Notable American right-wing political commentator Candace Owens recently informed the public that, should they so desire, they can order Hitler's Mein Kampf on Amazon.
She spoke about this in the context of NBA player Kyrie Irving's recent comments on the controversial book-turned-film Hebrews to Negros: Wake Up Black America, which is currently gaining popularity on Amazon.
Candace Owens: "If you actually go on Amazon right now, you can order and read Mein Kampf. It is not an endorsement of Adolf Hitler to read a historical textbook" pic.twitter.com/l4BawvXEDv
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) November 9, 2022
"You know how I feel about free speech," Owens said. "I think people have a right to be wrong. People have a right to take in information. People have a right to read whatever they want. Little reminder: if you actually go on Amazon right now you can order and read Mein Kampf. It is not an endorsement of Adolf Hitler to read a historical [sic] textbook. It just is not. And the idea that we should be censoring all this information and nobody should see it because it hurt some group of people, to me, to me does not gel with our first amendment rights.
Owens also stressed the fact that Kyrie Irving is being punished, while Amazon is making lots of money off of the fact that he made Hebrews to Negros a best-selling item. "Kyrie Irving's entire life is on the line," she said. "Nobody is talking about Amazon."
This is not Owens' first time using Hitler to make a point. In February, The Washington Post quoted her as saying:
“He was a national socialist. But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, okay, fine. The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German. To look a different way. To me, that’s not nationalism. In thinking about how we could go bad down the line, I don’t really have an issue with nationalism. I really don’t. I think that it’s okay.”
What did Kyrie Irving do?
Irving has faced heavy criticism since posting a link on Twitter to a 2018 film, Hebrews to Negros, and defending the post over the weekend. The seven-time All-Star has since deleted the Twitter post.
Posting on Instagram, he apologized to those "hurt by the hateful remarks made in the documentary," and said he took full responsibility for his decision to share the content with his followers.
Irving said the film "contained some false antisemitic statements, narratives, and language that were untrue and offensive to the Jewish Race/Religion."
"I want to clarify any confusion on where I stand fighting against antisemitism by apologizing for posting the documentary without context and a factual explanation outlining the specific beliefs in the documentary I agreed with and disagreed with," Irving wrote.
Irving's suspension and apology follow a controversy generated by Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who was suspended by social media platforms last month for posts that online users condemned as antisemitic.
Not Kyrie's first time in the spotlight
Irving's social media posts are not the first time that he has courted controversy in the NBA.
He played in just 29 of the Nets' 82 regular season games for the 2021-22 season after refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine despite a mandate by the city of New York.