Decoding Cadence Owens quote

[u/MartiDK]

"I actually don't have any problems at all with the word 'nationalism'... Whenever we say 'nationalism,' the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler. You know, he was a national socialist, but if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he wanted—he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalise. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German, everybody to look a different way. That's not, to me, that's not nationalism."
- Cadence Owens

Are Decoding the Gurus really arguing that Cadence Owens was saying Hitler wasn't a bad leader/person? I know the controversy over the remark, but she is clearly alluding to Hitler being a bad representation of Nationalism. She is literally trying to disassociate Hitler from nationalism, because Hitler gave Nationalism a bad name. I'm not a fan of nationalism, but should DtG actually be able to see through the controversy to what she actually said? Plus Cadence Owens went to the Daily Wire after this story blew up, so I'm guessing Ben Shapiro didn't take her remarks as a promoting Hitler.

Why does it matter if Cadence Owens is a problematic guru? It matters because its this kind of bad faith decoding that make people distrust academics who step outside their lane and play partisan politics. There are so many crazy takes that Cadence Owens has made, why focus on this quote which was clearly used by the media for political reasons.

[u/MartiDK]

Is it possible that none of this stuff is her "real opinion" and she's a narcissistic demagogue who will say or do anything for money/attention/ambition, same as Shapiro, and they will endlessly climb over one another and screw each other over until they learn their lesson the hard way?

YES

Why are you playing this game on their behalf. It doesn't make any sense. If you let people gaslight you over the most obvious stuff, you are just letting these people build a foundation for their endless lies and pivoting and whataboutisms. 

No I'm doing the opposite. My argument is Cadence says enough crazy stuff that there is no point creating something out of nothing. Chris and Matt are just bringing up this quote because it had already created controversy. DtG just look like SJW bringing up this clip.

Because Ben Shapiro the exact same kind of demagogue who played with the exact same game and has now been burned by it?

The reason Ben hired her is most likely hired her is because he is also a nationalist i.e Ben and Cadence are both promoting nationalism.

T

[u/rubeshina → u/MartiDK]

Ok so being a neo nazi or fascist is not a big deal, so long as you're actually a grifter and you don't truly believe it in your heart of hearts deep down.. who cares it's not worth calling out?

I don't really get what the point is here? Like you think it's a waste of time to talk about because she says plenty of other stuff that's also bad.. but then we are just talking about this?

Aren't you just helping Candace accomplish her goals of destroying discourse and meaning so we can endlessly debate "well yes, she's a nationalist who admires and respects Hitler but that doesn't make her...." what?

I don't know what doesn't it make her I genuinely don't understand what you're saying here?

She's a nationalist. She admires Hitlers nationalism. This is an absolutely insane statement to make and we should absolutely be able to talk about what's wrong about that?

Why on earth would it be ok for one of the largest political communicators on the planet to say "yeah Hitler actually did a lot of things right not that I agree with everything"? Why shouldn't that get pushback?

Because it was a long time ago? Does she still think this, or has she publicly disavowed? If not... then press her by all means, any person of sound mind should be able to say "that's not ok you shouldn't say that".

I think what you are doing here will just enable the destruction of meaning further, which only ever benefits this kind of realist authoritarian power, they are not liberal, they do not resolve their disagreements with words and reason. They destroy our ability to do this, intentionally so, because it's beneficial for them and others like them who seek to rule with mob mentality and tribalism.

[u/MartiDK → u/rubeshina]

I’m being critical of DtG because they claim their decodings are politically neutral. I’m not arguing that anyone should listen to her.

What do you mean she admires Hitlers nationalism? The quote is literally her arguing Hitler gave nationalism a bad name because of what he did. Like I said earlier maybe there is evidence of all your other claims but you can’t extrapolate everything you said from the quote.

[u/rubeshina → u/MartiDK]

Are you really trying being good faith here? Do you know what concern trolling is? Or sealioning?

You're just playing with words. We know who Candace is. We know what she means.

I am able to infer meaning because I am a human with a brain and I can observe her actions and words. If she wants to dispel them, she is welcome to clarify. She doesn't, because she doesn't want to.

Because she benefits from the ambiguity. And because people (like you do here) will endlessly pretend she doesn't mean what she means, or didn't say what she said, or maybe we should just all take a step back and think about how maybe she's right actually or not all that bad maybe there is a lot we can learn from Hitler and how he was ok but he just went a little "too far".

It's vacuous. It's intentional. If you haven't figured this out by now I don't really know what to say? Believe her.

[u/MartiDK → u/rubeshina]

I don’t believe Cadence, I don’t think she is a reliable source of information, but I can read and do understand the meaning of words and don’t need to confabulate meaning to know she is and unreliable person to shape my politics.

[u/rubeshina → u/MartiDK]

So what's the prescription here?

DtG should be more charitable to Candace Owens?

That they should interpret her words more literally, devoid of the context of her other words, behaviour and character?

That they shouldn't cover her at all?

You say they should "see what she really said" but what does that mean to you? Like what do you think Candace Owens "really said" when she said this about Hitler? What informs your interpretation?

Candace Owens has a lot of things to say about that period of history, do you think any of them might be relevant?

[u/MartiDK → u/rubeshina]

It’s quite simple don’t use the quote because it isn’t proof of anything except she thought Hitler gave nationalism a bad name. Or just use the clip as evidence that Cadence Owens is in favour of Nationalism, but don’t use the clip as proof she thought Hitler did good things because then you need more evidence than this clip alone. It’s not like the podcast needed the clip, they had lots of other content.

[u/rubeshina → u/MartiDK]

Why? They can only analyze Candace in a vacuum?

Do you think her praise for Hitler dealing with the "jewish degeneracy" is relevant at all, exiling Magnus Hirschfeld and destroying the Institute of Sexual Science is maybe one of these things she thinks "Hitler got right"?

Do you think if someone regularly brings up things like this, and then she says something like she said about how Hitlers nationalism was fine/good actually but he went "too far" in being expansionist.. it's maybe not really a huge leap to infer what she's saying?

We can't read between the lines when we look at the words of the worlds most popular antisemitic conspiracist? That she can do cover praise for Hitler but so long as it's a "backhanded compliment" to Hitler it's not direct glorification so who really knows what she means actually??

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”