MRC Loves Candace Owens — But Silent On Her Anti-Semitic Leanings

The Media Research Center has long been a fan of right-wing provocateur Candace Owens — in no small part because she sticks to right-wing narratives while her occasional social media bans for saying offensive things and spreading conspiracy theories feeds into the victimhood narrative. A sampling of Owens being invoked by the MRC over the past few years:

• PBS Facebook Report Blurs Candace Owens with Extremists Who Killed a Black Cop
• Candace Owens Owns Cardi B in Twitter Dispute
• Dem House Candidate Tweets KKK ‘Hood’ Image to Candace Owens: ‘You May’ve Dropped This’
• Candace Owens: Twitter ‘Sticking Bulls**t Labels on Tweets’ Won’t Make Me Get Vaccinated
• SILENCED AGAIN? Candace Owens Says Facebook Censored Her for COVID Vaccine Criticism
• TOSSED: Judge Dismisses Candace Owens Lawsuit Against Facebook Fact-Checkers
• James O’Keefe to Candace Owens: Important to Expose Big ‘Tech Oligarchy with the Media’
• Candace Owens Slams Instagram For Alleged Censorship
• Owens: LeBron Is Well-Meaning, But Has A Low IQ
• Freeform’s ‘Grown-ish’ Continues Attacking Conservatives: ‘We Don’t Need Another Candace Owens’
• ‘Trans’ Censorship: YouTube SILENCES Jordan Peterson, Candace Owens, Michael Knowles
• Freeform’s Racist Comedy ‘grown-ish’ Vilifies Black Conservatives Candace Owens and Herschel Walker
• PolitiFact Freaks Out at Claims of Candace Owens Joining ‘The View’

Additionally, the MRC’s former “news” division CNSNews.com was a huge fan of Owens, to the point that it falsely proclaimed her as the “founder” of the so-called Blexit movement though she merely co-opted it from the actual founder. However, CNS studiously ignored the numerous controversies Owens has been involved in — as has the MRC. In October 2022, the MRC was cheering Owens palling around with Kanye West, with Tierin-Rose Mandelburg gushing, “Ye and Candice Owens are freakin’ savage” — and this was two days after West made blatantly anti-Semitic remarks (which the MRC was extremely slow to condemn because he had been a spouter of right-wing narratives).

After the start of the the Israel-Hamas war, Owens was taking increasingly anti-Israel stances, to the point that her boss at the right-wing Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, criticized her, culminating in a Twitter war with Shapiro in which Owens heavily alluded to anti-Semitic tropes and stated that “Christ is king” (Jews don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus). She made more anti-Semitic allusions in a later interview with Tucker Carlson.

The MRC has been completely silent about all of this. Instead, it continued to promote Owens as she fed into its victimhood narrative:

A Dec. 20 post by Jorge Bonilla accused NBC of “displaying a deceptive edit of a Candace Owens video on the history of slavery” in a report on how right-wing PragerU is sneaking into schools. A Jan. 6 column by Jeffrey Lord touted a quip by right-wing podcaster and ex-Fox News host Megyn Kelly that Owens should be the next president of Harvard, adding:

Owens, of course, has made her career as a conservative activist and pundit and not as an academic, and scholar. So this would not happen.

But just suppose for a moment that Owens had in fact spent a career as an Ivy League academic. Would she ever have been chosen to be President of Harvard?

To say hell would freeze over would be to laughably understate the reaction a Professor/Dr. Owens nomination would receive.

A Jan. 11 post by Tom Olohan touted an appearance on Owens’ podcast by Vivek Ramaswamy, who helped him spread a conspiracy theory about a purportedly impending “central bank digital currency” that will be imposed on the U.S.:

Both [co-host Tim] Pool and Owens were quick to supply examples of how a CBDC could expand government censorship and control in the U.S. Owens pointed out that in many ways the “digitization of everything” which took place during COVID-19 had continued after the pandemic. Owens said that she “felt it was very much because they did want us to move in this direction as a society.” 

None of these writers mentioned Owens’ anti-Semitic leanings.

The MRC’s NewsBusters Twitter account also tweeted out a Jan. 10 image of Owens featuring the quote “Why is everyone so sensitive? What if everyone just shut up and stopped crying?” with the added message “Mood for 2024.” It too failed to mention Owen’s anti-Semitism; apparently, hating Jews is the MRC’s mood for 2024.

This is just another example of the MRC’s hypocrisy on the issue of anti-Semitism, quick to condemn it in non-right-wingers but downplaying or ignoring it when it comes from the MRC’s fellow travelers.