Turning Point USA's communications director, Candace Owens, told those gathered at an event in December in London that if Hitler had just focused on Germany instead of trying to conquer Europe, that would have been "ok." She argued that his only problem was globalism, and wanting to expand beyond his nation's borders.
Wait...what happened?
Answering a question on the role of nationalism during the London event, Owens said:
Yeah, I agree. I actually don't have any problems at all with the word "nationalism." I think that it — the definition gets poisoned by elitists that actually want globalism. Globalism is what I don't want. So, when you think about, 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 he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize, 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. So, in thinking of how we could go back down the line, I don't really have an issue with nationalism. I don't. I think that it's ok, it's important to retain your country's identity and to make sure that what's happening here, which I think is incredibly worrisome in terms of the, just the decrease in the birthrate that we're seeing in the U.K, is what you kind of want to avoid. So, I'm not, I don't have anything problem — I have no problems with nationalism. It's globalism that I try to avoid.
As any amateur historian would be able to tell you, Hitler's domestic rule in Germany was anything but "fine." According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 165,200 German Jews were killed by the end of World War II. In Austria, which shared Germany's language and much of its culture, an additional 65,459 were killed. In total, six million Jews were killed throughout Europe. We won't rehash the rest of Hitler's evils in this article, but a quick internet search or trip to the library should reveal that there were many of them.
Owens would later tell the Daily Beast that she thought Hitler was a "homicidal maniacal globalist" and "the scum of the earth," but defended nationalism which she said that "Americans wrongly equate" with Hitler.
Turning Point recently announced the launch of a British offshoot called Turning Point UK.
