Narrator: In 2018, Hollywood actor and producer Mark Duplass did something seemingly innocuous: he sent a tweet. He had recently met with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro to discuss gun rights for a film project and found him to be genuine. Duplass tweeted that Shapiro was a "genuine person" and encouraged his liberal followers to listen to people outside their echo chamber. The reaction was immediate and ferocious. Duplass was buried in an avalanche of online outrage. Within hours, he deleted the tweet and issued a lengthy, public apology, disavowing any association with what his critics deemed hatred and intolerance. This incident, where a simple suggestion of dialogue led to a public shaming, serves as a stark illustration of a cultural climate that many Americans feel but struggle to define.

In his book, The Authoritarian Moment, Ben Shapiro argues that this event is not an isolated case of online anger but a symptom of a much larger and more dangerous trend. He posits that the greatest threat to American liberty is not a right-wing movement, but a powerful, institutionally-backed authoritarianism from the Left that seeks to enforce ideological conformity by silencing, shaming, and deplatforming anyone who dissents.

Narrator: Shapiro argues that a "New Ruling Class" has been created in America, defined not by wealth alone, but by credentials and adherence to a specific progressive ideology. The primary engine for creating this class is the modern university. College, he contends, has shifted from being a place of open inquiry to a factory for credentialism and social sorting. The value of a degree is often less about the knowledge gained and more about the social cachet it provides, signaling entry into an elite tier of society.

This is illustrated by the infamous college admissions scandal, where wealthy parents like actress Lori Loughlin paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to get their children into prestigious schools like USC. Her daughter, Olivia Jade, had openly stated she didn't "really care about school," yet the credential was seen as so vital that her parents committed felonies to secure it.

This New Ruling Class is unified by a shared language Shapiro calls "wokabulary"—terms like "intersectionality," "systemic racism," and "privilege." This language, born in academic grievance studies departments, functions as a cultural signifier. Fluency in it proves one has been properly educated and holds the correct views. Shapiro points to the "Grievance Studies Affair" to highlight the perceived lack of rigor in these fields. In 2018, scholars James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian submitted a series of absurd, hoax papers to prestigious academic journals. Several were accepted for publication, including one analyzing "queer performativity at urban dog parks" and another proposing a framework for "fat bodybuilding." The hoax, Shapiro argues, worked because the authors were fluent in the wokabulary, demonstrating that in some corners of academia, adherence to a social justice framework has become more important than objective truth.

Narrator: According to Shapiro, the ideology of the New Ruling Class has not remained confined to universities. It has bled over into other core institutions, most notably science and corporate America. He introduces the concept of "Science™"—a politically driven perversion of the scientific method used to cudgel opponents and enforce policy, rather than to investigate and discover.

A stark example of this phenomenon occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020. As anti-lockdown protests took place, public health officials widely condemned them as dangerous, super-spreader events. Yet, just weeks later, when massive Black Lives Matter protests and riots erupted nationwide, over 1,200 public health "experts" signed a letter ecstatically endorsing the gatherings. They argued that "white supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19" and that protests against it were vital for public health. This double standard, Shapiro asserts, revealed that "The Science" was being selectively applied to support a preferred political narrative, eroding public trust in the process.

This same pressure to conform has reshaped corporate America. Fearing boycotts and legal action, and pushed by internal activism from their highly-credentialed staff, corporations have embraced woke ideology. In December 2020, NASDAQ proposed a rule, later approved by the SEC, requiring its listed companies to have at least one woman on their boards, plus another director who is a racial minority or self-identifies as LGBTQ. Companies that failed to comply would have to publicly explain why or face delisting. Shapiro argues this is a form of compelled speech and social engineering, where corporations prioritize ideological quotas over merit or business needs to appease the authoritarian Left.

Narrator: The establishment media and Big Tech social media platforms, Shapiro contends, have abandoned neutrality to become the chief enforcers of the authoritarian moment. They no longer see themselves as objective arbiters of information but as gatekeepers with a moral duty to shape the narrative and suppress "harmful" dissent.

The most significant example of this was the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020, just weeks before the presidential election. When the New York Post published emails suggesting Joe Biden may have been involved in his son's foreign business dealings, the story was immediately censored. Twitter locked the New York Post's account and blocked users from sharing the link, claiming it was "potentially harmful." Facebook, through its policy communications director Andy Stone, announced it was "reducing its distribution" on the platform pending a fact-check that never materialized.

The media and former intelligence officials dismissed the story as "Russian disinformation." This coordinated suppression by media and tech giants effectively killed the story's reach. A post-election poll found that a significant number of Biden voters were unaware of the story and might have changed their vote had they known. Shapiro argues this was not a simple mistake but a deliberate act of censorship by an informational oligopoly designed to protect its preferred political candidate and control the flow of information to the American public.

Narrator: The book concludes that the authoritarian moment relies on the acquiescence of a silent majority that is afraid to speak out. Therefore, the primary path to fighting back is to break the silence and refuse to comply. Shapiro argues that Americans must reject the premise that disagreement is violence and that silence in the face of leftist demands is complicity.

He points to the story of actress Gina Carano as a model for this resistance. In 2021, Carano was fired by Disney from the hit show The Mandalorian for social media posts that challenged the progressive consensus on issues like COVID-19 and gender pronouns. Rather than disappearing, Carano immediately partnered with Shapiro's own media company, The Daily Wire, to produce and star in her own film. In her announcement, she stated, "They can’t cancel us if we don’t let them."

This, for Shapiro, is the key. When institutions become hopelessly captured, the solution is not just to fight for their soul but to build new, alternative institutions. Whether in media, education, or commerce, creating parallel structures that serve the millions of Americans ignored or maligned by the New Ruling Class is the most effective way to counter the authoritarian impulse. It creates a space where dissent is possible and breaks the monopoly on culture held by the institutional Left.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from The Authoritarian Moment is that the primary threat to free speech and individual liberty in America today comes not from government edicts, but from a cultural and institutional authoritarianism that enforces its worldview through social and economic pressure. This new form of tyranny, as Alexis de Tocqueville once warned, "leaves the body and goes straight for the soul," creating a climate of fear where people are afraid to express their true beliefs.

The book's challenge is a profound one: it asks not just for intellectual disagreement, but for active courage. It suggests that the quiet, polite majority has been cowed into silence by a loud, intransigent minority. The final, lingering question is whether enough people are willing to risk their social standing and professional security to say "no," and in doing so, begin the difficult work of building a new birth of freedom.