Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Cathy Young -- The Problem with Candace Owens

Obviously, no one but Owens knows how genuine her professed beliefs are. But a look at her history strongly suggests that her “conservatism” is a mix of opportunism, personal grievances, canned slogans and paranoid conspiracy theories.


(Quillette) - In Owens’s narrative, while her enemies succeeded in killing her project, this incident was her “redpill moment”—right-wing Internet jargon for becoming aware of the truth: Previously a liberal Democrat, she became sympathetic to Trump’s broadsides against “the lying media” and began to question other progressive orthodoxies as well.

It’s a dramatic story; it’s also one that bears very little resemblance to the truth. I know, because I was there. I was one of the first journalists to report on Owens’s anti-cyberbullying start-up. I also followed the ensuing drama—a convoluted saga that involved warring Internet factions—and inadvertently became a part of it.