• Being too anti-genocide has cost Candace her job.
• Candace has evolved her views from being a staunch Islamophobe and massacre encourager to being sympathetic to the Palestinian people.
After three years of working as a commentator for the Daily Wire, Candace Owens has parted ways with the company over her sympathy shown towards the suffering of the Palestinian people. Candace Owens is a far-right commentator who is known for her non-mainstream views when it comes to topics such as abortion, the anti-LGBT stance, and recently her Palestinian sentiments. The Daily Wire, on the other hand, is a far-right American media company founded in 2015 by controversial pro-genocide commentator Ben Shapiro and American screenwriter Jeremy Boeing. The Daily Wire has admitted on their website that they do ‘not claim to be without bias’ and have time and time again allowed Islamophobic and outright racist individuals to run their shows.
Candace Owens started with humble beginnings
Owens was born in 1989 and grew up in the US state of Connecticut. Her parents were divorced, so she mainly grew up with her mother. Owens had acquired a love for journalism at a young age, and after graduating from Stamford High, she pursued her passion by studying a major in journalism at the University of Rhode Island. After her junior year, she left university only to begin her long career in the world of American journalism.
After leaving university, Owens worked for Vogue magazine and at a private equity firm. She also ran a website titled ‘Degree180’ that focused predominantly on lifestyle content. Today, this website continues to operate but has been the target of criticism for expressing left-leaning political views.
Owens’s stark shift to the right
It was only later, during the 2016 US presidential election campaign led by Donald Trump, did Owens become a conservative. She had said the change in her was partly because of the unprecedented media reaction she saw directed against Donald Trump. However, it was only in 2017 that Candace Owens truly became popular in the world of media. In August 2017, Owens took to YouTube to express her changing political views, quickly gaining massive viewership and a mix of praise and scorn. A few months later, in November of that same year, Owens became the Director of Urban Engagement at Turning Point USA, a non-profit organisation that advocates for conservative politics at high school, college, and university campuses. Owens then became communication director.
In 2018, Owens received greater visibility. Kanye West praised her on Twitter. The two even worked together for a brief period of time. However, the fame was nothing compared to the kind of fame she received later in her career. In 2020, Owens joined the Daily Wire, which is not surprising given her controversial right-wing views.
Candace Owens interviewed Donald Trump in 2021 after Owens joined the Daily Wire
She was even in the media spotlight in 2019 after the New Zealand mosque massacre took place. The mosque attacker stated in his manifesto that Owens was influential in his political thought. He had said:
“The person that has influenced me above all was Candace Owens. Each time she spoke I was stunned by her insights and her own views helped push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness. Though I will have to disavow some of her beliefs, the extreme actions she calls for are too much, even for my tastes.”
Although this was something Owens denied, it really outlined how far Owens’s right-wing views had gone and how extreme they had become. It also highlighted the dark islamophobia that lay within them.
Candace Owens Islamophobic history
After the New Zealand mosque massacre occurred and the media started to talk about the killers claims of inspiration through Candace Owens, Candace posted on X (then Twitter) in response:
The issue with this post by Candace is that it is categorically untrue. Owens has talked about Islam and the Second Amendment before. In July 2018, for example, she posted:
This shows she has previously scaremongered and vilified Muslims by scaremongering her followers and viewers into believing that Muslims are taking over Europe while perpetuating it as a bad thing.
So what changed?
It was only after the genocide in Gaza began on October 7th that Candace started to drift away from the Daily Wire. It first started off when Candace had a rift with cofounder Ben Shapiro in November over the genocide in Gaza. Ben Shapiro is notorious for his pro-Israeli, pro-genocide calls against the Palestinian people. In November, Owens tweeted, “There is no justification for a genocide. I can’t believe this even needs to be said or is even considered the least bit controversial to state.” Her tweet was a response to the Israeli siege on Gaza by the Israeli military on October 7th. Shapiro later responded to Owens’s tweet during an event, saying “her behaviour during this has been disgraceful, without a doubt.”
The pair later continued to go back and forth on social media for days. At one point, Candace quoted a verse from the Bible, resulting in Shapiro telling her to quit.
Interestingly enough, even with these differing views in the Daily Wire, Owens had still retained her job for several months. One of the reasons was perhaps because, although the Daily Wire is a vastly pro-Israeli outlet, it may well have caused a backlash from Owens, as she hadn’t actually said anything racist or inflammatory. In fact, other right-wing personalities in the United States even hold similar views on the issue of supporting Israel. Tucker Carlson, one of the most famous right-wing hosts on American cable news, also does not support American foreign assistance on issues that do not have anything to do with America. Israel is one of those issues for him.
One of the possible reasons Candace had sympathy for the Palestinian people when, in the past, she has insinuated hatred against Muslims may well be because she had been pregnant most of the time the Gaza genocide was taking place, and to be forced to see or hear the numbers of children killed was something that she may not have been able to bear. In an interview with Normal Finkelstein, she showed that she was willing to listen to the other side of the argument and was genuinely seeking to consider the truth of the situation.
On a podcast earlier this month with George Janko, Candace Owens even apologised for the islamophobia, saying that she is ‘sorry on behalf of America’. This highlights Candace’s changing views on Islam and Muslims.
Candance Owens and Rabbi Shmuley
In 2022, Kanye West posted a very anti-Semitic tweet on his X profile account. He had threatened to kill Jews and claimed he himself was not antisemitic in the same post. It was this that later led to massive backlash on both mainstream and social media against West. Candace Owens, who had previously worked with West had suggested that people should give West some time. It was this that provoked Rabbi Shmuley, an American rabbi and author who is notorious for running a sex toy business with his daughter and blackmailing celebrities for money, to pounce at the opportunity. Rabbi Shmuley had made countless videos, taking what Owen had said out of context and snipping Owen’s videos to make her seem like an antisemite. He even said to the Jerusalem Post when asked to comment, “There can be no question that Candace’s serious defamation against me and the Jewish community must be met with a comprehensive lawsuit that will bankrupt her as well as Ben Shapiro,’. This continuous harassment lasted for two years, and it was one tweet that Candace had liked that would allow the Daily Wire to have an excuse to disassociate from her. The tweet said, ‘It says February 20th Rabbi are you drunk on Christian blood again’.
The double standard
The reality is that Ben Shapiro, who is the cofounder and commentator of the Daily Wire, has directly said racist and Islamophobic things in the past that he has not apologised for. Candace Owens, on the other hand, merely liked one post on Twitter that may not even constitute homophobia, depending on the context. The fact that Owens was removed was simply because her sympathies for Palestinian children being massacred were deemed too much for the Daily Wire to handle. Hence, when the first opportunity came to justify firing Candace Owens, they pounced on it.
