Candace Owens' remarks about Adolf Hitler

Candace Owens is the Director of Turning Point USA, a conservative non-profit that has been criticized over its "Professor Watchlist" that identifies college professors who it accuses of discriminating against conservative students.  It also stands accused of attempting to secretly influence student government elections as part of its agenda to "combat liberalism" on college campuses.

She was in London last December when she made some comments about Adolf Hitler in response to a question.  Responses to those who criticized her comments claim they were taken out of context.  Here is the Buzzfeed article that broke this story.  This the portion of the article that contains all of her comments:

Asked by a member of the audience about nationalism in Western politics, Owens brought up Adolf Hitler. “I actually don’t have any problems at all with the word ‘nationalism’,” Owens said. “I think that the definition gets poisoned by elitists that actually want globalism. Globalism is what I don’t want. … Whenever we say nationalism, the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler."

“He was a national socialist,” she continued. “But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalise. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German. Everybody 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."

Ms Owens tweeted the following regarding her comments being taken out of context just after I began this blog:

Congratulations to Business Insider for being the first publication to publish the ENTIRETY of my comments, not taken out of context.

This is what responsible journalism looks like. @businessinsider https://t.co/GPA58FdTjh

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) February 9, 2019

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If I am interpreting the comments of Ms Owens in their entirety correctly, her problem with what Hitler did begins when he began his attempt at conquering the world, which was his definition of her term "globalism."  

In February of 1933, Hitler promulgated his foreign policy of incorporating Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans living outside of the nation's borders), expansion into and domination of western Europe and Lebensraum (living space, which was to be acquired in eastern Europe).  But it wasn't until March of 1938 when Germany annexed Austria that Hitler took action outside of his nation; where Ms Owens lauds his nationalism.  Let's look at some of the things that Hitler did between those two events:

Later in Feb 1933 - the Communist Party was banned following the Reichstag fire.  This gave the Nazis complete control of the government.

March 1933 - The Enabling Act is passed, giving Hitler authority to make laws without consulting the Reichstag for the next four years.

April 1933 - The German secret police, the Gestapo is formed.

April 1933 - The Nazis seized control of local governments.

May 1933 - Trade unions were banned.

May 1933 - Over 25,000 "un-German" books were burned at the urging of Joseph Goebbels.

July 1933 - All political parties other than the Nazi Party are banned.

All that in less than six months.

June 1934 - 150 leaders of the Sturmabteilung SA, the paramilitary unit of the Nazi Party were assassinated in what is now known as The Night of the Long Knives.

September 1935 - Nuremberg laws redefine German citizenship.  Relationships between Jews and Aryans are banned.

December 1936 -  Membership in the Hitler Youth organization was made mandatory for all boys.

One other item occurred after Hitler's annexation of Austria and seizure of Czechoslovakia, merely two months later.

November 1938 - Kristallnacht.  Night of the Broken Glass.  Named for the shards of broken glass from two nights of violence against the homes, businesses and synagogues of German Jews.  Hundreds dead.  30,000 Jewish men arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps.

If it was the intention of Ms Owens to dismiss these things as not being part of the problem because Hitler had formulated a foreign policy, but not yet undertaken any real expansion efforts outside of Germany's borders, that doesn't fly.