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Beyond the vagueness of summary of Hitler as merely trying to make Germany great, this rhetorical style of refusal to admit facts not liked and so be imprecise with history is par for the course for Turning Point and people like Owens trying to rewrite narratives. 5/
The impreciseness and desire to redefine though butt heads and cause some strange claims. Owens then says: "[Hitler] had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German... To me, that’s not nationalism." 6/
Everyone (here all inside and outside Germany) speak German. Everyone be German... But expanding German borders, expanding German language, to expand Germany - that is the basic reasons why people think Hitler was nationalistic. He though German was better than others. 7/
[*thought.] Owens tries to limit nationalism to merely being proud of their nation, "maintain" its "identity." And this is how the alt-right works rhetorically: redefine, change, alter, or make imprecise words ever so slightly. 8/
Owens thinks "maintaining" Britain's "identity" is nationalism and Hitler took that maintaining too far, going beyond Germany, to make *all* German. But "maintaining" identity here - purity, race, etc - is the heart of Nazi nationalism. It had to exterminate within & without. 9/
Owens wants you to redefine nationalism as patriotism, though she doesn't use that word. She wants a way beyond the harsher nationalism of Hitler to more accepted version of it. This is why Owens limits nationalism rhetorically to within borders. 10/
Of course "maintaining" identity as a nation in a globalized world - a world of migrants, refugees, illegal and legal immigration - begs for nuance and precise and limited definitions. Owens has none of that. For her it is global or national. 11/
When that is the choice, Hitler is a globalist and can't be nationalist, because Owens is nationalist and can't be associated with Hitler. It's stupid and blind binary thinking. And that is where her clarification becomes interesting rhetorically. 12/
In this video she makes it even more explicit that she is trying "to correct the record" (i.e. deny a lot of stuff) on Hitler being a nationalist. Then she defines nationalism as "believing in the sovereignty of your nation first" aka Trump. But... 13/
Owens goes directly into this scenario: when that sovereignty "is being threatened by outside forces." Outside here could mean foreign invaders or those "within" who are not true/pure Americans (or Germans). Owens doesn't specify and so both are there. 14/
She implicitly admits for her there is no nationalism without an "other" - invaders, those who would bring difference in. She mentioned a low birth rate in the UK, presumably not of immigrants or recent arrivals. 15/
And if you heard echoes of Hitler and Nazi and a global conspiracy and that "other" who was collected and brought to camps to die for the purity of the nation, so did Candace. Which is why she then tries to pronounce her nationalism is wrongly conflated with Hitler's. 16/
She uses homicidal, psychotic, and maniac - all overly dramatic and far-encompassing labels to bring rhetorical force to her impreciseness. She didn't use "evil," but this is how many use "evil" - as a kind of catchall for anything they want to dismiss easily. [See my book] 17/
Owens echoes Trump and what he didn't claim to know about race and nationalism: "... [asked] why he used that word given its association with racist movements, Mr. Trump professed ignorance of its history... “I never heard that theory...” 18/
nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/…
nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/…
Yes, words change over time. And Owens is trying to change this word, like Trump is. But their definitions are often lazy, imprecise, historically vague or inaccurate. It's the identification they want, to quote Kenneth Burke. 19/
Consider this from CNN: "Scholars" differentiate between a healthy "patriotism" and "sectarian nationalism... pernicious and dangerous." But Brexit adviser "rejects" the second. "Nationalism is not inherently ugly. It is in fact inherently beautiful." cnn.com/2018/10/23/pol…
For Owens it is not a healthy nationalism or evil nationalism, but globalism or nationalism so that nationalism is not divided, not dirtied by a choice from within. A key rhetorical move is to change the question asked, to change the ground of the terms in play.
Owens failed because by her own volition she redefined nationalism using the worst possible example. Owens and people like her are not defining anything with any preciseness, in terms of historical usage. They use floating signifiers, and make them useful to their end. /end
