Candace Owens traveled to Russia to participate in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum’s (SPIEF) discussion on “A Big Family, a Big Reach: New Demographics and Narratives for Media Leaders”. She also gave interviews to various Russian media outlets and briefly toured Moscow beforehand. Her trip went viral on social media, however, after her critics presented it as supposed proof that she’s paid by Russia. The innuendo, and in some cases outright allegation, is that Russia directs her content.
On that topic, Candace has become an incredibly polarizing figure over the past year. Her (in)famous series on “Becoming Brigitte” purports that French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife is actually her brother, who’s supposedly a transsexual, thus making Macron a homosexual as some have rumored. That was already off-putting enough for those of her followers who got to know her through her work at Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire and previously the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA.
What crossed the line for most of those who followed her from back then was her “Bride of Charlie” series focusing on Charlie’s widow Erika. Candace implied that Erika played a role in his assassination despite the suspect in custody being a radical liberal. The point in referencing these two series, especially her most recent one, is that they polarized a lot of Americans. Her participation at SPIEF thus made her critics suspect that Russia polarized Americans through her this whole time as a form of hybrid warfare.
No evidence has been presented in support of this conspiracy theory, which compellingly appears to be more of a personal vendetta by those like Laura Loomer with whom she’s feuded and the casual observers who despise her for the “Bride of Charlie” series than anything even semi-credible. Being invited to speak at a foreign event isn’t proof that the person’s content up until that point was directed by a foreign entity. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and there’s none in this case.
Having debunked the faux controversy surrounding Candace’s trip to Russia, it’s time to move along to the veritable one, and this concerns Russia’s new association with her by dint of her having been invited to speak at SPIEF and then interviewed by leading Russian media. As was earlier mentioned, her two series are incredibly polarizing, and many have argued that the “Bride of Charlie” is unchristian cruelty to a widow driven by Candace’s jealousy that Charlie chose Erika over her as his wife.
Whatever one’s opinion about her motives may be, there’s no doubt that Candace’s innuendo that Erika played a role in the assassination of her own husband is scandalous, and this in turn could reflect poorly on Russia due to its association with her through SPIEF. While Russia’s “soft power supervisors” might calculate that “any press is good press”, and perhaps they also expected her to extoll Russia’s beauty to her audience to counteract Western propaganda, it indisputably comes with some reputational risks.
The takeaway is that Candace isn’t a “Russian agent” like her critics now claim, nor did Russia ever direct her content that consequently polarized so many Americans as they now speculate, but Russia’s new association with her scandalous content might upset some of its conservative supporters. Some have already expressed dismay at the decision to invite her to speak at SPIEF. Just like Candace lost a lot of her old supporters but gained even more new ones, however, so too might the same happen with Russia.
