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Candace Owens and the Decay of the American Brain
How can someone so delusional attract an audience of millions? What does it say about us that Owens is listened to by anyone other than a psychiatrist?
I am used to debunking absurd right-wing arguments. But conservative podcaster and author Candace Owens is on another level entirely. Many of her proclamations are so bizarre, they seem better described as “symptoms” than “ideas.” She has said that the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz are performing a “satanic ritual” when they celebrate the death of the Wicked Witch. She says Justin Trudeau, Barack Obama, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Emmanuel Macron are all gay. (And that this is “not a coincidence.”) She has cast doubt on the crimes of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, saying his ghoulish experiments sound “absurd” and would have been a “waste of time and supplies.” Naturally, she believes we faked the moon landing (in fact, all of our space programs were both “fake and gay”). She now claims that the French Foreign Legion were involved in the killing of Charlie Kirk, possibly at the direction of Brigitte Macron (whom Owens thinks is transgender), and believes she herself is being pursued by assassins dispatched by the French government.
You might think these delusions would limit people’s interest in listening to Owens. Doesn’t the average person have enough common sense to realize that she’s totally detached from reality? Well, I have bad news for you: she has an audience of millions. She has, according to one ranking, the second most viewed and downloaded podcast across all platforms, averaging 3.7 million listeners an episode. Her YouTube channel has over a billion views, 5.6 million subscribers, and brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. She has over 7 million followers on Twitter (“X”) and another 6.5 million on Instagram. She was the subject of a recent CNN special, The World According to Candace Owens, and is a leading part of a sprawling and hugely successful right-wing media ecosystem.
How can someone so delusional attract an audience of millions, and what does it say about our country? Well, for starters, Owens is a skilled presenter. Telegenic, polished, and a fluid speaker, she might be saying things that are patently untrue or lack any evidence, but she does it with such conviction and professionalism that one can see how a gullible person might think she knew what she was talking about.
But then there’s the Owens method. It is not the scientific method. Owens has said explicitly that she has “left the cult of science,” which she believes is a “pagan faith.” The epistemology of Owens—not to be confused with Owenism, a philosophy with a noble history—is, in her words, as follows: “If I don’t get it from the Bible, and I can’t observe it with my own eyes, I can’t stan it as the truth.” This means, for instance, that she professes herself agnostic on the question of whether the Earth is flat—“I’m not a flat Earther. I’m not a round Earther.” You won’t be surprised to learn that she rejects climate science, even claiming that Scientific American’s articles on the subject could not be trusted because the website is a .com rather than a .org. (Interestingly, Owens’ own website is also a .com, while Current Affairs is a more respectable .org.)
Nevertheless, there is an Owens method of “truth-seeking,” and it’s worth scrutinizing, because it helps us understand how normal, often intelligent people come to believe things that have no connection whatsoever with factual reality.
The key thing to understand is, Owens doesn’t think she’s detached from reality. She thinks she’s uncovering deep hidden truths, which are concealed by nefarious elite actors. She goes about it with the classic conspiracist mindset, finding patterns in random data points, seeing every inconsistency or gap as proof the conventional wisdom must be a carefully-concocted lie. In this worldview, the fact that you can’t come up with a sensible overarching theory is not a sign of your own failure as an analyst, but proof that the mystery goes even deeper than you think.
More:
www.currentaffairs.org
How can someone so delusional attract an audience of millions? What does it say about us that Owens is listened to by anyone other than a psychiatrist?
I am used to debunking absurd right-wing arguments. But conservative podcaster and author Candace Owens is on another level entirely. Many of her proclamations are so bizarre, they seem better described as “symptoms” than “ideas.” She has said that the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz are performing a “satanic ritual” when they celebrate the death of the Wicked Witch. She says Justin Trudeau, Barack Obama, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Emmanuel Macron are all gay. (And that this is “not a coincidence.”) She has cast doubt on the crimes of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, saying his ghoulish experiments sound “absurd” and would have been a “waste of time and supplies.” Naturally, she believes we faked the moon landing (in fact, all of our space programs were both “fake and gay”). She now claims that the French Foreign Legion were involved in the killing of Charlie Kirk, possibly at the direction of Brigitte Macron (whom Owens thinks is transgender), and believes she herself is being pursued by assassins dispatched by the French government.
You might think these delusions would limit people’s interest in listening to Owens. Doesn’t the average person have enough common sense to realize that she’s totally detached from reality? Well, I have bad news for you: she has an audience of millions. She has, according to one ranking, the second most viewed and downloaded podcast across all platforms, averaging 3.7 million listeners an episode. Her YouTube channel has over a billion views, 5.6 million subscribers, and brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. She has over 7 million followers on Twitter (“X”) and another 6.5 million on Instagram. She was the subject of a recent CNN special, The World According to Candace Owens, and is a leading part of a sprawling and hugely successful right-wing media ecosystem.
How can someone so delusional attract an audience of millions, and what does it say about our country? Well, for starters, Owens is a skilled presenter. Telegenic, polished, and a fluid speaker, she might be saying things that are patently untrue or lack any evidence, but she does it with such conviction and professionalism that one can see how a gullible person might think she knew what she was talking about.
But then there’s the Owens method. It is not the scientific method. Owens has said explicitly that she has “left the cult of science,” which she believes is a “pagan faith.” The epistemology of Owens—not to be confused with Owenism, a philosophy with a noble history—is, in her words, as follows: “If I don’t get it from the Bible, and I can’t observe it with my own eyes, I can’t stan it as the truth.” This means, for instance, that she professes herself agnostic on the question of whether the Earth is flat—“I’m not a flat Earther. I’m not a round Earther.” You won’t be surprised to learn that she rejects climate science, even claiming that Scientific American’s articles on the subject could not be trusted because the website is a .com rather than a .org. (Interestingly, Owens’ own website is also a .com, while Current Affairs is a more respectable .org.)
Nevertheless, there is an Owens method of “truth-seeking,” and it’s worth scrutinizing, because it helps us understand how normal, often intelligent people come to believe things that have no connection whatsoever with factual reality.
The key thing to understand is, Owens doesn’t think she’s detached from reality. She thinks she’s uncovering deep hidden truths, which are concealed by nefarious elite actors. She goes about it with the classic conspiracist mindset, finding patterns in random data points, seeing every inconsistency or gap as proof the conventional wisdom must be a carefully-concocted lie. In this worldview, the fact that you can’t come up with a sensible overarching theory is not a sign of your own failure as an analyst, but proof that the mystery goes even deeper than you think.
More:
Candace Owens and the Decay of the American Brain
How can someone so delusional attract an audience of millions? What does it say about us that Owens is listened to by anyone other than a psychiatrist?
www.currentaffairs.org
