Candace Owens’ Reaction to New Zealand Shooter Name-Checking Her Is Detestable

Far-right commentator Candace Owens reacted to the New Zealand mosque shooter naming her in his manifesto as his biggest influence with a blend of denial and defiance:

LOL! 😂

FACT: I’ve never created any content espousing my views on the 2nd Amendment or Islam.

The Left pretending I inspired a mosque massacre in…New Zealand because I believe black America can do it without government hand outs is the reachiest reach of all reaches!! LOL! https://t.co/4vM1aXleL4

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 15, 2019

HAHA OMG you racist Leftists are taking your racism and crazy to a whole new level hahah.

“Black people don’t have to be Democrats” now means…mosque shootings in New Zealand?

This clearly won’t stick but damn if I won’t grow #BLEXIT highlighting your sheer desperation. 😂😂 https://t.co/4vM1aXleL4

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 15, 2019

But even a quick perusal of the manifesto will find statements about Muslim immigration to Western countries that echo public statements from Owens. The shooter explicitly cites as one his main fear the likelihood that falling birth rates for natives (read: white) in Europe combined with high birth rates for Muslims in those same nations will make whites a minority on the continent within a few decades. Owens has made statements expressing these same fears:

Please remind @SadiqKhan that according to the birth rate, Europe will fall and become a Muslim majority continent by 2050. There has never been a muslim majority country where sharia law was not implemented.
When we’re forced to save you guys (again) we’ll forgive the balloon. https://t.co/nvsHYJdh4b

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) July 7, 2018

If France wants to build an army to defend itself against anything, it ought to be the declining birth rate of its people. All signs indicate that it will be a Muslim majority country in just 40 years!

Defend your culture first, @EmmanuelMacron! We are your allies. https://t.co/2xAxCe5eMO

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) November 13, 2018

In her infamous defense of Hitler for going too far with globalism, she told an audience, “It’s important to retain your country’s identity and to make sure that what’s happening here, which I think is incredibly worrisome in terms of just the decrease in the birth rate that we’re seeing in the U.K., is what you kind of want to avoid.”

From the introduction section of the shooter’s manifesto: “It’s the birthrates. It’s the birthrates. It’s the birthrates.” The manifesto is shot through with fears about Muslim “birthrates” and their long-term effect on the make-up of Western populations.

We see this over and over with shooters such as this person in New Zealand, or Anders Breivik in Norway in 2011. (Breivik was clearly a heavy influence on the New Zealand shooter, who claimed to be a member of a reborn, militant Knights Templar just as Breivik did, and even claimed to have somehow gotten the blessing of the Norwegian himself before carrying out this latest massacre.) These shooters cite right-wingers known for their anti-Muslim writings as a heavy influence. The right-wingers themselves deny it and get angry at the suggestion that they influenced these shooters in any way. But how many shooters have to cite them before the idea gets through?

To be clear, Candace Owens and, say, Ben Shapiro (whose own work was cited by the man who killed six people at a Quebec City mosque in 2017) are not explicitly saying, “Go out and shoot Muslims.” But the message in their work is both an implicit and explicit brew of nativism and xenophobia that radicalizes people, particularly young men, in the online communities where they congregate. Communities like 8chan, where the shooter appears to have posted this manifesto just before the attack, and where other members were reportedly cheering him on after the news broke late Thursday night.

There is some speculation in forums such as Twitter that the shooter was trolling by mentioning Owens. And certainly, none of the ideas she is spouting were originally hers. Frankly, she doesn’t seem to be smart enough to do anything more than parrot what she has been told by the far-right nativists and racists to whom she has attached herself. But the stuff she is parroting is repeated almost word-for-word in the shooter’s manifesto, and with her large following and popularity among young right-wingers, this makes her at least somewhat complicit. Trolling is irrelevant when there is a body count.

Which makes reacting to the news of her inclusion in the manifesto by tweeting “LOL” followed by an emoji before using the shooting to promote her own podcast, as Owens did, particularly detestable.