Fun With Ben & Gavin

Recently on his podcast, California Governor Gavin Newsom interviewed Ben Shapiro at length. Shapiro, a failed screenwriter turned crypto-fascist ideologue (with the help of billionaire cash) gained notoriety at a young age when the New York Times referred to him as the cool kid’s philosopher. Today his boy-genius brand appears to be losing its potency, and not just because he recently turned 42. Because he is a mouthpiece for billionaires and enjoys close ties to several heads of the Israeli state, his views are increasingly at odds with the average American, whether they come from the left, right, or center. Recently, Shapiro has had to face increasing challenges from the far-right, perhaps a first in his career. While he remains a devout apologist for Israel’s apartheid and flagrant war crimes, this position has been challenged (mostly for terrible reasons) by several prominent conservatives. These include his former colleague Candace Owens, as well Tucker Carlson and the ‘groyper’ incel Nick Fuentes. The latter’s open embrace of fascism has already begun to displace Shapiro’s stale neoconservatism as the guiding ideology of the Republican Party mainstream. The assassination of Charlie Kirk appears to have only intensified these divisions, while Shapiro’s audience has been shrinking for some time now.

Although he is a shill for some of the worst people on the planet, one is almost tempted to feel bad for Ben Shapiro. Although he is a millionaire with a cushy job and access to powerful people, he never really looks happy (if you don’t believe me, just check the internet). Does he realize, on some level, that he sold his soul to the devil? Or is the loss of his Hollywood fantasies too painful for him to come to terms with? Shapiro seems most content when he’s reviewing movies on Daily Wire, or discussing Broadway musicals or classical music. One really wishes that he could’ve made this his full-time job: this would mean a more fulfilling career for Ben Shapiro and a great deal less fascist poison coursing through our airwaves for the rest of us.

Shapiro’s MO during debates is quite a good one for someone of his intellectual abilities: he talks at such a rapid pace, jumping from topic to topic while giving the opponent little time for refutation, that his arguments appear to contain more substance than they actually do. The best example of this during his interview with Newsom was when the two discussed individual and institutional investors buying up housing stock. Shapiro first attempted to minimize the problem by suggesting that these actions only made up a tiny percent of home purchases in the United States. He went on to suggest that wealthy investors, be they corporate institutions or individuals, have actually made the price of housing less expensive.

There is almost too much that’s ridiculous here to properly unpack, but let’s focus on a few key points. Shapiro says that the percentage of corporate purchases of real estate in California is “exorbitantly low” before Newsom interjects that this is only relative to the situation in other states. It is likely that Shapiro didn’t expect this level of pushback given Newsom’s relaxed, amiable tone throughout the conversation, but this does cause him to concede that in other areas of the country there is “pretty significant” corporate ownership of housing.This is a massive understatement. As I noted in an earlier post, “Wealthy investors purchased more than 30 percent of all single-family homes sold in Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona” in the year 2021, “while MetLife has projected that corporations and private equity firms could own as much as 40 percent of all single-family rentals by the year 2030.” It is no accident that billionaire investors are making real estate purchases outside of New York and California: after all, why purchase immensely expensive property in densely populated areas when they can be acquired for a song elsewhere?

Shapiro is suggesting that by increasing the supply of housing available to rent, wealthy investors are creating a more competitive market and thereby a general decline in prices. For this to be true, he’d have to ignore all the evidence that shows that these buyers directly collude with each other to limit competition in order to raise rents, which many have done to a dramatic extent. Shapiro’s entire argument is actually devoid of historical and institutional context. How did it come about that many Americans are struggling to rent homes, let alone buy them? If corporations are making housing cheaper, why is it that so many Americans continue to struggle with the high cost of living? Shapiro’s analysis seems stuck in the post-War ‘Golden Age’ of capitalism, which I’ve explored in my earlier analysis of housing in the 21^st century.

Shapiro is mainly a businessperson: in his single-minded pursuit of success, he has compromised several principles he once claimed to possess. One expects businesspeople to be transactional and opportunistic, but it is galling to see this same pattern of behavior from 2028 Presidential hopeful Newsom. Nearing the end of his final term as governor, Newsom appears desperate to appeal to the widest possible demographic range in order to shore up his electoral prospects. Evidently, he believes that the best way to do this is through relentless pandering. For liberal proponents of academic freedom, Newsom has shared performative photos of himself sipping lattes and reading “banned” books. For black and working-class voters, Newsom appeared on the ALL THE SMOKE podcast to spin tales about his supposed rough-and-tumble background. For Democratic stalwarts who are sick of the “when they go low, we go high” posturing, Newsom has taken to aping Trump’s all-caps style of tweeting, complete with thumbnails of cringeworthy AI slop.

When pressed by Shapiro to take firm positions on two key issues, Newsom offered cowardly answers that displayed his complete lack of fitness to serve as the nominee of a major political party. Shapiro, an anti-Arab racist who has publicly called for the ethnic cleansing of the occupied Palestinian territories, asked Newsom his opinion on the genocide charge (essentially demanding a repudiation). Newsom replied: “I don’t share that opinion as it relates to genocide. I do not agree with that notion. I’m also crystal clear on my love for Israel.” The governor apparently agrees more with this anti-Muslim activist than with the 77% of Democratic voters who believe Israel is guilty of genocide. The authoritative reports by Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and several prominent Israeli historians and human rights experts, as well as Holocaust survivors, do not merit a mention from Newsom or Shapiro.

Perhaps even more appalling were Newsom’s double-dealing comments on ICE. Shapiro attacked Newsom’s press office for referring to ICE operations as “state-sponsored terrorism,” to which Newsom appeared remorseful, muttering “yeah, I think that’s fair.” This capitulation is especially appalling coming less than a week after the state murder of Renee Good by ICE agents. Days later, Newsom appeared to reverse himself once again, referring to the recently-fired Border Patrol agent as “Gestapo Greg” immediately following the murder of Alex Pretti. The flip-flopping and pandering are endless.

This discussion is emblematic of America’s desolate media landscape. The form it had existed in has changed, since podcasts and TikTok reels are more watched, and probably more trusted, than most of the mainstream news networks. The content, however, calls to mind an old idea expressed by Noam Chomsky: “the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” One such acceptable public debate happening in today’s political sphere took place between a slick conservative (Newsom) and an arch-reactionary (Shapiro). Naturally, Americans who feel little or no affinity for these cynical grifters will feel like there is no place for them in the political and media mainstream. Hopefully this will lead them to seek out alternative news sources who will not filter out or shy away from reporting on the uncomfortable social and political truths about where this country is really headed.