The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called out conservative commentator Candace Owens for saying the issue with Adolf Hitler was “that he had dreams outside of Germany.”
At a December event in the United Kingdom, Owens, the communications director for the conservative activist group Turning Point USA, said that the term “nationalist” has been misconstrued thanks to Hitler.
“If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he had dreams outside of Germany,” Owens said. “He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German, everybody to look a different way. To me, that’s not nationalism.”
Here is video of Candace Owens' full answer on nationalism and Hitler pic.twitter.com/NfBvoH8vQg
— John Whitehouse+ (@existentialfish) February 8, 2019
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) tweeted in response, “Hitler’s murderous crimes against Jews & others were horrific regardless of whether they occurred across Europe or in Germany alone.”
“Hitler wasn’t a ‘globalist’ but a genocidal dictator,” they added.
Candace Owens bizarrely claims Hitler went wrong only when he meddled in other countries. Hitler’s murderous crimes against Jews & others were horrific regardless of whether they occurred across Europe or in Germany alone. Hitler wasn’t a “globalist” but a genocidal dictator. https://t.co/MhQad8GBw7
— ADL (@ADL) February 8, 2019
The American Jewish Committee similarly tweeted, “Here’s something that we can’t believe that we have to say in 2019. but here we are: ‘No, @RealCandaceO, Hitler was actually really bad from the beginning.'”
Here's something that we can't believe that we have to say in 2019. but here we are: "No, @RealCandaceO, Hitler was actually really bad from the beginning." https://t.co/xd9fbSRw9Q
— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) February 8, 2019
The Simon Wiesenthal Center also tweeted, “Scope and depth of @RealCandaceO lack of knowledge of basic history is appalling and frightening. #Hitler’s program to make #Germany great was based on race and #antisemitism!”
Scope and depth of @RealCandaceO lack of knowledge of basic history is appalling and frightening. #Hitler’s program to make #Germany great was based on race and #antisemitism! https://t.co/s8ZO9uqyRP via @jdforward
— SimonWiesenthalCntr (@simonwiesenthal) February 8, 2019
Owens is doubling down on her remarks.
“He [Hitler] was a homicidal, psychotic maniac who was bent on world domination outside of the confines of Germany, and you wouldn’t say he’s a nationalist because he wasn’t about putting Germans first,” Owens said in a Periscope video. “There were German Jews that he was putting into camps and murdering. He was a mass murderer.”
“So that’s the argument I was making on stage: This man, by no means, should be considered a nationalist.”
According to Jewish Virtual Library, Jews were targeted under Hitler’s regime in Germany through the 1935 Nuremberg laws “to ostracize, discriminate and expel Jews from German society.”
