Episode 9 - Candace Owens

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Imagine you really, really hate women and you finally accept you're gay. Oh. Homo fascism. Anyway, so early on in that Trump era, as I was saying, like there was this huge demand for it, for like somebody that they could set up to kind of like even having them was a troll, right? Having a young, attractive black woman say, Ah, racism isn't real, is like the ultimate troll for conservatives. So they fucking loved it.

SPEAKER_04 0:26

And and it's and it's uh she's additionally perfect because she was like on record a victim of a hate crime. So combined obviously with your with her you know ethnic identity, any denial or spin of what can be counted as racism or not coming from her mouth immediately additionally got legitimized because she was a victim, which makes you know her arguably even worse than if she had been someone that it might not have experience, at least on record, because I'm pretty sure that every single black person in the States experiences this at least once in their life.

SPEAKER_03 1:10

Uh they do. Uh and it's a lot.

SPEAKER_04 1:14

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But some of them might not have had the privilege that Candace did to get the lawsuit out there and do all of this stuff, right? So they might not be as ideal of a profile that she is. That's the only thing I'm trying to do is add context of just how many potential clapbacks that a progressive might have against Candace Owens can be immediately shut down because of her identity category and of her experiences as a young woman, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:44

Oh, and absolutely. Like, this is something that this, like, you know, influencer type was set up to do, which is like degrade the social and political movements that had gained them the ability to participate as an equal interlocutor in the discourse. Like Candace Owens as a black woman being accepted in even conservative spaces was a triumph of progressivism, but she used that triumph in order to spit in the faces of those people that gave her that ability, gave her that platform. And so it's she's a very vexing and aggravating figure, which is why she is a success, because that's the Candace Owens formula. Offer conservative talking points from the mouth of an attractive young black woman to rally the mostly white male and conservative audience. And she intentionally uses those antagonistic titles, she confronts racial taboos, and she offers tacit permission to her white conservative audience to spout racially insensitive or bigoted opinions about black people and other minorities. And she aggravates the left, which courts controversy and ultimately gets her the precious interactions she needs to get that social media algorithmic popularity.

SPEAKER_04 2:57

Absolutely. And the reason, in my modest opinion on why it could sell so so so so well is because uh like almost every spin or lie, or even if we want to call it piece of propaganda, if it has an aspect of truth to it, it's much easier to disseminate. So utilizing, I believe, very, very real uh dissatisfaction that black Americans have, for example, with the Democratic Party, or with liberals in general, especially white liberals, just uh wearing the cape of progressivism and anti-racism, but not really you know, fucking acting on it, treating it as a conversation piece more than something to actually contribute to, or even sometimes occupying these uh these spaces for themselves by shining a light on those very real realities, but then offering a solution that is well uh respectfully extremely uh problematic and reactionary, you you get to pitch it to more people, and then combine you get to pitch it easier to more people. And then when you combine with who is saying it, I mean it is an exceptionally attractive package that if I can put my uh obviously I cannot, I'm a fucking guy from across the pond in the fucking Balkans, but still, if I attempt to put myself in the spot of somebody who has been extremely disenfranchised, but let's say just liberal white America, and I see her with everything that she's experienced coming to me. I'm talking about this is early Candace, right? Very early Candace, I very much so disagree with later Candace, but the candles that Mike is talking about. I can I I could see myself falling for it, especially if I did not have a lot of class consciousness or a lot of you know the the ability to to understand that if somebody young people tend not to that if somebody is uh is uh talking about A, B, C, D, E, and F and G, and A is true, it does not, my friend, mean that B, C, D, E, and F are also true. So like I don't know why some people point at at her, at least early Candace, and say, I don't get it, I don't get like what the appeal was. Dude, it's a phenomenal package. Yeah. Phenomenal package.

SPEAKER_03 5:22

You know, it's important to understand that like Owens fills that very, very, very valuable niche, as you said, because she can serve as like that visible and personified rebuttal to charges that the movement was racist. She can criticize woke racial politics. And what are you gonna do? Have a white liberal debate with her and go, no, actually, you are suffering all sorts of discrimination. And when she laughs in their face or scoffs, it provides like a valuable visual language that you know it almost reaches us at a deeper level than just listening to the arguments, right? Because she has that optics win. And that optics win made her a very hot commodity for a variety of new conservative institutions which were building themselves around Trump's unexpected success in the you know 2016 election. And so late in 2017, Candace Owens was hired by the organization that ultimately propelled her to the top of conservative stardom, turning point USA. And this is when all of you should pause the video. And if you haven't already, go listen to our episode about Charlie Kirk because you need that context to understand exactly what that organization is and what it represents for the conservative movement. All right. Is everybody back? Great. Charlie Kirk hired her as the head of urban outreach, which is it's fucking crazy. It's crazy. That's the straight up just crazy. Yeah, which which is a title that itself is very politically revealing. It's it's not so much a dog whistle, it's a fucking foghorn. She's black. In charge of the hippity hoppity group. Exactly. Holy shit. And and and obviously, like TP USA had this goal of massively increasing campus outreach, and to do so, it needed to signal broader minority engagement. And as we discussed many, many times, young, charismatic, media fluent, and she was gaining enough attention through her own efforts through that race-focused political commentary. And her presence gave the organization a high-profile messenger who could speak to quote urban audiences, unquote, while also energizing conservative donors and activists eager for visible diversity within the movement.

SPEAKER_04 7:51

I'm going to interrupt if they unironically just call it like it actually wouldn't even be problematic, one could say. Like, oh, we have a department that speaks to African Americans with an African American voice. We have introduced an alternative and more diverse perspectives to Turning Point USA, which we hope will help us to adequately communicate our message and our ideals to the diverse people of our great nation, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:21

No, man, no, no, that that's the that's at woke shit. Like, no, we we do urban outreach, or we don't do none of that woke shit yet.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

Exactly. No, this was 2017, guys. Like DEI was winning so hard that it was happening at Turning Point USA, right? And and I think it is safe to say that Candace Owens is a DEI hire. 100%. I love this film. And that's like the ultimate irony of Candace Owens, right? She is the ultimate ladder pooler, right? Her entire political move is I'm gonna take advantage of my racial and gender identity in order to help repress other people who suffer under racial or gender oppression. And, you know, I consider that to be sociopathic. And and ultimately it worked for her. You know, uh it worked for her because she became a fixture of conservative media. Here is an example on Fox News. Candace joins me now. So, Candace, what do you mean by a hamster mentality with black Americans?

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Well, with black Americans, I mean the main issue is that we keep voting Democrat and expecting different results. And in every major city where Democrats are running, like Chicago, it's a complete mess. I mean, it's an absolute disaster. And they make these false promises so that we, you know, they secure our vote with all these false promises, and the second that they get into the White House, they do absolutely nothing for African Americans but make sure that we remember that we're black so they can play the same identity card the next election cycle.

SPEAKER_03 9:49

And that's basically what she would do. She would walk around and she would say to some of the most racist commentators, oh man, the black community is being abused by the Democratic Party because they're not keeping their promises. Promises which, keep in mind, the Republicans they're talking to despise and are trying to block. Yeah, they never made those promises to begin with. Yeah. It's like Jesse Waters has you on to tell everybody how the Democrats don't keep their promises, and it's like Fox News hates those promises. Fox News is blocking those promises. What is that? How does that make sense? But the point is it's not about making sense.

SPEAKER_04 10:28

Exactly. And this is not like an approval of like uh, oh, we genuinely believe that mainstream Democrat politicians don't utilize all kinds of minority groups in the United States during the election and then throw them away very often. Nobody is saying that. What we're saying is that she is giving you uh that exact same complaint, but then pivoting you and selling you to guys that very much in the open don't even agitate during the election, let alone push forward any sorts of policies that that would work more in your favor. So, what kind of thing is she really selling when the marketing campaign is basically all of it and the product is is non-existing? The criticism of the Democratic Party is there, the criticism of uh liberal sidestepping is there, but then on the other side she just offers you what? Uh absolutely nothing, which is kind of the main point to an extent, because then she makes you believe that there is no true, uh legitimate alternative, and that is why exactly she is a reactionary.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

Well, I think what it's a fascinating strategy because it's both sophisticated and unsophisticated. On the one hand, like if you think about what she's actually saying, she's like, hey, the Democrats promise to give you affordable housing, but the affordable housing voucher does, you know, has a five-year waiting list. That's why you should vote for the Republicans who want to abolish the affordable housing voucher, right? So none of you will have like you'll be worse off, but at least the Republicans didn't promise you anything and fail to live up to it. It is a nonsensical position. And if at the same time she's saying this to black people, Republicans are running around arguing that they're welfare queens, or, you know, and they're talking about how black people are abusing EBT, which is, you know, food stamps, or some other program, you know, Obama phones or Obamacare. There's this racially charged attacks on the Democratic Party, specifically programs that were enacted to help uh, you know, poor people under the Democrats, as as incomplete and inadequate as those are. And she's saying, no, that's why you should vote for the Republicans, who will strip it all away from you and leave you on the street.

SPEAKER_04 12:44

Exactly. She's pivoting people that potentially can grow up politically into some uh, let's say, schools of thought that look at things more systematically and so on and so on. Now I'm talking when she's communicating to black people, even though 95% of her messaging is you stated brilliantly, is just to fucking white dudes all over the states. But the black audience that she's actually talking to are those with the greatest potential because they're seeing all of these very, very real issues uh with their own eyes and experiencing them and living them every day. They are arguably the ones with the greatest potential to be turned into activists, into people that organize, into people that proactively fight for their community, and that is why it's so important to co-opt them either into just being completely apolitical, or God bless, if you can move them further right. Fuck yeah. So by vacuuming, kind of isolating that particular group with which has so much potential, she does and let's say she she x3s the amount of the amount of uh uh damage she does for progressive causes in contrast to people that just you know co-opt uh regular everyday libs uh over towards reactionary causes. You get what I mean, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Yeah. And you the other thing she pivots towards, by the way, uh for the white people who are 95% or whatever, daily wire plus subscriptions. Like that's it's that's all it is.

SPEAKER_03 14:13

Well, not anymore, uh which I'm sure we'll get to.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

But true, yeah. We'll get to that.

SPEAKER_03 14:18

But like one of the things about Candace is as her influence grew, her ambition grew. And with the Trump White House, there became an opportunity for her to kind of increase her status into the mainstream. And the biggest, you know, and most notable opportunity came with one piece of legislation that ultimately passed and was signed into law by Trump called the First Step Act in 2018. And this legislation was backed by a coalition of libertarians, criminal justice reform advocates, some conservatives, and some Democrats, which aimed to reduce recidivism, expand rehabilitative programs and prisons, and make some small reforms to the federal sentencing guidelines. So this was kind of a like prison reform bill, which Donald Trump now would never in a million years entertain, but was kind of in vogue in that era, that 20 teen 2018 era of you know, kind of civil libertarian woke politics that Candace Owens was nonetheless, you know, developing her stature around. And what she did is she used that opportunity because it was pushed by, as I said, those wealthy libertarians to make contact with like actual mainstream celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Alyssa Milano, like they became like prominent faces lobbying for this bill. And she had sit-down meetings with Trump in the White House, which helped ultimately secure, as I said, the successful passage of the bill, and that helped dramatically expand her image as a more serious political actor, right? She, you know, sitting down with a sitting president, even as goofy as Trump, and getting legislation passed, that helps you transition from like grifter influencer to somebody who's a political operator with actual policy like bona fides and access. And that, you know, stepped up Candace Owens significantly, her stature, as well as like helping her, you know, relationships with like mainstream celebrities and give her a veneer of you know plausibility as a cultural commentator rather than just making that lowest tier conservative slop that we've been making fun of. And that change in her presentation has continued to this day and has been her most successful foray into expanding her audience from being predominantly white and male and older into a much more diverse crowd. And she is now a frequent battler in the culture war, and she hounds every media controversy and pop culture to remain relevant and as a recruiter of non-political normies into the conservative funnel, right? So, fresh from all these successes, TP USA continued to expand its uh its brand both at home and abroad. And Candace Owens was one of those key figures. In fact, she traveled over in the summer of 2019 to launch Turning Point UK, and that is where she met her husband, George Farmer. Now, George Farmer had ties to Brexit era politics and right-leaning student activism in Britain, basically trying to absorb the campus complaining culture of right-wing media in America and campus activism in America, and import it to Britain. Now, Farmer was the son of Michael Farmer, who was a wealthy financier and member of the House of Lords. He's a baron, like he's a baron, Michael Farmer. Yeah, yeah, he's got hereditary title. And so, and what Candace describes as like a whirlwind romance, they quickly dated, they got engaged, I think over Zoom or something, and after only 17 days, they got married. Uh 17 days of engagement, they got married at the Trump winery in Virginia, which you know that venue choice reveals her dedication to the conservative movement she was building. Like, of course she got married at the Trump winery.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Yeah. Everything has to be a part of like the the lore, like the conservative lore, right? Like you can't wait. We had this fucking issue with Charlie and Erica Kirk as well, didn't we? Because like they they made their marriage about that stuff as well, didn't they? Like about the political movement.

SPEAKER_03 18:47

Like it's always like building the lore, building the well, and in parasocial, right? Like I think one of the things that the conservative movement has been very successful in doing is understanding the power of like parasociality and and building off of that, you know, feeling of hey, this influencer is a trusted friend, and you are part of their life, and they're part of your life. You know what I mean? And so by being overexposed and integrating the conservative movement into her personal life, she's kind of like ingratiating herself with her audience, she's building that rapport, she's building those feelings that will garner greater loyalty than you know, just an argument strictly on the merits or strictly logically whatever gain. Yeah. So, you know, and and that wedding itself drew widespread attention. And it it drew, you know, people's eyes to the idea that there was this greater international conservative movement, which I think that is a topic that we should delve into. That there is a what I would call a reactionary international or a fascist international that is developing, you know, uh, whether it is somebody like Viktor Orban in Hungary or you know, Donald Trump in the United States, or what is that, Geert Wilders or whatever his name is?

SPEAKER_02 20:04

Yeah, Girt, yeah, in in the Netherlands. Yeah, and you've got, of course, like uh Reform uh UK and Restore Britain, which is like the more radical UK variant. Yeah, these people are all over the place.

SPEAKER_03 20:15

And there's Vox in Spain, and and there is there is you know AFD, the Swedish Democrat, like all of these different fascist groups are are aligned and cooperating with one another. And I think I think that this marriage is an example of like that international fascist movement, which is in itself kind of funny because it's supposed, you know, fascists are supposed to be about uh you know exalting the nation and you have all these nations mixing. That sounds awfully cosmopolitan and and liberal to me. Uh not very, not very romantic era uh nationalist fascist. But nonetheless, that is how fascism has you know or reactionary politics has evolved, so much so that you know you could have a white son of a British baron marrying a black American, and that's all uh advancing some sort of conservative agenda, which would have made somebody conservative in Britain 50 years ago, their brain would melt.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

Yes, yeah. I mean, what they were like fucking like concerned about like like royals marrying people who were too German, or like a royal marrying like an American, like that that was too far. An American divorcee. Yeah, had to step down from the throne.

SPEAKER_03 21:28

Well, thank God, because wasn't that dude like really fucked up? Yeah, yeah, he was he was a Nazi sympathizer, I think. Yeah, a lot of the British royals were Nazi sympathizers. Yeah. Anyway, I think one of the so like with Farmer, her husband, he also got involved with the social media platform Parler. Are you familiar with that? Are you guys familiar with Parler? I haven't heard that in so many years. Parler, yeah. That's like so it's basically one of those alt tech social media platforms where when they say You know, it's it's famous for min quote minimal content moderation, which you can just understand. I mean they post a lot of racial slurs, and you know, it's it's a place where people can run around saluting Hitler and saying, you know, the jokes about the Holocaust. That's basically what these alt media spaces are. And part of about they they've been trying to build this kind of like alt conservative infrastructure, and Parler was, you know, one of those projects, you know, where where because they were trying to avoid that censorship toward, you know, the groper, alt-right, fascist content was oftentimes runs afoul, oftentimes fun runs afoul of like mainstream platforms terms of service. You can't threaten people, you can't scream racial slurs at them, you can't post gore, you know.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

It's not because like the people who run those uh platforms really care deeply, it's just because the advertisers don't really think that's like good for their brand.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

And so, you know, with uh with the parlor CEO husband, Owens, you know, she often references her family life publicly and she uses her marriage and and motherhood as part of her commentary on gender roles and modern culture. And I think this is where her her modern content, like her more recent content, focuses, which is a conservative alternative to mommy content, and it draws in millions of apolitical people. I think you would be really surprised at how successful she's been in recent years of expanding her audience to more and more people and creating this kind of like alt pipeline for you know that what you would have been more an apolitical or even left-leaning, you know, space for young mothers. That brings us to late 2018, which is when Candace launched yet another online project called Plexit. Yep, which is Black Exit, a racially provocative movement, which had at the time mainstream superstar Kanye West, rumored to be a helper or an assistant. She claimed early on that uh that that Kanye had helped her, it's you know, inspired her in the design of Blexit, but West at the time he distanced himself from it. He got a lot of backlash, so he distanced himself from Candace Owens.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

So that's just a funny like thing that to think about now, because obviously things happen after that fact where she has to distance. Yeah, she has to distance herself from well, yeah, you know, Kanye West did that thing where he's talking about that doctor, he couldn't say what ethnicity he was, and then went, you know, play the clip.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

The thing about the red hat that drove me to a point of exhaustion, which was misdiagnosed by a I'm not gonna say what race, what people, uh doctor, and what hospital and what media went to. We know I can't say that. It was a Jewish doctor.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

But anyways, yeah, he you know got really fucking anti-Semitic and suddenly started uh, you know, praising Hitler on Alex Jones InfoWars.

SPEAKER_04 25:10

The Jews made me goon. I'm a I'm a gooner because of the Jews, and the gooning is everything that ruined my life.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

But to be to be fair though, like he has since I I think I take him a little bit on his word here. He has since claimed that he suffered a traumatic brain injury and he wasn't like treating himself and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 25:28

I gotta use that if I ever get cancelled.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Yeah. If I ever become racist, I'm gonna use someone, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you find out about like the 12 children I ran over when I was drunk, I wouldn't have been around. Sorry about brain injury. I was just experienced psychosis and uh I was drinking and it was bad, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Yeah, no, but I genuinely think like he's he's he's got some shit going on, and I think he's maybe getting better at the time.

SPEAKER_04 25:52

Yeah, so did Adolf Hitler. Like, come on.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

Like Well, they let him uh This podcast is 100% financed by you guys, the listeners, and we have to pay our editor. As such, you can find the rest of this episode over at patreon.com slash the reaction podcast, or just use the link in the podcast description. We are incredibly grateful to all of our supporters. If you're already a patron and you're hearing this, you are on the wrong podcast feed. Thank you all so much for listening.