Let’s stop pretending the situation is complicated. Candace Owens’s use of Nazi-endorsed propaganda and the recycling of antisemitic tropes from Adolf Hitler’s playbook portray Jews as inhuman conspirators who secretly control the world.
Owens is a Nazi propagandist. She is spreading the same ideological poison that fueled one of history’s darkest genocides. And she’s doing it to millions of followers with complete defiance while maintaining her massive platform.
On her latest podcast episode, the mask didn’t just fall off. She ripped it off and threw it away. Owens responded to Ben Shapiro’s speech at AmericaFest where he rightly called out her disgracefully unhinged behavior. In response, she lashed out with a level of vitriol that exposes exactly who she has become. She accused Shapiro of embodying the alleged evils of Judaism. She claimed the Talmud teaches Jews to lie and cheat and instructs us to enslave non-Jews. She explicitly told her massive audience that Jews view non-Jews as “animals” whom they have a “right to own.”
She physically held up a copy of The Talmudic Jew on camera, urging her millions of listeners to read it as “the truth.” This isn’t just a book. It is a notorious 1871 forgery by August Rohling that falsely claims Jewish law commands us to rob and deceive Christians. It even alleges we are ordered to murder them. It was thoroughly debunked in court over a century ago, but that didn’t stop the Nazi Party from adopting it as a foundational text to justify the Holocaust. By dusting off this blood-soaked book and presenting it as “forbidden knowledge,” Owens is engaging in recruitment-level propaganda. She is mimicking Julius Streicher, the Nazi propagandist who waved similar distortions to convince Germans that their Jewish neighbors were monsters who deserved to die.
Let’s be clear. This has nothing to do with “criticism of Israel” or “anti-Zionism.” These claims are not merely “asking questions.” Owen’s claims track directly with the ugliest antisemitic myths in recorded history. These myths painted us as inhuman conspirators bearing collective guilt. These are lies that predate the State of Israel by centuries.
Owens told Black Americans to “wake up to your true history,” asserting that “Jewish people were in control of the slave trade.” This lie is so egregious that even the American Historical Association disavowed it. Both Black supremacists and white nationalists have weaponized this particular lie for decades. It forges perilous divisions between two historically marginalized communities. Owens, a Black woman with a massive platform, is now the bridge between those radical extremes.
But to truly understand the depths of her depravity, one must look at who she targets closer to home. Since the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk, a person she claims was her friend, Owens has spent weeks casting aspersions on his widow, Erica Kirk. She implies complicity in a “cover-up” and vomits baseless trash about the assassination. She inflicted pain on a woman who was mourning her husband and on TPUSA staff who were grieving their friend, all to satisfy her addiction to conspiratorial attention. This is not a journalistic investigation. It is pathological cruelty. It reveals a person who has lost her grip on reality and her basic humanity.
A hallmark of every antisemitic conspiracy theory
Her invocation of the “hidden truth” trope is the hallmark of every antisemitic conspiracy theory. Throughout her rant, Owens repeatedly commands her audience to “wake up.” She urges them to uncover the “buried” history of Jewish crimes and read books “they don’t want you to see.” This is precisely how radicalization works. You cloak bigotry as forbidden knowledge. You flatter your audience into thinking they’re smart enough to “see through the lies.” Then you point them toward literature that confirms their darkest suspicions. From The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to QAnon, it’s the same strategy. Jews are hiding the truth, and only the brave will expose them. Owens serves as a conduit for extremism.
This brings us to her peers’ reaction. Unlike many in the conservative movement who chose to stay silent, Ben Shapiro displayed admirable moral courage. While others offered silence or excuses, Shapiro went to AmericaFest and declared war on the “scavengers” and “charlatans” devouring the movement. He called out the cowardice of figures like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly for refusing to condemn Owens’s “hideous and conspiratorial nonsense.” He rejected the pathetic excuse that “friendship” justifies silence when a public figure is vomiting blood libels and accusing a grieving widow of complicity in her husband’s murder. In a world of grifters “just asking questions,” Shapiro drew a hard line. “Victory without truth is victory for a lie.”
The contrast could not be starker. While Shapiro stood alone, insisting that truth is not negotiable, others like Steve Bannon attacked him as a “cancer” for daring to push back. We are watching a major political faction decide whether it will tolerate open Nazism in its ranks for the sake of “unity.”
We are living through a terrifying global rise in antisemitism that feels all too reminiscent of the 1930s. We know where this leads because we have seen the bodies. It started with pamphlets like the one Owens held up, telling ordinary people that their Jewish neighbors were evil.
In the face of this threat, Ben Shapiro displayed the courage that so many others lacked. But let’s be honest. He shouldn’t be standing alone. It is a profound moral failure that a Jewish man is left to fend off Neo-Nazi propaganda from within the very movement he helped build while his non-Jewish peers and supposed allies look the other way. Silence from the rest of the movement in the face of this kind of hatred is not neutrality. It is complicity.
Candace Owens has made her choice. She is not merely misinformed. She is certainly not “just asking questions.” She is channeling the most dangerous antisemitic ideas in modern history. She does this knowingly and repeatedly, wielding her influence as a weapon. The danger isn’t just that she believes these things. The danger is that she is mainstreaming them to millions who don’t know better.
The writer is the CEO of DiploAct.