Michael: What if the biggest threat to your freedom isn't a government agent knocking on your door, but your HR department? Or the producer of your favorite TV show? Or even the person who designed your social media feed? Kevin: That’s a pretty unsettling thought. It makes it sound like the call is coming from inside the house. You're saying the things we interact with every day are the real danger? Michael: That’s the provocative idea we’re exploring today. We're diving into a book that’s been both a bestseller and a lightning rod for controversy: The Authoritarian Moment by Ben Shapiro. Kevin: Right, Shapiro is a major figure in conservative media, and he’s known for being provocative. What’s interesting is that he wrote his first book critiquing universities when he was just 20, so he's been on this theme of institutional bias for his entire career. Michael: Exactly. And this book is his diagnosis of how that perceived bias has now gone mainstream, moving from the campus quad to the corporate boardroom. He argues that a new kind of authoritarianism is taking hold, one that doesn't need laws to enforce its will. Kevin: Okay, I’m intrigued and a little nervous. So where does this all begin? How does an idea go from a campus to my workplace?

Michael: Well, Shapiro argues it starts with the creation of what he calls a 'New Ruling Class.' This isn't about old money or aristocracy; it's about credentials. A college degree, especially from an elite school, has become the ticket into this class. It’s less about what you learned and more about the social network you entered and the specific language you learned to speak. Kevin: A specific language? What do you mean? Like learning to talk about wine or something? Michael: Not exactly. He calls it the "wokabulary." It's the language of social justice, identity politics, and critical theory. And the argument is that fluency in this language is now a prerequisite for success in many powerful institutions. To show how detached this can get, he points to a fascinating and frankly hilarious academic stunt. Kevin: A stunt? Do tell. Michael: It's called the "Grievance Studies Affair." A few scholars, including James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian, were skeptical about the academic rigor in some fields of cultural studies. So they decided to test it. They wrote a bunch of completely nonsensical, farcical academic papers, loaded them with the right buzzwords from the "wokabulary," and submitted them to prestigious peer-reviewed journals. Kevin: And there's no way they got published, right? Michael: Oh, they did. Several of them. My favorite was a paper titled, 'Human Reaction to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon.' Kevin: Wait, they published a paper about dog parks and queer performativity? Seriously? What did it even claim? Michael: It claimed you could analyze dog-on-dog humping as a manifestation of rape culture and that we should learn from the dogs' "queer performativity." It was complete gibberish. Another paper, arguing for "fat bodybuilding" as a legitimate sport, was also accepted. The point they proved was that if you used the correct ideological language, the actual content or logic didn't matter. You were speaking the language of the club. Kevin: Wow. Okay, that's absurd academic stuff, but how does that connect to my HR department, like you said in the intro? That feels like a huge leap. Michael: That’s the core of the argument. The graduates of these programs, who are fluent in this "wokabulary," are now the managers, executives, and HR directors at major corporations. And they bring that ideology with them. The most potent example Shapiro uses is the Coca-Cola diversity training incident from 2021. Kevin: I think I remember hearing something about this. What happened? Michael: An internal whistleblower leaked slides from a mandatory employee training program called "Confronting Racism." The slides, which were part of a LinkedIn Learning series, instructed employees to try to "be less white." Kevin: Hold on. To "be less white"? What does that even mean? Michael: According to the training, it meant being "less arrogant, less certain, less defensive, and more humble." It also listed things like individualism, the nuclear family, and having a "focus on scientific method" as aspects of white culture that needed to be dismantled. Kevin: That is... deeply uncomfortable. It’s basically saying that core principles of Western thought are inherently racist. And this was at Coca-Cola, not some obscure college department. Michael: Exactly. The "wokabulary" and its underlying ideology moved from the "Grievance Studies" journal to the mandatory training program of one of the world's biggest brands. This is what Shapiro means by "renormalization." An idea that was once on the radical fringe becomes the accepted, and enforced, norm inside a powerful institution. You either conform, or you risk being seen as a problem. Kevin: And that's where the authoritarian part comes in. It's not a government mandate, but it might as well be if your job is on the line. It's one thing to have these ideas inside a company or university. But Shapiro's argument is that they're being enforced on everyone else. How does that work?

Michael: It works through a combination of social pressure and institutional power, especially in the cultural arenas: Hollywood, the media, and Big Tech. These are the places that shape our shared stories and conversations. Shapiro argues they've become the primary enforcers. Kevin: So this is where cancel culture comes in? Michael: Precisely. But it's not just about firing someone for an old, offensive tweet. It's about creating a climate of fear that prevents people from even associating with dissenting views. The story of Mark Duplass is a perfect, small-scale example. Kevin: The actor? What did he do? Michael: In 2018, Duplass, who is a well-known liberal in Hollywood, sent out a tweet. He said that Ben Shapiro was a "genuine person" and suggested that his liberal followers should consider following Shapiro to hear a different perspective, even if they disagreed with him. He was essentially advocating for breaking out of echo chambers. Kevin: That sounds... reasonable? Almost like a public service announcement for intellectual curiosity. Michael: You would think. The backlash was immediate and overwhelming. He was accused of promoting hatred, racism, and intolerance. The outrage mob descended so fast that within hours, Duplass deleted the tweet and issued what Shapiro calls a "craven apology," disavowing any endorsement of hatred and basically begging for forgiveness for the sin of suggesting a conversation. Kevin: That's the fear, right? That you can't even have a conversation with someone on the 'other side' without your own side turning on you. It’s not about what you believe, but who you’re seen with. It’s ideological quarantine. Michael: Exactly. And that's the social pressure part. But it scales up to institutional power. If social pressure is the mob outside your house, institutional power is when the utility companies agree to shut off your water. The ultimate example of this, for Shapiro, is the deplatforming of Parler. Kevin: Ah, the conservative alternative to Twitter. What happened there? Michael: Parler was launched as a free speech platform, and it exploded in popularity among conservatives who felt censored by Twitter and Facebook. Then, in the days after the January 6th Capitol riot, a coordinated effort took it down. Kevin: Coordinated how? Michael: First, Apple and Google removed the Parler app from their app stores, claiming it hadn't done enough to moderate content that incited violence. But the killing blow came from Amazon Web Services, or AWS. AWS hosted Parler's entire digital infrastructure. They terminated their contract, and Parler was effectively wiped off the internet overnight. Kevin: Wow. So it wasn't just one company making a decision. It was the three biggest players in tech—the app stores and the web host—acting in concert to eliminate a competitor. Michael: That's Shapiro's point. He argues it was a demonstration of an oligopoly's power to enforce an ideological standard. The message was clear: if you create a space for dissent that we don't approve of, we won't just argue with you; we will shut you down. It’s the digital equivalent of what happened to Mark Duplass, but on a massive, corporate scale. Kevin: And this all ties back to the book's title, The Authoritarian Moment. It's this convergence of social pressure and institutional power that creates a system where you don't need a dictator to enforce conformity. The system does it for you.

Michael: Exactly. So you have this new class with its own ideology forged in universities, which then takes over corporations and other institutions. And then they use the immense power of modern media and technology to enforce that ideology on the rest of society, not through debate, but through social shaming, censorship, and deplatforming. Kevin: It’s a powerful, and for many, a frightening, picture of how control works in the 21st century. The book is obviously coming from a conservative viewpoint, and critics point out it's a very one-sided take on authoritarianism. They'd say Shapiro ignores or downplays similar tendencies on the right. Michael: That's a very fair critique, and the book has definitely been polarizing for that reason. He focuses almost exclusively on the Left's institutional power because he believes that's where the dominant cultural and corporate control currently lies. Kevin: But the question it forces us to ask, regardless of our politics, is a tough one: Where is the line between a society setting new, evolving moral standards and a society that's becoming genuinely authoritarian? How do we tell the difference? Michael: That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? Shapiro would argue the line is crossed when dissent is no longer treated as a difference of opinion, but as a form of violence or harm that must be silenced for the sake of safety. It’s about whether we can still have open debate or if disagreement itself has become the problem. Kevin: It really makes you think about the conversations you don't have, or the opinions you keep to yourself, at work or online. Is that just being polite, or is it a symptom of this larger trend? Michael: A question worth pondering. We’d love to know what you all think. Is this something you've seen or felt in your own lives? Let us know. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.