Jewish Radio Personality Ben Shapiro Receives Death Threat from White Nationalist Follower
By: Fern Sidman
Controversial right-wing radio talk show host Ben Shapiro is no stranger to threats from those who feel threatened by the views he espouses on his popular program, but this time, shocking video evidence of such hatred towards Shapiro has emerged on Instagram.
CW: Antisemitism
On Saturday, racist Aidan Duncan (aka “Smiley the Fren”) of Colorado posted this video on Instagram showing him at a gun range in Nevada. In it, he speaks to the camera and says: “Alright, Ben Shapiro, you’ve spun your last dreidel.” He then fires three shots. pic.twitter.com/GKJSuyMt0Q
— Nick Martin (@nickmartin) July 18, 2022
As an Orthodox Jewish pundit who has garnered a massive following of listeners over the years, Shapiro’s straight-shooting demeanor on his show as well as the remarkable wealth of knowledge that he brings to his listeners appears to have irked his ideological adversaries.
The video, which has now been deleted from Instagram due to its hostile content was made by Neo Nazi activist Aidan Duncan. According to a report on the Vois Es Nais web site, Duncan is pictured in the video holding a revolver and pointing to a target at a Nevada range.
As he discharges his weapon three times, Duncan is seen saying, “Alright, Ben Shapiro, you’ve spun your last dreidel.” His utterance is a clear reference to Shapiro’s Judaism and is overtly anti-Semitic.
Unmoved by the video, Shapiro offered his response to the would be assassin by saying in a tweet, “It’s not even Chanukah season, you idiot.”
Shapiro is not alone in his condemnation of Duncan. Tweeting his own thoughts about it was Jewish educator David Bashevkin who wrote: “People have been telling the Jewish people that we’ve spun our proverbial last dreidel for over 2000 years. But here we are. Still spinning.”
Radio producer Cameron Gray said in a tweet, “Once again, fellow Jews, arm yourselves if you feel comfortable with it.”
In a recent interview with Israel National News, Shapiro was asked if it is possible today for progressivism and conservatism to go hand-in-hand as was the case at various times in the 20th century.
“The idea that the right and left can’t have a conversation anymore that is a new thing,” Shapiro told INN. “The idea that if you are on the left you literally can’t get in the same room with somebody on the right and have an open conversation without attempting to wreck the person on camera, that’s a major problem.”
INN reported that Shapiro sees a bleak future if “traditional liberals” continue to take their marching orders from the radical left and move increasingly away from the center-left of the political spectrum, where they used to reside.
“The future of the United States rests not on whether people like me speak. It’s really more on whether traditional liberals, people who disagree with me on taxes, on healthcare, whether those people are willing to tell the hard left it’s still important to have a conversation with people like me, or whether they decide they would rather get their policy done by working with the people on the left and then shutting the door on everybody else. A lot of liberals have been intimidated into believing that if they even have a conversation with people on the other side of the isle, this makes them bad. It’s more important to get done what they need to get done in terms of ramming the United States to the left, even if that means ending debate before it begins.”
Anti-Semitism in general, on both a national and global level has significantly escalated over the last several years and threats on Jewish lives and property is now a commonplace occurrence.
VIN reported that Duncan is affiliated with the anti-Semitic group known as “Groyper,” which is comprised of white nationalists who follow political commentator Nick Fuentes. Fuentes also has a history of anti-Semitic comments and antagonism toward Ben Shapiro, as was reported by VIN.
According to a 2019 report on Fuentes that appeared on the StopAntiSemitism.org web site, Nicholas Fuentes started his Jew-hating online career in 2014 when he began posting racist and bigoted videos to his YouTube channel, America First (YouTube has since removed the channel for hate policy violations).
StopAntiSemitism.org also reported that Fuentes, affectionately referred to as “Nazi Nick” by his loyal followers, first attended Boston University but was forced to leave by students angered over his involvement at the 2017 Unite the Right White Nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He now heads up the “Groyper Army”, a loose network of alt right figures who are vocal supporters of the white supremacist.
Since 2016, Fuentes gained an even bigger following when he pretended to be a true supporter of the current White House Administration. StopAntiSemitism.org reported that along with his YouTube channel, Fuentes used to run the Nationalist Review, a white supremacist podcast with James Allsup, another neo-Nazi, alt-right supporter; the podcast was terminated after the two had a fight.
In 2019, Fuentes used an analogy of Cookie Monster baking batches of cookies in an attempt to deny the horrific murder of 6 million innocent Jews during the Holocaust, telling his podcast audience that the number “just doesn’t make sense” to him, as was reported by StopAntiSemitism.org. Many have opined that this open and unashamed denial of the facts of the Holocaust is atrocious and disgusting.
On his other social media platforms, which include Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram, Fuentes makes many outrageous and sickening anti-Israel and antisemitic comments, as was reported by StopAntiSemitism.org. The site commented that, “It’s extremely puzzling why Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram are willing to lend Holocaust deniers such as Fuentes, and others like him, a platform for clear antisemitism.”
Fuentes frequently targets Christians who support Israel or as he claims ‘are working for the Jews’. StopAntiSemitism.org reported that In one of his videoblogs (now removed from YouTube for policy violation), Fuentes attacks Matt Walsh from The Daily Wire and states Walsh is a “shabbos goy traitor. That’s what it is, folks. He hates white people. Race traitor- you work for Jews”.
Nazi Nick also takes his antisemitic tirades out on the president of Turning Point USA’s (TPUSA), Charlie Kirk, tweeting Charlie has some obsession about supporting Israel. StopAntiSemitism.org reported that a 2019 TPUSA event at Ohio State University that featured Charlie Kirk was crashed by Groypers (what the alt-right followers call themselves), as the gate crashing Groypers chanted anti-gay and antisemitic slurs. Fuentes was credited for hijacking the event.
Fuentes often takes advantage of his young followers naiveté, many of them teenagers he refers to as Zoomers, telling them not to tell his parents if they get “red pilled”. StopAniSemitism.org reported that according to the alt-right, taking the red pill is the beginning of a process of radicalization in which an individual becomes enculturated in an extreme, reactionary worldview. Fuentes also encourages his followers to post antisemitic pictures and memes to his social media platforms.
