How Did Ben Shapiro Get Famous?
Benjamin Aaron Shapiro is a host, conservative political analyst, and attorney. He also creates popular columns. At 17, Shapiro started writing for a widely syndicated newspaper. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, on January 15, 1984, Ben Shapiro is currently 38. He is the famous editor of Ben Shapiro Daily Wire, a publication he created, writes columns for Newsweek and Creators Syndicate, and hosts The Ben Shapiro Show which is a live radio program and hosts a political podcast.
He is an author of eleven publications, the first of which was Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth (2004) and The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great (2019) being the most recent. He served as editor-at-large of Breitbart News from 2012-2016.
Like a million others, if you, too, are wondering, “who is Ben Shapiro?” or “where is Ben Shapiro from?” We have good news for you! This article will tell you all about who Ben Shapiro is, where Ben Shapiro is from and more.
Early Life: Young Ben Shapiro
Shapiro belonged to Conservative Jewish parents of Lithuanian and Russian descent in L.A, California. At the age of nine, his family converted to orthodox Judaism. Early on, he picked up the violin, and when he was twelve years old in 1996, he performed at the Israel Bonds Banquet. His parents were also Hollywood professionals. His father had been a composer, while his mother worked as an executive for a TV firm.
Shapiro traveled from Walter Reed Middle School in The Valley to Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles in the Westside of Los Angeles, missing two grades (3rd and 9th grades), where he earned a graduate degree in 2000 at sixteen years of age. When Ben was 20, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. He then earned a law degree from Harvard Law School in 2007 with honors. Later, he was under the employment of Goodwin Procter’s law firm. He was the owner of Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting, a Los Angeles-based independent legal consulting business, as of March 2012.
Career: What Does Ben Shapiro Do?
As an Author
Young Ben Shapiro developed a political interest; at age 17, he began writing a nationally syndicated column, and by the time he was 21, he had published two titles.
In his first publication, Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth, Shapiro asserts that the Leftist American have ideological dominance over universities and that professors would not accept non-left ideas.
Shapiro’s Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV, was released by HarperCollins in 2011. In this book, Shapiro makes the case that Hollywood deliberately endorses a leftist agenda via prime-time television programs. The creators of Happy Days and MASH claim in his book that their shows promoted pacifism and opposed the Vietnam War. Shapiro also joined the David Horowitz Fellowship Program.
The fifth book by Shapiro, Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans, was released in 2013 by Threshold Editions.
True Allegiance, his very first and so far only fiction work to date, was published in 2017.
The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great, written by Shapiro in 2019, emphasizes the significance of Judeo-Christian principles and criticizes their degradation in today’s America. In a BBC interview in May 2019 while young Ben Shapiro appeared advertising his publication, host Andrew Neil made the suggestion that Shapiro’s past comments were at odds with the book’s theme. Before ending the interview, Shapiro responded angrily to the questioning and started accusing Neil (a well-known British conservative reporter) of having a left-leaning bias. Shapiro also claimed that Neil was attempting to make a “easy money… off the fact that I’m widely known whereas nobody has ever even heard of you.” Shapiro later acknowledged on Twitter that Neil had “destroyed” him and that he “[had violated his] personal rule, and wasn’t fully prepared.”
The Authoritarian Moment, written by Shapiro and published in 2021, makes the case that the right-wing does not pose a significant authoritarian threat to American politics. Instead, he contends that the left’s hold on academia, Hollywood, the media, and corporate America poses the threat of authoritarianism.
As a Columnist
Shapiro was appointed editor of Andrew Breitbart’s Ben Shapiro website Breitbart News in 2012. In spite of recording and eyewitness accounts of the alleged attack by Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s previous campaign manager, reporter Michelle Fields claimed to have been assaulted by him in March 2016. As a result, Shapiro left his job as editor of Breitbart News. Shapiro said in his letter of resignation that Bannon had “turned the firm into Trump’s Pravda” and that both Bannon and Trump are bullies. After Shapiro left, Breitbart posted an article that falsely claimed to be written by his father under the pseudonym, “Ben Shapiro ditches devoted Ben Shapiro website Breitbart followers in chase of Fox News contributorship.” Breitbart eventually removed the article.
Shapiro became a constant target of racist invective from the alt-right after quitting Breitbart News.
On Feb 7, 2013, Shapiro published a piece citing unnamed Senate sources that claimed a group called “Friends of Hamas” was among foreign donors to Chuck Hagel’s election party. However, weeks later, Slate journalist David Weigel revealed there was no proof such a group existed.
Weigel was informed by Ben Shapiro political party that the report he published had “all of the facts [he] had.”
In collaboration with the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Shapiro Ben and his colleague Jeremy Boreing co-founded the activist Ben Shapiro website TruthRevolt in October, 2013. Operations for TruthRevolt ended in March 2018.
In January 2021, Shapiro penned a newsletter for Politico Playbook as a guest author and supported House Republicans who opposed Donald Trump’s second trial attempt. The newsletter offended many Politico employees, and several of them believed that Shapiro shouldn’t have been allowed to write the piece.
As a Host
In 2012, Ben Shapiro collaborated with Heidi Harris and Brian Whitman as a host on KRLA-AM 870’s morning show. He was among the hosts of the conservative radio program The Morning Answer on KRLA by the year 2016. Internal emails revealed that Shapiro was under pressure to endorse Donald Trump more in the 2016 presidential election from Salem Media officials, the syndication that controlled the program. Shapiro, though, continued to oppose Trump vehemently throughout the campaign.
The Ben Shapiro Daily Wire was established on September 21, 2015, by him and Boreing. He is the editor extraordinaire and host of the political podcast The Ben Shapiro Show, which is available online. The podcast was listed as the second largest podcast in the United States as of March 2019 by Podtrac. In April 2018, Westwood One started broadcasting episodes of The Ben Shapiro Show via podcast. Politico characterized the program as “massively popular” in 2018. Ben Shapiro today has three hours of coverage each day thanks to Westwood One’s expansion of his one-hour podcast-radio program in January 2019 to include a syndicated two-hour live radio show.
Shapiro began presenting The Ben Shapiro Election Special on Fox News in September 2018. The short-lived series focused on Ben Shapiro news and concerns around the 2018 election.
As of December 2018, Ben Shapiro news on intersectionality and Hollywood on PragerU had between 4,900,000 and 8,400,000 views.
Ben Shapiro’s podcast was the 9th most popular on Apple podcasts in 2021.
As a Speaker
Ben Shapiro today gives speeches on university campuses all across the country. He frequently offers a conservative stance on contentious issues in his lectures. During 2016 and 2017, he has spoken at 37 college campuses.
A speech by young Ben Shapiro, then an editorial person at Breitbart News, titled “When Diversity Becomes a Problem” was set to be delivered at California State University, Los Angeles on February 25, 2016, but some students and faculty members opposed. Three days prior to the scheduled address, president of the university William Covino canceled it with the goal of rescheduling it to include a range of perspectives on campus diversity. Covino eventually changed his mind, permitting the address to proceed as scheduled.
On the speech day, students organized sit-in protests and made human chains to bar the entrances to the event. The fire alarm was activated as Shapiro was starting his speech by a protester. Shapiro was led from the room by university security when his speech was over. Young America’s Foundation declared that it would sue the university (naming Shapiro as one of the petitioners), alleging that Covino’s orchestrated cancellation of the incident and the physical barriers preventing students from entering or exiting the event violated their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Due to “security concerns,” DePaul University withdrew Shapiro’s invitation to speak to students there in August 2016 and forbade him from stepping foot in the campus.
Shapiro spoke against identity politics on September 14, 2017, at the Berkeley College Republicans event, which was sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ had guaranteed a significant police presence at the rally in her August letter supporting free speech. For the event, which saw nine arrests but no significant problems, the city of Berkeley and the university collectively spent $600,000.
Abigail Shapiro is known to be an opera singer who uploads recordings to Classically Abby (her Youtube credentials), is Ben Shapiro’s sister. Due to her brother’s prominent public position, online antisemitic harassment has been directed at her. Mara Wilson, an actress and writer, is a cousin to Shapiro, although the two do not get along because of their divergent political ideologies.
Ben Shapiro tied the knot with Mor Toledano. She is an Israeli doctor of Moroccan ancestry, in 2008; the couple made Los Angeles their home.
The couple has a son and two daughters. They follow traditional Judaism.
Shapiro made the announcement that he was leaving California with his family in September 2020. Shapiro moved to South Florida after moving the Ben Shapiro Daily Wire company’s headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee.
Why is Ben Shapiro Famous?
After branding the conservative interviewer a “leftist” and boasting about his popularity, Ben Shapiro walked out of a controversial BBC interview in 2019.
In a pre-recorded interview with BBC interviewer Andrew Neil, Shapiro instantly became agitated when Neil pressed him about recent efforts to restrict abortion rights, questioning the editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire if such policies would send America back to the “Dark Ages.” Neil is known for playing the devil’s advocate in interviews.
Shapiro shot back, “You claim to be an unbiased journalist.” “BBC claims to be a down-the-middle, impartial network. Evidently, it is not and never has been. Why wouldn’t you just admit you’re on the left before calling one side of the political spectrum dumb, primitive, and dragging us back to the Dark Ages?
Neil, the editor-in-chief of the right-leaning publication The Spectator, chuckled at this and remarked to his guest, “If only you knew how ludicrous that sentence is, you wouldn’t have said it.”
Shapiro took to twitter and wrote that he had filmed a talk with Neil and “misinterpreted his animosity as political Leftism,” conceding that it was incorrect, in an attempt to repair the damage before the talk was broadcast.
All through the interview, Shapiro, who is known for saying “facts don’t care about your feelings,” grew more and more irate, growling that Neil was trying to “gotcha” him by bringing up some of his earlier tweets and remarks, like the one in which he claimed that “Arabs like to blow up crap and live in open sewage.”
Shapiro complained, “You talk about damaging the public conversation.” I believe you are trying to take advantage of the fact that I am well-known and that no one has ever heard of you by going through and picking out isolated phrases that sound horrible when taken out of context and then hammering others with them on BBC.”
Finally, Shapiro stated, “I am not willing to continue a conversation with someone as terribly motivated as you,” before pulling off his microphone and said, “we’re done here.” He added that the “whole thing was a waste of time” and that he didn’t “give a damn” how Neil regarded him.
Neil cheekily retorted, “Thank you for your time and for demonstrating that rage does not belong in American political debate.
In another instance, Shapiro got so offended by Cardi B’s song “WAP” in 2022 that he clumsily read the song’s lyrics out during a live broadcast of his show. The sexually explicit statements are repeated by Shapiro in this funny clip with a stiff, uncomfortable dread.
The hilarious incident went viral, obviously not among Shapiro’s supporters but rather his critics. Shapiro’s audio was quickly remixed, autotuned, and combined with Cardi B’s official video. Eventually, Cardi B herself was exposed to this.
Shapiro took a moment to tweet a response that carried a humorous innuendo after discovering that he was once more the target of widespread ridicule.
“As I also discussed on the show, my only real concern is that the women involved — who apparently require a “bucket and a mop” — get the medical care they require. My doctor wife’s differential diagnosis: bacterial vaginosis, yeast infection, or trichomonus.”
Shapiro once advocated for people who might be unlucky enough to be uprooted by the escalating effects of climate change to “sell their homes and move.”
Shapiro is too humiliating to dismiss for many of his critics.
But Shapiro has been the target of ridicule for years, and it’s getting old. Yes, the man has an overabundance of poorly reasoned beliefs, speaks like a Cassette tape on fast speed, and has a puritanical stance toward entertaining music videos.
But Shapiro’s capacity to reach millions of users on social media has never suffered by being the premise of a joke (Shapiro has 7 million Facebook followers and approximately 3 million Twitter followers).
Ben Shapiro Controversy: What Do People Think Of Ben Shapiro Today?
So, what is Ben Shapiro and why is he so controversial?
You know how people say that Donald Trump is the underdog version of a rich person?
Ben Shapiro today is what a fool imagines a smart person to be.
He is an expert at selling a product that his target audience is keen to purchase; he is not a debater.
He reminds us in arguments of the late Duane Gish, who made a name for himself among Evangelical Christian Creationists by debating biologists.
The Gish Gallop is a method that Duane Gish devised. In a timed discussion, what you essentially do is use your time to make a rapid-fire series of disjointed, irrelevant arguments that are untrue yet take longer to refute than they do to make. If you can refute 45 untrue claims in 5 minutes, and it takes 1 minute for each to be refuted, then your opposition cannot refute all 45 in 5 minutes. And you exclaim, “Aha! See? My opponent is unable to refute my claims! I won!”
When using a gish gallop, it helps if you can speak quickly and can talk over your opponent.
The gish gallop has been improved by Ben Shapiro into what I refer to as a “Shapiro stampede.” Ben Shapiro lies, adds derailing tactics like whataboutism, false analogies, and half truths to the traditional gish gallop—speak quickly, spit a large number of irrelevant weak arguments that overwhelm your opponent, and talk over your opponent. People with poor education, who struggle with reasoning and critical thinking, and (particularly) those who have little to no experience debating, find the Shapiro stampede astounding.
He performs well in unmoderated or lightly moderated debates with naive college students who have never seen a gish gallop.
Expert debaters dismantle their adversary like a child’s Tinker toy in strongly moderated debates that disallow derailing or talking over your opponent.
This interview was originally published on ValiantCEO.
