Once upon a time, I thought that Ben Shapiro was a good guy. To this day he is still great on social issues and for the most part, upholding the constitution. I used to listen to his podcast, read his website and ultimately still tend to agree with him on more than I disagree. The Piers Morgan take-down on gun control was peak Ben Shapiro and will always be gold. He’s done good things and plenty of young, right leaning individuals either view him favorably or have at one point.
That said, it doesn’t take long to notice that Ben Shapiro isn’t as honest and honorable as he claims to be. Shapiro markets himself as a logic based, free speech supporting conservative figure who simply follows the facts wherever they lead. Someone who markets themselves this way should be open to any and all challenges to their ideas and at times, will change their beliefs because the data simply can’t support their previous ones. That’s the point of “facts don’t care about your feelings”, right?
Someone selling that message is easy to get behind, that’s for sure, but Shapiro contradicts this message time and time again. For me personally, the first red flag in regards to Shapiro was the sensationalized Michelle Fields story. Just as it started to become clear that Donald Trump was running away with the nomination, Fields – who was a reporter with Breitbart at the time – accused then Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski of “assaulting” her at a Florida event in March, 2016.
Ben Shapiro – who had been a staunch supporter of Ted Cruz – expressed outrage over the alleged assault and resigned as editor of Breitbart over the site’s handling of it. Shapiro characterized Steve Bannon as a “bully” who had turned Breitbart into “Trump pravda”. He also labelled both Trump and Lewandowski as “thugs” over the incident and called for charges to be brought against the latter.
Lewandowski eventually was charged with battery only to have the charges dropped less than a month later. A video shows Lewandowski grabbing Fields by the upper arm and moving her out of the way of Trump’s path as they exited an event. The State Prosecutor said that “under these circumstances, it is not uncommon for a candidate’s inner circle staff members known to the agents to assist in clearing a safe pathway” in regards to the incident. It should also be mentioned that Fields presented bruises on her forearm as evidence of the alleged assault while the video clearly shows her being grabbed by the upper arm.
The hysterical reaction of Ben Shapiro and his supporters could not have been more timely given how things were looking for Cruz at the time. Trump was cruising (no pun intended) to victory and then all of the sudden, this story is conjured up. It’s hard to believe that law school graduate Ben Shapiro didn’t know why this wasn’t assault.
For someone who throws the phrase “facts don’t care about your feelings” around as a slogan, this seems to go against that, right? Ben Shapiro certainly let his feelings influence this decision and it isn’t the first time. His entire grudge against Trump stems from Trump upending Cruz in the primary and believe me, he’d love nothing more than to see Trump go down if for no other reason than to take the reigns again.
“This is a lying, lying, lying campaign. All they do is lie from the beginning and then they lie about their lies, and then lie about having told lies about their lies. And this is just a monster of a – of the fact that they are deeply dishonest and willing to smear anybody in their pursuit of power” Shapiro said of the Trump campaign following the Fields incident.
Ben Shapiro clearly has an axe to grind with Trump and only begrudgingly supports him now because he realizes he would lose a significant chunk of his audience otherwise. Sorry for the generic TrueConservative ™ statement here, but Shapiro is of course free to do as he pleases. He can hate Trump, he can hate nationalism, he can hold any belief he so chooses. It’s not that Ben Shapiro is wrong in his beliefs, it’s that he is immensely dishonest about it. He likes to market himself as a champion of free speech who slays leftist authoritarians while engaging in the same type of smear campaigns as giant media corporations. Facts clearly aren’t the only thing Shapiro values, so what gives with the slogan?
All of this is why Shapiro’s latest smear campaign against Nick Fuentes and the “groypers” shouldn’t be taken seriously. Shapiro recently gave a lengthy speech at Stanford about Nick Fuentes and his supporter’s disruptions of TPUSA events in which he compared them to third Reich, a very original tactic. The evidence he uses to back these claims are a series of out of context sound-bytes, videos and second-hand accounts while refusing to engage with Fuentes directly. He does this while promoting the “market-place of ideas”, which is some truly cringe TrueConservative™ material.
For example, Shapiro describes Nick Fuentes as “cackling maniacally” while murdering an Orthodox jew and saying “I just killed Ben Shapiro” during a gaming live-stream. The mentioned clip was simply a GTA stream in which Fuentes was gunning down NPC’s, pretty standard stuff for anyone who has ever played the series, which is about 3/4’s of anyone under 30. Fuentes never uttered the phrase “I just killed Ben Shapiro”, either.
Shapiro either fundamentally doesn’t understand video-games, live-streams or the concept of “shit-posting” or he’s using the same dishonest tactics as the Fields incident. The description of “cackling maniacally” is a shady attempt to make Fuentes out to be some unhinged psycho when the quote was simply an unscripted gamer moment from an hours long stream.
Plus, if we’re going to take everything said during a gaming stream seriously, why doesn’t Ben Shapiro take a look at Nick’s latest stream in which he offers to debate him at the marketplace of ideas?
The majority of Ben’s audience won’t look these things up, they’ll just hear these quotes out of context and assume Fuentes and his supporters are the second coming of Hitler. This simply isn’t true and Fuentes would say as much directly in a debate. America first nationalism has nothing to do with Nazism and attempts to connect the two are a left-wing tactic.
Shapiro actually uses several leftist talking points throughout the speech, including the catch all “alt-right” label. “Alt-right” is an accusation that can be lobbied against any right leaning individual who doesn’t fit the parameters laid out for what is “acceptable” conservatism. Any deviation from the neo-con plantation could result in an alt-right label, which is clearly an attempt to associate an individual with the one and only….. you guessed it…. Hitler.
This is such a Marxist tactic that someone such as Ben Shapiro – who claims to be unequivocally opposed to such beliefs – should never engage in. It gives media outlets/pundits the ability to put words in people’s mouths and make claims that were never made. Shapiro does this repeatedly throughout the speech, saying that when Fuentes and his supporters say “America First, what they really mean is white America first”. Fuentes has never said this, and since Shapiro won’t engage with him directly, how will anyone know?
He also accuses Fuentes and his supporters of only dubiously supporting Trump as a means to an end. He uses a straw-man in which he lays out this non-existent process where Fuentes supporters declare themselves as “not really alt-right, when you obviously are” and describes some sort of pledge of allegiance to Trump that supposedly takes place. It’s just more inventing something, knocking it down, then using that as justification to de-platform someone and not have to engage them. This way, Shapiro can simply write people like Fuentes off as Hitler loving social outcasts who masturbate to cartoon frogs while his audience gobbles it up the same way leftist drones get their marching orders.
Shapiro is simply attempting to “cancel” Fuentes the same way Marxist media outlets do, he’s just not saying it directly. It’s worked on TrueConservative™ pundits as they’ve all been dog-piling Fuentes for the past month.
How is any of this distinguishable from “orange man bad” and Media Matters hit pieces? The TrueConservative™ chorus turning shit-posting and gamer streams into a “cancel mob” is no different than the anti orange man brigade. Just point a laser and people who follower trawled their way to 600K will say whatever TheRightThing™ is at the time and cash in on some Twitter likes.
As the architect of this smear campaign, Ben Shapiro once again has his true colors on full display. He’s far from a “principled conservative” if he’s going to engage in Marxist tactics and is hardly an arbiter of what can and can’t be said.
None of this will work, however. One doesn’t have to agree with everything Nick Fuentes says to see the blatant smear going on. Fuentes uploads a daily podcast and has hours upon hours of footage archived on YouTube. He even reacted to Shapiro’s entire speech, which can be watched here.
Like the leftist attempts to smear President Trump, Shapiro’s similar gambit won’t work because cancel culture has led to a rise in skepticism when it comes to accusations. The days of drive-by, coordinated witch hunts on social media peaked about a year ago and have only declined in effectiveness.
A single full Fuentes clip will show how dishonest Shapiro is and from that point on, it’s hard not to be red-pilled. This is how Trump won and it’s how the sentiment Fuentes represents will take over the conservative movement.
Different beliefs and challenges to Ben Shapiro on the right are not baseless and simply labeling every accusation thrown his way as “anti-Semitic” isn’t going to cut it. Ben Shapiro has been exposed, and his desperation is on full display.