“If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was anti-Semitic. You did not think that he wrote this tweet because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people. This does not represent the beginning of a Holocaust. That’s if you’re an honest person, you’ll admit that.” Candace Owens
Dear Candace,
As an honest person, I must say that in the entire Kanye West imbroglio, I was most surprised by your condescending, gaslighting defense of the rapper formerly known as Kanye West’s indefensible hate. It wasn’t just a defense; it was an attack on Jews for having the gall to stand up for ourselves.
As an honest person, I was deeply offended by the fact that you thought you could tell us what we should and should not be offended by — days before you drop a documentary called “The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM.” It appears that lying about blatant antisemitism is ok for you.
As an honest person, your mocking comment about the Holocaust was as offensive as your admiration of Hitler in 2019: “If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, okay fine. The problem is that he … had dreams outside of Germany.”
As an honest person, I thought you were on a good track in distinguishing real racism from manipulated racism, but after gaslighting Jews, how can anyone trust you? Your new film is described as “a cautionary tale of what can happen when we blindly follow without critically thinking.” And yet you want the world to blindly follow your skewed view of antisemitism.
As an honest person, I know that West’s tweet was indeed dangerous. As Hillel Neuer tweeted: “The last time someone went death con 3 on the Jews, six million of us were murdered.” Not a week later, he fumed on the podcast “Drink Champs” that he was “used to getting screwed by the Jewish media” and blamed “Jewish Zionists” for pretty much everything: “Jewish people have owned the Black voice.”
As an honest person, I was equally disturbed by Tucker Carlson’s editing out West’s comments about Jews: “Jews don’t have the ability to make anything on their own … they are born into money.” He also wished that he had taught his kids to celebrate Hanukkah because it would come with “financial engineering.” Why would a journalist like Carlson believe he has the right to manipulate the truth—precisely what he accuses the left of doing?
As an honest person, I thought your line “It’s like you cannot even say the word ‘Jewish’ without people getting upset” was most telling. At a time when attacks against Jews are at an all-time high — when antisemitism has returned to being an “acceptable hatred” on both the left and the right — that line could only have been said by someone dishonest or perhaps anti-Semitic herself.
As an honest person, I now wonder about your beliefs regarding “Black Hebrew Israelites” and whether you, like West, have ties to Louis Farrakhan.
As an honest person, I have been equally disturbed by the far right’s unequivocal defense of you, West, and Carlson. We all know that the reaction would be quite the opposite if the three of you were on the left.
As an honest person, I know that when the right downplays or rationalizes antisemitism, as it has also done with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, it becomes a mirror image of the left: protecting the indefensible and silencing dissent — all for the sake of partisanship.
We’re never going to be able to address any issues in this hyper-partisan environment. Hate needs to be depoliticized. Antisemitism, like racism, is not a competitive sport.
As an honest person, I know that we’re never going to be able to address any issues in this hyper-partisan environment. Hate needs to be depoliticized — and I would have thought that you of all people would know that. Antisemitism, like racism, is not a competitive sport.
As an honest person, I do wonder whether you understand that insinuating that Jews are dishonest is one of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes.
So my question for you is: Are you an honest, principled person? Or does partisanship override both?
Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine.
