Ben Shapiro Is on the Warpath to Purge the Conspiratorial Cranks from the Right

Ben Shapiro is on the warpath.

Last month, conspiratorial right-wing commentator Candace Owens was fired by The Daily Wire, the conservative media company Shapiro founded nearly a decade ago. Her ouster followed a months-long cold war with Shapiro largely fueled by her descent into overt, proud anti-Semitism.

“I think her behavior during this has been disgraceful,” said Shapiro last fall, referring to Owens’ analysis of the war in Gaza and propagation of misinformation about Israel. It took awhile after Shapiro sounded the alarm, but Owens was eventually dismissed for her indulgence of bigotry.

And yet, his enemy’s defeat has not compelled Shapiro to lay down his sword. While Owens has been expelled out from under his own roof, Shapiro has turned his sights on other cranks on the Right and grown increasingly strident in his denunciations of them.

Tucker Carlson, in particular, has become a regular target of Shapiro’s. Hostilities between the two conservative media giants broke out even before the Shapiro-Owens spat, when Shapiro knocked Carlson for “downplaying” the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel just days after it happened. Shortly after that, Shapiro put the former Fox News host on blast again over another  conversation he had with anti-Israel commentator Douglas Macgregor.

“Peace through strength has been a conservative position for as long as I’ve been alive, certainly. This idea that you are heightening the chances of a world war if America actually flexes its muscles sometimes, it’s a bizarre one when what we know is precisely the opposite,” submitted Shapiro.

Carlson’s first attempt clap back came about a month later, when he hosted Owens for a conversation about the drama at The Daily Wire. From there, his attacks got more explicit, culminating in a stunning declaration that Shapiro’s concern for Israel in the wake of October 7 revealed that he “obviously” doesn’t “care about America.”

Shapiro responded to the personal attacks. But much more notably, he’s also continued to forensically pick apart Carlson’s positions as well as his form more generally.

On Monday, for example, Shapiro devoted more than 20 minutes to torching Carlson over his recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. “‘Just asking questions’ doesn’t make you a critical thinker,” argued Shapiro, who posited that Carlson’s rampant conspiracy theorizing — about 9/11, aliens, and much more on Rogan’s show, for example — is little more than a business strategy.

“Tucker’s narrative does have one important utility, it makes him the go-to source for everything,” he said. “According to Tucker, you have to believe Tucker, and if you don’t, it’s probably because you’re part of the conspiracy or cover-up.”

“The only man of courage in this routine is apparently the truth-seeker Tucker, who asks questions but doesn’t actually examine the evidence,” he mused with more than a little scorn. Shapiro’s scorn is not only reserved for Carlson, of course.

Last week, he excoriated Andrew Tate — an influencer and accused sex trafficker defended by both Carlson and Owens — as a “con artist” selling “evil” lies. The week before that, he denounced Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and other Republicans for holding Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) “hostage” over Ukraine aid.

“The Republican caucus continues to be a complete hellscape,” observed Shapiro before blasting the “very small group of Republican congresspeople who are clowns and who wish to basically do their clown act on TV for money and notoriety.”

Shapiro, it would appear, is suddenly aware of the most important divide on the right, the one between conservatives and cranks.

There is no strict ideological aspect to this divide, but it is generally the case that the latter group is made up largely of media figures, activists, and politicians who present themselves as populist imitators of former President Donald Trump, rather than traditional Reaganites. There are reasonable, worthwhile debates to be had about the merits of those two political camps. There are none to be had between those sincerely advancing arguments and those profiting, be it on balance sheets or at the ballot box, from telling lies.

In recent months, this distinction — and the fact that the cranks are coming for the conservatives’ throats — has been made real to Shapiro in a very personal, even intimate way; his actions over the last six months reflect a real urgency in fighting back.

Ben Shapiro has made his choice, he’s fighting back. The question looming for much of the rest of the patriotic Right is: Will it do the same?

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.