YouTube Suspends Candace Owens, Demonetizes Her Account for ‘Hate Speech’ in Kanye West Interview

On Aug. 7, Owens published on her YouTube channel an interview she did with West on Oct. 17, 2022, for her podcast “Candace.” During their conversation, the controversial rapper made a number of claims about his “Jewish doctor” and “Jewish trainer,” as well as the “Jewish media” allegedly conspiring against him. He repeatedly talked about the Jewish community, compared high abortion rates among Blacks to the Holocaust, and said, “Jewish businessmen are the ones who have done the things to me to hurt me and my friends.” West also discussed during their 2022 interview the notoriously antisemitic tweet he published that year about wanting to physically harm Jews.

YouTube’s decision to suspend Owens and demonetize her account came after she made offensive remarks last week about Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late spiritual leader of the Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch movement who was also known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

On Sept. 4, Owens appeared in an episode of the YouTube channel “Piers Morgan Uncensored” with fellow guest Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a former Chabad emissary. While debating Boteach on Piers Morgan’s show, Owens falsely claimed Schneerson, who died in 1994, “preached Jewish supremacism, the hatred of all non-Jews.” She added, “You can go through his speeches and you will see that he continually talks about how non-Jews should be treated and that, again, we are a different species.”

Yaacov Behrman, a spokesperson for the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, responded to Owens’ accusations by accusing her of displaying “utter ignorance” for labeling Schneerson as a Jewish supremacist. Chabad’s official X account shared a long thread about the spiritual leader’s life and wrote in part: “The Rebbe saw the importance of each individual, no matter how ordinary they might seem. His door was open to all. The Rebbe dedicated hours daily to personally responding to letters from people worldwide.”