Ben Shapiro, DailyWire+, and the Face-Eating Leopards

By Chris Revelle | Think Pieces | July 20, 2024 |

By Chris Revelle | Think Pieces | July 20, 2024 |

Ah the conservative sphere, has there ever been a space so cannibalistic? Leftists have a reputation for infighting over split hairs and granular identity politics, but I think we could learn a few things about in-group brutality from the far right. Take JD Vance, a dough-faced grifter with a desperate beard on par with Ted Cruz’s. Even though he was anointed Vice President for the King of MAGA’s candidacy, as soon as the chuds learned his wife Usha is of Indian descent, they did their now-usual white supremacist freak out. It’s disgusting for sure, but it’s also morbidly fascinating to see the classically binary and elementary understanding of identity laid out quite this bluntly bare. It seems that JD Vance, who attributed his turn from unserious-yet-successful writer to unserious-yet-successful politician to the poor reviews the bad adaptation of his bad book got, may be in danger of being toppled for being a part of something his base despises: an interracial family.

Nick Fuentes:
“J.D. Vance also has an Indian wife and a kid named Vivek. All his kids have Indian names—so it’s like, what exactly are we getting here? And that’s not a dig at him just because I’m a racist or something. But who is this guy really?”
pic.twitter.com/2P7KD2k6IK

— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) July 16, 2024

You know who else is a frustrated creative who rose to prominence in the chudsphere despite identifying as a member of a social group the chuds hate? Ben Shapiro. That might’ve been a long-shot of a segue, but it’s no less accurate. Shapiro has been building out the Daily Wire’s entertainment offerings as a different delivery system for conservative values. He’s repeated the idea that “politics are downstream of culture,” a statement I don’t necessarily disagree with. However, I’d argue that the relationship between politics and culture is less linear than a river and closer to an endless figure-eight in which they influence each other simultaneously. That said, I can’t fault Shapiro’s logic here; he wants to effect a political shift in America by creating political media that sells his talking points. So off he went, releasing a slew of features and series through his streaming platform DailyWire+ like the school shooting action film Run Hide Fight, the homestead invasion flick Terror on the Prairie, the Bluey knockoff Chip Chilla (on associated streaming platform Bentkey), and weak-tea Family Guy-style animated series Mr. Birchum. As my language may indicate, I don’t think much of Shapiro’s output and I struggle to understand why someone would tune in to any of them outside of the desire to support conservative messaging in the media space. Setting aside how much I disagree with, for example, how Run Hide Fight attempts a “good person with a gun” type narrative to turn a tragedy (a school shooting) into an empowering fantasy, these releases don’t stand on their own as media. However, I never wagered that Shapiro’s own audience would agree with me, albeit for entirely different reasons.

The word “woke” is inescapable these days, another casualty of the far-right’s talents at stretching and diluting a word past all meaning and context. It’s used to express shock and consternation at any efforts at basic social justice, including the recognition of marginalized groups. One might expect “woke” to be leveled at something like The Acolyte for the high crimes of depicting people of color, queer people, and women, but probably wouldn’t anticipate the same accusations to fly at something the DailyWire puts out, especially if the whole goal is to express conservative values. Alas, Shapiro’s audience has been decrying his entertainment as yet another incursion of the woke mind virus. Terror on the Prairie was intended to be a star vehicle for Gina Carano, who you may recall was set to lead an entire franchise within the Star Wars vertical until she decided to say the dumbest shit she could think of and then blamed Disney for it. Despite Carano’s MAGA chud bona vides, Terror on the Prairie is “woke” for starring a woman who fights, shoots guns, and engages in action scenes. Curiously, though Run Hide Fight is quite similar ( an active woman fights back against school shooters), it was much more beloved. Perhaps the audience was enraptured by the opportunity to see a school shooting reframed as a heroic struggle, even if it allowed a woman to do the fighting.

Mr. Birchum, the most recent series to come from the DailyWire, is a cutaway-joke-fueled animated sitcom that desperately bites Family Guy’s style. To my pinko-lefty-queer eye, the series is desperately unfunny and lazily written, but if you ask the DailyWire’s audience, well… I’ll let YouTuber Pillar of Garbage show you:

Yes, simply the depiction of a gay person or a diverse friends group is woke now! It doesn’t matter that the show makes gross jokes at the expense of those communities, simply showing them is too woke. It’s very likely that including that kind of representation is a part of Shapiro’s larger goal to spread a conservative message to a wider audience. The logic appears to be that if they can depict conservative queer people and conservative people of color, the conservative messaging can reach a larger group of people. It makes normal sense to do that, but this is the chudsphere, and even slightly recognizing the humanity in the other is unacceptable!

You’ve almost certainly heard the much-memed phrase I never thought the leopards would eat my face. Its origins are a handy demonstration of its meaning: in 2015, the austerity-drunk British government announced further cuts to social services. During a public forum about it, a tearful mother who voted for the same Tory government that was making life much more difficult expressed shock, anger, and sadness about it. Writer Adrian Bott tweeted this in response:

'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

— Adrian Bott (@Cavalorn) October 16, 2015

The phrase became shorthand for the phenomenon of someone attaching themselves to a community that’s open about wishing to hurt them. We are unfortunately quite rich in examples: Candace Owens, Blair White, log cabin Republicans, they have all thrown themselves in with a political movement that openly wishes to strip them of rights, power, and place in public life, apparently assuming they will somehow be immune. It perhaps goes to show that everyone thinks they’re an exception above the rules because I’m not sure how much clearer those leopards can be in their desire to eat some sweet sweet face flesh. JD and Usha Vance certainly understand this feeling, and I suspect Ben Shapiro will too, in time. The backlash against DailyWire+, as hilariously dumb as it is, is modest, but growing. It could be the start, however, of a much grander face-eating at Shapiro’s expense. The extreme conservative community Shapiro serves is increasingly antisemitic. White supremacists like Nick Fuentes take occasional swipes at Shapiro and even former DailyWire fixture Candace Owens has done the same. White supremacy is inherently antisemitic, which places the proudly Jewish Shapiro on an inevitable path to have his face eaten by leopards sometime or another. Perhaps not now, perhaps the gripes over Mr. Birchum die down to nothing, but someday, his face will be eaten by the leopards he dances with for the same reasons they’ll devour Owens’ face: the people who scream about the “Great Replacement” won’t care how much Shapiro or Owens did for them, that they are the hated other is all that is needed. The face-eating leopard party is going to eat faces.