Last week, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro gave a speech at Stanford University addressing the “dangerous game” being played by the Alt-Right, whose leaders he condemned as espousing racist and anti-Semitic views based on logically flawed, often self-contradictory premises. As followers of the fringe movement have been doing at recent conservative events, hecklers showed up to Shapiro’s next campus speech, this time at Boston University, to try to trap him with trolling questions. Shapiro responded by efficiently exposing the flawed arguments of his challengers (video below).
Shapiro’s Boston University speech Wednesday was dedicated to responding to the Left’s claim that “America was built on slavery.” The Left’s view of the country, Shapiro argued, is based on reductive, historically illiterate presuppositions that result in a false vision of what actually defines the country. The traditional, conservative view of the country remains true, Shapiro contended.
“America was built on eternally good and true principles, springing from both the Judeo-Christian ethic and English culture, rooted in natural law,” he said. “Those principles were denied in practice by many of the same people who promoted them in theory, but those theories were valid — and remain valid. The story of America, therefore, is a story of the broadening application of those principles — the perfection of our Union, the fulfillment of the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. This view certainly does not deny the evils and horrors of slavery and Jim Crow, or the savage brutality of the dispossession of Native Americans. But this view does recognize a simple truth: the state of the world, historically, has been replete with such evil, horror, and brutality — and America, unlike other nations, has fought, over time, to wipe them away at home and abroad.”
Following the sold-out event, Shapiro took questions from some of the audience members, as usual prioritizing those who disagree with him. Among the questioners were some apparent followers of an “America First” group led by an Alt-Right influencer who has been encouraging his supporters to crash conservative events, as they did at a speech by Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh a few weeks go. Like Walsh, Shapiro had no problem handling the hecklers.
The first “America First” defender started by saying that Shapiro once described Donald Trump among others as “Alt-Right” and then said: “It seems like conservatives like you, like [Turning Point USA founder] Charlie Kirk, and [Texas Republican Rep.] Dan Crenshaw, feel threatened by ‘America First’ conservatives and ‘America First’ ideas. Is that why you’re smearing them as Alt-Right racists, homophobic, and all these other things, instead of actually addressing them and debating them?”
“First of all, I’m happy to address any ideas; I’m not happy to debate somebody who has joked about murdering me,” said Shapiro, referencing past comments and actions of the Alt-Right influencer behind the hecklers’ questions.
Shapiro then explained why he described as “Alt-Right-adjacent” some of the people the questioner named, including Trump. “If you look at Donald Trump, who I said overtly in 2016 ‘flirted with the Alt-Right’ because he did in April and May of 2016. … Donald Trump, thank God, has forcibly expelled many of the people who were Alt-Right adjacent, like Steve Bannon, from his administration.”
“As far as the idea that I am somehow refusing to debate lower levels of immigration, that is obviously untrue,” said Shapiro. “You can go watch an hour-long interview that I did with the aforementioned Ann Coulter back before 2016 about a book she did on immigration — it’s all about lowering levels of immigration. If we’re talking about tariffs, happy to have that conversation. I had it with Tucker Carlson. If we’re talking about a more isolationist foreign policy, I’ve had that conversation with many, many people.”
“I said this in my speech at Stanford, which people are willfully ignoring: I’m not arguing that people that hold those views are quote-unquote Alt-Right,” Shapiro continued. “The Alt-Right is a very specific viewpoint that sees the problem in America as a problem of demographics, that suggest that white nationalism is the answer to that problem, that suggest that the problem with immigration is not a problem of culture or assimilation, the problem in America is a problem of what race the people are that are coming into the country. That is not a point of view that is even in the realm of the sort of a Paleocon viewpoint. That is a view that is actively Alt-Right.”
When the questioner accused Shapiro again of “smearing” those who disagree with him, Shapiro rattled off a list of disturbing comments and actions from the Alt-Right influencer behind the organized effort to troll the speech. “I think it is a sin for people to conflate mainstream conservatism with that kind of garbage,” said Shapiro, the audience erupting in applause at the assertion.
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Related: Boston University Student Group ‘Triggered’ By Ben Shapiro Speech Title; Shapiro Responds