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June 19, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
24:48
All The World's A Stage, And The Play Sucks | Ep. 322
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In a horrific act of anti-Muslim terrorism, a 48-year-old man drove a van into a group of Muslims near a mosque in Finsbury Park in London on Sunday.
He shouted, One man was killed, 10 others were wounded.
According to the Daily Mail, The incident's horrific.
The perpetrator should spend the rest of his life in prison, because the UK has no death penalty.
The left isn't wrong to connect it with an upsurge in anti-Muslim crime.
According to London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has been far too permissive with regard to Islamic radicalism on his own soil, he released police figures that showed, according to Newsweek, quote, Islamophobic attacks had risen fivefold since the ramming and knife assault, a 40% increase in racist attacks.
The numbers from London's Metropolitan Police show that anti-Muslim motivated incidents had risen to a daily 2017 average of 4 to as many as 20.
But it is wrong to use the anti-Muslim attack as justification for the equivalency between the dangers of the rise of radical Islam and the rise of anti-Muslim xenophobia.
That is absurd.
Yes, attacks on Muslims have risen, and that is unjustifiable and awful.
Major attacks on Muslims by anti-Muslim terrorists are far less common, however, than major radical Muslim attacks on non-Muslims across Europe, and they are supported by no major terrorist group, let alone state actors.
Radical Muslims run states.
Anti-Muslim countries do not exist in the same way.
Even the most extreme anti-Muslim countries have Muslim populations, for example.
This London attack marks the first major terror attack in Great Britain against Muslims since 2013, when a Ukrainian student attempted to bomb a mosque in Birmingham and stabbed a young Muslim man to death.
If I missed one, I apologize in advance.
In the last four months, however, we have seen the Westminster terror attack, the Manchester Arena bombing, and the London Bridge attack.
This is not to suggest that violent anti-Muslim terror attacks are somehow better or less disgusting than violent radical Muslim terror attacks on others.
But they are far less statistically frequent, have nearly no global support, and earn the round condemnation of the entire Western world.
The left has attempted to broaden the conversation to include individual hate crimes, for example, harassing a woman in a hijab.
But if we do that, we also have to include the rate of hate crimes by Muslims against others, e.g.
Jews across Europe.
We have a moral obligation to fight against terrorism wherever we see it, but to pretend that a widespread anti-Muslim terror network is spreading across the West, organized or disorganized, is a deliberate misreading of the situation by people who are politically motivated to wave away the continuing threat of radical Muslim terrorism.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
All right, so we have a lot to talk about today.
I want to talk about what looks like it could be looming war over Syria.
President Trump seems to be in a position where the Russians are now trying to push him around in Syria, so we'll talk about that momentarily.
We'll also talk about Megyn Kelly and Alex Jones, and I want to talk a fair bit today About the situation with these alt-right protesters storming the stage of Julius Caesar at Shakespeare in the Park, because I think it's indicative of something else that's happening in the modern right-wing movement that is troubling, to say the least.
But before we get to any of that, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors.
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Okay, so lots and lots of breaking news happening in the news today.
So we talked about this terror attack in London.
I wanted to lead off with that specifically because I think it's important for those of us who are on the right to point out when these sorts of attacks occur because terror is terror is terror.
That doesn't mean the terror movements are all the same.
It doesn't mean the terror is the same danger from all quarters.
But it is important to mention when a terror attack like this occurs because otherwise we are not being objective or honest in what's happening around the world.
Okay, other big news today is that the Russian government is basically now threatening war with the United States over Syria, which is, you know, I think that they're bluffing.
I think there's a pretty solid shot that they are bluffing, but it's dangerous anyway, obviously.
Right now, if you look at the situation, basically in Syria, you've got the Kurds all the way up in the north, and then in the west, you have ISIS, which is this big block of territory in the east.
And then the rest of the country, sort of everywhere from the southeast to the northwest, is split between the Free Syrian Army, that would be the Syrian rebels, and Bashar Assad's government.
Bashar Assad's government is being propped up right now by Vladimir Putin.
So, here's the situation.
According to CNN, On Sunday, an American jet shot down a Syrian jet.
The shoot-down came a little more than two hours after forces allied with the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad attacked the north-central Syria town of Jeddin, which was controlled by the Syrian Defense Forces.
In accordance with rules of engagement and in collective self-defense of coalition-partnered forces, the Syrian jet was immediately shot down by a U.S.
F-A-18E Super Hornet.
So I hope that I'm reading that correctly.
In any case, we shot down a Syrian jet and the Russians immediately threatened retaliation.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced, quote, all kinds of airborne vehicles, including aircraft and UAVs of the international coalition detected west of the Euphrates River, which includes part of Iraq, will be tracked by the Russian SAM systems as air targets.
So they're threatening to start shooting down American planes.
Once they start threatening to shoot down American planes, then we are on the brink of war.
Which is obviously a frightening scenario.
This was created by Barack Obama.
This has nothing to do with President Trump.
President Trump did say during the campaign to Hillary Clinton that her attempt to—her suggestion that we set up a no-fly zone over Syria could lead to World War III.
Now it appears that we are engaging in an air war with the Syrians.
Is, I think, a not bad move, actually, by President Trump, but I think we have to acknowledge the risks that are entailed here.
David French has suggested partition of the country.
We support the Kurds up north to create their own independent state, and that we guarantee air coverage over that area, and that we guarantee air coverage over various other areas, but we're playing a dangerous game of chicken with the Russians, and this is all because Barack Obama never had a Syrian strategy and didn't do anything back in 2013 when he could have and should have.
Again, I can't blame President Trump for this, and I won't blame President Trump for a situation he was handed by his unbelievably incompetent predecessor.
Again, I don't think there's any long-lasting great solution here, but the only solution here is going to be something that nobody really likes very much.
Okay, so the big news over the weekend, at least in the domestic political area, was that there are these alt-right protesters who have decided to run up on stage at the Julius Caesar production of Shakespeare in the Park.
Now, we talked about this production last week.
This is the production where the Julius Caesar part is staged clearly as President Trump.
His wife is staged clearly as Melania Trump, and then he is assassinated.
Now, for those who don't know the play, the basic concept of the play is that Julius Caesar has overweening ambition but is assassinated by a bunch of senators who want to restore the republic, and then the entire thing breaks down.
The assassination of Caesar is not seen in a particularly good light in the play.
The assassination of Caesar is seen as a big mistake by Brutus Cassius and all the conspirators, and the Roman mob is basically whipped into a frenzy by Marc Antony to permanently end democracy and Republicanism in Rome.
So, at the very least, You know, if you read the play, it is not clear that the play is in favor of Trump, you know, Trump-Caesar being assassinated, but the imagery is disturbing, obviously.
We played it last week, and it, I think, is an obvious and silly representation by the people who decided to do the play.
It is not, however, linked, and this is...
This annoys me.
It is not advocacy or defense of violence, and it is not linked, it is not linked to the assassination attempts on congressional members by this far-left anti-Trump guy.
There is no evidence whatsoever that he went and saw the play and then was inspired to do this, even if there had been.
I'm deeply uncomfortable with this notion that if you listen to Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh and then you go shoot somebody, that it's Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh's fault.
If they are not advocating violence, it is not their fault.
Okay, this is a game that we can play all day long, but it's a stupid game and it's a counterproductive game.
So, nonetheless, there are a bunch of people who want to get their name in the paper, so they've decided they're gonna rush up on stage at these events.
Now, I am against, as a general rule, snowflakery of all forms.
I don't like when people rush on stage when I am speaking.
I would be a hypocrite if I said it was okay for people to rush on stage when someone else is speaking.
The justification people use when they rush up on stage and try to shut down my speeches, or Ann Coulter's speeches, or Milo's, or Charles Murray's, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali's, or Heather MacDonald's, whenever they do this, what they say is they are trying to prevent hate speech because that hate speech will generate violence.
This is always their excuse.
Always.
And here is what it looks like when they do these things.
And it is bad, okay?
This is what happened at Cal State LA back in February 2015.
Here is what happened.
And this is how it's written.
And there it is, gang.
Guess what?
You know what?
They're not going to stop us.
They pulled the fire alarm in the middle of the speech.
We had footage, but there was a big riot outside.
Basically, people were assaulting people in the crowd.
It was disgusting then.
It is disgusting now.
Okay, here is protesters blocking the stage at University of Wisconsin.
This is very similar to what just happened at Shakespeare in the Park.
I was speaking at University of Wisconsin.
A bunch of protesters decided to get up and shout at me and disrupt the proceedings.
The police wouldn't do anything about it.
And then they all stood in front of the stage and they started blocking the proceedings.
Here's what that looked like.
Okay, so again, you know, this notion that I'm unfamiliar with people doing this sort of thing is ridiculous.
Or the notion that I am somehow against this sort of stuff because of cowardice.
I go on college campuses all the time and I speak to crowds in which this kind of stuff occurs.
It is always stupid.
It is always gross.
It is always counterproductive.
It is always anti-free speech.
Over at DePaul University, I risked arrest to walk onto campus.
Here is what it looked like when the administration there decided that they would not let me even enter the campus to speak.
Now I want to point something out.
After they informed me that they would arrest me because it would be trespass, it's a private university.
I don't have a right to be there.
So I left.
Here is what that looked like.
Just to be clear, if I attempt to enter that hall right there and sit down just to listen to somebody speak, or if I attempt to ask a question or to engage in free speech, you will have me arrested.
At this point, yes, sir.
Okay, and so I took all of the people from DePaul and we went to a place off-campus where we then proceeded to engage in our free speech event anyway.
So, all of that is prelude to what happened at Shakespeare and Parker.
The reason I put that out there is, number one, because I have lived this experience many times, and number two, because it is wrong when the left does it, and it is similarly stupid and wrong when the right does it, okay?
Here is what happened.
This is on Friday evening.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to pause.
We're going to pause.
Security.
know who he is or his name until he started tweeting at me.
And Laura, Laura, Lauren, don't know who they are.
But in any case, they stormed the stage and they make a big deal out of it.
And now they're raising all sorts of money for themselves.
Here's the first alt-right storming of the stage.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to pause.
We're going to pause.
Security.
Security, please.
Okay, so they're shouting liberal hate kills and this is violence. so they're shouting liberal hate kills and this is violence.
And then Passaba Jabba Do, he gets up and he starts shouting how everybody is Goebbels and everyone here is a Nazi.
Everyone here is Goebbels because they've come to watch a production of Julius Caesar in which the current leader of the country is portrayed as Julius Caesar, which by the way, happened in 2011 when Minneapolis theater portrayed President Obama as this.
Now, I thought it was ridiculous and stupid when the left went insane after a rodeo clown in Missouri dressed up as President Obama.
The left went nuts.
It was ridiculous then.
It is ridiculous now for people to go crazy over a piece of art that they don't like.
It's really, really stupid.
But, that's not stopping the right from now engaging in the same sort of snowflakery.
And make, let me make something clear, okay?
People have been acting like this is, oh well, you know, we're just using their tactics against them.
No, that's not what this is.
Okay, that's not what this is.
Because even if the left stopped shutting down my speeches, or Anne's speeches, or Milo's speeches, or any of the rest of these, presumably these alt-right protesters would still go and do this stuff.
They would still go and do it.
Why?
Not because they're trying to demonstrate that the tactic is wrong.
They're doing it because they are offended by the content, which makes them right-wing snowflakes.
Although they're not even really right-wing, because I have yet to identify their right-wing principles, other than that they don't like the left.
It's just insane.
Here's Laura Ingraham tweeting about this.
She tweeted, quote, First of all, in Minneapolis, none of them stormed the stage.
against their expression.
How many would storm stage if Obama was stabbed?
Okay, first of all, in Minneapolis, none of them stormed the stage.
But second of all, if they did, I would say that was bad and stupid.
I would say that is a dumb thing to do because you don't have a right to destroy people's place of business.
You don't have a right to interfere with someone else's freedom of speech.
Now this is not the same thing as establishing a mutually assured destruction with regard to boycotts, for example.
I have a right to do with my money what I want.
You have the right to do with your money what you want.
If you want to boycott Chick-fil-A and I want to boycott MSNBC, that is perfectly within our purview.
What I cannot do, and what you cannot do, you can't walk down to Chick-fil-A, occupy the place, okay?
When Black Lives Matter did that to a bunch of brunches in New York City, it was stupid, it was counterproductive, and it was gross.
And by the way, it led people to react by electing Donald Trump.
Trump's response to this kind of behavior, by the way, was not to go and shut down leftist events.
It was to point out that the left was shutting down his events, which was eminently correct.
So for all the people who keep saying, well, we have to use their strategies because they're winning.
No, they are not.
They've lost over a thousand seats all across the country.
Trump is the president and Republicans control the Congress as well as the Senate.
The notion that the left is winning because of Antifa snowflakes or because of the people at University of Wisconsin shutting things down, it's just idiocy.
It's just idiocy.
So no, that's not even strategically, it's not some sort of strategic genius.
So they do it again on Sunday night.
And of course, again, because so much of the right has become tribal instead of smart or conservative, there are a lot of people who have defended this activity, which I'll show you in a second.
So here's the second protester jumping on stage on Sunday night.
Liberal hate kills!
Global hate kills!
I've been on the receiving end of this routine from the left, okay?
Verbiage does not kill.
Words are not violence.
I've preached against this for years, okay?
The minute you start suggesting that words are violence, we grow ever closer to violence.
The minute you start suggesting that simple political discourse, discourse you don't like, is equivalent to violence, then you are justifying violence in the name of shutting down that discourse.
It's disgusting and it's wrong.
Okay, it's wrong and it's just as wrong as when the left does it.
I don't understand why I have to explain this to people who are conservative and are supposed to be grounded in a Judeo-Christian value system that suggests the value of other human beings and the value of free speech.
It's really quite disgusting and horrifying.
Okay, and then a guy gets up and he starts yelling that CNN is ISIS at this situation.
Again, very helpful.
Hold, hold, hold. - The circles would be brown!
The circles would be brown!
See 'em in the right chair!
Everybody keeps shouting about Goebbels, okay?
Let me point something out about Goebbels and the Nazis.
What they actually used to do is shut down Marxist events, okay?
If there was a Marxist political event, they would send stormtroopers to shut it down.
And not when they were elected, okay?
Like independent little Antifa-type groups.
This is just, it's just dumb.
But...
Sean Hannity, who, again, I love Sean Hannity as a person, but Sean is, I think, I think he's pandering to the worst group of people on the right.
Sean Hannity tweets this, right?
So Sean is tweeting about this last night.
I tweeted that this has to stay.
He tweeted, wild night.
Liberal hate kills, chants protester.
Okay, now, Sean gives opinions for a living.
He is an opinion host.
He is not an objective journalist.
When I called him on this, and I said, this is, this is, I said, the left chants conservative hate, conservative hate kills, and you call them snowflakes, which is right.
Stop with this stupidity.
And then Sean tweeted back, Ben, the only person being stupid here is you.
I was tweeting exactly what was said with video.
I'm mature enough to let people decide.
But do you have an opinion?
Do you have an opinion on this, Sean?
I mean, and then later, Sean did express his opinion, which is that he thinks it's perfectly fine that they shut this thing down because it was disrespectful to the President of the United States, and in his opinion, it was forwarding violence.
Again, I'm gonna be...
God forbid somebody should shoot a person on the left, and the shooter happens to be somebody who once listened to Sean Hannity's show.
I was somebody who, two weeks ago, two freaking weeks ago, two weeks ago, folks, I was sitting here defending Sean Hannity from boycott over the Seth Rich stuff.
Okay, but the entire left was going after him, and what did Sean say?
He said, just because I was covering a story in a particular way doesn't mean that the left should target me for destruction.
Okay, so all of this is highly irritating, and I want to talk about a few more points I have to make on this before I get to how the left has reacted to the shooting, because the left is reacting just as abysmally as you would expect them to.
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For free and you can go check it out right now and remember use that promo code Okay, so a couple of more points on this because I think that this is important I think it goes deep to the heart of what the conservative movement wants to be Do we want to be a movement that?
Suggests that we are going to shut down the left when we don't like what they say Or are we gonna be a movement that actually has some principles now?
There are a lot of people on the right who have been started using this this phrase my principles muh principles my print like as opposed to my principles and the idea is that you're a baby because you're whining about my principles Oh You have principles, too.
If you're one of these people, you have principles, too.
But you need to name them for me.
Because those principles obviously don't include the idea that you don't get to destroy somebody's establishment just because you don't like what they're saying.
I assume, and now you say your principle is winning.
That's not a principle.
That is a goal.
Okay?
A principle is something that you are willing to lose to uphold.
Okay?
What are you willing to sacrifice in order to uphold the principle?
I am willing to sacrifice the notion that a play offends me based on the principle that you shouldn't shut down free speech even for people I don't like.
I'm willing to sacrifice that.
By the way, I don't think they're winning because of that.
Freedom of speech is a principle.
Storming my speeches.
Storming plays.
It is wrong.
It's wrong whether we do it.
It is wrong whether they do it.
Not the same thing as an economic boycott.
And there's that other principle that I mentioned too.
That words are not violence.
I've spent my entire career saying words are not violence.
The left says they are violence.
And now we've got half the right saying that words are violence.
This is the predicate to legislation to tamp down on speech in order... This is how you get to Canada.
You wanna know how you get to Canadian version of free speech?
Where people get sued for things that they don't like?
The reason is because there are a bunch of people who say that it causes violence.
And then there's the tactical argument.
So my friend John Nolte, who I love, I love John, okay, but John wrote this piece today, Attacking Me By Name, and because at Daily Wire I want to have a site where we have a multiplicity of viewpoints, I printed it.
He used the My Principles line, I printed it.
I disagreed with every word of it, including and, and the.
He talks about how these people storming Julius Caesar, it was like Lincoln suspending habeas corpus.
Okay, this is just ridiculous to me for a couple of reasons.
One, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during an actual civil war.
Like, there was a war on.
If we're gonna use wartime morality in peacetime, we're pretty soon gonna be in a war.
Like, there will be an actual war if we use wartime morality in peacetime.
Okay, don't quote Sherman unless you're willing to burn Atlanta.
Furthermore, if we're going to pretend that the left is winning because they, as John says, break windows, hurl eggs, shoot us, shout us down, they're not.
They're losing because of all of this.
The more extreme the left becomes, the more they lose.
The left's insanity drove the right to victory across the country.
Let's not pretend that Donald Trump came along and suddenly the right won.
The right had won a thousand seats across the country.
The right had won back the House and the Senate before Donald Trump was even mentioned as a presidential candidate.
Okay?
Trump did a lot of good things.
One of the things he did was he called out the left when he did this stuff.
One of the things he did not do was attempt to shut down leftist speech.
John asked for a plan.
He said, so what's your plan if you're not storming stages?
Here's my plan.
Speak on college campuses, point out to the press as loudly and as often as possible when they refuse to allow us to speak.
And by the way, it works.
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, all have come out against the college snowflakery that is now being evidenced from the right.
And finally, there's a morality of the tactics question.
Okay?
Some of these tactics are just not moral.
They are not doing this again because they are attempting to stop the left from doing it.
They are doing it because they are offended.
If you are trying to shut down someone's free speech because you are offended, you are the problem.
You are the snowflake.
You're the person doing something wrong.
Okay.
Now, as we continue here, I want to talk about the left's response to the shootings because the fallout from that is just insane.
The left has lost its mind as well.
But in order for you to see that, you're going to have to go over and subscribe over at dailywire.com.
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