Candace Owens Revives Antisemitic Libels with ‘Talmudic Jew’ Rhetoric

In a recent video that quickly gained traction online, political commentator Candace Owens issued what she framed as a truth-telling warning to her audience urging them to “wake up” to what she described as “Talmudic Jews.” Her remarks, paired with a recommendation to read The Talmudic Jew by August Rohling, go far beyond commentary. They signal a disturbing embrace of one of the oldest and most dangerous antisemitic myths in modern history.

Owens’ narrative isn’t new. It revives an age-old trope that reduces Jewish identity to a sinister “code,” found supposedly in rabbinic texts that only outsiders can “expose.” But what she presents as revelation is simply recycled hatred discredited and debunked, but weaponized for a new generation.

By referencing The Talmudic Jew, Owens aligns herself with a book that served as ideological fuel for 20th-century antisemitic movements, including Nazi Germany. Its author, August Rohling, was a 19th-century Austrian Catholic polemicist who deliberately mistranslated and distorted Jewish texts to portray Judaism as a threat to non-Jews. His work was never about understanding Jewish law or tradition it was about dehumanizing Jews and undermining their rights in Europe.

Even in Rohling’s own time, scholars revealed that he had fabricated quotes, stripped texts of context, and manipulated legal debates to present Judaism as inherently immoral. Yet, like much propaganda, the book endured not because it was accurate, but because it served a purpose: to legitimize fear and hostility toward Jews.

Owens furthers this dangerous lineage when she claims that Jews are behind global conflicts pitting “Christian against Christian,” “Christian against Muslim” and even blames Jews for the Transatlantic slave trade. These assertions are not only demonstrably false; they are grotesque distortions of history. Jews, historically a persecuted and powerless minority, were neither colonizers nor imperial architects. The primary drivers of the slave trade were European Christian and Arab Muslim empires not Jewish communities.

When Owens invokes “Talmudic Jews,” she’s not referencing religion. She’s signaling conspiracy. It’s a rhetorical device designed to isolate Jews as alien and morally deviant outside the bounds of civilized society.

But the Talmud she smears is not a secret manual of malice. It is a vast legal and ethical library, written over centuries, preserving fierce debate, moral complexity, and enduring questions. It is the opposite of dogma it is the intellectual heartbeat of Jewish tradition.

To strip these texts of context, to weaponize lines from ancient discourse, is not scholarship. It’s distortion. And distortion is the foundation of every antisemitic lie that has ever paved the road to violence.

Owens is not ignorant of her reach. Her influence is significant, and her rhetoric matters. When public figures mainstream these old libels under the guise of “truth-telling,” they don’t just mislead they normalize hate. They teach millions to view Jews not as neighbors or fellow citizens, but as a lurking danger.

History has seen this playbook before. We know where it leads. The myths Owens is amplifying were not idle ideas they were the scaffolding for persecution, ghettoization, and genocide.

To remain silent in the face of such rhetoric is not neutrality it is complicity.

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