Candace Owens: Always There to Denigrate the Black Community

(Link warning: I have linked to many articles and videos to support my article. Some of these contain graphic language, including use of the N-word. I have placed an asterisk (*) next to links that I know contain extreme graphic language. However, as this was an afterthought, I apologize if I have missed some links. Please make me aware if you find any graphic language in other links, and I will place an asterisk on them as well. At my discretion, I have avoided some primary sources to highlight responses which I consider helpful and relevant.)

     I've been following Candace Owens for several years now. I first learned about her in her first interview with Dave Rubin. At that point, she was still a small YouTuber, known as Red Pill Black, but she was quickly gaining traction in conservative circles. 

     At the time, Candace was still invested in the idea of creating "Social Autopsy," a website dedicated to tracking people's harassing behavior online. Hearing her explain it to Dave Rubin, I was initially open to the idea of Social Autopsy. But doing my due diligence, I followed up doing basic research on it. And I very quickly changed my opinion.

     Social Autopsy was near universally denounced by both right wing and left wing thinkers alike. The goal of Social Autopsy was to associate people's online activity with their real life personal information, so that if you saw online "hate speech" (a term Candace herself used in promoting the website) you could capture that hate speech and associate it with specific people's personal information. People's profiles would include things like the city and state they lived in, as well as their place of employment. The profiles would include screenshots of every hateful tweet, post, blog, etc. that they made on the internet. Furthermore, the website would collect this information on minors as well. Candace promoted this website as an anti-cyber-bullying website. But others quickly pointed out that it would actually facilitate bullying. 

     The concern was that this website would give real life harassers the tools they would need to doxx and potentially swat their personal enemies, or create fake screenshots to tarnish other people's reputations. For those not familiar with these terms, doxxing is when you post people's real life address, phone number, place of work, etc. online so that others can harass them in their homes, on their phones, or at work. Swatting refers to filing false reports to the police saying there's an active assault in progress and giving them the address of the victim. Police show up in swat gear, thinking they are responding to an assault in progress. Swatting can, and sometimes does, end with police killing the unsuspecting victim.

     The greatest irony of this website was that it actively sought to destroy online anonymity, but, as critics pointed out, contributions to social autopsy were themselves anonymous. Many online commentators, well familiar with the dangers of online harassment, pointed out that rather than exposing online bullying, Social Autopsy would create a new venue for online bullying. Social Autopsy would be, by nature, one sided. Only your negative online interactions would be posted. There would be no weighing positive and negative. People wouldn't see the full context of you as a person. They would only get individual snapshots of the bad things you said online. It would encourage online bullies to dive deep into your social media history, find incriminating posts, and share them. 

     Social Autopsy faced direct opposition from all sides of the political spectrum. The Kickstarter campaign for Social Autopsy was targeted by internet activists, who appealed directly to Kickstarter to ban the campaign. After reviewing Social Autopsy, Kickstarter deemed it to be in violation of their policy, and the campaign was shut down.

     Meanwhile, there were dozens of online commentators, mostly right and center-right, who opposed Social Autopsy. Chris Ray Gun was one of the first commentators to oppose it. Computing Forever opposed it. Armored Skeptic opposed it. Andy Warski opposed it. The interesting thing about lots of the criticism against Social Autopsy was that many people classified Candace as a left wing SJW at the time. They didn't believe she had actually had a political conversion. The biggest blows against Social Autopsy came from black conservative YouTuber Tree of Logic* and Trump supporting trans YouTuber Blaire White. Side-note: If you want to watch a train-wreck of a debate, check out the debate between Candace Owens and Blaire White moderated (I use that term loosely) by Dave Rubin. 

     Despite the fact that Social Autopsy was roundly condemned by the entire political spectrum, but especially from the right, Candace herself maintained that she was the target of a conspiracy* headed by feminist game developer (and Gamergate victim) Zoe Quinn. Candace painted herself as a victim of left wing propaganda, and began to ingratiate herself to the right wing. (To be clear, Candace did experience online harassment, but her maintaining it came from the left is baseless.) She started by appearing with Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones. The interesting thing is, Paul Joseph Watson himself had written a piece for Infowars condemning Social Autopsy. But he and Jones oddly enough supported her narrative that Social Autopsy was attacked by the left. When Paul Joseph Watson straight up lied on Twitter about Social Autopsy, many people called him out. But lying is fair game. Conservatives were willing to buy into the lie if it meant having a conservative black woman on their team. Candace also won the support of such infamous right wingers as Mike "Pizzagate" Cernovich and Stefan "blacks have smaller brains than whites" Molyneux. 

     Conservatives ate up Candace Owens' victimhood story. They quickly forgot about Social Autopsy and what a terrible idea it was. Despite the fact that Social Autopsy was roundly condemned left, right, and center, Candace created a story that it was the left that attacked her, and the idea of having a black conservative women who was victimized by the left was just too irresistible. From there she worked her way into TurningPointUSA. She found herself making videos for Dennis Prager. And she even got invited to testify on Capital Hill by Republican lawmakers. 

     That is the story of how Candace exploited her own failed idea of Social Autopsy, got called out by the right (and center, and left), created a conspiracy theory about the left, and won conservative support. Candace Owens failed up, big time. 

     Now, I don't want to spend too much time talking about the controversies surrounding Owens; how she literally told Joe Rogan that .com websites are not trustworthy and .org websites are, and that this is how she does research on climate change; how she made a whole video for Dennis Prager telling liberal celebrities that nobody cares about celebrity opinion, but then called Kanye West "one of the bravest men in America right now" for his support of Trump; how she literally defended Hitler's nationalism! (Do you remember that one?) 

     Let's even gloss over the fact that she defended* Central Park Karen, Amy Cooper, who both filed a false report with police to claim an African-American man was threatening her life, as well as abused her dog. Let's gloss over her quasi-defense of Armaud Arbery's murderers. Let's even gloss over her disparaging of the Central Park Five, even thought they have all been exonerated. Although, all these are relevant to what I am about to say.

     I want to focus on one thing, which is Candace Owens' denigration of George Floyd. At a time when people left, right, and center are condemning police brutality, at a time when even police officers are taking the knee, she feels the need to tell you what a bad person George Floyd was. Why? Well, she says it's because people are upholding Floyd as a hero, and she won't do that. But, of course, nobody is upholding Floyd as a hero. He's not being placed on a six foot pedestal; he's being placed six feet underground. He was murdered in front of the nation's eyes. That's why people are protesting. As Dave Chappelle says in his video released just today*, the black community didn't select George Floyd as their rallying point. The police officer who murdered him did. 

     Why is Candace dredging up the past of George Floyd? I suggest that the answer is in Social Autopsy. Candace Owens began with an idea. That idea of Social Autopsy was to take every bad thing that anybody has said or done, and make a website to keep all of that information and put it in public view. Make sure everybody knows the naughty things you've said on social media. Make sure you have no anonymity. Make sure that no matter where you go, your bad thoughts, words, and deeds will follow you. Make sure there's no escaping from your wrong doing. Make sure that other people know only the bad side of you.

     Today, Social Autopsy no longer exists. It was a bad idea, condemned by both the right and the left. But Candace Owens herself hasn't changed. If there's a black man who was killed by the police, Candace Owens wants to be the person who makes sure you know every bad thing that black man has done. Unjustified murder you say! What about his criminal record? Never mind the fact he wasn't resisting; pay attention to his past arrests. Never mind that he was killed over $20, let's talk about his drug usage. Never mind guilty until proven innocent. In Candace's world, once you have any criminal record, you're fair game. 

     Candace Owens is doing with the death of George Floyd exactly what her critics said she was doing with Social Autopsy. She is creating a world where people's past wrongs justify any injustices committed against that person in the future.

     You see, Candace Owens wanted to create a website that would literally facilitate doxxers and swatters. The website was predicated on the idea that once you post bad things online, you should have to suffer the consequences in perpetuity, no matter how disproportionate those consequences may be. And there would be no discussion of your positive side. That project was shut down, thanks to near universal push back. But Owens herself still doesn't seem to mind people getting killed, as long as she's the one keeping track of all the bad things they did. Sure, she'll pay lip service and poo poo police brutality. But at the end of the day, what she wants you to know is that George Floyd deserved to die because of his past. 

     Candace Owens really hasn't changed. It's just that since she cannot facilitate violence against others, she at least wants to justify it. 

     No thank you, Candace.

     

     #JusticeforGeorgeFloyd

     

The Anti-Climatic Documentary "AKA Jane Doe."

     You've no doubt heard about it by now. Norma McCorvey, A.K.A. Jane Doe from the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Roe V. Wade, supposedly recanted her conversion to the pro-life cause. In the new FX documentary entitle AKA Jane Doe, McCorvey, who had converted to Christianity in 1995 and became a leading figure in the pro-life movement, told the filmmakers on her deathbed that she did not actually have a change of heart about abortion. She said it was "no skin of my ass" if a woman wanted to have an abortion. Much of the hype around this documentary focused on one topic: the implication that Norma McCorvey was paid to become a pro-life figurehead. 

     Having watch the documentary, however, the hype doesn't match the delivery. In fact, to be perfectly honest, the documentary had precious little to do with McCorvey's pro-life activism at all. The big moment where it was revealed that pro-life organizations had paid her for her activism was rather feeble. A former pro-life activist preacher states they paid her for her activism, and then a couple of numbers flash across the screen. Unlike all the op-eds and opinion pieces that portrayed this as scandalous, the documentary itself glossed over it with relative dismissiveness. McCorvey says they told her what to say, and she said it. OK, so like speech writers? Nothing particularly new there either.

     This documentary was not about the pro-life movement, nor about Roe v. Wade, nor even about abortion, really. This documentary was about Norma McCorvey, and to that end I believe this was a good documentary. I genuinely believe this documentary will do little to change anyone's view on abortion, and I do not believe the filmmakers had any such plan in mind. I may be wrong, but I just didn't see it. This is a documentary about Norma McCorvey and all the flaws and contradictions she brought with her.

     Norma McCorvey's life was full of all those twists and turns that make truth stranger than fiction, and the fact that she never fit in with any particular social norm speaks just as much to the social norms as to her own life. Can we appreciate, for instance, the comic irony that she was sent to an all-girls school to help reform her of her lesbian inclinations? Can we appreciate the tragic irony that she lied and said she was raped to get an abortion, even as her husband beat her for getting pregnant? That McCorvey is a contradictory figure only highlights the contradictions of the cultural and legal milieu she lived in.

     The contradictions keep coming. She wanted an abortion, and never had an abortion. She was the central figure for abortion rights, and yet abortion rights advocates had to marginalize her in order to keep their messaging. And then she converted, she switched sides! And a strange thing happened. She had to renounce her lesbianism, all-the-while she kept living with her lesbian partner. What's up with that? She became a pro-life advocate and a prize for the pro-life movement. But now the twist of this documentary comes: she didn't believe it. She was doing her thing to be an activist, but her activism was, what? A show, maybe?

     And yet, I didn't walk away from this documentary thinking her activism was a show. I didn't walk away thinking there were any scams or scandals. I walked away with one more piece of Norma McCorvey's life, full of uniquely human contradictions that defy rational explication. I don't think it was all for show, or money. Norma McCorvey was swept up into a social/political issue much bigger than herself. She became a central figure by opportunism. But opportunism itself is not the same as faking, nor the same as putting on a show. When people get swept into issues so much larger than themselves, a whirlwind ensues. So when an abused, pregnant, heteromarried, lesbian housewife goes from wanting an abortion, to becoming the face of all abortion, can we expect anything other than a whirlwind? 

     In summary, I genuinely believe that this documentary will not change anyone's minds on the topic of abortion, nor do I think it lives up to the media hype. But, this film did what it set out to do. It portrayed Norma McCorvey as a person, in all her flaws and contradictions, as an individual who was probably better off being an individual than a figurehead.