Ben Shapiro

Shapiro, president of youth who already look like old men.

Parroting squawkbox Pundits

And a dirty dozen more

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“”The immature rantings of Shapiro as a college student weren't something he grew out of. Instead, his dumbest beliefs were reinforced by a right-wing culture that nurtured every nutty idea he had, and pressured him never to stray from a far right ideology. As a result, Ben Shapiro has become a professional idiot.

—John K. Wilson

“”Shapiro is worth paying attention to bc he's the most influential young conservative in the country and it's good to know how much bigotry and dishonesty is acceptable among even the ones who don't like Trump

—@_Almaqah

Benjamin Aaron Shapiro (1984–) is a black American right-wing author of awful books, extremist Zionist, a warmongering coward shitstain who has never served a single day in the armed forces, UCLA- and Harvard-educated failed lawyer, founder of Truth Revolt (2013–2018) and The Daily Wire (2015–ongoing), catcaller, and notorious dog whistler. He is an insufferable asshole, a pseudointellectual hack, and another hapless proponent of far-right ideas, choosing whatever suits his current agenda. On that note, he is best known for his mostly fact-free criticisms of "left-wing" ideas; in particular, he is famous for the phrase "facts don't care about your feelings". His attitude towards verbiage in general emphasizes quantity over quality, with a hilariously nasally delivery to boot.^{[citation NOT needed]}

Of course, because facts are the #1 priority on his agenda, Shapiro denies anthropogenic global warming and supports intelligent design. He is ethnically Jewish and religiously Orthodox Jewish, but has no qualms with verbally abusing any Jew who disagrees with his backward ideology. Shapiro once childishly stormed out from a BBC interview when Andrew Neil of Britain's Conservative Party read Shapiro's quotes back to him (but not before accusing Neil of being a "leftist", of course). Shapiro's main shtick is to whine about the persecution of straight, white, conservative men by the liberal media and fear-monger about "coastal elites" liberally indoctrinating the unwitting public into communism.

Shapiro earned his spurs as a writer for Townhall and WND but is better known for his close association with Andrew Breitbart, even becoming an editor (and then editor-at-large) for Breitbart.com. He acrimoniously resigned after Breitbart refused to defend one of their reporters after she accused Corey Lewandowski (then Trump's campaign manager) of forcefully grabbing her. He has since become a frequent critic of Steve Bannon and the alt-right.

Shapiro has written several books, including the "Post-Obama thriller" called True Allegiance and a manual titled How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them. These are as childish as they sound, notably the former. Imagine being THAT pissed off with Obama that you feel the need to fill the US with scaremongering and denialism... oh, wait.

Early life

By his own admission, Shapiro was raised by Orthodox Jewish parents, with his mother being a successful entertainment executive and his father being a mildly successful musician who spent most of his time raising his children. He also skipped two grades during his youth, and entered college at age sixteen.

His upbringing was also very political, with a New York Times profile of him saying on his childhood, "Mr. Shapiro grew up in Los Angeles in a Jewish family of Reagan Republicans . . . They lived in a small house, his parents in one bedroom and he and his three sisters in the other. They had political discussions around the dinner table. He was patriotic. He dressed up as John Adams every year for Halloween from the age of 5. He had a favorite musical: 1776."

This bias followed him throughout his life. By his own admission, when he went to Harvard Law School he simply wrote what he thought his professors wanted to hear (and by that he meant the left-wing view of the issue) and made no attempt to actually educate himself with these ideas, only even valuing the degree he got as a "stamp of approval."

Shapiro claims in his 2011 book Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV that he actually nearly had a career in Hollywood, with one agent believing he had talent. However, he says said agent told him his conservative views make it so he'd be unable to work in place so liberal. “I’m not sure we can represent you, because he thinks your political views will make it impossible for you to get a job in this town,” Shapiro recounts the agent saying. Many have argued this Hollywood background play a large part in how Shapiro runs The Daily Wire, a perception helped by the fact that Jeremy Boreing, another figurehead of the organization, was a failed producer in Hollywood before working with Ben.

Bigotry

Racism

Meme made to mock how obviously racist this sounds.

“”If you wear your pants below your butt, don't bend the brim of your cap, and have an EBT card, 0% chance you will ever be a success in life.

—Ben Shapiro, non-racist

Shapiro claimed that "Colin Powell was an affirmative action general" and Barack Obama "an affirmative action President." He also decided that "[t]he Obama administration is" using "racism to let black criminals off the hook, justify illegal immigration, hamstring law enforcement across the country, and push redistribution as a solution to supposed continuing discrimination against 'people of color.'" As a result, "[t]he next race war will come not from racist whites, but from racist blacks and Hispanics who feel empowered to act on their racism by an administration that excuses all minority misbehavior."

In a 2018 episode of the Ben Shapiro show, Shapiro tried to argue that assuming all black people are criminals is a reasonable use of group data rather than racism. This included justifying avoiding young black people on the street and hiring no black people if you can't run a background check. No word was given on whether or not he would see it as reasonable to refuse to hire or rent to men because they have a higher violent crime rate than women.

In his "U.S. President Tier Ranking" video, he stated that the Civil Rights Act was wrong because it infringed on the freedoms of private businesses (these "freedoms" being the freedom to discriminate against black people). He has also expressed support for Charles Murray, listing him among a series of conservatives who he claims were unfairly maligned by the rabid Twitter mob.

Shapiro has also downplayed the racism of people on his side, once denying the racism of George Zimmerman, for example. Of course, Zimmerman has done things like get thrown out of a bar for saying the n-word, ranted about how he was cheated on by a "dirty Muslim," said the lives of "black slime" don't matter, and compared Barack Obama to a monkey while saying his wife was similar to Chewbacca.

For general racial insensitivity, Shapiro called the Supreme Court upholding the Constitutionality of Obamacare their worst decision since Dred Scott v. Sandford. He provides no constitutional reasoning as to why this decision was bad, he simply understood this case was seen as the most infamous in Supreme Court history and used it as a club against his enemies.

Police brutality

Whenever an unarmed person of color is murdered by law enforcement, Shapiro immediately jumps in to defend the killer and demonize the victim. Shapiro justified the killings of Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner, claiming in the latter case that Garner "was not murdered by the cops" and that his death was, in fact, caused by a heart attack. This contrasts with the autopsy conducted by the Medical Examiner's Office, which stated Garner died from "compression of neck (choke hold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police". A doctor hired by Garner's family came to the same conclusion.

Similarly, he defended the killing of thirteen-year-old Mexican-American Adam Toledo, calling it a justified killing and claiming that he had a gun. Unsurprisingly, Shapiro was lying by omission; while Toledo did carry a weapon, Shapiro left out the part of the story where he dropped it and raised his hands in the air.

Most frequently, Shapiro defended Derek Chauvin after he asphyxiated George Floyd to death by kneeling on his neck. He repeatedly claimed that the left-wing media was refusing to report on any defense testimony in Chauvin's trial despite said testimony being widely reported and while himself never mentioning any of the prosecution witnesses who refuted the testimony he was reporting on. As an example, he touted former police officer Barry Brodd, who testified that Chauvin's use of force was proportional, as evidence that the case could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt. Even though eight police trainers, senior police officers, and use-of-force experts testified that Chauvin acted outside protocol and was using wildly excessive force. Following Chauvin's murder conviction, Shapiro sent out a hilariously bad tweet attacking Don Lemon for daring to say that "justice was served".

Despite his dismissal of police brutality against people of color, Shapiro posted a video on Facebook in which fellow journalist far-right idiot Matt Walsh expressed support for a white terrorist named Ashli Babbitt who was shot by police while attacking the Capitol.

Columbus Day video

On October 2017, The Daily Wire posted an execrable video on Columbus Day which listed Native American achievements as "dreamcatchers, tomahawks and cannibalism" and European achievements as "written language, iPhones and women's suffrage"; he first defended the video as "satire". After claiming that it was his staff that posted a 16th-century-grade racist cartoon demonizing indigenous people and glorifying European colonialism, Shapiro eventually took it down and apologized. James Allsup, a noted alt-right white supremacist, proceeded to do what all of them do when they face opposition and called him a "cuck", only after regurgitating 16th-century anti-indigenous racist bigotry in so doing.

Arabophobia

“”Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue. #settlementsrock

—Ben Shapiro, Master of Facts and Logic

Shapiro is very intolerant towards Arabs, showing a dangerous level of hostility to Palestinians. In a 2003 op-ed titled "Transfer is not a dirty word", Shapiro (then 19) called for the removal of all ethnic Arabs from Israeli-occupied Palestinian land as well as Israel proper, asserting that Arabs cannot come to peace with Israelis:

The "road map" was doomed from the start. The Arab enmity for Jews and the state of Israel allows for no peace process. The time for half measures has passed. Bulldozing houses of homicide bombers is useless. Instituting ongoing curfews in Arab-populated cities is useless. Roadblocks, touch fences, midnight negotiations and cease-fires are useless.

[....]

Half measures merely postpone our realization that the Arabs dream of Israel's destruction. Without drastic measures, the Arab dream will come true. In the short term, the establishment of a "Palestinian state" based in Judea, Samaria and Gaza cuts Israel to the bone. In some places, Israel would be an unthinkable 9 miles wide. In the long term, the growth of the hostile Israeli-Arab population within pre-1967 Israel bodes ill for the future of the Jewish state. As University of Haifa professor Arnon Soffer says, "The trends and indicators all point to an economic and ecological catastrophe waiting to happen and of the death knell of the ideological dream of a Jewish state."

Here is the bottom line: If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It's an ugly solution, but it is the only solution. And it is far less ugly than the prospect of bloody conflict ad infinitum. When two populations are constantly enmeshed in conflict, it is insane to suggest that somehow deep-seated ideological change will miraculously occur, allowing the two sides to live together.

[....]

It's time to stop being squeamish. Jews are not Nazis. Transfer is not genocide. And anything else isn't a solution.

Shapiro explicitly related this to the flight and expulsion of Germans after World War 2, in which at least 500,000 Germans (of about 12 million Germans transferred) died. In 2013, Shapiro partially withdrew these views:

Some on the right have proposed population transfer from the Gaza Strip or West Bank as a solution. This is both inhumane and impractical. Moving millions of Palestinians out of areas they have known for their entire lives will certainly not pave the way to peace. Moreover, these Palestinians will have no place to go, since their brethren across the Arab would prefer to keep them cooped up in dismal poverty than house them in their own lands.

In the end, both right and left agree that a population separation is necessary. That does not mean Palestinian statehood, which will undoubtedly result in another Iran directly on Israel's borders. It means instead moving beyond utopianism and making mental peace with the fact that no solution will be permanent. Israel will have to protect its citizens, and it will have to continue to police Palestinian borders. Settlements are not the problem here. Removing settlements is not the solution. The problem is intractable.

Recognizing that the problem is intractable is the first step toward real security for Israel. Signaling to the Palestinian population that occupation will remain permanent so long as they continue supporting terrorism should provide a disincentive to do so. As for the propaganda wars, Israel has no choice but to weather them.

Shapiro offers no helpful solution. Instead of supporting "population transfer", he supports "population separation" with no mechanism for achieving this goal. He neither endorses a one-state or two-state solution -- instead simply calling for inevitable occupation.

It doesn't stop there. Also in 2003, Shapiro wrote an article criticizing secular Zionism on the basis that it provides a justification for equality for Arab citizens of the nation:

Israel's secular Zionism has always provided the seeds of its destruction. Secular Zionism requires that Arab citizens of Israel be guaranteed equal rights. Even though many Arabs within Israel wish for Israel's obliteration and vote as such, Israel does nothing. In January, the Israeli Supreme Court overruled a Knesset ban on Arab Members of Parliament Azmi Bishara and Ahmed Tibi, despite both Bishara's and Tibi's support for Palestinian suicide bombings. Israeli Arabs compose about 20 percent of Israel's population. Demographic trends indicate that within decades, Israeli Arabs will compose a voting majority in Israel, allowing them to vote the Jewish state out of existence. Secular Zionism will let it happen.

If this sounds like the Zionist equivalent of The Great Replacement, that's because it is.

In 2007, Shapiro wrote an editorial for the print and digital syndicate Creators, entitled "The Radical Evil Of The Palestinian Arab Population." He referred to Palestinian people as "rotten to the core". He declared they are "an entire population corrupted by bloodthirsty anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism" that "violates modern ideas of politics." He also wrote:

Ah, the fabled Palestinian people. The Palestinian people, who simply want "a better life." The Palestinian people, who, President George W. Bush has repeatedly informed us, "long for a society in which they can raise their children in peace and hope."

The Palestinian people, who support, fund and execute suicide bombings. The Palestinian people, who dress their toddlers in bomb belts and then take family snapshots. The Palestinian people, who cheered on September 11 as the World Trade Center towers fell. The Palestinian people, who followed terrorist extraordinaire Yasser Arafat, supported Saddam Hussein, shredded the blooming rose that was once Christian Lebanon, and almost toppled the Western-friendly Jordanian monarchy. The Palestinian people, who destroy relics on the Temple Mount, openly call for the destruction of the state of Israel, ally with Syria and Iran, and elect Hamas. The Palestinian people, who teach their children that the Holocaust is a fairy tale, and that Jews routinely poison Palestinian candy. The Palestinian people, who stage injuries in order to solicit Western media sympathy, and then roar madly as they hold up their hands, red with the blood of murdered Israeli soldiers.

Shapiro wrote in a 2008 WND op-ed:

Viewed in its starkest terms, the Arab-Israeli conflict may be accurately described as a war between darkness and light. Those who argue against Israeli settlements – outposts of light in a dark territory – argue for the continued victory of night. They argue for the dominance of the same terroristic population that elected Hamas. They argue for the appeasement of populations and leaderships who value murder at the expense of those who value life.

Shapiro explicitly called for the USA to invade Iran in 2019 after the Iranian military shot down an unmanned American drone, claiming that the deaths of hundreds of Iranians was worth avenging damage to American equipment:

When he says "150 people were going to die and that was not proportionate" I don't know where this idiotic notion came from, that if you attack the United States we are supposed to be proportionate in our response. In fact, I think that's a terrible idea.

In 2021, after a brief detour into defending the killings of African-Americans, Shapiro returned to Arab-bashing after Israeli police violently suppressed a protest out the Al-Aqsa mosque. Although the protest was, in fact, about Palestinians being evicted, Shapiro claimed that it was an act of anti-Jewish terrorism incited by Hamas. After the attack, Hamas launched rockets at Israel. Responding to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeting that the attacks were motivated by the Israeli police launching an Islamophobic attack on the Al-Aqsa mosque, Shapiro chose to ignore her criticisms in favor of calling her an anti-Semitic terrorist sympathizer. He also claimed that the conflict "is not a conflict about land" and that Arabs simply hate Jews, as if Israel didn't start the conflict by occupying Palestinian territory.

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan

Shapiro wrote an article for TownHall in 2002 stating that he is 'really sick of people who whine about civilian casualties' in Afghanistan because 'one American soldier is worth far more than an Afghan civilian'. He suggested that the IDF follow a US War on Terror approach to their oppression of Palestinians. He claims he would have 'gone in with F-16s and leveled Jenin' – a city of 40,000 Palestinians. Yikes.

Islamophobia

Comic made by Eli Valley regarding how Shapiro's reaction to the Quebec Mosque attack put together with his Islamophobia.

Tweets seen by the Québec Mosque shooter before his massacre.

Like many American conservatives, Shapiro is an almighty Islamophobe who has made multiple cope videos to cry about how Muslims are all terrorists. When his specific version of this claim was fact checked by Politifacts, it was found to be based on misunderstandings of the data he was using, such as taking the personal views of Muslims (for example, believing a Muslim should live according to their religion) and implying this is on its own evidence they want to force everybody to live said lifestyle by force. In actuality, although these Muslims might believe people should act a certain way, they also believe the only people who should be forced to follow these tenets are their fellow Muslims. For reference of just how silly Ben's assumption is, President Biden has said on multiple occasions that he personally does not believe people should get abortions because of his Catholic faith. However, he has still made it clear he believes people should have the ability to get an abortion in spite of his moral objections. Why are Muslims having views similar to that impossible in the mind of Ben?

In 2006, Shapiro wrote a column saying it "is simple common sense" that "Monitoring mosques is the simplest and most effective way of preventing terrorist attacks."

Shapiro was one of the top Twitter feeds that the 2017 Quebec City mosque shooter checked immediately before attacking the mosque. His feed was visited 93 times in the month preceding the shooting. He also did a Jewish prayer at the Muslim Al Aqsa mosque infamous for having multiple Jewish terrorist attacks to show those filthy Muslims who is boss.

Transphobia

When they say "right-wingers have one joke", this is what they mean.

“”She's on the cover of Time Magazine--I mean he's on the cover of Time Magazine.

— Ben Shapiro, needing to correct himself so he can properly be transphobic.

“”If you whip out your female penis next to my small daughter in a ladies' room, I don't care what you think you are.

—Ben Shapiro, in a tweet various people made fun of for his misunderstanding of how restrooms work.

Shapiro is also a virulent transphobe who does not believe that trans women are women, and thinks being transgender is a mental illness. He has also compared having a transgender identity to calling yourself a moose or saying you're a different age. Shapiro has elsewhere misused statistics about transgender suicide, on one occasion saying "the suicide rate in the transgender community is 40%," while conflating the rate of attempted suicide with the rate of completed suicide. After trans actor Elliot Page came out as transgender, Shapiro tries dismissing it by saying he "doesn’t care"… only to then throw a lengthy tantrum describing his coming out as "awkward," "creepy," "disgusting", and "pathetic".

In a 2017 episode of his podcast, Shapiro went after Bill Nye for saying children might express a gender identity different than the one that corresponds with their sex assigned at birth. Shapiro responded to this by calling Nye "evil" and using made up statistics to say that affirming transgender children will result in more children dying of suicide because more children will be "confused" about their gender identity. Again, given this is based on data he himself created from nowhere, this entire rather bizarre rant, which sees him going "let's say" multiple times because even he admits this is a hypothetical he made for the sake of his argument, means nothing.

He interviewed Blaire White on the topic of gendered language, stating that people should only be called pronouns and honorifics based on their biological sex (However, he does respect name changes, for whatever reason). He reiterated the myth that transgender suicide rates do not decrease post-transition. During a discussion about Caitlyn Jenner on HLN, Shapiro asserted that all transgender people are simply delusional and argued this point with Dr. Drew Pinsky (who had spent much of the segment explaining the neurobiology of sex and gender differences). Pinsky is a psychiatrist (i.e., a specialty specializing in mental disorders and other feelings, including gender dysphoria); Shapiro is a lawyer.

During that same discussion on HLN, Shapiro repeatedly addressed correspondent Zoey Tur, a transgender woman, as "Sir", to which Tur placed her hand on Shapiro's shoulder and replied, "You cut that out now, or you'll go home in an ambulance." Afterward, Shapiro filed a police report for battery against Tur.

In April 2023, Shapiro stated that communities have the right to enact bans on "men wearing traditional female clothing in public", and compared crossdressing to nudity.

Homophobia

“”.@Nero keeps ripping on my height (5'9"), but I'm not sure how he knows how tall I am, considering he spends all his time on his knees.

During an interview with Dave Rubin, Shapiro stated that he not only opposes gay marriage, but also marriage between Jews and non-Jews. Shapiro said he would not participate in any activities with Dave Rubin if it had anything to do with his homosexuality. He has also criticized the movie "Happiest Season" (which he admits having never even seen) simply for following a lesbian couple because having an LGBT-centred romantic comedy is apparently "woke."

In 2010, in an article for PatriotPost.us, Shapiro argues how homosexuality is a mental illness because "homosexual men still have higher rates of suicide and depression than heterosexuals," ignoring the fact that this could be from the stigmatization they face from homophobia, which he enables.

In 2016, he tweeted that he believes homosexual activity is a sin while frequently citing how the "militant gay agenda" is destroying America. Shapiro, who attended college and (probably) pays taxes, said:

If you pay tuition, you're sponsoring the militant homosexual agenda. If you pay taxes, you're sponsoring the militant homosexual agenda. If your child majors in English, you're sponsoring the militant homosexual agenda. Tell Billy to major in math.

After gay marriage was legalized in Obergefell v. Hodges, Shapiro issued this response to Barack Obama lighting up the White House in rainbow colors:

Our hate-filled president slaps religious Americans in the face in the name of "love," using tax $ for gay propaganda

Similarly, Shapiro saw a federal judge's 2010 ruling against California Proposition 8 as "using the power of his gavel to justify his sex life."

After the Supreme Court ruled in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia that Catholic adoption agencies could discriminate against gay couples looking to adopt, Shapiro complained that the ruling didn't go far enough because it didn't exempt religious people from all anti-discrimination laws.

He called Canada’s new law banning conversion therapy torture as "authoritarian" and "child-destroying"; ironically in reply to Matt Walsh, who literally calls himself a "theocratic fascist" in this bio; because, of course, it is authoritarian and destructive to let people be who they want to be, but not to force them to be who you want them to be. They also ignore the following line in the law, which clarifies that the law explicitly targets practices or services provided in a commercial setting. This does not mean the government is telling parents how to raise their own kids.

However, most horrifying of all was his response to Beto O'Rourke's promise to strip churches of their tax exemptions if they didn't perform same-sex marriages. In a blatant call to violence, Shapiro accused O'Rourke of "indoctrinating" his children into a pro-LGBT way of thinking and threatened to shoot him if he won the election and wrote his promise into law.

Antisemitism

Despite his Jewish beliefs, Ben has had somewhat of an antisemitism issue among his fanbase. For example, in 2019 a man in Indiana who claimed he was radicalized by Shapiro spraypainted a swastika on the side of a synagogue.

The Usual Positions

Abortion

“”Can I stab you in your sleep?

—Shapiro

It should come as a surprise to no one that Shapiro is not in favor of abortion, going all the way to believing life begins at conception, failing to realize at conception it is only cellular life and not human life, which are two vastly different things. He does not think there should be any exception for rape or incest. According to Ben, you can't draw the line at consciousness because otherwise, that means we could legalize murder so long as the victim is asleep. He also believes abortion is equivalent to slavery, because both enslavers and abortion doctors do not view the "victim" as fully human, even though slaves were humans while zygotes and embryos are just clumps of cells. It should also come as no surprise that he approved of Texas's ban on abortions before the time a woman typically finds out she's pregnant and established a slave like bounty system on women seeking abortions which violates their first amendment rights.

While a case could be made about whether the US's overall abortion policies aren't permissive enough or perhaps too permissive, a complete ban on abortion would return to the days of the back-alley abortions and worse. Many abortions are done for financial reasons, and it's unlikely that Ben would appreciate the higher taxes he would have to pay.

Poverty

It's not a shock that Shapiro believes in bootstraps. He will repeat ad nauseam that every poor person needs to do three things;

1. Don't have babies before marriage
2. Graduate High School
3. Get a job

Reality is never black and white. For the people that do have those three options, then yes, Shapiro is right to tell those people to do those three things (and there are indeed a lot of these people). But as we all learned when we were toddlers, life isn't fair. For example...

Point one would be quite a bit easier if there was, y'know, some sort of way to cancel an unwanted pregnancy. While Shapiro himself (along with many others on the new Right) do not seem to be anywhere nearly as anti-contraception as the older generations, he also doesn't seem to be all that in favor of expanding sex education. Never mind that sex education has been shown numerous times to not only reduce teen pregnancies, but actually reduce sexual activity overall. Another lesser talked about issue is that you have fewer entertainment options when you are poor. One of the possible side effects of having money for, say, video games is that video games seem to be associated with lower sex drive (and less premature ejaculation).

Graduating High School is much easier when you have a stable home life. Dropping out of High School to get a job to support your family is rare, but 1/4th of high school dropouts do so to become caregivers to sick parents and siblings. Yet another argument for Universal Healthcare. Many more drop out due to psychological issues from trauma, e.g., child abuse, crime, and so forth, much of which can be related to growing up in poverty. Few would argue that it's "fair" to have a system that punishes people for significant life events out of their control or doing the "right" thing for their families.

As for getting the job itself, for anything other than minimum wage you likely need several years of experience, training, or skills. These take time and often money to obtain. If you don't know whether you will have the rent paid this month, that's not something available to you. Furthermore, the minimum wage itself often doesn't cover basic living expenses, which can cause many to give up and instead go for get-rich-quick schemes or a crime, which obviously only make matters worse.

Use to dismiss racism

During one of his PragerU videos, Shapiro lays this out and says "If you do these three things, you’ll be on your way to the privilege of middle-class life, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual-orientation, or gender" and cites his source as The Brookings Institute. However, The Brookings Institute has also made it clear that this method is the most successful if you are white.

Furthermore, even if this was a guaranteed success formula for everybody regardless of race, white people would still end up better than people of color due to how much easier it is for white people to do all of these things. For example, black people have a much harder time finding work than white people do. Even white people with criminal records have an easier time finding work than black people without criminal records.

Conspiratorial

“”As a general matter, the left’s favorite three lines of attack are (1) you’re stupid; (2) you’re mean; (3) you’re corrupt.

—Shapiro, How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them: 11 Rules for Winning the Argument

Liberal indoctrination

Shapiro has long argued that colleges are liberal indoctrination centers. For example, The Christian Science Monitor (!) described his 2004 book Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth thus:

Of US professors in general, Shapiro makes sweeping — and many would say absurd — charges that they promote atheism, absolute sexual freedom (including pedophilia and statutory rape), and rampant environmentalism to the point of urging the annihilation of the human species.

Shapiro also infamously cited Sesame Street as an example of liberal propaganda.

Climate change denial

“”On the climate change issue, I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert in, in reading the studies.

—Ben Shapiro, fact and logic master

Shapiro is a fervent climate change denier. In 2007 he penned a weird article "mocking" liberals who believe in global warming and affirmed Gore's Law. He doubled-down in another article, which compares belief in global warming to a religion, with Al Gore as its "Prophet". He has since (somewhat) moderated his views, admitting that climate change is real and denying he is a denier but insisting that the issue has been overblown through catastrophic headlines. He opposes any government intervention to mitigate the problem. Now, claiming that the effects of climate change are exaggerated and saying "humans have adapted to climate change before" is still considered denialism.

When discussing Climate Change, Shapiro commonly just says the literal worse case scenario is not going to occur, as if that mitigates the problem on its own. He once made it clear that he didn't believe "like that a giant wave is gonna sweep in and then next morning it will freeze and all of New York will be under ice and Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal will be trying to fight their way through it," as if that was a fear anybody actually had. On another occasion, he said that "Species loss and coral reef bleaching are certainly bad things. But there’s no actual prediction of mass death or hellfire." Again, because if something does not literally result in hellfire Ben doesn't seem to think of it as a concern, we guess.

His stance now seems to be that instead of reducing emissions, we need to let the market "innovate" new solutions.

“”Ben Shapiro: ...that all the water levels around by, let’s say, five feet over the next hundred years, or let’s say 10 feet over the next hundred years, and puts all the low-lying areas on the coast underwater, alright, if you say all that happens. Wouldn’t you just think that all the people aren’t just going to sell their houses and move on? *awkward silence* Hbomberguy: *has a breakdown, grabs an axe and starts breaking his wall* *multiple axe blows to his wall, multiple hbomber grunts* (bemused yelling) just one small problem. SELL THE HOUSES TO WHOM, BEN? FUCKING AQUAMAN?!

—Climate Denial: A Measured Response on Youtube, about 4 minutes in.

Other conspiracies

• Shapiro got in some hot water when he pushed the "Friends of Hamas" manufactroversy, which came into existence through a reporter attempting to come up with the most unbelievable scandal possible for the sake of a joke.
• Shapiro has also written about birtherism, and while trying to avoid being an out and out birther, his writings are incredibly sympathetic to it. He believes that it is perfectly logical to judge someone as "un-American" as Obama was born overseas. Still, he concludes that it's more likely that Obama was indoctrinated with Marxism while in an American school. It seems he is willing to float the idea that the location of birthplaces can change based on how he feels about them.
• Shapiro is also (unsurprisingly) a DDT health risks denier who pushes the urban myth that Rachel Carson's anti-DDT campaign led to millions dying of malaria.
• Along with his great superpower to interpret anything being fed into his frontal cortex as "propaganda", he's even able to trace it back to the source: the (secular) Jews, of course!

Debate master

A compilation of rightist YouTube's hillariously dramatic and pathetic titling.

“”Renewable energy: dumbest phrase since climate change. See the first law of thermodynamics, dumbass. #tcot #teaparty

—Ben Shapiro, physicist extraordinaire

“”And the truth is, no pro-life person on Earth would kill baby Hitler. Right, because baby Hitler wasn't Hitler, adult Hitler was Hitler. Baby Hitler was a baby.

—Ben Shapiro, cool kids' philosopher

Shapiro does not debate as effectively as he constantly claims to. Instead, he is famous for bullshitting debates by speaking quicker than every rapper ever born, coupled with gish galloping and other logical fallacies, to make him seem confident. In contrast, the person he debates with remains confused by those irrelevant arguments. Ben also rarely debates intellectuals or experts on the subject matter, but college students with limited knowledge on the issue who lack his experience at public speaking and debate, making it easier for him to appear smarter, in the same way an adult is smarter than a child. Here are some of his personal highlights:

Victim complex

“”Unmask leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding bases."

—Mission statement of both TruthRevolt and The Daily Wire, both of which Shapiro founded

Shapiro authored a 300-page version of the tone argument in his 2013 book, Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans.

Even outside his debating, Shapiro quite seriously believes that "neoconservative" is a dog whistle for Jew (and thus considers it "anti-Semitic"), as he repeatedly demonstrated in a hilarious catfight with Patton Oswalt.

Ad hominems

“”The Nazis equated Jews with animals. In its Holocaust On Your Plate exhibit, PETA picks up where the Nazis left off.

—Ben Shapiro, owner of an enormous brain

Shapiro has a habit of engaging in ad hominem attacks against non-conservatives. As seen above, Shapiro literally compares PETA to Nazis for using Holocaust imagery. Shapiro described Obama as a "philosophical fascist" who had "clear-cut anti-semitism". Going back to his aforementioned Arabphobia, Shapiro said Obama wants Israel to work with "the Palestinian Arab thugs who seek to eviscerate all Jewish presence east of the Mediterranean." In an example of molehill mountaineering, Shapiro accused all liberal professors of spreading "evil" and called a professor's wife "brainless" because she talked about how much she treasures the Constitution.

Of course, this kind of attack fails against experience. When Shapiro was arguing with getting pwned by Andrew Neil, he accused Neil of being on the left. Neil, a British Conservative (and a staunch one at that), actually laughed in his face, replying, "If you only knew how ridiculous that statement is, you wouldn't have said it". After being thoroughly roasted for the Christmas turkey in a total one-sided battle, Shapiro stormed out, becoming perhaps one of the only people in history to lose an interview. Neil then turned the ad hominem back on Shapiro by finishing the discussion with: "Thank you for your time and for showing that anger is not part of American politics."

The YouTube upload of the interview was widely spread (8 million views) and completely undermined Shapiro's debating credibility, outing him as the flakey gish galloper he really is.

No true Scotsman

“”The Jewish people has always been plagued by Bad Jews, who undermine it from within. In America, those Bad Jews largely vote Democrat.

—Ben Shapiro

Shapiro believes that all Jews must be vehement Zionists who prioritize Zionism above all other issues, or they are not really Jewish. He also accuses Jewish people who are supportive of abortion and LGBT rights of being fake Jews. In response to a Pew Research Center poll that found that American Jews were more likely to say that Donald Trump was too favorable of Israel than any American Christian group said, Shapiro stated, "This is because a plurality of Jews have nothing to do with Judaism other than in a passing cultural context." Anti-semitism aside, Shapiro ignored the fact the study found the actual plurality of Jews (47%) said Trump had the right balance of Israel/Palestine favorability.

Shapiro also has a history of referring to numerous Jews as "Jews in Name Only". In his 2011 Townhall editorial "Jews In Name Only", he referred to every Jew who voted for Obama in 2008 as "Jews In Name Only". He claimed that because Obama supported the creation of a viable, independent Palestinian state, he was anti-Semitic and essentially stated that any real Jew would not only vehemently oppose the creation of such a state but would prioritize this opposition over all other issues. During a Fox News appearance in 2013, he stated that Noam Chomsky "is not really Jewish" and is "Jewish in name only. Finally, as recently as 2016, he wrote an editorial in The Daily Wire referring to Bernie Sanders as a "Jew in Name Only". He has also referred to journalists Sidney Blumenthal and his son Max as "self-hating Jew[s]", and has called Rahm Emmanuel and George Soros "kapo[s]".

Ben Shapiro, along with many of his fellow Orthodox Jews, hates Reform Judaism and other liberal Jewish movements, and wrote in article for Breitbart in 2015 in which he expressed his disdain for acceptance of transgender people within Reform Judaism, further accusing people who converted to Judaism via the Reform movement of being "urban white leftists" who just wanted minority status.

Shapiro was so critical of liberal Jews in Hollywood that he appeared on the podcast of Lana Lokteff, a neo-Nazi, to discuss Hollywood's "leftist communist agenda" and "Christian-Bashing." Shapiro did not seem aware that Lokteff was likely using his arguments as justification for anti-Semitic and white nationalist conspiracy theories.

He further spoke out against Reform Judaism at an event in Tel Aviv in 2022, stating, “It’s a very simple rubric for me: If as a Jew, your values are more in line with same-sex marriage, transgenderism and abortion than they are with, for example, the safety and security of the State of Israel – I have serious questions about how you think about yourself as a Jew.”

Breitbart

See the main article on this topic: Breitbart

Shapiro and Breitbart were made for each other. They both take even the tiniest, most irrelevant morsel of "news" and spin it into atrocities committed by the left. They both cry "Anti-Semitism!" when confronted with facts yet freely insert racist dog-whistles into their articles for effect. They both earnestly use derogatory names like "SJW" and Marxist for anyone not on the far right. Shapiro has been caught basing news articles on unsourced blogs a few time, which later turned out to be false, yet never retracted them. He tweets barely-literate screeds dozens of times per day. He's the hero they needed...

Resignation

...But not the hero they deserved, as Breitbart.com and Shapiro split in a rather dramatic fashion. In a stopped clock moment in March 2016, Shapiro resigned as editor-at-large from Breitbart.com following the site's handling of the assault on one of their reporters, Michelle Fields (who left at the same time), by Donald Trump's then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Shapiro cited the site's lack of support for Fields (they went so far as to publicly question the truth of their own report's claims, even in the face of clear video and audio evidence) and its subservient relationship with the candidate. Shapiro called Breitbart.com "Trump's Pravda".

The day following his resignation, Breitbart.com published a story mocking Shapiro as short, a "conservative gadfly" and a traitor to the deceased Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart.com gilded the lily of this extreme-but-characteristic pettiness by posting the article with the byline of "William Bigelow"; a pseudonym used by Shapiro's father, also a contributor to the site. His father had resigned with his son before the attack piece was posted. The story was quickly memory-holed and replaced with a vague statement by Breitbart.com editor and legal counsel Joel Pollak, the actual author of the original post. Shapiro has since called Breitbart.com a "feces tornado". Thanks for that image, Ben.

Breitbart's defense of the Trump campaign against the site's own reporter would help land their executive editor, Steve Bannon, a job in Lewandowski's former position as campaign manager and then (briefly) Senior Strategist in the Trump White House.

Brought to you by Carl's Jr

Ben has a tendency to interrupt his speeches with sponsorships. This is nothing out of the ordinary; Rush Limbaugh had lots of sponsorships after all. He makes money by interrupting his speeches with advertisements and can seamlessly transition from a topic to why you need some product, which is how he gets the big bucks.

His more common sponsors include...

• Birch Gold
• Carl's Junior
• ExpressVPN
• Jeremy's Razors
• Omaha Steaks (wait, why does this feel familiar?)
• Policy Genius

The few good moments

See the main article on this topic: Stopped clock

“”A good way not to accidentally dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you don't know is not to dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you do know.

—Ben Shapiro, Twitter

• After being ripped a new one on Twitter in July 2018 for all of the horrific things he has said over the years, Shapiro decided to apologize for a few, most notably the "Enemy Civilian Casualties Are Okay by Me" column from 2002. Alas, in typical Shapiro fashion, a good portion of his apologies spend time talking about how he is actually right on lots of things and how liberals are much worse than he is.
• He is in favor of ending the War on Drugs, although he is still very much in favor of stigmatizing addicts.
• On November 7, 2019, Shapiro gave a speech at Stanford University, during which he condemned the alt-right. During a later speech at Boston University, he was confronted by two alt-right supporters about this speech and took the opportunity to double down, attacking white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the Unite the Right rally, calling out Ron Paul for his anti-semitism and praising Donald Trump for expelling Steve Bannon from his administration.
• He has stated that he doesn't care about the Great Replacement. While certainly classist and a bit of a twat, Shapiro appears to have no problem with Black people immigrating to the US, so long as they have the "correct" values.
• Unusually for a conservative, Shapiro has advocated making Juneteenth a national holiday and admits that the Confederate States of America were fighting in favor of slavery.
• Shapiro has blasted Trump's false claims that he won the 2020 election as "deeply irresponsible" and condemned the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot while also acknowledging the role of Trump's misinformation in it, something many conservatives have been unwilling to do.

More nuttiness

"You either die Shapiro, or you live long enough to see yourself become Alex Jones"

See the main article on this topic: Alex Jones

Shapiro now openly hawks sawdust and caffeine-based brain pills to his fans. For someone who claims to not like Infowars, Shapiro sure does love stealing their marketing strategies. In addition, Shapiro has also started selling doomsday prepper food.

New evidence suggests that Shapiro may have been paid by Paul Manafort to push propaganda.

"Everything I Don't Like is Why Trump Won"

As you have probably seen frequently, Shapiro hates former President Barack Obama so much that it looks like Shapiro is Obama's biggest fan. In early September 2018, Obama gave a speech saying that America is good and should support liberty and stand up against fascism. Shapiro criticized him by claiming that "Obama lecturing us is LITERALLY how you got Trump", whom Shapiro supports but will oppose when it's convenient. This, of course, makes perfect sense since it is perfectly rational to think, "I'm so sick of being told what to do by a constitutional law professor, I'm voting for the racist, sexist, bigoted, game show host who cheats his vendors and founded his own scam university."^{Do You Believe That?} Jane Coaston pointed out that the real reason Trump won was that many people didn't vote in three battleground states and the Democratic Party ran a lousy candidate. Shapiro then responded by claiming that it was why Hillary lost but not why Trump was the nominee in the first place. Shapiro never explained how exactly Obama made the GOP primary voters nominate Trump over the supposedly more reasonable 11 other options in the primary. That's because he doesn't have an answer, and blaming Obama for Trump is just a way to remove responsibility from the GOP voters.

The Ben Shapiro "Election Special"

During his "election special" show on Fox News, Shapiro mocked Bernie Sanders' voice (in an impression that sounded awkwardly like Arnold Schwarzenegger), criticized Nike's social justice campaign with Colin Kaepernick in light of the brand allegedly running sweatshops, and made several racist jokes. It is highly doubtful that there will be a second episode.

True Allegiance

In 2017, Shapiro tried his hand in writing a "thriller" book, True Allegiance. The book takes place in an alternate universe where Iraq really had those WMDs and is giving them to Iran for some reason despite the recent history of conflict between the two countries. Side plots include a really racist depiction of black characters who are portrayed as purposefully getting eleven year old kids killed just to rile the nation against police brutality and a right-wing terrorist who is portrayed heroically, despite the whole plot of the book being fighting against Muslim terrorists but apparently it's okay when white conservatives do it. If you want to see an in-depth look at this book's many, many problems, here are reviews by Adam Something, James Tullos, and Jose.

Ayn Rand 2.0

What Shapiro is hiding from you #NWO

See the main article on this topic: Ayn Rand

“”Meet our new Ayn Rand: Ben Shapiro's hamfisted propaganda fiction is even worse than you guessed

—Salon headline

Shapiro is also known for having a suspicious and worrying resemblance to the late great Ayn Rand. According to Shapiro, the idea that America should have a minimum wage is "totalitarian" and comparable to gunpoint robbery.

On January 30, 2021, Shapiro posted a YouTube video claiming that all good movies follow right-wing values no matter how left-wing their themes because a hero simply having virtue and fighting against evil is inherently right-wing. Not too long in the past, Ben Shapiro went against his own principle. When Chris Evans came at Shapiro for his homophobic comments, Shapiro replied:

I don't dislike @chrisevans. We can disagree on politics, agree that The Fantastic Four is a terrible movie, and still like each other.

Shapiro handwaves away his own homophobia then acts like a child and antagonizes Evans via dislike of The Fantastic Four movie. Apparently, fighting against evil is, in this case, not right-wing. He wasn't done; he then de facto called Evans a bad actor. What was his reason? He concluded that MCU Captain America wasn't "nationalistic" and "America-loving" enough compared to the comic version. Fighting evil is right-wing, until Shapiro doesn't like you, in which case your character then becomes more leftist propaganda. *clap clap*.

Speaking of "heroism", not even he can write that well. With his fan fiction True Allegiance, Shapiro took the easy path by inserting the thinnest 'characters' ever, both literally and in character development (the protagonists are attractive because they're good) into what he perceives as real life. In his book, black characters are primarily caricatures (one subplot involves a cop shooting an unarmed black minor, later revealed to be entirely a setup by a local drug kingpin). He gives weirdly-sexual descriptions of the men in his book, hangs salaciously on how taut and sexy the heroes are, and makes himself sound gay despite being anti-LGBT.

Plagiarism

Of course, Shapiro completes his Ayn Rand transformation by stepping on the face of others, for profit's sake and profit's sake only. On August 16, 2019, The Daily Wire introduced a new piece of merchandise on Amazon depicting a dumpster fire with the Democratic Party logo attached to the lid. It turned out the design was almost entirely plagiarized from a pop artist who was already selling merchandise featuring the same dumpster fire, only without the Democratic logo. Eventually, the product listing was removed by Amazon, and the tweet advertising the product was deleted.

Nuking hurricanes

In August 2019, Shapiro unironically weighed in on President Trump's suggestion that the US military should drop a nuclear bomb on Hurricane Genevieve with this bizarre rant:

“”You’re talking about this dumb story that President Trump wanted to nuke hurricanes, which by the way, I don’t even care whether it does anything. It just sounds cool. I mean, what if there are sharks in the hurricanes? What if it’s a sharknado? What then guys? Have you thought about that? Just the idea. Anytime you’re talking about nuking a random thing that’s not really going to hurt anybody, I’ll admit the 13-year-old boy in me is kind of for it.

—He then goes on to complain about CNN treating it like the most powerful man in the world thinking this is deeply alarming.

Evidently, the master of facts and logic is unaware of nuclear fallout and has no concept of either nuclear physics or the fact that citing your inner thirteen-year-old makes you sound stupid.

When Hillary Clinton responded to this with "We should not nuke hurricanes", Shapiro tweeted that this was why she wasn't President.

Rap music is not music

“”Fact: rap isn't music. And if you think it is, you're stupid.

—Ben Shapiro, professional opinion-haver

Ironically, Ben would later go on to partner with conservative rapper Tom McDonald to create a rap song.

Misunderstanding of the law

After the 2021 Democratic primary for NYC mayor, during which the candidates were asked what they would ban if they were elected, Shapiro tweeted that none of the candidates had said they would ban crime. Crime is, by definition, already illegal.

"Wet-ass p-word"

Ben Shapiro has a problem specifically with the Cardi B song known as "WAP" ("wet-ass pussy"). In August of 2020 he recorded a video in which he awkwardly recited the lyrics, censoring "wet-ass pussy" as "wet-ass p-word". Then, he used the songs existence as proof that feminism was bad for women and was degrading.

Perhaps the funniest part, however, is when he publicly stated that he had shown it to his "wife, who is a doctor™" to try to figure out what medical condition was causing them to become so wet, essentially, accidentally admitting that he can't get his wife wet in an attempt to own the libs.

See also

For those of you in the mood, RationalWiki has a fun article about Ben Shapiro.

• What's Fair: And Other Short Stories — Shapiro's e-book of awful short stories

• L. Brent Bozell III: Shapiro's "media watchdog" crybaby-in-arms; also able to spot liberal propaganda in every facet of reality.
• Dunning Kruger effect
• Gish Gallop: This, alongside the Pathos Gambit, are Shapiros' two favorite debate tactics
• Friends of Hamas
• David Horowitz: Befriended Shapiro in his quest to reveal leftist plots
• Michael J. Knowles
• Newsbusters
• Katie Pavlich: His female counterpart.
• Dennis Prager: Shapiro has hosted several PragerU videos and has had Prager on his Sunday Special show.
• Townhall.com: Shapiro wrote several cranky editorials for the website.
• Matt Walsh
• Pathos gambit
• Truthiness

External links

• THE COOL KID’S PHILOSOPHER, Current Affairs
• Chapo Trap House reads True Allegiance
• Ben Shapiro Reddit AMA^{Do You Believe That?}
• Perhaps Ben Shapiro Shouldn't Be Taken Seriously By Anyone About Anything - SOME MORE NEWS