ON BRAND

Candace Owens Compares Push to Vaccinate Kids to Hitler Youth Programs

She said NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $100 offer for children who get their first jab feels like “a child predator.”

In her latest unhinged diatribe, far-right misinformation firebrand Candace Owens has compared the effort to vaccinate children for COVID to youth programs run by genocidal dictators Hitler and Stalin. After the CDC approved the Pfizer vaccine for children aged 5 to 11, Owens said that encouraging kids to get vaccinated—something that has been done for decades for a variety of illnesses—appeared to have an undercurrent that was “evil” and “sinister.”

“We can always look to history to see where these things come from,” she said in a Fox News interview, adding that it reminded her of when she “studied Stalin youth programs, Hitler youth programs. When you are talking about schools and the government issuing these brain-washing doctrines.” Speaking about New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $100 offer for children who get their first jab, she said: “There’s something about this that feels like a child predator.” Owens has pushed several wild conspiracies about COVID, calling the vaccine “poison” and the pandemic a ruse to “implement communist policies.” She parted ways with a conservative student organization in 2019 shortly after praising Hitler.