Candace Owens is a conservative commentator and pundit who has been thrust into the spotlight for her role in the Gamergaters movement. On this episode of The FiveThirtyEight podcast, we talk about how she became one of the most recognizable names in the pro-pro-Donald Trump movement.
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00:01:39.540I mean, look at the way that people are treating Erica Kirk as she's trying to raise these poor children after being widowed in this incredibly violent act.
00:01:46.860But, you know, you would never say something like what's being said about Erica Kirk to anyone's face.
00:02:25.140Yeah, I mean, I can certainly understand Tim's frustration, especially given all the security concerns and everything else happening there.
00:02:32.540I think ultimately he recognizes that pushing different narratives about nefarious actors inside the Republican Party, conservative movements, these kind of things, you know, artificially attributing fault to different people.
00:02:46.180This can drive people to ridiculous and radical action.
00:02:50.600I mean, obviously, we don't know if that's what happened in this case.
00:02:53.220We don't have enough information, but we've seen the way in which leftist propaganda and other suggestions about the fact that different actors are behind, you know, violence or corrupting different things is going to drive people towards these conspiracy theories and make them more likely to take some kind of violent action.
00:03:13.060And I will say that it's been interesting to watch this development.
00:03:16.920I don't know how many people remember this, but for those of us who have been around since Gamergate, the deep lore from Candace Owens originally was that she ran this site social autopsy, which was basically like a doxing service to try to ruin the life of people online.
00:03:34.260Now, eventually she kind of changed her tune and the left didn't like her very much.
00:03:40.140And so this kind of moved her to the right.
00:03:42.400This was her, the left left me, Dave Rubin type moment.
00:03:46.220But, you know, it's always been difficult to tell.
00:03:48.960Is that a real Candace or is that Candace moving with the currents?
00:03:53.480She's obviously always been somebody who is very talented.
00:03:57.020Somebody who is able to be captivating, has a lot of charisma, can put her pulse on what people want to hear.
00:04:03.980But is she saying what she really believes, right?
00:04:06.440She went from being a pro-doxing, anti-Gamergate liberal to being kind of this new right MAGA coalition person.
00:04:15.520She fed kind of the boomer con based blacks, get the African-Americans off the Democrat reservation, Blexit type narrative.
00:04:24.000And so she's just kind of always found this audience where she can say exactly to them what they want to hear.
00:04:30.280Now, maybe that is really her genuine political evolution.
00:04:33.860But that that fact that she's once again found herself with a new audience that she can tell exactly what they want to hear, when they want to hear it, create the drama, fit that exact.
00:04:43.660It just feels pretty convenient that once again, we find ourselves in that place with Candace's trajectory.
00:04:49.080Yeah. Well, I mean, I was reading earlier, Keith Woods, he kind of put together these turns that she's had throughout her career and tied it to these moments in the sort of the political zeitgeist and how she seemingly adopts the position where the most energy is at any given time or there is significant energy at any given time.
00:05:07.040I mean, he pointed out how she was actually a Zionist.
00:05:11.060She was an avowed Zionist for the longest time as she was a part of the broader MAGA coalition.
00:05:16.600October 7th happens. Obviously, there's a lot of this energy sort of critiquing Israel, you know, sort of analyzing our relationship with Israel.
00:05:24.620And then suddenly she turns into this like bold, brash anti-Zionist like overnight, and that becomes her new brand.
00:05:34.480And to me, I'm just looking at that. I'm looking at all these touch points throughout her career.
00:05:38.380And to me, the priority for her seems to be audience. There doesn't seem to be a North Star.
00:05:43.520It doesn't seem to be a mission. There doesn't seem to be sort of a vision for how she would like the country to be.
00:05:49.340It's just like perpetual contrarianism.
00:05:52.900And to be fair, this strain exists on the right.
00:05:55.720And it's been a big problem of perpetual contrarianism where as soon as we accumulate any power, like, for example, in the second term here,
00:06:03.080where things by all accounts are directionally correct, they instantly become skeptical.
00:06:07.340They instantly become uneasy. They instantly try to analyze like, OK, there has to be something off here.
00:06:11.860There has to be something wrong. We're never in power.
00:06:13.920But Candace has taken this to a whole new level where she is just consistently looking for what could turn her into the victim.
00:06:22.760And this goes all the way back to 2007, obviously, when she joined forces of the NAACP to extract $35,000.
00:06:33.680I just see her constantly trying to line up on the side that would make her the underdog and make her be the renegade.
00:06:42.060That seems to be what she's prioritizing at all times.
00:06:45.880Well, and, you know, she also gets the advantage, and I'll say this in to some level her defense, the fact that people get so incensed about her,
00:06:55.800the fact that people so overshoot what she's doing, they will make factual errors.
00:07:00.800And then she gets to capitalize on them, right?
00:07:03.100Like, so I think she is saying some rather ridiculous stuff.
00:07:06.660I'm not here to agree with most of it.
00:07:08.980But the point is that when, you know, when someone comes out and says, well, Charlie Kirk never sent this kind of text message.
00:07:19.060And then she can turn around and reveal this in some kind of big evidence, you know, on her podcast.
00:07:24.740This lends her credibility, this gives her momentum, and this allows her audience to then buy into some of the more extreme or ridiculous things she's saying.
00:07:34.640Because if Candace had the receipts on this, then maybe she has it on the other stuff, right?
00:07:38.840And so there's always, and that's the nice thing for her.
00:07:41.220She can advance, you know, 10 crazy theories.
00:07:43.360And even if nine of them get swatted down, if one of them happens to be right, now she's vindicated and she just pushes that theory and uses that as the stepping stone.
00:07:53.740So you can lose nine times, win once, and you're ultimately the winner, right?
00:07:58.300And this is kind of the Alex Jones thing.
00:08:00.140And again, not to tie these to one-to-one, but a lot of people would forever say, how does Alex Jones get all these things right, right?
00:08:06.200He seems so crazy, he's out there, but he seems right more often than he's wrong.
00:08:09.460And the answer is like, well, Alex Jones just said that everybody in the establishment was evil and doing the most evil thing all the time.
00:08:15.740And even though a lot of times he was wrong about the specifics, he's directionally correct that these are the most evil people in the world.
00:08:22.200So he's going to hit more often than he misses just because of that.
00:08:25.460It's not as extreme for Candace, but I feel like she's also benefiting from that dynamic as well.
00:08:31.000Yeah, and the way that she's sort of unveiling and revealing these new twists in her and sort of the story that she's concocting.
00:08:37.120I mean, I've talked about before how we're seeing within conservative media sort of the Mr. Beastification of polemics, where people are just trying to go as loud and bold and brash and colorful as possible.
00:08:48.600She's sort of putting together the Netflixification of polemics, where she's like, stay tuned for episode two, where I reveal that Charlie Kirk was in love with me, or that Badritte Macron has transitioned back to being a woman.
00:09:03.000Like, you never know what's going to happen, and that's, unfortunately, the way that Americans operate.
00:09:08.620We eat that up, hook, line, and sinker.
00:09:11.180And it's just really alarming to see that politics is a very serious thing.
00:10:06.900And after that moment, it should be really real to people that, you know, whatever aside, this is life and death.
00:10:13.180And we're talking about the country that we're going to leave to our children and grandchildren.
00:10:16.380And then you see people like her engaging in the Netflixification, that's a tough word, the Netflixification of politics.
00:10:25.160It's really just really horrible to see.
00:10:27.680It's like these people just don't know what time it is.
00:10:31.100You know, I tried to explain to people, because a number of guys I was talking with were trying to understand this behavior and why there was such a market for it.
00:10:41.100And the answer I told them is, like, guys, you're not people to Candace Owens' audience.
00:10:46.500You're characters in a TV show, right?
00:10:55.180I mean, look at the way that people are treating Erica Kirk as she's trying to raise these poor children after being widowed in this incredibly violent act.
00:11:02.360But, you know, you would never say something like what's being said about Erica Kirk to anyone's face.
00:11:07.840And you shouldn't if you do, you wouldn't walk out of a room with me in it.
00:11:10.820But ultimately, that, you know, people will just do this because she's just she's just the wicked stepmom on some TV show they're watching.
00:11:24.920I remember when The Daily Show started.
00:11:27.620You know, let Unk take you back to the before times when the magic was written.
00:11:32.560But but but, you know, I remember when The Daily Show came out and this was a big deal because before that news was news and entertainment was entertainment.
00:11:43.960You had a few programs like Donahue or like Crossfire where people would try to like debate.
00:11:49.540But for the most part, even those programs at least provided a veneer of serious addressing of issues as where John Stewart was obviously just mugging for the camera and bringing politicians on to embarrass them.
00:12:02.940And, you know, in and the clown knows on clown knows off thing where he would preach, you know, and then all of a sudden pretend he's a clown so that he doesn't have the consequences of being a political commentator.
00:12:12.500And this became the mode by which politics got communicated to people.
00:12:17.580Right. All of a sudden, people didn't get their news from Walter Cronkite or some serious news desk.
00:12:22.460They got it while, you know, Stephen Colbert was cracking jokes about Trump.
00:12:26.180And the fact that those things have been hybridized means that's very difficult for us to take politics seriously anymore.
00:12:32.840Politics isn't just something that's happening.
00:12:35.740It's not the way our country is governed.
00:12:38.900We now consume it in the way that we would consume anything else.
00:12:42.720And, of course, you and I work in this industry, so it's not like we're completely, you know, without guilt to some degree on this.
00:12:49.620But the fact that that has become the mode means that someone like Candace can operate without really needing to provide any serious news content while still driving the political conversation.
00:13:00.960And this is what happens when the right has to do all of especially its politics online in the entertainment sphere.
00:13:09.200We don't have other places where we can cultivate ideas, argue ideas in a serious way.
00:13:14.440The only way we do it is podcasts and news shows and entertainment.
00:13:18.760Yeah, well, I mean, because that's why there's kind of been this rush since the MAGA movement sort of originated to intellectualize a lot of these ideas.
00:13:26.700And people kind of rolled their eyes at it.
00:13:28.480But you kind of need that stability for people because, again, when something like the Charlie Kirk assassination happens and it's so dramatic and it's so scary, quite frankly, that breeds a lot of anxiety in people.
00:13:41.860That breeds a lot of discomfort and instability and these sorts of things.
00:13:46.500And Candace is exploiting that by instead of sort of backfilling and providing people with a vision forward.
00:13:53.240Here's how we can prevent this from ever happening again.
00:13:56.400She peddles these conspiracy theories.
00:13:58.940It's it's almost a cliche is peddling conspiracy theories, but that's what's going on here.
00:14:03.820And it's because the audience, quite frankly, is looking for an answer here.
00:14:08.380They don't want to believe the reality that a lone gunman or, you know, whatever collaboration, but that effectively a random guy can take down a titan like Charlie Kirk.
00:14:17.680People don't want to believe that people don't want to believe that the world is that chaotic.
00:15:06.180And they would rather hear that, oh, no, there's this huge network that took them out rather than the reality is, you know, Tyler Robinson and maybe a few of his friends and local agitators were behind this ultimately.
00:15:19.260You know, I'm trying to remember, I think it was Genghis Khan had the famous quote, you know, if you had not created, if you had not committed these monstrous sins, God would not have sent me to punish you.
00:15:29.820And in a way, that's kind of Candace Owens right now, right?
00:15:32.760So what we have is an epistemological crisis, right?
00:15:36.100We've had a shattering of the way we gather and understand information.
00:15:40.220After the COVID, after all the betrayals involved, every institution from the medical to the political to the religious, the news, everything broke down.
00:16:48.680We can't shatter our collective sense-making apparatus in the United States and the wider West and then turn around and be like, why are people believing Candace Owens?
00:16:56.960Why are people believing these conspiracy theories?
00:16:59.400Well, because the last 10 conspiracy theories they believe turned out to be right.
00:17:04.980Yeah, that's a great point is that, I mean, especially following Charlie Kirk's assassination, there was a huge vacuum for information on the right.
00:17:11.760And like you said, I mean, Candace Owens is a symptom.
00:17:14.100If it wasn't her, we would just be insert name here.
00:17:17.240Oh, insert name here is really tearing this coalition apart.
00:17:20.580I mean, the reality, people like you have said this for years or something along these lines is like the need for a counter-elite to be ready to go, ready to rock.
00:17:28.720And in the instance that, you know, Trump is successful and he seems to be trending in this direction at sort of picking apart this elite that has lied to us at every turn.
00:17:37.760Like you've said, they've corrupted virtually every institution that exists, barring like, I don't know, like police unions.
00:17:42.820So every institution is off the table for the right that does, you know, sort of.
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00:18:39.360Amplify the need that we have for a counter-elite to be ready to rock, ready to go when their number is called.
00:18:45.640So like you said, I mean, this vacuum occurs and yeah, people are going to turn to Candice Owen.
00:18:52.760She's providing, you know, she's stitching together a narrative that you can buy into because in many ways there's not many other narratives for people to buy into.
00:19:05.280And yeah, that was an excellent point, right?
00:19:08.160I mean, yeah, Candice Owens is sort of the one of the many, many, one of the many pieces of this storm, not necessarily the cause of the storm.
00:19:18.600And this is something I've really been trying to get the right to understand.
00:19:22.900And they don't like this because it strikes at kind of a very thin veil that they've had pulled over kind of their actual political situation.
00:19:32.740But the truth is that especially in mask politics, when we're scaling up politics and including hundreds of millions of people and trying to persuade them one way or another, people need narratives.
00:19:44.640You know, I think this is the one contribution Jordan Peterson actually provided to the right.
00:19:48.440It's not just about truth in the Sam Harris biological science way.
00:19:53.860It's about truth in the collective understanding way.
00:19:57.160And narratives are not less or more true than science.
00:20:00.100They are the way in which we understand all things, including science or others.
00:20:04.460And when we don't fill a space with a narrative, when there isn't a cohesive way for us to collectively understand an event, something will fill that void.
00:20:13.760Something will come in and fill that space.
00:20:15.840And frankly, the fact that the Trump administration, while they have made great gains in other areas, have simply done basically nothing about the death of Charlie Kirk.
00:20:40.640You know, J6 guys had FBI agents swinging through windows, pulling them out of beds, ripping them out of their truck cabs, pulling them out of their workplaces a few weeks after the event.
00:20:51.600Why can't we do that for radical leftists who are encouraging violence like we saw against Charlie Kirk and likely like we've seen against other conservative commentators?
00:21:48.760But now within our coalition where Candace is unresponsive to any evidence provided debunking it, like, you know, Bridget Macron, it's like, okay, no, she's not a man.
00:22:03.520There's just people are unresponsive to information.
00:22:08.080Scott Greer, I don't know if he coined the term, but he's certainly popularized the clown world where the right wing polemics has just turned into a spectacle.
00:22:59.800This is why every ancient thinker, you know, said this was the worst possible system, because ultimately, especially as you widen the franchise, right, you can have a limited democracy.
00:23:09.160You can have a limited republic, as we would actually want to call it, where there's a certain set of, you know, well, you know, well-heeled, well-educated, thoughtful, resourceful people who come together and vote and make the decisions because they have involved themselves as responsible citizens and virtuous citizens inside the body politic.
00:23:29.360But the wider you get the voting group, the less that aspect goes away, right?
00:23:34.720And the more mass democracy you get, the more people who are just, you know, barely paying attention, you know, they don't have any time, they don't have the leisure time.
00:23:43.780Again, this is not to downgrade or denigrate people for this.
00:23:47.720Like, ultimately, you shouldn't spend your whole life obsessed with politics.
00:23:51.160We should have a good enough regime where the average person doesn't need to vote for hours of their day listening to a bunch of different podcasts, desperately hoping to sift through the truth.
00:24:01.200Like, that's not the way that life should be.
00:24:03.540But when you open up the entire voting base to this, well, you're going to eventually run down to the lowest common denominator.
00:24:10.720I mean, anyone who's been in a group project or a public school or anything knows exactly how this works, right?
00:24:17.080Like, if you've got two or three studious people working on the project, you're fine.
00:24:20.740But if you get five, ten people, you know, you're going to get some people who don't care what's going on.
00:24:25.240And just the quality level is going to slowly degrade.
00:24:28.300And this is just what's going to keep happening in our scenario.
00:24:31.680The more people who want to feed into this content, the harder it is to refute.
00:24:36.200So I think there's still some utility to having discussions and debates, but you can't expect that to win over the masses at this point.
00:24:43.920You have to get better at the game or you have to change the game.
00:25:01.800And I'm in politics, and they'll introduce me to a commentator who has hundreds of thousands of followers, and they're not even on my radar.
00:25:08.140Like, people are all within, like, these different silos of information.
00:25:11.760And there's some value to that, to a degree, because, you know, there's new ideas being introduced to the zeitgeist.
00:25:17.100And oftentimes, some of these ideas are quite valuable, and you can evaluate them and these sorts of things.
00:25:21.460But, you know, going into 2024, Trump had to stitch together a coalition to get across the finish line.
00:25:27.880Because, like I said, you know, everyone's in their own lane.
00:25:32.220It's not like the 80s, where pretty much everyone was on the same page, like, for better or for worse.
00:25:37.000And then now, as soon as one of these coalitions that was brought into the fray feels wrong, feels like their issue is not being addressed, they immediately splinter off.
00:25:45.960And beyond that, with the coalition, we needed our rock stars to push things across the finish line.
00:25:51.100A lot of these comedians, these brocasters, as they've been dubbed, immediately soured on things as soon as it became, as soon as they started receiving pushback from presumably people in their circle.
00:26:01.960Media Matters clipped me discussing the Tim Dillon, Joe Rogan kind of sphere, where as soon as the mass deportations went underway, they immediately soured.
00:26:13.760And they said, oh, well, this is too far.
00:26:28.980And you can introduce all these different parties into your coalition.
00:26:32.480If anybody's played the Victoria games, you know how hard it is to maintain coalitions because everybody in your coalition wants something different.
00:26:40.840So I guess all this to say, how do we keep this coalition going together or stick together going into the midterms?