I’ve noted before that I believe The Daily Wire plays a fundamental and important role within the conservative media ecosystem, a sort of National Review for the digital age. Their first documentary, Matt Walsh’s What Is A Woman? may prove to be a cultural moment as Walsh turns his audience into an activist base combatting gender ideology and fueled by reporting that few other outlets are willing to engage in. Which brings me to Candace Owens’ new film, The Greatest Lie Ever Sold—which, I should clarify, is not about her pet theory that the moon landing was faked.
I’ll be up front: While I like the rest of the DW hosts, I don’t care for Candace Owens. She’s one of those conservative stars who got famous for shock jock virality rather than insightful commentary; she’s prone to really asinine statements (early on I watched her long-form conversations on Joe Rogan and Russell Brand and was unimpressed with her shallow, reactive responses to many issues); she gets in Twitter brawls where, in true Trumpian fashion, she calls conservatives she disagrees with “fat pigs”; her defences of Kanye West’s anti-Semitism and other ludicrousness reeks of self-interest. I’d be surprised if Ben Shapiro doesn’t frequently regret hiring her.
I’m not the only one, by the way—most of the DW hosts disagree with her on this stuff, with Andrew Klavan noting that he disagrees with almost everything that comes out of her mouth. But The Greatest Lie Ever Sold is probably an exception to that disagreement. The title is definitely overkill, but the content is genuinely interesting—although very little of it is new. Owens relitigates the killing of George Floyd, reviewing the various camera angles, and making the case that Floyd’s death was a tragic case of drug overdose rather than a murder by Derek Chauvin. Anybody familiar with the contrarian narrative on the Chauvin conviction—that it was trial by media and that good evidence of innocence was ignored—will already know most of this.
The most interesting part of the documentary to me was her careful review of the financial dealings of Black Lives Matter. In her telling, a handful of progressive grifters used George Floyd’s death to exploit the grief and rage of Black America to accrue a massive amount of money—over $80 million in one year—which was then used to purchase mansions worth millions and to pay friends and family members exorbitant salaries for invented jobs (Patrice Cullors gave her brother, a graffiti artist, nearly a million dollars in a single year to run security at her new, expensive property). The BLM organization also funneled over two million dollars to various transgender activist groups to fuel activism committed to breaking the binary and further the trans agenda.
I got a lot of backlash—even from many Christians—for explaining why I believe the organization Black Lives Matter is unsupportable back when everyone was required to prove their anti-racism by pledging fealty to BLM. BLM is a revolutionary organization committed to the most extreme version of the LGBT agenda (two of the three founders identify as queer) and the destruction of the nuclear family. Those are their publicly declared motives. What we didn’t know at the time is that the millions of dollars being donated to BLM in the wake of the George Floyd riots were being funneled to transgender groups and funding the lavish lifestyles of the champagne socialists buying houses in gated communities far from the inner city. The Greatest Lie Ever Sold debunks the idea that Christians can support this organization, once and for all.
Again, I don’t think this documentary is important in the way that Walsh’s film is. She’s mostly recounting her greatest hits and covering well-worn territory, and the premiere almost immediately got swamped with controversy due to the presence of Kanye West (for his recent anti-Semitic outbursts), Ray-J (the failed rapper who shot the Kim Kardashian sex tape), and (to a lesser degree) Kid Rock. Not, I’m sure you’ll agree, great company. But the documentary is a decent overview of BLM as a massive grift, and if you’re interested in hearing that case made again with great production value but without much new information provided, it is worth the watch.
