Australia bans Candace Owens from entering country due to antisemitism

Candace Owens has been banned from entering Australia, following a history of antisemitic, anti-Muslim and transphobic comments, the Sydney Morning Herald posted for the first time on Sunday morning.

Tony Burke, the Immigration Minister, announced that Owens has had her visa cancelled, meaning she will be unable to travel to the country for her upcoming tour.

“From downplaying the impact of the Holocaust with comments about [German SS officer Josef] Mengele through to claims that Muslims started slavery, Candace Owens has the capacity to incite discord in almost every direction,” Burke stated.

“Australia’s national interest is best served when Candace Owens is somewhere else.”

Jewish groups previously called for her visa to be cancelled in August, with Burke telling the Sydney Morning Herald "Tickets to these events are selling for $100. I hope she has a good refunds policy."

The Candace Owens Live! show is marketed as a “raw and unfiltered commentary on politics, culture, and everyday life” and was scheduled to take place in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, and Adelaide.

VIP tickets for her Australia tour are selling at $1500.

Owens told Australia's Radio 2GB in August that she was "surprised" to learn of calls to revoke her visa, saying, "I promise you it is not going to harm you to hear different ideas.”

Jewish groups respond

The Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) called the decision a "victory for truth."

The visa cancellation of Owens, "a known peddler of dangerous rhetoric against Jews and other groups, and unapologetic Holocaust denial," is a victory for "the millions of Jewish souls and millions of others whose memory she so shamelessly desecrated," the ADC added.

The ADC, along with Annetta Able, the oldest surviving victim of Dr Josef Mengele, and her daughter Daphne, have fought to prevent Owens from holding the events.

The ADC lamented Owens' "vile revisionism," in which she claimed that the atrocities of Dr. Mengele, who subjected many Jews to experiments and torture, were “propaganda.”

"This is more than just a visa being revoked. This is a tribute to every single survivor who bore witness to the horrors of Auschwitz," the ADC added.

"Australia has no place for those who mock the suffering of genocide survivors and insult the memories of the six million Jews who perished."

However, the Australian Jewish Association (AJC) criticized the decision, saying that while they did not support Owens' "bizarre antisemitic conspiracy theories," they saw the pan as a "flawed proposal" and one that went against Jewish values of free speech.

They also added that banning Owens may prove a "counter-productive pyrrhic victory."

"Sometimes attempting to ban a speaker can [...] encourage ugly conspiracies that Jews seek to control who can speak, exercising undue power. 

The AJC added that they were more concerned with the failure of the [Australian] Labor government to deal with the real antisemitism in the community, such as at universities, calling the Owens' ban "a false appearance of acting against antisemitism, in effect throwing us a few crumbs while ignoring the big issues."

Owens' previous statements

Owens has made multiple statements that have outraged Jews and Jewish groups.

Previously, she referred to Judaism as a “pedophile-centric religion that believes in demons...[and] child sacrifice.”

She accused Sigmund Freud of pedophilia and of using psychoanalysis to tell rape victims they were attracted to their fathers, “No, they were being raped when they were seven years old because that’s what you do when you worship the Kabbalah."

She also accused Israel of having killed John F Kennedy.