What Candace Owens reveals about support for trophy hunting
The far-right media darling known for white supremacist rhetoric comes out as a proud trophy hunter.
Candace Owens published a monologue on her Daily Wire show professing her new found love for trophy hunting after she killed a gemsbok in the Kalahari Desert. Her fetishization of the Great White Hunter narrative demonstrates the shallowness underpinning support for trophy hunting.
Candace Owens fetishizes the Great White Hunter narrative
Owens, like many newly converted sustainable use activists, said that she originally didn’t like the idea of hunting and always found trophy photos of dead animals to be horrific. But Donald Trump Jr. convinced her that hunters are the “#1 animal conservationists in the world.”
Owens stated, “When you ban [trophy] hunting… it’s open season for poachers.” I guess no one told Owens that Donald Trump Jr. was accused of poaching on one of his trophy hunting trips...
But wildlife isn’t the only thing trophy hunters save, according to Owens.
Continuing her monologue, Owens rambled on about the idea that hunters hunt to save wildlife and people. She gave the example that when you see a photo online of a trophy hunter posing next to a dead lion, that’s because the lions overpopulated the region and “began attacking and killing an entire village of Africans.”
Hammering home the idea that American and European trophy hunters are the saviors to Africans, Owens added, “They need this population of lions to go down because these starving Africans in this village are being slaughtered.”
Owens continued that trophy hunters do more than simply protect African people from “being slaughtered.” She stated that trophy hunters take the animal and turn it “into meat which feeds the African children in the local villages.”
She added that part of the pride that she took in killing a gemsbok was that it “was going to feed all of these African children who are ecstatic when the hunters come because they know they’re going to get a bunch of meat.”
The Great White Hunter: Protector and Provider.
The depiction “starving” Africans “being slaughtered” and the subsequent “ecstatic” reception reinforced the fantasy of the Great White Hunter being Africans’ savior. Owens’ attempt to paint Africans as inferior people was nauseating, yet typical of her work.
Candace Owens is paid to promote white supremacy
The Daily Wire is a far-right media outlet that pays Owens millions of dollars to promote hateful content. Owens’ main appeal is that she is a black woman which helps to validate the white supremacist ideology that she spreads to her conservative audience.
Owens defended white supremacy in a Congressional hearing, saying that it would not even rank in the top 100 problems facing black Americans. Instead, she blamed “the breakdown of the family” and “black-on-black crime.”
A few months before Owens went on her Kalahari trophy hunting trip, she published a Daily Wire monologue calling the British colonization of Africa a “net positive.” Additionally, she said that “it was white men that were the first in the world to abolish the slave trade” and that “it was Africans that fought and said “No, we want to maintain the system of slavery because it is good for us.”
Where have we heard those types of arguments before?
Candace Owens’ arguments are no different than what’s coming from ‘reputable’ sustainable use activists
As disgusting as the rhetoric in Owens’ monologues was, it wasn’t much different from what we hear from the sustainable use community.
For instance, Amy Dickman’s arguments (that she allowed the trophy hunting industry to use in their disinformation campaign) play up the ideas that trophy hunting protects wildlife from poaching, trophy hunting bans would harm wildlife, and that lions are a danger to the people living near them.
Likewise, Resource Africa’s information page on trophy hunting is replete with the narrative that Africans want trophy hunting because it benefits them and it’s necessary for their survival. Ever notice how sustainable use activists never try to explain why the survival of so many Africans is apparently dependent on a colonial activity?
As revealed by Owens, support for trophy hunting is grounded in the belief that Americans and Europeans are superior to Africans. The legitimization of trophy hunting relies on the idea that African people are incapable of conserving wildlife and, in fact, incapable of even surviving on their own without help from the Great White Hunter.
It’s easy to see through this shallow attempt at promoting white supremacy when it’s coming from a far-right grifter. But it’s much more difficult when it’s coming from reputable people and groups within wildlife conservation.
And that’s dangerous.