Let us begin with a moment of candor, shall we? Ben Shapiro, that diminutive impresario of fast-talking sophistry, has lately taken to the airwaves with a proclamation so brazen it could only emerge from the sanctimonious swamp of his own making. He declares, with the smug assurance of a man who mistakes volume for veracity, that the question of who assassinated John F. Kennedy is irrelevant—particularly, one presumes, because the shadow of Israel has long lingered over that Dallas afternoon. This is not a confession of ignorance but a calculated dodge, a sleight of hand from a propagandist who has spent his career cloaking hardcore Zionism in the star-spangled garb of American patriotism. The effect is as nauseating as it is transparent.
Shapiro’s intellectual lineage is not difficult to trace. In the early days of his career, when his voice still cracked with the fervor of youthful certainty, he was a cheerleader for the Iraq War—a baseless escapade rooted in the fever dreams of the Project for the New American Century, that neocon cabal whose lust for empire rivaled the Roman appetite for conquest. These were the days of 9/11’s aftermath, when the neoconservative choir—thinkers like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and the ever-pompous William Kristol—sang hymns of preemptive war and American hegemony. Shapiro, then a precocious scribbler, echoed their refrains with the zeal of a convert. His parallels with these figures are striking: a belief in military overreach as a moral imperative, a disdain for dissent masked as principle, and an unshakeable faith that Israel’s interests must be tethered to America’s destiny. Where the neocons saw Iraq as a stepping stone to remake the Middle East in Israel’s favor, Shapiro saw a chance to prove his mettle as a loyal footsoldier in their ideological crusade.
But let us not mistake this for mere historical footnote. Shapiro’s commitment to Israel is not a youthful indiscretion he has outgrown; it is the beating heart of his worldview, unapologetic and unrelenting. He has said it himself, in moments of unguarded hubris, that his loyalty to the United States is contingent upon its fealty to Israel. “The existence of the state of Israel is the single greatest guarantor of my loyalty to the United States,” he once confessed—an admission so stark it ought to have ended his pretense as an American everyman. This is not patriotism; it is parasitism. As long as Israel wields influence over the corridors of Washington, Shapiro is content to profit, peddling his wares to a Middle American audience too dazzled by his rapid-fire patter to notice the foreign flag pinned to his lapel.
And profit he does. The Daily Wire, his media fiefdom, has become a beacon for a certain breed of conservative influencer—men like Tim Pool and Jordan Peterson, whose recent alliances with Shapiro’s enterprise raise a troubling question: how conservative can one be when tethered to the interests of another nation? Pool, with his beanie-clad everyman shtick, and Peterson, with his labyrinthine lectures, have joined a stable that reeks of Israeli patronage. One need not don a tinfoil hat to wonder at the coincidence. The Daily Wire’s coffers swell, its voices amplify, and its agenda—unswervingly pro-Israel—marches on, all while its luminaries posture as defenders of American values. The irony is as thick as the fog over the Potomac.
But let us turn to the darker thread in this tapestry: the occasions when Israel’s partisans have seemed to revel in American suffering. The events of September 11, 2001, offer a grim tableau. Recall the infamous “dancing Israelis,” a group of men caught filming the collapse of the Twin Towers with what authorities described as suspicious glee—later revealed to be Mossad affiliates, quietly deported after the fact. Or consider the words of Benjamin Netanyahu, who mused in 2008 that the attacks were “very good” for Israel, a sentiment echoed in his earlier writings where he framed American calamity as a boon for Zionist aims. These are not conspiracies spun from whole cloth but incidents documented in the public record, footnotes to a relationship that Shapiro and his ilk prefer to gloss over. When America bleeds, Israel’s hawks have too often seen opportunity—a pattern Shapiro excuses with the fervor of a man who believes the ends justify any means.
Herein lies the essence of Shapiro’s grift. He is a low-level propagandist, a hawker of half-truths who drapes himself in the rhetoric of reason to appeal to the heartland’s distrust of coastal elites. Yet he omits the central fact of his being: he is a hardcore Zionist, a man who would cheer any policy, no matter how deleterious to the United States, so long as it buttresses Israel’s ramparts. His debates with college students, his sanctimonious lectures on “facts over feelings,” are mere theater—a distraction from the reality that his allegiance lies not with the republic he claims to cherish but with a state across the sea. He is a ventriloquist’s dummy for a cause that sees America as a means, not an end.
To watch Shapiro is to witness a man at war with his own contradictions. He rails against identity politics, yet his identity as a Zionist defines him. He champions free markets, yet his enterprise thrives on the largesse of foreign-aligned donors. He preaches American exceptionalism, yet his heart beats for Jerusalem. In this, he is not alone—merely the most visible of a cadre of influencers whose conservatism is a mask for something less noble. The Middle American mindset he courts deserves better than this charlatan, whose every word is a plea for Israel’s primacy, even at the cost of the nation he professes to serve. One can only hope that the audience he has duped will one day see through the smoke and mirrors. Until then, Shapiro will prattle on, a small man with a smaller vision, content to profit as the republic frays.