A video from December has surfaced featuring conservative commentator and Trump cultist Candace Owens giving her thoughts on how the term “nationalist” can’t really be applied to Hitler because he went “global” with his ideas.
Speaking at a London event to mark the launch of her organization Turning Point USA in the UK, Owens was asked by an audience member how British conservatives who want to promote national sovereignty can avoid the dirty word “nationalist.” But according to Owens, people shouldn’t shun the “nationalist” label.
“He was a national socialist,” Owens replied. “But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he wanted — he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German. Everybody to look a different way. To me, that’s not nationalism. In thinking about how we could go bad down the line, I don’t really have an issue with nationalism. I really don’t.”
Here is video of Candace Owens' full answer on nationalism and Hitler pic.twitter.com/NfBvoH8vQg
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) February 8, 2019
It’s not clear what Owens meant by saying Hitler wanted everyone to look a “different way.” History shows that clearly wasn’t the case.
Owens later posted a video to Periscope, accusing the media of taking her words out of context.
“I thought [the questioner] was sort of implying that nationalism is a dirty word,” Owens said. “And we see that a lot in America where nationalism is sort of conflated, for some reason, with Hitler… I think that’s really, really wrong and that we almost have to correct the record on that.”
Candace Owens just finished a periscope on this with "I stand by my statements" so https://t.co/JFv0mcLgpr
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) February 8, 2019
“People wrongly conflate the word nationalism to mean…Hitler,” Owens continued. “Hitler was a national socialist, but in my interpretation, or from my understanding, I would make the argument that he wasn’t a nationalist, he was a homicidal, psychotic maniac who was bent on world domination outside the confines of Germany.”
The video came to light due to a report from BuzzFeed News highlighting the “disastrous British launch” of Turning Point USA.
With a provocative pitch about liberating universities from the left, the launch attracted widespread publicity. Several prominent politicians on the British right endorsed the group, including Nigel Farage, Priti Patel, and Jacob Rees-Mogg. But there was also pushback: Labour MP David Lammy tweeted that Tories who were endorsing Turning Point were openly promoting “hard right, xenophobic bile”. Conservative party headquarters sent an instruction to its members “not to work with them in any capacity”.
Naturally, Twitter had a field day:
“If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, ok fine. The problem is he had dreams outside of Germany.” – @RealCandaceO, who thinks murdering millions of Jews is "fine" if you keep it in your national borders. Another stellar example of "nationalism." https://t.co/SIGAFtdZlZ
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) February 8, 2019
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1093952819965689857
If you are going to start a sentence with “the problem with Hitler,” you might need to include some mention of the Holocaust, or even something he did that was in any way related to the Holocaust.
— D. OB (@Boomy2007) February 8, 2019
https://twitter.com/MuslimIQ/status/1093963256287428608
Featured image via screen grab
