Candace Owens, described as the “new face of Black conservatism” and a rabid Trump supporter, has been fired from The Daily Wire, a conservative news website and media company run by Ben Shapiro. Owens has been on an ever-increasing anti-semitic rant against Jews in the Israel-Hamas war.
Owens has also been in a public feud with Shapiro, who is Jewish. Owens and the Daily Wire did not give specifics on her firing, other than to confirm that she is out.
Owens is always promoting ridiculous right-wing conspiracy theories. She accused a Jewish gang in Hollywood of being “evil Marxists” obsessed with political power. Owens accused a Jewish rabbi, who was a critic of Owens, of being “drunk on Christian blood,” which has been part of an antisemitic conspiracy theory used for centuries as a way to justify the murder of Jews. Owens has also spoken publicly about her respect for Hitler.
Candace Owens should not only be condemned for her right-wing radical views and her promotion of anti-semetic content through the media, but she deserves to be written off as a credible conservative - because she wasn’t always a conservative.
Of course, people can change their political views over time because of how life has treated them and how they have seen others treated. The Baby Boomer generation, known as the original anti-establishment generation, collectively supported anti-government rhetoric and participated in violent protests against the U.S. government. Of course, there were exceptions and not all Boomers were radical leftist liberals, but many were that extreme. Today, the Boomer generation is the establishment they once rebelled against and Boomers began to change in the 1980s and fueled the conservative movement that is still incredibly strong in 2024. I wonder how many Boomers try to reconcile the change from being extremely liberal to being extremely conservative?
Changing political ideology over time is not wrong as long as it is the result of a true change from within - but a rapid change in political ideology is wrong if the motivation is money and popularity. And that’s the story of Candace Owens.
Candace Owens was once a liberal who once called for the death of the Republican Tea Party and was critical of Donald Trump. It seems that because she was a young, attractive, hip, Black female, she found a more profitable niche becoming a conservative commentator when there weren’t many others that looked like her in that arena.
Unlike those who have transformed their political beliefs as a result of time, Candace Owens was an insincere opportunist and converted to conservative ideology for the wrong reasons. She is not unique in this way.
In my years of doing talk radio, I have witnessed, first-hand, talk show hosts who were not completely sincere with their opinions on the air. They sacrificed their personal political beliefs to pretend to be true conservatives on the air after Rush Limbaugh blazed the trail of conservative talk show hosts.
Not every host you hear is completely honest with their political opinions. Opinions can be formed not out of honesty to oneself, but opinions are formed for the sole purpose of fitting into conservative ideology to follow the established trail of conservatives on the air.
Changing opinions to fit conservative ideology shuns honesty in a world where honesty is a lost art.
In talk radio and TV and in the vast world of social media, the truth is a casualty in the battle for money and power. The fact that one’s true political ideology can be sacrificed for the sake of money and popularity is one of the reasons that opinions are skewed and do not always represent the one expressing opinions.
It is reasonable to assume that right-wing talk show hosts subscribe to some tenets of liberal ideology and that liberal talk hosts subscribe to tenets of conservative ideology. I know right-wing hosts push conservative ideology from a strong puritan Christian perspective on the air, but enjoy pornography and frequenting strip clubs in their private lives. This is more common than you might think.
Candace Owens is celebrated as a true right-wing conservative, but the fact that conservative rhetoric coming from an attractive, Black female was compelling for conservatives and Owens changed her political views - not to reflect her true self - but to fill a niche that would make her more popular. This is one example of how the conviction of political commentators cannot always be trusted.
