Ben Shapiro SMEARED As "Alt-Right Sage" By MAJOR Magazine
Ben Shapiro SMEARED As "Alt-Right Sage" By MAJOR Magazine. The Economist was forced to apologize and retract after they falsely labeled Ben Shapiro, an orthodox jew, as a "pop idol of the alt right." This was such an absurd lie that is generate a massive backlash.But why smear him in the first place? Well the smear did generate massive traffic for the website. This is what we call "ragebait" stories designed to make you angry so you share and click.But there could be a more nefarious reason, to get Ben and others like him banned from various platforms. As Facebook and Youtube discuss and actually take action against certain kinds of content these fake news smears could lead to people lobbying social media to ban people like Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, Joe Rogan, or even myself. We even saw Kara Swisher discuss banning Ben in an interview about Youtube.It is important to fight the fake news from the regressive left, feminists, and social justice activists otherwise it ends up on Wikipedia and is then used to justify banning you.
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The Economist is facing a major backlash after smearing Ben Shapiro as alt-right.
In a story, they call him an alt-right sage and refer to him as a pop idol of the alt-right.
And that's 100% factually incorrect.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Ben Shapiro was the number one target of harassment from the alt-right, and he's an Orthodox Jew.
So why would The Economist smear him as alt-right?
There are a few reasons in my opinion.
First, I think this instance we're seeing rage bait.
Content designed to make you angry so you click on it, they serve ads, or sell subscriptions and make money.
But there is another more nefarious reason we might be seeing this from many media outlets.
Facebook recently announced it's banning white nationalism and white separatism.
If activists can produce enough content claiming you are a white nationalist, it's possible Facebook could be lobbied into banning you or other people.
Today, let's take a look at what's happening with Ben Shapiro and the smear, and we'll take a look at what Facebook is doing in regards to white nationalism.
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The first story from The Daily Caller, Ben Shapiro demands retraction after The Economist falsely labels him alt-right.
The Economist on Thursday published an interview with Shapiro about his new best-selling book, The Right Side of History.
The magazine titled the interview, Inside the Mind of Ben Shapiro, the Alt-Right Sage Without the Rage.
The alt-right is a fringe right-wing movement aligned with white nationalist politics.
Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, is a consistent and outspoken critic of the alt-right.
In fact, a 2016 analysis by the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League found that Shapiro was the alt-right's number one target for online abuse among Jewish journalists.
Shapiro and other conservatives were quick to cry foul at the magazine's false description, which he called a vile lie.
And as they mentioned, the Anti-Defamation League produced a report in 2016 showing Ben Shapiro, by a massive margin, is the number one target of alt-right harassment.
Ben Shapiro tweeted, this is a vile lie.
Not only am I not alt-right, I am probably their leading critic on the right.
I was the number one target of their hate in 2016, according to ADL data.
I demand a retraction.
What makes the story so much worse is that Anne McElvoy, who is a senior editor at The Economist, said, hello Ben, in fairness, I think we said, like, a figure in alt-right thinking, but not really a label.
Which means absolutely nothing, and I have no idea what they're trying to say with this tweet to defend calling an Orthodox Jew alt-right.
There are many journalists in the UK, and some in the US, that use the alt-right label on people who are absolutely not alt-right.
And you have to wonder why they do it.
Now, it's probably, like I mentioned earlier, rage bait.
But it's also probably an attempt at inflaming the culture war and smearing you.
And it is a smear, because according to the Associated Press, we know what the alt-right means.
This article is from 2016.
The guidelines from the Associated Press clearly state, Whenever alt-right is used in a story, be sure to include a definition.
An offshoot of conservatism mixing racism, white nationalism, and populism, or more simply, a white nationalist movement.
Now while I said I think the Economist version is rage bait, trying to get you angry to read it, because it's certainly got this story a ton of attention, this is also coming at a time where Susan Wojcicki of YouTube and Kara Swisher talked about banning Ben Shapiro from YouTube.
This story from the Daily Wire.
Leftist exec hates her son watching Shapiro videos.
Says she'd like Shapiro banned from YouTube.
In the story they mention how the two women were discussing how to keep youngsters safe from problematic material on YouTube.
She says, I'll get to recommendations, I have a personal beef with you about that.
This is part of, at least in my opinion, a conspiracy theory about YouTube.
Many news organizations cite this idea that YouTube radicalizes people, when in fact, data suggests otherwise.
I'm often forced to show this graphic to dispute the conspiracy theory from many of these left-wing individuals claiming that YouTube feeds people right-wing content.
It's just not true.
While you are more likely to find right-wing content if you watch right-wing content, and the same for center or left-wing, we can see that even though the right gets way less recommendations, they feed substantially more into left-wing videos. The left is getting more recommendations than the
center and the right combined. It's not true. At one part of the conversation, Wojcicki says, Ben
Shapiro is going to meet the community guidelines. I don't think you're suggesting that we remove
him from the platform, are you?
Swisher bluntly, I would, but I can't. No, no. Ben Shapiro tweeted about this and Kara Swisher
said, no, I was saying I don't want him banned. But she said, I would, but I can't.
Meaning, if she had the ability, she would have him banned.
And so it's no surprise then that people are trying to smear Ben Shapiro.
He has one of the top podcasts in the world.
How do you get rid of someone like that if you can't argue against them?
You call them a white nationalist and then cross your fingers and hope they get deranked and removed.
We've already seen moves from YouTube and other social media networks to restrict certain information.
Now, some of this information may be questionable, and it may be bad for society, but it's a slippery slope.
It really is.
Where do you stop?
If you're claiming that white nationalists need to be banned, then they only need to produce a fake narrative about me or Dave Rubin or Ben Shapiro as being alt-right so they can claim that we should have our channels restricted.
And they have been doing this.
But the Economist did cave to the pressure.
The tweet, as I understand it, is still up, but they did change the story, too.
Inside the mind of Ben Shapiro, a radical conservative, the controversial commentator talks to the Economist about Western values, disappointment with Trump, and moral clickbait.
There's an editor's note that now reads, this article has been changed.
A previous version mistakenly described Mr. Shapiro as an alt-right sage and a pop idol of the alt-right.
In fact, he has been strongly critical of the alt-right movement.
We apologize.
And they have removed the pop idol reference, saying he is a hero to many young conservatives.
And actually, just after I said that last section, it appears they've actually removed the tweet and it no longer exists.
But the more nefarious reason for smearing people, trying to get them banned, it's happened to a lot of people.
The media drags them and accuses them of being white nationalists when they're actively opposing white nationalists.
And I have to wonder why.
Why smear someone as alt-right?
Well, for one, they do want to get me and many others banned.
Now I've been called alt-right adjacent, whatever that means.
They call Joe Rogan the same thing.
And they claim that we lend credibility to that movement even though we're ridiculously critical of it.
And for those who don't know, I've brought it up a million times.
You ready?
I'm mixed race!
I literally wouldn't be allowed in whatever version of an ethnostate they're claiming they want.
Now, some of them try to play politics, and they try to be diplomatic, but we know what they actually want, and that's why it's so offensive to an Orthodox Jew or a mixed-race person that we would get smeared this way.
Now, Ben Shapiro was called a pop idol for them.
That's ridiculous.
For me, I'm just—they call me a bootlicker or adjacent.
But it's bad for people like Count Dankula or Sargon of Akkad.
This story from The Guardian falsely calls Paul Joseph Watson, Mark Meechan, and Carl Benjamin alt-right.
Now, there is some criticism to throw at Paul Joseph Watson, because it's my understanding that in the past, he had referred to himself as alt-right.
So, that's gonna pop up from time to time.
But Count Dankula, this man you see here, this fine gentleman, has a communist star tattooed on his chest, and he's a center-left individual.
Carl Benjamin, for instance, was banned from Patreon for insulting, in a rather crass way, people he considered to be alt-right.
In fact, most of the reasons why Sargon, aka Carl Benjamin, was banned from various platforms is because he routinely insults white nationalists in rather crude ways.
But of course, Vox would call him.
Notorious alt-right YouTuber Sargon of Akkad, even though he lost his Patreon account for talking smack to the alt-right.
How that makes sense, I have no idea.
But of course, Vox has a vested interest in making it seem like there are more of these people than there really are.
In a story from last August, they claim that 11 million white Americans think like the alt-right.
This is ridiculous.
According to most fair estimates from the Anti-Defamation League and from the Southern Poverty Law Center, even if you want to criticize them, they say there's only around 10,000 people who think this way in the United States.
It is a fringe, fringe minority.
But of course, Ragebait requires the enemy exist.
Of course they want to claim Dave Rubin is alt-right or far-right, and Joe Rogan and Sargon and Dankula, people who actively oppose the alt-right.
Because they need to find personalities so they can justify their own identitarianism.
They need to resist the alt-right.
They claim there's 11 million of them.
Why?
Well, in my opinion, many of them are identitarian.
That means they want government and policy based off of their identity instead of ideas and principles.
So they're going to claim on their platforms that all these people are alt-right.
They're going to point the finger at them and try and accuse them of all the worst things possible.
And then the lobbying takes a bigger turn.
When Facebook announces they're going to start banning white nationalism, this makes it even more dangerous for these lies and these smears to exist.
Something that XKCD brings up that is terrifying and extremely dangerous is called cytogenesis.
He says, someone through a convoluted process will just create a fact the scroll lock key was designed by future Energy Secretary Stephen Chu.
A rushed writer will see that on Wikipedia and put it in their story.
Surprised readers will flag this saying, hey, this can't be right.
But then someone finds the story written by a crappy journalist, and they put it on Wikipedia, essentially.
Because it's put falsely onto Wikipedia, and then someone from one of these clickbait blogs sees that and thinks it's true, it then becomes its own citation.
Where does this leave us?
Well, it can get really bad from there.
It was just announced that Facebook is going to ban white nationalism and white separatism.
Facebook has said it will block praise, support, and representation of white nationalism and separatism on Facebook and Instagram from next week.
The company said it had deemed white nationalism as an acceptable form of expression on par with things like American pride and Basque separatism, which are an important part of people's identity.
But in a blog post on Wednesday, it said that after three months of consultation with members of civil society and academics, it found that white nationalism could not be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups.
And they're right, actually.
For the most part, you can't really separate them because there's a dramatic overlap.
And I certainly don't like these people for obvious reasons, nor do most of the people who find themselves in the political center or who are anti-identitarian, because these people are identitarians.
The issue here is that the left-wing identitarians will start smearing anyone as alt-right.
And they'll try to get you banned for it.
And that's where I think we're headed, which can be really, really dangerous.
Many sources are accusing people of being alt-right.
They appear on Wikipedia.
Facebook will then see that and say, I don't know, just get rid of them.
And that's the danger of fake news.
But fortunately for someone like Ben Shapiro, he currently has the number one top-selling New York Times bestseller in nonfiction, which means Ben is famous enough to have a massive backlash Forcing the Economist to retract and apologize.
There's a certain level of social power that comes with being well-known and well-off.
We see that with Jussie Smollett.
We see it now with Ben Shapiro in a rather different and dramatic way.
In this instance, someone tried to cause damage and smear Ben Shapiro, and because he's well-known and respected, many people, many famous people stood up and said, hell no, and the Economist was forced to retract.
But they don't do the same thing for Count Dankula or Sargon of Akkad or others, because they don't have the same level of power.
Even Joe Rogan gets smeared this way, and it's tough for him to push back.
But what can we say?
Following Russiagate, it seems like trust in media has been destroyed anyway, so perhaps this won't matter as much in the future.
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
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