By PoliZette Staff | April 10, 2019

It was the pushback heard across the nation.

At a tense House Judiciary Committee hearing on online hate speech on Tuesday, conservative commentator Candace Owens (shown above center) pushed back on Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and said he so grossly distorted her comments about Adolf Hitler, to try to smear her and by connection others on the Right, that he must “believe black people are stupid.”

“In congressional hearings, the minority party gets to select its own witnesses,” Lieu began. “Of all the people the Republicans could’ve selected, they picked Candace Owens. I don’t know Miss Owens. I’m not going to characterize her,” he said. “I’m going to let her own words talk.”

Incredibly, the California Democrat then pulled out a cellphone — and as everyone in the hearing room watched and listened, he played a brief clip of previous remarks by Owens at a conference back in December.

“I actually don’t have any problem with the word ‘nationalism,'” she can be heard saying in the clip — which was edited without her permission.

“I think the definition gets poisoned by elitists that want globalism. Globalism is what I don’t want. When we say ‘nationalism,’ the first thing people think about — at least in America — is Hitler,” she continued in the clip. “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 had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everyone to be German …”

Owens, much like President Donald Trump, has defended nationalism against attacks and accusations from the Left that the concept is somehow racist.

Lieu then asked committee witness Eileen Hershenov, senior vice president for the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish anti-hate group, in part, “When people try to legitimize Adolf Hitler, does that feed into white nationalist ideology?”

Shortly after Hershenov replied, Candace Owens explained that she believed Lieu had intentionally and greatly misrepresented her views to advance a false narrative against Republicans in general.

“I think it’s pretty apparent that Mr. Lieu believes that black people are stupid and will not pursue the full clip in its entirety,” Owens began.

Before she could get much farther, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), broke in.

He told Owens, “It is not proper to refer disparagingly to a member of the committee. The witness will not do that again.”

“He’s trying to present [it] as if I was launching a defense of Hitler in Germany, when in fact the question that was presented to me was pertaining to whether I believed in nationalism, and that nationalism was bad.”

Owens refuted him — clarifying that she had not at all called Lieu stupid, as the record clearly showed and as others sitting in the room along with them also clearly heard.

Then she said when Nadler permitted her to continue, “As I said, he is assuming that black people will not go and pursue the full two-hour clip. He purposefully cut off — and you didn’t hear the question that was asked of me. He’s trying to present [it] as if I was launching a defense of Hitler in Germany, when in fact the question that was presented to me was pertaining to whether I believed in nationalism, and that nationalism was bad.”

Owens wasn’t finished.

“And what I responded is that I do not believe we should be characterizing Hitler as a nationalist. He was a homicidal, psychopathic maniac that killed his own people. A nationalist would not kill their own people … That was unbelievably dishonest, and he did not allow me to respond to it, which is worrisome … ”

She then finished with, “By the way, I would like to also add that I work for Prager University, which is run by an orthodox Jew. Not a single Democrat showed up to the embassy opening in Jerusalem. I sat on a plane for 18 hours to make sure I was there. I am deeply offended by the insinuation of revealing that clip without the question that was asked of me.”

She spoke clearly, bluntly, and with conviction.

Executives from Google and Facebook were present in Washington, D.C., to respond to questions from Congress about the organizations’ role in the spread of hate crimes — and the seeming increase of white nationalism in the U.S.

Leaders of such human rights organizations as the Anti-Defamation League and the Equal Justice Society, along with conservative commentator Candace Owens, were also there to join them.

The Monday hearing “was prompted by the mosque shootings last month in Christchurch, New Zealand, that left 50 people dead,” as Fox News pointed out. “The gunman livestreamed the attacks on Facebook and published a long post online that espoused white supremacist views.”

“Owens was named in the mosque shooter’s manifesto, along with eco-fascism, socialism, Trump, and other seemingly unrelated actors,” the outlet also reported. “The shooter, who professed affection for divisive online memes and sowing social discord, explicitly stated that his intent was to gin up division and goad different factions into attacking one another.”

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This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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