@notpoliticallauren/TikTok
May 13, 2021, 7:57 am
TikTok videos are only a minute, but as it turns out, that’s all it took for a TikToker to break down how Ben Shapiro uses logical fallacies—though he’s smart enough to know better.
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The video comes from @notpoliticallauren’s TikTok account, and it has received 2 million views on the platform since it was posted there last month. More recently, it got a boost on Left-Wing TikTok account, sharing videos appearing to those on the left side of the political spectrum.
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While unpacking a cardboard box containing furniture, the TikToker breaks down how Ben Shapiro builds arguments seemingly catered to those who have a white supremacist viewpoint.
“Is Ben Shapiro smart?” she asks rhetorically. “Yes, he skipped two grades, and has a law degree from Harvard.” That might sound like a compliment, but it sets up for where she’s going next. “So he’s smart enough to know what logical fallacies are and how to avoid using them.”
She then points out that Shapiro “uses them all the time,” contending that he does so “to promote ideas of white supremacy.”
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In case you weren’t paying attention in your high school English class, she’s here for you. “It’s when you misstate your opponent’s argument and then you attack that version,” she explains. “For example, if you said to me, ‘Wow, it’s really hot outside today,’ and I said, ‘Oh, you think every day is hot? Well, yesterday, it was cold, so you’re an idiot.’”
She says Shapiro often uses those types of arguments to “dismiss overwhelming evidence of systemic racism.”
She uses one example where he appears to be trying to dismiss a video on this topic in a segment, stating, “The basic assumption of this video is that if your grandparents are rich in the United States, this means that you are rich.”
She counters with, “No one’s arguing that if you’re poor, it’s impossible to become rich. We’re saying that I’m more likely to be in a better position if my grandparents could build wealth and yours couldn’t.”
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She says that Shapiro knows this, and yet persists in the tactic. She notes, “He knows that if you dismiss all these things,” pointing to a list she’s overlaid on her screen that lists facets of systemic racism, “the only explanation for disparities like this,” then showing income discrepancies between whites and Blacks, “is white supremacy—that white people are somehow smarter or better.”
*First Published: May 13, 2021, 7:57 am
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