Candace Owens tweeted a classic over-the-top comment on Friday evening that tweaked all the usual suspects on the right and the left. She called for us to ignore Russia (no) and send troops into Canada (also no).

STOP talking about Russia.
Send American troops to Canada to deal with the tyrannical reign of Justin Trudeau Castro.

He has fundamentally declared himself dictator and is waging war on innocent Canadian protesters and those who have supported them financially.

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) February 19, 2022

It’s important for us to note that Owens is acting as a provocateur and not as a serious commentator when she says something like this. There is no rational person who actually believes this is a good idea. People who through this out there are trying to generate talk and have decided any pushback is just part of the fame-building process.

But some of that pushback comes from David French, who routinely criticizes the fringe of the online right and acts as though it represents more than it does.

French’s mistake over the weekend was to conflate Twitter follower numbers with actual engaged Americans.

I’m told, “Stop highlighting the fringe!” But the “fringe” is huge. This person has three million Twitter followers. Greg Locke, the book-burning TN pastor, has 2.2 million Facebook followers.

If you’re more angry at Canada than Russia, something is deeply wrong. https://t.co/6P20mIBxJE

— David French (@DavidAFrench) February 20, 2022

Let’s focus on the “Candace Owens has three million followers” part first.

The population of the United States is about 330 million people. If we’re being extremely generous and saying that all 3 million of her followers are U.S.-based followers, that’s 0.9% of the U.S. population, which is statistically fringe. But that also assumes that all 3 million of her followers interact with her tweets, and that is statistically impossible.

According to the website SpeakrJ.com, the engagement on Owens’ tweets isn’t very high. She averages, at best, around 1 percent engagement from her followers. For that particular tweet, there are about 120,000 interactions, and a lot of them are mocking her.

It’s completely irrational to think that social media numbers are somehow indicative of the strength of a movement. On a website where fake accounts, bots, and purchasable followers exist, it’s beyond unreasonable to base an assumption about a group of people on one Twitter account.

Yes, 1 percent engagement would mean about 30,000 people, and that is a big number of people who may agree with her. But 30,000 keyboard warriors on Twitter does not a revolution make. You very likely aren’t going to see those 30,000 people rise up and stage a coup somewhere. What you will find is that, if they’re called, they won’t serve the “cause,” whatever the cause French is worried about may be.

Candace Owens does not represent the full right. She doesn’t really represent much of anyone. There are not untold numbers of people out there basing their activism and their votes on what Owens tells them to. They follow her for the entertainment value.

I used to joke that one day our net worth was going to be based on our social media followers, that we’d over-inflate the importance of how many people follow us on social media. But guys like French, who are wanting to paint wide swaths of Americans with a very broad brush, will use the biggest numbers they can find to fit their theory. But it simply isn’t logical to think that 3 million Americans are hanging on to Owens’ every word.

But, French has been openly embracing this alarmist mentality for a while now.

In the end, French contends that the conservative movement is making a mistake by focusing too much on “wokeism” and exaggerating the threat of the more unsavory machinations of the hard left. But he also criticizes the “deafening silence” from Christian leaders in relation to this supposed MAGA Christian nationalist movement which seeks to encourage more political violence.

What is curious about French’s piece is that he never actually manages to tie this religious group to the Jan. 6 riot or any other type of political violence. It is almost as if he expects his audience to take his word for it that the folks who rioted on that day were part of this movement.

The points he makes about the fringe elements within conservative Christianity are not necessarily wrong, especially when it comes to the many prophecies issued by so-called prophets who made predictions that Trump would win in 2020. He rightly points out that many of these people seem to view the former president as a Messiah-like figure.

However, nobody can argue that these people represent even a significant percentage of the conservative Christian crowd. Indeed, many have condemned people like Gen. Flynn for appearing to promote a rebellion. In the end, French is actually engaging in his own form of “nutpicking,” demonizing the church and making it appear as if its adherents should be portrayed as being similar to the thugs who rioted at the U.S. Capitol.

These massive generalizations are far more detrimental to actual substantive arguments that can be made about Owens and those like her who wish to provoke with over-the-top rhetoric. Combined with French deliberately ignoring the fact that one can be deeply critical of both Russia and Canada and the harm that their governments are bringing on their people. To simply reduce it to an either-or, an ideas French flirts with in his tweet, yet another dishonest spin on the idea.

Owens had a stupid tweet. French, in an effort to criticize it, made dumb arguments. Neither should be taken seriously.