I was an early Candace Owens fan. She’s very bright, a good speaker, solid on most conservative issues, and attractive. However, it has become increasingly apparent that Owens does not like Jews. That’s okay. Not everyone has to like Jews. However, disliking Jews becomes a problem when you excuse damaging lies about a historically vulnerable community, and it becomes dangerous when you excuse genocide against them. One of the saddest things about Owens’ increasingly troubling animosity is that it’s representative of the antisemitism seen in large numbers of American blacks.

Rabbi Michael Barclay has written a well-sourced exposé of Owens’s increasingly open hostility to Jews, especially in the wake of the sexually sadistic and genocidal attack against Israel on October 7. I urge you to read the whole thing, but just a portion will suffice:

This is a woman who is such an anti-Semite and so ignorant of history that in 2018 she publicly said that Hitler was “OK”.

[snip]

A mere month after the horrors of babies being beheaded, women being raped, and the slew of horrors from Hamas, Owens went on Tucker Carlson’s show to speak about how it really wasn’t that bad, and why should she even care. (After all, she seems to think that Hitler was “ok”, so what’s the problem?) She wanted to talk about the depravities of Hamas as an “academic discussion”, and refused to even condemn Hamas. She castigated Ben Shapiro for being passionately pro-Israel, and demonstrated a remarkable ignorance about everything Jewish, including: the Holocaust; the history of Israel; the history of the involvement of Jews in the early civil rights movement, and how Kanye West’s anti Semitic comments were clear expressions of Jew hatred.

[snip]

Owens has repeatedly tried to justify Kanye West’s anti-Semitic comments, who has has said, “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”, wanted to title his 2018 album “Hitler”, has never expressed remorse for his comments and has even double downed and repeatedly made more Jew hating statements.  Condemned by everyone from Adidas to his ex-wife Kim Kardashian for his attitudes, West has been applauded and supported by Candace Owens. When Rabbi Shmuley publicly outed her, she spent the last number of days attacking him personally. She has called him and anyone who points out her Jew hating libel “thugs”. She has referred to Jews as “gangs”, and as egregious as anything, has fallen back on the Jew hating trope of the early 20^th century that Hollywood is run by a gang of Jews.

I wonder how the Daily Wire will deal with Owens’s increasingly open hostility to Jews. After all, Ben Shapiro is one of its founders and remains its Editor Emeritus (which I assume means he has no say in its day-to-day operations). But back to Owens.

Owens’s open disdain for Jews comes at a perilous time when they are more at risk than they’ve been since WWII. It’s disturbing on its own, but it’s also disturbing because, sadly, her values reflect the fact that, while most American blacks are not antisemitic, they are still second only to Muslims when it comes to antisemitism in America.

The information about black antisemitism is hard to find. Leftist groups such as the ADL no longer publish polls that break antisemitism down by race. In 1998, over 30% of blacks held antisemitic views. By 2016, 23% of blacks polled were antisemitic. Today, finding useful polls is challenging, but it is still possible to learn that blacks are more likely than whites to be antisemitic. My guess, looking at the Squad, is that the number has crept up from 2016’s low point. After all, as a general matter, antisemitism in America is spiking, something that happened even before October 7.

The interesting question is why black Americans, from Kanye and Candace on down, are more likely to be antisemitic.

Wikipedia acknowledges Islam’s role, which is sensible. Muslim African slaves, modern Muslim African immigrants, and Louis Farrakhan’s fanatically antisemitic Nation of Islam all contribute to black antisemitism. However, Wikipedia also contends that blacks dislike Jews because the latter were overrepresented in the slave trade. Considering that it was Muslim slave traders who controlled the entire African end of the slave trade, that’s retrofitting and propaganda, not truth.

Another reason for black antisemitism is Marxism, which gave birth to the Holocaust and Stalin’s purges and which we see daily on American streets and in the White House After all, it’s Marxists who insist that Hamas, which has openly genocidal aspirations toward Jews and, incidentally, brutally oppresses its own people,* is the real victim. Marxism is a significant factor in the black community, especially in academia (see, e.g., Leonard Jeffries).

Finally, to the extent Marxism has infected Christianity, many churches that cater to blacks, especially urban blacks, are antisemitic. Just look at Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Jeremiah Wright. People sitting in those pews aren’t learning about Christ’s love. They’re learning to hate Jews (and, if they’re in Rev. Wright’s church, to hate America, too).

Candace Owens is a disappointment but she’s also one among many, and that’s the most disturbing thing of all.

Image: Candace Owens. YouTube screen grab.

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*As a reminder, before Iran/Hezbollah made a move on Lebanon, that country had a renaissance after Israel cleaned out the PLO in 1982. Muslim Arabs' worst enemies are often other Muslim Arabs.

UPDATE: A reader kindly directed me to a 2018 Rasmussen poll (behind a paywall) that speaks to the black community's admiration for Louis Farrakhan.