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Candace Owens Reveals How She Became Conservative Overnight After Media Hit Job
Candace Owens sits down with Dave Rubin to share her journey from a liberal Democrat to conservative YouTuber. After launching an anti-bullying startup, she found herself targeted by coordinated media attacks that opened her eyes to how activists masquerading as journalists operate. What started as a tech project became a full political awakening, leading her to question everything she thought she knew about liberalism, the black community, and American politics.
From Finance Professional to YouTube Phenomenon
Candace Owens grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, and attended the University of Rhode Island where she pursued a degree in journalism. After graduating with significant student loan debt, she made the practical decision to work in finance in New York City. For four years, she worked at a private equity firm before leaving to pursue her own anti-bullying startup. What seemed like an innocent venture into social good would become the catalyst for a complete political transformation.
Little did she know that her anti-bullying project would thrust her into the center of one of the internet's most controversial scandals and expose her to the machinery of media manipulation. The experience would shatter her political worldview and set her on a path that would make her one of the most talked-about conservative voices in America.
The Social Autopsy Incident That Changed Everything
Owens created a Kickstarter campaign for Social Autopsy, an anti-bullying platform. In a three-minute video, she used what she thought was an innocuous figure of speech: that the platform would "figuratively lift the masks up off of trolls." That single sentence triggered alarm bells.
She received a message from Zoe Quinn, a figure central to the Gamergate controversy who was working with Twitter on something called Crash Override Network. Quinn called Owens and tried to convince her to pull the project, claiming that as a victim of online harassment, she never wanted to know who harassed her. The logic made no sense to Owens. If Quinn had genuinely been harassed, this technology should have been exactly what she needed.
When Owens refused to pull her Kickstarter, Quinn started crying and warned her that anonymous white men and Trump supporters on 4chan were going to come after her and dox her family. Within two hours of that phone call, Owens received approximately 4,000 threatening emails through Kickstarter with obvious screen names like "Trump or Die" and "Trump 2020." Everything Quinn had warned about came true within hours of Owens refusing to comply.
Owens quickly tweeted that after speaking with Zoe Quinn, she believed Quinn was never harassed and was actually doing the harassing herself. The next morning, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and New York Magazine were all calling her. For a nobody with a three-minute Kickstarter video, this was unprecedented attention.
Journalists as Hitmen
Owens initially thought the mainstream media outlets would help expose what had happened to her. As a journalism major who still considered herself a liberal Democrat at the time, she was excited to talk to The Washington Post. She soon learned a harsh lesson about how modern media actually operates.
Jesse Singal from New York Magazine contacted her, claiming he just wanted to hear her side of the story. When she explained everything, he wrote an article that essentially gaslit her, portraying her as a nice girl who got dragged into a conspiracy theory while defending Zoe Quinn as a genuine victim of harassment. At that moment, Owens realized the media was trying to kill her project and that these journalists were not seeking truth but acting as hitmen.
When Caitlin Dewey from The Washington Post called, Owens had the presence of mind to record the conversation on camera. Dewey's questions revealed her real agenda: to figure out who was funding Social Autopsy and cut off the legs of the project so it would never see the light of day. Owens received a tip that Dewey had already written a hit piece. She caught Dewey in lies via email versus what was said on the phone. When Owens threatened to sue, The Washington Post pulled the article at the last second, claiming she wasn't important enough to write about anyway.
Kickstarter ultimately pulled her project without giving a clear reason, simply stating it violated their policies without specifying which ones. The only media outlet that covered her story extensively and accurately was Breitbart, the very publication she had been taught to view as evil white nationalists.
A Conservative Overnight
The experience transformed Owens politically in a matter of days. This was April 2016, and Donald Trump was on television saying the media was lying, that CNN was fake news, and that journalists were dishonest. Everything he said suddenly resonated with her because she had just experienced it firsthand. She no longer believed the media when they called Trump a racist, rapist, or white nationalist because she now understood that the media employed hitmen who conducted absurd hit jobs.
Looking back, Owens doesn't think she was ever truly a liberal. She hadn't cared much about politics before. She was simply trying to pay back her student loans and build a business. She realizes now that she was always more conservative in her thinking—rational, fact-based, and someone who valued economics above social issues. She understood that you can't become a third world country while screaming about pronouns.
The incident was so traumatic that Owens took a year off to rebuild as a person. She was shell-shocked. As a private citizen, media hit pieces can ruin your entire life, making it nearly impossible to get jobs because people believe whatever they read. She felt the experience happened to her for a reason, and she wanted to re-enter the public sphere as someone more informed who could potentially red pill other people.
Coming Out Conservative
Owens describes coming out as conservative as one of the scariest things a person can do. The reaction from liberal friends was immediate and harsh. They had no tolerance for anyone who didn't drink the liberal Kool-Aid. They were aggressive and mean, and if you hit them with a fact, they claimed they were under attack. There was a natural shedding of friendships because she couldn't bear to be around people constantly in a state of victimhood who didn't want to exchange ideas.
As an African American conservative, she instantly became labeled a traitor and an Uncle Tom. That comes with the territory. She emphasizes that the most racist people she has encountered have been on the left, particularly in how they employ the soft bigotry of low expectations. White liberals constantly need to be the superheroes, refusing to accept that she doesn't consider herself a victim.
Owens identifies as black but insists that being black doesn't mean she has to think a certain way. Her grandfather was raised on a sharecropping farm and was branded in the face by the KKK. She knows what real racism is. These are her stories, her history. The idea that someone like Chelsea Handler, a limousine liberal, thinks it's acceptable to revoke black cards is deeply offensive not just to Owens personally but to the entire history of black struggle in America.
YouTube Success and Red Pill Mission
Owens launched her YouTube channel under the name Red Pill Black, inspired by The Matrix. The name reflects her mission: once you start realizing how things actually work, you become red pilled. She added "Black" because her goal is specifically to wake up people in the black community, who she believes are being used the most by Democrats and kept down by the very systems Democrats have built.
Her channel exploded far faster than she ever anticipated. Within a short time, she gained over 100,000 subscribers. Even more surprisingly, her videos were being dubbed in French and Portuguese, with fan bases emerging in France and Brazil. What she thought was unique to America was actually touching an international nerve about media manipulation and psychological warfare.
She has been shocked to find that these so-called white nationalists and racists are really bad at their job. She hasn't encountered the scary racists she was warned about. Instead, she's been embraced by conservatives, appearing on programs with Jesse Watters, Daily Wire, PragerU, and other conservative outlets.
The State of the Black Community
Owens argues that the biggest problem in the African American community is a lack of education about their own history. Black people don't know their own history. They turn on CNN and are told what to be afraid of without understanding the policies that actually affect their lives. The indoctrination and brainwashing happen on college campuses, where people start to think they're liberals and adopt positions without critical examination.
She believes the Democrats have been particularly destructive to black families. She points to Bill Clinton's crime bill, which incarcerated an entire generation of black men and deconstructed black families. When black families fell apart, everything went sideways for the community. Instead of addressing real issues like prison reform and father absence, the conversation focuses on movements like Black Lives Matter that don't address the root problems.
Owens is passionate about father absence in the black community. People have no idea what it means to grow up without a father figure. Kids are raising kids in these communities. She is literally doing a charity event for father absence, believing this is one of the core issues that must be addressed.
She takes issue with athletes like Colin Kaepernick, who she describes as not the brightest individuals, taking a knee during the national anthem. Kaepernick is half white, she points out, yet tweets about "my people's struggle" and spent Independence Day in Africa. She asks: Do people know their history? How did Africans get to America? Who sold them to the Americans? Black people in Africa were not all kings and queens—many were slaves and peasants there too. The disrespect shown to veterans and active military members who are willing to die for the flag is disgusting and anti-American.
Feminism and Identity Politics
Owens states plainly that she hates feminism. She sees it as another corrupted movement, radicalized beyond its original purpose. Feminism used to be about classical liberalism—about women's suffrage and the right to vote in the 19th century. Now she asks: What don't women have that men have? What opportunities are unavailable to women that are available to men?
Modern feminism has become another form of identity politics, telling women they have to think a certain way, vote a certain way, and support certain candidates regardless of their actual positions. Hillary Clinton ran a campaign based on being a woman, and radical feminists don't embrace women who aspire to stay at home and raise children. Raising three or four children to be good citizens is not an easy job and should be something women are proud of, but modern feminism treats it as a form of victimhood.
Owens also rejects the idea that men and women are equal in the sense that they are the same. They are different people with different hormones and different biological realities. Women can have babies; men cannot. That's a fundamental difference. Feminism was increasingly radicalized during Hillary Clinton's campaign, and if people weren't done with it by the end of that campaign, they never will be.
The NFL Controversy
When asked about the NFL take-a-knee controversy, Owens is blunt: it's ridiculous and uneducated. Athletes aren't the brightest people to begin with—half of them don't even know why they're on their knees. It's just trending. Colin Kaepernick started a trend, and now other millionaire athletes are being completely disrespectful to veterans and people actively serving in the military who are willing to die for the flag.
That said, Owens believes in freedom and consequences. If players want to take a knee, they should be allowed to do it, but there should be consequences. This is their job, they get paid, and customers are leaving. This is a capitalist society. If the business wants to fire them, fire them. She's happy Colin Kaepernick didn't get signed. What we're watching is freedom actually working. People can do what they want, businesses can respond how they want, the president can say what he wants as long as he doesn't put a law or executive action in place, and fans can decide whether to attend games. It's the beauty of democracy in action.
Trump and the 2020 Preview
Owens did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. At the time, she was falling down the rabbit hole and needed to relearn everything. It was like learning to walk and talk again, with everything she thought was true turning out to be false. However, she likes Trump because he's not politically correct. She likes that he says what's on his mind and she doesn't feel like she's being sold something.
Barack Obama was an amazing speaker who could ease a crowd instantly, but at the end of the day, he was a puppet who did absolutely nothing for the black community. Owens likes Trump because he has financial freedom and isn't taking money from people like George Soros. That means there's a chance to take out the globalist environment that has been created. That's why they attack him so much—because they don't own him.
She believes Trump's tweeting is essential because it's the only way he can get the truth out. No matter what he says or how he says it, the media spins it. The Charlottesville incident was a prime example—what he said was factually accurate, but they spun it to make it seem like he was supporting the KKK. Trump understands how he won the election, and he knows that no matter what he does or doesn't do, the media will write a hit piece anyway, so he might as well speak directly to the people.
The implications of current events are a preview of 2020. The Democrats' new platform appears to be anti-American. Let's see how that works out for them.
The Death of Mainstream Media
Owens sees tremendous opportunity in the current moment. The media is dying a slow and painful death. No one cares what they say anymore. They can keep pretending and talking to themselves and laughing at themselves, but Hollywood is losing power. Nobody trusts the media anymore, and we're seeing a mental spiral. Half of what they're saying on air should be kept between them and their therapist.
The media is spiraling because they are aware deep down that they've lost control. People don't care what they think anymore. Their opinions aren't valued. People would rather watch a girl on YouTube open her laptop and talk about politics than pay attention to an anchor paid by CNN. People are hungry for truth, and people are waking up. We are in an era that is absolutely fascinating, and Owens is happy to be part of it.
The Mission Ahead
Owens sees a problem with how conservatives are approaching campus activism. Major figures like Charlie Kirk, Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro, and Ann Coulter go out and speak on college campuses, but they speak to conservatives. It's an echo chamber. Owens wants to go out and speak to liberals. She wants to speak to black people specifically.
She hopes to get invited by liberals, though she acknowledges that will be difficult given their intolerance. Her approach isn't about name-calling or trying to say she's right and others are wrong, or that she's smart and they're stupid. It's about leveling with people and getting them to understand where their ideas came from. At a certain point, she was brainwashed too, so she understands. The indoctrination starts in public school and continues through college. We're taught to be liberals.
She has sympathy for blue-pilled individuals because she was one of them. She understands how easy it is to get brainwashed when it's written into our DNA from kindergarten through college. They're not being willfully ignorant—they just don't know any other way. Her hope is that she'll be able to guide them toward a different perspective, one based on facts, history, and genuine understanding of the policies that affect their lives.
Owens believes that if the Democratic party had not co-opted the process of freeing America from bigotry, most minority communities would completely identify with classical liberalism. They did at one point. But that movement has been hijacked. Her mission is to help people see that, to empower black people to think independently without fear of having their "black card" taken away, and to challenge the narratives that keep entire communities trapped in victimhood and dependence on systems designed to keep them down.
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