Ben Shapiro is famous for his bad faith arguments. “There are 680 million radical muslims,” Shapiro has claimed. “And they’re coming for anyone that doesn’t think like President Obama. Are you scared yet?” From Shapiro’s perspective, this is a fact. He explains in his video, “The Myth of the Tiny Radical Muslim Minority,” that all of the data backing his claim is from the Pew Research center, and actually the number of radical muslims worldwide could be higher than 680 million.
Regardless of his purposeful misinterpretation of facts, Shapiro’s claims hold serious weight amongst conservatives. One fan on Quora explains this, “He talks very VERY fast, amazingly effective and eloquent. He talks like an absolut machin , this shows that his brain also thinks very very fatst. Because if you talk smoothly , fast with no breakes you must think about the next words and formulation that you are about to say moments before you say it while stil speaking of the previous subject. Speed is one of the main components of IQ tests.”
In most cases, Shapiro’s bad faith arguments are to win political debates, to “destroy his opponents with facts and logic,” which Shapiro is supposed to be famous for. But earlier this year, it came to light that Shapiro’s bad faith arguments were potentially inspiring killers. The Quebec City Mosque shooter that gunned down six men and women was a Shapiro zealot. In the weeks leading up to the shooting, prosecutors found that the killer intensively studied Shapiro’s content, browsing his Twitter profile close to 100 times.
“I didn’t incite the mosque shooter,” Shapiro insisted while under heavy pressure from prosecutors. “Now I have 1.4 million Twitter followers so I guess the idea from the left is that if somebody sees enough of my tweets they’re inevitably going to become a terrorist. Weird that I don’t have a spate of enormous terrorism across the country thanks to my Twitter followers.” The second claim of having a ‘spate of enormous terrorism across the country’ is being closely reviewed by prosecutors and law enforcement, sources say.
Yesterday, Shapiro continued his habit of of engaging in bad faith arguments, but luckily this time there was no blood shed as a result. Over the course of this week, Shapiro ran a publicity stunt where he offered Democratic House candidate, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, $10,000 to debate him.
Several people close to Shapiro’s operation explained the situation. “Ben just wants to be taken seriously. Right now everyone sees him as that short guy that makes hyper-partisan, outlandish claims and has a genius level IQ. He wants to be viewed as legitimate in the political realm though.”
After receiving incessant debate requests, Ocasio-Cortez finally responded on Twitter, which she did not have to do, but did as a courtesy. “Just like catcalling, I don’t owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions. And also like catcalling, for some reason they feel entitled to one.”
Shapiro, who had claimed he wanted to debate in good faith and have honest conversation immediately showed he had no intentions of doing so. He took this metaphor out of context and immediately defaulted to his go to, bad faith arguments. “Discussion and debate are not “bad intentions.” Slandering someone as a sexist catcaller without reason or evidence does demonstrate cowardice and bad intent, however. But sure, go with “the Orthodox Jew who has never catcalled a woman in his life is ACKSHUALLY a sexist catcaller for asking for a discussion or debate.” I’m sure your media sycophants will eat it up.” Of course, no one mentioned anything about Shapiro’s religion.
This exchange led to media uproar and outrage. And currently, this morning, Shapiro has chosen to make what seems to be a final statement on Twitter about the matter. “Hey, girl — want to have a public one-hour discussion on the intricacies of trade policy, deficit spending, and the value of the profit motive? I’ll even donate a bunch of money to charity or your campaign to make it happen.” — Construction worker in Queens, apparently.”
Bernard Media will continue to monitor Shapiro’s bad faith arguments and provide updates accordingly.
