Ben Shapiro

**Benjamin Aaron Shapiro** (born January 15, 1984) is an American conservative political commentator and media host. At age 17, he became the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. He writes columns for Creators Syndicate, *Newsweek*, and *Ami Magazine*, serves as editor emeritus for *The Daily Wire*, which he founded, and hosts *The Ben Shapiro Show*, a daily political podcast and live radio show. He was editor-at-large of *Breitbart News* between 2012 and 2016. Shapiro has written eleven books, the first being *Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth* (2004) and the latest being *How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps* (2020).

## Contents

* 1Early life
* 2Career
	+ 2.1Author
	+ 2.2Columnist
	+ 2.3Host
	+ 2.4Speaker
* 3Views
	+ 3.12016 presidential election
	+ 3.22020 presidential election
	+ 3.3Abortion
	+ 3.4Alt-right
	+ 3.5Facebook
	+ 3.6Gun ownership
	+ 3.7Israeli–Palestinian conflict
	+ 3.8LGBT rights
	+ 3.9Muslims
	+ 3.10Political ideology
	+ 3.11Race
	+ 3.12Religion
	+ 3.13Safe spaces
	+ 3.14Western civilization
* 4Personal life
* 5Works
* 6See also
* 7References
* 8External links

## Early life

Shapiro was born in Los Angeles, California, to an Orthodox Jewish family of Russian-Jewish and Lithuanian-Jewish ancestry. He developed a talent for violin at a young age, having performed at the Israel Bonds Banquet in 1996 at twelve years of age. His parents both worked in Hollywood. His mother was an executive of a TV company[*which?*] and his father worked as a composer. Skipping two grades (third and ninth), Shapiro went from Walter Reed Middle School to Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles where he graduated in 2000 at age 16. He graduated *summa cum laude* and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004, at age 20, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and then *cum laude* from Harvard Law School in 2007. He then worked at the law offices of Goodwin Procter. As of March 2012, he ran an independent legal consultancy firm, Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting, in Los Angeles.

## Career

 Conservatism in
 * v
* t
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### Author

Shapiro became interested in politics at a young age. He started a nationally syndicated column when he was 17 and had written two books by age 21.

In his first book *Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth* (2004), Shapiro argues that students are not exposed to a variety of viewpoints at universities and that those who do not have strong opinions will be overwhelmed by an atmosphere dominated by liberal instructors even if discussion is encouraged in classrooms.

In 2011, HarperCollins published Shapiro's fourth book, *Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV*, in which Shapiro argues that Hollywood has a left-wing agenda that it actively promotes through prime-time entertainment programming. In the book, the producers of *Happy Days* and *M\*A\*S\*H* say they pursued a pro-pacifist, anti-Vietnam-War agenda in those series. The same year *Primetime Propaganda* came out, Shapiro became a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.[*citation needed*]

In 2013, Threshold Editions published Shapiro's fifth book, *Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans*.

In 2019, Shapiro published the book *The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great,* which focuses on the importance of Judeo-Christian values and laments the decline of those values in modern America. In a May 2019 interview on BBC where Shapiro was promoting his book, interviewer Andrew Neil suggested that Shapiro's history of remarks were inconsistent with the message of the book. Shapiro took offense to the questioning, accused Neil (a prominent British conservative journalist) of being a leftist, said Neil was trying to make a "quick buck... off of the fact that I'm popular and no one has ever heard of you", and stormed out of the interview. Shapiro later admitted that he had been "destroyed" by Neil, commenting on Twitter that he "[had broken his] own rule, and wasn't properly prepared".

### Columnist

In 2012, Shapiro became editor-at-large of Breitbart News, a far-right website founded by Andrew Breitbart. In March 2016, Shapiro resigned from his position as editor-at-large of Breitbart News following what he characterized as the website's lack of support for reporter Michelle Fields in response to her alleged assault by Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump's former campaign manager in spite of video and eyewitness evidence of the assault. In his resignation statement, Shapiro stated that "Steve Bannon is a bully", Donald Trump is a bully, and that Bannon had "shaped the company into Trump's personal Pravda". After Shapiro's departure, Breitbart published a piece, falsely attributed to Shapiro's father's pseudonym, saying "Ben Shapiro betrays loyal Breitbart readers in pursuit of Fox News contributorship", which Breitbart later deleted.

After leaving Breitbart News, Shapiro was a frequent target of antisemitic rhetoric from the alt-right. According to a 2016 analysis by the Anti-Defamation League, Shapiro was the most frequent target of antisemitic tweets against journalists.

On February 7, 2013, Shapiro published an article citing unspecified Senate sources who said that a group named "Friends of Hamas" was among foreign contributors to the political campaign of Chuck Hagel, a former U.S. Senator awaiting confirmation as Secretary of Defense as a nominee of President Barack Obama, but weeks later *Slate* reporter David Weigel reported there was no evidence such a group existed. Shapiro told Weigel that the story he published was "the entirety of the information [he] had."

On October 7, 2013, Shapiro and business partner Jeremy Boreing co-founded TruthRevolt, a U.S. media watchdog and activism website, in association with the David Horowitz Freedom Center. TruthRevolt ceased operations in March 2018.

### Host

Shapiro in 2018
In 2012, Shapiro joined KRLA-AM 870 as a host on their morning radio program alongside Heidi Harris and Brian Whitman. By 2016, he was one of the hosts for KRLA's *The Morning Answer*, a conservative radio show. Internal emails showed that Shapiro faced pressure from Salem Media executives, the syndicate that owned the show, to be more supportive of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. Shapiro however remained highly critical of Trump throughout the election.

Shapiro and Boreing founded *The Daily Wire* on September 21, 2015. He serves as editor emeritus as well as the host of his online political podcast *The Ben Shapiro Show,* broadcast every weekday. As of March 2019, the podcast was ranked by Podtrac as the second most popular podcast in the U.S. Westwood One began syndicating *The Ben Shapiro Show* podcast to radio in April 2018. In 2018, *Politico* described the podcast as "massively popular". In January 2019, Westwood One expanded Shapiro's one-hour podcast-to-radio program, adding a nationally syndicated two-hour live radio show, for three hours of Ben Shapiro programming daily. As of March 2019, according to Westwood One, *The Ben Shapiro Show* is being carried by more than 200 stations, including in nine of the top ten markets. In June 2020, Shapiro stepped down from his role as editor-in-chief, which he had held since the site's founding, and took on the role of editor emeritus.

In September 2018, Shapiro started hosting *The Ben Shapiro Election Special* on Fox News. The limited-run series covered news and issues relating to the 2018 midterm elections.

Shapiro has made frequent appearances on PragerU with talks on intersectionality and Hollywood with 4,900,000 to 8,400,000 views as of December 2018.

### Speaker

Shapiro speaks at college campuses across the United States. In his speeches, he often presents a conservative viewpoint on controversial subjects. He spoke at 37 campuses between early 2016 and late 2017.

Some students and faculty members at California State University, Los Angeles objected to a speech that Shapiro, who was then an editor at Breitbart News, was scheduled to hold at the university on February 25, 2016, titled "When Diversity Becomes a Problem". University president William Covino canceled the speech three days before it was to take place, with the intention of rescheduling it so that the event could feature various viewpoints on the subject of campus diversity. Covino ultimately reversed his decision, allowing the speech to go on as planned. The day of the speech, student protesters formed human chains, blocking the doors to the event, and staging sit-in protests. When Shapiro began his speech, a protester pulled the fire alarm. After the speech ended, Shapiro was escorted out by campus police. Young America's Foundation announced it was filing a lawsuit against the university (with Shapiro as one of the plaintiffs), claiming that the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the students were violated by Covino's attempted cancellation of the event, as well as the physical barricading of students from entering or leaving the event.

In August 2016, DePaul University revoked an invitation for Shapiro to address students at the school and barred him from entering the campus due to "security concerns."

On September 14, 2017, Shapiro gave a speech at the invitation of the University of California, Berkeley, student organization, Berkeley College Republicans, in which he criticized identity politics. The event involved a large police presence which had been promised by Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ in her August letter that supported free speech. Together, the university and the city of Berkeley spent $600,000 on police and security for the event, which transpired with nine arrests but no major incidents.

## Views

### 2016 presidential election

Shapiro supported Ted Cruz in the 2016 presidential election and opposed Donald Trump's candidacy. He called Steve Bannon a "bully" who "sold out Breitbart founder Andrew Breitbart's mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump." Not voting for Trump or Clinton in 2016, Shapiro has suggested that the election of Trump was more a vote against Hillary Clinton than a vote in favor of Trump.

### 2020 presidential election

On October 19, 2020, Shapiro announced he was voting for Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election: "There are three reasons I'm going to vote for Donald Trump in 2020 when I didn't four years ago: First, I was simply wrong about Donald Trump on policy. Second, I wasn't really wrong about Donald Trump on character, but whatever damage he was going to do has already been done, and it's not going to help if I don't vote for him this time. And third, and most importantly: The Democrats have lost their fucking minds."

He rebuked Trump on Election Night, November 3, 2020, when Trump claimed his reelection victory when neither he nor his opponent Joe Biden reached the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency. He tweeted: "No, Trump has not already won the election, and it is deeply irresponsible for him to say he has."

### Abortion

Shapiro speaking at the 2018 Young Women's Leadership Summit in Dallas, Texas
Shapiro supports a ban on abortion, including in cases of rape and incest, with one exception: when competent medical authority determines that the life of the mother is in jeopardy as a result of the pregnancy. He has further clarified that this includes extreme cases of mental illness where the life of the mother is at risk due to suicide. He also believes that doctors who perform abortions should be prosecuted. He has referred to women who have abortions as "baby killers". In 2019, Shapiro asserted that "the Supreme Court overturning *Roe v. Wade*" was "not going to happen", and added that he had "serious doubts" about "whether the Supreme Court, as currently constituted, would vote to overturn *Roe v. Wade*".

In 2019, Shapiro spoke at the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., where he said abortion is a "violent act".

### Alt-right

Shapiro is a critic of the alt-right movement, stating in 2017, "It is a garbage movement composed of garbage ideas. It has nothing to do with constitutional conservatism." In 2019, Shapiro criticized weekly newspaper *The Economist* for describing him as "alt-right" in their interview with him; in response, *The Economist* issued an apology and modified the article title to instead describe Shapiro as a "radical conservative".

### Facebook

In 2018, Shapiro argued that Facebook was targeting conservative sites after the platform implemented an algorithm change, limiting their traffic, and that they are not transparent enough.

### Gun ownership

Following the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Shapiro appeared on CNN's *Piers Morgan Tonight* on January 10, 2013. On the issue of gun control, Shapiro called Piers Morgan a "bully" who "tends to demonize people who differ from you politically by standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook, saying they don't seem to care enough about the dead kids." Videos of the encounter quickly received millions of views and went viral.

Writing in October 2017, in the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, Shapiro argued that "banning all guns would be unwise as well as immoral," but "we must balance the need and right to firearms with public policy concerns, including the risk that a machine gun will be used in public." Shapiro suggested that policy makers "should look at ways of enforcing federal laws banning the sale of guns to the mentally ill."

### Israeli–Palestinian conflict

In 2003, Shapiro published a column on *Townhall* demanding that Israel "transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper." Citing expulsion of Germans after World War II as a precedent, Shapiro insisted that "expelling a hostile population is a commonly-used and generally effective way of preventing violent entanglements." In the same article, Shapiro said that "The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership." Jeffrey Goldberg was highly critical of these comments and cited them as an example of Shapiro's "fascist" behavior. Shapiro later reversed his view on the West Bank issue, saying it was "both inhumane and impractical".

*Vox* describes Shapiro as a polarizing figure, in part due to tweets such as "Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage" (2010).

Shapiro supported Israel's settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank. Shapiro is a longtime opponent of the two-state solution.

In 2007, Shapiro wrote an article in which he described the "Palestinian Arab population" as "rotten to the core" and places the blame for the Arab–Israeli conflict "with the Palestinian Arabs themselves". He further believes Israel and America will "continue to pay the price in blood and treasure" if they refuse to recognize the "simple truth" that the "Palestinian Arab population breeds terrorism, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism".

In 2019, Shapiro said that Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, whose comments about American support for Israel were accused of evoking antisemitic tropes, and the white supremacist San Diego shooter, hold "a lot of the same opinions about Jews."

### LGBT rights

In 2010, Shapiro argued that homosexuality should not have been removed as a mental illness from the DSM because homosexuals have higher rates of depression than heterosexuals and do not reproduce.

Shapiro opposed the *Obergefell v. Hodges* Supreme Court ruling that deemed bans of same-sex marriage unconstitutional. However, he opposes government involvement in marriage, saying, "I think the government stinks at this," and expressing concern that because of the ruling in *Obergefell v. Hodges*, at some point the government may try to force religious institutions to perform same-sex weddings against their will. According to *Slate*, Shapiro has described homosexuality as a sin. He has said that "a man and a woman do a better job of raising a child than two men or two women".

He has stated he does not feel same-sex marriage should be taught to students in schools, saying, "In California, they've already passed laws that you have to teach same-sex marriage in public schools, for example... I went to public school for elementary school and junior high, I don't know why the government is teaching me anything about this stuff. This is for my parents to teach me. This is a values thing". He also states, "I'm very much anti gay-marriage in the social sense. As a religious person, I think homosexuality is a sin, I think that lots of things are sins that people engage in, I think they should be free to engage in them." In 2014, Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center disputed Shapiro's assertion that the United States "is not a country that discriminates against homosexuals" and that "there is a vastly minute amount of discrimination against gays in this country."

Shapiro believes transgender people suffer from mental illness. Shapiro has commented, "You can't magically change your gender. You can't magically change your sex," and has compared such changes to the notion of changing one's age.

In July 2015, Shapiro and transgender rights activist Zoey Tur were on *Dr. Drew On Call* to discuss Caitlyn Jenner's receipt of the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. After Shapiro referred to Tur, who is a trans woman, as "sir", she placed her hand on the back of his neck and threatened on air to send him "home in an ambulance". Shapiro replied, "That seems mildly inappropriate for a political discussion." He later filed a police report against Tur.

In 2019, in response to 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke calling for the removal of the tax-exempt status of religious institutions opposed to same-sex marriage, Shapiro said that if O'Rourke was going to try to "indoctrinate" his children in religious schools he would be forced to either "leave the country" or "pick up a gun."

### Muslims

In a 2002 article, Shapiro wrote, "I am getting really sick of muslims"