Robert and Cody Read Ben Shapiro's New Book | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

What this episode is about

The discussion focuses on the hosts' reactions to Ben Shapiro's latest book, reflecting on their previous critique of his fiction and highlighting the poor quality of his writing. They humorously express disappointment that Shapiro has released another book, despite the lack of success of his previous literary endeavor.

Key takeaways

• Ben Shapiro's latest book reads like a history lesson from a time traveler stuck in 2018.
• Attempting to channel C.S. Lewis without the writing chops is a bold choice—especially for a non-fiction piece.
• When civilization’s sinking, who needs floss when you can bleed out over ideological disputes?
• Shapiro's 'Lions and Scavengers' could be an allegory for modern debates: much roar, little substance.
• If 'scavengers' are critics, what does that make his fans—perhaps 'lions looking for a snack'?

Who speaks in this episode?

• Robert Evans (Host) · 43 min speaking
• Cody Johnston (Guest) · 21 min speaking
• Sophie Lerman (Host) · 7 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 10:00: Lions and Scavengers, Katie Stoll
2. 10:00 – 20:00: Lions and Scavengers
3. 20:00 – 30:00: J.R.R. Tolkien
4. 40:00 – 50:00: Lions and Scavengers
5. 50:00 – 1:00:00: Palestine Action

Notable quotes from "Robert and Cody Read Ben Shapiro's New Book | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"

• Here's the thing. I'm really upset. He announced he's had this new book out, but I remember like a year or two ago, a few years ago, he said he was working on a science fiction book. Yeah. Yeah,.

  about Lions and Scavengers · at 2:08

• Literally calls the quote cords of Mordor stand-ins for the Nazis and their allies. Now Tolken himself would have rejected Ben's claiming this wholeheartedly. He always…

  about J.R.R. Tolkien · at 25:56

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• J.R.R. Tolkien — Person · Referenced author / interpretive case study · 3 mentions · first at 25:27
  Discussed to rebut Shapiro’s implied reading of LOTR as a simple WWII/Nazi allegory; the speakers outline Tolkien’s politics and themes (power, industrialism) as not aligning with Shapiro.
• Katie Stoll — Person · Referenced collaborator / mutual friend · 1 mention · first at 1:32
  Mentioned as a mutual friend and prior collaborator on a long series dissecting Shapiro’s fiction novel; serves as context for the hosts’ history covering Shapiro’s writing.
  Didn't know it could do that. of the people who's happening here is a friend of ours, you and me, Cody. A friend of the pods, a friend of our mutual friend who we all miss right now, Katie stole.

Books & papers

• Lions and Scavengers — Book · Primary recommendation · 6 mentions · first at 2:47
  The main subject of discussion in the podcast, critiquing Ben Shapiro's latest book.

Companies & orgs

• Palestine Action — Company · Case study · 2 mentions · first at 57:11
  Mentioned in the context of protests in London against the Israeli government's actions in Gaza, which Ben Shapiro criticizes.
  It's it becomes clear here that opening sort of vignette about hundreds of thousands strong marching, their banners unfurled. This was him pulling from Tolken describing the…

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Oh my goodness. It's behind the behind bastards podcasters. Robert Evans show that you're listening to. This was not a good introduction. I I

0:11 Sophie Lerman, producer show. Is that what we're doing? Guess you making fun of me, Sophie? You making fun of me?

0:18 Do the same thing. Do it for here to laugh at me more. Cody Johnston will never laugh at you. Thank you so much.

0:26 Guest. Cody, you are the host of News, Some More, a podcast about news. Yes. And also a a a YouTube show about news.

0:37 Indeed. How you doing? I'm great. How you doing? Um, how are you? Yeah. Ah, no.

0:42 No. Everyone, no one's doing great. Come on. But you got to be pleasant, right? Uh,

0:49 I was at a friend's wedding the other week. He's like, "How you doing?" I mean,

0:54 right now, fine. in general. Bad open bar. So good. Yeah. Yeah. Outside maybe. I don't know. Uh yeah, I'm fine.

1:06 We're all We're all doing our best. Things are things are happening. Things are things are weird and happening and they're happening quickly and suddenly in many ways

1:18 they are uh they're happening here. You could say the things. Oh, I didn't know it could though. I didn't know it could do that. of the people who's happening here is a friend of of ours, you and me, Cody. A friend of the pods, a friend of our mutual friend who we all miss right now, Katie stole.

1:35 Hi, Ben Shapiro. Our buddy, our our our good comrade and colleague, my bandmate. He's in my band.

1:42 Yeah. Yeah. You for rocking out. Um Katie and you and I did a series of and also Sophie did a long series of podcast episodes. We went through the entirety of Ben Shapiro's unbelievably shoddy fiction novel. I mean, just some of the absolute worst pros I think either of us has ever encountered.

2:01 Um, it was bad enough that Ben has not written another fiction novel since uh the best of my knowledge.

2:08 Here's the thing. I'm really upset. He announced he's had this new book out, but I remember like a year or two ago, a few years ago, he said he was working on a a science fiction book. Yeah. Yeah,

2:20 like a science. I want to read that [ __ ] I want that. Like, don't do that. I don't need your

2:25 That's like a year of free content for me [ __ ] Book about No, like give me I know I'm late on my novel, but come on.

2:33 You don't have a real job. Like, yeah, just do it. Take your time off. Take off.

2:38 Oh my god. Uh, but we are doing a Ben Shapiro book episode because on September 2nd of this year, he published his latest non-fiction novel,

2:47 Lions and Scavengers, the true story of America. Yeah, this is and her critics. That's in That's in

2:55 and her critics. Yes, of course. parenthesis at the very bottom and tiny text. This is a fascinating choice for him. It seems like So, do you know like the um the abundance book? We don't need to talk about abundance or whatever, but that book uh firestorm on the internet uh seemed to be sort of written in a way that was intending for like well and then Kla Harris will be the president and then this book will come out.

3:20 That didn't happen. And so it's a the reaction was different. It's a whole other conversation sort of happening. Um,

3:26 it's like sitting down with a friend to like tell them that you're worried about like their their their like dental health while they're actively bleeding out from an arterial wound. And you're like, "Yes, I just really think you need to floss more." And oh, sorry. You spurted a little bit of that arterial blood right on my neck here. But yeah,

3:42 maybe rip the pages out of that book and use them to like stop the bleeding or something. Uh, and this book seems very like 2019 2018 coded. It's like what are you doing like doing this history stuff again? what like you're trying to it's like the what the project uh what did the Trump administration do the first time with their like project about like what real history is like how slavery didn't happen or whatever.

4:07 Yeah. Uh just that this this is a weird book I guess to come out now in my opinion. Uh but I haven't read it so maybe it's actually perfect for this exact moment.

4:17 It you know what it is? I'll tell you right now. We'll talk about this more. Ben Shapiro desperately wishes he were CS Lewis and you know CS Lewis talked about politics but in like a broader kind of philosophical sense uh

4:33 because he was and he was like a good writer you know and and Ben is not and Ben is also obsessed with like

4:39 petty culture war grievances and [ __ ] Uh, yeah. And this is him this is him trying to like really establish himself as a CS Lewis type thinker. Um, and it's not good like like that's that's my short but but we'll we'll go through it because I I have actually quite a lot to say about most of the introduction to this book is is part one. So Cody, you and I may be back repeatedly talking more about this.

5:07 Fair enough. So So five hours on the intro and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we haven't we're not even getting through all of that. Um, but I think you will also get the gist of his argument from this because Ben being Ben, most of this book is him just kind of repeating himself, right? Yeah.

5:25 Uh, but it opens with an inscription. This is like the dedication to the book. To the lions, the L is capitalized. The hunters, warriors, and weavers. Each of those words is capitalized. who build, defend, and maintain the greatest civilization in the history of mankind against the scavengers, the S is capitalized, who would destroy that civilization from within. Right. And that's essentially the thesis of the book, right? Is that you've got lions and scavengers. That's all of society.

5:53 Yeah. That's his whole thing. Um I can't wait to find out what he thinks is a lion, what he thinks is a scavenger. And what's funny here is first off, and I know I know this is petty, but I can't get over it, is that we're just this whole book, the basic premise of this, and he's trying to be kind of artistic by framing it as lions and scavengers, you know, like he's trying to be kind of philosophical, but his entire like the entire underpinning of that attempt is based on a wild factual inaccuracy about lions. Like out out the gate, none of this is right because lions and scavengers aren't separate things. And I'm going to quote very quickly from an article on Krueger Park, which is a wildlife national park in South Africa. Another lion fact not commonly appreciated is that lions are not just hunters, but scavengers as well, often chasing smaller predators like cheetah off their kills. In some

6:45 instances, up to 50% of a lion's diet can come from scavenging rather than hunting live prey. Lions are scavengers as much as they are hunters. Sometimes more.

6:56 Sometimes more. The whole you imagine he gets most of his information from the Lion King, right?

7:02 Right. Yes. This is all of his knowledge about lions is is from what he remembers of the Lion King and the fact that lions look impressive.

7:09 Yes. Exactly. But but there is something deeply meaningful about the whole root of his ideological argument here is that you've got lions which are conservatives, right? Which are the people who build culture and the people who like make everything good, right? And they're they're creators, you they they do the hard work of of forging civilization and then there's scavengers who just want to tear everything down and they're just mooching and and stealing and crit and attacking from within this thing that they didn't make. And of course the reality is that like well lions not only do they scavenge but most of their scavenging is them stealing kills from animals that did the actual hunting like hyenas and cheetahs, right? Like and then taking credit for it. Yeah.

7:51 Interesting. Interesting. It's uh he's just a bad writer. Like he's a bad writer. He's a bad thinker.

7:58 Also, like it's not even he couldn't even do he couldn't he couldn't stretch it. He couldn't stretch his like analogy past the and because if you're going to say lions, that's a specific animal. And then you're zooming out to say scavengers. Say vultures. Like pick a scavenger

8:17 to like lay like lions and vultures, whatever. But like it's just you're you're being specific with the first one and then vague like you're using a category for the second and it's just like it's just sloppy sloppy. It

8:29 it's also it's also evidence of like this thing that you see a lot with Ben and with other conservatives where it's like well you've never done anything in the world, right? Like you don't know anything about survival in the wilderness. If you did, you'd know that like scavenging and tra like hunting is a bad way to survive. Very few animals live just by hunting because it's hard and it burns a lot of calories. Like I I have taught me how to hunt is a great outdoors person, right? Extremely skilled. And they will admit it like if they had to survive on their own, 90% of their calories would be foraging and trapping because hunting is wildly inefficient. And if you can take a kill that someone else made or find something dead, that just works a lot better. It's what almost every animal prefers to do, right?

9:20 How to survive. Yeah. It just keeps you alive better. Um anyway, the introduction chapter opens and it's just titled London, England. And this is how it starts. Oh, cool. The tension lies at the core of our being. It royals us. It churns our guts. It boils our brains. The tension lies between two opposing forces. Those forces beat within every man's breast. They fight for supremacy within every civilization. One must triumph and one must fall. The spirit of the lion. The spirit of the scavenger. Again, lions are scavengers.

9:52 Lions are scavengers. The scavengers. There are specific animals you can choose. Lion.

9:57 It's actually very efficient. It's smart. Like also, your brain's boiling. I say that as a hunter and a scavenger. I pick up roadkill and I hunt. I also raise and slaughter animals. All of these things are ways to get calories. Um,

10:15 beyond that, beyond him getting lion facts, beyond like the premise of the analogy he wants to use,

10:21 right? The fundamental premise of this is just based on a complete misunderstanding of of wildlife. Uh beyond that, his attempt to apply a moral line to something fundamentally immoral, which is how different creatures take in their calories, shows a very conservative ignorance towards basic biological reality, which is what they're supposed to stand up for. You know, scavenging for food is not in any way worse than hunting for it. And every great predator, like the Tyrannosaurus Rex, paleontologists generally agree we're scavengers at least in equal measure to hunters, right? Because it's just not a great way to survive just hunting.

10:53 Yeah. You get what you can. Yeah. Exactly. You get what you can, you know, unless you're like a society.

11:00 Yes. Like you've got, you know, like working together to Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like Ben does pay someone to do your shopping for you, you know, because you don't your soft little hands. You're not going to go skin an animal. You're not going to do that, Ben Shapiro. You know,

11:13 hey, we don't know. You the cowboy hat chafes your head when you try to wear it outside.

11:18 Yeah. Got got a bunch of splinters when he held up that 2x4 outside. That 2x4, you know, he's still tired from that. He's still getting the splinters out of his hands from that one day he went to Home Depot to buy a single piece of wood.

11:28 Got to go scavenge some more calories to you get back to zero. Yeah. Anyway, after this we get a dramatic opening about how Ben is writing this introduction in London which quote has been conquered by the scavengers. Who is he defining as scavengers? You ask for

11:44 I don't ask that because I know the answer to that but you can you can go ahead. Yeah, it was it was it was pro Palestine anti- genocide protesters who were marching through the city. Ben writes, quote, "Hundreds of thousands strong, marching, their banners unfurled, the banners of terrorist groups and communists and of transgender activists gathered together to revolt against the civilization that has given them their rights and their prosperity and their power." And you know, he's writing about protests against the Israeli government's actions in Gaza, which he defines as protests supporting Hamas and the October 7th attacks. And obviously you can find people who you there were people who had Hamas flags. There were people cheering on the October 7th attacks. That's a thing that happened.

12:23 But that's not the primary reason there are protests. The primary reason there are protests and what most people is the the genocide is all the death.

12:30 It's what the UN just admitted it was. It's what the UN just doing. Like it's it's just that is

12:37 so God of course he's doing that. But also like actually pen they're not trying to uh like rail against or like destroy the society that like built everything. If they're trying to participate in that society,

12:47 they're participating in it by speaking and by trying to speak to power and make their voices heard. Also, the civilization didn't give them their rights. They had to take their rights or their predecessors did via protest and violence sometimes because societies don't just give people rights because they're nice. Those rights are fought for.

13:10 Well, yeah. like a lion, unlike these people who are fighting for it like scavengers.

13:16 Yeah. Now, um obviously in standard Shapiro fashion, he ignores the critiques these marchers have of the mass slaughter of civilians by a modern first world military in favor of raging at people who march around with flags and post on social media. He cites one commentator from Twitter who wrote after October 7th, "What did y'all think decolonization meant in response to those attacks by Hamas?" Uh, quote, "Her comment received nearly a hundred,000 likes." Wow. And it spoke to the very core of the scavengers. All hum inhumity against the lions is justified. And this is just classic Ben in classic conservatism, not just Ben Shapiro, of like this person made a dumb post that's obviously the same as tens of thousands of people getting murdered from air strikes

14:02 and starve to death. These are the likes. 100,000 likes to a bad post equal to the murder of thousands of equal to [ __ ] babies being incinerated. All equivalent. Yes.

14:13 Think of the likes. I I'm I'm actually I need to hold a moment of silence for the likes real quick.

14:18 For the likes. Yeah. Really? That's Thank you, Cody. We We sometimes forget the real victims here.

14:24 We do. We do. I also I'm just I am dreading how many [ __ ] times he's going to use the words lions and scavengers.

14:32 It's so much. It's so it's such bad writing already. I'm just like, "God, stop saying it."

14:38 CS Lewis would [ __ ] like give him pile drive him in frustration at how badly this is written.

14:44 At least name the lion. Like, and I'm not I'm not particularly a CS Lewis stand, but the man knew how to put together a sentence, right? Like, and he understood how to like not make me my head hurt while reading a book.

14:56 Or in Ben's words, you're boiling brain. Boiling your brain. Exactly. Boiling a brain in London. But we do see here kind of the ultimate reason for the framing of this book. Israelis are lions. Palestinians and people angry at their murder are scavengers. There's a particular irony in his horror at this scavenger gathering and quote the beating heart of what was once the center of Western civilization. Because London was only the center of Western civilization due to a vast centuriesl long program of what can only be described as scavenging, theft on a grand scale against an impossibly vast chunk of the globe. They stole from the rest of the world.

15:35 That's what imperialism is. They stole from India to build it everywhere they could.

15:42 They built it to themselves. They stopped 30 million people in Bengal. They wiped out entire like wiped out entire ethnic groups, you know, to get spices. Like it's it

15:54 Okay, you're making it really hard for me to say this is building. Yeah, but I'm going to try. Okay, so

16:02 clear example of building. They're build they build. Okay. Impossible. Uh no, you're you made made a good point. Um, I mean this all like this whole framing just goes back to that uh [ __ ] tweet from like right 25 or 15 years ago. Uh, his Israelis like to build, Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage.

16:21 Precisely. It's just that which he apologized for, by the way. He said it was stupid. He said it was a stupid tweet.

16:28 We'll talk about another thing that he apologized for in a little bit here, Cody.

16:32 And then you write a whole book about it. Yeah. So Ben expresses disbelief in the existence of groups like Queers for Palestine, which he he says was formed quote in solidarity with people who would throw queers off buildings at the first available opportunity if given half a chance. Meanwhile, his colleague Matt Walsh in the immediate wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination posted this. This was left-wing LGBT terrorism. There was never much doubt. Now there is none at all. All left-wing terror networks must be crushed. All of the terrorists and their helpers and funders must be arrested, prosecuted, and put to death. Yeah, these Palestinians want to kill queer people, unlike Ben Shapiro and his allies at the Daily Wire who want to put

17:11 Matt Hamas Walsh LGBT terrorists to death. Also, which I'm sure doesn't include everyone who's LGBT, just you know, whoever Matt Walsh thinks is a terrorist.

17:22 They make very clear. Uh I mean, now it's associating with anybody if Right. and people who associate with them, of course, fund them, you know, maybe

17:30 um in in ways that we still don't know. We still but but surely they do. It's not important to have that all ironed out right now.

17:37 Uh uh there are other tweets from Matt Walsh. Obviously, that's horrific. What a horrible what a what a [ __ ] terrible person. Uh but he's also he specifically has also uh been basically calling for um uh unity amongst all the factions on the right

17:55 uh in order to carry out what he's talking about crushing the left and like rounding up people and all this all the stuff he's talking about and public executions I believe he's talking about as well.

18:04 Oh yeah Charlie Kirk had talked about public executions. Oh of course. Yeah. Well you need to see him uh age 12 I think is the appropriate age for for watching that according to them. Um,

18:14 yeah. But so he's calling for uh uniting um all the uh right-wing factions in order to do this. So which I mean I guess a good phrase instead would be to unite the right.

18:25 So sure. Yeah. Maybe he's actually calling to unite with people who actually would want to do the same thing to Ben. Like if you're calling to unite the right in order to do this, then you're calling to unite very very faright um sorry to say like neo-Nazis. uh who would want to kill the Jewish people who are in the coalition much like Ben is saying that Hamas wants to do to gay people.

18:54 Yeah. Um just seems like I don't think they I don't think they really understand what they're saying or

19:00 no recognize recognize these inconsistencies or consistencies to them. Who knows?

19:05 They and they don't care, you know? None of that doesn't matter like to them. What matters is crushing their enemies, right? like the fact that there's lo that these are they aren't logically consistent. It's about power. It always has you know and there's there is a lot that's disingenuous about this framing though and it's worth getting into that. One thing is that uh as of May 2025 uh per UNICEF regional director Edward uh Bike Better more than 50,000 children have been killed or injured by Israel in the Gaza Strip. These kids had no power or frankly desire to throw anyone off of buildings. Right. Like the people marching

19:39 but they might one day. I'm sure I'm sure you know you can find people who are delusional in any group, but I know a lot of queers who are angry about what's being done in Palestine and they're not they're not they don't they're not laboring under a misapprehension that Hamas is woke. They're angry that kids and women and children of nothing to do with Hamas or any other armed group are being murdered. That's what they're angry about cuz it's bad. Like

20:02 Yeah, it's bad. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's very obvious, uh, that that's the situation, but they don't they they again, they don't care.

20:10 If there's a if there's a mass shooting at a church that believes things I don't like, I'm not not going to be angry about the mass shooting because the pastor of the church said something shitty and like like that doesn't make it okay that kids got shot. Do you understand that? Like it's it's horrific.

20:28 Yeah. Yeah. And we can say we can say that without the the the queers for Palestinian people aren't marching in the street because they they aspire to make their civilization identical to how the Gaza Strip is run. They're marching because they're angry that civilians are being killed, right? And they understand rightfully that the average person in the Gaza Strip has absolutely no control over what [ __ ] Hamas does. uh like and like

20:56 you can call those you can call those things uh horrific uh crimes against humanity and not have to be like but also I don't want to do Hamas stuff here because they would they have like

21:09 Yeah. It's like are you bummed out when you read about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Yes, I can be bummed out about that. I [ __ ] talked to a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. She was like seven when it happened. She's not responsible for the empire. Like me being bummed about us nuking Japan doesn't mean I'm pretending Japan, the empire of Japan was a good society. It wasn't like

21:32 Yeah. It's recognizing to kill kids. Yeah. Their crime was being born in a certain place, right, at a certain time. And that's actually not a crime.

21:41 Yeah. It should certainly shouldn't be treated like one, right? Um, and you know, again, are there [ __ ] in any ma ma mass movement who try to hijack the momentum of a larger number of people to push their own [ __ ] up [ __ ] including like uncritical worship of violence used by a group? Sure. And Ben Shapiro knows full well what it's like to uncritically endorse violence against civilians. In 2002, he wrote an article stating that he wasn't the least bit concerned about civilian casualties in Afghanistan or the West Bank. And the insinuation was that this extended generally to the war on terror.

22:14 He expressed a belief that the life of a single American soldier mattered more than the life of any number of Afghan civilians. And while he apologized for this article being badly written later, the next year he wrote an article for Town Hall in which he argued in favor of allowing Israel to quote transfer Palestinians and Israeli Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Israel proper. That's just an ethnic cleansing.

22:37 Yes. Transfer is not a dirty word, I think is the title of that piece. Uh uh yeah. Uh like they're like citizens. You realize that, right? Like I It doesn't matter cuz they're not, you know,

22:51 I feel like he only really apologized for like like you're saying it being poorly written, which Ben apologized for everything ever written then.

22:58 Uh but not the actual argument. I don't think I don't think he's actually he ever actually said like and I don't think we should be doing this. Um or he did and then changed his mind back.

23:09 Yeah. I think both of those things have happened. Now during this rant, Bin first starts referring to and again going sorry off on a tangent. This the protests last year in London against the the genocide in Gaza. During this rant, Ben first starts referring to the Lions collectively as the pride with a capital P in order to differentiate from the so-called scavengers as a group. He accuses scavengers of being willing to do quote anything to tear down the pride. This is not mere anti-semitism. Anti-semitism is an age-old hatred rooted in a conspiracy theory. It takes many forms and has countless victims.

23:46 This is something different. It is a united coalitional hatred of the re of the west. Now, this is actually where I come closest to agreeing with Shapiro in a certain sense because the primary motivating factor of these protests is not anti-semitism. There have been and I agree. One factor at play within many people protesting against Israel's actions here is a coalitional hatred of what Ben defines as the West. But while he tries to describe this as an unreasoning hatred of Western civilization, it's a very clearly a hatred of what Western governments do to specific groups of people.

24:22 Exactly. Yeah. Right. Like the decades of support for Israel's continuing Yeah. actions that are have been genocidal and quasi genocide for quite some time. constantly does this um I mean with many different topics and and issues but he's conflating

24:37 I mean basic criticism of actions like it's not it's not saying like these values that you pretend to have are evil. It's not about like western values or anything like that. It's about specific actions being taken that should be able to be criticized without you saying like, "So, you hate everything we've ever done and everything we believe in?" Well, if it's this, then yeah, I guess. But that's not what is actually being said or claimed.

25:08 Right. Right. Right. And we will continue uh and get to Ben talking about J.R. Tolki, which I am excited to chat with you about, Cody. But first,

25:19 let's have some ads. And we're back. So, after introducing this protest and starting his scavengers and the pride, you know, discourse, Ben pivots to discussing the Lord of the Rings. And it's it becomes clear here that that opening sort of uh uh vignette about hundreds of thousands strong marching, their banners unfurled. This was him pulling from Tolken describing the army barbarians of the armies of Mordor marching on Minister, right? Uh he's not he's not like sly clever. It's obvious what he's doing.

25:53 No. And he gets very direct here. He he literally calls the quote cords of Mordor stand-ins for the Nazis and their allies. Now Tolken himself would have rejected Ben's claiming this wholeheartedly. He always rejected. He hated it when people like accused the Lord of the Rings of being rooted in real history and his World War I experiences. Um, and I do tend to be in the camp of like, well, obviously I mean a little at least a little bit both World War I and World War II in influence.

26:23 I'm sorry. I just right now that said, and again you Lord of the Rings, in case you you didn't know, was written mostly between 1937 and 1949. the the trilogy that was like the the bulk of the writing. It wasn't published until the 50s, but that's when he was like doing most of his writing and editing. Um, and I would agree with Ben that like there's clearly some World War II in The Lord of the Rings. But it's also not accurate to say the hordes of Mordor are just stand-ins for the Nazis and their allies. That's that's not really true. And I think it's worth discussing J.R.R. Tolken's personal politics here. um because like most peoples they are complex and not entirely consistent and sometimes incoherent. For an example, Tolken on a number of occasions described himself as an anarchist and described himself as an anarchist in ways that are like relatively like recognizable to modern day anarchists. He he talked about his

27:18 hatred of power. He expressed a a disgust for industrialism that is very much in line with how some anar primitivists talk today, right? Not entirely so. But his his fundamental dissection of like why he was an anarchist is very much like relevant to modern day anarchists. He thought people were not fit to hold power over people. Right? This is an important belief. The the the ring of power, right?

27:44 That is effectively a an object in which all of like polit like all political power, all power of the state is is sourced into. Right. It's not it's not super subtle, right? Yeah. There's certainly a reading of the Lord of the Rings that's very much anarchist. And at the same time, Tolken was, for example, uh not an uncritical but a supporter of the Franco regime during the Spanish Civil War, largely because he was horrified at the killings and what he saw as the unjustified murders of nuns and priests and whatnot um by in some cases anarchists, right? Um and so again this is not a like most people Jared Tolken's political beliefs were not entirely coherent or consistent you know

28:29 contextual yes however what I can say is that Jarro Tolken was not at all in alignment with Ben Shapiro's politics and would have been disgusted by them. Tolken was a firm anti-Nazi. who was also very anti-S Stalin, but he was regularly critical of conservative icon Winston Churchill, who he described as looking like the biggest ruffian in photographs from the Tehron conference. Right? So he he said basically standing next to [ __ ] Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill looks like a scumbag,

29:01 which is not something Ben Shapiro would ever say. Uh I I want to read from you. There's a I found a summary of a letter that Tolken sent his son Christopher in December of 1943 that gives you an idea of how little Tolken's personal politics graph onto Ben's ideological schema. Tolken lamented that the globe was getting smaller, duller, and flatter, foreseeing American sanitation, moral pep, feminism, and mass production introduced everywhere, which would at least cut down travel. Colonel Knox said that 1/8 of the world spoke English, which Tolken called a damn shame. He called for the curse of Babel to strike all tongues and considered refusing to speak anything but old mercen.

29:37 Seriously, Tolken found a cosmopolitan uh cosmopolitanism terrifying. He was unsure if victory would be much better for the world as a whole. This was the sentiment of a lot of folk, but it it indicated no lack of patriotism. Tolken loved England, but not Great Britain and certainly not the British Commonwealth. But were he younger, Tolken figured he would be grousing in the military, willing to go to the bitter end and hoping that things might turn out better for England. Again, you know, you can find Tolkien had some issues with uh like feminism like or what he saw as feminism, but he also he hated like American capitalism. He was disgusted by like advertisements. He was disgusted by the culture of consumption. And he was disgusted by the flattening of culture, by the idea that everyone would need to speak, you know, English, by the idea that American culture would flatten the world, right? He found this personally

30:31 horrifying and disgusting. Um, which is like the opposite of Ben's politics. This he was not and he was not pro the British Empire. He was in fact deeply critical of the British Empire for the reasons established in the letter above. He hated the flattening of cultures around the globe under burgeoning capitalism and was disgusted by the domination of peoples around the world by foreign powers. The beliefs he most consistently expressed throughout his adult life were a sort of anti- capitalist, anti-industrial sentiment based around a hatred of pollution and the destruction of the natural world.

31:04 But he was clear in his letters to his son and others that he saw America and Americanism as the central culprits in this.

31:10 I mean, that's what Mordor was basically modeled after, right? Like and like the orcs too.

31:16 Like Yeah. But like the orcs like sprouting up from the ground and like destroying the planet and all that uh stuff that we apparently love now.

31:24 Yes. Like like there's some Germany in Mordor, but there's more than a little of the United States there, too. And quite frankly, more than a little Great Britain. you know he was not because he was looking at the industrialization that had happened in his own country too. This is something that horrified him right if Tolken were somehow to have survived to the present day and gotten involved in like a film version of the Lord of the Rings and been had any choice in casting a voice actor for Sauron. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd s wind up sounding like a Californian.

31:55 Right. That's a little bit I I be a little bit particular, but like that's that's he expresses feelings in line with that, right? Like like I can tell you one thing that conservatives are are on about in this country that he would have hated is the idea that like everyone needs to speak English. What the [ __ ] are you talking about? Like

32:13 Yes. Yeah. Like Yeah, that's Yeah. Anyway, after quoting a passage from Return of the King describing the armies of Mordor marching on Minister, bin Shapiro writes, "So it goes today in London. The lions are gone and without the spirit of the lion, our civilization collapses." What is the spirit of the lion? The spirit of success, of responsibility, of duty. Now, I should note here, Cody, lions sleep up to 18 hours a day. They have intensely matrineal family groups. It the the women run and like are in charge as a general rule in lion society. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, they steal and scavenge food regularly from kills made by better but physically weaker predators like hyenas. I know it's probably silly for me to keep returning to the bill doesn't know a goddamn thing about lions well, but paragraphs like this drive me [ __ ] crazy. Cody, the lion is a hunter.

33:10 Creative, audacious, innovative. He bends the world to his will. He forges new paths and crafts new solutions. When faced with a problem, the lion does not complain about the unfairness of life. He seeks an answer. The lion is bold and persistent. Failure does not unnerve him. It teaches him. The lion knows that boldness of purpose and willingness to undergo risk are the driving forces of any successful civilization. He believes in the words of Proverbs, where there is no vision, the people perish. And I mean,

33:38 he's really stretching this really, really, really far. I I'm not Let's avoid the biological critiques here. If we're just talking about conservatives,

33:48 the opposite of what you do is find new solutions to problems or forge new paths. You're violently offended by the idea of forging new paths and new solutions. Novelty disgusts you, Ben Shapiro. You're a arch conservative.

34:03 Conservative. What's the There's one bit also about like uh like they don't whine. I know that's not what the

34:09 Oh my god. Yes. Yeah. No, he's saying that they don't complain. The land does not complain about the unfairness of life. That's literally your job, Ben,

34:14 buddy. Like, that's all you conservative's job. That is the only way you've ever president's job. He's constantly talking about how everything is unfair to him specifically.

34:25 Well, and it's just the only way you've ever You got rich complaining, Ben. That's what you do for a living.

34:33 Business model. Yeah. Complain and then sell leftist tears mugs, right? What are you talking about? Lion. Uh, it's absurd. Uh, I think there's also uh Ezra Klein did an interview with Ben. Uh, yeah. Not, you know, whatever. Um, but like Ben's like talking about like lions and he's like, "Yeah." And then, you know, they build the social fabric and all this kind of stuff.

34:57 Trump's entire project is to tear down the social fabric. That's not the line that you're talking about. Literally in 2019, Ben was on like Bill Maher or something and he's like, "Yeah, I didn't vote for Trump in 2016 because I didn't want him to to uh break the social fabric." But he did. So now I'm going to vote for him because he's already broken the social fabric like a scavenger maybe.

35:26 Yeah. Right. It's just the whole thing is just like not it's just a mess. Uh yeah, it it's a mess and it's like you ultimately Ben I don't really think I know you believe in things and and to be honest to be entirely fair there I can think of one time in his life where Ben took a principal moral stand when he got really angry.

35:48 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like that. So was it Luendowski who grabbed his colleague? Yeah. He like was physically aggressive towards like a female employee.

35:57 No, he left. It was uh yeah I I've mentioned that exact thing before. I was like yeah good.

36:01 So he does unlike a lot of these guys Ben does believe in some things but his beliefs are very fluid right and his his morality is very fluid you know um so inconsistent. He he became a political pundit when he was 17 like he's got to he's got to do that. um he wasn't he wasn't ready for that and he decided to do it. And uh so much of uh his uh he's just constantly inconsistent. Everything he purports to like believe in socially uh in the conservative sphere is not something like he lives. He's like he's like a theater guy with a doctor wife. He stays home and like does podcasting and takes care of the kids. Like that's not that's not what he purports that people should be doing. Um

36:46 No. No. Um, now Ben goes on to describe the lion as quote a warrior who understands the spirit of the scavenger is always abroad and that only strength can defend against it.

37:00 Then he and again the lions are the scavengers hiding in his need to defend against whatever.

37:05 Warriors are you like doing like now they're like people doing like whatever. The lions aren't warriors. They don't have wars. They fight.

37:12 Exactly. Exactly. You're saying lions are warriors. What are you talking about? That's that's just not anyway whatever. Then he brings in a he brings up another much better writer CS Lewis claiming the lion lives by these words. And he's quoting this is a quote from CS Lewis right that he Ben says describes how the lion lives. Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point which means at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chased or honest or merciful only on conditions.

37:44 Now, that's a very good point from CS Lewis. I don't think Ben understands what this sentence means.

37:49 It's a good sentence. Yeah, because I mean his whole being disgusted and horrified at Trump and then voting for him and supporting him because he won and pivoting like that's that's him yielding to danger, a danger to his career, a danger to maybe his personal health. Uh,

38:07 I mean that's what the entire conservative that's what the entire GOP did that we saw we all saw it live in 2015 2016 it happened we saw Ted Cruz go out there and say vote your conscience and then like four weeks later he's sweaty on the phone being like vote for Trump please

38:21 right um and that's yeah exactly exactly and that's that's been that's all like I agree with this CS Lewis quote it's a a very well-ritten and accurate point to make and Ben does not understand it at all because he is incapable of living that Um, Ben's entire career has been built on taking money from the mega rich to push a very specific kind of propaganda. He wouldn't know courage if it bit him in the ass, and he has never had to stand up for what's right in a way that meant taking on any meaningful personal risk. Lewis's quotation here is excoriating men like Ben Shapiro who lack any meaningful virtue because they've never had to stand up to any kind of danger. I would like to introduce Ben to another quote, one that might be more relevant to his own stated political aims and the aims of the party he supports. This is from a 1946 letter CS Lewis sent to a professor friend of his collected in of other worlds essays

39:11 and stories. Quote, "Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep. His cupity at some point be sated. And since he dimly knows he is doing wrong, he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of heaven will torment us indefinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.

39:41 Well, there it is. I mean, that's like it's just like they're just it's just now they're supporting a a robber baron who is leading

39:55 this back this theocratic movement like he's talking about he's just doing both. It's so

40:01 CS Lewis failed to to consider you know what actually what if you get a robber baron to lead your theocratic movement that's wild man.

40:10 There we go. There we go. Speaking of robber barons, Cody, the sponsors of this podcast.

40:18 Yeah, get them. There we go. Got them. Hell yeah. And we're back. So, thank you. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you.

40:31 So, we just I just read a quote from CS Lewis, who uh I guess I just care more. I simply crave it, you know.

40:39 It's It's my heroin. Also, heroin. No, I don't do heroin. Um anymore. No, I've never done it.

40:45 I mean, according to RFK Jr., it helps you focus in school. It does. It makes it great easy to focus.

40:51 Yeah. Focus on being on heroin. Yeah. So, didn't know I was on heroin until I did it. Now it's all I can

40:59 The only heroin I've ever taken I licked off a guy's finger at a cafe in rural India.

41:04 That's fair. It was a nice afternoon. So, we're talking about CS Lewis who Ben Shapiro just brought up.

41:13 Not licking heroin off of fingers. Yeah. No, we're not. Although I'd do it again. So, it's worth Well, maybe not in this fintel era. Anyway, uh it's worth noting that in 1951 when Winston Churchill and his Conservative Party retook the UK government, the Prime Minister's office wrote Lewis a letter offering to gift him an honorary title, commander of the British Empire. And CS Lewis declined. Not because he wasn't conservative. He was that that that's the the most accurate box to put him into. Um but because he was worried that if he accepted he would it would turn him into a political figure which would diminish him as a writer and a thinker because well again he would talk philosophically about philos political like things that kind of were adjacent to politics. He was kind of disgusted at the idea of being like what Ben Shapiro is you know like being a political

42:02 propagandist. Yeah. Um right. He thought that was gross because it is well because and you can you know in in your own way it's like I guess like propaganda kind you know to put those sort of thoughts and in your in your work as Orwell would say all art is propaganda right but I don't think Lewis believed that you know

42:18 but there's a huge difference between doing like doing your art and expressing yourself in that way and being like well I'm going to start an organization that does propaganda for the regime.

42:28 Yeah. That that gets literally paid by oil billionaires to write propaganda supporting oil. Yes. Um, and again, Lewis would have obviously, well, not maybe not obviously if you don't know him, but Lewis would have fallen on the more conservative axis of politics, certainly more conservative than progressive, but one of his most consistent stances was a sort of disgust at political hacks and politicians. Now, where Ben where Lewis would align with Ben Shapiro is he had a strong belief in natural law and in a sort of objective moral reality, which he saw as necessary to accept in order to be able to criticize groups like the Nazis. In other words, Lewis wrote that if there was no right, in like a greater cosmic sense, by what standards could we judge the Nazis as being wrong? And I don't agree with Lewis in this. I'm just describing his beliefs here.

43:11 Um, at the same time though, like his friend Tolken, he expressed horror at the two occupations that he worried would doom mankind. The magician who quote sought power over nature and the astrologer who quote proclaimed nature's power over man. And I want to quote from a write up on cslewis.com here. The former thought led many to think man can do everything. The latter strongly suggested he can do nothing. Lewis saw modern scientists as the sons of the magician who believe every ill in the world can find a cure in science. From the astrologer came the philosophical materialist who believed man is nothing but a slave to nature, his animal instincts. And one thing we see here is that despite having a belief in absolute morality, Lewis tended to reject simple dichotoies like the one Ben presents us with in his very bad book. He presented readers with two archetypes in opposition, either of which would doom

44:02 mankind if worshiped or followed beyond reason. Lewis isn't saying science is bad. And he's not saying that like like belief in the natural world is bad or like kind of yielding to nature's power is bad, but making either of those like the kind of center of your being is bad. Right.

44:21 Right. Because he's also not saying there are two types of people. No. No. He's not one or the other. He's saying bad. Yeah. Exactly. You know,

44:32 and this is something that Ben would never do. been glories in presenting a false and limited choice to the reader and then describing one of those choices as inherently good and the other is inherently bad. Lewis was a believer in natural hierarchies and a critique of democracy which he felt was the best system overall but also was not a good system and he believed that among other things one of the problems democracy had is that it must ultimately destroy education right that like because of the way democracy functions it's going to like [ __ ] up the educational system

45:08 sort of like overtaking facts and reality and sort of you know He's not entirely wrong about obviously other democracies do better. So I don't agree with him this is inherent but it can happen right.

45:19 Uh yeah a lot of things can happen in a lot of bad things can happen in a democracy.

45:23 Exactly. Exactly. And Lewis was also he was deeply critical about technological process and the worship of machines in a way that makes me pretty certain he'd have rejected AI violently. Both both he and Tolken would have been on the bomb data center side if they would be radicals about that. Like if you could bring both of those guys forward and explain to them what Sam Alman is trying to do, they would try to buy a gun. Like I like they would be extremists.

45:50 Uh using I mean even like using the AI for like uh fake like like things like dead people have said and like the the ghost the ghost AI stuff they're doing. All all of it is

46:02 if you explained to him like the how much water and pollution are created by data centers, he would like [ __ ] Token especially would lose his mind. Like I he he never imagined anything that awful. Like it's just

46:16 it's no good. Um anyway, not Yeah. Not even like taking into like account what it does exactly. Yeah. What it can create or create in quotes, I guess. Yeah. Now Lewis did believe that you could reform bad political systems through Christian education. But he also like that was his solution to the problems democracy causes for education. But he was also against mandating Christian principles in public education. Right? So what we see in Lewis is a mix of some values and stances that could very easily be mapped to things that Ben himself believes.

46:47 There are some. But mixed in with this is a fundamental distrust of giving humans power. one that makes me equally certain he'd have disliked the argument that Ben is making here about lions and scavengers. In his book, Present Concerns, Lewis wrote, "I don't deserve a share in governing a hen roost, much less a nation, nor do most people who believe advertisements and think in catchwords and spread rumors. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows."

47:19 He would hate so much about be so unhappy. Like he'd be like the internet memes, meme culture, like like all god he would hate.

47:27 Again, not at all woke. Just absolutely not. Yeah. Just disgusted with like Christian as he was not a theocrat.

47:36 Exactly. Yeah. Every single AI post that the Department of Homeland Security puts up, like every single thing they're doing [ __ ] mind.

47:43 Despise this. Oh yeah. grotesque. Gosh. Yeah. Now, after quoting Lewis, Ben introduces another wrinkle to his lion scavenger dichotomy. The pride of lions is split up between three subarchet types. The weaver, who quote weaves together the disperate strands of family and society and often goes unnoticed, but quote are the true heroes of our civilization and the hunters, the warriors, and the weavers form a pride together. It is kind of unclear to me what separates the hunters from the

48:13 I was gonna ask like describe the hunters and the warriors. The weavers are like women. That's the place women have in the pride is they're the weavers, you know.

48:21 Yeah. Well, the the men get two two groups to choose from. That's right. They get to hunt or war

48:27 or be a warrior. Yeah. All right. I Anyway, and again, also Ben uses warrior and hunter more or less as synonyms in this book. It's just he's he's bad writer.

48:36 He's not a good writer. After establishing this, the subsets of the of the pride, the the the categories inside the pride, Ben acknowledges that lions have to create a system of rules, which they absolutely don't because they each have the spirit of the scavenger in them. And so, they have to always be on guard against being overtaken by that. And again, half of their calories they get from scavenging. They're not on guard against it. It's how they survive. the pride has a spirit of of scavengers or individual individual lines in them.

49:07 Then what are you talking about Ben? He what he's trying to say is that like even you know conservatives we we have the like the the the he's describing the scavengers liberals and leftists as like people who are lazy and just want to steal from other people and also tear down what other people have built. And Ben is trying to say that like that is a that that there's that voice in all of us that we have to be on guard against, right? Like that's what he's trying to say, right?

49:33 Yeah. Um because also in that same interview about this book, uh they bring up Vance and uh Ben basically admits that like yeah, the current version of Vance is a bit of a scavenger. He's doing all these things. He like

49:49 describe Vance. Yeah. Oh, 100%. Um like he's like yeah the uh the hillbilly elegy era he was like a lion which like maybe he was a scavenger the whole time Ben who you know

49:59 how is that being a lion he's literally just okay I know we don't need to talk but like it it's just it's absurd. Um but it was was interesting that he is willing to recognize that uh there are scavengers amidst I don't even know if he thinks Trump's a lion or not but uh that whole that whole group of people. Yeah, I it's Yeah. Um, next after this, we get one of the least coherent sections of the book thus far. A pride of lions can accomplish nearly every nearly anything unless the pride falls to the pack. And pack is capitalized, too. To the spirit of the scavenger. The spirit of the scavenger is the spirit of envy.

50:46 I I I it means nothing. It's so fundamentally irrational because the foundation of this the whole life you're just wrong entirely about like none of this makes sense. It's like if I were to write a book about like [ __ ] uh I I I don't even know how to like make a bad enough analogy.

51:08 It's too bad. It's too bad. You can't cuz also when you say the word pack and you capitalize it. I'm thinking of wolves which wouldn't you be able to use

51:18 for your other like you can you can they're so interchangeable. It's like if I were to write a book called the horse and the ant and start it with like obviously the horse soarses high above all of us on its mighty wings and like

51:31 meanwhile the ant looming over the horse like okay. Um, so I debated whether or not to discuss the fact that Ben himself is clearly motivated by a deep spirit of envy, right? His initial career goal, as you and I have talked about on several podcasts, Cody, was to write for Hollywood. He wanted to be a screenwriter. He wanted to write TV and movies and he failed in this goal because he's not good at it, right? And the Daily Wires

51:57 movie like is also a massive waste of money. Horrible idea because none of them are good writers. Hey, you wait until they do the anti-woke Snow White, okay? That's going to be really, really good.

52:09 That's gonna really blow up. Yes. The audiences are craving. The children cry out demanding anti-woke Snow [ __ ] White.

52:17 You can hear them now. They're just not anti-woke. Snow White is Snow White mean like the 60s. It's not woke. I don't Anyway, I

52:25 It's because they made a new one and the actress wasn't white enough. I haven't been keeping up with the [ __ ] Disney.

52:31 Don't. Yes. But I I think it's important to hear the spirit of envy is the mot is the primary that's the center of Ben Shapiro's soul. Right? It is quite obvious reading his angry rants against Hollywood which have motivate he's that's a huge amount of his writing and it's what the Daily W he's tried to make the Daily Wire they've wasted millions trying to create their own Hollywood because his hatred of the left its origin I in a lot of ways I'm not going to say this is the only origin point but a major source for his hatred of the left is because he sees Hollywood as a fundamentally leftist institution that refused to give him the respect he deserves that didn't recognize his brilliance Right. That is Ben Shapiro's origin story as a villain is that he couldn't hack it as a [ __ ] professional screenwriter.

53:19 Yes. About 85%. Uh yeah. Like growing up fundamentalist religious conservative all that kind of stuff, you know,

53:27 did not help. But that is that resentment uh fueled by envy is 100%. Yeah. And he can only see this as an example of Hollywood hating conservatives like him, right? It has to be bigotry. That's the because that's the only way he could not succeed, right? And you know, he has to ignore a lot in order to believe this. If he were to look at reality, he would see that plenty of conservatives have been very successful in Hollywood. Screenwriters like David Mamemoth and John Millius, right? Or Millius, I always forget, the guy who did Red Dawn, right? Uh actors like Kelsey Grammar and John Voit, not to mention Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who feels more like a Democrat today, but was the literal Republican governor of California, right? There's plenty of successful conservatives in Hollywood as actors and writers, right? Clint Eastwood writer director massively successful,

54:16 incredibly talented, uh, very conservative person. Plenty of conservative like movies that are conservative. And I just think about how many during the war on terror, how many TV shows and movies had a scene where the guy has to torture someone to save lives, right? That is conservative propaganda. even though it's like made by a lot of like self, you know, self-described libs or whatever, like that is there, it's still conservative uh ideologically. Um, but we're but we're in America, so we don't recognize that all of that is in service of a more right-wing viewpoint.

54:54 Um, and he resents it. And I mean, we're seeing it now with all this like move to like

55:00 I'm not even going to say cancel culture because that's not what it is. is not what is going on. Um, but like the firing of all these people is is an expression of that resentment because they want to do it. They want to be doing it,

55:12 right? And there Yeah. Part of it is if I get them out, then clearly I'll people will finally I'll get a shot and people will realize I was better.

55:18 Finally, late night with Gutfeld. Um, right. And obviously, you know, Ben did not fail to make it in Hollywood because people were bigoted against his conservatism. He failed because he's not a good writer. his only talent is in agitating people with cheap political shots. This is very funny because the next paragraph of the book after that line about the spirit of the scavenger is the spirit of envy, the very next paragraph is basically Ben describing himself. Quote, "The scavenger does not believe in an understandable universe in which success is the result of performance of duty. Instead, the scavenger believes that any such argument is a guise for power and power alone." The scavenger in his perverse projection believes that there is a great conspiracy against him and that the only path to success lies in tearing away at that great conspiracy with tooth and claw.

56:04 That's just you, man. Ben, you got to you got to read that again. Ben, that's like your whole life. That's your That's your entire like career buddy.

56:13 That's your first book was about that. Your first book was about the conspiracy against you and you specifically and conservatives generally. Yes, that's like that's your whole life, bro. Now, Ben goes on to write that while lions form a pride, scavengers form a pack. Is it a problem from a writing standpoint that pack and pride are basically synonyms? No. I mean, it should be, but can you describe lions as having a pack? Sure.

56:42 Right. I guess you couldn't describe other like pride doesn't go both whiskey thing, right? Anyway, the pack consists of lutters, lechers, and barbarians. Uh, the fall of London, he writes, is symptomatic of the growing power of the pack. And reading this, reading him write about the fall of London felt particularly ridiculous in 2025, given that about a month before Bin's book was published, London police arrested 474 people at a Palestine action ban protest. Per the BBC, police have arrested 474 people at a demonstration in London in support of the ban group Palestine Action. The Metropolitan Police said 466 protesters were arrested for supporting the group. Five for assaults on police officers, two for public order offenses, and one for a racially aggravated offense. Scores of people simultaneously unveiled handwritten signs with the message, "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action at the protest organized by

57:38 Defend Juries at Westminster's Parliament Square." It was the biggest protest since the government prescribed the group in July under the Terrorism Act of 2000, making membership of or support for it a criminal offense, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. No officers were seriously injured and the Met police said that the number of arrests was the largest made by the force on a single day in the last 10 years. London really has fallen to the pack.

57:59 Pack of police. You can't even say I oppose genocide. I support this group. They'll arrest you. I mean, you know, I feel like he loves it. I mean, he this is the exactly what they want. They're again, it's just this is what they're talking about doing now. Uh labeling anybody as a terrorist and uh doing exactly what you described, but here. That is their political project. That is what he is supporting right now.

58:25 Um he's getting he's guesting on all the podcast with the vice president who's only a podcaster now talking about this exact thing.

58:34 Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. So maybe he's a I don't know, a wolf, a vulture, I don't I don't a lion a line. Line lime piece of [ __ ] Bad writer.

58:45 Yeah. Now, given the way book publication timetables work, there's no way that, you know, these mass arrests happen. They certainly didn't happen in time for Ben to revise his book to account for it. Right. But the fact that this happened puts the lie to everything he says here about the supposedly massive and rising social power of the pack and the fact that they've taken London. You know, the fact that the the pride the pride has to constantly be back on their heels scrambling desperately to hold on to civilization because if like you just acknowledge that like no actually they have all the power and they're like massively abusing it and like hurting people and like are in no danger whatsoever but are endangering huge numbers of people. That doesn't sound as good.

59:23 Yeah. No, it needs to be barbarians at the gates. Uh we're perpetual perpetual victims perpetually persecuted.

59:31 We have every lever of power. Exactly. control and he critiques leftists in this passage for embracing Maoy Dong's statement that political power grows from the barrel of a gun. But that's the only power Ben has ever recognized.

59:44 That's what that's what like what are you talking about? Like ICE is like do like that is that is that is political power.

59:54 What do you call like Israel's actions, right? like are they I mean it's bombs I guess more than the barrel of a gun but you know the basic idea is the same

1:00:03 you can use you can use language in ways to mean many things um yeah uh he believes that

1:00:09 yes he believes that yes Ben continues with a warning that the children of lions will themselves become scavengers if the lions don't pass on their ways to their kids and then he pivots to talking about an 1897 poem that Ridard Kipling wrote for the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria This poem written at the height of the power of the British Empire, he sees as a warning that went unheeded. The tumult and the shouting dies, the captains and the king's depart, still stands thine ancient sacrifice and humble and a contrite heart. Lord of God, Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget.

1:00:44 Lest we forget. Now, I don't really see that as a warning about not indoctrinating your kid with propaganda, but I I guess I can see where he's coming from there. Um, that said, it's clear that where he he goes next in this chapter, basically he says that the reason England fell, so to speak, is that they embraced the welfare state and that's why the British Empire ended, right? that that's why they're no longer the center of the west is because they they got taken over by these socialist ideas and like the the establishing of a welfare state all of those lions their kids became scavengers you know that's the argument

1:01:21 yeah it's mandatory scavengerism right right and this is classic Ben leaving out a massive and important inconvenient fact that does not fit in his neat ideological lines the British Empire didn't sicken in yeah the British Empire didn't get sick and fail because of welfare. It began its slow death slide during the First World War in which it lit its treasury on fire and annihilated a generation of young men. Kipling himself was profoundly changed by the horrors of World War I. He was a strong imperialist prior particularly prior I mean he was his whole life. He was an imperialist his whole life. He was a very strong imperious imperialist prior to the outbreak of hostilities in World War I. Kipling despised Germany and German civilization and he was a huge supporter at the outset of the war in England getting involved and committing to it. As the war started, he wrote something that feels very familiar to

1:02:17 what Ben writes in his book. For all we have and are, for all our children's fate, stand up and take the war. The hun is at the gate. That's essentially what Ben's writing.

1:02:28 That is what he's writing, right? Yeah. So, let's talk about Kipling. Let's talk about what World War I did to Kipling because Rudard had one son, 16-year-old John Kipling. John was 16 when the war started. Now, John had intended to join the the Royal Navy, but his eyesight was bad, and so he was unable to take on a Navy career. So, Rudyard used his connections, being a very famous and influential person in media, to get Jon a commission as an officer in the Irish Guards, which is a military unit. It's obvious a British military unit made up of Irish soldiers, right, with British officers. In 1915, John became a platoon commander in the Irish Guards and was sent to fight in the Battle of Loose. He died while assaulting the German lines.

1:03:11 This was a profoundly traumatizing and changing event for Kipling. And there's a lot of things that change. For one thing, prior to his son becoming a platoon commander, Kipling was super anti-Irish, right? He was anti-un like he was a strong unionist. So he was anti- likeIrish independence, but he was also just kind of bigoted against Irish people. He had written with disgust about Irish culture previously.

1:03:34 And this changed uh I think in part just because he had more contact like through his son and whatnot with Irish people as a result of this.

1:03:41 That's how it happens. Um that's how things like this can happen. And I'm not going to say he ever totally turned around on the issue, but he wrote poetry about Irish history and started expressing after this point a considerable degree of admiration about Irish, particularly in comparison to what he'd written before. Now, he also wrote this about what happened to his son in the wake of World War I. If any questioned why we died, tell them because our fathers lied. Now,

1:04:10 seems maybe different from Yeah. from what the topic started as, right? It seems maybe again to go from where Ben is like that like, "No, no, the the war is at the gate. Anything we have to do is justified and like, oh no, my son's dead. Oh, my kid's dead.

1:04:25 We shouldn't have done that. We shouldn't have said that. We shouldn't have told him to do that.

1:04:27 Maybe maybe this was a fuckup." Right now, there's some context to this line, and I'm going to quote from an article for the Irish Times by Ronan McCrevy explaining the context behind this line. This has often been wrongly interpreted as Kipling believing that his son's death was in vain. He never believed the first world war was unnecessary. He believed it was badly prosecuted. On a more general level, this couplet is about the lies the older generations tell that compels the younger to fight. It could also allude to his own lies and getting a son a commission when he was physically unfit to fight. So, there is a lot going on here. But Kipling was racked for the rest of his life with a tremendous guilt because of what happened to his son. And because even if he could never admit that World War I was itself fully a bad idea, he knew that it was right. He had to be like, "Well, it was badly pro." But he this is

1:05:11 I think there's a degree of ego there. But he knew that he'd [ __ ] up, right? They all have.

1:05:16 We've lied lied to them to get them to fight. That's and you know Ben will never admit to being wrong about anything. I don't think no matter what happens he's capable of that. But Kipling was to an extent. You know he never fully repudiated imperialism. But he went to his grave racked by the knowledge that the war he'd endorsed and supported had taken not only his son but had shattered the British Empire. Right. It had shattered his hopes of continuing British imperial dominance. As an imperialist, he couldn't ignore the fact that like, oh, this kind of ruined it all. Right.

1:05:49 Yeah. I mean, like sometimes expressing that sort of guilt is is how you're actually saying that you were wrong without saying it. Um.

1:05:58 Right. That's human beings are complex and it's can be very hard to just say those words. So you just express the guilt of it.

1:06:06 Right? And it it's so telling about Ben and about what goes on in his head that he cites approvingly this passage of Kipling while ignoring the rest of his life because in reality a figure like Rudard Kipling ought to be a warning to Ben Shapiro and those like him, right? And even again, I I don't want to frame it as like Kipling got woke after World War I, but Kipling got increasingly critical of imperialism and of his previous stances after World War I. And he actually wrote some stuff that is I mean, one of his one of his poems, a picked song, is one of my favorite anti-imperialist pieces of of writing.

1:06:44 Um, and I I was considering just reading like a segment from it, but do you mind if I just read the poem?

1:06:51 Go for it. Because I think we all need this, right? I think this might be this might be handy as we all watch this [ __ ] empire come down to crush us and the ones we love. Uh so I'm going to read this poem and then we'll talk it with something really depressing and then yeah do the nice poem.

1:07:08 So this is a picked song by Richard Kipling. Rome never looks where she treads always her heavy hooves fall on our stomachs, our hearts or our heads. And Rome never heeds when we ball. Her centuries pass on. That is all. And we gather behind them in hordes and plot and plot to reconquer the wall with only our tongues for our swords. We are the little folk. We too little to love or to hate. Leave us alone and you'll see how we can drag down the state. We are the worm in the wood. We are the rot at the root. We are the taint in the blood. We are the thorn in the foot. Mistletoe killing an oak. Rats gnawing cables in two. Moths making holes in a coat. How they must love what they do. Yes, and we little folk, too. We are as busy as they working our works out of view. Watch and you'll see it someday. No, indeed we are not strong, but we know peoples that are. Yes, and will guide them along to

1:08:06 smash and destroy you in war. We shall be slaves just the same. Yes, we have always been slaves. But you you will die of the shame and then we shall dance on your graves.

1:08:18 Anyway, that's all I got for part one or for the first we'll we'll probably come back to this book, but I think you get the idea of what Ben's going for here and why it's feastful of [ __ ]

1:08:30 Um I mean I'm convinced that maybe we're all lines and scavengers. Um and we're also a pack. We're also a part of a pack and we are also a a colony of we can say ants. We're a hive also.

1:08:44 Sure. And the hive the hives are made of crows and the crows are made of lions.

1:08:52 Right. Right. Every crow contains a lion, you know. Um obviously Yeah. It's known, you know. Uh yeah,

1:09:02 we all went to school. We all learned about lions and crows. Yeah, it's like the parable of the butterfly and the Tyrannosaurus Rex, you know, uh, both of which swim deep in the ocean in the Marianis trench

1:09:17 on the moon. As accurate as what Ben's written. Mhm. I I Anyway, Cody, how you feeling?

1:09:25 I'm good. Brody, I liked all the I think I I feel like you have to have. Yeah, probably. Yeah.

1:09:32 Yeah, sure. I appreciate that he uh at least knows he needs to get some good sentences into his books so he quotes other writers.

1:09:41 So he quotes writers even if he doesn't like necessarily interpret them well. He's at least trying to

1:09:46 got to pad this out with some toolken and Lewis and K other people might write.

1:09:52 Yeah. Yeah. H good stuff. Good job to him. Mhm. Uh sure. Why not? Uh check out uh some more news. It's our weekly uh show. I sit at a desk. I read the news and talk about various topics. We also have a show called Even More News twice a week. Talks about more current events in a more casual way. And check out my band. It's called The Hot Shapes.

1:10:16 Hell yeah. Check out Cody's band. Check out Cody, you know, at like a bar or something. Uh be like, "Hey, how's it going?"

1:10:26 I'll be like, "Good." Yeah. You know, yeah. I'll say, "Yeah, don't do that." Probably anyway.

1:10:31 Yeah. Don't I shouldn't I shouldn't joke about the weird parasocial stuff cuz that'll that'll happen. Um

1:10:36 we don't want any of that. But check out Cody's podcast and YouTube show and check out when we come back to Ben Shapiro's book, which I I'm sure we'll do at least one more time before the year ends. Um

1:10:48 yay. Well, gang, this has been Behind the Podcast, A Bastards About Shapiro Ben. Good night and good luck. And

1:10:59 I think I'm the first guy to say that. That's good. Just write it down then.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Robert and Cody Read Ben Shapiro's New Book | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"?

Robert Evans (Host), Cody Johnston (Guest), Sophie Lerman (Host).

What is "Robert and Cody Read Ben Shapiro's New Book | BEHIND THE BASTARDS" about?

The discussion focuses on the hosts' reactions to Ben Shapiro's latest book, reflecting on their previous critique of his fiction and highlighting the poor quality of his writing. They humorously express disappointment that Shapiro has released another book, despite the lack of success of his previous literary endeavor.

What is mentioned in this Behind the Bastards episode?

4 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Lions and Scavengers, J.R.R. Tolkien, Palestine Action, Katie Stoll. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Robert and Cody Read Ben Shapiro's New Book | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"?

The episode runs 1 h 11 min; the transcript is about 13,391 words in 239 timestamped sections.

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