The Daily Signal - Ben Shapiro's Advice for Resisting America's 'Authoritarian Moment'

Episode Date: August 2, 2021

Authoritarianism is all around us. We see it in government, at work, and even in our local communities and schools. What can we do about it? Ben Shapiro, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show” and editor emeritus of The Daily Wire, is the leading the charge against authoritarianism. His new book, “The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent,” is already a No. 1 bestseller after debuting last week. "I think that there's two types of authoritarianism when we think about it," Shapiro says, explaining: One is a sort of political authoritarianism in which the government continues to exert more and more power in the name of 'doing good.' And then the other sort of authoritarianism, which is unique to our moment a little bit, is the authoritarianism of the culture. The militarization of private institutions on behalf of one particular point of view, and then universally over time. And that one, I will say, is something kind of new.Shapiro joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to talk about this authoritarian threat and why we should resist conformity. Listen to the podcast interview or read a lightly edited transcript. Also on today's show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, August 2nd. I'm Robert Blewe. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, Rob sits down with Ben Shapiro, host of the Ben Shapiro show. They discuss his new book, The Authoritarian Moment, how the left weaponized America's institutions against dissent. We also read your letters to the editor and share a good news story. Before we get today's show, we want to tell you about another great Heritage Foundation podcast called Heritage Explains. Heritage Explains episodes are quick and easy to listen to because host Michelle Cordero and Tim Desher

break down complex policy issues using stories, clips, and expert analysis. Recent Heritage Explains episodes dive into what you need to know about the situation in Cuba, critical race theory, and what American inflation means for our economy. You can find the latest episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We even put the full episode on YouTube. Stay tuned for today's show coming up next. I'm excited to welcome a longtime friend to The Daily Signal podcast today. Ben Shapiro is host of the Ben Shapiro show, editor emeritus of The Daily Wire, and here

today to talk about his new book, The Authoritarian Moment, how the left weaponized America's institutions against dissent. Ben, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Before we begin, I want to thank you for writing such a prescient book. In just the past few days, we've seen authoritarianism. all around us.

You quite possibly pick the best moment to release this particular book, and I truly hope Americans will buy the book and take seriously the threat that we face. Let's begin. What inspired you to write this book, and frankly, how did you know that this would be the right moment to release it? You know, in the aftermath of January 6th, I think there was a big push from the left to suggest that the great authoritarian danger to the country lay on the right. And January 6th is really ugly.

It was really, really bad, and a lot of criminals did criminal stuff. And the left took that as sort of the moment to start pushing its own, I think much more dangerous forms of authoritarianism at an even new level. In the aftermath of January 6th, obviously, you saw, for example, parlor being taken offline by Amazon Web Services, a purportedly neutral service provider. And you saw the entire Democratic Party decide, apparently, that every conservative was complicit in January 6th. You saw open calls for quashing First Amendment freedoms. You saw open attempts to cudgel corporations into dissociating from conservatives and Republicans. And it was apparent to me that if we are talking about the true authoritarian threat in the country, it's not from several hundred idiots and criminals who did something on January 6th.

The real threat to the country is in the institutional takeover of nearly every major institution. We've seen that played out over the course of the last year in particular in extraordinary ways, ranging from the reaction of institutions to the full-scale riots last summer to, you know, up to this week when you see the entire scientific establishment repeating ad nauseum anti-scientific notions about what we ought to do in order to fight the Delta variant. I mean, all of this is political. And if you protest it at all, you are declared outside the Overton window. Ben, each day on your show, you talk about so many of these current events. But I think the thing that we also need to remember is that throughout history, there are exact. of authoritarianism that can really ruin a society. Can you share with us some of those examples that you draw on to point to why it's such a threat today?

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's two types of authoritarianism when we think about it. One is a sort of political authoritarianism in which the government continues to exert more and more power in the name of, quote unquote, doing good. And then the other sort of authoritarianism, which is unique to our moments a little bit, is the authoritarianism of the culture, the sort of military. of private institutions on behalf of one particular point of view and done universally over time. And that one, I will say, is something kind of new. We haven't seen a lot of that in the past. You've seen sort of the attempt, particularly in fascist countries, by the

government to use corporations as sort of a stand-in for its own policymaking. You saw this, for example, in Germany, where industry works pretty regularly with the Nazi administration in order to effectuate exactly what the Nazis wanted. But the sort of informal bond that's been created between the Democratic Party and the government and the media outlets who do their bidding, and then the corporations who are just cuddled into doing whatever they want, that is something that's completely new. And it's really, really frightening because you can see not only that it doesn't really require a government in order to create this sort of restrictive mindset and polarization, but also you can see it bleeding up to the government. You can see a point where

the government is going to simply start effectuating as policy, a lot of the social authoritarianism that we're seeing on a day-to-day level. It is alarming, and it's also alarming to see so many Americans who are just willing to fall in line and follow these orders. What is it going to take to get Americans to snap out of this and think critically and speak up against what's going on? So I think that we're starting to see it, thank God. I mean, I think that the sort of reaction that we've seen to critical race theory, for example, in the schools, which has been going on for years. But it took, you know, a little bit of a revelation, people seeing inside the classrooms, frankly, last year or so to drive that reaction. I think you're seeing that. I think that when you see

the left making more and more radical plays with regard to men not being men and women not being women and men being women and all of this, and the idea that you can be thrown out of your job if you fail to acquiesce to this or your child could be moved from your home. If you fail to acquiesce to this sort of stuff. In other words, the heart of the left pushes, the more they're going to meet with some resistance. The key for the left for the last couple of decades at least, has been incrementalism. In the 60s, they went too radical too fast, and the reaction was the Reagan years. But since the 1990s, the left has really decided to be pretty incremental on its approach. They take over institutions. They bully and they cudgel. But what

they're bullying and cuddling on behalf of is usually some sort of small incremental step. And so people in the middle just kind of throw up their hands and go, okay, well, is it really that big a deal? And sooner or later, you're going to run up against the fact that the left has moved pretty radical. And now they've really, they've put the pedal to the metal. I mean, over the The last year really is, I think, a breaking point from the country. The fact that corporations were basically threatening their own employees if they weren't posting black squares on Instagram, or the fact that if you voted for Trump, this was considered rationale enough

for you to be disowned by friends and family. Or now the fact that if you have serious questions, data-driven questions, about the approach being taken by, for example, the CDC, you could be completely deplathsome from social media. I mean, this sort of stuff is driving a response because the left is – I think the left believes they're never going to lose again. I think they're about to get a swift lesson in justice on that one. You brought up education, and as a parent yourself,

what advice do you have for the moms and dads out there who are listening to this show? How should they be preparing their kids to resist authoritarianism? Well, I mean, if you're talking about people going to college, then you really do need to have them read up on the opposing points of view they're likely to encounter in college. You need to sort of inoculate them against a lot of the poison that they're likely to experience in college, and that means reading books that take that sort of stuff on and analyzing those books.

And I think there are a lot of good books on economics, for example. I always recommend economics in one lesson for kids who are about to go to college as sort of a good primer on some of the bad ideas that are pushed out there. Obviously, the writings of Thomas Sowell are good and well-written and easy enough that kids can read them. If you're talking about small kids, then first move should be take your kid out of the public school if you can. If you can't, then you really need to get active at the school board level or you need to think about homeschooling because the education. system really has been taken over by a cadre of left-wing extremists. And you can see that in the behavior of the people at the AFD and the National Education Association. You mentioned COVID and the CDC, and obviously that's on the minds of a lot of Americans right now. You have been one of the most

outspoken pro-vaccine conservative leaders, both on your show and at the Daily Wire. But you've also expressed a lot of frustration with how the Biden administration and CDC have been handling this, at least from a messaging and policy perspective. Where do you see this going from here? and how do you think the American people are going to react to some of this new guidance has just come out? I mean, I think they're out of their dam's mind. I think that the CDC and the Biden administration are out of their damned minds and their approach to this. The fact is that the vaccines are extraordinarily effective when it comes to mitigating hospitalization. When it comes to death, they basically prevent nearly all that from COVID.

That's a miracle. That's wonderful. Also, adults are adults. And you can't force people to take a vaccine if they are upset. about taking a vaccine, but they also have to live with that decision. And the guidance that you're getting from the Biden administration is so mangled and befuddling. And it makes no sense at all. They're talking down the efficacy of the vaccine.

At the same time, they're saying, we're going to force you to get it. They're saying, well, you know, if you're vaccinated, you still might have a breakthrough infection, you still might pass it on to somebody else, which, of course, leads people who are wary about the vaccines to say, well, then you lied to us. You weren't telling us the truth in the first place. So now you're expecting me to take this vaccine. And the Biden administration's response is, well, then maybe we should think about mandate. It's like, like, you know what? Here's the biggest problem. From the very beginning,

we had an original goal. The original goal was we have to prevent the overwhelming of the hospitals, right? That was the original goal. And then we did that. And then there was a big debate that broke out, which basically was, we're going to have to learn to live with the virus on one side and zero COVID on the other. And we're going to have to learn to live with the virus. It was obviously a much more scientifically driven, verifiable, likely scenario than zero COVID, which pretty much from the beginning, as soon as it was widely seated, it was never going to be anything that happened. Zero COVID was not going to happen. Then the next goal became, okay, well, we still have to do lockdowns, we have to do masking in order to get to the point where we have a vaccine.

Okay, well, we did that. And then we had to do it until the point where all the adults could have the opportunity to get the vaccine. And particularly adults, because kids are not very vulnerable to COVID, thank God. The grand total number of kids under the age of 18 who have died from COVID is under 350. That's out of a subpopulation of 75 million human beings. So if that's the goal, if the goal was, everybody now has the opportunity to get the vaccine, and the vaccines, thank God, are unbelievably good at preventing hospitalization and death. This is the point where you throw up your hands and you say, we are now done.

And if you're unvaccinated and you don't want to take the vaccine, you know, that's your prerogative. I may disagree with that analysis. I may think that you're wrong, but you're an adult human being. You get to make that decision. You just have to live with the consequences. But because the left never let go of the zero COVID idea, they now have to keep saying over and over and over that we are going to take. any measures necessary to force you or cudgel you or or even force the vaccinated. We've been taking our advice and doing the mask. We're going to force all those people to now protect you

by putting on a mask even after they're vaccinated and thus no longer vulnerable to hospitalization or death. This is utter insanity. There's no limiting principle. There's no end to it. I honestly don't know what would now be considered the end of the pandemic because literally they're not saying that they're not too worried about counties that have a case rate of 50 out of 100,000 population. Well, there's the problem with that. Number one, that's an incredibly low rate. Number two, let's say it goes to 20. Okay, and then tomorrow, there's a bit of an up thing.

So what? Everybody has to mask up nationwide over it? I mean, like, this is all crazy. There's no limiting principle to any of this. In fact, I would say that there's a significantly better moral case that you have to mask up if you have a cold than that you have to mask up if you've been vaccinated and you have COVID. The reason being, again, because if you have COVID, everybody else has had a chance to insulate themselves against that. If you got a cold, there is no vaccine for a cold.

So this is all madness. Do you think that these political leaders who are doing this will pay a price at the ballot box or when will that reckoning come? Yeah, it's coming. I think it's coming and it's coming strong. I think that it's not going to come in the blue stage where people seem to have accustomed themselves to authoritarian rule and seem very, very comfortable with giving up their freedoms. Listen, I'm, you know, sort of a circumspect guy about this. I'm not somebody who was, I'm never wearing a mask ever, masks are inherently evil. That was not my cap on this.

I wasn't somebody who was saying Fauci needed to be fired in the person on TV. It took me a while to get to Fauci needs to be fired. And I think that, you know, the fact is that we are now separating as a population into two groups. One group of people, at the very least, wants to see the data before they are told what to do. And they want to see the deaths justified. And then we have another group of people who don't care what the data says. They just want to be told what to do. And that is extremely disturbing.

I think that if Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo in New York State said we're going to just mask you down literally forever because we don't know what variant could happen ever for the rest of your life. I mean, there could be a new variant. There could be smallpox tomorrow. This is only the first pandemic. If they said that, I think that 50% of the population of New York would continue masking up until the end of time. Well, Ben, you've certainly led by example to push back against the conformity. You moved your family out of the state of California, which I think you might describe as an authoritarian state, at least with authoritarian leaders.

What prompted you to make that decision? Why have you encouraged others to follow suit? I mean, I think the state is basically toast. I think that they took the most beautiful state in the country in terms of natural resources, and they completely wrecked it. I mean, they decided that ideology was significantly more important than having a workable state. The tax rates there are obviously exorbitant, but they also decided they just weren't going to police crime. more. They decided that it was not in their interest to stop the homeless epidemic from overrunning the city. They didn't care about the safety of taxpayers at all. And then during the riots,

they basically decided to shut down the entire city for a week to allow people the freedom to do what they wanted on Melrose Avenue, which largely meant breaking into shops and burning cop cars. And at that point, it was like, okay, well, if this is a bad place to live now, how bad is this place going to be in five years. And so my business partner and I've been talking about moving Daily Wire out of California for a couple of years because of tax rates and regulations and it's a very unfriendly business climate. And that really started to accelerate when I took my family to Florida and we visited for three weeks, really not thinking we were going to buy a house here. And within two weeks, we're like, okay, well, got to buy a house here. We bought a house. And then we moved the

business to Nashville because there's no Jewish community in Nashville for my family needs, but I apply to National pretty frequently. So, I mean, California, people are fleeing California. They're fleeing California for a reason. There's a reason that Gavin Newsom is being recalled. Liberal governance has shown itself over the past several years, particularly, to be an extraordinary failure. When you're talking about crime or whether you're talking about the handling of COVID,

I've never seen a better object lesson in why blue governance tends to fail. Ben, you acknowledge that there are authoritarian leaders on the right, but usually it's limited to the fringes. Why has the left so embraced authoritarianism with such vigor? I think the reason is that the left truly believed that people who disagree are unempathetic, cruel, nasty, and inhuman. And that's a pretty dangerous thing to believe about your political opponents. I believe that, as you again suggested, that people in the left are wrong about a lot of things. They hold a lot of premises that I don't share.

But I don't think they're evil. I don't think that they're people. I mean, there's some of them who are overly evil. I think that many of them are not. I mean, I think your typical run-of-mill Democrat is a person who just disagrees with me about taxes, but generally agrees that the United States is a damned good place to live and was founded on good principles and that, you know, we're privileged to live here. And we can disagree about, you know, the way that we handle the health care system,

but that doesn't go to sort of the root values of what it means to be an American. I think that people on the left by and large don't think that about people on the right. They tend to think that people on the right are evil, theocratic monsters who spend their days, in church plotting how to destroy other people's lives and who are selfish and nasty and love guns. When they're in the privacy of their own sort of bubbles, they say this sort of stuff pretty openly. I mean, Barack Obama famously said in 2008 that people disagreed with him or just economically depressed bitter clingers who were interested in gods and guns and xenophobia. I think that that feeling is pretty widespread. What that means is you really don't have to take their opinion seriously.

In fact, your demand is not to take their opinions seriously. Whatever methods are at your disposal to run roughshod over them are totally decent. So on the one hand, you'll say that we need a pure majoritarian rule at the federal level because Democrats think they have the majority to get rid of the filibuster, stop all this. And then on the other hand, Texas is so bad and so red that it's perfectly good and wonderful that Texas Democrats just absconded from the state completely to deny a quorum. So on the one hand, the filibuster is bad because the filibuster is in their way. other hand, denying a quorum, which is a pure procedural move and done so illegally, that's good.

So that's not anything remotely resembling principle, except for the principle that you ought to lose. Ben, you've built a profitable media brand, one of the most popular podcast. You've written many bestselling books, including this one. And yet, rather than welcome the competition, it seems that the left wants to destroy you. NPR is just one of the most recent examples publishing an outrageous attack piece recently. What motivates you to keep going every day? You know, I think that the fight unfortunately never ends. You know, both you and I are in the business of, in essence, trying to eliminate our own jobs.

Like at a certain point, I hope that the country would be in such a strong position that I would find something else to do for 11. But I think that the fight that we're in as a country and as a culture is a nice-edge fight, and I think every day matters. I'm very low to take a day off from my podcast. I never stop writing. And I think that there are a lot of people on the right who feel like this. And listen, I'm lucky. I get to do what I want for a living. I get to speak out in a way that a lot of other people don't. And so to a certain extent, I feel like if I'm given the privilege of doing that, I owe it to a lot of people who aren't able to say what they actually believe or feel to say it because it gives them a feeling of solidarity. They're not the only ones out there who feel that way. I think one of the things the left has done is they've very successfully made conservatives feel like they're alone. Like they're the only people who think like this. And that's just not true. I think the majority of Americans are moderate to moderate right. and maybe even full on right on many of these issues. And so denying the left a monopoly of message, I think, is really important.

One more question for you. In addition to buying your book, which we'll link to in the show notes and transcript, what's the best way for our listeners to follow your work and support what you're doing? So come on over to DailyWire.com and get a subscription. We have all sorts of good stuff over there, ranging from my show to Michael Moles to Matt Walsh and Kansas Owens. We've got a lot of good stuff happening over there. We've gotten into the film business, so we've started release entertainment content

specifically to pose a threat to the traditional Hollywood model. So go support us over there. You can also follow pretty much everything I'm doing over on Twitter where I'm far too active for my own mental health. And we love the new show, The Morning Wire. Congrats on the launch of that podcast and so many of the other things that you're doing. You really truly are an inspiration to so many people who work in conservative media for all that you've done and the great work that you've built at The Daily Wire.

Ben, thanks so much for being with us today. Thanks a lot. Really appreciate it. Do you have an opinion that you'd like to share? Leave us a voicemail at 202-608-6205 or email us at letters at dailysignal.com. Yours could be featured on the Daily Signal podcast. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday we feature our favorites on this show.

Virginia, who's up first? In response to Fred Lucas's piece, major school district, eyes anti-racism, instead of questioning assumptions. Debbie Horton of Brighton, Colorado, writes, Dear Daily Signal, what is so frustrating about what's happening in our schools is that it seems like we're going backward. I've worked with children, mostly preschoolers, for over 40 years. I always emphasize that each child, each person, is valuable and special in their own way. My job as an educator is to help that person find his or her specialty, embrace it, love it, and develop it.

and to give them lots of opportunities to explore the vast world of options available along the way. But this emphasis on anti-racism and equity seems to be ignoring the mind and heart of everyone. It looks only at the packaging, which no one has any control over. I certainly don't feel valued or seen when I'm evaluated solely by my white skin and blue eyes. what happened to Dr. Martin Luther King's dream of people being judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character? Thanks for that letter, Debbie. Well said.

And in response to Jared Stetman's commentary, I read Robin DiAngelo's book on Nice Racism. Here are three takeaways. We received this letter from Hesse Harris. I am a black woman who was old enough to see that Robin DeAngelo's mumbo-jumbo is just repackaged 1960s white liberal pap with large sprinkling of black nativist jive also of that era. It is easy to see from Jarrett Stetman's commentary why DeAngelo appeals to whites with assumed guilt and to irresponsible blacks. At some point, though, she is going to make a statement that even her most devoted followers

will disagree with and she will lose her influence. But we cannot wait for that. Your letter could be featured on next week's show. So send us an email at Letters at DailySignal.com. Never has it been more important for us to fight for America. Each day we see the penalties of progressive policies across our nation. Our elections are under assault. Our economic freedom is on the decline.

And our culture is turning its back on the founding principles that have made us the freest, most prosperous nation in history. That's why the Heritage Foundation developed a plan to take on the left and take back our country. The Citizens Guide to Fight for America provides a series of heritage recommended action items delivered on a regular basis to your inbox. Make an impact in your community and in our country. Sign up for the Citizens Guide at heritage.org slash citizens guide and join in the fight for America today. We are pleased to have Heritage Foundation intern Bernadette Breslin, a member of our young leaders program. Join us again today to share a good news story.

Bernardette, over to you. There's something to be said of an individual who offers help without being asked or rewarded. Bartelsville, Oklahoma police officer, Sierra Compton, did just that when she went beyond the badge to assist an elderly man she saw in one of her routes. 70-year-old Jim Sutherland took up the responsibility of mowing his own lawn after falling on hard times financially. I have lawn shows that would come mow my grass for them. But my wife basically lost her job. So we're a little short on money. So I came out to do myself.

After hours of attempting to mow his lawn while simultaneously balancing himself with his walker, Jim was spotted by Officer Compton, who was immediately moved with compassion. It looked like he was unsteady on his feet, just kind of leaned over his walker that he had near his porch. And he had an electric mower with a cord. and just pushing it with one hand.

Just seeing that image, I knew that if I didn't stop, I would think of that man, probably for the rest of my life. Officer Compton finished what Jim had started and mowed the rest of his lawn. To say Mr. Sutherland was grateful would be an understatement, as he told Oklahoma City's News on Sixth that, when an officer does something good, they should be praised for it. As for Officer Compton, she hopes to continue leading by example.

I would love to be a role model to not only, our department, but other departments, just be kind. That's all it takes. And it's always great to see our men and women in uniform, making the news by going above and beyond the call of duty for members of their communities. Bernadette, thanks so much for sharing. We're going to leave it there for today. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rurkissue audio network. All of our shows are available at dailysignal.com slash podcasts. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcast, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. And be sure to listen every weekday by adding the Daily Signal podcast

as part of your Alexa Flash briefing. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review and a five-star rating. It means a lot to us and helps spread the word to other listeners. Be sure to follow us on Twitter at Daily Signal and Facebook.com slash the Daily Signal News. Have a great week. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Rob Bluey and Virginia Allen. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geine, and John Pop. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.