Who is Candace Owens and why is Yeezy tweeting about her?
By Rebekah Kuschmider — Written on Apr 26, 2018
Who is Candace Owens? If you’d never heard of Candace Owens before yesterday you’re not alone. The conservative commentator who's been called the 'next Tomi Lahren' and YouTube star was working her way up the media ladder slowly until she got a huge social media boost — from Kanye West.
The hip-hop star and Kardashian spouse busted Owens’ world wide open when he tweeted:
The short missive came as a part of a larger tweet storm that’s been going on for days, where he shared his thoughts on his own similarities to Donald Trump (dragon energy, what?) photos of his house, and told the world that he fired his manager because he can’t be managed.
But no one is feeling the tweets like Candace Owens is. She’s been rocketed to household name status literally overnight and she is thrilled about it.
Here's what you need to know about the new darling of the right.
1. She’s a bullying victim.
Owens was subjected to an awful campaign of harassment when she was in high school. It began with threatening voicemail messages from a classmate and escalated to physical altercations, verbal abuse, and a period of time where she was homeschooled because she was too scared to attend class. The kids responsible were ultimately charged for their harassment and Owens’ family won a $37,500 settlement from the school district.
2. She worked in the fashion industry.
After graduating from University of Rhode island with a degree in journalism, she got a job working for Vogue. She was still struggling with the after-effects of her bullying episode and with the stress of working at a high-powered magazine. She says she had an eating disorder at the time, but she also says that didn’t make her unusual. “Everyone there has an eating disorder,” she told the CT Post in 2016.
3. She tried to address online bullying — badly.
In 2016 she announced plans to created a website called Social Autopsy where people would be able to post screenshots of negative interactions they had online. Owens said the point was to make people think twice before they post awful things. Other people, including Gamergate victim Zoe Quinn, disagreed. They asked Owens to rethink her plans because it was basically a site to dox people, a practice of sharing people's private contact and employment information on the internet and it can ruin lives. Eventually Kickstarter pulled her fundraising campaign and the project never went forward.
4. She now works for Turning Point USA.
She currently has a job as an Communications Director for the conservative organization. Founder Charlie Kirk was so impressed with Owens when he met her that he say he hired her “four minutes later”.
Turning Point's stated mission is "a youth organization that promotes the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government" but it's probably better known for maintaining a Professor Watchlist that lists college professors who allegedly discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.
5. She’s a hip-hop fan.
After Kanye tweeted his support of Owens, she fangirled out on Twitter saying:
She went on to speculate about other stars who might lend her some support, specifically mentioning Cardi B and talking about how long she’s loved the artist.
6. She’s kind of a big deal on YouTube.
She has a YouTube channel called that was previously Red Black Pill, a reference to the movie The Matrix where characters take a red pill to see things as they really are. The Red Pill idea has been adopted by far-right political groups who like to think they’re seeing a truth about society others, like the mainstream media, might be missing.
She's since dropped the Red Pill moniker and uses her own name instead. Her channel has almost 200,000 followers and her posts generate hundreds of thousands of views.
7. But don’t call her far right.
She doesn’t claim the far-right label for herself, even though she's a proud Trump fan. She even calls Trump the world's savior.
And she doesn't have any respect for groups like Black Lives Matter:
She prefers to describe herself as a free thinker, only interested in the truth. As she said on Twitter:
It's likely that Candace's Owens' profile will only grow now that Kanye has made her famous. Will she get 15 minutes or is Candace Owens here to stay?
Rebekah Kuschmider is a DC area writer with a background in non-profit management and advocacy Her work has been seen at Ravishly, Babble, Scary Mommy, The Mid, Redbook online, and The Broad Side. She is the creator of the blog Stay at Home Pundit and is a contributor the book Love Her, Love Her Not: The Hillary Paradox . She is a cohost of the weekly political podcast The More Perfect Union.