Liberty, Lavon, and Lies: Croaky Exposes the Woke Right’s Revisionism

Croaky on Candace Owens and the Market for Antisemitism

The internet has become a breeding ground for antisemitism, allowing revisionist narratives to gain traction among disillusioned audiences. It is in this fertile ground of misinformation and grievance that Candace Owens has found her latest act. But to understand why she’s taken this path, one must first understand her pattern—a career built not on insight but on opportunism.

Candace Owens has always struck me as a shallow opportunist, more interested in branding than advancing conservatism. To be honest, I’ve never paid her much attention beyond the occasional glimpse of her attempting to play the role of an intellectual—awkwardly reciting talking points she’s either “borrowed” or outright stolen from minds far greater than her own, like Thomas Sowell or Walt Williams. It’s painfully clear that Owens is no original thinker; she’s a vessel, regurgitating prepackaged lines in hopes of applause.

Owens made her name as a black face for conservatism at a time when the Tea Party and Pro-Trump crowd was being called racist. Owens, capitalizing on the understandable but ultimately misguided conservative desire to amplify more black voices, based her schtick on copying commentary from prolific black writers but completely lacking the knowledge or the “soul of conservatism” as Russel Kirk called it. I’ve spoken on this before—how easy it is for a black conservative to achieve prominence simply by existing in opposition to leftist narratives about race. But in Owens’ case, the substance never matched the hype. She never had anything meaningful to contribute. Her schtick was always shallow—“bumper sticker conservatism,” as I call it. She strung together populist slogans that lacked depth or coherence, yet people cheered simply because it reinforced the idea that conservatism is a universal truth, not limited to white identity.

Now, desperate for relevance and on the outs with Con Inc, Owens has turned to more inflammatory waters—pivoting to anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric, callbacks and buzzwords, all while cloaking herself in the pomp of Catholicism and “just asking questions.” There is plenty of real criticisms to make of Israel and what it has done in the past both for advancement or more often self-preservation. Though I will point out get them talking long enough and they switch from using Israel as a codeword to just talking about Jews in general. The go-to is to suddenly fall back on their claimed “Christianity” as a defense for their language, as if them Jewsperging is solely based on their deep piety. Let’s be honest: for people like Owens this isn’t about faith or principle. This is about branding. Owen’s seems to do this not because she believes or even knows what she’s saying but because notoriety is her singular ambition.

This is why we now see her pandering to the fringes of the Woke Right—a bizarre convergence of populists, communists, National Syndicalists, white Christian nationalists and anti-Zionists masquerading as conservatives. Owens has found her niche among these factions, offering them a veneer of credibility by parroting their rhetoric with just enough polish to make it palatable to mainstream audiences. But make no mistake: this isn’t about conservatism. It’s opportunism, pandering to the worst instincts of a disaffected, grievance-driven crowd.

Candace Owens has always been about Candace Owens. She’s never sought to advance the cause of conservatism—only herself. Her shift from bumper sticker platitudes to inflammatory antisemitism isn’t a sign of some form of intellectual evolution but instead is a desperate attempt to stay relevant in a market that rewards controversy over substance and whatever generates clicks. And for those who would still defend her—not that many exist—let me remind you: the grift will end, but the damage she does to “the right’s” credibility will linger. She’s not the voice of any movement; she’s the echo of shallow impulses, amplified for profit, but most of all attention.

Owen’s Needs Tropes

And here we are yet again where she has proven herself to be a dilettante masquerading as a scholar, this time delving into the murky waters of the USS Liberty incident and the Lavon Affair. Her commentary on these complex events is as misguided as it is cynical, the product of a grift that has shifted from parroting the brilliance of Thomas Sowell to pandering to the dark corners of the internet populated by white supremacists and antisemites. These groups, delighted to have a black face repeating their talking points because they think it masks their racism, have eagerly embraced her shallow provocations. Yet Owens’ attempts to align herself with such revisionist narratives reveal not only her ignorance but also her utter lack of conservative principles.

Distorting History

The use and abuse of history by Owens isn’t her own, its part of the continued trope as using certain events as a cudgel to attack Israel and to expand that criticism to Jews worldwide. One can make a script off of the predictable refrains these people like to bring up and first up are usually the USS Liberty and the Lavon Affair. These incidents are frequently resurrected not to seek truth but to promote long-debunked conspiracy theories, often used as dog whistles to stoke antisemitism under the guise of historical critique. So I’ll go over them here.

The USS Liberty
To give a quick rundown the USS Liberty incident occurred on June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War, when Israeli forces mistakenly attacked an American intelligence ship off the coast of Sinai. The attack resulted in the tragic deaths of 34 crew members and injuries to 171 others. Israel after realizing what occurred immediately apologized, citing misidentification in the fog of war, and later paid reparations. Multiple investigations by both the U.S. and Israel, as well as independent inquiries, have upheld this explanation.

Yet Owens being led by the terminally online Woke Right’s use of this trope as an attack on Israel and it’s alleged manipulation of the West for it’s own means resurrects the conspiracy theories that claim the attack was deliberate, framing it as part of a nefarious Israeli plot. Her regurgitation of these baseless assertions mirrors the rhetoric of antisemites who have long sought to exploit this tragedy to demonize Israel. What Owens conveniently ignores is the mountain of evidence that refutes these claims, including intercepted Israeli communications that corroborate the error and the fact that Israel had no logical motive for such an attack. The claim is simultaneously that Israel intentionally attacked the ship to both attack the US, but also somehow draw the US into the war on their side, because to the historically illiterate that makes sense.

The reality is that war is chaotic, and errors—tragic though they may be—happen. The U.S. itself has made similar mistakes, including the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988, which killed 290 civilians. The US has on multiple occasions accidentally blown up Canadian positions in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, to the same fog of war issues. In fact fratricide due to fog of war has occurred in every US military engagement and often is due to negligence or mistaken identity. But Owens is not interested in context or nuance; she is interested in feeding a narrative that will generate clicks and align her with an audience eager for confirmation of their biases. The most interesting thing to do with these types who throw out this trope is to ask them what they know about it. I’ve had them come on Spaces before and bring it up and not be able to answer a single question about the incident. They just know the USS Liberty as a form of “gotcha” and hoping the person they’re arguing with doesn’t know the subject. Similar to the USS Liberty issue is the next trope I’ll break down that Owens cluelessly throws in.

The Lavon Affair

Turning to the Lavon Affair, Owens again demonstrates her penchant for distorting history to suit her opportunistic aims. The Lavon Affair, also known as "Operation Susannah," was a failed covert operation in 1954 in which Israeli agents attempted to plant bombs in Egyptian civilian and government buildings. The goal was to frame Egyptian nationalist groups and destabilize the Egyptian government, thereby discouraging British withdrawal from the Suez Canal. Now here we move away from Fog of War and go into international intrigue and intelligence games played in international politics. This is a decent example of what not to do.

The operation was a disaster. The agents were caught, and the scandal rocked Israeli politics, leading to the resignation of Israeli Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon who was blamed for it (it’s named after him now) despite intel later showing he was kept out of the loop on the issue. Owens, in her characteristic fashion, inflates this event into evidence of a grand Israeli conspiracy, odd though that one can make a comparison to Operation Northwoods—a U.S. plan from the early 1960s that proposed staging attacks on American soil to justify military action against Cuba. This is what I mean about intel games that nations engage in that have historically misfired.

While the Lavon Affair was undoubtedly a failure of judgment, it is not evidence of the pervasive malfeasance Owens suggests it’s really just a way to lump all actions as intentional and code for “sneaky jews” for the intended audience. In fact, the exposure of this plan led to significant reforms in Israeli intelligence practices. Owens’ attempt to tie this Cold War-era debacle to broader conspiracy theories is not only historically inaccurate but also profoundly irresponsible. Yet, these revisionists’ moral indignation collapses under scrutiny. Their supposed quest for justice is riddled with contradictions, nowhere more evident than in their sympathy for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

The Selective Outrage of Revisionists

The paradoxical outrage of our time: those who raise the banner of moral indignation over incidents like the USS Liberty or the Lavon Affair—a tragic mistake and a Cold War relic, respectively—find their sympathies, curiously enough, aligned with groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Groups whose sole purpose appears to be the orchestration of intentional and grotesque violence against the West and especially Israel whom they would like to see erased from the map.

Hezbollah, the darlings of this revisionist chorus, were responsible for the deliberate murder of 241 American servicemen in Beirut in 1983. This was not a fog-of-war mishap, nor a tragic misidentification. It was an unequivocal act of calculated terror. And yet, the very people who howl about an Israeli mistake from the Six Day War that served no strategic advantage—a mistake for which reparations were paid and apologies issued—are the same people penning apologias for a group that gleefully targeted a Marine barracks with the precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel made of hate.

But wait, the irony compounds! These same critics, ever so concerned with historical injustice, turn a blind eye—or, more accurately, an approving nod—to the atrocities of Hamas, an organization that recently perpetrated the mass slaughter of civilians in Israel on October 7th. These aren’t just tragedies of miscommunication or the byproducts of “fog of war”; these are calculated acts of barbarism, executed with the kind of moral vacancy that only the most ideological minds can summon.

And yet, these critics claim the mantle of moral superiority? They invoke decades-old incidents involving Israel, cloaked in bad faith, not to pursue justice but to justify their defense of the indefensible. Their outrage is selective, their principles are non-existent. They don’t care about the truth but for narratives that serve their own grievance-laden and often “racially” motivated agendas.

Using these incidents to attack Israel’s current war against groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, they reveal themselves for what they are: hypocrites whose moral compass spins wildly, pointing always toward the most convenient outrage. Their arguments crumble under the weight of their own contradictions trying to wield the language of justice to excuse the purveyors of deliberate evil.

The Opportunistic Grift

As I mentioned earlier Owens’ foray into these topics is not the product of genuine intellectual curiosity or any desire to inform; it’s a calculated move to exploit a niche market in the age of monetization of engagement. Having run out of Thomas Sowell quotes to paraphrase, she has pivoted to catering to the growing wave of antisemitism on the internet. By parroting revisionist narratives about Israel, she positions herself as a contrarian while giving white supremacists and antisemites a convenient black figurehead to shield their hate from criticism. Her two main problems are a lack of intellectual depth and the inability to sustain meaningful engagement. Even the most ardent antisemites grow weary of her shallow provocations, realizing that grift can only mask intellectual bankruptcy for so long and that Owens can only be useful in limited circumstances.

The main issue that any conservative should have with this is that it can and will be conflated with actual conservatism. This isn’t conservatism. Conservatism values truth, context, and the careful study of history. It seeks to preserve the best of our traditions while understanding the complexities of the human condition. Owens, by contrast, is a grifter who exploits the language of conservatism while embodying none of its principles. She is not interested in fostering intellectual discourse; she is interested in monetizing outrage, no matter the cost. But Owens isn’t an isolated figure; she is a symptom of a wider malaise in online discourse, where controversy thrives at the expense of truth. This ecosystem fuels the growing market for antisemitism

The Market for Antisemitism

The internet has provided fertile ground for the resurgence of antisemitism, allowing old canards to find new audiences. Owens appeals to some because she repackages these narratives with a contrarian veneer, giving them the illusion of intellectualism…at least until you hear her mispronounce “napalm” multiple times in a row. But for disillusioned audiences seeking a scapegoat, her rhetoric offers both validation and a sense of belonging. From forums to social media platforms, these narratives are disseminated with a speed and reach that would have been unimaginable in earlier eras. Owens has identified this as a lucrative market for someone of such little ability, aligning herself with these voices is not out of conviction but out of opportunism. This isn’t merely a rhetorical problem—it’s a gateway to the normalization of hate. When influencers like Owens parrot these revisionist narratives, they don’t just betray intellectual laziness; they give credibility to the darkest elements of public discourse. Left unchecked, this creates an environment where antisemitism flourishes under the guise of contrarianism and people internalize these falsehoods becoming incapable of critical thinking on the subject, even when proven wrong.

A Conservative Response

True conservatism—and common sense—rejects Owens’ shallow provocations and demands a commitment to truth and intellectual rigor. To combat antisemitism, conservatives should promote education on historical events like the USS Liberty incident with clear evidence and context. Encouraging forums that value thoughtful debate over clickbait rhetoric can also help reinvigorate the intellectual foundation of the movement. As Edmund Burke observed, “Falsehood is a perennial spring.” Owens’ grift and many like her exemplifies this, preying on ignorance to serve personal ambition. Conservatives must be the defenders of truth against such opportunism, standing firm against those who would dilute the movement’s intellectual heritage for personal gain

We should begin by promoting platforms that emphasize historical literacy and fostering dialogue between conservative and centrist voices, ensuring a robust defense against opportunists like Owens who trade principles for profit. The USS Liberty and Lavon Affair are complex events that require careful study and context, not sensationalism. There are definitely criticisms to be made and lessons learned, but they don’t come from promoting ahistorical nonsense parroted by someone with the intellectual rigor of carnival barker. These events are not fodder for grifters looking to monetize outrage; they are lessons in the dangers of war, the fallibility of intelligence operations, and the importance of accountability.

As conservatives, we must speak against the opportunists who exploit our movement for personal gain. Candace Owens isn’t a conservative; she’s a weak brand. She doesn’t seek to preserve or improve the intellectual heritage of conservatism or Western Civilization; she seeks to profit while assisting in its decline.

Grifters Gonna Grift

Candace Owens’ commentary on the USS Liberty and Lavon Affair is a microcosm of her broader grift—ignorant, opportunistic, and devoid of principle. She has abandoned the intellectual foundation of conservatism in favor of pandering to the lowest common denominator. Her attempts to align herself with historical revisionism and conspiracy theories are not only embarrassing but dangerous, providing fuel to the growing wave of antisemitism on the internet.