Candace Owens: Religion Isn’t the Issue

Tensions between Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens — one of the site’s most prominent voices — have burst into the open over the past week. Owens and her partisans, including Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, are scrambling to frame this as a religious dispute between the outspokenly Christian Owens and the devoutly Jewish Shapiro, or perhaps as some form of attempted cancellation of Owens.

The reality is quite different: Owens and Shapiro disagree profoundly on the conflict between Hamas and Israel, and Owens is more than dabbling with antisemitism by siding against Israel. Shapiro is right to call her out on this, and Owens’s defenders should be ashamed of themselves for hiding behind Christianity to obfuscate what she has been saying. Jesus Christ was executed by the same empire that drove the Jews out of Israel in the first place.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

Tensions between Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens — one of the site’s most prominent voices — have burst into the open over the past week. Owens and her partisans, including Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, are scrambling to frame this as a religious dispute between the outspokenly Christian Owens and the devoutly Jewish Shapiro, or perhaps as some form of attempted cancellation of Owens.

The reality is quite different: Owens and Shapiro disagree profoundly on the conflict between Hamas and Israel, and Owens is more than dabbling with antisemitism by siding against Israel. Shapiro is right to call her out on this, and Owens’s defenders should be ashamed of themselves for hiding behind Christianity to obfuscate what she has been saying. Jesus Christ was executed by the same empire that drove the Jews out of Israel in the first place.