While in a very broad sense, I agree with that, I think Shapiro is a VERY bad example. He has demonstrated his own closed-mindedness about positions that represent an existential threat to others. While most people I interact with on a daily basis who would consider themselves conservatives would fit your statement above, Shapiro does not. Every time he is challenged with facts that go counter to his position, he either throws up a straw man or throws the same kind of childish, name-calling tantrum that he had in this interview.
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I don’t have a problem with BBC bias in the overt sense that they employ Andrew Neil. They employ Paul Mason too (or they did; I haven’t watched in years). If they refused to employ anyone with an identifiable tribe, it’d be duller without fixing anything.
For me, the problem is more with presenters like Humphrys, Dimbleby, Paxman – people who do embody a kind of supposed “neutrality”. Because if that kind of upper-middle-class old white man represents the sensible, normal centre of British political attitudes, then it’s no wonder people see the Tories as the party you vote for if you “aren’t political”. It means anyone who isn’t a Tory on the BBC is cast in the role of the outsider. That influences a lot more people than any overt partisanship would.
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I think a great microcosm of Ben Shapiro is in his repeated demanding of a debate with AOC being met with her saying she has no need for her to respond to something that is like a cat-call to which he responded in disgust that a crazed leftist would go so far as to insult him and say he was cat-calling her.
EDIT
Oh, and then he went on every right-wing media outlet that would have him to make fun of her. Because that’s what good faith intelligent debate is about 
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No, that’s called living in a proto-fascist country where you are privileged enough to be able to ignore someone who is advocating for the destruction or dehumanization of others.
The real options aren’t debate (which legitimizes the point) or ignore (which dosn’t help). There are other options, like ridicule (completely valid for clowns like Spencer and Coulter), explanation to 3rd parties why Shapiro is fundamentally wrong-headed, and deplatforming. I like a combination of all 3, myself. They take all the oxygen out of the under-bridge-dweller and isolate them to think about what they’ve done wrong.
Again, as it bears repeating: if your argument is that someone else should be destroyed or dehumanized because of YOUR hang up with who they are, you’re wrong, and don’t deserve debate or discussion. That covers racism, sexism/misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, and the othering of mental illness.
Did I miss anything?
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right!?
i don’t know him much of him, the little i do is that he plays the angry white man trope. bully your *opponents in to submission.
this is why the attitude of trying to find common ground and mutual interests - even to reason using science and logic - fails when dealing with the alt/right.
they just don’t care. everyone who isn’t in their group is the opponent. the enemy.
this country isn’t polarized. it simply has a full third who refuse to listen to the other two thirds.
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“You haven’t answered any of my questions!”
Um, the BBC is not in the business of answering your questions, Ben. That’s not why they put you on.
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I actually didn’t know how contemporary this thinking was – thank you for posting this.
Validates the notion that everything went to fucking shit in the 80s. I blame cocaine. Helluva drug.
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Also worth a look:
And:
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Surely part of any media-savvy pundit’s experience includes the interviewer adopting a position counter to the interviewee’s (even if they do not believe it themselves) in order to provoke them into making rash, ill-considered statements?
The alt-right is using the OK hand gesture? No. Just no.
The OK hand gesture is a simple way of saying yes or “it all good”. I don’t want to be construed as an alt-righter just because they are co-opting a gesture that has been around for decades.
If the alt-right needs a gesture, I’ve got just the one for them, one that I will not be using accidentally to say “everything is cool”:
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“The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” ( Didache 2:1–2 [A.D. 70]).
In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed”
“The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall cause abortion [Ex. 21:22–24]” (Tertullian Apology 9:8,37 [A.D. 197]).
“For the fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man’s house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.” (John Calvin, Commentary on Exodus, 1509-1564).
Right wing political ideology is a degenerative brain disease
Discuss.
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You are perfectly free to follow the teachings of an anonymous first-century writer of a disputed pamphlet. Just say no to abortion and practicing magic. (I trust you fast on the fourth and the sixth day of the week, not the second and fifth like the hypocrites.)
However, you do not have the right to make those teachings law, and to force everyone else to obey them.
“The Didache is considered part of the group of second-generation Christian writings known as the Apostolic Fathers. The work was considered by some Church Fathers to be a part of the New Testament while being rejected by others as spurious or non-canonical.”
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Those guys also said using condoms was equivalent to murder too, as was any form of contraception. Modern Christians looking for insight from ancient writers in the subject might find it doesn’t fit well in the modern world.
Doesn’t change the point that the political movement in the US against abortion started recently.
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They have managed to co-opt it - so under some contexts it is supposed to be an “under the radar” white power symbol, akin to tucking your finkers in your belt with three exposed (KKK). Secret handshake bullshit that MOST people have never heard of.
I agree that I am not letting them co-opt it out of popular culture. Aside from the OK symbol, it is used as the circle game, which is childish as well, but at least done in fun.
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I was merely highlighting how incredibly ignorant it is to claim that the pro-life movement is a new idea. It has been around as long as Christianity. I didn’t cite those things as arguments in themselves, but to highlight how this is not a new opinion.
The heart of the argument, has and always will be, what makes a person a person. If you see a child in the womb as a person you see abortion as murder, if you don’t then you don’t. The argument is not much more complicated than that.
I won’t try and argue over a comments discussion as I know how pointless that is, but if you want to understand the other side rather than just dismantling strawmen there are plenty of resources available.
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I would be interested to see citations for that claim, but I’m certainly not claiming those people were infallible. Just that they argued for a pro-life position. So claiming it is a new concept is ignorant.
Yes the US movement started recently. But that might have something to do with it not being widely legalised until recently. There was no need for a large movement around something that wasn’t common.
But feel free to believe whatever you want. I’m presenting some facts, you can decide what you do with them.
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Abortions still happened frequently in the U.S. before Roe v. Wade (and more frequently before the Gilded Age). They were just done in back alleys and back rooms by quacks and butchers and desperate women themselves (for the poor), or by reputable doctors at exclusive and discreet clinics and spas (for the wealthy).* The latter were open secrets, and yet somehow the Xtianists weren’t protesting outside their gates before the 1970s.
The American anti-choice movement was, as many conservative initiatives in America are, in part a reaction to “undeserving” poor people and minorities getting access to beneficial things formerly reserved for the wealthy and white. It’s no mere co-incidence that the anti-choice movement grew along with the Know-Nothing GOP base.
So, no, you can’t really imply that the anti-choice movement can be blamed on the SCOTUS decision that made abortions safe, legal and (thanks to the family planning and contraception services that came along with the clinics which are also opposed by the Xtianists) rare for every woman.
[* the only time the poor got abortions by properly trained doctors under sanitary conditions was when they were forced on mentally ill and minority women by eugenicists, often Christian ones]
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It’s not like your average anti-choice Xtianist (or Ben, for that matter) can cite those later opportunists, either. They just erroneously state that the Old or New Testament bans abortion, waving about signs with Biblical verses to “prove” their points.
And also what makes a child a child.* If you see a non-cognizant cluster of cells as a child based on … well, not science … then you see abortion as murder. Ironically, the moment the fully formed and cognizant child exits the womb most of the anti-choicers lose interest in its welfare – especially if the kid is the result of a poor person’s or minority’s unplanned pregnancy.
[* if you thought your choice of words would slip by unremarked here, Welcome to BoingBoing!]
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