If someone admits to watching Ben Shapiro it just draws their entire being into question. A gay black man watching a homophobic white supremacist? Don… Either you’re lying or you’re really telling on how much you hate yourself.
Everyone is entitled to bad taste. Money and intelligence do not keep someone from making a golden toilet, and they don’t keep Don from idolizing idiots.
What’s wrong with listening to the opposition? I try to get a taste from the left, right, and everything in the middle, that way I’m informed of things each side leaves out. That seems to be what Don Lemon is doing here.
If you just casually listen to garbage or propaganda like shapiro, some of it you’ll retain without retaining the source. Some of his bullshit will land in your brain under “Oh yeah I heard somewhere [complete bullshit]”. Especially if it’s something that gets repeated a lot.
Also if you’re listening uncritically, some of the entry level bullshit might land with you. He might lay blame on some outgroup and you might be like “huh that does make sense”. If you don’t go and do the work to research his claim to contextualize and possibly debunk it, now you’ve got right wing nonsense planted in your brain.
No one is immune.
That’s why you see multiple sides. If what Shapiro is saying doesn’t jive with what you’ve heard on other sources (liberal, neutral, etc), then you’ll doubt it.
The main problem is that many people don’t look at multiple sources.
Not trying to poop on your ability to tell propaganda from not, but considering liberal news the opposition to Ben Shapiros bs is a one way ticket to it. You’ve included 3 types of sources that all appeal uniformly to capitalism and left out leftist/socdem/socialist, which is a very “enlightened centrist” thing to do and basically saying your centrism is centered on the right. Your demographic are exactly why people like Tim Pool succeed in messaging and pulling people further right. Usually anyone who uses liberal as the opposing viewpoint to modern conservatism fits cleanly into this box.
left out left/socdem/socialist
Feel free to provide them. I’m not familiar with which sources are high quality to post them confidently.
Most I’ve seen are poorly cited opinion pieces, at least on the socialist camp. Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders do a decent job, but that’s a very different thing, and usually larger media orgs do a decent job of covering their positions.
Tim Pool
Not a fan. I think I’ve watched a few videos of his, but I honestly don’t see the appeal. Shapiro is at least kind of entertaining, so I occasionally tune in to see what rhetoric the right is using.
Usually anyone who uses liberal as the opposing viewpoint to modern conservatism fits cleanly into this box.
That’s a pretty broad brush you have there.
I consider myself a left-leaning libertarian, which means I see myself as the opposite of both conservatives and progressives, at least in terms of authority of government to control peoples’ lives.
I think the political compass is useful, and when I take the test, I’m usually about halfway down the bottom half of the chart, and I drift around the middle of the left/right spectrum (most recently, I was a little to the right).
I do periodically listen to socialists, but they usually support aggressive governments, so I rarely agree with much they have to say. I’m okay with libertarian socialism (e.g. Noam Chomsky), but I don’t think it’s practical and it’s certainly not popular. Instead, I promote co-ops, private unions, and similar business structures.
Check out democracy now
I don’t think Shapiro or anyone like him have any sources of fact. None. Zero. Zip.
They have opinions, and they swap those between them as if they were facts, but that’s not the same thing AT ALL.
They often have more extreme takes of what the mainstream conservatives think, so it’s good to be aware of what they’re saying. I generally try to avoid opinion pieces like Shapiro and whatnot, but when I do, I try to get a good variety.
