Candace Owens

Key Points

• With a digital network of over 35 million followers across social media platforms, Candace Owens has emerged as a top global broadcaster of conspiratorial antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
• Owens actively amplifies antisemitic figures on her shows, providing a large stage for individuals who have praised Hitler, trivialized the Holocaust, or promoted "Jewish mafia" narratives.

Recent Activity

• While possessing a history of concerning remarks about Jews, Owens significantly intensified her promotion of explicitly antisemitic conspiracy theories following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.
• Her conspiracy theories have also extended to the high-profile September 2025 assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, with whom she was previously associated.
• Since the start of the U.S.-Israeli military operation in Iran in late February 2026, Owens has promoted explicitly antisemitic conspiracy theories blaming Jews for the war and demonizing the Hasidic Jewish sect Chabad as “dangerous.”

Introduction

From Conservative Commentator to Antisemitic Conspiracist 

Candace Owens is a far-right political commentator and podcaster who has become one of the most influential promoters of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the world, with an online following of millions.

While Owens has a long history of making troubling remarks about Jewish influence and power, and has engaged in Holocaust distortion, she’s come to espouse more explicitly antisemitic, anti-Zionist, and anti-Israel views and conspiracy theories following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

A Web of Anti-Jewish Conspiracy Theories

Owens has woven a sprawling conspiratorial web alleging a hidden Jewish hand, supposedly instructed by millennia-old Jewish texts, that somehow connects psychiatry, pornography, Hollywood, the publishing industry, the Atlantic slave trade, the Spanish Inquisition, and even a 17th-century Jewish messianic movement.

She has promoted inflammatory conspiracy theories, including the “blood libel” and “dual loyalty” tropes, made bizarre allegations of Israeli involvement in the JFK assassination and advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, and claimed that modern Jews are secretly not actually Jews, but rather “pagan gypsies who have been wearing the cloak of Judaism” since the 8th century. She’s also claimed that Israel “took over” the U.S.

Platforming Hate

On her shows, Owens has given a significant stage to several prominent figures also associated with antisemitic discourse. These include Nick Fuentes, who has expressed admiration for Hitler, Myron Gaines, who made headlines in July 2025 for encouraging guests on his podcast as they made comments justifying the Holocaust, and Ian Carroll, who has claimed that a “Jewish mafia” controls America and that Israel was behind 9/11. Carroll briefly took over as host of Owens’ podcast while she was on maternity leave in early 2025.

Platform and Reach

Owens has an expansive network of some 35 million followers (as of March 2026) across YouTube, X, TikTok, Facebook, Rumble, and Instagram, serving as one of the most prolific disseminators of antisemitic narratives, conspiratorial content, and anti-Zionist rhetoric.

Exploiting the Kirk Assassination and Iran War

Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), Owens quickly began to broadcast conspiracy theories about the killing to her fanbase. Owens has made many deeply inflammatory and conspiratorial claims about the assassination of her former colleague Charlie Kirk, including that the Israeli, French, and U.S. governments played a role in the killing. 

She has positioned herself in the narrative as a close confidant of Kirk while accusing multitudes of other friends and associates, such as TPUSA staff and Jewish and Zionist donors, of involvement in the killing or of coercing Kirk. She has claimed that she has become more convinced that “Israel is involved” because Ben Shapiro seems to her to be “too invested” in the killing. Her podcast has skyrocketed in popularity for her episodes supposedly investigating “the truth” about the assassination, becoming the most-listened-to podcast in the world in late 2025.

In late February and early March 2026, she began to spread a series of bizarre conspiracy theories about the military operation against the Iranian regime, claiming that the conflict was being secretly orchestrated by Jews and that Kirk was killed to lay the groundwork for the war. She claimed on March 6, 2026, that “Charlie Kirk was the first casualty of the War in Iran. Never forget what they did to him.”

Background

From Political Outsider to Conservative Star 

Owens rose to prominence in 2016 and 2017 as a conservative commentator, a MAGA supporter, and a fierce critic of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

While previously voicing left-leaning opinions, Owens says she “became a conservative overnight” in 2016 after she was doxxed amid online criticism of a site she created to unmask online bullies. She blamed progressives for the doxxing, which brought her support from right-wing male figures who were associated with the early alt-right movement, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, and promoters of the 2014 Gamergate incident (where male gamers bullied female gamers who demanded equality in the gaming industry).

In 2017, Charlie Kirk hired Owens as an urban engagement specialist for TPUSA and she soon became TPUSA’s communications director. Later, Kirk reportedly had a falling out with Owens “after her views became too extreme.” 

A History of Inflammatory Rhetoric 

Owens has been mired in controversies and conspiracy theories for a decade. She's often downplayed the impact of slavery and racism on the Black community, claiming that Blacks were better off the first 100 years after slavery ended than they are now. She’s also railed against the LGBTQ+ community, particularly transgender individuals, and rebuked the “Me Too” movement against the sexual assault and harassment of women.

Embracing Antisemitic Figures 

Owens has famously defended rapper and producer Kanye West (known as Ye) following several antisemitic outbursts from him in recent years, earning public backlash. She appeared with Ye at a Paris fashion show in October 2022 where the two wore matching shirts from Ye’s clothing line that read “White Lives Matter,” a slogan popular with white supremacists.

Breaking with Mainstream Conservatism

Owens’ increasingly overt antisemitism led to a public falling out in March 2024 with Ben Shapiro, the conservative pundit and co-founder of the Daily Wire, where Owens had been employed since late 2020. She severed ties with the conservative media outlet, creating her own independent platform and podcast.

Religious Antisemitism

Owens has used her platform to frequently attack Jewish religious practices and texts such as the Talmud, an ancient record of Jewish oral law and centuries of commentary and debates about Jewish practice. For centuries, antisemites have fabricated, mistranslated, or mischaracterized passages from the Talmud to paint Jews as hateful, deceitful, or depraved.

During a December 19, 2025, podcast episode, Owens unleashed a diatribe replete with classic antisemitic falsehoods about the Talmud, claiming that modern religious Jews are taught by ancient religious texts to hate and deceive non-Jews. She then held up a copy of August Rohling's virulently antisemitic 1876 work “The Talmudic Jew” (“Der Talmudjude”), a book that was once labeled by the Jewish Telegraph Agency as “the standard work for antisemitic authors and journalists.”

During an interview of Owens on actor Russell Brand’s podcast on December 8, 2025, she suggested "The Talmudic Jew” was written in response to Jews supposedly killing Christian children as part of religious rituals — a blatantly false classic antisemitic trope dating back to the medieval era known as the blood libel. It has been used by antisemites for centuries to justify their bigotry and to foment numerous acts of mass violence against Jews.

Owens has regularly promoted similar false claims that Jewish texts and traditions promote the sexual assault of children. On the podcast episode with Brand, she alleged that a supposed secret Jewish cult (“Sabbatean-Frankists”) believes in “practicing incest as a sacrament... and they believe that you rape your kids when they’re 7” because it “conditions the child to grow up to be a psychopath.” She went on to claim that this is the “guiding philosophy of people in Israel.”

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An October 23, 2025 post from Owens claiming that kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, has a “history of child rape.”

Conspiracy Theories About Secret Jewish Plots to Control the World

A centerpiece of Owens’ grand Jewish conspiracy is the supposed persistence of a Jewish messianic movement from the 1600s based primarily in the Ottoman Empire known as Sabbateanism. This Jewish movement, which was widely popular at the time, claimed that a man named Shabtai Tzvi (sometimes written Shabbetai Zevi) was the messiah. After his imprisonment by the Ottoman sultan and Tzvi’s subsequent conversion to Islam in exchange for his life, the mass movement effectively died out. In the 1700s, a far smaller, related heretical movement called Frankism emerged when a man named Jacob Frank claimed to be the messiah and the reincarnation of Tzvi.

Owens often mentions “Sabbatean-Frankists” to make antisemitic conspiracy theories appear more legitimate and respectable and has falsely claimed that the movements survived within modern-day Judaism, operating as a secret cult that practices pedophilia and conspires to control non-Jews. She has also alleged that Sabbatean-Frankists have secretly infiltrated the Catholic church to undermine Christianity, claiming, “This could be where all of the scandals in the Catholic faith came from.”

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Owens reposted claims from Vladimir Putin advisor Alexander Dugin that the Rothschild family, frequent targets of classic antisemitic conspiracy theories, have “sabbateanist and frankist roots.”

According to Owens, Sabbatean-Frankists also created psychiatry and Hollywood as instruments to control non-Jews. She has claimed Hollywood is run by secret “Jewish gangs” and was devised as an “intentional way to supplant the Catholic Church” because “they hate Christians.”

Owens has also regularly promoted a bizarre, debunked conspiracy theory known as the Khazarian hypothesis that attempts to delegitimize Jewish identity with claims that modern day Ashkenazi Jews are unrelated to the people of biblical Israel and are actually Turkic in origin. She stated on a February 2, 2026, podcast that “The people that we are fighting are effectively pagan gypsies who have been wearing the cloak of Judaism, I would say since the fall of the missing Khazarian Empire.”

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Owens claimed that the “Khazarian mafia” were sending “goyim,” a Hebrew word meaning “non-Jewish people,” to die to achieve their goals.

On March 6, 2026, Owens promoted conspiracy theories about the Hasidic Jewish group Chabad, claiming that “they are digging tunnels in New York and in cities all across America. They are taking over entire towns in New Jersey. You should absolutely be aware of where the Chabad is nearest your home. These people are dangerous.”

Owens has also attempted to stoke racial tensions between Black Americans and Jews using historical falsehoods. During a December 19, 2025, podcast episode, Owens promoted the conspiracy theory, long promoted by the Nation of Islam, that “Jewish people were in control of the slave trade,” and blamed Jews for secretly fueling tension between Christians and Muslims.

Holocaust Distortion

Owens has a long history of deeply offensive comments about periods of Jewish suffering, such as the Holocaust. She accused Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel of stealing the identity and manuscript of a Holocaust survivor. She also cast doubt on the veracity of Joseph Mengele’s horrific experimentation on living human subjects, labeling it “bizarre propaganda” on a July 2024 podcast episode.

She has allowed guests on her show to promote Holocaust denial. In her subscriber-only interview with prolific antisemitic Traditionalist Catholic author E. Michael Jones released on her website on February 21, 2025, Jones claimed that Hollywood “created the Holocaust narrative” and stated that “You go [visit Auschwitz] to offer up incense to idols.” He also used the opportunity to claim that Jews created the pornography industry, stating that it is “one way they weaken the dominant culture, and that allows them to take control.”

Anti-Zionism and Conspiracy Theories About Israel

Owens has routinely pushed antisemitic conspiracy theories that Israel controls the U.S. government. She has claimed that Jeffrey Epstein was employed by Israel as part of an international sexual blackmail ring, stating in one X post, "they are blackmailing President Donald Trump in broad daylight...Now he will give them whatever they want. For those who struggle with context clues, THEY = Israel, who Jeffrey Epstein worked for."

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Owens claims that the U.S. is controlled by “satanic pedophiles who work for Israel” and again invokes the antisemitic canard “the synagogue of Satan.”

In a podcast episode on October 31, 2025, Owens called Zionism "an evil... supremacist ideology" and claimed that committing "the most depraved acts of evil" appears to be "the guiding philosophy of people in Israel.”

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Candace Owens posts conspiracy theories about Israel, referring to them using the antisemitic phrase “Synagogue of Satan.”

Since the start of the Iran war, Owens has spread numerous antisemitic conspiracy theories blaming Jews and Israel for the ongoing military operations. In a February 28, 2026, X post, she reposted an antisemitic claim that “American goyim are blowing up Iranian goyim because America is controlled by the people who call us goyim and Iran isn’t.” In other posts, she claimed that Israel was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.