever spent time with young girls.
- Will Sommer @ The Bulwark: MAGA Inches Closer to a Ghislaine Maxwell Alliance
Is perpetrating heinous crimes against children too big a hurdle for a political alliance of convenience? Maybe not.
- Kathryn Wilkens @ Mediaite: Candace Owens Vows to Fight Macron Lawsuit Over Claim French First Lady Is a Man: ‘Obvious’ She ‘Has a Penis’
Candace Owens doubled down on her claim that French First Lady Brigitte Macron was born a man on Wednesday after French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife filed a defamation lawsuit against the right-wing commentator accusing her of spreading the conspiracy theory that Brigitte was born “Jean-Michel Trogneux.”
- Amanda Moore @ The Intercept: Project 2025 Data Leak Shows a Paul Ingrassia Calling for Test for Voting and Halting Immigration
Trump appointed far-right loyalist Paul Ingrassia to head a Justice Department office responsible for keeping politics out of the civil service.
- Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: So much for ‘looking forward’: Republicans launch yet another Jan. 6 probe
The GOP's Jan. 6 probe in the last Congress was an embarrassing dud. Rather than learn an obvious lesson, the party is going to give it a second try.
- Jessica Mason Pieklo @ Rewire News Group: These Two ‘Culture Warriors’ Are Trump’s New Federal Judges
The conservative legal movement used Trump’s first term to seize control of the federal courts. Will it use his second term to rewrite the Constitution entirely?
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U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to order three military strikes against nuclear facilities in Iran on Saturday, June 21 are a source of heated debate among his far-right supporters.
Fox News host Mark Levin is having bitter shouting matches with and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and "War Room" host" Steve Bannon. Levin is taking an aggressively interventionist position while Green, Bannon and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson believe the June 21 strikes were a betrayal of the "America First" ideology that Trump has championed.
Meanwhile, far-right media figure Candace Owens is attacking Trump on Iran as well.
READ MORE:New Trump plan gives the White House greater influence in the fight against organized crime
During an
on Fox Nation, Owens told host Morgan, "He’s been a chronic disappointment. And I feel embarrassed that I told people to go vote for him because this wasn't going to happen, and it is happening."
Owens' tone is much different from Greene's. During a lengthy post on X, formerly Twitter, Greene praised Trump on a variety of issues but attacked his Iran strikes as a bad decision.
Owens, however, sounded like she is fed up with Trump in general. And she characterized Trump as a puppet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Owens told Morgan, "This was not Trump's decision; it was Bibi Netanyahu’s decision. And that is the reason that he did it. We’re very aware that Israel is dictating our foreign policy, and we'd now like that to stop."
READ MORE:MAGA rages as Trump judge goes 'squishy' before upcoming decisions
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- Ian Millhiser @ Vox: The Supreme Court just made it easier for Trump to deport people
On Monday night, the Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision tossing out a closely watched district court decision, which blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to use a 227-year-old law — the Alien Enemies Act — to deport many individuals without due process. The Court largely voted along party lines, although Republican Justice Amy Coney Barrett crossed over to dissent with the three Democratic justices.
- Angry White Men: Candace Owens: ‘The Beatles Was Totally A Psychological Operation’
In an interview with antisemitic conspiracy theorist Ian Carroll, Candace Owens claimed that The Beatles “was totally a psychological operation.” Owens also called Volodymyr Zelensky a “literal actor” who was trained by the CIA, and said Emmanuel Macron was “installed as president of France with the Rothschilds behind him.”
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10/01/24 mma
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September 11, 2024, edition of Candace Owens, posted to Rumble
CANDACE OWENS: This is how you know you're getting close to truth. I mean, what a ridiculous reason to take a video down. You can't say the words satanic cults. Obviously, there is one. That's the only reason why you would say no one can hear this is because there was truth in that. And I will be posting that interview on to X later today, and you can still find that on Spotify, Apple, and here on Rumble.
So I advise you listen to it before they try to delete these things off of the internet because I'm still convinced that the World Economic Forum running that simulation that they did a while ago about what would happen if we had an internet pandemic and they had to force shut down the entire internet -- I still think they're going to do that, just like they predicted the COVID pandemic. I think they're essentially running tests to see what would happen if they brought down the internet so that they could sanitize it, as they said in that simulation. They said we're going to have to sanitize the internet if there's just a virus that's all over the web. We, the government, are gonna have to take control just like with COVID. But this time, it's going to be on the web.
So I really do encourage people to be conspiracy theorists. Consider that the government is showing you their hand and are telling you what they want to do because they realize that too many people are waking up to what's happening today. Print things out, buy books, get them into your possession, and make sure that we stay organized, that we have our own websites, that we have our own technology. It's why I'm building my own database. We're gonna have to do that. But don't just rely on the internet. Like I said, buy books, get hard copies, photocopy the things that you need to remember, write them down, go old school, that's really going to be our only guard against what I believe to be a government that fully just wants to wipe out history so that they can just make us live in an ever Orwellian present.
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Vivek, Trump and the Puppet Master Trope: MAGA’s Soros Obsession Inflames Raging Antisemitism on the Right
By Peter Montgomery | September 30, 2024 rww
Vivek Ramaswamy stumping for Donald Trump. (Image from video posted on X)
Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, now a Fox Nation host and cheerleader for Donald Trump’s campaign, used his account on the social media site X (formerly Twitter) to spread a dangerous antisemitic trope among his 2.6 million followers last week.
After philanthropist Alex Soros posted a photo of himself with Democratic vice-presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz, Ramaswamy reposted it with the comment, “If you squint, you can see the strings on the marionette.”
Alex Soros is the son of philanthropist George Soros, a longtime funder of progressive and pro-democracy causes. As Media Matters noted, “The ‘puppet master’ imagery is a classic antisemitic trope, and right-wing media and
have used it for years to smear George Soros.”
It is so recognizably antisemitic, in fact, that three years ago Fox News deleted social-media posts with a cartoon portraying Soros as a “puppet master” after critics called them out.
But that hasn’t stopped MAGA activists. Last year, when a podcaster asked Ramaswamy about having received a scholarship funded by George Soros’s late brother Paul, Ramaswamy said, “I think the big question that comes up is who’s the bogey man pulling the strings. I have no tie to George Soros other than criticizing him.” Ramaswamy later said he was unaware of the podcast host’s record of peddling tropes about Jews owning “almost everything.”
Trump himself has used the “puppet master” trope to rile his followers and motivate them to send him money. Last year, Trump sent a fundraising email that attacked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as a “bought-and-paid-for Soros prosecutor” carrying out his “puppet master’s plot to put me in JAIL for committing NO CRIME.”
Trump and other right-wing leaders revere Hungary’s “illiberal” leader Viktor Orbán, who deployed antisemitism in forcing a university funded by George Soros to leave the country where he was born, and has continued to use antisemitic narratives—more recently targeting Alex Soros—to maintain his grip on power. Orbán’s heavy-handed moves to impose ideological control over the judiciary, media, education, and culture have made him a hero to U.S. right-wing leaders like Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who views Orbán as the model for the kind of strongman they would like Trump to be in his second term.
Often the promotion of antisemitism is more coded than overt. While Ramaswamy has publicly criticized antisemitism as “morally outrageous” and “a symptom of something that is broken in our society,” he has also participated in the MAGA movement’s embrace of antisemitic conspiracy theories. Last year, when Ramaswamy was running for president, The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer dubbed him “The new face of the ‘great replacement.’”
The BBC describes “great replacement” as “the far-right idea that a cabal of people—often named as ‘globalists,’ ‘elites,’ or Jews—is deliberately plotting to change the demographic of Western countries,” and “a version of the ‘white genocide’ conspiracy theory that there is a plot to entirely ‘eliminate’ white people.” Proponents of this theory—including Trump and Carlson—sometimes blame George Soros directly for this imagined scheme.
As Right Wing Watch has noted, “the theory that global elites are out to ‘replace’ white people motivated mass murderers who killed Muslims in New Zealand, Jews in Pittsburgh and San Diego, and Latinos in El Paso, Texas. It also inspired organizers of the deadly Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, where protesters chanted, ‘You will not replace us’ and ‘Jews will not replace us.’”
But none of that has stopped right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson or far-right openly antisemitic figures like white nationalist Nick Fuentes from promoting great replacement rhetoric.
The poison is spreading within the MAGA movement. Trash-talking commentator Candace Owens
Tucker Carlson in 2021 that George Soros’s philanthropy was designed to “undo American civilization.” Owens, who lost her job at the Daily Wire earlier this year, has veered into antisemitic territory that is uncomfortably close to what is spewed by Fuentes.
Owens’ antisemitic rhetoric was called out by some conservatives. Yet two months after Owens’ highly publicized departure from the Daily Wire, Ramaswamy was urging BuzzFeed, where he had just bought a significant stake, to hire her. Owens is still promoted on the Turning Point USA site, whose founder Charlie Kirk is touring colleges with Ramaswamy this fall.
Carlson, meanwhile, recently hosted Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper on his online show—a top-rated podcast—and Cooper followed up with a social media post saying that Hitler had tried to “work with the other powers to reach an acceptable solution to the Jewish problem.”
The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg cited the episode in his recent article, “The Anti-Semitic Revolution on the American Right,” which noted that Carlson was given a prime-time speaking slot at the 2024 Republican National Convention. “Anti-Semitism has always existed on the political extremes, but it began to migrate into the mainstream of the Republican coalition during the Trump administration,” Rosenberg writes.
Rosenberg notes that the MAGA movement’s angry anti-elite populism “readily maps onto the ancient anti-Semitic canard that clandestine string-pulling Jews are the source of society’s problems.” That brings us back to Ramaswamy and other MAGA insiders. “Trump fundamentally refuses to repudiate anyone who supports him,” notes Rosenberg, who cites a conservative columnist who told him last year, “What you’re actually worried about is not Trump being Hitler. What you’re worried about is Trump incentivizing anti-Semites” in a way that brings them real political power.
There are other strains within the right wing of American politics that threaten to foster the marginalization of American Jews.
Among the “illiberal” and “post-liberal” thinkers that J.D. Vance pals around with is Yoram Hazony, whose Edmund Burke Foundation sponsors the National Conservatism conference at which Vance has spoken repeatedly in the past few years. Hazony believes that in a Christian majority country, “public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private.” When journalist Katherine Stewart asked about minorities in such a society having outsider status, Hazony said, “That simply is reality,” adding that minorities would not get the same treatment as the majority, but “should be grateful for the fact that you’re not persecuted as minorities often have been in history.”
Like Trump, American religious-right groups loudly declare their support for Israel’s government and love for the Jewish people. But some of the movement’s increasingly aggressive, exclusionary, and dominionist Christian nationalist leaders declare that the U.S. is meant to be a Christian nation, with certain kinds of Christians ordained to rule. Some claim that the U.S. was founded with a national mission to advance the Christian faith. Some assert that Christian beliefs should be amended into the Constitution and that public officials should be required to be Christian. One has called for public worship by non-Christians to be banned.
Religious-right groups have also attacked Soros’s philanthropic support for progressive religious groups, calling it “evil.”A letter circulated among right-wing evangelicals several years ago portrayed George Soros as a global schemer whose goal may be “the imposition of a global monoculture” but is “at least the destruction of our national identity through demoralization, open borders, drugs, crime, law-fare and media propaganda — the ‘fundamental transformation’ (weakening) of American civil society for the leveraged power of global ‘elites.’” Signers included broadcaster Eric Metaxas, anti-LGBTQ activist and New Apostolic Reformation figure Jim Garlow, and the Family Research Council’s Jerry Boykin.
Trump himself has inflamed antisemitism on the right since his 2016 campaign rhetoric electrified white nationalists. He has routinely disparaged American Jewish voters for not supporting him more widely based on his support for Israel’s far-right government. And Trump recently threatened to blame American Jews if he loses the election. What could be more calculated to inflame the antisemitism already surging through his conspiracy-embracing MAGA movement?
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September 10, 2024 rww
- Matt Keeley @ The New Civil Rights Movement: JD Vance Says in 2020 He Wouldn’t Certify Election: ‘Let the Country Have the Debate’
Ohio Senator JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, said Monday that if he were in former Vice President Mike Pence’s place, he would not have certified the election on January 6, 2021.
- Josh Kovensky @ Talking Points Memo: How JD Vance Turned The Conspiracy Machine On Haitians In A Small Ohio City
It’s been a surreal experience for Dorsainvil, but Vance’s tweet seized on a conspiracy theory that has been bouncing around the right-wing echo chamber. The core allegation that Haitians in Springfield had “abducted and eaten” pets followed a meandering path, from local Facebook groups to the online, right-wing influencers that Vance follows, and onwards to the current vice presidential candidate. It’s an example of the engine that drives modern right-wing politics: wild and false claims start off scattered across the internet, before being vacuumed up and boosted to mass audiences, sometimes by high-profile politicians whose status as public figures lends credence to what, only days before, had been random, unverified posts.
- Angry White Men: ‘He Can’t Go As Far As Naming The Jew’: Stew Peters Fumes After Being Removed From Tucker Carlson Event
On Saturday, Holocaust denier and Nazi sympathizer Stew Peters claimed that he had been denied entry at an event hosted by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. In a post on his X account, Peters wrote that he was “BANNED from entry to a ticketed VIP event” in Salt Lake City, UT which was part of Carlson’s ongoing “Live Tour.”
- Robert Jones @ Time: Trump’s Christian Nationalist Vision for America
The connection between Republican voters and their leaders was never primarily about abortion. Rather, as Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) transformation of the party reveals, Trump’s bond with his supporters is forged from different material: namely, his militant mission to return power to white Christian America.
- Hafiz Rashid @ The New Republic: Project 2025 Leader Confesses Deep Trump Ties in Damning Interview
Donald Trump is probably fuming about this interview with former Project 2025 director Paul Dans.
- David Gilbert @ Wired: He Worked for a Law Firm Consulting on an Anti-Trans Supreme Court Case. Then We Asked About These Racist Posts
Lawfair, founded by the well-known litigator Adam Mortara, is a boutique right-wing firm currently engaged by the state of Tennessee to provide counsel on a contentious Supreme Court case that could affect the availability of gender-affirming care for transgender minors across the country. Aside from Mortara, the only other lawyer known to have worked or done work for the firm is a project-based contract attorney named Christopher Roach. He no longer does so, after WIRED asked questions about his apparent ties—revealed exclusively in this story for the first time—to online accounts with a long history of posting white supremacist and antisemitic content.
- Alex Griffing @ Mediaite: Candace Owens Suspended From YouTube Over Kanye West Interview — She Immediately Blames ‘Zionists’
Candace Owens announced on X Monday that she was suspended from YouTube for a week following her recent interview with anti-Semitic rapper Kanye West, which YouTube said platformed anti-Semitic claims that “Jewish people control the media.”
- Russell Payne @ Salon: Pro-Trump group 99% short of its $108M get-out-the-vote scheme — so Republicans are getting creative
While swing state Republican officials, former Republican National Committee leaders and strategists are ringing alarm bells over the party’s lackluster get-out-the-vote effort, some pro-Trump organizers suggest that the GOP ground game is successfully targeting voters at the margins.
- Tim Alberta @ The Atlantic: Why Mike Lee Folded
In 2016, he tried to stop Trump from becoming president. By 2020, he was trying to help Trump overturn the election. Now he could become Trump’s attorney general.
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Warning of a “synagogue of Satan,” Candace Owens says, “All of these world leaders that we have, even President Zelensky, all seem to be homosexual” 09/03/24 mma
08/29/24 mma
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August 23, 2024 rww
- Josh Fiallo @ The Daily Beast: RFK Jr. Suspends Failing Campaign to Throw His Support to Donald Trump
The independent never made it on a debate stage and had his polling numbers drop significantly after Kamala Harris became Democrats’ presumptive nominee.
- Media Matters: Roger Stone and Alex Jones endorse RFK Jr. as CIA director in a second Trump administration
“He could get to the bottom who killed his uncle and his father, and he can get to the bottom who really tried to kill Donald Trump.”
- Angry White Men: Joel Webbon Insists It’s Not Racist To Prefer A White Doctor Over A Black Doctor
During a recent livestream, radical Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon justified his decision to see a white doctor instead of a Black doctor. Webbon claimed that there is a greater likelihood that the Black doctor was unqualified, and said this “prejudgment” was neither racist nor sinful.
- Khaya Himmelman @ Talking Points Memo: Georgia Election Board, Beloved By Trump, Keeps Cranking Out Rules That May Sow Chaos
Election truthers in Georgia got their latest win this week when the Republican-controlled Georgia State Election Board approved another rule that gives county election officials a new way to potentially delay certification. It’s the second time this month that the Trump-friendly board has passed a rule of this type, a particularly worrying development given how close we are to the upcoming presidential election.
- Isaac Schorr @ Mediaite: Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes Goes to War With Candace Owens for Anti-Semitic Crown: ‘She Was Coming For Our Thing’
Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes is not happy with former Daily Wire personality Candace Owens for coming for infringing on his turf and appealing to his anti-Semitic audience.
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August 16, 2024 rww
- Shane Goldmacher, Russ Buettner and Maggie Haberman @ The New York Times: Trump Made $300,000 for Endorsing Bible, Financial Disclosure Shows
Donald J. Trump’s latest financial disclosure lists more than $100 million in liabilities stemming from three civil lawsuits he lost in New York that required him to obtain bonds to pay the judgments — but also profits from licensing fees at Trump-branded properties in Dubai and Oman, as well as income that he made from his post-presidential books, including a Trump-endorsed Bible.
- Angry White Men: Candace Owens: ‘I’m Definitely A Bigot’
During an interview with misogynistic alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate, ex-Daily Wire host Candace Owens admitted that she’s “definitely a bigot.” Referring to her own bigotry as a “divine gut instinct” and a sign from the Holy Spirit, Owens also claimed that the government tries to get people to ignore that instinct.
- Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Christian pastors were told to start private schools since taxpayers would foot the bill
During a training session for future pastors, one Christian speaker urged the audience to have their churches launch their own private schools as soon as possible. It was easy, he told them, because taxpayers were subsidizing the one his church began in Florida to the tune of millions of dollars—and, more importantly, it gave them the chance to win new child converts.
- Nikki McCann Ramirez @ Rolling Stone: Project 2025 Co-Author Says It’s Time to ‘Rehabilitate’ Christian Nationalism
Former Trump administration official Russell Vought gave a candid interview to undercover members of the Centre for Climate Reporting posing as potential donor.
- Natalia Contreras @ The Texas Tribune: Texas election officials are dealing with a flood of challenges to voter registrations
County election departments across Texas are trying to reassure voters amid a flood of formal challenges questioning whether their registrations are valid. The challenges, filed by conservative groups and individual activists, seek to remove tens of thousands of voters from the rolls on the grounds that they don’t live in the county, are not citizens or have died.
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mma 7 24
many pix vid? twt
donald Trump Jr. is headlining a fundraiser with Candace Owens. Here are some of the extremist things she's said since leaving the Daily Wire.
WRITTEN BY JASON CAMPBELL & JOHN WHITEHOUSE
:{:{PUBLISHED 07/23/24}:
MAGA media personality Candace Owens is reportedly set to feature at a fundraiser headlined by Rumble host Donald Trump Jr.
Owens has made extremist and antisemitic remarks in the months since she was forced out at The Daily Wire — having an extremist track record there as well, including saying that “you cannot even say the word Jewish without people getting upset” when Kanye ”Ye" West wrote, “I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.”
- ### Candace Owens is set to feature at a Trump fundraiser headlined by Donald Trump Jr.
Donald Trump Jr. is set to headline a Trump campaign fundraiser on Friday in Nashville, Tenn., that will feature Candace Owens, the far-right pundit who has frequently advanced antisemitic commentary.
Owens, a fervent supporter of former President Donald Trump, has in recent months amplified the ancient blood libel against Jews, downplayed the Holocaust and defended Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist, among other incendiary remarks.
In March, the 34-year-old conspiracy theorist parted ways with Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire — where she had served as a weekday host — amid mounting tensions over her increasingly antisemitic rhetoric and fierce criticism of Israel in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.
Trump Jr.’s scheduled appearance with Owens on Friday appears to underscore the influence he is now exerting on his father’s campaign — as Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, have publicly distanced themselves from the former president after previously serving as top advisers in his administration.
- ### Candace Owens has made numerous extremist remarks since leaving the Daily Wire. Here are some of them.
Candace Owens referred to Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, as “a little bit uppity.”
Video
CitationFrom a July 21, 2024, YouTube stream
CANDACE OWENS (HOST): So they, at some point, months ago, made the decision that we're gonna have to get rid of him, but we want to wait until we're close to the conventions so that we can select who we want. I personally think they want a Governor Whitmer. I personally think that they want a Gavin Newsom. They do not want Kamala Harris, and so this convention is going to get interesting. I'm not buying all of this rhetoric of everyone saying, “I'm — I stand with her.”
They have to say that, and then I think some calls are going to be made. I think it is entirely plausible that they put somebody else in there that they actually want and can control because Kamala is a little bit uppity. And what I mean by that is she has an attitude, and she gets stubborn, and she has not been as malleable as a Biden or Clinton-type person would be. So keep your eyes and keep your eels — ears peeled because, there is more drama. As I said, no one's sleeping until November.
During a discussion with 9/11 and Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Owens said,“I actually very much believe our state was involved” in the shooting at the Donald Trump rally.
Video
CitationFrom the July 17, 2024, edition of Candace Owens, posted to YouTube
CANDACE OWENS (HOST): And this goes back way further in American history, and I do try to slow it down because I know that so many people are just waking up to this. And it's overwhelming, you know? It is like an avalanche. I always say that you kind of go through this period of cognitive dissonance where you just go, how could I have believed that things were happening and it was just this exceptional evil thing that took place and never considered that this could be being led by our government.
Now let me ask you this question: why does the government do these sorts of things? So I learned in that CHAOSbook about the Charles Manson murders. I very much believe that the reason for that was they wanted to end the hippie generation because they were very anti-war and our government wanted to go to war. And so by conducting this hippie commune, conducted these terrible murders in Beverly Hills, suddenly people were buying locks and people were scared again. It wasn't like the love dream and the hippie love generation suddenly came to an abrupt end. What is their issue with Trump? Explain why they would — if we are alleging, and I actually very much believe our state was involved in this. I think you have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that it was a — just a remarkable intelligence failure. I think that the crazy people are the ones that actually believe that this just happened by accident. Why would they try to assassinate Donald Trump?
Owens criticized a Sikh prayer during the Republican National Convention, saying, “It’s not emblematic of America.”
Video
CitationFrom the July 16, 2024, edition of Candace Owens, posted to YouTube
CANDACE OWENS (HOST): First and foremost — and I say this with the most kindness in my heart — I actually love her as a lawyer. I think she has been tremendous in fighting for American freedoms and defending the Constitution. Harmeet Dhillon — we're going to — I'm going to go ahead and show you guys in case you missed it. But she is a leader, obviously. She's a Republican leader, and she decided to lead the Republican National Convention with something known as an Ardas, OK? It is a — I guess it's a song. It's also a prayer, and it is something that is done if you adhere to Sikhism. So I just wanna go ahead and show you guys a clip of that taking place on the RNC stage. Take a listen.
...
OWENS: OK. I'll let you guys comment. I got — for me, I just thought, first and foremost, what is this? Secondly, who is this for? Who is the intended audience? I guess, what is the RNC for? What is the purpose of the RNC? What is this convention about? Are we trying to bring voters in? Are we just trying to assert who we are as conservatives? If it is the former, how does this help? If it is the latter, how does this help? That gets where I was. I said, what is this? Literally, why? Why is this? I thought to myself. Again, this is not a personal jab at Harmeet Dillon. She's definitively somebody who punches for America and should be supported. But whose idea was this? That was the other thing. When you sit around and you're like, OK, we are planning the Republican convention, who rose their hand and was like, “What if we do something known as the Ardas?" And then someone said, “Tell me more. What's that?" And they said, “Oh, actually, if we didn't know about this well, first and foremost, seven percent of Americans are Asian-Americans. And of that seven percent, one percent adhere to Sikhism." “Oh, tell me more." “And of that one percent of the seven percent, they do this prayer." And then someone in that meeting said, “Yeah. No. Go with that. That's definitely the thing to do." Huh? What?
This is why I think — and this is a moment in which I think a lot of people were responding going, what are we doing here? Are we now the same party that critiques DEI and then also practices it at certain points? Because this, for me, if I'm running the RNC, if I'm running the convention, I'm going this is just — it's not emblematic of America. So I said, you can find a melting pot in different cultures within America, but this is not something that patriots are rallying behind. This is — it doesn't make any sense for this to be on the RNC stage.
So I saw this. I didn't think it made any sense. And I can tell you, for those of you who are like me going, what is what is Sikhism? I have no idea what this is. Here are the basic five tenets of it. They believe there's only one God, that God is without form or gender. Everyone has direct access to him. Everyone is equal before him. And a good life is served as part of a community by living honestly and caring for others. They also do not believe in empty religious rituals, and superstitions have no value. So I hope that helps you a little bit. That, by the way, those religious tenets, that is as offered by the BBC. I — if you were as confused as me, I hope now you have some clarity. And by some clarity, I mean you should still be utterly confused as to why the RNC thought that that was a necessary thing to include in its evening program.
In order to defend Nick Fuentes from Jordan Peterson, Owens discussed how many Jews are in the Biden administration:
Video
CitationFrom the July 9, 2024, edition of Candace Owens, posted to YouTube
CANDACE OWENS (HOST): Jordan Peterson has built himself as somebody who is calm, who is rational, who relies on logic, who is a person who believes in radical free speech. He's now coming to the aid of his daughter and essentially doubling down on calling — which is, again, a 62-year-old man calling a 24-year-old a rat. And what is the reason, by the way? Because we should also say what is it that Nick Fuentes said that garnered that response from Jordan Peterson. And Nick Fuentes wrote one word on Twitter — he wrote “Jews." Now what was that in response to? Well, somebody asked the question: We know that Joe Biden is not in control of the White House, so who is in control of the White House? And Nick Fuentes wrote a one-word response — “Jews." He's saying Jews are in control of the White House, and that garnered a response from Jordan Peterson calling him a psychopathic rat. Now, we all know that Nick Fuentes has branded himself as somebody who expressly hates Zionism, he expressly hates Israel, and he is saying that Jews in the White House are now obviously in control because Joe Biden is not.
Now, to be fair, the Times of Israel has noted in the past — this is an actual article from them — all the Jews Biden has tapped for top roles in his new administration. This is from back in 2021 when Joe Biden first was inaugurated as president. And it goes on to say, “Joe Biden filled the months before inauguration day, lining up a slate of cabinet secretaries, assistants, and advisers, many of them Jewish." It goes on to give us a rundown of all of the Jewish names, all of the Jews that they are saying are in his cabinet. You have Antony Blinken. You have David Cohen, the CIA director. You have Merrick Garland, the attorney general. You have Avril Haines, the director of National Intelligence. You have Ronald Klain, the chief of staff. So it seems a weird tweet for him to be so disturbed about.
Now, again, it's likely because Nick Fuentes has a very long background of focusing his attention on Israel and Zionism, and that's what he is reacting to. Also because Nick Fuentes has called out Jordan Peterson explicitly for a very long time as somebody who he believes has more of an allegiance to Israel than he does to Western civilization in general, essentially, that he would put Israel before he would put Canada and before he would put America.
Now I don't know if that's a fair critique of Jordan Peterson, but I do know that it is off-brand for him to respond by calling someone a psychopathic rat. I mean, calling somebody a name, calling somebody an animal when you are billing yourself, right, as the calm, rational psychologist, doctor who insists on logic and that the better ideas should win is just going to be off-brand.
Owens claimed that the experiments Nazis conducted during the Holocaust sound “like bizarre propaganda.”
Owens: “I’m not a flat-earther. I’m not a round-earther. Actually, what I am is I am somebody who has left the cult of science.”
Video
CitationFrom the July 1, 2024, edition of Candace, posted to YouTube
CANDACE OWENS (HOST): Can you guys imagine being married to me? My my poor husband, he rolls over, he's like, “What are you reading?" And I feel like a regular wife says something, I don't know, maybe a love series. Nora Roberts sweeping her away. Me, on the other hand — he rolled over, he asked me and I said, oh, I'm reading a flat Earth theory. And it dawned into an entire conversation. He's like, why are you reading a flat Earth theory? And I'm like, because somebody messaged me on Monect about it, and they included some links, and I'm just reading them. I don't know. I'm just an interested person no matter what. If there's a bunch of people that believe something, I now want to know what it is that they believe. And, of course, he pushed me on this, and he was talking about the Earth curvature and science. And I said to him, listen. I'm not a flat-earther. I'm not a round-earther. Actually, what I am is I am somebody who has left the cult of science. I have left the megachurch of science because what I have now realized is that science, what it is actually, if you think about it, is a pagan faith.
Owens: “Hollywood is, in fact, being controlled by some sort of demonic cult with an intention to corrupt our souls.”
Video
CitationFrom the June 12, 2024, edition of Candace, posted to YouTube
CANDACE OWENS (HOST): Here is my conclusion after having read that book and just paying attention to what is happening in my very, very real belief that Hollywood is completely being used as a form of psychological entrapment, as a form of psychological — mass psychological brainwashing. I believe the media is a form of black magic — that people actually sat down experts and they experimented to see how people would react to certain things. Right? That they can create a celebrity virtually overnight, make people want to be like that celebrity, that they can induce people to love someone instantly or to hate somebody instantly. I'm someone that they induce people to hate immediately before they ever even heard what I had to say. They understand that headlines work. So if you say something enough times, people will believe it to be true.
...
Now, suddenly the the music is so dark, it is so demonic that it has led me to believe that Hollywood is, in fact, being controlled by some sort of a demonic cult with an intention to corrupt our souls. And in particular, there definitely seems to be some sort of a deranged focus on Black people, giving us the worst filth. It's all filth, but it's almost like the worst filth that you can corrupt a soul with is reserved for Black people.
Owens also reportedly suggested that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee had President John F. Kennedy assassinated.
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Candace Owens on VP Harris: “Kamala is a little bit uppity”
07/21/24 5:04 PM EDT
CANDACE OWENS (HOST): So they, at some point, months ago, made the decision that we're gonna have to get rid of him, but we want to wait until we're close to the conventions that we can select who we want. I personally think they want a Governor Whitmer. I personally think that they want a Gavin Newsom. They do not want Kamala Harris, and so this convention is going to get interesting. I'm not buying all of this rhetoric of everyone saying, I'm — I stand with her.
They have to say that, and then I think some calls are gonna be made. I think it is entirely plausible that they put somebody else in there that they actually want and can control because Kamala is a little bit uppity. And what I mean by that is she has an attitude, and she gets stubborn, and she has not been as malleable as a Biden or Clinton type person would be. So keep your eyes and keep your eels — ears peeled because, there is more drama. As I said, no one's sleeping until November.
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trump assass if i were conspiracy theory i wd say deep state fbi
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recall unity theme post assass
07/17/24
July 16, 2024, edition of Candace Owens, posted to YouTube
CANDACE OWENS (HOST): First and foremost - and I say this with the most kindness in my heart, I actually love her as a lawyer. I think she has been tremendous in fighting for American freedoms and defending the Constitution. Harmeet Dhillon — we're gonna — I'm gonna go ahead and show you guys in case you missed it. But she is a leader. Obviously she's a Republican leader, and she decided to lead the Republican National Convention with something known as an Ardas, OK? It is a -- I guess it's a song. It's also a prayer, and it is something that is done if you adhere to Sikhism. So I just wanna go ahead and show you guys a clip of that taking place on the RNC stage. Take a listen.
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OWENS: OK. I'll let you guys comment. I got — for me, I just thought, first and foremost, what is this? Secondly, who is this for? Who is the intended audience? I guess, what is the RNC for? What is the purpose of the RNC? What is this convention about? Are we trying to bring voters in? Are we just trying to assert who we are as conservatives? If it is the former, how does this help? If it is the latter, how does this help? That gets where I was. I said, what is this? Literally, why? Why is this? I thought to myself. Again, this is not a personal jab at Harmeet Dillon. She's definitively somebody who punches for America and should be supported. But whose idea was this? That was the other thing. When you sit around and you're like, OK, we are planning the Republican convention, who rose their hand and was like, what if we do something known as the Ardas? And then someone said, tell me more. What's that? And they said, oh, actually, if we didn't know about this well, first and foremost, seven percent of Americans are Asian-Americans. And of that seven percent, one percent adhere to Sikhism. Oh, tell me more. And of that one percent of the seven percent, they do this prayer. And then someone in that meeting said, yeah. No. Go with that. That's definitely the thing to do. Huh? What?
This is why I think — and this is a moment in which I think a lot of people were responding going, what are we doing here? Are we now the same party that critiques DEI and then also practices it at certain points? Because this, for me, if I'm running the RNC, if I'm running the convention, I'm going this is just — it's not emblematic of America. So I said, you can find a melting pot in different cultures within America, but this is not something that patriots are rallying behind. This is — it doesn't make any sense for this to be on the RNC stage.
So I saw this. I didn't think it made any sense. And I can tell you, for those of you who are like me going, what is what is Sikhism? I have no idea what this is. Here are the basic five tenets of it. They believe there's only one God, that God is without form or gender. Everyone has direct access to him. Everyone is equal before him. And a good life is served as part of a community by living honestly and caring for others. They also do not believe in empty religious rituals, and superstitions have no value. So I hope that helps you a little bit. That, by the way, those religious tenets, that is as offered by the BBC. I — if you were as confused as me, I hope now you have some clarity. And by some clarity, I mean you should still be utterly confused as to why the RNC thought that that was a necessary thing to include in its evening program.
Related
07/12/24 10:46 AM EDT
07/10/24 10:28 AM EDT
07/05/24 10:44 AM
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07/02/24 mma
charlie Kirk’s Turning Point connects far-right extremists with the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign
The Turning Point event this past weekend featured a number of extremists, with at least two speakers using the phrase “Christ is king” — an antisemitic dog whistle long favored by the white nationalist “groyper” movement
WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MADELINE PELTZ, SOPHIE LAWTON & ALEX KAPLAN
PUBLISHED 06/18/24
Several right-wing extremist figures spoke at a weekend event organized by conservative radio host Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action, which is partnering with the Republican National Committee and former President Donald Trump's campaign. At least two speeches included the phrase “Christ is king,” an antisemitic dog whistle long favored by white nationalists.
Speakers at The People’s Convention included right-wing pundit Candace Owens, who has a history of making antisemitic remarks and appears to be associating herself with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes; neo-Nazi collaborator and Pizzagate conspiracy theory peddler Jack Posobiec; and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The presence of these figures is not surprising, given the significant ties Kirk and Turning Point have to right-wing extremists and white nationalists.
The three-day summit illustrated how Turning Point Action and its affiliate Turning Point USA have come to serve as a bridge between official Republican Party institutions and the more openly bigoted and extremist elements of Trump’s movement. Over the weekend, CNN reported that the Trump campaign is working with Turning Point Action. Politico wrote that Turning Point “has become a central player in the party apparatus,” as “part of recent collaborations between the [Trump] campaign, RNC and outside groups.” In May, The Washington Post reported that the RNC was adopting a “leaner” approach and was considering outsourcing much of its voter outreach to TPUSA and other right-wing organizations.
Speaking directly after Kirk on the event’s opening day, Owens opened and closed her speech with the phrase “Christ is king” — a slogan long used by Fuentes’ “groyper” movement that has gained antisemitic connotations through its use in far-right-wing contexts. Last November, Owens used the phrase to troll Ben Shapiro, her then-colleague at The Daily Wire — one flare-up in a monthslong feud between the two. The Daily Wire and Owens “ended their relationship” in March, according to CEO Jeremy Boreing.
“When you do come together and you do start a family, for the love of God, put Christ first,” Owens said, prompting an audience chant of: “Christ is king.”
“Correct, and we’re going to lead out on that chant,” Owens responded.
Owens then claimed that Democrats and liberals are bringing “the full weight of the government” against Trump, but that “Trump is just one step — they’ve always been after Jesus Christ.”
“Christ is king,” Owens said in closing.
Video
CitationFrom the June 14, 2024, Rumble livestream of Turning Point USA's The People's Convention
On the third day of the event, Posobiec echoed Owens.
“We understand this is a war against the demonic, this is a spiritual war!” Posobiec shouted, raising a rosary in his clenched fist. “We can only defeat a spiritual war with Christ as king because Christ is king.”
“Christ is king,” he repeated.
That phrase wasn’t the only example of the groypers’ influence on Turning Point. In 2021, Chet Hanks attempted to manufacture a viral moment for himself by calling for a “white boy summer,” but the phrase was quickly adopted by neo-Nazis and other extremists, including followers of Fuentes. On Sunday, Posobiec took the stage next to a banner reading “WHITE BOY SUMMER” and tossed hats branded with the slogan to the crowd.
Video
CitationFrom a June 16, 2024, Rumble livestream of Turning Point USA's The People's Conference
Posobiec then introduced Jones, appearing fresh off a court order to liquidate his assets in order to pay surviving members of the Sandy Hook massacre whom he’d repeatedly defamed by claiming the shooting was a false flag.
“The answer to 1984 is 1776,” Jones said before attempting to lead the crowd in a “1776” chant — a dog whistle that signifies opposition to the anti-racist 1619 Project.
“Just three or four days ago, the great folks at Turning Point Action invited me on here. I’m very blessed and honored to be here,” Jones said before pushing an election denialist conspiracy theory. “We are in the very center, the TCF Center, where almost four years ago, in the dead of night, they stole the election not just from our amazing president, but from us.”
Later in his speech, Jones repeated another conspiracy theory he’d helped spread in May when he falsely claimed President Joe Biden had hatched a scheme to kill Trump. “They are going to try to assassinate President Trump, make no mistake about that,” Jones said.
Video
CitationFrom a June 16, 2024, Rumble livestream of Turning Point USA's The People's Conference
Posobiec, standing next to Jones, praised his career. “Alex Jones has spent 30 years being the loudest voice for freedom, for liberty, and for anti-war that this world has seen,” Posobiec said.
Other notable speakers included anti-LGBTQ extremist James Lindsay and QAnon conspiracy theory peddler Scott Presler, who was present during the January 6 attempted insurrection and previously worked at anti-Muslim hate group Act for America. In March, RNC co-chair Lara Trump said she was interested in hiring Presler to be “part of the team” to help with “the largest legal ballot harvesting operation in the entire country,” which will be “started by the RNC.”
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06/25/24 mma
Candace Owens’ eponymous new show is only one week old, but the former Daily Wire personality has already returned to an old fixation: a conspiracy theory that the first lady of France is secretly a transgender woman. Similar false accusations, known informally as “transvestigations,” are raging everywhere on social media, targeting figures from Kyle Rittenhouse to Taylor Swift — an uncomfortable if inevitable evolution of a mass hysteria fixated on the bodies of trans people.
Prior to losing her jobat The Daily Wire, Owens proclaimed that she would stake her “entire professional reputation”” on the theory that Brigitte Macron, the longtime wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, was hiding the fact that she is a transgender woman. While heraccusation was met with derision, outrage, and concern, Owens made the claim in a new video on her YouTube channel, and then repeated it several days later.
Video
CitationFrom the June 13, 2024, edition of Candace
Two women in France are currently facing defamation charges for helping spread the claim. Macron’s husband has recently adopted strident anti-trans rhetoric in the run-up to new elections.
Accusations of a secret trans identity have been weaponized against women deemed insufficiently feminine or subversive for years. Lady Gaga was asked in multiple
about rumors about her genitalia, and similar claims pushed by Infowars host Alex Jones dogged Michelle Obama during her husband’s time in office. Although Jones recently announced that he would have to liquidate his assets to settle claims over a separate conspiracy theory about the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, accusations that the former U.S. first lady and mother of two children is secretly trans have refusedto go away.
“Transvestigations” have been hard to miss on social media in recent years, targeting basketballstars Britney Griner and Caitlin Clark, pop stars outspoken in their supportfor LGBTQ equality like Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa, Man of Steel star Henry Cavill, and even former President Lyndon B. Johnson.
These false accusations come amid a broader “trans panic” encouraged by right-wing media and politicians. And right-wing media stars are not immune to this scrutiny, with similar accusations lodged against Laura Loomer, Riley Gaines, Kyle Rittenhouse, and others.
While these accusations are, on their face, an extremely funny result of a deeply unfunny moment in LGBTQ history, they come with dark precedents. The “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s grew partly from a widely covered and since-debunked memoir detailing the occult sexual abuse of children, and it eventually led to a string of false convictions for offenses ranging from sexual abuse to homicide. One couple, wrongfully convictedin Texas at the height of the panic, spent more than two decades in prison.
Although the particulars of these accusations may have changed — though not as much as you might think, with trans people frequently accused of being either sexual predators or dangerous killers — public enthusiasm for the punishment of people seen as a threat to children has not vanished, making such claims disruptive or even dangerous for their targets. Confirmation bias means that people with negative opinions about transgender people who are prompted to suspect that somebody is transgender are likely to find evidence for their claim, whether or not it exists. The right’s present fixation on trans people has led to accusations of secret trans people everywhere not because men and women are so different, but rather because we have so much in common.
In recent years, the idea that trans people either do not exist as a meaningful category or are a recent invention has taken hold in right-wing media — especially among Owens’ former colleagues at The Daily Wire. Owens herself has previously argued that trans identity is “all made up”in the heads of trans people, an assertion that would be contradicted by the seeming existence of a secret class of trans celebrities, athletes, and politicians, if consistency were a core value of the anti-transition movement. In their own way, “tranvestigators” are living in the aspirational fantasies of the trans community of today: a world where we are known not for the messy spectacle of the metamorphosis, but rather for what we accomplish in the happily ever after.
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06/13/24
CANDACE OWENS (HOST): Here is my conclusion after having read that book and just paying attention to what is happening in my very, very real belief that Hollywood is completely being used as a form of psychological entrapment, as a form of psychological -- mass psychological brainwashing. I believe the media is a form of black magic - that people actually sat down experts and they experimented to see how people would react to certain things. Right?
That they can create a celebrity virtually overnight, make people want to be like that celebrity, that they can induce people to love someone instantly or to hate somebody instantly. I'm someone that they induce people to hate immediately before they ever even heard what I had to say. They understand that headlines work. So if you say something enough times, people will believe it to be true.
...
Now, suddenly the the music is so dark, it is so demonic that it has led me to believe that Hollywood is, in fact, being controlled by some sort of a demonic cult with an intention to corrupt our souls. And in particular, there definitely seems to be some sort of a deranged focus on Black people, giving us the worst filth. It's all filth, but it's almost like the worst filth that you can corrupt a soul with is reserved for Black people.
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3 24 erruption
Media Matters weekly newsletter, March 22 | Media Matters for America
not
CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD (HOST): I love the way that you and Ben Shapiro are able to disagree, but then, I guess, still have a business relationship. Because I saw him recently tell you — well, this is — I think it was maybe a few months ago. He told you to quit over your — over your Israel coverage, your Palestine / Israel coverage.
CANDACE OWENS (GUEST): Yeah.
CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: What was that about?
OWENS: Well, he told me — well, the — the tweet that he responded to was actually just some Biblical passages. And he thought that it was me saying that I had to choose money over the — I don't know how he interpreted it, but it was — it was definitely not — I just meant it as, like, you know, peace. Calling for peace because, you know, there was a video circulating of him calling me a disgrace or a faux professional, or whatever it was. I decided to choose peace, and then when I chose peace, he responded to the peace with not peace.
CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: So why wouldn't he just fire you?
OWENS: Well, as I explained on Tucker Carlson's show, like, Ben doesn't have the power to fire me. And it's not even saying that we disagree on Israel and Palestine. I just think that he's — obviously, his wife is Israeli. He spends a lot of time in Israel throughout the year. I think when you have an emotional attachment to some place, that sometimes your reaction to anything is going to be more extreme to it. You know? I have some relatives that are from Saint Thomas. If what was happening in that region was happening in Saint Thomas, I would probably be the most fired up out of everybody at The Daily Wire. And, yeah, he definitely went through, I think, an emotional time at the end of last year, you know, dealing with everything. I think I was pretty even keel.
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February 14, 2024
- Riley Rogerson @ The Daily Beast: Democrats Reclaim George Santos’ Seat in Special Election.
Former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) defeated GOP candidate Mazi Pilip in the contest to fill the vacancy left by Santos after he was expelled from Congress.
- Joe Jervis: GOP Senate Candidate: Jews Killed JFK And Lincoln.
In a series of interviews and public appearances spanning nearly two years, Jim Marchant, a Republican candidate for the Senate seat in Nevada, has frequently invoked antisemitic tropes claiming that “evil people” including the “Khazarians,” “the cabal,” “globalists” and “central bankers” have controlled the government and conspired to oppress the American people and the world for centuries.
- Sky Palma @ Raw Story: Utah GOP House speaker hides speaking calendar after speech to Christian nationalists.
Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz is under scrutiny for giving conflicting reasons for hiding his calendar for his speaking engagements from the public after he spoke at a Christian nationalist event last month.
- David Moye @ HuffPost: GOP Lawmaker Dubiously Claims Amendment Would Let 1-Year-Olds Get Abortions.
Missouri state Sen. Bill Eigel, who is running to be the Show-Me State’s governor, made the claim while objecting to abortions for child victims of rape and incest.
- Kevin Drum: Republicans and racism.
In the end, they’re willing to tolerate racist overtones more than they’re willing to tolerate Democrats who keep them in constant fear of setting a foot wrong with a “microaggression” or a “trigger.”
- Zachary Leeman @ Mediaite: Candace Owens Declares Taylor Swift To Be ‘Most Toxic Feminist That’s Ever Existed,’ Shocking Even Fellow Daily Wire Host.
Taylor Swift is the “most toxic feminist that’s ever existed,” according to Daily Wire host Candace Owens.
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As right-wing blog The Daily Wire expands its reach, it has also stepped up calls for violence against LGBTQ people and others.
Founded in 2015 by Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing, The Daily Wire has grown beyond its significant Facebook following — recently signing a streaming deal with X (formerly Twitter), pouring $100 million into new children's programming, and producing feature-length movies. But amid all these efforts to expand The Daily Wire into new markets, its hosts have continued pushing bigoted, extreme rhetoric targeting trans people, unhoused people, health care providers, and more.
Daily Wire personalities often use a rhetorical device called stochastic terrorism, a process of associating marginalized groups with vile or disgusting acts in order to incite violence against them.
Hosts Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, and Candace Owens frequently uses their programs to attack doctors who provide gender-affirming care, even smearing a children's hospital by claiming children were being tortured and mutilated there while dismissing the potential harm that could result from their words. Then, when the hospital received a bomb threat, Walsh dismissed concerns by suggesting that liberals were responsible.
Stochastic terrorism can result in real harm, and The Daily Wire has become a platform for amplifying these calls for violence. [vid]
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Get a load of this wild Sinclair town hall discussion on “youth & morality”
Sinclair says such discussions are a “significant public interest benefit” for stations it buys
Blog ››› May 22, 2018 ››› PAM VOGEL
Last night, Sinclair Broadcast Group station WJLA hosted a “town hall” discussion on "youth & morality" featuring morally bankrupt media personality Armstrong Williams, young conservative talking heads Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens, a campus carry activist, and a Daily Caller reporter (among others) -- and Sinclair wants you to believe it’s for the public good.
The town hall was branded as both an episode of Sinclair-linked commentator Armstrong Williams’ show and a part of Sinclair’s ongoing town hall discussion series. The town hall does not appear to have yet aired on WJLA and it’s not clear if it has aired or will air on the WJLA-operated local Washington, D.C., cable channel News Channel 8, but it’s posted in full on WJLA’s website.
Sinclair touts its “Your Voice, Your Future” local town halls as a public service and an opportunity to “alert, inform, empower and engage our audience.” Here’s a quick clip to give you an idea of how that went:
For this event, “morality” actually meant Christianity specifically
Though the panel was titled “Youth & Morality,” it was advertised as largely focusing on one study that showed dwindling millennial identification with Christianity, which WJLA characterized as a sign of “unprecedented moral decline.” The panel discussion was filmed at the Museum of the Bible.
Two minutes into the town hall, host Armstrong Williams asked the audience to raise their hands if they believe in God. (Williams also asked for audience members to raise their hands if they were atheist; one person did and panelists grimaced.) Williams’ first question for the panelists followed from there: “Can you be moral and good and not believe in God?” (Most of the panelists agreed that it was possible but not as easy.) Within eight minutes, panelists were equating “objective truth” with a belief in a Christian god and arguing that the inability to identify objective truths was “cultural Marxist.”
At one point during a commercial break, Williams can be heard joking on a live mic, “Don’t fall asleep on me!” The panel returned from that break to listen to Charlie Kirk talk about “the distinction between Christianity and other religions.”
The “morality” panel was hosted by the notoriously morally challenged Armstrong Williams
The town hall was hosted by conservative pundit Armstrong Williams, who has significant ties to Sinclair. Williams hosts a weekly show that airs on the Sinclair-owned News Channel 8 in the D.C. area and is syndicated on other Sinclair local TV stations across the country. Williams also owns several local TV stations through his holding company, Howard Stirk Holdings, which in turn sends business back to Sinclair through operations agreements.
Williams is a close confidante of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Ben Carson, even doing public relations work on behalf of Carson while continuing to also work as a media figure. (He also served as a Carson presidential campaign adviser while maintaining his weekly hosting duties.) Recently, Williams has aligned himself with other members of the Trump administration, joining Sinclair CEO David Smith in meeting with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai -- who was then a commissioner -- to advocate for pro-industry policies the day before Trump’s inauguration. About two months later, Williams hosted Pai on his show for a friendly interview.
Back in 2005, Williams used an earlier version of his syndicated show to promote Bush administration education policies, failing to note he was paid $240,000 by the administration to do so. The Government Accountability Office subsequently found that the Bush Department of Education had violated federal laws about covert government propaganda by paying Williams for the promotion.
Williams has also settled at least two sexual harassment suits -- one in 1997 involving reports that he “repeatedly kissed and fondled” a former producer for his now-defunct radio show over the course of nearly two years, and another in 2017 alleging that he groped and sought sexual favors from a former employee and later retaliated against the man.
During the panel, Williams talked about his daily prayer routine and decision not to “use profane language” at work because he is the “moral leader” in his office.
Several participants also seem to struggle with morals
The panel featured eight participants in addition to Williams, the majority of whom were young conservative media figures who fall at various points on the spectrum from extreme or blatantly racist to embarrassing or just boring.
:{:{TPUSA’s Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens both participated in parts of the town hall. Frequent Fox News guest and conservative “boy wonder” Kirk is the founder of TPUSA, a group best known for a misguided 2017 protest in which its members wore adult diapers to “trigger the libs,” but whose stated mission is to “identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.”}:
Kirk, Owens, and TPUSA frequently fearmonger about suppression of conservative speech on college campuses while themselves leading a McCarthyist doxxing effort against liberal professors. Meanwhile, TPUSA has defended at least one professor with ties to a white nationalist group and several of its leading members have been outed for expressing patently racist sentiments, e.g. the group’s former national field director making the statement “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE.”...}:
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https://www.mediamatters.org/candace-owens/candace-owens-tpusas-young-womens-leadership-summit-every-ill-we-are-fighting-right
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https://www.mediamatters.org/candace-owens/candace-owens-says-existence-trans-people-worse-jim-crow-laws
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https://www.alternet.org/Bank/candace-owens-jamie-lee-curtis/
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https://www.alternet.org/Bank/candace-owens-jamie-lee-curtis/
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conservative commentator Candance Owens said on Thursday's edition of her Daily Wire show that if she could "get away with punching one person in the face and have no consequences," that individual would be Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Owens' manufactured outrage stemmed from a speech that Zelenskyy gave earlier this week in which he contemplated the fallout of a direct clash between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is arming Ukraine's defenses against Russian President Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion.
The clip has circulated among right-wing circles, who have taken Zelenskyy's comments out of context in order to justify opposition to the aid that the West is providing to Ukraine.
READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Lee spread anti-Ukraine disinformation with edited video
"Take a listen to Zelenskyy warning you of what will happen if youstop funding his lifestyle," Owens said before rolling the Zelenskyy footage.
"The US will have to send their sons and daughters exactly the same way as we are sending their sons and daughters to war," Zelenskyy said through a translator. "And they will have to fight because it's, uh, NATO that we're talking about, and they will be dying, God forbid, because it's a horrible thing."
Owens used that as a pretext to, ostensibly, side with Russia.
"Ooo. Oof. I am not going to say that I'd like to punch Zelenskyy in the face cause that's, that's violent. But I am saying that if I could get away with punching one person in the face and have no consequences, it would be President Zelenskyy," Owens snapped. "I can't even tell you how much oof I harbor for him; the audacity to tell you that the consequence is going to be that your sons and daughters are going to fight and die if you don't help him secure a win against Russia."
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https://www.mediamatters.org/candace-owens/candace-owens-im-very-anti-museum
[pix air quotes?]
Conservative commentatorCandace Owens stated on Thursday's edition of her Daily Wire talk show that she is "anti-museum" and declared that archival institutions serve no useful purpose.
"What are your thoughts on the British Museum and other artifacts from other cultures? They have returned many of them to Nigeria. Do you think they should return them?" a viewer identified only as "Jensen" asked Owens.
Last November, The Guardianreported that the Horniman Museum and Gardens in London surrendered six relics that were "looted by British troops 125 years ago from Benin City, in what is now Nigeria, are being repatriated to their place of origin, increasing pressure on theBritish Museum to follow suit."
These types of reconciliations are gradually increasing in frequency.
In 2021, Forbesreported that "the push for repatriation of art and artifacts with questionable histories has become more widespread in recent years, which experts attribute to advances in research techniques, a rise in interest in art looted by Nazis during World War II and a renewed focus on the issue of racism and colonialism in the art world after worldwide Black Lives Matter protests kicked off last year."
Similarly, in October 2022, Washingtonianhighlighted the Smithsonian Institution's efforts to return items in its collection to their rightful cultural homes:
The Smithsonian Institution announced in Maya new return policy for stolen or otherwise unethically sourced artifacts. On October 11, the National Gallery of Art (which is not part of the Smithsonian) and the National Museum of African Art transferred ownership of 30* Benin bronzes in their collections back to the people of Nigeria. In 1897, British troops raided the kingdom of Benin as a punitive response to an earlier attack launched by the king. The troops burned and looted the royal palace, and took stolen treasures back to London to pay for the raid. Over 2,000 bronzes are now in public and private collections all over the world, mostly in the US, the UK, and Germany.
Nonetheless, Owens responded to Jensen's question by calling for the elimination of museums across the board.
READ MORE: Watch: Candace Owens self-rationalizes 'healthy discrimination' against 'men that paint their nails'
"You know, I actually, kind of, hate a lot of museums because they steal our tax dollars. And so, yeah, defund all of the museums and send back all of the artifacts. The amount of money that was given in the COVID bill, the trillions of dollars, all of it going to, like, the Kennedy Center, the African-American Museum. And what did they do? The people that sit on the boards take all of the money. It's kind of become this huge money laundering operation," Owens said.
"And yeah, I say return it all," she added. "If you want to see something, go to the country, you know? So, I'm actually totally fine with that only because I'm very anti-museum because they stole a lot of our money."
While museums did receive government funds during the pandemic, that money was primarily to prevent them from shutting down and to ensure that their social programs could continue their work.
For example, The Washington Postexplained in 2020:
The NYC Covid-19 Response & Impact Fund will be just a start. They intend it to serve as a model for similar funds or grants outside New York, to address the unprecedented shutdown of museums, concert halls and other venues and its impact on artists, writers and musicians. Social service organizations provide, among other things, housing, child care and food to people in need.
The fund will provide grants and loans to groups with budgets of $20 million or less, to pay for everything from technology for newly remote workers to general operating support. Examples of organizations eligible to apply are the Weeksville Heritage Center, Bronx Museum of Art and El Museo del Barrio.
The federal Institute of Museum and Library Services also noted at the onset of the coronavirus crisis that the CARES Act – signed into law by then-President Donald Trump – provided the necessary backing for institutions to remain operational.
“As Americans are sheltering in place, working from home, and isolating themselves from all but their closest family, the digital divide only deepens,” said IMLS Director Crosby Kemper. “The need for access to information about the virus, government actions, and community safety messages in addition to telemedicine, job, and unemployment resources is crucial. This funding sustains our most trusted institutions as they provide vitally important information and useful tools to our citizens. IMLS is committed to channeling this much-needed grant-based funding as quickly as possible to help the impacted library and museum sectors as they continue to support their communities.”
Watch below via Media Matters for America or at this link.
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female thus obligated /opportunity to attack? flesh tone blazer?
CANDACE OWENS (HOST): In case you haven't seen this, and it is going viral because it's incredible. It shouldn't shock you. Greta Thunberg, obviously, I've discussed her many times on this show. Something about her is incredibly dark. I can't quite pick up on it but from the time she hit the scene, she just seems to me in need of an exorcism. You look at her and you're like, this is an unhappy individual. Trump once called her an unhappy child. Well, she's no longer a child anymore. I think she's almost 20 or 20 years old. Now, she still looks like a child and she's still got some weird spiritual weirdness about her. I can't explain it. There's just something about her that I have around her that I just think, this is the orphan -- if you've seen that movie. She reminds me of the orphan and I don't want to be near her. When I see her I think, I would not go near that person because there's a darkness over her.
https://www.mediamatters.org/candace-owens/candace-owens-says-greta-thunberg-need-exorcism
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lib u 2018
hile speaking out against political correctness and encouraging the next generation of students to stand up for truth, Candace Owens struck a chord with the Liberty University crowd gathered in the Vines Center for Wednesday’s Convocation.
Owens, the director of communications for the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA, has served as guest host on Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN and has more than half a million Twitter followers.
“She is one of the young people that is really making a difference in our country,” Liberty President Jerry Falwell said in introducing her. “Us old guys might have age and wisdom, but you guys listen to the young ones more than you listen to us. She is making a difference with the new generation in ways that us old folks cannot.”
Owens explained how she has risen above poverty and abuse, which led to an eating disorder and drinking problem, to return to her Christian roots — ingrained in her by her grandfather.
In high school, Owens was the target of racial threats from four classmates that led to an FBI investigation. Labeled a victim, she battled with anorexia over the next four and a half years as she processed the event, which involved media attention and attacks on her integrity. In early 2017, she decided to take control of her life. She stopped drinking and blaming God for her problems stemming from the verbal attacks, and found her voice through social media.
“I wasn’t happy being a victim. I was miserable,” Owens said. “I have this idea that if we don’t accept ourselves as oppressed, or as a victim of our experiences, then we can achieve more in life.”
Her YouTube videos take on controversial issues, like the #MeToo Movement, welfare, and Planned Parenthood, and her positions defy stereotypes.
“I go for the jugular a lot against tons of things,” she said. “I challenge Americans to believe their experiences versus what they see coming out of their TV screens. Because … I grew up in a country that is diverse. I grew in a country that has given opportunities to so many people, including myself.”
Though her positions have garnered critics, Owens said she just wants to give people a message of self-empowerment.
“I go around with a very simple message which is that bad things happen to everyone, but a victim’s mentality is not something that you should possess.”
Her views have also received praise, including from hip-hop megastar Kanye West, who tweeted, “I like the way Candace Owens thinks,” in response to her video posted after the events in Charlottesville.
Owens said that people like her, West, and President Donald Trump have a shared belief in individualism. She suggested it is that conviction that draws critics, because so many people want to control how people think and believe.
“It’s believing in yourself, it’s standing up in the face of everybody telling you ‘You can’t. You’re not allowed to think that.’”
She said she works every day to share her passion and energy and message of faith, hope, and love with the world.
“It’s standing up in the face of all of that (criticism) and saying, ‘No. I am my own person. I am governed by what I believe to be truth, and I can live up to any expectation that I set for myself,” Owens said.
On Friday, Liberty will welcome another media personality to Convocation, Judge Jeanine Pirro.
At the start of Wednesday’s service, Jordan Hayley, president of Liberty’s chapter of the Alexander Hamilton Society, introduced Dr. Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., who has spent his career fighting terrorism.
Rubin, who lived among the Taliban in Iran prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America and has an arrest warrant from the government of Turkey after speaking out against the arrest of Pastor Andrew Brunson, emphasized the importance of standing up for religious freedom.
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https://www.youtube.com › watch
Oct 10, 2018 — Taken from Joe Rogan Experience #1125:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nnzpy5GRak.
Focus on the Family Announces Guest Speaker Candace ...
https://www.focusonthefamily.com › Newsroom
Feb 18, 2020 — COLORADO SPRINGS, CO – Focus on the Family announced today that renowned conservative commentator Candance Owens will be a guest speaker at ...
A Voice Told Him The Way: He Asked Candace Owens to ...
https://medium.com › catholic-way-home › a-voice-tol...
Candace Owens, George Farmer, and the Voice: Another crazy quick marriage ... he was “raised conservative evangelical” and his father “is a big Christian.
Media personality Candace Owens inspires students to speak ...
https://www.liberty.edu › news › 2018/09/26 › media-p...
Sep 26, 2018 — Owens explained how she has risen above poverty and abuse, which led to an eating disorder and drinking problem, to return to her Christian ...
Missing: evangelical | Must include: evangelical
Candace Owens, in her defense of Christian morality, once ...
https://www.facebook.com › groups › posts
Candace Owens, in her defense of Christian morality, once again, proves that she is an unethical moron! Like most Christians, she seems to never have ...
Candace Owens Says Left Enjoys 'Making Fun' of Jesus Christ ...
https://www.christianpost.com › news › candace-owens-...
Nov 9, 2018 — Earlier in the session, Owens explained how she grew up in an environment riddled with poverty and abuse, which led to an eating disorder and ...
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/candace-owens-mein-kampf-textbook/
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an 10 22
According to a report from the Daily Beast's Kelly Weill, the Blexit Foundation created by rightwing provocateur Candace Owens for the purported purpose of converting Black Americans into conservatives, is seeing donations dry up-- dropping now to a third of the amount taken in compared to last year.
However, as the report states, that hasn't stopped Owen from increasing her pay while running up expenses.
As Weill wrote, "Founded in 2018, Blexit urges African-Americans to leave the Democratic Party, preferably to take up conservative politics. Amid racial justice protests in 2020, the Blexit Foundation reaped more than $7 million in donations. Now the organization is back in the public eye after its sometimes-collaborator Kanye West kicked off a firestorm of antisemitic comments, shortly after posing in 'White Lives Matter' shirts with Owens, and pledging to buy Parler, the rightwing social media site Owens’ husband runs."
With that in mind, Weill wrote that despite the collapse of fundraising, Owens jumped her pay up over $250,00 this year -- up from $230,000 from 2 years ago -- while other execs working for the foundation are also raking in six-figure salaries.
"Blexit’s most recent filing suggests. Last year, the foundation received $2,342,820 in contributions, less than a third of what it raised the previous year," the Beast report states. " Despite that, the org spent nearly $1 million more than it earned, with its total payments to employees nearly doubling. A sizable payment, $250,000 plus benefits, went to Owens. Another $612,000 went to fundraising, and $205,708 went to travel, some of which was first-class or charter."
Asked to respond, Owens issued a statement explaining, "In short, yes we raised money and proudly dispersed money for and to black businesses and continue to do so. Our filings are public, timely, and entirely comprehensive.”
The report notes that she refused to answer specific questions about disbursements, with Weill adding, "In 2021, the Blexit Foundation reported giving away just $4,000 in grants or other assistance. The recipients are unclear; on public tax filings, nonprofits that have not donated more than $5,000 are not required to fill out additional information about recipients.
Owens repeatedly declined to clarify to The Daily Beast how much Blexit had given to Black-owned businesses."
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https://www.mediamatters.org/white-nationalism/far-right-extremists-celebrate-embrace-and-defend-kanye-wests-antisemitic-remarks
mma 10 22
CANDACE OWENS (HOST): Now, if you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic. You did not think that he wrote this tweet because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people. This does not represent the beginning of the Holocaust. That's if you're an honest person, you will admit that. Right? If you're an honest person, when you read this tweet, you had no idea what he was talking about. I had no idea, when I read this tweet, what the hell he was talking about. This tweet inspired questions, not answers.
First and foremost, what is death con three? Did he mean def con three? Which would be a military defense position, not an offense – for those of you are offended. A military defense position. Is he tweeting this because he's reading the Newsweek headline calling him an antisemitic? Is he angry because he can't believe that he's not free to talk about people in his life who happened to be Jewish – right? – without being accused of antisemitism?Is he saying, I'm not going to shut up and I'm going to keep tweeting and I'm going to keep calling these people out, referring to his friends that he feels slided by? Is he talking about Jared Kushner and Josh Kushner?
If you're a liar, you'd say, no, I was scared, Candace. I actually thought that Kanye West was going to launch a military strike in Israel. Because that's the reaction, like, when I woke up, and I looked at the headlines, the reaction was, like, Kanye West had gotten together a military strike and it was going to go forward in the morning time in Israel. That was the reaction that was met with this tweet.
Now, once again, I want to make this very clear – this is not a defense of his tweet. This is an open question which never seems to happen anymore. It's like you cannot even say the word Jewish without people getting upset. In the same way that you're not allowed to say Black anymore.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/white-nationalism/far-right-extremists-celebrate-embrace-and-defend-kanye-wests-antisemitic-remarks
no lnx vid twts
Far-right extremists celebrate, embrace, and defend Kanye West’s antisemitic remarks
WRITTEN BY JUSTIN HOROWITZ
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MEDIA MATTERS STAFF
PUBLISHED 10/10/22
Far-right and neo-Nazi-linked extremists are embracing, celebrating, and defending rapper Kanye West’s recent antisemitic remarks.
On October 8, West lashed out at Jewish people, writing, “I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” In the same tweet, he claimed, “You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.” West later tweeted, “Who you think created cancel culture?"
Here are examples of violent far-right and neo-Nazi-linked extremists celebrating West and his antisemitic comments:
Infowars celebrated West multiple times on October 9. Host Owen Shroyer said, “I did not hear one thing Kanye West said that was bigoted.” He later added that the backlash to his antisemitic remarks “only proves what he’s talking about is real.”
Video file
Video
CitationFrom the October 9, 2022 edition of Infowars' Sunday Night Live
White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes posted on Telegram, “Kanye is going to be cancelled by the Jews for saying that the Jews invented cancel culture” and shared multiple memes celebrating the rapper. Fuentes also streamed West’s music on his Cozy.TV platform while wearing a West-inspired face covering. The title of the stream was “DEFCON 3.”
Fuentes CozyTV stream West
Daily Wire host Candace Owens on West's “death con 3” tweet: “If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic.” Owens added that, “It's like you cannot even say the word Jewish without people getting upset.”
Video file
Video CitationFrom the October 10, 2022, edition of The Daily Wire's Candace Owens
Antisemite and Gab founder Andrew Torba posted, “How do we get Kanye on Gab?"
Neo-Nazi blog The Daily Stormer published a story by neo-Nazi founder Andrew Anglin with the headline “Lying Jew Media Claims Kanye West is Mentally Ill for Going Death Con 3 on Jewish People.” On October 10, the header on the site’s homepage read “d e a t h c o n 3” and featured multiple stories celebrating West’s antisemitism.
Andrew Anglin: “Lying Jew Media Claims Kanye West is Mentally Ill for Going Death Con 3 on Jewish People”.
Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander used West's remarks to suggest that Jewish people have “weaponized their trauma” and complained that “all of us are forced to learn their trauma.”
Ali Alexander on Kayne West's antisemitic posts
OCTOBER 9, 2022
Ali Alexander on Kayne West's antisemitic posts
AudioCitationFrom the October 9, 2022, edition of Answers with Ali Alexander
Far-right British extremist Tommy Robinson wrote that West’s statement “needs to be addressed” above a meme that appears to suggest that liberals are overreacting to West’s comments.
Neo-Nazi streamer Baked Alaska compared himself to West and wrote, “IT KEEPS GETTING BETTER AND BETTER” under a screenshot of one of West’s Instagram posts.
Former BlazeTV host Elijah Schaffer posted multiple tweets that appear to be in support of West.
BlazeTVhost Jason Whitlock defended West’s remarks in a tweet, writing, “You can't question black entertainers' unhealthy relationship with non-religious Jewish power brokers in Hollywood.”
White nationalist and notorious antisemite Vincent James Foxx wrote on Telegram, “Kanye is going to do another Holocaust?”
Fascist streamer Dalton Clodfelter wrote that West’s remarks are “very admirable.”
Fuentes' cronies Tyler Russell and Brandt Wiggins both celebrated West’s remarks with posts on Telegram.
Failed congressional candidate and anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer defended West’s remarks with multiple posts on Gab. In one post, she wrote, “Ye does have a point in his posts.”
On violent white nationalist Gavin McInnes’ Censored.TV, host Josh Lekach said he admires West and claimed, “I don’t understand why you can’t talk bad about the Jews.” Lekach added he believes that West may be killed for his beliefs.
CitationFrom the October 8, 2022, edition of Censored.TV's Wrong Opinion
West’s antisemitic remarks came after he was criticized for wearing a “WHITE LIVES MATTER” shirt last week at Paris Fashion Week. He later appeared on white nationalist Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show to ramble about censorship, the media, his shirt, his career, and his family.
Updated (10/10/22): This post has been updated with additional examples.
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White Nationalism
Diversity & Discrimination
Infowars
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Candace Owens says of Kanye West's “death con 3” tweet about Jewish people: “If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic”
10/10/22 4:02 PM EDT
The Kanye West-Infowars feedback loop
10/10/22 1:49 PM EDT
Fox hosts call Kanye West's antisemitic posts “ugly,” then say the real issue is their removal from social media platforms
10/09/22 1:20 PM EDT
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https://www.mediamatters.org/infowars/kanye-west-infowars-feedback-loop
no lnx vid
The Kanye West-Infowars feedback loop
West namechecked Alex Jones during his interview with Tucker Carlson, and an Infowars host defended West's antisemitic remarks, claiming that the backlash to West’s remarks “only proves what he is talking about is real.”
WRITTEN BY MADELINE PELTZ
PUBLISHED 10/10/22
Far-right outlet Infowars celebrated Kanye West after he made multiple antisemitic remarks on Instagram and Twitter over the weekend and pushed conspiracy theories on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight. The admiration goes both ways — West shouted out Infowars head Alex Jones during his interview on Fox.
West has made multiple antisemitic remarks over the course of his recent media tour. On Instagram, he posted screenshots of a text message allegedly sent to media mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, in which he wrote “I'ma use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.” After he was restricted from posting on Instagram, he took to Twitter and threatened to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” who he claimed “have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”
On the October 9 edition of Infowars’ Sunday Night Live, Jones reacted to West’s segment on Tucker Carlson Tonight, during which the rapper remarked, “Have I reached Alex Jones territory yet?”
Jones said “people are waking up and very exciting, positive things are happening” in response to West’s conspiracy theory suggesting that actor Matthew McConaughey and clothing retailer the Gap knew about the Uvalde school shooting before it happened. Jones added that West “has a lot of courage, and so does Candace Owens,” after the pair wore T-shirts that said “White Lives Matter”at West’s Paris fashion show. Jones took credit, saying, “We woke up Kanye West, folks.”
Video CitationFrom the October 9, 2022 edition of Infowars' Sunday Night Live
Later on, Infowars host Owen Shroyer took over the broadcast and went on a full-fledged antisemitic rant, saying he has “yet to see what Kanye West has said that’s bigoted.” Shroyer defended West, and concluded his segment by blaming Jewish people for poverty among Black Americans “when Jewish people are making out like bandits making millions of dollars on foreign policies.” He also said West is “being attacked relentlessly because he said ‘Jew.’”
Video CitationFrom the October 9, 2022 edition of Infowars' Sunday Night Live
OWEN SHROYER (HOST): I don’t see anything bigoted about it. Now you have the Democrat Party, you have the ADL, you have the SPLC, you have all these different groups and you have the conservative wing, the Israel First MAGA conservative wing, they’re all going after Kanye West too, saying he is bigoted. I did not hear one thing Kanye West said that was bigoted.
…
I don’t want to be involved in Russia-Ukraine. I don’t want to be involved in Israel-Palestine. I don’t want to be involved in Saudi Arabia-Yemen. I don’t want to be involved in any of this crap, and neither does Kanye West. And he sees this and he says why are Americans poor and hungry — specifically Black Americans — poor and hungry, when Jewish people are making out like bandits making millions of dollars on foreign policies? … So Kanye being attacked relentlessly because he said “Jew.” That’s what it is. You’re not even allowed to say it, you’re not even allowed to point out that there’s anybody Jewish in the media or anybody Jewish in the Congress, you’re not allowed to do it.
When the broadcast resumed after a break, Shroyer said the backlash to West’s remarks “only proves what he is talking about is real.”
VideoCitationFrom the October 9, 2022 edition of Infowars' Sunday Night Live
Infowars also published an article with the headline “Establishment Sends Warning to Kanye West For Speaking His Mind.”
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picked why? what expertise? baggage?
Climate denial abounds on Fox as Hurricane Ian devastates Florida
On back-to-back nights during Florida’s Hurricane Ian nightmare, Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham cast doubt on climate science
Special PROGRAMS
CLIMATE & ENERGY
WRITTEN BY ILANA BERGER
PUBLISHED 09/30/22
In response to Hurricane Ian, Fox News primetime shows sought to mislead viewers about how climate change is affecting hurricanes, using bad faith and often-repeated climate denier talking points.
More than 2.6 million people were without power across the state on Thursday morning, as extreme flooding left many residents trapped in their homes and on top of cars. At a press briefing, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called Ian a “500-year flooding event” and added, “The impacts of this storm are historic and the damage that has been done is historic. … We've never seen a flood event like this, we've never seen a storm surge of this magnitude.” There were at least 21 confirmed deaths as of Friday morning, but that number is expected to rise as recovery efforts continue.
Fox primetime shows recycle debunked or irrelevant talking points on climate
Meanwhile, Fox personalities attempted to gaslight viewers into complacency by describing any hurricane coverage that mentioned climate change as “alarmist.” Fox also cherry-picked information about the relationship between climate change and hurricanes to imply that the two are not related. Climate scientists and media outlets have acknowledged that there is not enough evidence to support the theory that climate change will increase the frequency of hurricanes. However, there is evidence suggesting that higher ocean and air temperatures are causing hurricanes and storms to intensify more rapidly instead of weakening as they approach landfall, as happened with Ian. Hurricanes are also absorbing more moisture and dumping more rain on affected areas. Fox ignored this crucial connection or refuted it all together.
On September 27, Tucker Carlson called severity warnings leading up to the storm a “scam” on Tucker Carlson Tonight. But the next day, he called Hurricane Ian “a catastrophe” and a “national disaster,” adding, “People will certainly be killed.” Carlson then tried to use an exchange between CNN’s Don Lemon and Jamie Rhome, the deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, to push his agenda. Carlson used Rhome’s reluctance to link climate change to specific events to suggest that for political reasons, the media is more concerned about climate change than actual climate scientists are. However, Rhome clearly agreed that climate change is having an impact on storms, which is consistent with mainstream reporting on the issue. In fact, on September 28, CNN meteorologist Tom Sater reiterated Rhome’s point and added, “Since 1950 there have been seven landfall hurricanes in Florida that were a category 4 or 5 … the first 4 were each in a different decade. The last three — all in the last 5 years.”
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On September 29, Carlson devoted a good chunk of his show to ranting about climate change as well.He was obsessively focused on hurricane frequency, arguing that somehow, a decrease in the numbers of storms would cancel out the plethora of other evidence indicating that the storm events themselves are intensifying. After citing a NOAA research overview highlighting that hurricanes are predicted to become more intense, Carlson went on to insist that “the claim is never proven,” and that “there’s no science behind these claims.” Later in the segment, he implied that humans cannot influence weather events because “they’re called natural disasters. … they’re products of nature, God is in charge.”
He then discussed Hurricane Ian with Candace Owens, who has a long history of climate change denial. Owens reiterated that climate change does not exist because “if there was no human beings that walked the face of the planet, there would continue to be hurricanes, like there would continue to be blizzards, and like there would continue to be tornadoes.” She also used several other environmental concerns such as the hole in the ozone layer, which has diminished because of the Montreal Protocol, and ocean acidification, which remains a concern due to climate change, to try and argue that “they’ve been wrong over and over and over again.”
Video
CitationFrom the September 29, 2022, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight
On September 28 edition of The Ingraham Angle, frequent Fox News guest and climate contrarian Michael Shellenberger and host Laura Ingraham told viewers that their personal experiences with extreme weather were untrustworthy and invalid. Ingraham implied that concerns about climate change only exist because people “feel that the ocean is warmer … but a feeling is not fact.” Shellenberger falsely claimed that hurricanes are “not intensifying right now, so any perception that hurricanes are more intense is just a perception fed by that relentless alarmist media.” Guest Mollie Hemmingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, later claimed that “the left” is pushing a “conspiracy theory” that “man-made climate change is the cause of hurricanes. … There’s just no evidence for this theory that people keep holding.” Hemmingway said this despite the fact that no one is claiming that climate change is the primary cause of hurricanes, rather it is one factor making them more dangerous.
Video file
Video CitationFrom the September 28, 2022, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
Hemmingway and Shellenberger also latched onto the idea that hurricane frequency is apparently the only metric that should concern the public, glossing over the very real dangers of threats like higher rainfall rates, which is the main factor that drives deaths and damage during a hurricane. They were fixated on the number of hurricanes that have occurred over different periods of time, using various irrelevant data points to unsuccessfully support their climate denial. They also downplayed damage caused by storms by saying that nowadays more people live in the areas most affected by hurricanes. Shellenberger first said that damage caused by hurricanes “has not increased at all” but then claimed that the increase in damage is due to the fact that “there’s more wealth in harm’s way,” going on to claim that the extreme weather events of the last several decades represent “an incredible success story for America,” because, in his telling, they could have been worse.
Before Ian made landfall, Sean Hannity hosted his favorite climate denier Joe Bastardi to emphasize that hurricane frequency in Florida has not increased. On September 28, Hannity said that the media should not discuss climate change because “this is hurricane season and during hurricane season, you usually have hurricanes like we did a hundred years ago.” Fox News contributor Lara Trump insisted that the Democrats' “marketing arm, the mainstream media” is “now trying to claim that one of the quietest hurricane seasons in 30 years is somehow due to climate change.” Finally, former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee, who was a guest on the show, said that people should reject the established science of climate change and instead of “worshipping that which is created rather than the creator … get back to the simple things of science and real faith and trust in God.”
The public is beginning to increasingly understand the dangers of climate change and the need for actions that not only reduce climate-causing emissions, but make our communities less vulnerable to the climate impacts that are already happening. But as the public and more media outlets are starting to connect extreme weather to the need for climate action, Fox News coverage seeks to break those links.
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As Hurricane Ian hits Florida, Fox News undermines climate change
09/27/22 11:15 PM EDT
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https://www.mediamatters.org/candace-owens/candace-owens-suggests-bill-gates-using-mosquitoes-make-people-allergic-beef
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https://www.mediamatters.org/candace-owens/daily-wires-candace-owens-praises-british-invasion-africa
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https://www.mediamatters.org/candace-owens/candace-owens-there-are-freaks-predators-and-pedophiles-are-all-hiding-under-lbgt
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https://www.mediamatters.org/candace-owens/candace-owens-ukraine-wasnt-thing-until-1989-ukraine-was-created-russians
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/twisted-and-warped-maga-republicans-fears-justin-trudeau-more-than-vladimir-putin-conservative/
wingnuttery c owen no twt
'Twisted' and 'warped' MAGA Republicans fear Justin Trudeau more than Vladimir Putin: conservative
Alex Henderson February 22, 2022
At a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin appears likely to invade Ukraine, many right-wing media outlets — from Fox News to the Daily Wire to Breitbart News — are vigorously defending Putin and Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán while arguing that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the real authoritarian. Trudeau’s unforgivable sin, according to the MAGA far right, is enforcing vaccine and testing requirements for people entering Canada from the United States.
Conservative Daily Beast opinion writer and Never Trumper Matt Lewis, in a February 22 column, compares the MAGA movement’s views on Trudeau versus Putin — arguing that the American right has truly gone off the deep end when it considers Trudeau the enemy but defends Putin.
“If you want to understand someone’s values or worldview,” Lewis writes, “take a look at who and what provokes outrage and who and what evokes sympathy. The cognitive dissonance inherent in much of the American right can make such an examination problematic. That’s because some of the most prominent voices on the right today view Vladimir Putin as a misunderstood victim. Meanwhile, they cast Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as an authoritarian strongman.”
Lewis goes on to offer specific examples, noting that theDaily Wire’s Canace Owens tweeted, “STOP talking about Russia. Send American troops to Canada to deal with the tyrannical reign of Justin Trudeau Castro.”
The Never Trumper adds, “Or consider Fox News host Tucker Carlson, my friend — though we disagree profoundly on politics — and former boss. Carlson isn’t outraged over what is happening to Ukraine, but found time last week to bash ‘strongman’ Trudeau as ‘the dictator of Canada,’ while saying that ‘Canada canceled democracy.’ There’s also Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who says Trudeau has gone ‘full dictator.’And J.D. Vance, celebrated author and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, who recently declared that he ‘doesn’t really care what happens to Ukraine.’”
Lewis injects some humor into his column, noting that Marty McFly — the time-traveling Reagan-era teenager Michael J. Fox portrayed in the 1985 fantasy film “Back to the Future” — would be shocked to see so many Republicans fawning over a former KGB agent. Indeed, back in the days of Madonna, Run-D.M.C. and Duran Duran, Reagan Republicans railed against the Kremlin nonstop; now, MAGA Republicans consider Putin and his ally Orbán people to be admired.
“If the 1985 version of Marty McFly transported to 2022,” Lewis writes, “it would be impossible to explain to him why so many conservative Republicans are willing to look the other way on Russia invading a sovereign nation, while they simultaneously blast Canada for imposing consequences on protesters blocking traffic…. To be clear, Putin is a former KGB agent and an actual authoritarian. He literally kills and imprisons his critics. And don’t forget the little matter of 100,000 of his troops massed on the Ukrainian border.”
Lewis adds, “Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau is the elected leader of a free nation. He took action to restore law and order [and GNP!]after three weeks of truckers blocking traffic and generally disturbing the peace.”
The conservative Lewis has spent plenty of time bashing the left, but he has been a blistering critic of former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. And he wraps up his February 22 column by stressing that MAGA Republicans are as “warped” now as they were when Trump was still in the White House.
“If you find someone willing to defend Vladimir Putin for threatening to invade and kill his neighbors, while simultaneously calling Justin Trudeau a ‘dictator’ for shutting down a lawless protest after three weeks,you have found someone who either is intellectually dishonest or has a warped sense of reality,” Lewis warns. “If you thought the gaslighting would end with Trump, you were wrong. The American right is getting in the habit of calling evil good and good evil. It’s a truly twisted and perverse perception of a dangerous world, and the scary thing is, it’s catching on.”
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In viral Turning Point USA video, Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk falsely claim there is no evidence of global warming and scientists don’t know the cause
CLAIM
There is no factual data to back up global warming; real scientists don’t know whether CO2, solar sunspots or natural activity cause global warming
SOURCE: Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk , Turning Point USA
Published: 16 Apr 2021
https://climatefeedback.org/authors/charlie-kirk/
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turns ppl blue
https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/candace-owens-cures/
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paradox trump wants to boast about vaccine ~ vaxx
conspiracy theorist Alex Jones issued an "Emergency Christ Message" to Donald Trump following the former president's defense of Covid-19 vaccines.
“Oh no, the vaccines work,” Trump told Candice Owens. “But some people are the ones — the ones who get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine. But it’s still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you’re protected.”
Jones blasted Trump for acknowledging the reality of vaccines.
“This is an emergency Christmas Day warning to President Trump. You are either completely ignorant about the so-called vaccine gene therapy that you helped ram through with Operation Warp Speed or you are one of the most evil men who has ever lived to push this toxic poison on the public and to attack your constituents who they simply try to save their lives and the lives of others," he said.
"We're about to lay out the basic, incontrovertible facts that you told Candace Owens just a few days ago is nothing but a raft of dirty lies," he said....---
When Owens implied that the vaccines weren’t having much of an effect because there were more COVID-19-related deaths in 2021 than in 2020, Trump responded, “The vaccine worked, but some people aren’t taking it. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine. But it’s still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you’re protected. The results of the vaccine are very good.When Owens implied that the vaccines weren’t having much of an effect because there were more COVID-19-related deaths in 2021 than in 2020, Trump responded, “The vaccine worked, but some people aren’t taking it. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine. But it’s still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you’re protected. The results of the vaccine are very good.”
...ight-wing media personality Candace Owens on Thursday urged supporters of former President Donald Trump to go easy on him for promoting COVID-19 vaccines.
In a video Owens posted on social media, she explained that Trump was an "old" person who came from a generation where people believed the advice of medical professionals.
"People oftentimes forget that, like, how old Trump is," she said. "He comes from a generation -- I've seen a lot of people who are older, have the exact same perspective, like, they came from a time before TV, before internet, before being able to conduct independent research. And everything they read to them that was in a newspaper that was pitched to them, they believed that that was a reality."
In fact, Trump has lived with television for his entire life and also became famous throughout his presidency for telling followers not to believe things they read in newspapers.
Owens went on to explain that Trump's trust in vaccinations was why he wasn't paying attention to all the videos posted on right-wing website Rumble that document purported instances of vaccine "injury."
==
important step on escalator, or only on her BLM niche?
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/candace-owens/
arbery push back?
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de regeur req to speak on any black issue BLM thus:
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/matt-gaetz/
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., suggested on Wednesday that his office is open to hiring Kyle Rittenhouse as a congressional intern if the accused gunman is acquitted, arguing that the 18-year-old is "not guilty" for the killing of two men during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin last summer.
"You know what, Kyle Rittenhouse would probably make a good congressional intern," Gaetz said Wednesday during an appearance on Newsmax. "We may reach out to him and see if he'd be interested in helping the country in additional ways."
The Florida lawmaker continued: "He is not guilty. He deserves a not guilty verdict and I sure hope he gets it."
Thursday marks the third day of jury deliberations for Rittenhouse's trial, which began on November 1. In August of 2020, Rittenhouse drove from his home of Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, where he apparently sought to defend a car dealership from the threat of looting in the aftermath of the police shooting of Jacob Blake. During an armed confrontation – the details of which were litigated at trial – Rittenhouse fatally shot two men and injured another with an AR-15-stylerifle.[barrrell short thus got off one slam dunk charge, ok to carry if hunting? POC?]
Rittenhouse has pleaded not guilty, claiming that he acted in self-defense, while prosecutors argue that the then-17-year-old acted like a vigilante. "I defended myself,"[[proudly, manly?] Rittenhouse said during the trial last week. The teen faces life imprisonment if convicted.
Over the last several weeks, the televised trial has been closely followed by politicians, pundits, and activists, who have weighed in the proceedings as they relate to racial justice, white privilege, Black Lives Matter, and gun violence.
In a Fox News interview this week, conservative author J.D. Vance, currently vying to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy for Ohio, called Rittenhouse's trial a "farce," adding that "it's child abusemasquerading as justice in this country."
"The kind of people who thought O.J Simpson was innocent are the same people who believe that Kyle Rittenhouse is guilty," echoed right-wing commentator Candace Owens last week. "Facts don't matter to emotionally-indoctrinated zombies. Only feelings do."
But those on the left have sung a markedly different tune.
Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that Rittenhouse's trial reflects "white privilege on steroids."
"It is literally impossible to imagine a 17-year-old Black kid traveling to a different state … who shoots three people, kills two – who, right now, isn't in prison," Butler told POLITICO.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., spoke about the case with marked candidness for a federal lawmaker, tweeting on Wednesday: "Lock up Kyle Rittenhouse and throw away the key."
Rittenhouse's defense team has already filed a motion for a mistrial with prejudice, according to CNN, meaning that Rittenhouse would be protected from any state bid to retry the case going forward.
For his part,Gaetz also railed against the recent sentencing of 34-year-old Jacob Chansley, the "QAnon Shaman" notorious for breaching the U.S. Senate floor on January 6 while donning a horned fur headdress. On Wednesday, Chansley was sentenced to three years in prison on a single count of felony obstruction of an official proceeding.
"This QAnon Shaman is a relatively harmless,nonviolent veganand the notion that he has to be in prison for three and a half years to settle some sort of political score defies justice,"[eternal victims, shocked shocked playing politics, we never do that] Gaetz continued.
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aha: gop/rt busted so many times for dark $/corruption that it needs whatabout so soros = kochs and actblue = dark $/scam
plus they need to neutralize blm demand for justice, and it's a scam than racism not real
note chan origin then moves up escalator to dobbs
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921
owning the libs inversion?!
"Here are just some of the freaks and geeks who might replace him in a recall," Miller explains. "The favorite is Larry Elder, a conservative talk radio show host who is basically a walking Boomer Facebook meme. This guy has made countless crazy statements, but just watch this one."
Miller then shows a clip of Elder discussing slavery reparations and telling right-wing pundit Candace Owens, "You could make an argument that the people that are owed reparations are not only just Black people, but also, the people whose quote, property, close-quote, was taken away after the end of the Civil War."
Miller observes, "In addition to being possibly interested in reparations for slaveowners, Elder has supported rolling back Gavin's vaccine mandates. And the Democrats have been trashing him for it."
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821 an
lawsuit 20m$ defam stripper start w/ twit war juneteenth
https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/candace-owens/
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an 621
when Dave Chappelle released his latest stand-up comedy special 8:46, he did not hold back when it came to sharing his unfiltered opinion of controversial conservative commentator Candace Owens. But during his latest podcast segment,the comedian asked for a thorough assessment of his work.
"There is no possible way that I owe Candace Owens an apology, is there?" Chappelle asked. To which, cohosts Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey," responded with a resounding "F--that!"
Then, Chappelle, Kweli, and Bey began their verbal assault on Ownes. "mascot for colonial interests in America today," Legend said.
"So the verdict is no apology, right?" Chapelle asked. Then he went in for the kill. While onstage during his slams session, Chappell also lambasted Owens and her platform to exploit Black people while supporting problematic conservative policies that serve no one outside of the Republican base. Chapelle believes Owens is "mascot for colonial interests in America today."
"That rotten b---h, she's the worst," Chappelle said on stage. "I can't think of a worse way to make money. She's the most articulate idiot I've ever seen in my f--king life."
"So the verdict is no apology, right Chappel asked while highlighting some of Owens' worst political remarks. Chappelle referred an "often spoken but unwritten rule" of comedy that "you shouldn't apologize for jokes," calling it a "very bad precedent to set."
"It's like Rachel Maddow crying on the news," he continues. "If you cry about one story, you're going to have to cry about all these shits." Chappelle defends his trolling of Owens "in the p---y" by explaining how "cruel and dangerous" her rhetoric was at the time. While "it's not illegal to be an asshole," he says, he found her comments about George Floyd "particularly cruel."
At one point, Jon Stewart entered the discussion and offered a response to Owens' relatively positive remarks about Chappelle despite his stark rebuke of her.
"We've arrived too suddenly into a culture where people can't laugh at themselves, or want to restrain comedians. I will never be a part of that culture," Owens tweeted at the time, adding, "@DaveChappelle—you are legend and I'd love to meet you and challenge you to say any of that to my face! All love!"
"Here's why you were so effective in what you said about Candace Owens," Stewart said . "Because they have held you up as an avatar of truth-telling, because you're willing to speak your art in the way that you want to speak it." Speaking about Owens specifically, he adds, "Her life is provocation, her brand is provocation, that's how she makes her money." Rather than a "genuine offer of argument and exchange of ideas," it's a "provocation and a troll that's meant to increase brand recognition."
Although Owens admitted she would love to meet Chappelle, he took one more jab at her that suggests he completely disagrees.
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/meet-the-twitter-verified-maga-influencers-spreading-the-qanon-gospel/
no lnx twt pix
Meet the Twitter-verified MAGA Influencers Spreading the QAnon Gospel
By Adele M. Stan | October 26, 2020
In July, Twitter—after years of unheeded warnings—removed from its platform more than 7,000 accounts that were tweeting conspiracy theories from the QAnon universe, a move estimated to have affected more than 150,000 accounts related to those that were purged. National Public Radio called it “the most wide-reaching and aggressive response to the pro-Trump conspiracy theory that any social media platform has ever undertaken.”
And yet, QAnon’s presence remains robust, thanks in part to the work of Trump-enabling hard-right “Twitter verified” influencers who advance QAnon talking points, often minus overt QAnon branding.
To you, James Woods may just be that actor who’s played a bunch of creepy roles. But to people on the hard right, Woods is a digital warrior, and maybe even a friend of Q,the mysterious entity whose cryptic messages on far-right message-board channels form the core of the central QAnon conspiracy theory—the false claim that top Democrats and Hollywood figures are running a Satanic child-sex-trafficking ring, and that President Donald Trump is working behind the scenes to “save the children.” Woods has 2.6 million followers on Twitter, to whom he has tweeted messages remarkably similar to those of QAnon adherents. Consequently, his is the favorite among Twitter-verified accounts of those posting from QAnon-related accounts. The non-profit research group, Advance Democracy, Inc., found that more than 50,000 QAnon-related Twitter accounts either mentioned or retweeted Woods approximately 1.6 million times between Jan. 1 – Aug. 2020. The research organization says that, as of September, all of those 50,000 accounts remained active.
And Woods is not the only Twitter presence with more than a million followers who plays this game. ADI identified five key players in Twitter’s million+ club who are involved in the propulsion of false claims embraced by the QAnon community.Each account bears a blue checkmark badge next to the tweeter’s name—Twitter’s signal to its users that the account is somehow significant. Twitter executives define the blue checkmark in a more understated manner: “The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic.” Twitter users tend to view it a sign of prestige and credibility. After all, by Twitter’s own criteria, the blue-checkmark account is “of public interest.”
In addition to Woods’, the accounts of Donald Trump Jr., Turning Point USA Executive Director Charlie Kirk, radio personality Dan Bongino, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton and BLEXIT Foundation principal officer Candace Owens are all Twitter-verified, have more than 1 million followers and advance QAnon messaging. With the exception of Trump Jr., each has been mentioned or referenced in a “Q drop,” one of the messages left by the enigmatic Q on the 8kun internet message board, a haven for those who wish to post anonymously. (Hence the “Anon” part of the movement’s name.)
Here are some of the public-interest bon mots offered by Woods:
Funny thing about that tweet: It’s a lot like a tweet linked to in a Q drop, and Woods’ tweet was made only an hour after the Q post appeared.
The Twitter link in that Q drop goes to this:
Then there’s Bill Mitchell, the Trump superfan with an online video show who got permanently booted from Twitter for creating a new Twitter identity in order to evade a previous Twitter suspension. He may not have had a million followers, but he had more than half that many, according to The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer, and he regularly regaled them with QAnon conspiracy theories—and, unlike others, freely bandied about the QAnon name. The QAnon community returned the favor, ADI found, yielding Mitchell thousands of retweets from QAnon-related accounts. One tweet featuring disinformation about the coronavirus—which Mitchell dismisses as a hoax—garnered more than 3,100 retweets from accounts in the QAnon community. Another favorite topic of Mitchell’s among QAnon adherents is the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, whom Mitchell tars with the usual tacit anti-Semitic smears one finds elsewhere on the right-wing internet. In a June 20 tweet no longer available on the internet, Mitchell wrote:
Arrest Soros, seize his records and freeze
his assets and 99% of this chaos you see on
our streets ends tomorrow.
Retweet if you agree.
That one got 1563 retweets from QAnon-related accounts. Until Twitter threw him out, Mitchell was a blue-checkmark tweeter. In July 2019, he was invited to Trump’s White House “social media summit,” which The New York Times’ Kevin Roose described as a gathering of “right-wing trolls.”
QAnon claims are so easily dismissed as too crazy to be believed that the danger posed by the movement, designated by the FBI as a potential domestic terrorism threat, is often overlooked. To understand the threat, one needs to focus on the second part of the narrative—the part that promises that all of these Democratic and Jewish leaders smeared by Q and Q’s followers will meet with bloody vengeance on the day that the hero Trump rounds them all up in mass arrests and executes them. Consider the impulses of some of the most unhinged of the conspiracy-minded. Remember Pizzagate? That was the internet conspiracy theory that posited a child-sex-trafficking ring involving top Democratic leaders that was ostensibly run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. A man drove up to the nation’s capital from North Carolina to rescue the non-existent victims, having armed himself with an AR-15 assault rifle and a pistol. He shot a round into an interior door as the families who had been eating inside fled for the exits.
And those are just QAnon’s central claims. The QAnon network is a transmitter of all manner of conspiracy theories, many of them part of right-wing lore for years or even decades: The purported war of the “deep state” against Donald Trump, the anti-Semitic trope of Soros as a puppet-master, and of “spygate,” a fantasy about a “deep state” that had it in for Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, the evidence for which is the fact that the FBI was keeping tabs on conversations between agents of the Russian state and Americans; some of those Americans, it turned out, were working with Trump campaign.Another common theme is that America is headed for civil war because of the savagery of the left.
Woods also advanced a phantasmagoric QAnon claim that the liberal Twitter influencer Chrissy Tiegen is linked to Jeffrey Epstein, and is a pedophile. The online assaults consequently endured by Tiegen made her “worried for my family,” she wrote on Twitter, so she deleted 60,000 of her own tweets, she said, and blocked some 1 million accounts from engaging with hers. (The QAnon spreaders had gone into her Twitter archives and pulled out tweets in which Tiegen stated her disgust with such exploitive television programs as TLC’s “Toddlers and Tiaras” in a sarcastic manner, promoting them as to be taken literally.)
With 2.4 million Twitter followers of his own,Dan Bongino is the fourth-most popular verified Twitteraccount within the QAnon community, according to ADI. (He also claims more than 3 million followers of his public Facebook page.) On Feb. 14, a tweet with a link to his show appeared in a “Q drop.” The research group found that between Jan. 1 – Aug. 1, some 4,700 QAnon-related accounts either mentioned or retweeted (or both) tweets from Bongino’s account.
Bongino, radio personality and coauthor of “Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump,” is a favorite commentator of the president’s, who gifted Bongino with a blurb for his book:
‘Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump,’ is terrific. He’s tough, he’s smart, and he really gets it. His book is on sale now. I highly recommend!
—President of the United States, Donald J. Trump
In 2016, the president took to Twitter to declare his appreciation of Bongino, as chronicled by The Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani, Asawin Suesbsaeng and Lachlan Markay.
With 1.1 million Twitter followers, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton is a top influencer in the hard-right realm. Dating back to 2016, Fitton, who helms a non-profit organization that takes in tens of millions in donations each year, has been flogging the main claim of “Spygate,” with allegations that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign on behalf of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, who is the top target of QAnon adherents. They want to see her executed.
Fitton has a knack for advancing exactly the kind of narrative that QAnon enthusiasts build upon. As far back as November 22, 2016, Fitton was calling on Trump to arrest the candidate who won more of the popular vote than he did. In fact, he claimed on Fox News that the Justice Department was “broken” for not having done so already.
In February 2017, Fitton took to the CPAC stage to claim that Michael Flynn—the retired general and Trump national security adviser who was fired after being accused of lying to Vice President Mike Pence regarding Flynn’s communications during the presidential transition phase with Sergey Kislyak, who was then Russia’s ambassador to the United States—had been done wrong. Flynn, it was learned, had been coaxing Kislyak not to respond to sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration in response to the federation’s intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential race—with the inference that the Trump administration would lift them once Trump was inaugurated.
Flynn himself is a QAnon buff,even recording a video of Flynn family members and the retired general himself reciting the QAnon slogan, “Where We Go One, We Go All.” (Julian Feeld of the investigative QAnon Anonymous podcast tweeted it here; CNN has the full video and some backstory here.)
Travis View, who hosts the QAnon Anonymous podcast, noticed this tweet from Fitton, who accused Facebook of “censoring QAnon” in its purges of QAnon-related accounts.
In the time period studied by ADI (Jan. 1 – Aug. 1, 2020), more than 39,000 QAnon-related accounts either mentioned or retweeted Fitton some 721,000 times. Those accounts, the research group says, remain active (as of September).
The president himself retweets Fitton or @JudicialWatch with some regularity. Tweets by Fitton have also been linked in at least three Q drops.
Charlie Kirk is another favorite of the president’s;Trump gave him a shout-out during a rambling speech he delivered at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference at National Harbor, Md. Kirk is said to be close to Donald Trump Jr., and a 2018 fundraiser Kirk held at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida resort, is reported to have reaped $5 million in a single night with the help of Trump Jr., according to ProPublica’s Mike Spies and Jack Pearson. “Over the last year, the president has delivered remarks at the organization’s conferences three separate times,” they write, also noting that Kirk’s book, “The MAGA Doctrine,” was promoted by both the president and Trump Jr.
Conceived as a right-wing presence on college campuses, Kirk’s Turning Point USA has become a full-on Trump-boosting organization. It is also a tax-exempt non-profit. For Kirk, the Trump train has proven to be a gravy train. At TPUSA’s 2012 founding, his annual salary was $27,000; he’s now paid $300,000, according to ProPublica. Kirk is 27 years old.
Among Twitter accounts that are part of the QAnon infrastructure, Kirk’s is the third most popular Twitter account, according to ADI. And, as of August, his account was following some 557 QAnon-related Twitter accounts. Kirk’s name and image appeared on a flyer for Q Con Live!, a QAnon conference that was to have taken place in Fresno, Calif., this month, but appears to have been canceled.
rww
> Twitter-verified MAGA Influencers Spreading the QAnon Gospel
October 26, 2020
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/some-among-trumps-white-house-south-lawn-audience-were-paid-to-be-there
hunter kos
Donald Trump has always been a game show kind of guy, so it's maybe not a surprise that his first public rally after his hospitalization for COVID-19 symptoms turned into a game show itself, of sorts.
Do you like prizes, kids? Do like prizes enough to listen to Donald Trump talk? Do you like prizes enough to risk your life during a deadly pandemic to listen to Donald Trump talk? Well then, you are in luck! Because conservative weirdo Candace Owens is handing out free travel and lodging to anyone willing to put on an oversized blue T-shirt and risk pandemic death on the White House's South Lawn.
Yeah, that's right. Donald Trump's White House rally on Saturday, the one that was absolutely not a campaign event, the one that featured Trump addressing an adoring teal-shirted and mostly maskless crowd wedged shoulder to shoulder, the scene right out of Evita 2: Mar-a-Lago Boogaloo, the ol' balcony Mussolini routine—an unknown number of those folks were paid to be there. ABC News reports that Owens' fake grassroots "BLEXIT" group offered to cover travel and lodging expenses for a "limited" number of people who showed up and were willing to wear the light blue T-shirts. Owens' group was already organizing a separate fake grassroots Washington, D.C., event on the same day; the White House crowd was gathered from there.
What seems to have happened, reading between the lines, is that Donald Trump was going absolutely stir-crazy and wanted to get back out on the campaign trail, contagious or not contagious, and like the previous "drive once around the hospital while unnecessarily exposing my Secret Service agents to my deadly illness," this was the hurried compromise offered to him by his staff and doctors. Bring an audience to him so that he would stay in the building a few more days rather than taking his coronavirus-infected, pneumonia-having self on a road trip.
Don't worry, though: It wasn't a campaign event. Just an event specifically for far-right voters, ones specifically gathered to encourage Black Americans to vote for Trump and Trump's allies, to hear a Donald Trump speech about "law and order," by which he means crushing the Black Lives Matter demands for police reform, with guest expenses paid by one of Trump's more visible and conspiracy-adjacent allies out of whatever slush fund first birthed the idea for their Washington, D.C. rally to begin with—one that Owens explicitly called an "anti-Black Lives Matter event," just in case people weren't clear about what the agenda was.
Eh. At this point it would be more surprising if some stunt Trump pulled wasn't a fake-ass reality show moment. The South Lawn just recovered from the totally nonpartisan (checks notes) Republican National Convention; now it's going to need repair again. It's you and me that will be paying for those repairs this time, by the way. Because all involved are insistent that this was a presidenting speech, not a campaign speech.
We do, however, have our answer. Yes, there are people willing to risk COVID-19 to see Typhoid Hitler lie to them in person, and especially so if somebody else is paying their bills. Seeing it on television is one thing, but if you go in person you can always hope that the man's spittle will land directly on you, infecting you with Dear Leader's own, um, pandemic superpowers.
Whatever. You do you, Trump supporters. Preferably over there—as far away as possible. The American version of the worldwide pandemic is slowly morphing into a partisan disease, a disease spreading most aggressively among Trump-supporting states and communities while Dear Leader rants about everything being a hoax and ... sigh. Whatever.
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ref
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/candace-owens-blexit-group-pays-attendees-travel-trumps/story?id=73531036
no lnx pix vid
some guests for Saturday's White House event on the South Lawn, which will be President Donald Trump's first since testing positive for the coronavirus, had their travel and lodging paid for by controversial conservative activist Candace Owens' group BLEXIT, according to emails obtained by ABC News.
Supporters, who are also scheduled to attend a separate BLEXIT event earlier in the day, were invited to attend a "HUGE outdoor rally" by the group and asked to fill out a form that notified them that BLEXIT, a campaign urging Black Americans to leave the Democratic Party, will be covering travel costs.
Guests were later informed they would be receiving an invitation from the White House to attend an event with Trump.
In an email from Owens, obtained by ABC News, attendees were told "EVERYONE MUST BRING A MASK TO BE ALLOWED ENTRY ONTO THE WHITE HOUSE GROUNDS." and that "absolutely no exceptions" will be made.
[MORE: Trump planning to host 1st in-person event since diagnosis at White House on Saturday: Sources]
Still, wearing a face mask will not be required. Attendees will have to submit to a COVID-19 screening the morning of the event, which will consist of a temperature check and a brief questionnaire.
Guests will first attend a "BLEXIT Back the Blue event" on the Ellipse between the White House and the Washington Monument before heading over to the South Lawn for the president's remarks, according to a schedule obtained by ABC News.
When reached for comment, Owens told ABC News, "We are not interested in participating in your obvious media angle here to slander/attack the President regarding Covid-19." She added that Saturday's event "is about supporting law enforcement in minority communities." It is not immediately clear how many of those set to attend the event had their travel costs covered.
White House spokesman Judd Deere told ABC News the White House "is not involved in covering any cost."
Following Trump's remarks, the BLEXIT group is also planning a demonstration at Black Lives Matter Plaza showing "support for law enforcement," according to the schedule.
The White House plans to host an event on Saturday featuring Trump with hundreds of supporters and guests from Owens' group on the South Lawn discussing "law and order," ABC News previously reported.
MORE: 2nd presidential debate between Biden and Trump canceled]
"All attendees must bring a mask with them and will be instructed to wear it on the White House Complex. All attendees must submit to a COVID-19 screening tomorrow morning. This will consist of a temperature check and a brief questionnaire. The health and safety of all attendees is our priority and following CDC guidelines is strongly encouraged," a source with knowledge of the group's planning told ABC News.
Trump will deliver "remarks to peaceful protesters for law and order," according to an invite obtained by ABC News and confirmed by two White House sources familiar with the planning. The move underscores an effort to deliver the president a packed crowd of supporters for the event as he struggles with support among Black voters. Joe Biden led Trump, 88% to 9%, among Black registered voters, according to a Sept. 26 ABC/Washington Post poll.
Owens, who founded BLEXIT in 2018, told ABC News it is an organization "with the purpose of educating minorities about conservative principles (free markets, entrepreneurship, capitalism, etc) -- concepts and theories that can truly transform and uplift our communities."
[PHOTO: Political commentator Candace Owens introduces President Donald Trump, not pictured, during the Young Black Leadership Summit 2019 event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., Oct. 4, 2019.
Political commentator Candace Owens introduces President Donald Trump, not pictured, during the Young Black Leadership Summit 2019 event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., Oct. 4, 2019.]
"We stand in unapologetic, stark contrast to leftist ideologies that have destroyed our communities for decades," Owens said.
In an Instagram post last week, Owens promoted what she called an upcoming "anti-Black Lives Matter event," and urged followers to submit to attend in person. "We are giving away a limited amount of travel stipends to those that really them," she said in the post.
MORE: Trump itching to get back to campaign trail, but he and White House evasive on health questions]
"Our president doesn't want us to be fearful or scared," one person planning to attend Saturday's events told ABC News. "Look how he came out of it. He popped right back. We have got to stop being afraid of this."
"We got to take this mask off, we have to unmask America," the person added.
Attendees for Saturday's event were also told, "EVERYONE MUST WEAR A BLEXIT T-SHIRT (Which will be given to you ahead of the event) -- no exceptions."
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6/20
https://www.mediamatters.org/fake-news/debunked-conspiracy-theory-about-black-lives-matter-actblue-and-democrats-can-be-traced
no lnx many pix
A false money laundering conspiracy theory regarding the Black Lives Matter movement's use of a payment processing company for donations has gained traction online among right-wing figures and can be traced back to far-right message boards.
The conspiracy theory alleges that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is some kind of a front to launder money to Democrats because the BLM website uses ActBlue to process its online fundraising payments. ActBlue is a payment processor used widely by progressive groups and organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party has an equivalent processing company called WinRed. As the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has noted, “many candidates use [ActBlue] to process donations but that money isn't pooled to be shared across candidates or groups,” and “a donation to BLM through ActBlue goes just to BLM, not any other group.” But the conspiracy theory still has earned well over a million shares and views on social media and has been amplified by a Fox Nation host.
A review by Media Matters found that before it gained traction, the conspiracy theory had been circulating for days on far-right message boards. The earliest mention our review found was at the beginning of June on Twitter, when an account that has pushed the slogan for the QAnon conspiracy theory repeatedly tweeted the claim on June 1 and June 2. The account claimed it had sent the conspiracy theory to the FBI and President Donald Trump, and it urged the Ohio Police Department to investigate the claim.
@OneVoiceUS
The conspiracy theory popped up days later on June 5 on TheDonald.win, a new forum for the subreddit “r/TheDonald,” which was known for violent rhetoric and was ultimately quarantined by Reddit. On TheDonald.win, a user wrote that “when you go to donate on the blacklivesmatter.com website,” you are redirected to ActBlue, which means entities “donating to Black Lives Matter are actually donating to ActBlue.” That means, the user wrote, that the donations may be “just going straight to fund the Democratic presidential campaign.”
The next day, another user on the forum wrote in a post that “BLM is a bait and switch fundraising scam” for the Democratic National Committee “by laundering money through Act Blue.” The user urged others to “tell everyone you know.” This post gained more traction on the forum than the first one, which it directly referenced in the comments. Similar language made its way to Facebook minutes later.
The Donald subreddit forum ActBlue1
Over the next few days, the conspiracy theory also began circulating on 4chan’s “/pol/” message board, a known hotspot for white nationalists, where users pointed to ActBlue to claim Black Lives Matter was “a fundraising apparatus” and a “slush fund” for Democrats. One 4chan user pushing the claim on June 8 used nearly the exact same language as the June 5 post from TheDonald.win.
4chan ActBlue claim
The conspiracy theory also continued to circulate on TheDonald.win on June 8 and reached the subreddit “r/conservative,” where a user called Black Lives Matter a “money laundering scheme” for Democrats via ActBlue. That post was later shared in a YouTube video.
The following day, on June 9, The Gateway Pundit, a far-right blog that has a history of publishing misinformation, posted that the BLM site “appears to be aninternational money laundering scheme used by the Democrats to raise money from an international audience,” claiming ActBlue appears to be “a funding arm of the DNC.” (The site’s owner Jim Hoft shared the post on Twitter, calling it an “exclusive.”) The post gave a “hat tip” to TheDonald.win for the claim. The post was picked up by multiple far-right figures, including by a QAnon-supporting former congressional candidate on Twitter, another QAnon Twitter account with a major following who keeps evading his Twitter ban, and by trollMilo Yiannopoulos on Telegram.
Gateway Pundit ActBlue claim
On June 10, right-wing pundit Candace Owens quote-tweeted an Instagram video pushing the conspiracy theory and accused Black Lives Matters of being a “shell company” for Democrats via ActBlue(Owens also posted the video on Instagram, where it received well over a million views). Minutes later, “Q,” the central entity of the QAnon conspiracy theory, posted a link to Owens’ tweet on 8kun’s “/qresearch/” message board. Owens’ post has been retweeted more than 64,000 times so far.
Candace Owens ActBlue claim
Following Owens’ post, the conspiracy theory began spreading to other conservative figures, such as Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch; a Florida Republican congressional candidate who has given credence to QAnon; Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier (who, like Owens, incorrectly called ActBlue a “Democrat super PAC”); Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk; and former editor-in-chief of Breitbart’s London bureau Raheem Kassam.
Additionally, two major conservative TikTok accounts, @therepublicanhypehouse and @conservativehypehouse, both posted videos pushing the conspiracy theory, getting more than 370,000 views combined (even though TikTok has an anti-misinformation policy).
The conspiracy theory also apparently reached Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren, who has a history of pushing claims from message boards. She tweeted, “When you donate to BLM you’re donating to the Dems.”
Tomi Lahren ActBlue claim
These tweets and videos combined have gotten hundreds of thousands of shares and views and have amplified the conspiracy theory far beyond fringe message boards.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/how-donald-trump-will-try-to-scapegoat-george-soros-to-win-re-election/
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How Donald Trump will try to scapegoat George Soros to win re-election
Written by The Conversation July 16, 2020
by Neil McLaughlin, McMaster University and Iga Mergler, McMaster University
When future scholars write the history of the administration of Donald Trump, he may end up being called — among many other things — the conspiracy theorist president. Trump famously began his ascent to power with the false and racist “birther” claim that Barack Obama was not really an American.
Trump and his followers have also legitimized bizarre conspiracy theories against Hungarian American financier and philanthropist George Soros. It now appears continued attacks toward Soros will be a part of the president’s re-election campaign.
Soros has been a punching bag for authoritarians, anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists around the world since 1992, when he became famous as “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England” by making more than US$1 billion by “shorting” the British pound.
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Born in Budapest in 1930, Soros barely survived the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis. Living in New York City since 1956, he has combined a long career as a successful capitalist while doing philanthropy under the banner of his Open Society Foundations.
Anti-Semitic attacks
Attacks on Soros have circulated on the margins of mainstream politics for years, tinged with anti-Semitism and fuelled by half-truths and outright lies. Russia has always been at the heart of anti-Soros propaganda, and it’s now joined by China in promoting attacks, distortions and lies. Over the last few years, these conspiracies have entered mainstream debate in Hungary, Poland, Brazil and the United States.
The Trump movement attempted to scapegoat Soros as part of its Make America Great Again rhetoric. Trump supporters accused Soros, among other things, of supporting the caravan of migrants attempting to enter the United States from Central America, being behind the attacks on Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court nomination (a falsehood Trump himself tweeted about) and promoting an elitist globalist agenda that undermined American jobs and culture.
Most incredibly, in recent weeks Soros has been accused of paying Black Lives Matter protesters who demonstrated across the United States after the police killing of George Floyd.
Trump has major liabilities in his quest for re-election: his incompetent handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his polarizing opposition to protesters after the Floyd killing and the decline of the U.S. economy since the outbreak of COVID-19. Loss of support among suburban white women, members of the military elite and moderate Republicans are now a threat to his electoral prospects.
Attacking Soros part of the plan
Attacking China, stoking nationalist resentments, uncritically defending the police, claiming economic competence and bashing Joe Biden will be Trump’s major electoral strategy. But Republican attacks on Soros are also likely to circulate widely until the election.
Soros is a perfect foil to try to convince people that Trump stands for the average American. What better scapegoat than a wealthy, uber-liberal currency speculator who helped fund Obama and Hillary Clinton, supports abortion, gay and trans rights and gives generously to the electoral campaigns of liberal public defenders and prosecutors? In Trumpist rhetoric, Soros is soft on crime and promotes the values of cultural liberalism and global elites over the average American. [HE'S ALSO THE WHATABOUTISM CORP OLIGARCH FOR KOCH BOROS; I'M NOT CORRUPT YOU'RE CORRUPT KNEE-JERK REFLEXIVE ST'D MOVE
Soros’s history of supporting Palestinian rights and calling for a negotiated peace settlement created an opportunity for the White House to exploit. Rhetoric about big finance linked to a “globalist” Jewish philanthropist understandably concerns Jewish voters and others opposed to anti-Semitism, but anti-Soros rhetoric can unify evangelical Christian Zionists, pro-Israel Republicans, interventionist neo-conservatives and far-right extremists.
Attacking Soros is also part of a Trumpist appeal to conservative Black voters, now being led Candace Owens, a young media figure and Republican activist.
Owens spreads paranoia
Prone to gaffes that expose her ignorance about history and politics, Owens has gained a massive online presence among far right-wing Trump supporters by directly challenging the mainstream Democratic Party narrative on racism, police violence and poverty in America. She’s also attacked George Floyd’s character. What’s more, Owens has spread anti-Soros paranoia online, giving it a cooler, hipper and younger flavour.
The core of the Trumpist scapegoating of Soros is an attempt to blame Soros for the Black Lives Matter protests and calls for defunding the police. The lie that Soros is paying for the protests that have swept through the United States and is promoting riots is deeply corrosive to American democracy.
Conspiracy theories work best when lies, exaggerations and paranoia are linked to real things in the world that can be distorted by spin. Soros’s recent pledge of US$220 million to support civil rights and racial equality groups like Black Voters Matter will add fuel to extremist fire.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson will play a major role in all this. During a recent segment on his show, former Missouri governor Eric Greitens attempted to link Soros to anti-police violence and made reference to a “George Soros-funded prosecutor” involved in the case of the couple in St. Louis who stood in front of their house with guns while anti-racism protesters marched on their street.
None of this is likely to save Trump from going down to an electoral defeat in November. While there are legitimate criticisms to be made of the role of billionaires like Soros in politics and economic life, the divisiveness of anti-Soros paranoia will take years to repair.
The Conversation
Neil McLaughlin, Professor of Sociology, McMaster University and Iga Mergler, PhD Candidate in Sociology,, McMaster University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/candace-owens-departs-turning-point-usa/
Conservative activist Candace Owens has departed from her role at right-wing youth organizing group Turning Point USA as communications director to focus on her gig at Dennis Prager’s “Prager U” and to work on her own spin-off movement and book.
“I am both excited and sad to announce that I will be officially moving on from my role as Communications Director for Turning Point USA,” Owens wrote in an Instagram post yesterday evening. “My dream has always been simple— to wake up black America—To turn the lights on within a community that has been used and abused by the Democrat party for decades.”
She continued, “With the #BLEXIT movement,the Candace Owens podcast, and my upcoming book— I no longer feel I can be a dedicated communications director to an organization that is rightfully growing rapidly.”
Owens said that she will still be speaking at TPUSA conferences and will continue to chair TPUSA’s annual Black Leadership Summit.
In 2017, Owens began her career under the moniker “Red Pill Black” on YouTube. Her videos reached viral success and she worked her way to guest slots on Alex Jones’ Infowars outlet, going as far as to appear in-studio with Jones for a co-hosting feature. With her message that black Americans have been taken advantage of by Democrats, she eventually landed the role of Turning Point USA communications director and became a semi-regular guest on Fox News. Last year, Owen was given a major thrust into the public consciousness when rapper Kanye West tweeted, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks."
in recent months, Owens has started a podcast with Prager’s digital outlet called “The Candace Owens Show” and launched the “Blexit” movement, which encourages black Americans to step away from the Democratic Party and join the Republican ranks. She also appeared on Capitol Hill last month at a hearing on the threat of white nationalism in America, where she managed to derail what was planned to be a serious domestic terrorism discussion. Owens insisted that the Southern Strategy—the Republican Party’s well-documented post-Civil Rights Act plan for building power by exploiting racial resentment among Southern white voters—was a “myth,” a ridiculous and ahistorical claim she got from a Prager U video.
Tags: Candace OwensPragerUTurning Point USA
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https://www.mediamatters.org/black-lives-matter/study-right-wing-fearmongering-leads-facebook-engagement-about-peaceful-protests
wow live video
The top post about protests is an 18-minute video from right-wing figure Candace Owens, who says she doesn’t “support” Floyd or see him as a “martyr.” She goes on to disparage Floyd and say that the Black community is “unique” because its members are “the only people that fight and scream and demand support and justice for the people in our community that are up to no good.”
In
addition to Owens’ live video, Media Matters identified the other nine posts about the protests from right-leaning Facebook pages that earned the most interactions. These posts reinforce narratives Fox News and other right-wing media outlets have promoted in response to the largely peaceful protests, including amplifying a small number of instances of violence from protesters, ignoring accounts of police instigating violence, and praising Trump for tear-gassing peaceful protesters.
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https://www.the GUK .com/us-news/2020/apr/18/coronavirus-americans-protest-stay-at-home
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Thousands of Americans backed by rightwing donors gear up for protests
Conservative activists to demand governors lift stay-home orders – and movement has been driven by wealthy conservative groups
Adam Gabbatt
@adamgabbatt
Sat 18 Apr 2020 06.00 EDT...
Many of the rallies have been inspired by a protest at the Michigan state capitol.
Many of the rallies have been inspired by a protest at the Michigan state capitol. Photograph: Matthew Dae Smith/AP
Thousands of people are preparing to attend protests across the US in the coming days, as a rightwing movement against stay-at-home orders, backed by wealthy conservative groups and promoted by Donald Trump, continues to take hold.
Conservative activists are demanding governors lift orders designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, despite the recommendations of public health officials. Trump, who has clashed with Democratic governors over how soon to reopen the US economy, tweeted his support on Friday, in an unprecedented endorsement of civil disobedience by a sitting president.
Many of the planned rallies have been inspired by a protest at the Michigan state capitol on Wednesday, which was attended by thousands.
2:09
Armed protesters demand an end to Michigan's coronavirus lockdown orders – video
Yet while organisers claim the protests are grassroots- and people-driven, a closer look reveals a movement driven by traditional rightwing groups, including one funded by the family of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos.
The rallies have drawn comparisons to the Tea Party movement, which sprang into life in 2009 following the election of Barack Obama and was driven in part by Americans for Prosperity, a group founded by rightwing donors Charles and David Koch.
As with the Tea Party, the anti-stay-at-home movement has been promoted by a rightwing media eager for the economy to reopen, including Fox News which on Friday aired a segment on protests in Virginia, Michigan and Minnesota. Two minutes later, Trump tweeted to his 77.4 million followers the need to “liberate” those states.
1:40
'They seem very responsible to me': Trump defends anti-lockdown protesters- video
A majority of Americans support the lockdowns, with a Pew Research Center poll finding that 66% are concerned state governments will lift restrictions on public activity too quickly. But protests, helped by media coverage, have spread around the country.
The two groups behind the “operation gridlock” rally in Michigan on Wednesday have ties to the Republican party and the Trump administration.
The Michigan Freedom Fund, which said it was a co-host of the rally, has received more than $500,000 from the DeVos family, regular donors to rightwing groups.
The other host, the Michigan Conservative Coalition, was founded by Matt Maddock, now a Republican member of the state house of representatives. The MCC also operates under the name Michigan Trump Republicans, and in January held an event featuring several members of the Trump campaign.
“Absolutely the Michigan event was a huge inspiration and it was a huge success,” said Evie Harris, organizer of a ReOpen Maryland protest planned for the state capitol on Saturday.
“That was the model for our event.”
Thousands drove to the Michigan state capitol in Lansing, while the Michigan Freedom Fund purchased Facebook advertising to promote the rally. Protesters, many waving Trump campaign signs, honked their horns and chanted for Governor Gretchen Whitmer to end the stay-at-home rules.
The protest was covered exhaustively by the rightwing media.Harris said her Facebook following grew from “700-800 people” to more than 15,000 members following the Michigan rally, inspiring her to organize “Operation Gridlock Annapolis” for Saturday.
Harris said her group had support from some elected officials in Maryland, but declined to name them.
While ReOpen Maryland might not have funding from rightwing advocacy groups, it appears to be linked to at least four other “reopen” organizations.
“Government mandating sick people to stay home is called quarantine,” ReOpen Maryland said. “However, the government mandating healthy citizens to stay home, forcing businesses and churches to close is called tyranny.”
That text is identical to text on Facebook pages calling for rallies in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Virginia. ReOpen Virginia aims to hold its own “gridlock” rally on Wednesday – again inspired by the conservative-funded Michigan event.
Despite ReOpen Virginia billing itself as a “grassroots group of people and small business owners”, founder Kristen Lynne Hall said the idea for the protest came from the organizers of the “Lobby Day” demonstration earlier this year.
That demonstration was organized by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights group that has donated tens of thousands of dollars to politicians.
Hall, who said Candace Owens, a rightwing activist and favorite of Trump, had been in touch to discuss the event, said the president’s tweet about “liberating” Virginia was “great”.
“It could be spreading the movement,” she said. “Any support is appreciated right now.”
A decade ago, the Tea Party movement billed itself as “grass roots”, despite receiving money from the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and the conservative organization FreedomWorks.
Jenny Beth Martin, who founded the Tea Party Patriots group, promoted this week’s Michigan protest. The Tea Party Patriots also supported the protest, in messages to its 200,000 Twitter followers.
Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog, said the similarities between the Tea Party and ReOpen movements went further, with rightwing media boosting both.
Fox News ran favorable coverage of the Michigan rally and hosts including Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro endorsed the protest.
“Fox gave the Tea Party a phenomenal amount of attention and promotion,” Gertz said. “It really sort of boot-strapped it to another level, and made it a political force, and we see something similar happening with these anti-stay-at-home order movements.”
Gertz said he was not “simply” concerned with “the conservatives having a strong election the next time out”.
“It’s a real chance for devastating consequences with regard to the coronavirus,” he said.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/dumbassery-conservative-editor-calls-out-right-wing-medias-bad-takes-on-deadly-coronavirus-pandemic/
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‘Dumbassery’: Conservative editor calls out right-wing media’s ‘bad takes’ on deadly coronavirus pandemic
Written by Alex Henderson March 17, 2020
As the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic continues to grow in the United States and many other countries, one thing The Bulwark can take pride in is the fact that — unlike so many other right-wing media outlets — it didn’t spend weeks trying to convince readers that coronavirus was merely a liberal hoax or “fake news” designed to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency. The Never Trump conservatives at The Bulwark always took the pandemic seriously, including The Bulwark’s senior editor, Jim Swift — who lambasts some of the incredibly moronic things that various Trumpistas and far-right media figures have said about coronavirus recently.
“The internet being what it is, and politics being what it is — and 2020 dumbassery being what it is — there are a lot of bad covid-19 takes floating around,” Swift asserts. And he cities Newsmax writer John Cardillo as a glaring example.
On March 13, Cardillo went to Twitter and said of coronavirus, “Treat it like the flu. The panic and hysteria created by the media is criminal. They are destroying lives, businesses, and the economy to make Trump look bad and again screw with elections.”
In response to Cardillo’s tweet, Swift writes, “Sure, John. The news media aren’t covering this story because it’s important and deadly, they’re only covering it because they want to take down President Donald J. Trump.”
In other words, treat it like the flu.
The panic and hysteria created by the media is criminal.
They are destroying lives, businesses, and the economy to make Trump look bad and again screw with elections. https://t.co/Pmclsy25wJ
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) March 13, 2020
Swift also slams Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell, Jr. Appearing as a guest on Fox News’“Fox and Friends,” Falwell argued that Americans are “overreacting” to coronavirus and that all the media coverage of the pandemic is merely an “attempt to get Trump.” Moreover, Falwell claimed that coronavirus is a North Korean bioweapon.
On Fox & Friends, Jerry Falwell Jr claims people are “overreacting” to coronavirus, the national response is “their next attempt to get Trump,” and the virus itself is a North Korean bioweapon. pic.twitter.com/2JPuNBW7C3
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) March 13, 2020
Swift goes on to lambast Infowars’ Alex Jones and “old-school televangelist grifter Jim Bakker” for “hawking” bogus treatments they claim will cure coronavirus. And Swift cites a March 12 tweet from The Federalist’s Sean Davis as another example of idiocy: Davis tweeted, “Corporate political media hate you, they hate the country, and they will stop at nothing to reclaim power to rule over you. If that means that they destroy the economy via a panic that they helped incite, all while running interference for the communist country that started it, so be it.”
Truly deranged, InfoWars level stuff from The Federalist. pic.twitter.com/FzBTldunsg
— andrew kaczynski?? (@KFILE) March 13, 2020
Sarcastically describing Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt as an “aviation expert…. not to be confused with Amelia Earhart,” Swift notes her recent comment, “It’s actually the safest time to fly. Everyone I know that’s flying right now, terminals are pretty much dead.”
Ainsley Earhardt: “It’s actually the safest time to fly. Everyone I know that’s flying right now, terminals are pretty much dead.” (It is not the safest time to fly.) pic.twitter.com/a3BnajAbj5
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) March 13, 2020
AmGreatness’ Julie Kelly, who Swift describes as a “nutty, bad-faith operator,” has called social distancing a left-wing plot to “get control” that is “far scarier than any virus.”
Scientists and health officials say social distancing (reducing contact, temporarily) is an effective way to reduce infections. Naturally, some are claiming it’s a leftist plot to gain control of the country. pic.twitter.com/TDMJM6ddir
— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) March 13, 2020
At this point I think you have a greater chance of being attacked by Joe Biden than catching coronavirus
— Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2) March 10, 2020
China. https://t.co/VULqyrceUH
— Ron Coleman (@RonColeman) March 13, 2020
Good news on the coronavirus you won’t find anywhere else:
-China has closed down its last coronavirus hospital. Not enough new cases to support them.
-Italy is hit hard, experts say, because they have the oldest population in Europe (average age of those that have died is 81).
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 13, 2020
Swift concludes his article by warning that as coronavirus “spreads” in the U.S., Americans will do themselves a favor by not taking nonsense from Fox News seriously.
“Things are going to get worse — not only as the pandemic spreads, but as the bad takes spread too,” Swift warns. “If you’re stuck at home, I’d encourage you not to watch cable news — and encourage your family to avoid it, too. Especially Fox News.”
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has came back endured pro hitler slap down
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/paul-joseph-watson-i-hate-conspiracy-theories
Paul Joseph Watson, a right-wing YouTube creator and editor-at-large at the prolific conspiracy theory outlet Infowars, wants you to forget the last decade of his career and to now believe he doesn’t like conspiracy theories.
In
uploaded yesterday to Dennis Prager’s digital media outlet PragerU, Watson joined conservative commentator Candace Owens on her podcast to discuss issues of social media moderation as interpreted through the right-wing lens that defines it as “censorship.” Watson was banned from Facebook earlier this year.
During the interview, Watson took issue with how the media has characterized the content he produces, often identifying him as a conspiracy theorist and sympathetic to the alt-right. Watson rejected being considered alt-right, since he said he does not believe in the pursuit of a white ethnostate, and similarly rejected being called a conspiracy theorist.
“I hate conspiracy theories. I think most of them are really dumb,” Watson said.
Owens chimed in that she doesn’t watch CNN because it’s a “conspiracy theorist network.”It’s worth noting that Owens got her start in right-wing media thanks in part to an in-studio appearance she made on Alex Jones’ Infowars show while she still operated under the moniker “Red Pill Black.”
Watson said, “I was a conspiracy theorist when I was a kid, like 15 years ago. That’s where I came from, so I know how those ideas—you take disparate bits of information and fuse them together to create a conspiracy. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some conspiracies. But I know how they’re created and I know mentally how people are lulled into believing them.”
After making his claim, Watson maintained his newfound anti-conspiracy theory position for about 10 minutes. Then, Watson and Owens theorized that tech companies were banning right-wing figures from their platforms because they are involved in a conspiracy to silence political dissidents and enforce homogeneous political thought.
Watson appeared in-studio on Infowars in March to talk about a new project he was working on to “generate the next generation of YouTubers, of young political commentators."
[vid]
Tags: Candace OwensPaul Joseph Watsonconspiracy theoriessocial mediaPragerU
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did she amplify IRA collusion BS?
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joe rogan debate
https://www.desmogblog.com/turning-point-usa
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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/candace-owens-departs-turning-point-usa/
Conservative activist Candace Owens has departed from her role at right-wing youth organizing group Turning Point USA as communications director to focus on her gig at Dennis Prager’s “Prager U” and to work on her own spin-off movement and book.
“I am both excited and sad to announce that I will be officially moving on from my role as Communications Director for Turning Point USA,” Owens wrote in an Instagram post yesterday evening. “My dream has always been simple— to wake up black America—To turn the lights on within a community that has been used and abused by the Democrat party for decades.”
She continued, “With the#BLEXIT movement, the Candace Owens podcast, and my upcoming book— I no longer feel I can be a dedicated communications director to an organization that is rightfully growing rapidly.”
Owens said that she will still be speaking at TPUSA conferences and will continue to chair TPUSA’s annual Black Leadership Summit.
In 2017, Owens began her career under the moniker “Red Pill Black” on YouTube. Her videos reached viral success and she worked her way to guest slots on Alex Jones’ Infowars outlet, going as far as to appear in-studio with Jones for a co-hosting feature. With her message that black Americans have been taken advantage of by Democrats, she eventually landed the role of Turning Point USA communications director and became a semi-regular guest on Fox News. Last year, Owen was given a major thrust into the public consciousness when rapper Kanye West tweeted, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.”
...[twit]
In recent months, Owens has started a podcast with Prager’s digital outlet called “The Candace Owens Show” and launched the “Blexit” movement, which encourages black Americans to step away from the Democratic Party and join the Republican ranks. She also appeared on Capitol Hill last month at a hearing on the threat of white nationalism in America, where she managed to derail what was planned to be a serious domestic terrorism discussion. Owens insisted that the Southern Strategy—the Republican Party’s well-documented post-Civil Rights Act plan for building power by exploiting racial resentment among Southern white voters—was a “myth,” a ridiculous and ahistorical claim she got from a Prager U video.
Tags: Candace OwensPragerUTurning Point USA
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caught a lot of crap for pro hitler comments, but apparently black woman with some kid cachet too valuable to chuck: along w/ diamond and silk on trump ads
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/04/10/candace-owens-fumes-after-ted-lieu-plays-clip-her-remarks-hitler/3420977002/
Owens said Tuesday to House Judiciary Committee that Democrats' concerns about white nationalism were just a preview of their 2020 election strategy. Wochit, USA TODAY]
WASHINGTON –Rep. Ted Lieu was not happy that his Republican colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee invited conservative commentator Candace Owens to speak at a hearing on the rise in hate crimes and white nationalism.
To explain why, the California Democrat pulled out his smartphone and played a clip of Owens making some controversial comments about Adolph Hitler.
"In congressional hearings, the minority party gets to select its own witnesses. And of all the people Republicans could have selected, they picked Candace Owens," Lieu said during the Tuesday hearing.
"I don't know Ms. Owens. I'm not going to characterize her. I'm going to let her own words do the talking," he said.
In the clip, Owens, the communications director for Turning Point USA, explains that she thinks the word "nationalism" has been "poisoned" by "elitists that actually want globalism" and who conflate the word with Hitler's Nazi agenda.
Candace Owens of Turning Point USA testifies during a House Judiciary Committee hearing discussing hate crimes and the rise of white nationalism on Capitol Hill on April 9, 2019 in Washington.]
Candace Owens: Democrats' hate crimes concerns are just '2020 election strategy'
Hitler comment: After backlash, Owens clarifies viral Hitler comment
"You know, he was a National Socialist, but if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, okay fine," she said. "The problem is he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German."
Lieu did not ask Owens to respond, but rather asked another panel member, Eileen Hershenov from theAnti-Defamation League,"When people try to legitimize Adolph Hitler, does that feed into white nationalist ideology?"
"It does, Mr. Lieu," Hershenov replied. "I know that Ms. Owens distanced herself from those comments later but we expressed great concern over the original comments."
In February, Owens had tried to clarify her comments, which had then gone viral. She explained that she considered Hitler "a homicidal, psychotic maniac" and that her point was that he was nota nationalist. But she added, "I stand by my statements. And that is that.”
Candace Owens interview: Her rapid rise defending two of America’s most complicated men: Trump and Kanye]
"I think it's pretty apparent that Mr. Lieu believes that black people are stupid and will not pursue the full clip in its entirety," Owens said Tuesday when she did get a chance to respond. "He purposely presented an extracted clip."
Her response prompted a rebuke from Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., who mistakenly thought she had called Lieu "stupid."
"I didn't refer to him as stupid, that's not what I said. That's not what I said at all. You didn't listen to what I said," Owen said, prompting a shrug from Nadler.
Owens then continued, saying Lieu was "trying to present as if I was launching a defense of Hitler in Germany when, in fact," she was trying to say that Hitler should not be characterized as a nationalist.
"A nationalist would not kill their own people," she said.
She said Lieu was trying to "create a narrative" and that it was "similar to what they do to Donald Trump."
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ref
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/09/candace-owens-dismisses-white-nationalism-2020-election-strategy/3412604002/
WAINGTON – Controversial conservative Candace Owens said Tuesday during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee that Democrats' concerns about white nationalism are actually meant to send a message that "brown people need to be scared" ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
"Let me be clear, the hearing today is not about white nationalism or hate crimes, it's about fear-mongering, power and control," Owens said in her opening remarks at the hearing titled, "Hate Crimes and the Rise of White Nationalism."
She said the hearing was a "preview of a Democrat 2020 election strategy."
Last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray called white supremacist violence "a persistent, pervasive threat" during testimony before the House Appropriations Committee.
In November, the FBI released a report that showed a 17% increase in hate crimes from 2016 to 2017, although the bureau pointed out the number of law enforcement agencies reporting the data had also increased.
Candace Owens interview: He rapid rise defending two of America’s most complicated men: Trump and Kanye
More: Candace Owens fumes at Rep. Ted Lieu's use of her Hitler comments
There were 1,020 known hate groups in the country in 2018, the fourth straight year of growth, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremism in the U.S. Hate crimes, meanwhile, rose 30 percent in the three-year period ending in 2017, the organization said, citing FBI figures.
Owens said Democrats had "simply changed the data set points by widening the definition of hate crimes."
"What I mean to say, is they are manipulating statistics," she said.
Owens is the communications director for Turning Point USA, a conservative organization that aims to organize college students. She has pushed for more African-Americans to vote Republican, arguing Democratic policies have hindered, rather than helped, their community. She was invited to testify at the hearing by Judiciary Committee Republicans.
In her opening statement, Owens said many journalists had appeared confused about why she was speaking at the hearing. She said she was there because she had been the victim of a hate crime when she was in high school.
She said few people knew that about her because the news media and journalists "on the left are not interested in telling the truth about me because I don't fit the stereotype of what they like to see in black people."
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2018/10/19/candace-owens-found-her-place-conservative-politics-age-donald-trump-alongside-kanye/1521771002/
many lnx twt pix
Candace Owens’ rapid rise defending two of America’s most complicated men: Trump and Kanye
Sean Rossman, USA TODAY Published 6:00 a.m. ET Oct. 19, 2018 | Updated 5:37 p.m. ET Oct. 21, 2018
Candace Owens shares the story of her rise to national prominence as a black conservative and plans to collaborate with Kanye West. Jasper Colt, USA TODAY
It’s a Wednesday morning at Liberty University and the basketball arena is packed with nearly 10,000 people. Students reach their arms skyward, eyes closed, entranced in deafening Christian rock music.
Backstage, administrators and students dote on Candace Owens, that day’s convocation speaker, who has quickly built a career trashing liberal politics with a millennial fierceness. She hasn’t rehearsed. It protects her authenticity. But she knows her beats.
Onstage, she speaks for about 24 minutes, calmly gliding back and forth across the stage in heels, attacking some of her usual targets: Planned Parenthood, feminism, the welfare system.
She builds to the moment. Then, she goes for it.
“Kanye West. Man, he’s a wonderful man,” she says to applause and cheering — breaking the quiet of what had become a calm, attentive audience.
“What is it that President Donald Trump, Kanye West and Candace Owens have in common?” she asks rhetorically. “Kanye West describes it as 'dragon energy' and to me I think it’s individualism. It’s believing in yourself. It’s standing up in the face of everybody telling you you can’t.”
Owens embraces her role as the young black woman defending conservatism, attacking liberals and praising two of America's more complicated men.
View image on Twitter
Candace Owens
?
@RealCandaceO
We just made history in Washington D.C.
I am so unbelievably proud of my friend and fellow warrior. Today was a glorious day for freedom.
And this is just the beginning.
Big announcement next week.
...
Since April when West tweeted, "I love the way Candace Owens thinks," she has never been far behind the star, playing his chief defender as he lurched from one controversial headline to the next. She accompanied West to TMZ when he said slavery "sounds like a choice" and posted a photo of herself with West after his headline-making White House visit last week. People ask her to autograph West's CDs.
Owens, 29, regularly appears on Fox News and travels six days a week to speak at college campuses. It's made her friendly with Trump and the first family, some of whom she's met for dinner.
But barely more than a year ago she was an unknown YouTuber.
What changed her life was a video about the Charlottesville rally, wherein she blames the media for creating racial hysteria. That video prompted Fox News host Jesse Watters to invite her on the network for the first time late last year.
Fox News amplified Owens, who was then hired by Turning Point USA, an organization aimed at bringing conservative ideas to college campuses. Her Twitter following quickly grew to 108,000. West's tweet brought hundreds of thousands more, ballooning her audience to 850,000 today.
The president also took notice. Trump said Owens "represents an ever expanding group of very smart 'thinkers.'"
Donald J. Trump
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@realDonaldTrump
Candace Owens of Turning Point USA is having a big impact on politics in our Country. She represents an ever expanding group of very smart “thinkers,” and it is wonderful to watch and hear the dialogue going on...so good for our Country!
...
Her rapid rise gives her a massive political voice for someone with such a brief career – or even interest – in politics. Owens says she has never voted. Not for Trump, or any other candidate, and only recently registered as a Republican, but previously identified as liberal.
"I had no interest in politics whatsoever prior to 2015," she said.
Owens illustrates a political fact stamped and sealed by Trump: that strong voices can break through regardless of prior experience.
Owens defends Trump's comments after Charlottesville: "I still agree with him. There are morons on both sides." She doesn’t believe in white privilege and often criticizes Black Lives Matter. Feminism, she claims, has become radicalized. Planned Parenthood is "murdering" people using abortion, which has slowed black population growth. The media causes dissent. And lately, amid Kavanaugh's ascension to the Supreme Court: "I'm really passionate about defending men."
She's now preached politics to hundreds of thousands of students, said Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk. Her reach isn't contained to conservative havens like Liberty, where its president Jerry Falwell Jr. is an outspoken Trump supporter. Most recently Owens and Kirk spoke at the University of Colorado-Boulder, the University of Washington and the University of Georgia.
After the speech at Liberty, Owens jumped off stage and was hounded by a group of students, black and white, seeking selfies. Security had to step in to control the crowd. On Twitter, the speech was mostly praised.
Miss Lin
@Misslinlou
Hey @RealCandaceO I watched you Speaking at Liberty University Convocation, girl you killed it, I'm so glad we have you for our Voice, you speak with so much Common Sense, and I agree with you 100% #KeepItUp MAGA #BlessYou
...
But outside the arena at a small protest, Liberty senior Abigail Ferris held up a pro-#MeToo sign. It's the day before Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, testified before a Senate committee. Owens often dismisses the #MeToo movement as a Democratic political ploy and called Ford a liar who should serve time in prison.
"We're not directly protesting her," Ferris said. "But we are showing while she has made some disparaging remarks to the movement, that there are students on campus who respectfully disagree with her."
Luke Cromwell of Lynchburg, VA, holds a sign with a tweet from conservative commentator Candace Owens on the campus lawn of Liberty University. Owens was the school's convocation speaker on Sept. 26.]
More than anything, Owens preaches against victimhood, particularly among African Americans, a pull-yourself-up-by-your bootstraps mindset.
“I consider myself insanely privileged to be in this country," she said. "I try to tell people how much value there is in seeing yourself as privileged ... because if you see yourself as a victim, you’ll have that shade over your eyes in life and you’re not going to accomplish much."
She bolsters her message with an intriguing personal story, one that starts in poverty, involves a traumatic episode of racism and an I've-seen-the-dark-side political awakening. She sees it as the perfect antidote to liberal attacks on Republicans over race.
A 'victim' who hates the word
Owens grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, the middle child of three girls. Her father was a property manager and her mother an executive assistant. Even as a toddler, Owens didn't back down in a debate, her dad Robert Owens Jr., said.
The family grew up in poverty, she claims, living in a small apartment before moving into the home of her grandfather, who laid tobacco out to dry on a sharecropping farm at age 5 and faced the Ku Klux Klan.
View image on TwitterView image on Twitter
Candace Owens
?
@RealCandaceO
Happy birthday to the greatest man alive! I owe my spirit, my work ethic, and my “Owens temper” to you, granddaddy.
“the KKK used to come and shoot bullets at our house— and my daddy used to grab the rifle and shoot back at them boys!” ??
Never a victim! I love you.
...
"He is a man's man," Owens said. "That masculinity is now being taught as toxic, when in reality it's the one thing that grounded me as a child."
In 2007, Owens' senior year at Stamford High School, came an experience that shaped her personally – and eventually politically.
Four boys called her from a blocked number and left voicemails with racial epithets and threats of violence.
“They were calling me the N-word, they were saying they were going to put a bullet into the back of my head as they had done to Martin Luther King. They were calling me Rosa Parks. They were telling me that they were going to tar and feather my family,” she told the Liberty crowd.
The episode became enflamed because one of the boys was the son of then-Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy, the current Democratic governor of Connecticut. Owens, then 17, faced threats and harassment in school for weeks afterward, according to a lawsuit her father filed against the Stamford Board of Education. Robert Owens, in his filing, said the school district failed to protect his daughter from the harassment. The school board later settled with the family for $37,500, according to a settlement agreement provided by the board.
The Stamford Police Department said documents related to the case were sealed because those involved were minors and a spokesman would not confirm the outcome. But the Danbury News Times reported police arrested at least one student.
Owens was out of school for weeks because of the incident, which drew the attention of the NAACP, which defended her in the media. But Owens felt like a public relations pawn.
"I would come out of school and they would be outside with cameras and speaking, and I would stand there," she said. "It was really awful because then it sort of gave people that fire of like, 'she's doing this for attention.'"
The incident, Owens said, set in motion years ofanorexia, which lasted through college and into her working years.
"It was really just a manifestation of trying to control something in your life," she said.
Candace Owens speaks at Liberty University, retelling her story from high school in which a group of boys left her voicemails with racial slurs and threats.
Candace Owens speaks at Liberty University, retelling her story from high school in which a group of boys left her voicemails with racial slurs and threats. (Photo: Jasper Colt, USAT)
Today, she complains about the media framing her as the victim.
"What it taught me was how little value there was in victimhood," she said. "Now, according to the left, that should have been the best moment of my life."
In 2016, she wrote an op-ed in the Stamford Advocate defending the boys,which hints at what has become her candid speaking style.
"I'll be the first to say I am sorry," she wrote, "To all of them, having to endure that experience; a group of children dissected and labeled."
Years later, Owens chalks up the voicemails to poor decision-making, not racism.
"They were labeled these racists, and I never felt that they were racists," she said. "I felt that they were people who did something that was really stupid."
She said some of the boys have since thanked her.
"People should be allowed to evolve," she said.
Doxxing and media distrust
After high school, Owens enrolled at the University of Rhode Island to study journalism, but dropped out in 2010 because she said her loan was declined. She then moved to New York City, and found steady work at a private equity firm, where she worked for four and a half years, starting off as an assistant and working her way up to the vice president of administration.
In 2014, she started the website Degree 180, a now-defunct lifestyle blog.
"I wanted to find my voice," she said.
The website sometimes touched on politics – one contributor wrote the idea of a Trump presidency "makes my skin crawl." But Owens, listed as the founder and CEO, wrote mostly about relationships and sometimes sex. She did say in October 2015 that she welcomed the end of the Republican tea party movement and their "crazy antics."
In April 2016 Owens started fundraising for another venture, an anti-cyberbullying website named Social Autopsy – the rapid downfall of which would embolden her political views and distrust of the media.
Social Autopsy aimed to connect people's social media comments to their places of employment as a way to hold people accountable. But to targets of GamerGate, an online harassment campaign led by video gamers, it sounded like "doxxing," the term for exposing someone's personal information online. Owens denies this was the intent.
When Social Autopsy launched a $75,000 Kickstarter campaign, it drew criticism in blogs and a lengthy piece in New York Magazine. Kickstarter suspended the project after two days, arguing the "project's plan to 'dox' people were in violation of our rules."
Social Autopsy's coverage in the media made Owens a conservative overnight, she told Dave Rubin on his YouTube show "The Rubin Report" last year. To USA TODAY, she describes her political switch as the result of a perfect storm driven by an intense distaste for the media and Trump's rise.
"There's this guy who I used to watch on reality TV who's running for president of the United States and he says they're fake news," she said. "It was happening to me at the same time."
Candace Owens made a turn to conservative politics after her anti-cyberbullying website Social Autopsy was shut down by Kickstarter. It created in her a distrust of the media, something she shared with President Donald Trump.
Candace Owens made a turn to conservative politics after her anti-cyberbullying website Social Autopsy was shut down by Kickstarter. It created in her a distrust of the media, something she shared with President Donald Trump. (Photo: Jasper Colt, USAT)
The incident drew her to conservative outlets she'd formerly cast off as fringe, like Breitbart.com.
She also started exploring the writings of black conservatives, such as Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Like Owens, Sowell has alleged liberal attempts to stifle free speech on college campuses. He slammed the "liberal media" in a column for the conservative National Review in late 2016 regarding Trump's picks for top White House positions.
"They would be worried about anyone who has not been brainwashed in the political correctness that reigns among the intelligentsia," he wrote.
Juan Williams: Donald Trump has black cheerleaders. But what he really needs are tough lessons on race.
Opinion: White people, just mind your business and let people of color exist
Out of her self-immersion in conservative media and black conservatism came a new outlook, which Owens describes like a calling.
"I want to make a difference," she said. "I want people t know my story so that they know that it can be their story, that they’re in control of their own destiny."
To do that, she'd use a 21st Century technique to push the ideas of Sowell and others to a social media crowd.
"I said, ‘How can I bring that message that they’re saying so brilliantly to a wider audience?" she said. "'Oh, I’m like a millennial. I can do a YouTube channel. I’m hilarious.'"
YouTube to Fox to Kanye
Owens began making a series of YouTube videos in July 2017. Her first post features her "coming out" as a conservative to her parents, who are aghast at the news. All characters are played by Owens. In her most watched video, with 1.6 million views, she mocks a list of demands Black Lives Matter made of white people.
The videos kickstarted a new career as a conservative commentator, earning her airtime on Fox and, eventually, West's attention. When he tweeted about her in April, she reacted like a fan, not the collaborator she is now.
"Please take a meeting with me," she tweeted to West just minutes later. "I tell every single person that everything that I have been inspired to do, was written in your music."
@kanyewest
I love the way Candace Owens thinks
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Days later she appeared with West on TMZ,when he made his remarks about slavery. West drew widespread condemnation for his comments – including from other celebrities, like Stevie Wonder and Kobe Bryant – and later apologized.
But former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, another black Republican, defended him.
“People ought to be able to express their views,” she said. “Not all of us have to think politically the same way. I’ve said to people sometimes, ‘You know, I’ve been black all my life. You don’t have to tell me how to be black.’”
Not long after TMZ, Owens visited Trump at the White House.
Candace Owens
?
@RealCandaceO
This is the greatest President of our lifetime.
As a matter of fact, not opinion.
The honor was truly mine, @realDonaldTrump. #MAGA #KeepAmericaGreat
Owens doesn't think she's treated differently in conservative media because of her race, but does suggest there is a "sense of relief" with her in the fold.
"I think there's a draw. I think there's a validation," Owens said. "Imagine being a Republican and for years and years you try to say something and you get called a racist."
But Tasha Philpot, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, said Owens and West draw more attention because they're unique.
"They’re novel and so they can get media attention and coverage in ways that black Democrats can’t," Philpot said. "The idea that there is this special person, this aberration, exception to the rule, does certainly get you a platform that you wouldn’t have otherwise."
An exception because Trump's approval rating among African Americans lags at 10 percent, according to a most-recent Gallup poll. Just 8 percent of African Americans voted for Trump in 2016, which is slightly higher than Republican presidential contenders John McCain and Mitt Romney when they took on former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012; but slightly lower than former Republican President George W. Bush's outcomes with African Americans in 2000 and 2004, according to Cornell University's Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
"There’s nothing particularly appealing, especially in this highly racialized political environment that would draw blacks over to the Republican Party,” Philpot said.
Trump often touts black unemployment, which has reached lows. Although, as The Associated Press has reported, economists have argued the success is not Trump's doing but the result of years of economic recovery started years ago. The White House also distributed false statistics saying Trump has created more jobs for African Americans than Obama, something for which the White House later apologized.
"At this point, wearing a MAGA hat is a proxy for not being authentically black," Philpot said.
Owens has her share of black critics. Black Lives Matter protesters have heckled her speeches. The news website The Root, which focuses on African American issues, often takes aim at her.
"Either they are delusional or they earned their Ph.D.s from the history, sociology and political science departments at the University of the Sunken Place," wrote Michael Harriot in The Root, referring to Owens and West while referencing the hypnotic abyss from the film "Get Out."
It's the comments from other African Americans that bother her father, Robert Owens.
"What really makes me upset are the comments she gets from her own race," said Owens, a registered Independent who did not vote for Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016.
"We as African Americans need to stop believing that we can only vote Democrat," said Owens, whose daughter predicted a black exodus from the Democratic party on Fox News. "We need to stop using slurs against those that choose to vote Republican because, in my opinion, there are good people on both sides."
Philpot says black Republicans are different from black conservatives. Many African Americans identify as conservatives, which she ties to the importance of religion in black community. But, she says, not all of those black conservatives vote Republican.
“Usually (black Republicans) tend to have lower levels of group consciousness," Philpot said. "They define their conservatism not just in terms of being anti-government or reduced social spending but also in terms of blacks not relying on the government to get ahead.”
Owens insists she's not trying to convince people to become Republicans, but rather show them not to "blindly" trust in the media. She also comes out swinging against white progressives.
“Black people have become for white liberals like the puppy that they rescued from the pound,” she said. “White people that want to scream so much on behalf of black people that you can’t even hear what black people have to say. If a black conservative says, ‘No, thank you,’ they lose their minds because they’ve built their sense of worth on being the righteous white person.”
Changing minds
Owens' abrupt shift from liberal to conservative confounds some. Her critics often point to some anti-Trump posts on Degree180 to counter what she says on television.
“You wonder why did she flip her perspective," said Nikki Usher, a professor of media at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne. "Is it because she is somebody who genuinely has re-thought her ideological commitments or is this like a really good way to feed your ego and put yourself out there and establish a career?"
Usher suggests that a number of conservative pundits — Diamond and Silk, the black conservative duo popular on Facebook, as well as InfoWars' Alex Jones and the website's editor Paul Joseph Watson, whom Owens calls an "amazing friend and a true supporter" of hers — have found their way into the mainstream in a way "that didn't really exist before the internet."
Now people pay attention when someone is "taking very alternative positions that then gain attraction in the digital space and then cannot be ignored by sort of the more mainstream right-leaning sites," Usher said.
Owens bats down suggestions she has ulterior motives.
"It's just something that I believe in, and I love what I do," she said.
Candace Owen built a career as a conservative commentator in a little over a year. She started off on YouTube before being invited on to Fox News. She's since developed a friendship with rapper Kanye West. Here she is onstage during a speech at Liberty University on Sept. 26.
Candace Owen built a career as a conservative commentator in a little over a year. She started off on YouTube before being invited on to Fox News. She's since developed a friendship with rapper Kanye West. Here she is onstage during a speech at Liberty University on Sept. 26. (Photo: Jasper Colt, USAT)
Owens' story of political conversion is part of her pitch. Such stories have appealed to people for generations and been used by famous leaders like Ronald Reagan, Hillary Clinton and Malcolm X, said Don Waisanen an associate professor of communication at Baruch College-CUNY who wrote a book about political conversions.
"This is one of the most convincing arguments you can make in politics," he said.
Waisanen said most conversions go from liberal to conservative. He argues it resonates better with a crowd accustomed to religious redemption narratives.
"It’s a way of kind of arguing in a religious way without the overt religious overtones that you are going from one paradigm to the other,” he said. “That form of ‘I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see,’ it’s still maintained in these narratives.”
Whatever the draw, Owens now boasts a bigger profile than her boss.
"No one in the modern era of American politics has accomplished such a meteoric rise in the cultural and political world," said Kirk, the Turning Point founder. "Commentating on the news and doing punditry is a very small piece of Candace Owens. She is a movement leader."
For now, Owens won't pinpoint a future. She's planning to launch a podcast that touches on culture and politics, but says "there's no destiny."
She doesn't plan on running for public office as long as she's satisfied with the country's leadership.
"If I wanted to be the president, I would win," she said "I hope we don't need Candace for president. I hope it just is that America keeps on this trajectory and just that these social battles can die down. They're a little insane."
Follow Sean Rossman on Twitter: @SeanRossman
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https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrats.judiciary.house.gov/files/documents/Truth%20in%20Testimony%20Candace%20Owens.pdf
discloses nothing, even that she works for turn pt
says as VP to pvt equit firm in manhattan to its "administration" infamy "exploded" on youtube
liberal indoctrination at unis
==
who invited her? steve king?! mebbe not b/c he was de-platoformed/de-committeed
minority
- Doug **Collins, Georgia, Ranking Member
- Jim Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin
- Steve Chabot, Ohio
- Louie Gohmert, Texas
- Jim Jordan, Ohio
- Ken Buck, Colorado
- John Ratcliffe, Texas
- Martha Roby, Alabama
- Matt Gaetz, Florida
- Mike Johnson, Louisiana
- Andy Biggs, Arizona
- Tom McClintock, California
- Debbie Lesko, Arizona
- Guy Reschenthaler, Pennsylvania
- Ben Cline, Virginia
- Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota
- Greg Steube, Florida
https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/trump-fan-candace-owens-goes-down-in-flames-as-rep-ted-lieu-plays-her-bizarre-hitler-remarks-in-a-public-hearing/
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For over a year Republicans and right-wing activists have been promoting the false claim that conservatives are being “silenced” and marginalized on social media platforms. GOP lawmakers love the idea, despite it being entirely false, because it allows them to continue the victimization belief that is at the center of Trumpism: “If only liberals and brown people weren’t part of America we could go back to the way things were” idea. Things were never the way they think they were.
On Tuesday the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Hate Crimes and the Rise of White Nationalism, which was also to “foster ideas about what social media companies can do to stem white nationalist propaganda and hate speech online,” according to the Committee.
Democrats invited representatives from the Anti-Defamation League, Google, Facebook, and other organizations.Republicans invited Turning Point USA’s communications director Candace Owens.
Owens is infamous for her remarks that appeared to be supportive of Hitler, in which she said: “Whenever we say nationalism, the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler.”
“But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine,” Owens, speaking in London at a TPUSA recruitment event, said. “The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalise. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German. Everybody to look a different way. To me, that’s not nationalism.”
In fact, Hitler didn’t want to just have “things run well,” he wanted to – and did – exterminate tens of millions of people, including Jews, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and many more.
Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) played those remarks during Tuesday’s hearing.
.@RepTedLieu plays recording of Candace Owens: "I don't know Ms. Owens. I'm not going to characterize her. I'm going to let her own words do the talking. So, I'm going to play for you the first 30 seconds of a statement she made about Adolf Hitler."
Owens responded, only to embarrass herself further. Her remarks were so offensive the Chairman of the Committee, Jerry Nadler (D-NY) was forced to interject and instruct her that she was not allowed to disparage Members of Congress during a hearing in the manner in which she did.
Embedded video
CSPAN
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@cspan
Candace Owens: "I think it's pretty apparent that Mr. Lieu believes that black people are stupid and will not pursue the full clip…That was unbelievably dishonest…I'm deeply offended by the insinuation of revealing that clip without the question that was asked of me."
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Owens accuses Rep.Lieu of being dishonest and playing a selected clip from the entire video. It should be noted that the question that was asked of her when she made her remarks appearing to defend Hitler had nothing to do with Hitler. She chose to bring up Hitler.
Her remarks when publicized were so offensive that Turning Point USA chapters wrote letters denouncing her.
==
==
Trump’s re-election campaign has been producing news-style videos featuring numerous media figures, including commentators for CNN and Fox News.
The president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump has been hosting the video series “Real News,” which includes guest interviews and campaign propaganda. The videos, which are posted on the president's Facebook page and carry “paid for by Donald J. Trump for president” disclaimers, ask viewers to sign up for mobile alerts from the campaign, a list-building activity that the 2020 campaign can use to raise money and organize get-out-the vote activities.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Jeremy Barr reported on March 19 that conservative commentators and sisters Diamond and Silk appeared in a recent video with Lara Trump. Fox News attempted to distance itself from the campaign video by stating that Diamond and Silk “license short weekly videos to Fox Nation – they are not Fox News contributors or employees. When they appear on FNC and FBN, they do so as guests." That explanation contradictsFox News’ own identifications of the two as “Fox News Channel contributors,” “Fox Nation contributors,” and “Fox Nation hosts.”
Regardless of Diamond and Silk’s employment classification, several Fox News contributors have appeared in Trump campaign videos with Lara Trump. They include Deneen Borelli, Alveda King, David Bossie, and Mike Huckabee.
CNN analysts have also appeared in Trump campaign videos despite the president’s frequent trashing of the network as “fake news.”
[pix]CNN's David Urban and Stephen Moore with Lara Trump.
David Urban is a CNN commentator who previously worked as a paid consultant for Trump’s 2016 campaign. During a March Trump video appearance, the campaign identified him as the president of American Continental Group, a major lobbying firm that lobbies the Trump administration and Congress on a variety of issues. (Urban has used his CNN gig to specifically push a lobbying client and its interests without disclosing the connection to viewers.)
In that video, which did not mention his CNN role, Urban spoke like a Trump surrogate. The Republicancommentator, who directed Trump's 2016 operation in Pennyslvania, said that “Pennsylvania is always a tough state to win. I predict, I'll say it here again, I think we’re going to win in 2020. It’s going to be close, but we’re going to win, the president’s going to put the time in; you know, we’re going to work hard and we’re going to win. I have no doubt that he will win in 2020 in Pennsylvania." He also lied about the Green New Deal, claiming that “you’re not going to have a car; forget, you know, no cows ever again.” (Urban’s firm does lobbying work on behalf of oil and gas interests.)
At the conclusion of the video, Lara Trump thanked Urban for “the job you do every single day out there fighting for the president. You really do an incredible job, and we are so lucky to have you.” Urban responded by saying that he loves President Trump and relayed that people tell him, “You may not hear it on the mainstream media, but we really like” the president. Urban also appeared in a June 2018 video and touted Trump ahead of the then-upcoming midterm elections.
Stephen Moore is a senior economics analyst for CNN who advises Trump (during a recent appearance, CNN described Moore as “an informal White House adviser”). He has made several appearances on Trump’s video program and promoted Trump’s economic message.
Other media commentators who have appeared in the Trump campaign’s videos include Fox 5 DC host, Daily Caller video columnist, and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Stephanie Hamill; Talking Point USA’s Candace Owens; conservative troll Dinesh D’Souza; and Trump sycophant Bill Mitchell.
---
==
3/19
https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/trump-to-sign-executive-order-mandating-campus-free-speech/
no lnx
Trump to sign executive order mandating campus ‘free speech’
Trump to sign executive order mandating campus ‘free speech’ White House/Shealah Craighead
written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement March 21, 2019
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At 3:30 Thursday afternoon President Donald Trump is scheduled to sign the executive order he promised while speaking at the far right Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) several weeks ago. The order, framed as protecting…
At 3:30 Thursday afternoon President Donald Trump is scheduled to sign the executive order he promised while speaking at the far right Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)several weeks ago. The order, framed as protecting “free speech” on college and university campuses, is actually a direct threat to defund them by rescinding a wide array of federal grants for research and other programs.
Embedded video
CPAC 2020
?
@CPAC
“I will be signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research dollars” @realDonaldTrump #CPAC2019 #WhatMakesAmericaGreat
Trump isn’t actually advocating for “free speech,” he’s working to make it easier for far right extremist groups and their positions to enter the marketplace of ideas – unencumbered, and without context or warning, on the nation’s colleges and universities. It is a literal attempt to move the nation to the right – or alt-right – starting with college-aged Americans.
Leading up to the push for the executive order are several years of conservative outrage that came to national attention when far right wing or extremist pundits like Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, and Milo Yiannopoulos saw their speeches canceled at various colleges, mostly due to overwhelming outrage from students who pay thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to receive an education.
According to the President’s son, Donald Trump Jr., today’s executive order is the result of a “push” from the far right wing group Turning Point USA (TPUSA), founded by conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Donald Trump Jr.
?
@DonaldJTrumpJr
Super excited today that @realdonaldTrump is signing an executive order today to protect free speech rights for ALL students!
Great work by @TPUSA and @charliekirk11 who have been pushing this since the first time I met him years ago
A big momentous day! #MAGA
41.3K
5:36 AM - Mar 21, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
17.2K people are talking about this
Kirk, perhaps best known for being a close friend of Donald Trump Jr., is also known for the embarrassingly false tweets he produces on a regular basis. Trump Jr. and TPUSA are closely aligned, as are TPUSA and the Trump campaign. Politico calls Kirk “Trump’s man on campus,” and The Weekly Standard called him “Kid Trump.” Trump last year was interviewed by Kirk at a White House event for college students hosted by an anti-gay hate group.
One year ago, almost as if publishing a prediction, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) warned of “Turning Point USA’s blooming romance with the alt-right.”
Fast forward to this past December.
Kirk and TPUSA’s Communications Director Candace Owenstraveled to London to launch Turning Point in the UK, as Buzzfeed News reported last month.
Owens, in a discussion with potential recruits, brought up Hitler and, as many reports state, appeared to defend him, saying, “if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany.”
Headlines encapsulated her remarks:
“Candace Owens: Hitler Was ‘OK’ Until He Tried to Go Global” (Daily Beast)
“One of Trump’s most vocal black supporters seemed to defend Hitler in a recent speech” (Washington Post)
“Candace Owens’ Bonkers Take On Nationalism Includes A Defense Of Hitler” (Huffpost)
“Candace Owens: If Hitler Was Just a Nationalist, He’d Be Fine” (Ebony)
One year earlier, in December of 2017, the award winning journalist Jane Mayer at The New Yorker published an article on TPUSA titled, “A Conservative Nonprofit That Seeks to Transform College Campuses Faces Allegations of Racial Bias and Illegal Campaign Activity.”
That lengthy and in-depth article includes this disturbing revelation:
As Turning Point’s profile has risen, so has scrutiny of its funding and tactics. Internal documents that I obtained, as well as interviews with former employees, suggest that the group may haveskirted campaign-finance laws that bar charitable organizations from participating in political activity. Former employees say that they were directed to work with prominent conservatives, including the wife of the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in aid of Republican Presidential candidates in 2016. Perhaps most troubling for an organization that holds up conservatives as the real victims of discrimination in America, Turning Point USA is also alleged to have fostered an atmosphere that is hostile to minorities. Screenshots provided to me by a source show that Crystal Clanton, who served until last summer as the group’s national field director, sent a text message to another Turning Point employee saying, “i hate black people. Like fuck them all .?.?. I hate blacks. End of story.”
This is the organization that President Trump, the Trump family, and the Trump campaign are not only intimately involved with, but now creating national policy with.
All Americans, but especially college students, educators, researchers, and actual civil rights supporters and advocates, should be extremely concerned.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/the-shooters-manifesto-was-designed-to-troll/585058/
nl lnxtwit
In the hours after the horrific mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, people desperately searched the internet for any sign of a motive or meaning behind the attack. Early Friday, a number of unverified social-media posts surfaced, along with a bizarre manifesto posted to 8chan, rich with irony and references to memes.
Together, the posts suggest that every aspect of the shootings was designed to gain maximum attention online, in part by baiting the media. The shooter live-streamed the attack itself on Facebook, and the video was quickly shared across YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. Before committing the act, he shouted, “Remember, lads, subscribe to PewDiePie,” a reference to Felix Kjellberg, who runs YouTube’s most subscribed-to channel. The phrase itself is a meme started by PewDiePie’s fans, and its goal is to be reprinted.
Read: YouTube extremism and the long tail]
Kjellberg, who has previously found himself embroiled in controversy over alleged anti-Semitism, disavowed the shooting on Twitter Friday morning. “Just heard news of the devastating reports from New Zealand Christchurch. I feel absolutely sickened having my name uttered by this person. My heart and thoughts go out to the victims, families and everyone affected by this tragedy,” he wrote. By forcing Kjellberg to acknowledge the attack, the shooter succeeded in further spreading the word about the crime to Kjellberg’s tens of millions of followers.
@loudmouthjulia
"Subscribe to PewDiePie" is a meme that encompasses a misled belief that it's a fight for the disenfranchised; those constantly being pushed down. It's David vs Goliath. It's used on boards like 8chan as a rallying cry. It doesn't belong to PDP anymore — but we need to examine it...
Significant portions of the manifesto appear to be an elaborate troll, written to prey on the mainstream media’s worst tendencies. As the journalist Robert Evans noted, “This manifesto is a trap … laid for journalists searching for the meaning behind this horrific crime. There is truth in there, and valuable clues to the shooter’s radicalization, but it is buried beneath a great deal of, for lack of a better word, ‘shitposting.’”
[The Tech White Power Used to Go Viral
OLGA KHAZAN]
Shitposting is a slang term used to describe the act of posting trollish and usually ironic content designed to derail a conversation or elicit a strong reaction from people who aren’t in on the joke. Certain aspects of the shooter’s manifesto fall into this category. He includes Navy Seal Copypasta, a meme that originated on 4chan. He claims that Spyro: Year of the Dragon, a video game, taught him ethno-nationalism and that Fortnite taught him to “floss on the corpses,” referring to a viral dance move from the game. These absurd references are meant to troll readers
Jasmin Mujanovic
?
@JasminMuj
Replying to @JasminMuj
One more thought: the shooter makes repeated references to the “remove Kebab” meme, which is based on a propaganda video produced by Serb nationalist forces during the Bosnian War & Bosnian Genocide in 90s. Meshes w/ Obilic references & clear Breivik influence.
...
The shooter also credits the far-right personality Candace Owens with helping to “push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness.” Though the shooter could be a genuine fan of Owens, who has been known to espouse right-leaning views on immigration and gun control, this reference might be meant to incite Owens’s critics to blame her.
That doesn’t mean the racism expressed throughout the 74-page manifesto isn’t genuine. But the complexities of the crime are still unfolding, and as the New York Times journalist Kevin Roose cautioned, “The NZ shooter’s apparent manifesto is thick with irony and meta-text and very easy to misinterpret.” Unfortunately, when journalists report on these horrific acts, the shooter’s hateful messages are sometimes amplified in the process. But the origins of that hate and the shooter’s public postings do need to be examined, even when taking them at face value is difficult.
Mass killers have long exploited the media environments they operate within. The Zodiac killer gained notoriety by persuading newspapers to publish his cryptic messages. In 2015, a shooter in Virginia killed people during a live television broadcast.
As the internet and social media have democratized access to information, much of it spreads without necessary context. As the Verge writer Elizabeth Lopatto noted in 2015, “Our interactions with these killers were mediated by huge media gatekeepers—their manifestos were left at their homes, or sent to newspapers and TV stations. If the manifestos appeared at all, they were quoted from, rather than released in full. This is no longer the case.”
Read: The dangerous spread of extremist manifestos]
While this system of gatekeeping itself was undoubtedly problematic, since many of the gatekeepers upheld norms and power structures built on privilege, technology has upended our media environment so quickly that many people are ill-equipped to handle the new information environment. We’ve seen the consequences of this play out in the rise of fake news, thriving misinformation campaigns, and bizarre viral hoaxes warped by trolls to capitalize on people’s worst fears.
Before people can even begin to grasp the nuances of today’s internet, they can be radicalized by it. Platforms such as YouTube and Facebook can send users barreling into fringe communities where extremist views are normalized and advanced. Because these communities have so successfully adopted irony as a cloaking device for promoting extremism, outsiders are left confused as to what is a real threat and what’s just trolling. The darker corners of the internet are so fragmented that even when they spawn a mass shooting, as in New Zealand, the shooter’s words can be nearly impossible to parse, even for those who are Extremely Online.i
==
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/video-reveals-trump-loving-activist-candace-owens-suggesting-hitlers-plans-for-germany-were-fine-the-real-problem-is-globalism/
In a video posted on Twitter Friday by Media Matters for America’s John Whitehouse, right-wing activist Candace Owens shared disturbing comments about her views on nationalism and Adolf Hitler.
The video showed an event discussed in a BuzzFeed News article published Friday. It reported that the event, at which she was joined by fellow fan of President Donald Trump and founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, was held in December.
During the event, Owens was asked about her views of nationalism.
“I actually don’t have any problems at all with the word ‘nationalism.’ I think that the definition gets poisoned by elitists that actually want globalism. Globalism is what I don’t want,” she said. “Whenever we say nationalism, the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler. You know, he was a national socialist.”
She continued: “But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German. Everybody to look a different way. To me, that’s not nationalism. In thinking about how we could go bad down the line, I don’t really have an issue with nationalism. I really don’t.”
Of course, Hitler is famously one of history’s most horrendous dictators whose plan to “make Germany great” involved committing genocide internal to the country, not just outside its boundaries. This was driven by his nationalism — which Owens says she has no problem with — a monstrous view of what it meant to be German and who the nation’s enemies were. And the fact that she so carelessly dismisses this vicious part of the ideology is a perfect example of why those defending supposedly new versions of nationalism should not be taken seriously.
Watch the clip below:
also
https://twitter.com/existentialfish/status/1093923658446323712
==
in vid above she refers to replacement rate of bbaies in UK, which //, as well as defense of term nat'lism
King also expressed his belief in the "Great Replacement", a conspiracy theory that nonwhite immigration is an orchestrated plot to replace the white population of Europe. He suggested that George Soros, the Hungarian-born liberal billionaire philanthropist and Holocaust survivor, is behind it, insisting, "if you trace it back, you can connect it to his foundation." [you/Jews will not replace us]
==
hmmn, correlation is not cause?
11.02.18
:{:{}:
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-propaganda-veterans-push-candace-owens-blexit-campaign
no lnx
We’re not saying that Russia helped make #Blexit trend, but Twitter accounts with a history of pushing Kremlin fake news are playing a disproportionate role in amplifying the call for African-American voters to hop on the Trump Train.
Blexit, the brainchild of right-wing personality Candace Owens, is a nascent movement meant to urge black voters to leave the Democratic Party.
Owens, the communications director for campus conservative group Turning Point USA, announced the campaign last Saturday at a Turning Point conference in Washington. But while Blexit is less than a week old, it’s already been beset with controversies. Owens initially claimed that rapper Kanye West, who praised her politics earlier this year on Twitter, designed Blexit’s “X” logo and the 90’s-style colors of its merchandise. But West claimed in a series of tweets Tuesday that he had nothing to do with Blexit, distancing himself from Owens and her group. Owens eventually apologized to West, but insisted that Blexit will continue.
Additionally, a pre-existing organization also called Blexit is threatening to sue over Owens’ use of the name. (Owens didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story)
Despite the hiccups, the torrent of tweets pushing the Blexit hashtag on Twitter gives the impression that African-Americans are rejecting the Democratic party in droves. Over 15 hours ending Friday afternoon, the Daily Beast captured more than 250,000 tweets amplifying the Blexit movement.
“40,000, or16 percent, of the Blexit tweets we collected came from accounts that previously pushed Kremlin propaganda.”
There’s no easy way to tell how many of those tweets are swelling from Blexit’s target demographic rather than already-committed GOP supporters. But by cross-referencing the tweets with data The Daily Beast collected during previous tweet storms, we can tell a little about what the putative Blexiters supported in the past.
It turns out that approximately 40,000, or 16 percent, of the Blexit tweets we collected came from accounts that previously pushed Kremlin propaganda in one of two key Russian disinformation campaigns: one attempting to exonerate the Syrian government in a deadly chemical weapons attack, another targeting last year’s presidential election in France in support of a failed 11th-hour intervention by Russia’s GRU, its military intelligence agency.
RELATED IN TECH
Russian Trolls Sue Facebook, Their Old Propaganda Machine
New Russia Breach Claim as Global Lawmakers Shame Zuckerberg
Are Silicon Valley’s Autoreplies Taking Over Our Minds?]
The Syria-related campaign unfolded on the heels of the Syrian government’s April 4, 2017 chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in which at least 80 people were killed, including 20 children. In the aftermath, Donald Trump ordered an airstrike on a Syrian military airfield to retaliate for the war crime, while the Russian government rushed to the defense of Syria's Kremlin-backed autocrat, Bashar al-Assad. Russian trolls in the Internet Research Agency and in the GRU are known to have aggressively pushed a fake story that the attack was a frame up targeting Assad—a “false flag.”
“We consistently see Russia-linked accounts pushing Syrian talking points,” said Ryan Fox, COO of New Knowledge.
The “false flag” meme was pushed in a week-long storm of tweets from at least 88,000 different Twitter accounts, many of them since deleted by Twitter. Thousands of the surviving accounts, 7,427 of them, are boosting Blexit today.
A second Russian social media campaign came one month after #falseflag, when Russia’s GRU intelligence agency attempted to repeat its 2016 U.S. success in the 2017 French election, dumping emails and documents it hacked from the Gmail accounts of people connected to now-French President Emmanuel Macron using the hashtag #MacronLeaks.
BLEXIT BOOBOO
Pro-Trump Activists Blame Turning Point USA for Losing Kanye
Will Sommer]
Unlike the DNC leaks, “Macron Leaks” contained nothing of consequence, and were promoted most heavily on social media by Pizzagaters and pseudonymous accounts. Today, 4,461 accounts that amplified Macron Leaks during the French election are throwing their weight behind the Blexit movement. And 2,678 of the accounts using the Blexit hashtag amplified both #falseflag and #macronleaks.
Our monitoring captured 78,134 accounts pushing Blexit. In total, 12 percent of those accounts championed those earlier Russian disinformation efforts.
Russia’s Internet Internet Agency heavily targeted the black community before and after the 2016 presidential race. Most of the trolls’ Facebook ad buy was aimed at African-Americans, and the Russians enjoyed a sizable following on fake activism pages they set up with names like Black Matters US and Do Not Shoot Us. The IRA even recruited two men from Nigeria to pose as Americans in their own YouTube show, called “Williams and Kalvin,” where they tried to persuade black voters to support Donald Trump, just like Blexit today.
None of this means the accounts that promoted Kremlin causes and now push Blexit are all Russian trolls—Americans are uniquely receptive to foreign disinformation, and every Russian troll operation enjoys some level of organic amplification from its target audience. As for the Blexit movement, the size and shape of its genuine participants will become clear on Tuesday, when Americans go to the polls for the midterm elections—no Russian bots allowed.
Kevin Poulsen
@kpoulsen
Kevin.Poulsen@thedailybeast.com
Will Sommer
William.Sommer@thedailybeast.com
---
There were plenty of voices putting those ideas forward though, including on this site. Are they all Russian trolls, or did some people buy into it?
Some on the far left genuinely believe that the Democratic party is just as bad as the Republicans.
A good chunk of people honestly can't vocalize why they hate Hillary Clinton from a policy perspective, and a lot of that goes to years of right wing propaganda, including the 2016 rush.
The #WalkAway /CandaceOwens/Kanye stuff this year was so embarrassingly transparent after what we saw in 2016 that they got laughed out of the room.
The GOP gave up on that nonsense with LGBT voters and women, the mask was completely off this cycle.
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The Russian campaign was the subject of Senate hearings last year and has been widely scrutinized by academic experts. The new reports largely confirm earlier findings: that the campaign was designed to attack Hillary Clinton, boost Trump and deepen divisions in American society.
The Washington Post reported last night that the Senate report also detailed efforts byRussia’s disinformation teamsto target Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller** III as a threat to Trump, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies.
New Knowledge gave particular attention to the Russians’ focus on African-Americans, which is evident to anyone who examines collections of their memes and messages.
The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.organd blacksoul.us. On YouTube, the largest share of Russian material covered the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality, with channels called “Don’t Shoot” and “BlackToLive.”
The report does not seek to explain the heavy focus on African Americans. But the Internet Research Agency’s tactics echo Soviet propaganda efforts from decades ago that often highlighted racism and racial conflict in the United States, as well as recent Russian influence operations in other countries that sought to stir ethnic strife.
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mason weaver it's ok the leave the plantation the new undergd rr?]
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amplified by kanye
youtube monetized, HQ attack b/c woman thot blocked, rt has used better/1st? echo/escalator?
alt rt uses effectively see RAM and red elephant
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html
NYT bari IDW:
closest thing to a phone book for the I.D.W. is a sleek website that lists the dramatis personae of the network, including Mr. Harris; Mr. Weinstein and his brother and sister-in-law, the evolutionary biologists Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying; Jordan Peterson, the psychologist and best-selling author; the conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and Douglas Murray; Maajid Nawaz, the former Islamist turned anti-extremist activist; and the feminists Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Christina Hoff Sommers. But in typical dark web fashion, no one knows who put the website up.
...
But they all share three distinct qualities. First, they are willing to disagree ferociously, but talk civilly, about nearly every meaningful subject: religion, abortion, immigration, the nature of consciousness. Second, in an age in which popular feelings about the way things ought to be often override facts about the way things actually are, each is determined to resist parroting what’s politically convenient. And third, some have paid for this commitment by being purged from institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought — and have found receptive audiences elsewhere.
“People are starved for controversial opinions,” said Joe Rogan, an MMA color commentator and comedian who hosts one of the most popular podcasts in the country. “And they are starved for an actual conversation.
...
no lnx
Ben Shapiro’s podcast, which airs five days a week, gets 15 million downloads a month. Sam Harris estimates that his “Waking Up” podcast gets one million listeners an episode. Dave Rubin’s YouTube show has more than 700,000 subscribers.
Offline and in the real world, members of the I.D.W. are often found speaking to one another in packed venues around the globe. In July, for example, Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray and Mr. Harris will appear together at the O2 Arena in London.
But as the members of the Intellectual Dark Web become genuinely popular, they are also coming under more scrutiny. On April 21, Kanye West crystallized this problem when he tweeted seven words that set Twitter on fire: “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.”
Candace Owens, the communications director for Turning Point USA, is a sharp, young, black conservative — a telegenic speaker with killer instincts who makes videos with titles like “How to Escape the Democrat Plantation” and “The Left Thinks Black People Are Stupid.” Mr. West’s praise for her was sandwiched inside a longer thread that referenced many of the markers of the Intellectual Dark Web, like the tyranny of thought policing and the importance of independent thinking. He was photographed watching a Jordan Peterson video.
All of a sudden, it seemed, the I.D.W. had broken through to the culture-making class, and a few in the group flirted with embracing Ms. Owens as their own.
Yet Ms. Owens is a passionate Trump supporter who has dismissed racism as a threat to black people while arguing, despite evidence to the contrary, that immigrants steal their jobs. She has also compared Jay-Z and Beyoncé to slaves for supporting the Democratic Party.
Many others in the I.D.W. were made nervous by her sudden ascendance to the limelight, seeing Ms. Owens not as a sincere intellectual but as a provocateur in the mold of Milo Yiannopoulos. For the I.D.W. to succeed, they argue, it needs to eschew those interested in violating taboo for its own sake.
“I’m really only interested in building this intellectual movement,” Eric Weinstein said. “The I.D.W. has bigger goals than anyone’s buzz or celebrity.”...
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mma
Owens burst onto the scene recently afterKanye West praised her way of thinking. She is the communications director for Turning Point USA, a group for young pro-Trump supporters that once staged a protest where members all wore diapers.
Owens made more noise this week when she blastedthe #MeToo movement, claiming it was a witch hunt on men. Unbelievably, she also claimed that she talked to CEOs and men in politics, who told her that they were not hiring women. While normal people would be outraged by the admission of illegal hiring practices, Owens used it as a reason to attack #MeToo.
Owens' comments even received criticism from conservative women who pointed out that her rhetoric is damaging to survivors and victims. And that's not the only criticism coming from the right. A competing group for young conservatives wrote a memo calling out Turning Point as damaging. In return, Turning Point seems to have leaked information to a host at Alex Jones' Infowars who Owens has recently praised.
Also: Turning Point held a conference for women. It was full of sexists.
==
horo ucsc rep praise"
i know all is pol corr; take it from me, i was raised by commies, invent by Mao, greatest murdered; my parent say do not deviate from party line, not cute; waited 30 years, bootheels on necks of inner city blks; it wd take blk leader to break, and candace and kanye west, very courageous and accomplished; left are bullies, went after his adidas contract; if you do, i will take my fans of adidas and they backed down; his new album top 7 on spotify, so greAT WAR going on, earthshaking conseq if blk ppl take back __ mccarthyism call race traitor, it cd be great change;
==
wiki
Owens is an American conservative commentator, and activist.[1][2][3] She is known for her pro-Trump commentary, and criticism of Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Party.[4][5][6] She is the Director of Urban Engagement at Turning Point USA.[7]
Early life and education
Born to an African American family and raised in Stamford, Connecticut,[8] she is a graduate of Stamford High School.[1] In 2007, while a senior in high school, she received hurtful and threatening racist phone calls that were traced to a car in which the 14-year-old son of then mayor Dannel Malloy was present.[1] Owens' family sued the Stamford Board of Education in federal court alleging that the city did not protect her rights, resulting in a $37,500 settlement.[1][9]
Owens was pursuing an undergraduate degree in journalism at the University of Rhode Island.[8], but did not graduate. Afterwards, she worked for Vogue magazine.[1] In 2012, she took a job as an administrative assistant for a private equity firm.[1]
Career
Anti-cyberbullying campaign and doxing
Having experienced online harassment, Owens launched SocialAutopsy.com in 2016, a website she said would expose bullies on the Internet.[1][10] The site would have solicited users to take screenshots of offensive posts and send them to the website where they would be categorized by the user's name.[1] It was being crowdfunded on Kickstarter. The proposal was immediately controversial, drawing criticism and comment from a variety of sources on the propriety of de-anonymizing (doxing) Internet users.[11] The idea behind the Kickstarter in Owens' words:
“We attach [people’s] words to their places of employment, and anybody in the entire world can search for them. What we are doing is figuratively lifting the masks up so nobody can hide behind, you know, Twitter handles or privatized profiles. It’s all real, and it’s all researchable. You can still say whatever you want to say on social media, but you have to be willing to stand by your words.”[12]
According to The Daily Dot, "People from all sides of the anti-harassment debate were quick to criticize the database, calling it a public-shaming list that would encourage doxing and retaliatory harassment."[13] Zoe Quinn, founder of the Crash Override Network and an online bullying victim (see Gamergate controversy), called her to request that she stop her project.[12] Randi Lee Harper of the Online Abuse Prevention Initiativealso requested that she desist, suggesting that she did not fully understand cyber-bullying (due to Owens having referred to Quinn as a leader of Gamergate).[12] Owens responded that Social Autopsy was not meant to be a doxing platform and that no one making abusive posts anonymously would be "outed" by name or place of employment. Kickstarter suspended her funding campaign, and the website was never created, despite having created profiles on over 22,000 individuals (per their assertion).[12] The site has since been closed.
Media and conservative activism
Prior to 2017, Owens ran a website that frequently criticized conservatism and mocked then-candidate Donald Trump.[4][14] By 2017, she had become prominent in conservative circles for her pro-Trump commentary and for criticizing liberal narratives around structural racism, systemic inequality, and identity politics (the kind of content that her website previously trafficked in).[4][5][6]
In 2015, Owens founded the website Degree180.[4] The website frequently posted anti-conservative and anti-Trump content, including mockery of his penis size.[4] Owens said in one of her postings that it was “good news” that the “Republican Tea Party ... will eventually die off (peacefully in their sleep, we hope).”[4] In one article she wrote that the antics of the Tea Party Movement were "bat-shit-crazy".[15][10] When Buzzfeed Newsin May 2018 reported on the anti-Trump content on Degree180, Owens described the Buzzfeed reporter as a "despicable creature" and alleged that Buzzfeed had threatened the former writers of Degree180 (something which Buzzfeed rejects).[4]
In 2017, Owens began posting politically themed videos to YouTube.[4] She launched Red Pill Black, a website and YouTube channel that promotes black conservatism in the United States.[16][17] She is known for her criticism of Black Lives Matter.[6][18][3][19] She has described Black Lives Matter protesters as "a bunch of whiny toddlers, pretending to be oppressed for attention."[20] She has argued that African Americans have a "victim mentality" and often refers to the Democratic Party as a "plantation".[21][18] She has argued that the American left "like black people to be government-dependent".[22] She has argued that black people have been brainwashed to vote for Democrats.[5] She has argued that police violence against black people is not about racism.[18][20]
On November 21, 2017, at the MAGA Rally and Expo in Rockford, Illinois, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk announced her appointment as their director of urban engagement.[7] Turning Point's hiring of Owens occurred in the wake of allegations of racism at Turning Point.[4]
Owens is staunchly pro-Trump.[5][6] She has characterized Trump as the “savior” of Western civilization.[6] She has argued that Trump has neither engaged in rhetoric that is harmful to African Americans nor proposed policies that would harm African Americans.[21][10] Following Kanye West's return to Twitter in April 2018, West tweeted "I love the way Candace Owens thinks."[23] The tweet was met with derision among some of West's fans.[24] President Donald Trump stated that Owens "is having a big impact on politics in our Country...She represents an ever expanding group of very smart 'thinkers,' and it is wonderful to watch and hear the dialogue going on...so good for our Country!"[25]
Owens has appeared on The Rubin Report, Fox News and InfoWars.[26][10][5] According to The Guardian and the Daily Beast, Owens has referred to police killings of black people as a trivial matter to African Americans.[21][10] In May 2018, Owens suggested that "something bio-chemically happens" to women who do not marry or have children, and she linked to the Twitter handles of Sarah Silverman, Chelsea Handler and Kathy Griffin, saying that they were "evidentiary support" of this theory.[27][28] Silverman responded, saying "It seems to me that by tweeting this, you would like to maybe make us feel badly. I’d say this is evidenced by ur effort to use our twitter handles so we would see. My heart breaks for you, Candy. I hope you find happiness in whatever form that takes."[27] Owens responded, accusing Silverman of supporting terrorists and crime gangs.[27]
Political views
Previously a liberal anti-Donald Trump Democrat who "didn't care about politics", since April 2016, Owens is now a pro-Donald Trump conservative commentator and part of the red pill movement. She claims she was "always a conservative." She did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. She says she values economic issues over social issues.[26] She stated that “Being conservative is like being gay in the 1980s,”.[29] The Guardian has described her as "ultra-conservative", the Daily Beast has described her as "far-right", the New York Magazine and Columbia Journalism Review described her as "right-wing", and the Pacific Standard described her as "alt-right."[30][31][21][10][32] She states that liberalism and feminism is no longer liberal, but fascism, and true liberalism and feminism is classical liberalism. She opposes the U.S. national anthem protests and called for all NFL players who protest to be fired. She criticized both Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, along with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that Bill Clinton signed into law. She is critical of the War on Drugs, habitual offender laws, stop and frisk, and supports legalization of cannabis. She supports school choice, abolishing the minimum wage, and deregulating venture enterprise.[26]
Owens opposes over prescription of pharmaceutical drugs. She is critical of affirmative action.[26][33][34] She praised H.R.1, supports same-sex marriage and called abortion "murder", although doesn't have a position on abortion per se. She wants Planned Parenthood defunded of federal tax dollars and claims it has "decreased" the African American population in the United States. She believes the pro-choice movement is just about "population control."[35][26][36][37][38][39] She states that she "1,010% support the transgender community." She's part of the drop the T movement, which seeks to separate the issues of transgender community from the LGB community. She believes there are only two genders and mocks the concept of more than two genders. She supports post-op transgender individuals serving in the United States military, but opposes transitioningtransgender individuals from serving in the United States military, along with the United States military funding sex reassignment surgery.[40][41][42][26] She attended the opening of the United States embassy in Jerusalem, Israel and is critical of the 2018 Gaza border protests.[43][44] She is a member of the National Rifle Association.[45] She is critical of open borders policies.[2] She supports Donald Trump's proposed border wall around Mexico's border.[46] She stated that "Every single illegal immigrant should be dropped from welfare programs, immediately."[47] She has called for the deportation of all recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.[48] She supports voter ID laws.[49]
Owens described the #MeToo Movement - which was an international movement against sexual harassment and assault - as "stupid" and said that she "hated" the movement.[50] Owens wrote that the #MeToo Movement was premised on the idea that "women are stupid, weak & inconsequential."[50]
In May 2018, Owens praised Louis Farrakhan's endorsement of Trump, describing it as “a really big deal” and “relevant.”[50] After Owens received criticism from conservative figures for praising Farrakhan - who has a history of anti-semitic remarks - Owens deleted the tweet.[50]
Owens appeared that same month on The Joe Rogan Experience and stated she did not believe in anthropogenic climate change.[51]
References
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^c^ ^d^ ^e^ ^f^ ^g^ ^h^ Cuda, Amanda (March 5, 2016). "We were children. I wasn't the only victim". Connecticut Post.
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b Nagle, Angela (December 2017). "The Lost Boys The young men of the alt-right could define American politics for a generation". The Atlantic. Candace Owens, a popular young black conservative also known as Red Pill Black, has mastered new media platforms, but in service of advocating for something closer to a traditional strain of conservatism: She’s critical of the press, feminism, and open borders, but supports gay marriage
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^"In Kanye West, the Right Sees Truth-Telling and a Rare A-List Ally". The New York Times. 2018-04-27. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^c^ ^d^ ^e^ ^f^ ^g^ ^h^ ^i^ ^"The Newest Star Of The Trump Movement Ran A Trump-Bashing Publication -- Less Than Two Years Ago". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 2018-05-16.
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^c^ ^d^ ^e^ Ohlheiser, Abby (2018-04-25). "Analysis | 'The mob can't make me not love him': How Kanye West joined the pro-Trump Internet". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^c^ ^d^ ^e^ Kornhaber, Spencer. "What Kanye West and Shania Twain See in Donald Trump". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^"In Liberal Illinois, TPUSA's Charlie Kirk And Other Speakers Strike A Chord With Conservative Crowds – Turning Point USA News". 2018-05-03. Archived from the original on 2018-05-03. Retrieved 2018-06-13.
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b
. The Rubin Report. September 28, 2017. - Jump up Danbury News Times: "Racist threats case filed by Stamford High student settled for $37,500" January 23, 2008
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^c^ ^d^ ^e^ ^f^ Zimmerman, Amy (2018-05-09). "Meet Candace Owens, Kanye West's Toxic Far-Right Consigliere". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- Jump up "The Strange Tale of Social Autopsy, the Anti-Harassment Start-up That Descended Into Gamergate Trutherism". Select All. Retrieved 2018-04-26.
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^c^ ^d^ ^New Yorker Magazine: "The Strange Tale of Social Autopsy, the Anti-Harassment Start-up That Descended Into Gamergate Trutherism" By Jesse Singal April 16, 2016
- Jump up Controversial bully shaming database loses Kickstarter but will launch anyway. The Daily Dot, 15 April 2016
- Jump up Sanchez, Luis (2018-05-15). "Activist praised by Trump once ran online publication that mocked him: report". TheHill. Retrieved 2018-05-16.
- Jump up Owens, Candace (4 October 2015). "News Update: The Republican Tea Party is Led by the Mad Hatter". Degree180. Archived from the original on 23 August 2017. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
- Jump up Watkins, D (September 25, 2017). "Candace Owens of Red Pill Black, the toxic right's newest African-American star". Salon.
- Jump up Fox News: "Liberals sick of the alt-left are taking 'the red pill'" By Elizabeth Ames September 13, 2017
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^c^ ^"Who is Candace Owens, Kanye West's favorite new thinker?". The Daily Dot. 2018-05-14. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- Jump up "The ignorance of Kanye West". Vox. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b Scott, Eugene (2018-04-22). "Analysis | Kanye West's embrace of a black Trump supporter not well-received". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^c^ ^d^ Lartey, Jamiles (2018-05-09). "Trump praises controversial pundit Candace Owens as a 'very smart thinker'". the Guardian. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- Jump up "'I love the way Candace Owens thinks'". NewsComAu. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- Jump up "Kanye West tweets that he likes the way far-right personality Candace Owens "thinks"". The FADER. Retrieved 2018-04-22.
- Jump up "Kanye West Applauds Black Lives Matter Critic; Many Fans Revolt: 'This Is So Disturbing'". TheWrap. 2018-04-21. Retrieved 2018-04-22.
- Jump up Shelbourne, Mallory (2018-05-09). "Trump praises conservative activist Candace Owens as a 'very smart thinker'". TheHill. Retrieved 2018-05-09.
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^c^ ^d^ ^e^ ^f The Rubin Report (28 September 2017).
– via YouTube. - ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^c^ ^"Candace Owens Gets Gently Dunked on by Sarah Silverman Over 'Women Who Don't Marry' Tweet". SFGate. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- Jump up "Sarah Silverman responds to conservative's suggestion that single women without children are 'bio-chemically' affected". Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- Jump up "Right-wing firebrand wows American Experiment forum - MN Spokesman-Recorder - MSR News Online". 16 May 2018.
- Jump up "Why Is Kanye West Sounding Like the Alt-Right?".
- Jump up Feldman, Brian. "Kanye West, Galaxy Brain". Select All. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- Jump up "Politics meet publishing in books by Chozick, Farrow, Goldberg, Tapper". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 2018-05-18.
- Jump up Boller, Jay. "Candace Owens in Minneapolis: Kanye's favorite 'free thinker' is coming to speak - City Pages". City Pages.
- Jump up "The Problem with Candace Owens - Quillette". 8 May 2018.
- Jump up "Candace Owens on Twitter".
- Jump up Fouriezos, Nick. "This Conservative Convert Dishes Out 'Red Pills' Online".
- Jump up "Candace Owens on Twitter".
- Jump up "Candace Owens on Twitter".
- Jump up "Candace Owens on Twitter".
- Jump up "Candace Owens on Twitter".
- Jump up "Candace Owens on Twitter".
- Jump up Candace Owens (28 July 2017).
– via YouTube. - Jump up "Candace Owens on Twitter".
- Jump up "Candace Owens: 'Not a single elected Democrat is here to celebrate this historic event in Jerusalem'". 14 May 2018.
- Jump up "Candace Owens on Twitter".
- Jump up "Candace Owens on Twitter".
- Jump up "Candace Owens on Twitter".
- Jump up "Candace Owens on Twitter".
- Jump up "Candace Owens on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 2018-06-13. Voter identification is a MUST....
- ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b ^c^ ^d^ Sommer, Will (2018-06-13). "Conservatives Turn On Candace Owens, Kanye West's Favorite Republican". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2018-06-13.
- Jump up "Joe Rogan Experience #1125 - Candace Owens". Player FM. Retrieved 14 June 2018.
Further reading
- Pavia, Will (June 9, 2018), "Interview with Candace Owens", The Times.
External links
- 1990 births
- African-American journalists
- African-American religious skeptics
- American activists
- American women television journalists
- Classical liberals
- Conservatism in the United States
- Female YouTubers
- Living people
- People from Stamford, Connecticut
- University of Rhode Island alumni
==
https://www.mediamatters.org/people/candace-owens
no lnx
Candace Owens
TPUSA’s communications director, Candace Owens, is a vicious critic of the #MeToo movement. She has attacked its leaders and maliciously defamed and insulted victims of abuse. Owens has also maligned feminism and she often promotes sexist and demeaning tropes.
Owens has been a vocal critic of the #MeToo movement, which has helped elevate the voices of people who have experienced abuse and has led to the rightful downfall of numerous abusive men. Owens, however, has accused the movement of turning “sexual assault into a trend,” contended that its premise is that “women are stupid, weak & inconsequential,” and claimed the movement is at fault for men who won’t hire women. Owens’ attacks on #MeToo were so tone deaf and clueless that even conservative women condemned them, causing at least one conservative organization to pull out of the conference, and leading TPUSA’s Kirk to beseech attendees not to attack Owens publicly.
Owens also wrote that the “entire #metoo” movement was evidence of how “vicious and cunning women can be when they feel scorned.”
She argued that the leaders of the movement “were at one time willing to trade sex for career advancements” and accused them of leading a “political witch hunt.”
Owen’s has promised that her 2018 TPUSA speech will center on why she “hate[s] the #metoo movement.”
Owens has claimed that women “are being systematically taught to equate ‘regret’ with ‘rape,’” an old and incorrect assertion that is sometimes used to minimize the reality of sexual assault.
She has accused “modern feminism” of “singlehandedly (sic) deteriorating relationships and eventual motherhood” and argued that feminists “hate men” and are “miserable.” She also claimed that “if you believe in equality between men and women, you cannot be a feminist today.”
Owens has perpetuated sexist tropes with such statements as “Women are naturally jealous creatures. It’s not a trait they grow out of, they just get better at hiding it.”
She once relayed the “interesting theory” that “something bio-chemically happens to women who don’t marry and/or have children” to her Twitter followers. She offered comedians Chelsea Handler, Kathy Griffin, and Sarah Silverman as “evidentiary support.” In a similar vein, she noted that “the most vicious perpetuators of modern feminism almost never have any children.”
Jordan Peterson
Right-wing YouTube star and Canadian professor Jordan Peterson advances a philosophy that demonizes and demeans women, refuses to respect the needs of transgender women, and shares videos that have been described as a gateway into the “alt-right” for men suffering from depression.
Peterson has argued for a hierarchical system built around gender and has condescendingly claimed that those who view our culture as an “oppressive patriarchy” simply don’t want to “admit” that the “current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.”
During a discussion about the “incel” (short for involuntarily celibate) who murdered 10 people in Toronto, Canada, at least in part because of his antipathy toward women, Peterson suggested that the “cure” for violent men is “enforced monogamy” to ensure that lower-status men get to have sex with women.
Peterson has argued that “conscientious and agreeable women” are more likely to prioritize their families over their work.
He has questioned whether “feminists avoid criticizing Islam because they unconsciously long for masculine dominance?” and asked, “Is it possible that young women are so outraged because they are craving infant contact in a society that makes that very difficult?”
He warned against women trying to “usurp” men.
He has called Nazi sympathizer and unapologetic anti-feminist Milo Yiannopoulos “unstoppable” and “an amazing person.”
Peterson ardently rejects the right of transgender people to be called by their prefered pronouns and insists that calling people by the pronouns they prefer won’t “do [them] any good in the long run.” In reality, misgendering is a cruel and dangerous act.
Candace Owens says she speaks to CEOs and men in politics who won't hire women. She blames #MeToo.
Video ››› June 12, 2018 5:04 PM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF
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Even conservative women are shredding Candace Owens' attack on the #MeToo movement
Owens claimed #MeToo treats women as “stupid, weak & inconsequential.” Even conservatives clapped back.
Blog ››› June 12, 2018 1:59 PM EDT ››› CRISTINA LóPEZ G.
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Candace Owens, communications director for Turning Points USA, attacked the #MeToo movement on Twitter on June 11, claiming that it treats women as “stupid, weak & inconsequential.” Owens, whose profile skyrocketed after rapper Kanye West promoted her brand of hot takes on Twitter, also stated that #MeToo had “turned sexual assault into a trend,” an absurdity akin to claiming that fire alarms are turning fires into a trend.
By elevating the voices of accusers, the #MeToo movement has been pivotal in spotlighting powerful figures who had gotten away with sexual misconduct and violence. Owens’ ignorant attack faced immediate criticism. Even conservative women, who typically espouse anti-feminist views, spoke out against it.
Kimberly Corban, a rape survivor and an NRATV favorite due to her pro-gun advocacy, said she disagreed with Owens and suggested they “get together” to talk:
Corban also pointed out why Owens’ words could be damaging to survivors and victims, while explaining that #MeToo “isn’t a problem with women” but rather a problem that stems from a culture that forces victims into silence.
Amber Athey, a breaking news editor for The Daily Caller and a columnist for Catholic Vote, called Owens’ tweets “an ignorant take” and “ridiculously unfair”:
According to Athey, Owens’ cluelessness on #MeToo comes from taking “the conservative idea of personal responsibility” and warping and twisting it to “unimaginable levels.”
Rita Panahi, who works for the Herald Sun, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia, and hosts The Friday Show at conservative network Sky News, responded to Owens that “blaming the victim for being victimised isn’t helpful”:
Cassandra Fairbanks, who writes for The Gateway Pundit, a conspiracy theory-friendly and error-filled outlet, called out Owens for her “bad tweet”:
Some conservative men were also shocked by the ludicrous comments. Benji Backer, founder and president of the American Conservative Coalition, shared his own experiences of being subjected to sexual misconduct and called Owens’ attacks “abhorrent” as well as “asinine & cowardly”:
Jerry Dunleavy, an alum of Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign who works for Judicial Watch, explained why Owens’ take was “exactly wrong”:
Caleb Hull, a senior editor at Independent Journal Review, suggested Owens “will do or say anything for the attention”:
Hull might be onto something. Owens is slated to speak at Turning Point’s upcoming Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Dallas, TX. With her tweet, she was likely attempting to exploit a sensitive topic to draw more attention to her speech, in which she has promised to explain why she hates the #MeToo movement.
Owens’ skyrocketing ascent to conservative fame has, after all, always rested on wildly inaccurate assertions. She has claimed that police brutality is not an issue the Black community faces, blatantly dismissed the threats that white supremacy presents, and volleyed toxic, inaccurate attacks at the immigrant community, including claiming that undocumented immigrants are voting illegally and that they are “directly harming the black community” by taking jobs.
Kennedy Copeland, an advancement associate at Owens’ own Turning Points USA, attempted to distance the organization from Owens’ views after she tweeted about #MeToo, claiming to “respectfully disagree” with her statement. But given that TPUSA considers “grab them by the pussy” apologist Jeanine Pirro and enforced-monogamy supporter Jordan Peterson worthy ambassadors for its young women’s leadership summit, TPUSA’s views on women and victims of sexual violence and misconduct may actually be in lockstep with Owens’.
UPDATE: Following backlash, Candace Owens took to Periscope, calling #MeToo "a witch hunt on men" and blaming it for causing the men she speaks to refusing to hire women.
UPDATE (7:15 PM): On Twitter, Mediaite's Caleb Ecarma shared a leaked message in which TPUSA's executive director and founder Charlie Kirk asked fellow conservatives to refrain from critizising Owens or the organisation and to backchannel their disagreements to avoid hurting the group's image.
View image on TwitterView image on Twitter
Caleb Ecarma
?
@calebecarma
here's Charlie Kirk defending Candace Owens in a TPUSA GroupMe after she attacked victims of sexual misconduct. Kirk demanding that his activists "don't publicly go after allies" is pretty funny considering all his bitching about "groupthink"
2:28 PM - Jun 12, 2018
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Candace Owens goes on Fox & Friends to dismiss the impact of police brutality on the black community
Video ››› June 6, 2018 10:10 AM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF
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Get a load of this wild Sinclair town hall discussion on “youth & morality”
Sinclair says such discussions are a “significant public interest benefit” for stations it buys
Blog ››› May 22, 2018 4:10 PM EDT ››› PAM VOGEL
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Last night, Sinclair Broadcast Group station WJLA hosted a “town hall” discussion on "youth & morality" featuring morally bankrupt media personality Armstrong Williams, young conservative talking heads Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens, a campus carry activist, and a Daily Caller reporter (among others) -- and Sinclair wants you to believe it’s for the public good.
The town hall was branded as both an episode of Sinclair-linked commentator Armstrong Williams’ show and a part of Sinclair’s ongoing town hall discussion series. The town hall does not appear to have yet aired on WJLA and it’s not clear if it has aired or will air on the WJLA-operated local Washington, D.C., cable channel News Channel 8, but it’s posted in full on WJLA’s website.
Sinclair touts its “Your Voice, Your Future” local town halls as a public service and an opportunity to “alert, inform, empower and engage our audience.” Here’s a quick clip to give you an idea of how that went:
For this event, “morality” actually meant Christianity specifically
Though the panel was titled “Youth & Morality,” it was advertised as largely focusing on one study that showed dwindling millennial identification with Christianity, which WJLA characterized as a sign of “unprecedented moral decline.” The panel discussion was filmed at the Museum of the Bible.
Two minutes into the town hall, host Armstrong Williams asked the audience to raise their hands if they believe in God. (Williams also asked for audience members to raise their hands if they were atheist; one person did and panelists grimaced.) Williams’ first question for the panelists followed from there: “Can you be moral and good and not believe in God?” (Most of the panelists agreed that it was possible but not as easy.) Within eight minutes, panelists were equating “objective truth” with a belief in a Christian god and arguing that the inability to identify objective truths was “cultural Marxist.”
At one point during a commercial break, Williams can be heard joking on a live mic, “Don’t fall asleep on me!” The panel returned from that break to listen to Charlie Kirk talk about “the distinction between Christianity and other religions.”
The “morality” panel was hosted by the notoriously morally challenged Armstrong Williams
The town hall was hosted by conservative pundit Armstrong Williams, who has significant ties to Sinclair. Williams hosts a weekly show that airs on the Sinclair-owned News Channel 8 in the D.C. area and is syndicated on other Sinclair local TV stations across the country. Williams also owns several local TV stations through his holding company, Howard Stirk Holdings, which in turn sends business back to Sinclair through operations agreements.
Williams is a close confidante of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Ben Carson, even doing public relations work on behalf of Carson while continuing to also work as a media figure. (He also served as a Carson presidential campaign adviser while maintaining his weekly hosting duties.) Recently, Williams has aligned himself with other members of the Trump administration, joining Sinclair CEO David Smith in meeting with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai -- who was then a commissioner -- to advocate for pro-industry policies the day before Trump’s inauguration. About two months later, Williams hosted Pai on his show for a friendly interview.
Back in 2005, Williams used an earlier version of his syndicated show to promote Bush administration education policies, failing to note he was paid $240,000 by the administration to do so. The Government Accountability Office subsequently found that the Bush Department of Education had violated federal laws about covert government propaganda by paying Williams for the promotion.
Williams has also settled at least two sexual harassment suits -- one in 1997 involving reports that he “repeatedly kissed and fondled” a former producer for his now-defunct radio show over the course of nearly two years, and another in 2017 alleging that he groped and sought sexual favors from a former employee and later retaliated against the man.
During the panel, Williams talked about his daily prayer routine and decision not to “use profane language” at work because he is the “moral leader” in his office.
Several participants also seem to struggle with morals
The panel featured eight participants in addition to Williams, the majority of whom were young conservative media figures who fall at various points on the spectrum from extreme or blatantly racist to embarrassing or just boring.
TPUSA’s Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens both participated in parts of the town hall. Frequent Fox News guest and conservative “boy wonder” Kirk is the founder of TPUSA, a group best known for a misguided 2017 protest in which its members wore adult diapers to “trigger the libs,” but whose stated mission is to “identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.” Kirk, Owens, and TPUSA frequently fearmonger about suppression of conservative speech on college campuses while themselves leading a McCarthyist doxxing effort against liberal professors. Meanwhile, TPUSA has defended at least one professor with ties to a white nationalist group and several of its leading members have been outed for expressing patently racist sentiments, e.g. the group’s former national field director making the statement “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE.”
Owens, TPUSA’s communications director, is another Fox News regular and “a far-right vlogger and conspiracy theorist” who has lately garnered media attention after rapper Kanye West praised “the way Candace Owens thinks.” Owens gained attention from far-right MAGA trolls after she posted a video in the wake of the deadly Charlottesville, VA, “Unite the Right” rally in which she dismissed white supremacy as a narrative pushed by the media, leading to her appearance on conspiracy theory outlet Infowars. Owens has also called for all DREAMers to be deported and has argued that immigrants directly harm the black community.
During the town hall discussion, Owens lamented that conservatives were allowing themselves to be “silenced by liberal outrage” and said that younger conservatives and Christians ought to “punch back.”
The Daily Caller’s Amber Athey also participated in the discussion. The Daily Caller is Tucker Carlson’s sexist and racist brainchild, which frequently dabbles in anti-Semitism, anti-trans rhetoric, far-right conspiracy theories, and celebrity bikini photo slideshows, and makes light of sexual assault. Athey herself has tweeted anti-Semitic jokes, and repeatedly used the slurs “fag” and ”faggot,” and, in one case, “nigga$.” (Athey has since deleted the tweets, but they are available via archive.is.)
During the town hall discussion, Athey complained, “There are a lot of ideas on college campuses that -- if they’re conservative or they’re religious, they’re considered taboo and you’re not allowed to say it. Otherwise you’re considered a bigot.”
Town hall participant Antonia Okafor describes herself as “one of the country’s foremost advocates of concealed carry on campus” and has previously appeared in NRA media. Okafor makes regular media appearances pushing NRA-backed myths about campus carry, arguing that carrying concealed firearms would make young black women safer. In reality, the presence of firearms in domestic violence situations, for example, puts women’s lives -- and especially black women’s lives -- at significantly greater risk. And household gun ownership in general only increases the risk of death due to homicide, suicide, or accident; Okafor’s agenda would put women in greater danger.
Rounding out the participant list are right-wing media figures Jason Russell, an editor at the conservative Washington Examiner, and Shermichael Singleton, an aspiring conservative pundit who briefly worked at Carson’s HUD before he was fired for anti-Trump writings. Preacher and lobbyist Quadricos Driskell and American Legislative Exchange Council-affiliated conservative attorney Shelby Emmett also participated.
Sinclair cites town halls like this as evidence its expansion would benefit the public
Sinclair has used its “Your Voice, Your Future” town halls -- also the platform former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka used to decry “black African gun crime” last fall -- to argue that Sinclair-owned and -operated local TV stations are providing greater services to the public. In one Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filing, Sinclair pointed to the discussion series as evidence that its planned acquisition of Tribune Media would create a “significant public interest benefit.”
The FCC is currently reviewing the Sinclair-Tribune deal specifically to ensure it would benefit the public and has signaled it will make a decision following a comment period that ends on July 12.
Eric Hananoki contributed research to this post.
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CANDACE OWENS: You can say that there are obviously tons of women that are raped and that go through these really awful experiences, who saw themselves and said, “You know what? that’s a movement that’s for me, that encourages me to come out and talk about that.” Great. That’s a great launch point. People that are raped should always speak out, regardless of whether or not there’s a hashtag or not (sic). But ultimately, that movement is sowing division between men and women and I do not support it whatsoever.
So, people think I should apologize for not supporting movements that ultimately promote division. I never once in my tweet said that rape victims are weak, you know? That’s a reading comprehension thing. I said that the #MeToo movement was weak and that it was causing more harm than good and I stand by those sentiments. I think that all of these movements which may have been started off of something that was very authentic are now weak. I think the greatest example is that the #MeToo movement has ultimately become a witch hunt on men.
It’s making relations between men and women harder. I hear this, if anybody even looked in the comments. There were women that were saying that they were raped and that they were against #MeToo but nobody wants to hear them because they’ve decided that all women must think this. I’m not a woman that will ever subscribe to groupthink. I just -- I don’t think it’s good, I think herd mentality is wrong and it makes it hard to distinguish between something that is really meaningful and somebody that really experienced pain, like say, a rape victim, and a woman who was just a little uncomfortable, right? A woman who had a guy make a comment to her which is something that does not, in my estimation, need to be something that is reported to the police. It’s creating an environment where every man that I speak to now -- and I go on a lot of business trips, as you guys know. I go and I meet with a lot of CEOs and I see men a lot just in the business of politics say that they wouldn’t even hire a woman, that if they had a choice between hiring a young woman and a young man, they say they would hire a young man just so they don’t have to worry about anything. That’s not good. That means the end-goal of the #MeToo movement is not good, that if you think that the message is that women shouldn’t be raped, that’s not the way it’s being translated out in the real world. You can see culturally it’s already starting to be discussed colloquially -- Kanye’s recent song when he says, “Imagine if I got #MeToo’ed.” He’s not saying, “Oh imagine if I raped a girl,” he would never rape a girl. The #MeToo movement is about men that have correspondences with girls that could come out later and potentially ruin their entire careers. And this is what is felt. This is what men feel.
...
I think it is terrifying, terrifying to think that we’re creating a world that young men can’t thrive in and learn and mistakes. You know, when I was growing up, the first time that I got my -- guys used to slap girls’ asses in middle school. That was like the thing. Girls used to kick guys in the crotch in elementary school. That was a thing. Guys used to pull down their pants and moon on the bus, they would moon ongoing cars. All of that is under the umbrella of #MeToo today. All of it. There’s no distinguishing between real rape victims, women that are uncomfortable on dates, men that are giving off-compliments -- off-handed compliments, and that’s the problem. It’s too convoluted. The discussion is not happening anymore, it’s just becoming men that are too scared to even say they don’t support #MeToo, like my inbox represents, they said, and this is a perfect way to sum it up, he said, “I wanted to tweet and defend you but even if I came out and said I didn’t support #MeToo, that would be me being #MeToo’ed.” Even if a man is critical of #MeToo, the mob will ruin their lives. For thinking. For having different ideas. For saying that, “You know what, I understand what you’re trying to say but here is what the world is hearing,” right? And that’s what the women that are like, pitchfork mob mentality -- and look at the way they treated me. I said that I think that the #MeToo movement is weakening to women. It suggests that we can’t handle ourselves in any scenario, like you know, when those guys slapped my ass in middle school I turned around and said “don’t slap my ass,” right? Now, a #MeToo movement activist might say, “They never should’ve slapped your ass.” OK, that’s one way of looking at it, or a lot of these corresponds that happen are these guys and girls growing up, girls kicking guys in the crotch. OK, maybe the girls shouldn’t have done that when I was in elementary school but they did it and I don’t think that these people should be branded and have their lives ruined when they’re 10 and 13 years old because somebody has now decided that these things shouldn’t be happening. I disagree with it. I genuinely disagree with it.
Previously:
Even conservative women are shredding Candace Owens' attack on the #MeToo movement
On *TMZ Live*, Kanye West and Candace Owens discuss free thought and call slavery “a choice”
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