More incendiary commentary is emanating from YouTube conservative commentator Candace Owens, this time she claims it was Jews who were responsible for enslaving black people, robbing them of their names, culture, religion and placing them in bondage.

Recently, she has viciously gone after her former colleague on the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, and maintains that his sole concern is the welfare of Israel at the expense of the United States. She also claims that what Israel has done in Gaza amounts to genocide. She was fired from the Daily Wire and then went on to become the most-viewed YouTube commentator, far surpassing the Daily Wire.

This is what Candace Owens said on her show about Jews profiting from the black slave trade: “You [Ben Shapiro] describe yourself as a Talmudic Jew, and I have learnt what’s in that Talmud and what Ben thinks about you. He doesn’t just hate me, he hates you, too, white men. He hates all black people.

“If he is following the rules of the Talmud, he thinks we are all animals, that they (Jews) have a right to own us, that they have a right to make us worship them, that they have a right to lie to us.

“Wake up and learn the true history of slavery. That wasn’t exactly a white man’s sport. Jewish people were the ones that were trading us. Jewish people were in control of the slave trade. They buried a lot of it, but it is there; you can find it.”

This is controversial and could lead to incitement of conflicts at a time when anti-semitism is running at a high. Some may see this as Candace Owens looking to turn blacks against Jews and blame them for putting them in bondage, thus refuting what is popularly held as white European men enslaving and breaking the will and minds of black people.

Candace Owens gave no historical context or salient facts to support her assertion. This may simply be a spit in the eye of Ben Shapiro, with both young right-wing commentators viciously going at each other, tearing the other down and dismissing each other’s credibility.

Anyway one looks at it, this was an explosive, eyebrow-raising utterance by Candace Owens. Recently, she has gone on a conspiracy theory tirade, claiming all sorts of things. She has declared that Brigitte Macron is really a man, that Kamala Harris has lied about her family background, that there is something more to Charlie Kirk’s murder involving Israel.

Both Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens are articulate commentators who have gone on to have outstanding careers. They have turned their new-media platforms into major successes, outdoing traditional media.

Donald Trump has been President for less than a year, scoring a stunning victory for the right and American conservatives, yet, its entire movement and its many star faces are knifing each other and tearing out their own innards. This will only serve to undermine Trump’s success and likely see them out of power if this continues. It is self-defeating. Instead of being self-congratulatory and working together to get their position across, the likes of Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owen, Ben Shapiro and  Steve Bannon are warring with each other, and it is a blood sport.

With Candace Owens announcing that Jews controlled the black slave trade, she is sharing similar notions to those of the Nation of Islam. In the three-volume work first published in 1991, entitled The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, the Nation of Islam asserts, like Owens, that the Jews controlled the Atlantic slave trade. This book has been deemed hate literature and anti-semitic.

Leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, hailed the book. Kyrie Irving championed the film Hebrew to Negroes, which also insists Jews played a prominent role in the black slave trade.

Some share the sentiment that blacks and Jews share an alliance due to both groups being persecuted, having been enslaved, both being discriminated against and that there should be empathy between the two.

Candace Owens disagrees and insists that Jew were the ones who were wicked, evil, enslaving blacks robbing them of their history and freedom, scattering them in the Diaspora, breaking their connection to Africa, She says blacks must wake up to this and acknowledge who really sold them into bondage, who really made them work the American and Caribbean plantations, who really made them hate themselves. 

She has now taken anti-semitism to another level, and now another group of people will have reason to hate Jewish people. 

Will Ben Shapiro debunk what she says about the Atlantic slave trade and the Jews? Who knows. What we do know he would do so, calling on scholarship, history and facts. 

The hate against Jews is real and is getting nastier in recent times. If no effort is made to prevent it, to stem this growing tide, it could turn out to be another nasty epoch in human history, this time in the twenty-first century, weaponised by the internet.