Dennis Prager Exposed Candace Owens Once and For All
“You know, I’ve spent my entire lifetime separating the right from the kooks.”
That isn’t some quote from a liberal media talking head; it’s from an American conservative. In fact, it’s a quote attributed to who could not insensibly be called the American conservative, the man without which American conservatism wouldn’t exist: William F. Buckley Jr.
It gets trotted out from time to time by the liberal media to insinuate that some mainstream conservative really is a kook and that St. William of Sharon, Connecticut, would have extirpated them posthaste. But Buckley did have to wrestle with real political nutters in the nascent years of the movement: conspiracy theorists, polybigots and, most noxiously, the anti-Semitic element.
After a magazine he was an associate editor for, The American Mercury, was bought out by anti-Semitic interests, he left and founded his own journal of conservatism, National Review. Not only that, he railed against the Mercury and those who continued to spew its bile, expressly forbidding NR contributors from writing for the Mercury.
There were other examples, as well, but the fact is this: Any movement, and ours is the American right, needs to prune its extremists and kooks — which is why we need to talk about the errant branch that is Candace Owens and the masterful pruning job being done by a very skillful gardener, Dennis Prager.
Owens, you may recall, left her most recent major employer of note, the Daily Wire, earlier this year. The exact circumstances of her departure and how voluntary it was are unclear, although it’s fairly certain that she would have been fired had she not left.
The reason behind the departure was straightforward: Not only had Owens become an extremely vocal critic of Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, she consistently did so in a way that was so extremely erroneous that the only logical conclusion was that, to her, there was something different about the Jewish state than other nation-states that kooks spread random falsehoods about.
(Spoiler alert: It’s that the Jewish state is, quite obviously, Jewish.)
Owens’ began with dog whistles, minus the dog.
The month after the attack, she subtweeted about Israel by quoting Matthew 5:9-11 and Matthew 6:24 (“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God,” etc.) followed by a three-word phrase, which quickly gained traction among all the wrong sorts of people seeking to besmirch the Lord and Savior by dragging him down into the anti-Semitic mire: “Christ is King.”
Christ is King.
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) November 14, 2023
Former academic and conservative-ish social media pundit James Lindsay might have put it best with this response a few months later when the term was still going viral in the worst way possible:
I don’t think the Muslims who are repeating “Christ is King” are doing it in earnest good faith either.
— James Lindsay, anti-Communist (@ConceptualJames) March 25, 2024
Owens has since become more outré than that, however, accusing Jewish people of consuming the blood of Christian children; of being a “pedophilic” religion; of being responsible for transgenderism among children because of Sigmund Freud’s study of the Kabbala, a book of Jewish mysticism; and of influencing Joseph Stalin because of the false rumor that Stalin’s wife was Jewish.
And that’s just all in one interview, according to the Jerusalem Post. Consider, this bizarreness all took place over the course of a single conversation. One almost suspects she dropped several tabs of acid with swastikas on the blotter paper before the sit-down.
Her latest anti-Semitic bugaboo is airing the conspiracy theory that the founders of Israel weren’t really the Jewish people, but “Frankists” — followers of Jacob Frank, an 18th-century Jewish apostate whose beliefs incorporated fragmentary elements of Judaism, Christianity, and (mostly) the belief that he was the real messiah the Jewish people had been waiting for.
This all went down during a September livestream in which she warned, according to Uinterview, “Anything happens to me, blame the Zionists. Like, one thousand percent blame the Zionists.”
Mr. Prager, a conservative pundit who is Jewish, had some serious issues with this — and debunked her nonsense entirely in a 15-page letter.
While it’s impossible to repeat all its points in their entirety — and I’m not the president of an Ivy League university, so I can’t get away with that kind of plagiarism — it’s worth going through Prager’s thorough but fair analysis of just how thoroughly wrong she is, lest you be young and/or impressionable and think that she’s engaging in dispassionate heterodoxy and not the outright flogging of blatant anti-Semitic tropes.
In the Sept. 3 letter — which came shortly after the “Frankist” livestream” — Prager stated that he “wanted to reach out to you privately before I say anything publicly, I have devoted a lot of time to listening to your relevant podcast episodes and your comments in debates and conversations with other people. If you think, based on my responses here, I’ve missed anything relevant, please let me know. I want to take everything into account, and do so in full context.”
According to Prager’s account, Owens didn’t respond, which is why he later made the letter public; as per to YouTube channel J-TV, which specializes in Judaism-related content, they spoke briefly on the phone after he decided to make the letter public, and she apparently had no objections to it — which is telling in its own way, I suppose.
First, the ludicrous idea that Israel was founded by “Frankists.” Prager wrote, “I taught Jewish history at Brooklyn College, and never heard or read such a thing. And even if there were any truth to it, it in no way explains the founding of Israel. For two thousand years, as part of daily ritual prayers, Jews prayed three times a day to be able to return to their homeland, Israel.
“That, plus the world witnessing what happens when Jews have no homeland — centuries of pogroms, massacres, and expulsions (which inspired Theodor Herzl to organize the Jews’ return to Israel — ‘Zionism’ — in the late nineteenth century) culminating in the Holocaust — is what led to the reestablishment of the Jewish state. That Herzl came from the same general region as did Jacob Frank, who predated Herzl by about 150 years — a region with millions of Jews who were not Frankists — and therefore must have been a Frankist, seems like a pretty big leap,” he added.
Prager then addressed Owens’ rant in which she aired the ancient “blood libel” and connected it with Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched in Georgia in 1915 for a crime he almost certainly didn’t commit.
Owens’ words:
“Catholics and Christians were going missing on Passover, then they would find bodies across Europe, and they were able to trace them back to Jews … They weren’t Jews, OK? It was the Frankists, and just as Leo Frank killed Mary Phagan on Passover back in 1913 or 1914 — [it was done] on Passover for a reason. The Frankist cult, which masquerades behind Jews, still participates in this s*** to this day. Why would you want, as a small nation that is the size of New Jersey, the pedophiles to flee there?”
As Prager pointed out, follow that logic and “Israel was founded to be a haven for pedophiles — who, furthermore, engage in slaughtering Christians as part of a satanic ritual.
“That is as close to the medieval libel of Jews — as butchers of Christian children to use their blood for baking Passover matzo — as I have heard in my lifetime.”
He then went on to note that, again and again, she repeated accusations of observant Jews involved in ritual killing that have been so thoroughly debunked that it’s practically like saying O.J. died because he wore himself out searching for Nicole’s real killers.
These things “didn’t happen, and repeating [them] does terrible harm,” Prager wrote. “It is painful for me to know that the Candace I have known would say such things.”
But she has, she will continue to, and she will stand behind it all. Again, we must separate the right from the kooks, and this is kookery.
Prager then took Owens to task for what, on their face, sound like more mundane claims: that Israel cannot be considered a U.S. ally, that it was responsible for a deliberate attack on the U.S.S. Liberty during the 1967 Six-Day War, and that it shelters (sigh, again) pedophiles fleeing justice.
As Prager noted, “Harry Truman saw Israel as America’s greatest ally in the Middle East, and one of its greatest allies in the world. Only the Biden administration has begun to regard Israel differently.
“In every year for which I could find data — 2005 to 2021 — Israel voted with America at the United Nations more often than any other country in the world,” he continued. “And no country has supplied the U.S. with more intelligence or as much arms innovation as has Israel.”
Prager was blunt about the Liberty attack and Israel’s refusal to extradite certain individuals, noting that there were reasons behind them and that they were the exceptions that prove the rule.
“Terrible mistakes happen in every war — a few months ago, Israeli troops mistakenly killed three of their own hostages in Gaza, for example — and for a long time I thought the Israeli attack on the Liberty may have been one,” he wrote. “But I am persuaded that the strike on the Liberty was probably deliberate. For reasons I do not understand, and wish I did, both the American and Israeli governments covered it up at the time and have never since explained why it happened.”
And, as for the Jewish state’s extradition laws: “Israel, in my view, has also been wrong in not extraditing any of the accused American Jewish pedophiles living in Israel. I should explain, however, why that is. It has nothing to do with pedophilia; Israel would not extradite any Jew to any country for any crime.
“The reason is history: Corrupt authorities often demanded that Jewish communities hand over innocent Jews on trumped-up charges. And if they did, those Jews would often be tortured into confessing some crime and then be executed. This history in no way justifies Israel not extraditing Jews to law-based countries like the United States. But history has effects. And, as I said, it is not specific to pedophiles.”
However, it’s worth noting that these abuses have often come to light via Israeli whistleblowers and are often condemned by other Israelis. “Contrast the Israeli whistleblowers with the sharing of photos and videos of October 7 by Hamas terrorists with fellow Palestinians. Are there any Palestinian voices who have objected to what was done that day, or what has been done during 75 years of Palestinian terror?” Prager asked.
The question is, quite sadly, rhetorical. But not to Candace Owens, and that’s the problem.
Most of Prager’s other points are on topics where Owens’ rhetoric speaks for itself. Those who complain frequently about the “Zionist media” and America being occupied by Israel are not talking seriously. And yet, up until recently, Owens seemed to be a woman at least in the orbit of reality, even if she could test its outer limits on occasion. (See: West, Kanye; enabling mental illness.)
That’s the real issue with her anti-Semitism: If you’ve followed Candace loosely throughout her career in conservative media, she came across as a reasonable, level-headed voice. She no longer is, but people’s past assumptions of her mental acumen might lead them to believe that it’s indicative of her current mental state. Her ugly, worthless lies are being floated on the collateral of her prior reputation — which has now been rendered worthless.
Prager was kinder, but stronger, in his final condemnation of Candace’s ugly metamorphosis:
“You may not consciously intend to engender hatred of Jews and Israel. But that doesn’t really matter. The fact is that you are doing so. Whatever your motives, I cannot think of anyone in public life engendering as much suspicion of Jews, Zionism, and Israel as are you.
“All of my life, I have tried to teach people that motives rarely matter. Actions matter. Communists killed one hundred million people and enslaved and ruined the lives of more than a billion. Yet, many communists and their supporters had good motives. It turns out that the amount of evil done by people with good motives is far greater than the amount of evil committed by people with evil motives. I suspect that few people wake up in the morning planning to do what they consider evil.
“So, I don’t impugn your motives. I don’t even judge them. But, to my shock — and that of every Jew and Christian in my life — our once-adored Candace has done great harm to Jews, whether intentionally or not.”
William F. Buckley Jr. may have died in 2008, but we can be thankful that his spirit lives on in men like Dennis Prager. It isn’t enough to just forget the kooks when they reveal themselves. They must be extirpated from the right with vigilance and vehemence.
In 15 pages that should be read by anyone who thinks Candace is speaking a lick of truth, Prager managed to uproot Owens and her bilious beliefs by exposing every falsehood and distortion she peddles. Read them. And remember them. Candace isn’t the first kook that has managed to ingratiate herself into a mainstream political movement, and she won’t be the last.
But unlike the left, we rid ourselves of our extremists.
Part of it is because we have to; we don’t get free passes for anti-Semites among our ranks, like the left does with Ilhan Omar and Buckley’s bête noire, Gore Vidal. However, part of it is also that conservatives need to stand by Israel in its hour of need. That includes not giving air to those who would undermine it with vicious, obvious falsehoods. Candace Owens is full of them, ready to emerge at any moment, and they need to be constantly and aggressively rebutted at the moment they drop from her poisoned mouth.
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