Ben Shapiro and the Nonsense of Horseshoe Theory

I wrote last week that Catholic nationalist ‘groypers' were beating the likes of Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro at their own debate nerd game. Shapiro tried to return fire on Thursday. His speech at Stanford University was aimed directly at the ‘alt-right.'

I agreed with much of what he said, about the immorality of equating skin color with moral worth and of jokes about the nature of the Holocaust. Shapiro made a good point in saying that ‘irony' can be a weaselly rhetorical maneuver inasmuch as it allows people to express contentious opinions with the escape clause of insincerity.

But Shapiro's speech had serious weaknesses in style and content. Firstly, he refused to name anyone that he was referring to. This can be an effective power play if the goal is to suggest that someone is too insignificant to be called out. Given that Shapiro quoted Nicholas Fuentes word-for-word and addressed much of his speech at him and his supporters, though, it felt odd that he didn't acknowledge him.