Yesterday the internet lit up over an exchange between black conservative activist Candace Owens and members of the House Judiciary Committee during hearings on hate crime and the rise of white nationalism. Most of the coverage focused on Rep. Ted Lieu’s heavy-handed and dishonet efforts to make it seem as though Owens had condoned the brutality of Adolf Hitler by playing out of context a recording of remarks she made last December in defense of nationalism.
If the words defense of nationalism in the previous sentence sound curious, it is because, as LU’s J.E. Dyer recently noted, nationalism of late has become a dirty word, associated mainly with excessive statism, race-baiting, and Adolf Hitler, when in fact the term encompasses a much wider array of positive ideas, among them patriotism and national exceptionalism.
While I recommend that readers watch the video of Lieu’s shameful attempted “gotcha,” as well as Owens’s more-than-adequate dressing down of him and Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, who wrongly disciplined her, the video that deserves to be watched and talked about is the second one below.
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It is Owens’s opening remarks at the hearing and addresses the real origins of hate crimes in our country, calling out the true white nationalist group that poses the greatest threat, namely Antifa. The video runs a little over six minutes, but I urge you to watch it in its entirety.
