Pro-Turmp political commentator Candace Owens has been criticised for minimising the Holocaust after calling Mengele’s experiments on Auschwitz prisoners “bizarre propaganda”.
Speaking on an episode of The Candace Show entitled “Literally Hitler. Why can’t we talk about him?”, Owens described Holocaust education as indoctrination.
The Combat Antisemitism Movement called Owen’s comments “utterly repugnant”, adding: “It is an established fact that SS officer Josef Mengele performed deadly experiments on Jewish twins during the Holocaust,” they said on social media. “Not 80 years later [Candace Owens] tries to rewrite history by denying these depraved acts ever happened”.
Owens also ranted about how “factually and statistically” Hitler was not the greatest evil of his time.
Responding to the backlash, Owens hit out at the “Zionist media”. “The reason why this particular episode is so detrimental to Zionism is because they have polluted American minds to believe that we must defend Israel out of morality and the evils of the Holocaust,” she said.
Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum, wrote on social media that Owens “has totally lost the plot and gone full-blown neo-Nazi”.
This is not the first time Owens has been accused of antisemitism. The commentator was fired from The Daily Wire, news site co-founded by Ben Shapiro, over numerous allegations of antisemitic rhetoric.
Earlier this year, Owens, while hosting her show on The Daily Wire, claimed there was “ring” of Jews in Hollywood up to “something quite sinister”. “If there is just a very small ring of specific people who are using the fact that they are Jewish to shield themselves from any criticism, it’s food for thought, right?” she said.
In March, Owens liked a post on X which accused Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a prominent public figure, of being “drunk on Christian blood”. The Anti-Defamation League accused Owens of endorsing the antisemitic canard of blood libel.
Owens has refused to back down over her recent comments, laughing about allegations of Holocaust denial in a clip posted to social media.