Thousands gathered at the Curtis M. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts Wednesday night, eager to listen to guest speaker Ben Shapiro, while others stood outside to protest his presence on campus.
Shapiro is known for his political commentary on YouTube, where he has more than six million subscribers, and for founding the conservative news site The Daily Wire.
He has made appearances at schools across the country through Young Americans for Freedom, including the University of Michigan in 2022, the University of Utah in 2017 and Stanford University in 2019. All three schools saw student protests outside the venue the day Shapiro was to speak, with Utah’s protest turning violent over clashes on race and LGBTQ+ rights.
UF YAF originally announced on its Instagram account Sept. 14 that the conservative commentator would be coming to speak. The event was organized by YAF as a part of the Free to Choose Network and was funded by Student Government.
Caitlyn McCoy, the president of UF YAF, shared some of the struggles the group faced in organizing the event.
“Our flyers were torn down. Intolerant leftists held protests in the hopes of getting our event canceled or leveraging peer pressure to scare students away from attending the event,” she said. “Hundreds of fake tickets were claimed.”
Shapiro’s speech was titled “Hamas is evil, and its defenders are Jew-haters” and addressed the Israel-Hamas war.
“Tonight’s speech is about a topic I frankly did not think that I would have to talk about because it is so eminently obvious Hamas is evil and those who support them hate Jews,” he said. “It’s particularly not obvious on America’s college campuses where [...] moral relativism has settled in.”
The speaker went on to share the history and the state of Israel and its other past conflicts, leading up to the Hamas attack on Israel Oct. 7.
“The goal of Hamas was and is clear: genocide against the Jews,” Shapiro said, “Not just genocide against Jews in Israel, genocide against Jews everywhere.”
Shapiro admonished Hamas for strategically placing its military headquarters beneath a hospital, where an attack would pose risk to civilians; this puts an international law of war that forbids targeting civilians and attacking hospitals to the test, he said.
“There’s a reason that the Pentagon is not located beneath a hospital. There’s a reason Israeli military bases are not located beneath hospitals,” he said. “The entire purpose of the rules of war is to make it easier for military to target one another while not harming civilians.”
Anyone in support of Hamas is in support of genocide, Shapiro said.
“Those who support Hamas support Jew murder, full stop,” he said. “They do not support a two-state solution, they do not support the state of Palestine, they support Hamas. They support genocidal terrorists.”
Shapiro addressed the idea of antisemitists wishing to disrupt the Jewish state without harming Jewish people.
“You can’t destroy a Jewish state without killing a s—load of Jews,” he said.
The speaker went on to discuss the history of Judaism and the origin of Israel as a place for it. He described the past conflicts over control of land in Israel, Palestine, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
While there have been similar conflicts in the past, the magnitude of these recent events is notable, Shapiro said.
“What we’ve seen over the past few weeks has been condensing antisemitism into a historical period like nothing I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” he said. “We’ve seen a massacre of Jews on par with the Holocaust.”
No one can remain neutral on the issue, Shapiro said.
Calling for a cease-fire would only allow Hamas to retain control of the Gaza Strip and leave over 200 hostages — including some U.S. citizens — within their hold, he said.
“Hamas needs to be eradicated, needs to be wiped from the face of the earth,” he said. “Every Hamas member needs to die. It is that simple.”
Meanwhile, just outside the Phillips Center on a grassy patch, a group of about 40 protesters gathered around 6:45 p.m. for what they named the “Wet *ss Protest” — a homage to Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s song “WAP.”
The protest was aimed to be a “big gay party,” according to its flier, and organizers served pizza and handed out glow sticks. As music played through speakers, protestors shouted through megaphones phrases like “f*ck Shapiro” and “Ben Shapiro get a life! We feel sorry for your wife!”
The protesters, many of whom said they were part of the LGBTQ+ community, stood against Shapiro’s conservative rhetoric surrounding sexuality. Some even felt unsafe that he was on campus, said 20-year-old Erin Bischof, one of the protest organizers.
“We thought it would be unjust if he were to feel completely safe coming into our community and making us feel unsafe,” she said.
A group of about eight counter protesters gathered, including 44-year-old Michael Taylor, a gun rights activist and YouTube creator who spoke earlier that day to UF College Republicans. Taylor said he was open to having conversations with the protesters, and at one point said he was having fun.
“I don't want to disqualify anybody,” he said. “Just like these people have their First Amendment, I may not agree with everything, but individually, I might find something within them that I do like.”
As showgoers streamed out of the venue, some stopped to film and take photos in front of the protest. As two people unfolded and held an Israeli flag for a photo, the protesters erupted into yells of “free Palestine,” in reference to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Police began dispersing the crowd around 8:20 p.m., about 20 minutes after Shapiro’s speech ended.
UF YAF was aware of the protest prior to the event, a representative said.
Contact Bailey Diem and Alissa Gary at bdiem@alligator.org and agary@alligator.org. Follow them on Twitter @BaileyDiem and @AlissaGary1.
Bailey Diem is the Fall 2024 Metro Editor at The Alligator. She spent previous semesters reporting for The Alligator's University and Metro desks. In her free time, Bailey enjoys playing guitar or getting lost in a book.
Alissa is a sophomore journalism major and University Editor at The Alligator. She has previously covered student government, university administration and K-12 education. In her free time, she enjoys showing photos of her cats to strangers.
