Most Bay Area locals automatically assume that other Bay Area locals are liberals. As a Bay Area resident, I’m usually tempted to let said locals assume as much about me.

Why? Because if said locals learn that I’m not a liberal, they are liable to swing in the far opposite direction and assume I’m the scum of the earth. It seems that’s a reality for conservatives living in the Bay Area: you’re either a progressive, or you’re a sewer-licking, puppy-burning, antichrist Nazi cave troll.

Many liberals religiously attend to certain arbitrary and relativistic notions of critical theory, notions that say binaries suck and, instead, spectrums are better for describing aspects of humanity (like gender). But many liberals are also more than willing to pigeonhole conservatives into a binary system in which all people are either angelic progressives or malevolent Nazi scum. It’s just one of those weird political paradoxes, I guess.

Some Berkeley liberals have recently used this Nazi binary to try to pigeonhole Ben Shapiro as a white-supremacist.

A Soros-funded site, RefuseFacism.org, posted this on Facebook on September 9th:

Sunsara Taylor is a liberal activist who writes for RefuseFascism.org. Here she is talking about “Why it’s Right, and Righteous to Drive Fascists Off Campus, Out of Berkeley… and Out of Power!”:

Taylor has an article on RefuseFascism.org titled, “The Issue is NOT “Free Speech”— The Issue Is Fascism!” In the article, she writes that Ben Shapiro is an “intellectual hitm[a]n” who “dresses his arguments in intellectual garb but serves [the] same basic agenda” of the white-supremacist and fascist “Trump/Pence regime.”

Hilarious.

First off, Sunsara Taylor seems like she wouldn’t know a “regime” if a real regime regime-d her in the face. 

Second, Taylor obviously hasn’t done her homework on Shapiro, because he is a yarmulke-wearing, Sabbath-observing, kosher-eating Orthodox Jew. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Shapiro was a prime “target of a wave of anti-Semitic tweets” in 2016, and a huge chunk of that anti-semitism was lobbed at him by white supremacists and the alt-right. But, somehow, even he’s a Nazi.

Well done, Taylor and RefuseFacism.org. You’ve attacked a member of a vulnerable population because he committed the sin of valuing the constitution. The same was true of Frederick Douglass when he was alive. Would you like to apply an insulting and unfounded generalization to him too?

This all might seem amusing, and it is… but it has unfortunate repercussions.

The Bay Area, namely Berkeley, is already a hotbed of political vitriol.

When liberals who have a voice in Berkeley– like Sunsara Taylor and the folks at RefuseFacism.org– use the Nazi binary to point at anyone who is a mainstream conservative in the area and cry “Fascist!,” they inaccurately characterize normal, good conservative people as monsters that need to be driven away.

This makes the vitriol in the Bay Area so much worse. Worsened vitriol means every Bay Area local is less safe, especially during events where conservatives try to exercise their right to free speech.

As a regular listener of Shapiro’s podcast, I can tell you that he is no monster. He is a normal, mainstream conservative who believes in reasonable and smart conservative principles. He is an enemy of fascist thinking. And yet, he will surely be treated like a fascist monster when he goes to UC Berkeley.

Heck, he’s already being treated as a monster in the community. Berkeley admins have released a statement that implies Shapiro’s speech “may include speech that is antithetical to [school] values.” Berkeley students, faculty, and staff will be able to receive, I kid you not, counseling services if they’re hurt by Shapiro’s words or the fact that he’s speaking. The LA Times released an article titled, “Berkeley braces for right-wing talk show host Ben Shapiro’s visit,” as if they think Shapiro is the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, UC Berkeley is Manhattan, and Shapiro’s ready to ravage Midtown.

This is all because of a ridiculous binary made up by people, like Sunsara Taylor, who ordinarily don’t believe in using binaries, but are just so angry they can’t get what they want.

Why do I write all of this? Because I’m irritated that the Nazi binary seems to be catching.

It’s not just used in Berkeley. We’re seeing it crop up in a lot of places. It’s getting so common that it’s shocking us less and less.

So if you become a victim of the Nazi binary, I urge you to challenge the faulty logic of the binary. Ask the person calling you a Nazi why it’s okay for liberals to apply binary thinking to conservatives when they don’t trust binary thinking otherwise.