The “most dangerous” movement in the West is composed of radical Islamists and their enablers, according to Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro delivered a speech on the “Superiority of Western Values” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Monday evening. The Daily Wire host said the West must decide to stand again for the values that made it great, or risk losing to radicalism.
The immediate threat to Western values is the terror group Hamas. But after October 7 when Hamas killed over 1,400 civilians in Israel and abducted over 200 more, the West is facing a growing crisis from radical Islamist sympathizers and enablers within its own borders.
“Why are there so many in the West eager to make excuses for today’s Nazis, barbarians who carve live children out of their pregnant mothers? Why are so many in the West trembling to find evidence of Israeli errors in their prosecution of war against Hamas, so as to set up some sort of retroactive moral equivalence between the Jews and their genocidal neighbors?” Shapiro asked.
The Daily Wire cofounder gave two reasons: complicity and cowardice.
For the complicit, Shapiro gave examples such as Queers for Palestine and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. These groups seemingly find common ground with Islamist terrorists because the LGBT movement and BLM “agree with Hamas about one key notion: that the West is evil and exploitative,” Shapiro said.
“These Hamas fellow travelers are members of the so-called ‘decolonization’ coalition. They believe that the West, because it has been uniquely powerful historically, is also uniquely bad and uniquely sinful. And thus it must be torn down,” he continued.
Of the cowards, Shapiro said that UW-Madison counted as one after the university put out an ambiguous statement after the October 7 attack. The university president later clarified, after backlash, that the university condemned the Hamas attack, but questioned why such pressure was brought to bear on him.
Shapiro said the university’s reaction drew a stark contrast to how it embraced social justice in the wake of George Floyd’s death, which the Daily Wire host said exemplified a “double-standard.”
Shapiro said: “The cowards have spent generations apologizing for Western civilization. They have refused to acknowledge two obvious truths: first, that Western civilization has, of course, committed atrocities and evils in the past; and second, that nevertheless, Western civilization is, in fact, better than its competitors. All civilizations have attempted to engage in colonization and exploitation. Only one civilization has spent its own blood to free slaves throughout the world. All civilizations have engaged in ruthless suppression. Only one civilization has spread liberty. All civilizations have engaged in economic imperialism. Only one civilization has spread prosperity. Western civilization is great because it has provided unique good, and continues to do so.”
The cowards have created a “dreamworld in their own head” that sees the atrocities committed by Hamas as a “rational result of oppression,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro called the alliance between radicals, sympathizers, and cowards “the most dangerous phenomenon in the West.”
He ended his speech on a hopeful note, but with a warning.
“I believe that the West will once again stand up for its own principles. The West’s freedoms are good, they are morally good and must be protected. That means opposing moral relativism. Loving freedom does not mean that every expression is equivalently valuable. Freedoms should not be trampled upon, and those who oppose freedoms should be opposed,” Shapiro said.
“The West has a long history of resilience. The West should not and will not go down without a fight. But that requires actual moral courage. That requires recognizing the greatness of the West, and not being shy about proclaiming that greatness in the face of alternatives. It requires moral clarity. It requires the tough business of saying things that are true. If the West does the business of saying things that are true, the West will emerge successful and stronger than before. If the West does not, it will fall to the darkness,” he warned.