Candace Owens v. The Daily Wire: A Political Realignment

PoliticsSociety
Written By Vincent Williams

Political realignments happen when historical narratives are disrupted.

Since the Republican Party's inception in 1854, it had been known for liberating and protecting the rights of all Americans, specifically black Americans. The first twenty-three black members of Congress were elected under the Republican umbrella. The first was Hiram Rhodes Revels. Among Republican accomplishments for the betterment and acceptance of black Americans were the Reconstruction Amendments pushed for by Abraham Lincoln, the creation of the Department of Justice under Ulysses Grant to combat the KKK, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and Calvin Coolidge's resolution to have a Negro national monument built.

The narrative started changing during the Herbert Hoover administration. Democrats blamed the Great Depression on Hoover, while ignoring their culpability, and took to print to smear him. The Great Depression hit black Americans the hardest. Homeless encampments were called "Hoovervilles." Old newspapers used as blankets were coined "Hoover blankets." An empty pocket turned inside out was called a "Hoover flag." The Hoover smear campaign was a success. Years later, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal initiatives, which increased the welfare state tenfold, were championed by poor black Americans. Depression Era blacks would gleefully chant, "Let Jesus lead me and welfare feed me."

Black Americans have primarily supported Democrats ever since, who leveraged that support into wildly progressive initiatives and elitist government expansion that often hinders black American prosperity. The actual narrative of Republicans had been destroyed, giving way to a more liberal political alignment.

After the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements in the early 2010s and the outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election, America is amid a conservative populist political realignment. Citizens are reexamining historical outcomes. Is MLK deserving of the posthumous praise he receives? Was the creation of the Federal Reserve a net positive? Did black Americans get a raw deal with the Civil Rights Act of 1964? What was World War II really fought over? New political parties and identities are forming. Nationalist populism and America First policies have become popular as people have awakened to the ills of globalization. American flag symbolism is rapidly spreading. The blue-line American flag is one of conservatives' most significant cultural wins in the last fifty years. Remakes of the flag are everywhere in almost every industry.

As the narrative shifts and political alliances are reconsidered, the current narrative holders will push back as their power is threatened. Insert Candace Owens and The Daily Wire.

Candace Owens, a former TPUSA and PragerU commentator, is now a former Daily Wire commentator. Last week, she and Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing confirmed her split with the company on X.

“Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship”

“The rumors are true— I am finally free.

If you would like to support my work, you can head to http://CandaceOwens.com where you will be directed to my locals page.

Or, you can give a gift at http://gocandace.com There will be many announcements in the weeks to come.”

Since her departure, many black social media influencers have inserted their ignorant logic into the public square. Most of the attacks were centered around Candace's husband being a white Brit. Other influencers, like Author David Icke, critiqued Michael Knowles for not having a more fiery response.

What did people expect him to say? Did people expect him to start brawling with Ben Shapiro? Go watch WorldStarHipHop for that kind of buffoonery.

The rest of the conversation goes a little deeper. There is talk about who funds The Daily Wire, possible connections with Israel, Candace's father-in-law being a member of The House of Lords in the UK, the discordant relationship between Christianity and Judaism, and, of course, the Jews.

And I'm here for all of those convos. However, I'd like to take the conversation in a slightly different direction. 

I started this piece by discussing political realignments. American Jews have aligned with liberals and Democrats for decades.

As I stated in a previous piece, liberalism is the bane of society. Born out of the secular French Enlightenment movement in the 17th century, it runs antithetical to many Christian teachings. To be brief, the Enlightenment birthed Deism, the belief in a single God who created the world but does not intervene in its affairs, relying on reason rather than revelation or religious authority to understand the divine. Deism is at the core of liberalism.

Since the 20th century, American Jews have embraced and promoted liberalism. Outside of American blacks, Jews are the most loyal block of Democrat voters, supporting the blue brand over 70% of the time. American Jews were the driving force behind Barack Obama's 2008 victory. They supported FDR's New Deal welfare expansionism, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program, stricter business regulations, social movements like BLM, organized labor, gun control, and large-scale immigration. Sanctuary cities (initially called Cities of Refuge) were based on the Jewish interpretation of scripture (Numbers 35:9). They saw it as a win-win for America and themselves, hoping it'd shield them from Christian cynicism while living up to the teachings of Judaism.

(Playing devil’s advocate: this thinking doesn't pass the smell test because if living up to the principles in the Torah leads one to become a Democrat, then why do Orthodox Jews vote almost entirely Republican out of fear of contradicting Jewish law?)

For a good stretch, it panned out. This liberalism kickstarted a golden era for American Jews, bringing safety, wealth, and political clout like never before. Once outcasts, they waltzed right into the American elite. What's more, they snagged power while keeping their Jewish identity intact, a feat no other ethno-religious group has accomplished. For better or for worse, Jews left their mark on American culture. My hometown, Chicago, features four stylized Stars of David on the city flag. Jews built Hollywood, outpaced all of their ethno-religious counterparts in earnings since the 1930s, and quickly molded society to fit their vision. Their worries became everyone's, and their aspirations became the American Dream.

The original idea of the American Dream was never about a house, a white picket fence, and a couple of cars in the driveway. Sarah Churchwell, author of the book Behold, America, spoke to Smithsonian Magazine in 2018: "'The American Dream' has always been about the prospect of success, but 100 years ago, the phrase meant the opposite of what it does now. The original 'American Dream' was not a dream of individual wealth; it was a dream of equality, justice and democracy for the nation. The phrase was repurposed by each generation, until the Cold War, when it became an argument for a consumer capitalist version of democracy. Our ideas about the 'American Dream' froze in the 1950s. Today, it doesn't occur to anybody that it could mean anything else."

The materialistic American Dream concept stuck because of Hollywood films and the explosion of television. Big movie stars with fancy cars, stylish garbs, and oversized mansions fed audiences the fantasy of material wealth. It was also emblematic of the lavish lifestyle many American Jews increasingly enjoyed.

As is often the case with liberalism, it sounds good; it looks good on a television screen, but it is a disaster in real life. Americans are slowly waking up to this fact, realizing many of the Hollywood, political, and cultural elites, some of whom happen to be Jews, do not appear to have America's best interest at heart. I get it. Most Americans do not have a second country to call home. America is the only home they have, and it is being overrun by criminal cartels who hate America.

I cannot confidently say with what country The Daily Wire's allegiances lie. I can say it is an organization that supports the old liberal order.

The old American liberal order, which was, in some ways, created by Jews for Jews, is under attack from the left and the right. Israel has become a wedge issue on both sides. Much of the Democrat and Republican donor classes are pro-Israel. They have supported the millions of American taxpayer dollars sent to Israel on autopay for the last half-dozen decades. Elites in both parties throw around anti-semitism accusations like black elites hurl around racism claims. The voters in both parties are becoming increasingly weary of it all.

Opposition from the left comes in the form of unabashedly pro-Palestine and pro-Gaza college students. College campuses around the country are breeding grounds for anti-Jewish demonstrations, many of which turn violent.

Candace Owens embodies the opposition from the right. Candace, in principle, supports a new conservative American order that takes care of its own first. Not Ukraine or Israel. Ben Shapiro and the executive brass at The Daily Wire desire a return to the American liberal Jew golden age. He's not a bad guy for wanting that. If I were Ben, I'd want the same thing. But those two warring ideologies, and the two firebrands attached to them, would never be able to coexist under the same roof for an extended period. In hindsight, the moment Candace took Kanye's side in the fierce "Death Con 3" controversy, her days were probably numbered.

The Daily Wire separating from Candace Owens is a microcosm of the old liberal regime's repudiation of the conservative populist movement. The pristine narrative of "classical" liberalism has been fractured, much like the Republican narrative was destroyed in the 19th century.

It is not just liberal Jews rejecting a conservative populist uprising. Liberal black elites are rejecting the movement, as well. iHeartMedia has taken the brunt of criticism for allowing The Breakfast Club, a nationally syndicated New York City-based radio show catering to black audiences, to interview Vivek Ramaswamy and Candace Owens. Asha Bandele, a Black Lives Matter activist and contributing writer for NewsOne, wrote a scathing piece criticizing "College dropout Candy."

Asha writes, "Because College dropout Candy [Candace Owens] anchors her authority on social issues to her intellectual curiosity, which is also a fake thing and leads to her consistently drawing false conclusions from shockingly faulty logic. Her interview on The Breakfast Club Thursday morning was kind of like handing the keys to the codes over to the Village Idiot (VI) simply because the VI has hands—and then being surprised when everyone's blown to pieces."

That critique of Owens' intellect sounds familiar.

At a fundraising event last year, The Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro issued a similar condemnation.

It should be no surprise that Bandele and Shapiro despise Donald Trump, albeit for different reasons.

Candace Owens will be smeared as a proxy attack to target Donald Trump. The Make America Great Again movement represents an upending of the old liberal guard.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, contributing writer for the Jewish news and commentary site Haaretz, sounds terrified of another potential Trump term: "If Trump is nominated, the nightmare scenario for the election has become the probable scenario, modeled on the pattern of the previous four years. The Trump-led Republicans will challenge every Democratic victory, pressure state officials to bow to wild charges of fraud, twist the arms of representatives in Congress to play along, threaten Republican resisters with retaliation, and strike up the 'stop the steal' band."

Yoffie continues, "Most important of all, the signal will be given — openly or implicitly, by Trump himself or others in authority — that loyal Trumpers must take to the street. And take to the streets they will."

"Jews fear chaos and angry mobs for good reason. They know that if a mob is yelling for blood, it will be yelling for Jewish blood as well. They know that they will never be safe in such an America, and neither will other minorities."

According to polling, nearly three out of four American Jews believe the MAGA movement is a "threat to Jews in America."

Back in 2016, liberal Jews talked about fleeing if Trump clinched the presidency. When Trump won, many didn't. Barbra Streisand is still here. But for many others, the talk became action. In 2017, post-Trump's victory, Jewish passport applications to Germany nearly doubled from the previous year, hitting 1,685, and the numbers kept climbing. By 2022, they reached 2,500. Imagine that. Trump fueling a rise in Jews fleeing back to Germany of all places? Interesting.

There is some truth to what Rabbie Yoffie said. Some people are violently spiteful toward Jews. Anti-semitism is real. But given some of the rhetoric coming from people like Dennis Prager, Jonathan Greenblatt, and Ben Shapiro, color me skeptical if violence is their number one concern.

Entrenched historical narratives are not sacred; they must be scrutinized from every perspective. This scrutiny is precisely why free speech faces such fierce opposition and must be protected at all costs. Who is more dangerous: the man with nothing to lose or the man with everything to lose? When those in power feel threatened and everything is on the line, they fight back. The old liberal world order won't surrender without a fight.

Vincent Williams

Founder and Chief Editor of Critic at Extra Large, an American, former radio personality, former Music Director, Hip-Hop enthusiast and lover of all things mint.

https://twitter.com/VinWilliams28
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