As appealing as she is as an activist, Candace Owens is no clear thinker. She certainly manages to confuse with her default definition of nationalism vis-a-vis the Trump Revolution.
The setting: Some moronic, white-nationalism Congressional hearings.
There, Owens roughly asserted that “Hitler killed his own people hence he was not a nationalist,” which is a non sequitur.
Ms. Owens here is proceeding from the asserted premise—for she doesn’t argue it—that nationalists do not “kill their own people.” This may be true (but would further depend on definitions; what is meant by “own people”), although I very much doubt it. Nevertheless, it appears that Owens’ thought process is something like,
“I like nationalism [check], and, therefore, Hitler, whom I most certainly don’t like, and who was a monster, could not have been a nationalist.”
Consider: Like all Republicans, Owens, no doubt, adores Lincoln. But would she call Honest Abe a nationalist? Why not? I mean, nationalism is a good thing and Abe, say Republicans like Owens, was a good guy.
Well, there is the pesky fact of Lincoln having killed “his own people” … hmmm. By Owens’ seemingly dogmatic definition of nationalism (not killing your own people), Lincoln, at least, does not qualify as a nationalist.
Just so we’re clear.
What preceded Owens’ odd assertion above was an even stranger comment, again, about Hitler. (This was at the same moronic, white-nationalism Congressional hearings.)
“If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well — OK, fine,” she says. “The problem is … he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German.”
The problem with Hitler? Heavens! Where does one start? It was not that he was a “globalist.” (Is that the kind of “globalist” George Soros Citizen of The World is, Candace?)
How about that Hitler is synonymous with conquest, subjugation, slavery and industrialized mass murder in the service of world hegemony, which, he truly believed, would make Germany indisputably the greatest power?
the presumed successor of the medieval and early modern Holy Roman Empire of 800 to 1806 (the First Reich) and the German Empire of 1871 to 1918 (the Second Reich)
