Leftists Lose It Over Ben Shapiro Speech At Stanford University
The Young America’s Foundation has announced that Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro will be speaking at Stanford University on November 7th, and predictably, leftists are apoplectic, taking to social media to denounce the California school for rolling out the welcome mat to “hate.”
Far-left cartoonist Eli Valley, whose work often builds on anti-Semitic tropes — and who has targeted Shapiro in the past with drawings reminiscent of those that appeared in the Nazi-era German tabloid, Der Sturmer — labeled Shapiro a “hatemonger” and the Stanford College Republicans a “hate group” in a recent tweet which, of course, included one of his signature pen-and-inks.
“Stanford College Republicans—a hate group that in the past year has brought a Holocaust Revisionist and a Jew for Jesus to campus—is now hosting hatemonger @benshapiro Flashback to when these Nazi allies called my portrait of Shapiro ‘Nazi’-like,” Valley tweeted.
He later added that “the Hitler Youth Stanford Division is at it again,” in reference to Shapiro’s planned speech, essentially likening YAF and Shapiro himself to Nazis (an odd label for the man who repeatedly earns the title as the top target of anti-Semites on social media).
Valley went on to clarify his insult, saying that “they’re Hitler Youth bc they hosted a Holocaust Revisionist, plastered student dorms w/images from Der Stürmer, champion the Hero of American Nazism, + now host a man who inspired a teen to become a Nazi + vandalize a synagogue.”
He then went on to connect everything back to Republicans and Israeli politics, in a Kevin Bacon game-like conspircy theory.
Valley is hardly alone, of course. Perennial Twitter presence Eugene Gu, who is a Stanford alum, took time out of his busy schedule of replying fruitlessly to President Donald Trump’s tweets to criticize Stanford, calling their willingess to host Shapiro for a lecture “an absolute disgrace.”
“Stanford inviting Ben Shapiro to speak on campus is an absolute disgrace. Ben is a dishonest troll with zero intellectual depth or critical thinking skills. He only knows how to inflame and manipulate the media to cover his antics and gain legitimacy through his bullying lies,” Gu tweeted.
Stanford inviting Ben Shapiro to speak on campus is an absolute disgrace. Ben is a dishonest troll with zero intellectual depth or critical thinking skills. He only knows how to inflame and manipulate the media to cover his antics and gain legitimacy through his bullying lies.
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This was only hours after Gu targeted Shapiro independently, suggesting that Shapiro should be on a psychiatric hold because of a clip from Shapiro’s radio program that circulated on social media last week.
With all the violent gun threats he made, including those against specific individuals and public officers, Ben Shapiro should be under consideration for a 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold and have all his firearms removed from his possession.
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Gu’s Tweet does prove partially useful — it does show why civil rights groups and many conservatives object to so-called “Red Flag” laws that allow friends and family members to petition the government to revoke someone’s Second Amendment privileges.
Not to be outdone, Stanford’s educational elite also got in on the action. Young America’s Foundation reports that Stanford professor (and co-founder of the campus’s “anti-Fascist” group, ironically) David Palumbo-Liu is encouraging Stanford students to follow in the footsteps of Boston University students, who circulated a Change.org petition to revoke “racist hatemonger” Shapiro’s invitation to speak.
YAF also notes that Palumbo-Liu is scheduled to speak on a panel about the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (or BDS) movement, which is being held on campus (and could certainly be considered controversial in its own right, just perhaps not by the campus’s leftists).
In fairness to Palumbo-Liu, he does bring up a good point: Stanford has rejected a permanent art installation featuring a quote from Chanel Miller, formerly known as Emily Doe, the victim of a sexual assault that took place on Stanford’s campus. Her attacker, Brock Turner, famously received only six months in jail for his crimes because the judge felt Turner was a good kid (he ended up serving only three, and his bizarre sentence prompted a California minimum sentencing law, and the first successful judicial recall in California history).
The LA Times reports Stanford censored the quote because certain Stanford students believed the quote would be too triggering to victims of sexual assault and other forms of violence, even though Miller’s quote has, the Times reports, changed the way sexual assault is discussed on campus.
Instead of allowing the art installation to serve its purpose — forcing Stanford students to confront an incident that happened on their campus — Stanford would rather silence Miller. Palumbo-Liu, though, doesn’t seem to see the irony of asking for one controversial statement to be allowed, but another banned.
