Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore
It is time to discuss our third horseman of New Zionism, Ben Shapiro, because if we wait too much longer, he might descend into complete irrelevance. In fact, Ben Shapiro is not only a central figure in the Conservative Cinematic Universe, but the poster child of New Zionism. He combines the willful blindness of Sam Harris and the identitarian hypocrisy of Bari Weiss that we have discussed previously, but goes even further.
If you are not familiar with Ben Shapiro, he is the product of a wound of rejection. He emerged on the political scene after being passed over for a comedy career in Hollywood, a rejection he attributes to his conservative political orientation. Shapiro then made a name for himself by debating with the speed of an auctioneer and landing blows with his signature catchphrase “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” a selective slogan he can’t seem to live up to when it comes to his dedication to Israel.
Shapiro went on to establish The Daily Wire, which became a truly massive outlet that overtook many legacy media institutions and even began producing original movies and children’s programing in addition to political media. The outlet’s rise was truly meteoric and its decline similar. He occupies a peculiar throne, having successfully fused the often-disparate forces of Orthodox Jewish religious identity, mainstream American conservatism, hawkish pro-Israel politics, and internet-native debate bro culture. Using this persona, Shapiro normalized emotionally charged pro-Israel advocacy inside mainstream conservative media while presenting it as rationalism.
To be specific Ben’s Israel advocacy is three pronged:
- He moralizes issues concerning Israel as part of a broader civilizational struggle, and at times his politics become driven by theocratic concerns rather than strategic. Shapiro says, “Obviously, being religious has a tremendous impact on how I view Israel.”
- He presents himself as the arbiter of Jewish identity and presents allegiance to Israel as a political litmus test being intrinsic to that identity, thus separating good Jews from bad Jews and good people from anti-semites, further exacerbating anti-semitism.
- He consistently frames Israel as a proxy battle in a broader culture war.
You will notice that each of these prongs pedestalizes a foreign country and relies more on emotional appeal (feelings) rather than a sober assessment of what is in the foreign policy interest of the United States (facts).
Shapiro is constantly labeling Israel the epitome and protector of the West:
While in Jerusalem in November 2024, Shapiro referenced the war in Gaza, remarking, “Thank you on behalf of Western civilization for fighting the fight the rest of the West should be fighting.” Two days before, the United Nations warned that conditions in northern Gaza had deteriorated to a point “unfit for human survival” with shelters, homes, and schools being bombed to the ground and humanitarian assistance largely blocked by Israel.
Shapiro’s assertion that Israel is a liberal Western county stands in sharp contrast to certain prominent Israeli thought leaders like the fanatical Yishai Fleisher, who argues ethnicity and religion trump democracy and that Israel is an ethnoreligious project:
Let me remind you that interfaith marriage remains unlawful in this place, and Israel’s Arab citizens do not stand on equal footing with their Jewish counterparts, as Israel’s Nation State Law makes clear. Moreover, Israel’s Arab subjects have even less rights than its Arab citizens. Those living in the West Bank are increasingly the targets of terrorism and pogroms led by fanatical settlers. This as MK Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrates executing Arabs uniquely by the Leviathan-like sovereign they live under. This is a far cry from liberty and austice for All, and Shapiro knows better than to gaslight Americans by asserting otherwise.
The effects of all of this are not only felt a world away, but right here at home. It was recently reported that an illegal Nevada biolab that caused several Americans to become deathly ill was run by an Israeli operating in the United States under questionable circumstances. This individual was released without charges, despite the obsessive and heavy-handed treatment that other immigrants who weren’t in possession of guns or vials marked “Ebola” and “HIV” are subjected to. This individual was released by the same Nevada official who released an Israeli government official and would-be sex criminal just last year.
As noted in a previous article about Israeli connections to Jeffrey Epstein, Israeli government ties to sex crimes are not uncommon. Much to the chagrin of Ben Shapiro, Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times recently reported in graphic detail on the systematic sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli facilities. Lest you think Kristof is a rabid anti-Israel shill, following the horrific October 7 atrocity he stood by Times reports of mass rapes that took place. Interestingly, Ben Shapiro took that reporting quite seriously. I find the attempts to label this reporting blood libel simultaneously disgusting and laughable. In 2024, I watched a video taken from the security cameras of the Sde Teiman prison facility in Israel showing a man being dragged into a corner by Israeli guards and raped with an object. Those involved were not brought to justice. In fact, Israeli elected officials took part in riots to demand their release. This is happening and it’s funded with your tax dollars. It is because of God’s chosen Defense Forces, the ‘world’s most moral army’ that I know what it looks like when a man is raped with an object.
Shapiro said himself that his allegiance to the United States is contingent on its allegiance to Israel:
Israel may be the only political issue that Shapiro is rigid on. He is so politically flexible with everything else that watching Ben Shapiro speak is like watching Cirque du Soleil. Just consider his on-again, off-again relationship with President Donald Trump. If you can remember all the way back to the 2016 presidential campaign, Ben Shapiro counted himself among the OG “never Trumpers.” When this stance was no longer viable after Trump took office, Shapiro began moving towards the president. Then when watching the January 6, 2021 riot, Shapiro labeled it “the worst thing to happen to America since 9/11,” and declared himself finished with Trump. He went on to condemn Trump for dining with Nick Fuentes, but after just a few short years, Shapiro once again found himself enthusiastically endorsing Trump once again, largely based on the president’s disposition towards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government.
The commander-in-chief who large swaths of the political left deemed “Genocide Joe” maintained insufficient allegiance to Israel in Shapiro’s eyes. It is difficult to fathom the intensity of Shapiro’s flip-flopping and the insincerity with which he speaks on any issue aside from Israel. If I thought that an individual was responsible for the worst moment in American history since 9/11, I would die of shame in lending them my public support. The about-face is truly mindboggling. One might think that Shapiro’s stances are more contingent on The Daily Wire’s bottom line than any principled commitment, but there is one massive Israel-shaped exception to that notion.
Interestingly, his career tracts perfectly with the trajectory of American opinion towards Israel. Ben Shapiro may ultimately be remembered less as a conservative intellectual than as the clearest avatar of a bygone era, the period in which unconditional support for Israel became a defining feature of mainstream American conservatism. His rise coincided with the peak of post-9/11 neoconservative influence on the American right. His decline now coincides with the collapse of consensus around Israel among younger conservatives, populists, and the post-Iraq right. Shapiro’s rise and centrality to New Zionism mirrors uncritical support for Israel becoming an identity marker on the American right, and his decline mirrors the fracturing of that paradigm. As Israel’s behavior worsened—the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, escalation in Lebanon, spearheading the Iran War, and settler violence in the West Bank—the American people reconsidered their views. Shapiro didn’t.
One set of polls from Pew and Gallup was taken shortly after October 7, 2023 demonstrate widespread support and sympathy for Israel across demographics. The other is much more recent. Gallup measures a trend of decreasing support for Israel and increasing sympathy for the Palestinians. Notably, American Jews’ views of Israel have also declined considerably.
But still, Shapiro insists that only religious Jews are authentic, which contrasts him sharply with fellow Horseman Sam Harris: Shapiro says:
“There are a lot of people whose last name ends with ‘berger’ or ‘stein’ who fundamentally reject nearly all Jewish values and are secular leftists…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.”
An additional tragedy in all of this is the inevitable and frightening rise in antisemitism, resulting in large part from the actions of Israel’s government and the way in which rhetoric from influential figures orients crucial elements of American foreign policy, like dragging us into an illegal war and then gaslighting us about it. When prominent individuals like Ben Shapiro, in the face of Israel’s atrocities, declare unquestioning loyalty to Israel to be a foundational identity marker for all the world’s Jews and a litmus test that separates the decent from the bigots, it is no surprise that Jewish-Americans become otherized, regardless of their personal disposition towards the Israeli government. This is the antithesis of the best American values. If we are to strive for a more perfect union, we must set aside the ideals of blood and soil, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the here and now with enlightenment ideals as our true north.
