Candace Owens’s Latest Lie: “Jewish People Were In Control of the Slave Trade”

I first realized that Candace Owens was not a serious thinker when I listened to her on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2020. He asked her about a controversial topic, and she responded that she did a deep dive one night which solidified her conclusions. PhD holders have written their dissertations on the subject, but Candace did a deep dive. Joe was incredulous that she thought a “deep dive” on Google made her an expert on the subject.

Candace, who does not have a college degree, is suddenly an expert on Jewish involvement in the slave trade. It would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. She now has the number one podcast in the country (in specific categories) and is influencing millions of people with her hate speech.

THE TRUTH!



Claims that Jewish people were responsible for, or disproportionately behind, the Atlantic slave trade are not only historically false but also recycle long-standing antisemitic conspiracy theories. When Candace Owens repeats or amplifies these ideas, she is not engaging in serious historical critique, as she is not a historian or even a student of history. She primarily repeats unproven claims on a myriad of subjects for likes and clicks.

Now, she is reviving a narrative that has been thoroughly debunked by mainstream historians across ideological and religious lines. Even a novice student of the 17^th and 18^th centuries would know how dumb her assertions are.

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The Atlantic slave trade was a vast, multinational enterprise spanning centuries and involving European empires, African kingdoms, shipping companies, plantation owners, insurers, and financiers. The dominant actors were the Portuguese, Spanish, British, French, and Dutch, operating through state-sanctioned trading companies and imperial systems.

To suggest that Jews “ran” or were “behind” this system ignores the basic structure of early modern power: Jews, as a small and frequently persecuted minority in Europe, were largely excluded from political authority, colonial governance, and chartered monopolies that controlled the trade.

LET ME BE CLEAR: JEWS WERE HATED AND DESPISED, OFTEN PERSECUTED. THEY HAD NO MEANS OR OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE ANY SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN THE SLAVE TRADE.

• In 1492, the Spanish (and Portuguese) Inquisition forced Jews to leave Spain or convert to Catholicism.

• Before that, Jews were blamed for the Black Plague, and whole communities were murdered.

• Throughout Europe and its colonies (15^th–18^th centuries), Jews lived under restrictive laws that sharply limited their power. They could not hold office or have high rank in the military.

• Jews were barred from joining trade companies that controlled the slave trade.

• Most Jews were poor or, at best, lower middle-class, working menial jobs.

• Jews often bore the brunt of violent pogroms and massacres.

• They were the scapegoats for nearly every problem in Europe.

In other words, it was impossible that Jews controlled the slave trade.

Yes, a small number of Jewish individuals participated in slaveholding or slave trading, just as members of virtually every ethnic and religious group did in societies where slavery was legal. But participation is not the same as control, and participation of Jews was minimal. 

Serious scholarship consistently shows that Jewish involvement was marginal relative to the scale of the trade. Jews owned only a tiny fraction of slave ships, plantations, and trading firms. In many colonies, laws explicitly restricted Jewish economic activity and barred Jews from the very institutions that organized large-scale slaving operations.

The idea that Jews were central to the slave trade gained traction not from academic research but from polemical sources (meaning, written to prove a point, not for accuracy)—most notably the highly racist propaganda “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,” published by the Jew-hating Nation of Islam. Historians have debunked the book. It is not peer-reviewed (meaning scholars have not affirmed it).

What makes Owens’s claims especially troubling is that they mirror classic antisemitic tropes: the notion of secret control, disproportionate influence, and hidden culpability for society’s greatest evils. These narratives have historically been used to exploit, expel, persecute, and MURDER JEWS. Repackaging them as “just asking questions” or “telling uncomfortable truths” does not make them any less dangerous or false.

Owens, who claims to be a follower of Jesus (wait until she finds out He’s Jewish!), is influencing hundreds of thousands of Christians. Paul warned the Christians of his day not to buy into such theories, saying that God has not rejected Israel (Rom. 11:1, 11). We sound the alarm because we care for you. Paul warned that misunderstanding God’s plan for Israel could lead to pride and deception (Rom. 11:25). While God wants his church to pray for Israel and contend for her salvation.

Debunking this claim does not minimize the horrors of slavery or deflect responsibility from those who truly profited from it. Slavery is grotesque. The moral weight of slavery rests squarely on the imperial powers, colonial elites, and economic systems that normalized and enforced it. In fact, the vast majority of slave owners in America identified as Christian. I did not listen to her entire podcast, but did she mention that? (That is not an indictment of Christianity, but of those hypocritical slave owners who claimed to love Jesus while abusing His creation.)

In the end, Owens’s narrative fails both historically and morally. It collapses under basic scrutiny of the evidence and relies on innuendo rather than scholarship. It is classic scapegoating. It fails the common-sense test for anyone who knows anything about Jewish history. We dishonor the history of slavery when we use it to attack people who had very little to do with it.

Pray for Candace Owen’s soul. I just did.