We are all human, we can all make mistakes and we can all fall for plausible chat put out by those with nice smiles and manners. This is the position that I and many other internet commentators have been placed by Ms Candace Owens, the You Tuber who picked up a lot of support for her public declarations that she had abandoned the Left and was now a conservative. To many of us on the centre right, especially those of us who admire the courage of Black conservatives who step off the Leftist plantation, Ms Owens seemed legit. Her videos under the series headings ‘Red Pill Black’ and ‘The Myth of the Coon’ were entertaining, informative and looked like a valuable addition to the world of political debate. This blog has even featured her videos and given Ms Owens a glowing shout out.

Ostensibly Ms Owens looked like another of those individuals who may have been steeped in Leftist thought at school, college or in her community, but who challenged these political views with logic, accuracy and a considerable degree of panache. Ms Owens, or so I thought, looked like a breath of fresh air and the sort of person who could have been of great benefit to Black citizens in both the USA and the UK. She looked like she would do a good job of promoting the idea that freedom, hard work and personal responsibility brings greater happiness to humans than the path advocated by socialist race baiters such as David Lammy MP. As a former repenting ex Leftist myself I had some sympathy and empathy with Ms Owens journey from the dark prison of socialism to the light of freedom.

However, latterly there have been revelations about the conduct of both currently and in the recent past by Ms Owens that show her in a very different light. She has been accused by a number of commentators including high profile ones such as Dave Cullen of Computing Forever of previously running a doxing site, a site that could have put people, including minors, at great risk. Before Ms Owens became a public conservative she was the promoter of an online project called ‘Social Autopsy’ which allowed users to enter a persons, name, photograph, social media handles and rough geographical area and searched the internet to tie up anonymous or semi anonymous social media accounts and other parts of the person’s digital footprint with the users real life home addresses, schools, workplaces etc etc. In an explanatory video that is quoted by Mr Cullen in the video below, Candace Owens states that this system is designed to go after people who engage in ‘hateful’ or ‘bullying’ activities online. Unfortunately the words ‘hateful’ and ‘bullying’ are often highly subjective and without a doubt this service would have been used by, among others, members of the violent, intolerant Left to intimidate people in to silence. This service could even have put lives at risk especially for those who live in countries that are dictatorial and oppressive or which have forbidden their citizens from speaking of certain issues. Doxing is not something that is to be encouraged and because of that this automated doxing system promoted by Candace Owens must be condemned. It’s morally wrong to knowingly publish a person’s home address with the intent of whipping up a mob to go round there and intimidate them. Demonstrations at the offices of an organisation, such as a police headquarters or a the offices of a political party which has done wrong or stupid things is one thing, but sending angry mobs round to the houses of people who may have said something with which the Left disagree, is a completely different kettle of rotten fish.

I was horrified by the revelations about Ms Owens but, being a former Leftist, I know also that it is possible to make seriously piss poor political decisions and support some shit causes whilst in that world, so I wanted to give her some benefit of the doubt. Some people can change and realise that previous deeply held Leftist views, change when confronted with the evidence that socialism doesn’t bring freedom or justice but only oppression and injustice. That desire to cut her some slack disappeared when I found out that not only was she working on Social Autopsy in the Spring of 2016, a very short time ago, but that the Social Autopsy website was, until a couple of weeks ago, still up and running.

The revelations about Candace Owens are worrying and do not lead me to want to trust her anymore. I’ve come to this decision for a number of reasons. The first is the nature of the project that Ms Owens was working on, it stinks morally, it really does. It could have exposed a lot of people, including minors, to danger. The second reason is that this project was not a mistake that Ms Owens made five or six years ago, this was only a year and a half ago. For me, not enough repentance and reflection time has been served by Ms Owens in her journey from the Left. I know for myself how it takes time for views to properly and sincerely change. Ms Owens has started that journey but is in no way a long way down that road. The third reason for distrust is that the site remained live up until relatively recently. If as Ms Owens states that the Social Autopsy project was a key part of her move from Left to Right, then why didn’t she scrub the site as soon as possible?
Finally there’s the matter of Ms Owen’s post revelation conduct. From what I’ve seen of her she has come over as a little evasive and one would think that if she truly had made the journey that she says she has made then she would be a little more transparent about her answers. There has not been enough remorse shown by Ms Owens over this matter as well.

Many of us have been caught out by Candace Owens, in Mr Cullen’s video below he said he didn’t twig that the Candace Owens of ‘Red Pill Black’ fame was the same one as in the ‘Social Autopsy’ promotional videos. Neither did I, neither did a lot of people. We have trusted someone who had not yet earned that trust by showing consistency of purpose, or by the temporal separation of her conservative present and her Leftist past. I certainly agree with Mr Cullen that if we are to be morally consistent then we must ‘police our own in exactly the way that we police our opponents’. Ms Owens behaviour is bad and must be condemned with just as much vigour as we on the centre right condemn the excesses of the Left.

My own opinion is that people of a centre right/libertarian mindset were so delighted by the appearance, content and delivery of Ms Owens and by her forceful but engaging personality, that they and we failed to undertake any checks on her previous projects or statements. She has let down not just those who gave her conservative themed videos support and publicity, but she has also let down the Black conservatives many of whom fight valiantly against the Left and the misery that Leftist policies bring to humans of all races.

Why did Ms Owens behave the way she did is a question for which many seem to have their own answers ranging from ‘it was a genuine conversion’ but one a little too recent for comfort right though to the seemingly tin foil hat ideas such as she was a ‘plant’ by social justice warriors to embarrass conservatives. Why she did what she did is an interesting question but at the end of the day Ms Owens has become a person that I don’t think that I could bring myself to trust until she proves to me that she may be trustworthy.

Here’s one of the videos that Dave Cullen of Computing Forever has made about the Candice Owens saga. I’d advise watching it all as it is a good explanation of this scandal and how it came about.