Calling Out the Judases and Jezebels

Shapiro and others shine, while Candace and Tucker decline:

A very large gathering of conservatives and patriotic Americans just met over four days in Phoenix, Arizona for the AmericaFest 2025 conference. The Turning Point USA event was a continuation of the work started by Charlie Kirk, now led by his widow Erika.

There were many highlights that could be mentioned, but discussions had to take place about the widening rift within the conservative movement, especially due to the divisive, arrogant and increasingly psychotic attacks being made by Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, especially their vile Jew-hatred and Israelphobia.

Thankfully Candace did not appear, but Tucker – oddly – did get another chance to speak. He spent much of his time telling the Christians and conservatives there how really neat Islam is, and how we must stop being so Islamophobic! Good grief – he is just as off the planet as Candace is!

Some speakers did wade into this controversy, bravely calling out the demonised rubbish that Owens, Carlson and Nick Fuentes are pushing. Chief among them was the orthodox Jew Ben Shapiro. He minced no words as he called out this unholy trinity of haters and antisemites.

This is part of what he said in his 20-minute talk:

Today, I want to talk about something even more important: how to discern those attempting to speak truth from frauds and grifters because something is new. An informational environment rife with both opportunity and chaos. Opportunity because the legacy media gatekeepers are no longer in charge of what we see and what we hear. and chaos because an anarchic formational environment means we actually have to be smart in how we assess the information and arguments that we hear.

 

Why does that matter? Well, because today the conservative movement is in serious danger. It is in danger, not just from a left that all too frequently excuses everything up to and including murder. The conservative movement is also in danger from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty who offer nothing but bile and despair who seek to undermine fundamental principles of conservatism by championing innovation and grievance. These people are frauds and they are grifters and they do not deserve your time. And they are something worse than that: a danger to the only movement capable of stopping the left from wrecking the country wholesale. So today I want to discuss five obligations that people who speak to you on matters of importance have to you. I want to speak to you about our duties.

 

Our first duty is truth. We owe you the truth. That means we should not mislead you. It means we shouldn’t hide the ball. We shouldn’t be deliberately obscure about what we’re telling you. . . . We should not traffic in generality. We should not say things like they shot Charlie without specifying whom we mean by ‘they’….

 

We must not let fear of audience deter us from telling the truth. We must not let fear of other hosts deter us from telling the truth. So, for example, if Candace Owens decides to spend every day since the murder of Charlie Kirk casting aspersions at TPUSA and the people who work here, who worked with Charlie every single day, his best friends to cast aspersions at Mikey McCoy and Andrew Kolvet …and yes at Erica Kirk, and to imply or outright claim complicity in a coverup over Charlie’s murder, to spew absolutely baseless trash implicating everyone from French intelligence to Mossad to members of TPUSA in Charlie’s murder or a cover up in that murder, then we as people with a microphone have a moral obligation to call that out by name….

 

Second, because we owe you the truth, we owe you the duty to speak out of principle, not personal feeling. It should not matter whether we despise someone or whether we love someone. The question is what they say and what they do and whether those things are morally decent or not. On a political level, do they foster freedom, justice, and prosperity? On a personal level, do they treat others as they would wish to be treated? Personal feeling is not a substitute for moral judgment. To take again the Candace Owen situation as an example, friendship with public figures who say or do evil things is not an excuse for silence on the matter. Politics is not the sisterhood of the traveling pants. Politics is about principle. And if you are willing to sacrifice basic truth and simple principle in favor of emotional solidarity, you have betrayed your fundamental duty to the American people….

He continues

Third, and relatedly, we have a duty to take responsibility for what we say and do. If we hire awful people, we’re responsible for that. I have some experience there, as you might suspect. That means that if we offer a guest for your viewing, we owe it to you to ask the kinds of questions that actually get at the truth. If we agree with a guest, that’s fine, but we should own it. So for example, if you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving anti-American piece of refuse like Nick Fuentes….

 

Fourth, because we have a duty to truth, we also have a duty to provide you with evidence of the claims that we make. Emotive accusations, conspiracy theories, and just casting questions – that’s lazy and stupid and misleading. None of them are a substitute for truth. None of them are a substitute for evidence. So when Candace Owens says, “I don’t know know, but I know,” that is retarded. And we are all more retarded for having heard it….

 

Our duty to provide you evidence means we actually have to do much more than just ask questions. Just asking questions is something my 5-year-old does, and it’s really cute when it comes from my 5-year-old. But when grown men and women spend their days just asking questions without, you know, seeking answers, they are lying to you. In fact, they’re doing something even worse. They are seeding distrust in the world around you and they are enervating you in the process….

 

None of this means there aren’t actual real conspiracies in the world. Of course, there are. But actual conspiracies require actual evidence. . . .  But when people posit a conspiracy and then provide you no evidence, they are doing you a fundamental disservice and they are making you stupider in the process….

 

Finally, because it is our job to make the lives of our audience better (right?) – it’s really our job to give you more information to make your lives better – we have a duty to propose solutions. That’s why we have to talk about our problems in order to find the solutions. That’s what politics was supposed to be about after all. Finding solutions to our common problems. If we speak endlessly about the problems we face without ever positing a solution other than wrecking the system or centralizing power in a cult-like figure, we are not finding solutions. We are merely making problems worse, just asking questions, positing vague conspiracies….

 

So for those of us who talk for a living, that’s our job – to discuss America’s problems with truth and with evidence, to provide possible solutions, and to encourage Americans to succeed and make great decisions. We who speak to people on a regular basis, who have a microphone and an audience, we have duties to you. The duty to speak the truth. The duty to speak from principle, not personal feeling. The duty to take responsibility for our own actions. The duty to provide you with evidence to do more than conspiracize or just ask questions, and the duty to posit solutions. And if we fail in those duties, you shouldn’t listen to us.

Please listen to his full talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69NNcVshOwM

Many spoke out in praise of his remarks. Here are few short quotes from some of them:

David Bahnsen 
“Somebody went full Buckley today. The most courageous 20 minutes for any conservative in many years. This is what fearless conviction looks like. This is how the right conserves its soul.”

Laura Loomer
“Ben Shapiro just torched Tucker Qatarlson and Candace Owens onstage at AmFest tonight.”

Gina Pascarella
“He slammed the Woke Right for exploiting Charlie Kirk’s murder. He called them grifters and frauds. Let’s hope Qatarlson is too embarrassed to show his face tonight. Totally insane that he has been welcomed back to TPUSA events despite using Charlie Kirk’s memorial to suggest the Jews murdered Charlie. Candace Owens was booed when her name was brought up tonight. Tucker Carlson was booed when his name was brought up. The Woke Right is a cancer.”

Rabbi Mark N. Wildes
“There’s a kind of courage that almost never gets celebrated: refusing to go along when your own camp drifts from truth. That’s why Ben Shapiro’s speech at Turning Point USA struck me so deeply. . . . History doesn’t turn on who controls the narrative. It turns on who is willing to call out a lie. That kind of courage is lonely but it’s exactly what keeps the light of truth alive.”

Tim Orr

Ben Shapiro’s stance is based on an idea that is becoming less popular: truth is objective, binding, and enforceable. Words mean something, proof limits claims, and public figures are responsible for what they say and for not condemning, normalizing, or justifying behavior. People often make fun of this position by saying it’s too strict, but it’s really better to think of it as setting limits. Movements fail when they lose elections, but they also fail when they can’t tell the difference between disagreement and corruption. Shapiro’s insistence on drawing lines is an effort to keep that skill alive before it goes away….

 

The decision that conservative media and anyone who watches it has to make is not about strategy, but about civilization. Truth is not just one value among many; it is what makes moral judgment, disagreement, and trust in a group possible. When neutrality takes the place of judgment, power fills the void, and power that isn’t based on truth is never neutral. There are no exceptions to this rule in Jewish history. It’s clear that Ben Shapiro is right to set limits, and Megyn Kelly is wrong to ignore them. Not choosing between enforcing the truth and being neutral is a choice in and of itself, and history will not forgive it.

Truth matters. As Allie Beth Stuckey put it, speaking at the same event:

Unity is good, but truth is better. And sometimes, truth divides. Why does this happen so much more on the right than on the left? Because the left is seeking to destroy – the church, the family, the West – and destruction requires little agreement. Use whatever tool you want, however you want. Just take it down.

 

But, on the right, we’re seeking to build something. And when you’re building something, you have to agree on a lot. What are you building? What materials should you use? Which tools? And, most importantly, what’s our foundation? As Christians, we hold that the foundation of any flourishing civilization is that we were created in the image of a God whose power transcends the government’s. He alone is the giver of rights and the determinant of right and wrong.

 

We can’t compromise on that, because without that truth, nothing else in conservatism holds together. Our job isn’t to compromise on our foundation for the sake of “unity.” It’s to do everything we can to pull people over to our side—to what’s good, right, and true.

And by the way, do not let known liars and frauds like Candace try to tell you that Charlie Kirk wanted nothing to do with Jews and others. This is what Charlie posted on April 5, 2018:

People ask my all the time where I get my ideas and arguments from.

I read @jordanbpeterson

I watch @benshapiro

I listen to @DennisPrager

Those three are by far the most effective, wise, intelligent, and impactful thinkers of our time!

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