Candace Owens
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JD Heel
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Right out of the Q playbook.
gtyellowjacket
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It's always surprising to me that it doesn't seem to work on the left wing. The left certainly has their wing nuts. And there are people talented enough and morally flexible enough to push left wing crazy. But it doesn't seem to work. Even going back 50 years it doesn't seem to work. No one seems to be able to make good money spouting easily disproven nonsense to the Democrats like Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones or really a host of others. Then it worked with Trump as well. Shocking.
And I do think that we on the left can be misled by false narratives in traditional media and social media but the astronomically crazy stuff seems to exclusively lie on the right wing when it comes to any sort of recognized commentators.
lawtig02
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Education accounts for a lot of this. There are tons of educated Americans who are nonetheless under the thrall of the right wing crazies, but as a general rule, less education makes one far more susceptible to manipulation. And the American right has been shunning the educated and appealing to the less educated for decades now.
I think we're a little more likely to accept that we have to address the conventional wisdom before we reject it. On our good days, we might even let it alter how we reject it. It amounts to us making fewer decisions based on received wisdom of dubious origin, a damned good idea for anybody. The right is literally built around that whole sacred heritage thing.
ZenMode
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It takes a lot for MAGA to disown someone that says all the things they want to hear.
GoHeelsweeeehoooo
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Does Candice owens actually believe in the crap she says or is it all part of the grift?
ZenMode
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Big difference between having a different opinion on a topic and buying into the conspiratorial insanity of the right. Candace is female Alex Jones...
For example, it's one thing to believe that the tree-hugging contingency of California has directly impacted the severity of, and ability to fight, fires. It's another thing to say that Jewish space lasers started those fires.
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eternalheel
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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:
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
Candy Owens is a grifter. Probably a "government" agent. The idea that know it all libertarians and two faced white supremacists quote her as an intelligent voice in this 3rd world dystopian meat grinder is, in and of itself, a tragedy.
superrific
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Sure.
superrific
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I think it's much more personality and epistemology. My wife's siblings are educated and believe the crazy shit. they are also conservative Free Methodists who believe in creationism.
When your model of truth is "revelation" you can believe a lot of crazy things. And when your personality is dark triad, you are well on your way to believing in insane conspiracies to justify your hatred.
The paranoid style in politics has been right-wing going back a century or more. It's prevalent on the right-wing all over the world. It is the essence of the appeal of fascism. Communism had its own set of perversions but tended not to appeal to paranoia, except in East and SE Asia.
lawtig02
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Agree with all of that. But I do think, on the whole, education is still an important part of it.
Why Education Predicts Decreased Belief in Conspiracy Theories - PMC
People with high education are less likely than people with low education to believe in conspiracy theories. It is yet unclear why these effects occur, however, as education predicts a range of cognitive, emotional, and social outcomes. The present ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
superrific
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Well, a correlation analysis is better than "super's sense of things," even if my sense of things is informed by reading such work. Interestingly, the author interestingly treats education as a proxy for other factors, rather than a strong causative factor. I didn't and am not planning on reading the whole paper beyond my first skim.Agree with all of that. But I do think, on the whole, education is still an important part of it.
Why Education Predicts Decreased Belief in Conspiracy Theories - PMC
People with high education are less likely than people with low education to believe in conspiracy theories. It is yet unclear why these effects occur, however, as education predicts a range of cognitive, emotional, and social outcomes. The present ...
Also, the studies were done in the Netherlands, which might have a different dynamic than the US
lawtig02
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Fair. I also see it as a proxy more than anything else.
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People love to believe conspiracy theories and other crazy stuff. Especially when it's on a subject that they don't understand or are scared by. They will be receptive to anyone coming along and telling them, with conviction, that the answer is simple. (Bonus points if these people are unhappy with their lives, and the grifter at issue tells them it's someone else's fault.)
And in any event, Candace is not the first. She's just following in the tradition of Rush LImbaugh, Alex Jones, Dan Bongino, and numerous other grifting manipulators of this ilk. You could go back further in US history to demagogues who trafficked in conspiracy theories like Joseph McCarthy, Father Coughlin, etc. Or in other countries to Hitler, Mussolini, etc. People being susceptible to this shit is nothing new; the internet, algorithms, etc have just made it possible to reach more people directly and target them more precisely.
I will note, also, that this same thing is why people can be so susceptible to having their minds poisoned by religion. The old joke/meme format of "Men will literally [insert crazy thing] instead of going to therapy ....." can be repurposed for religion too: "People will make up/believe some absolutely batshit things rather than confront the truth they they and their lives are terrifyingly insignificant within the large scale of the planet, the solar system, and the universe." Because really, is "ephemeral all-powerful holy being who created and watches us all and will decide whether we live forever in torment or splendor in a different plane of existence" any crazier, from a logical perspective, the stuff Candace says?
And in any event, Candace is not the first. She's just following in the tradition of Rush LImbaugh, Alex Jones, Dan Bongino, and numerous other grifting manipulators of this ilk. You could go back further in US history to demagogues who trafficked in conspiracy theories like Joseph McCarthy, Father Coughlin, etc. Or in other countries to Hitler, Mussolini, etc. People being susceptible to this shit is nothing new; the internet, algorithms, etc have just made it possible to reach more people directly and target them more precisely.
I will note, also, that this same thing is why people can be so susceptible to having their minds poisoned by religion. The old joke/meme format of "Men will literally [insert crazy thing] instead of going to therapy ....." can be repurposed for religion too: "People will make up/believe some absolutely batshit things rather than confront the truth they they and their lives are terrifyingly insignificant within the large scale of the planet, the solar system, and the universe." Because really, is "ephemeral all-powerful holy being who created and watches us all and will decide whether we live forever in torment or splendor in a different plane of existence" any crazier, from a logical perspective, the stuff Candace says?
The primary allure of conspiracy theories is control. People are less scared of a controlling force, even if evil, than randomness. It is more reassuring that 9/11 was an inside job or that Kennedy was killed by the CIA than to believe bad shit just happens. It is very similar to the desire for an all powerful, supernatural being to control the world.
There is definitely some of this thinking on the left, too. Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big Oil, etc. etc. or the Bernie Bros 1%. The idea that a super secret cabal (which sometimes veers dangerously close to "the Jews") controls everything and is keeping the good people down. It is reassuring to people to believe there is an evil force -- a force that if they could defeat, the world would turn to sunshine and roses -- than to believe the truth that the world is full of randomness and that no one is controlling anything.
whatntarnation
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This.
Kid have autism. not random, Vaccine did it.
Kid LGBTQ. Not your fault, the School did it.
Not getting a piece of the pie. its not you. Immigrants took your slice.
superrific
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This would be a better argument if a) the theories about Big Tobacco and Big Oil hadn't been proven true (and in the former case, the rot went further than anyone had claimed); and b) the 0.1%ers weren't acting exactly as socialists have always predicted the oligarchs to act when presented with a threat to power. If you wanted to explain the last year in one sentence, you could do worse than the peasant in the Holy Grail: "now you see the violence inherent in the system."