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California Rep. Ted Lieu Makes Candace Owens Visibly Angry After Playing Her Hitler Comments During White Nationalism Hearing
California Rep. Ted Lieu Makes Candace Owens Visibly Angry After Playing Her Hitler Comments During White Nationalism Hearing
Source: C-Span

California Rep. Ted Lieu Makes Candace Owens Visibly Angry After Playing Her Hitler Comments During White Nationalism Hearing

California Rep. Ted Lieu Makes Candace Owens Visibly Angry After Playing Her Hitler Comments During White Nationalism Hearing Source: C-Span

During the hearing Owens also claimed that the GOP's Southern strategy was a myth.

Previous comments Candace Owens said about Adolf Hitler recently resurfaced during a hearing on the rise of white nationalism.

READ: Candace Owens Reacts To Being Called An Influence In New Zealand Mosque Shooter's Alleged Manifesto

Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California played video of Owens' controversial remarks during the hearing, which the black conservative commentator was invited to testify at. She was among eight witnesses on the panel.

"Of all the people that Republicans could have selected, they picked Candace Owens," Lieu said before sharing the clip. "I don't know Ms. Owens. I'm not going to characterize her. I'm going to let her own words do the talking."

Lieu then shared a 30 second clip of Owens speaking at a conference in London late last year where she was answering questions about nationalism.

"I think that the definition gets poisoned by elitists that actually want globalism. Globalism is what I don't want," Owens said then. "Whenever we say 'nationalism,' the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler. You know, he was a national socialist, but if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine."

"The problem is that he wanted — he had dreams outside of Germany," she continued. "He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German. Everybody to look a different way. That's not, to me, that's not nationalism. In thinking about how we could go bad down the line, I don't really have an issue with nationalism. I really don't. I think that it's OK."

After sharing the clip, Lieu asked Eileen Hershenov if people's attempts to "legitimize" Hitler fed into "white nationalist ideology."

"It does, Mr. Lieu," Hershenov, who serves as the senior vice president for policy at the Anti-Defamation League — an organization that focuses on combating anti-Semitism — responded. "I know that Ms. Owens distanced herself from those comments later, but we expressed great concern over the original comments."

Later in the hearing, Owens called out Lieu for playing the video.

"I think it's pretty apparent that Mr. Lieu believes that black people are stupid and will not pursue the full clip," she said. "I'm deeply offended by the insinuation of revealing that clip without the question that was asked of me."

She also discussed white nationalism, white supremacy, and racism, saying that "words that once held real meaning, have now become nothing more than election strategies."

"The hearing today is not about white nationalism or hate crimes — it's about fear-mongering, power, and control," Owens said. "...the goal here is to scare blacks, Hispanics, gays, and Muslims into helping [Democrats] censor dissenting opinions, ultimately into helping them regain control."

Elsewhere in the hearing, Owens also claimed that the GOP's Southern strategy was a myth. She argued that black conservatives are criticized for having "the audacity to think for themselves and become educated about our history and the myth of things like the Southern switch, the Southern strategy, which never happened."

Following the remarks, people took to Twitter to counter Owens' claim, including Ava DuVernay.

The director shared a scene from her 13th documentary, where Ronald Reagan's political strategist, Lee Atwater, was caught on tape explaining the Southern strategy.

"The Southern Strategy succeeded in many ways," DuVernay wrote with the video. "One was on display today in front of the House Judiciary Committee in the form of a black woman spouting revisionist history about pain suffered by black people, suggesting the Strategy never existed. Keep your eyes open, beloveds."