CNSNews.com loves quoting black right-wing activist Candace Owens’ conservative rantings, no matter how dubious — even while it censors the controversies she gets into. Since we last documented this in August, the love has continued, mostly from writer Craig Bannister:
- Candace Owens: ‘Coronavirus Is the Greatest Rigging of an American Election that Has Ever Taken Place’
- Candace Owens: Joe Biden Is So Senile He ‘Believes He Is Running for President of Iran’
- Candace Owens: ‘Only Marxist Psychopaths’ Call It ‘Hateful’ to Believe Only Women Can Give Birth
- Candace Owens Calls Out Hollywood ‘Frauds’: ‘Never Listen to a Person That’ Does These Two Things
- Candace Owens: Democrats ‘Like Black America Screaming in the Streets, Rioting, Looting, Being Pawns’
- Candace Owens Shares MAGA Rapper Video: ‘The Whole Mood Is Changing in Black America Right Now’
- Candace Owens: Biden, Obama Gave Blacks More Handouts; Trump Is Giving Us More Hand Ups (this one was posted by Melanie Arter, who falsely called Owens the “Blexit founder”; in fact, she co-opted it from the actual founder)
- Candace Owens: Business Owners Know the Rioting Looters are ‘Antifa Operating Under the Guise of Black Lives Matter’
- Candace Owens on Vogue’s Harry Styles: ‘Bring Back Manly Men’
- Candace Owens: ‘No Amount of Media-Coverage, Data Manipulation’ Will Make Me Fear Coronavirus
In that last one, posted Dec. 11, Bannister uncritically repeated Owens’ claim that “I am not afraid of any virus that has over a 99% survival rate” — a dishonest argument that callously handwaves the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have died from it.
Bannister let Owens get away with more dishonesty in a Jan. 7 item:
The rise and fall of any nation always follows the same path, Blexit leader and conservative commentator Candace Owens said Wednesday.
Owens tweeted that the progression of a country takes nations through a common sequence of nine stages, the first and last of which are always the same – bondage:
- Bondage,
- Faith,
- Courage,
- Liberty,
- Abundance,
- Selfishness,
- Complacency,
- Dependence,
- Bondage
Attaining abundance is, ironically, the very thing that ultimately proves to be a nation’s undoing, Owens appears to suggest in her tweet:
“Nations always progress through the following sequence: From bondage to great faith; From faith to great courage; courage to liberty; liberty to abundance; abundance to selfishness; selfishness to complacency; complacency to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
Owens’ Blexit movement seeks to introduce conservative values to the nation’s urban communities.
Bannister presents this as an original thought from Owens — in fact, it’s something that’s been bouncing around the internet for years. We first wrote about it back in 2004 when a slightly longer version of that list of stages had already been bouncing around right-wing email lists since 2000. The words were being attributed to 18th-century Scottish history professor (though there’s no actual evidence it originates with him), which evolved somewhere along the line to “Alexander Tyler.”
That dishonesty, of course, hasn’t stopped Bannister from promoting Owens’ alleged pearls of wisdom since then:
- Candace Owens: If You’ve Been Calling Trump Supporters Nazis, It’s Time to ‘Take a Good Hard Look in the Mirror’
- Candace Owens Blasts #FreeTheNipple: ‘Women Upset That They Can’t Show Their Breasts on Instagram’
Clickbait is more important to Bannister than honesty, it appears.