Candace Owens speaks at CPAC on March 2, 2023. Photo: Lev Radin via Reuters Connect
Candace Owens, a prominent provocateur and media personality, has recently promoted a series of talking points downplaying the atrocities of the Holocaust, sparking fresh accusations of antisemitism.
Last Tuesday, Owens claimed in an episode of her podcast that the media smears Nazi Germany by depicting the regime as the “greatest evil” to ever exist on earth. She then suggested that the supposed “ethnic cleansing” of 12 million Germans as a result of World War II was a greater crime than the killing of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.
Lamenting that Americans have supposedly been “indoctrinated” into hating Adolph Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, Owens, a right-wing commentator, appeared to suggest that young children should not receive Holocaust education in schools.
“I started recognizing these Soviet tactics of introducing really heavy concepts to kids while their brains are developing, because you want to traumatize them, and you’re traumatizing them because you want them to comply. What you want them to comply with, in this case, is [that] Germany, Nazi, Hitler [are] the greatest evil that’s ever happened on earth, even though factually and statistically it is not,” Owens said.
The Allies were the bad guys? Imagine hating the Jewish people so much that you feel the need to defend Hitler. Can’t believe this video actually exists. pic.twitter.com/iiahGkahNP
— Adam Goldman (@admgoldman) July 9, 2024
Owens bemoaned that American schools do not draw attention to the 12 million Germans who were displaced at the conclusion of World War II.
Following the Nazis’ defeat, roughly 12 million Germans either fled or were forcibly expelled from communities throughout Eastern and Central Europe. In many cases, ethnic Germans had lived in those communities for centuries.
“What is it about Hitler? How, why is he the most evil? Well the first thing people would say is, well an ethnic cleansing almost took place. And now I offer back, ‘you mean like we actually did to the Germans?'” Owens asked.
Many historians, who generally agree that the mass displacement of Germans after World War II caused immense suffering, have argued that minimizing the atrocities of the Holocaust is a tactic that constitutes Holocaust denialism.
Nonetheless, Owens asserted that the expulsion of German civilians and the attempted extermination of European Jewry were “the same,” pointing to the fact that some Nazi concentration camps were repurposed to hold Germans fleeing hostile European countries.
During the same podcast episode, Owens also seemed to cast doubt on the well documented history of the infamous Nazi doctor and war criminal Josef Mengele performing gruesome medical experiments on Jewish prisoners in concentration camps.
“The Nazis experimented on innocent people,” Owens began. “Some of the stories, by the way, sound completely absurd.”
“The idea that they just cut a human up and then sewed them back together. Why would you do that? Even if you’re the most evil person in the world, that’s a tremendous waste of time and supplies,” Owens continued. “That just sounds like bizarre propaganda.”
Mengele conducted gruesome and deadly medical experiments on Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during the Holocaust. He also carried out torturous experiments on twins and was nicknamed the “Angel of Death.” He fled to Brazil after World War II and eluded capture until he died in 1979 under a false name.
The Combat Antisemitism Movement lambasted Owens for her remarks.
It is an established fact that SS officer Josef Mengele performed deadly experiments on Jewish twins during the Holocaust.
Not 80 years later, @RealCandaceO tries to rewrite history by denying these depraved acts ever happened.
Utterly repugnant. pic.twitter.com/1RdLn35wLm
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) July 10, 2024
Owen’s comments prompted a wave of backlash online.
“Candace Owens has completely lost her mind. Blinded by Jew hatred, she’s now resorted to defending Hitler statements,” Adam Milstein, a philanthropist, wrote on X/Twitter. International human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky accused Owens of having “gone full-blown Neo-Nazi.”
A source “close to the situation” told the New York Post that Owens “never denied that Mengele conducted experiments.”
“This is a misleading edited clip,” the source reportedly said. “In fact, if you listen to the full episode, you will hear that Candace condemned medical experiments.”
Owens later posted a message on X/Twitter lashing out at her critics and claimed “Zionists are in overdrive to get this episode banned.” She added that the episode was “so detrimental to Zionism” because “they have polluted American minds to believe that we must defend Israel out of morality and the evils of the Holocaust.”
In the months following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, Owens has continuously flirted with antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denialism.
Last month, Owens claimed that the US is being held “hostage””by Israel and suggested that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the US, was behind the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy.
Weeks later, during an appearance on The Jimmy Dore Show, Owens asserted that Hitler was not “the greatest mass murderer” to ever exist. She pointed out that the Bolsheviks — the far-left, Marxist faction that led the Russian revolution in the early 20th century — “casually killed 10 million Christians” under the command of Genrikh Yagoda, the director of the Soviet Union’s security and intelligence agency. Owens stated that Americans are not “allowed” to learn about Yagoda “because he’s a Jew.”
Owens and The Daily Wire, a conservative media outlet co-founded by conservative and Jewish political commentator Ben Shapiro, parted ways earlier this year amid outrage over Owen’s comments on Israel and the Jewish people.
The post Candace Owens Downplays Holocaust Atrocities, Calls Infamous Nazi Doctor’s Experiments ‘Bizarre Propaganda’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
