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  • The Authoritarian Moment

  • How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent
  • Written by: Ben Shapiro
  • Narrated by: Ben Shapiro
  • Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (118 ratings)

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The Authoritarian Moment

Written by: Ben Shapiro
Narrated by: Ben Shapiro
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Publisher's Summary

New York Times best seller

How far are Americans willing to go to force each other to fall in line?

According to the establishment media, the intelligentsia, and our political chattering class, the greatest threat to American freedom lies in right-wing authoritarianism. We’ve heard that some 75 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump represent the rise of American fascism; that conservatives have allowed authoritarianism to bloom in their midst, creating a grave danger for the republic.

But what if the true authoritarian threat to America doesn’t come from the political right, but from the supposedly anti-fascist left?

There are certainly totalitarians on the political right. But statistically, they represent a fringe movement with little institutional clout. The authoritarian left, meanwhile, is ascendant in nearly every area of American life. A small number of leftists — college-educated, coastal, and uncompromising — have not just taken over the Democratic Party but our corporations, our universities, our scientific establishment, our cultural institutions. And they have used their newfound power to silence their opposition.

The authoritarian Left is aggressively insistent that everyone must conform to its values, demanding submission and conformity. The dogmatic Left is obsessed with putting people in categories and changing human nature. Everyone who opposes it must be destroyed.

Ben Shapiro looks at everything from pop culture to the Frankfurt school, social media to the Founding Fathers, to explain the origins of our turn to tyranny, and why so many seem blind to it.

More than a catalog of bad actors and intemperate acts, The Authoritarian Moment lays bare the intolerance and rigidity creeping into all American ideology – and prescribes the solution to ending the authoritarianism that threatens our future.

©2021 Ben Shapiro (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
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What listeners say about The Authoritarian Moment

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I wish everyone would read!

Ben's the bomb.com
the world would be a better place if everyone would read this lol.
the end.

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2 people found this helpful

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Absolutely necessary!

Excellent work untangling and articulating the very current state of society. Understanding of oneself is paramount. The book offers hope for a brighter future for ALL of society. If we all worked as hard as Ben Shapiro imagine what could be accomplished.

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Excellent Read

Shapiro nails the problem in our society today and I recommend this for Canadian readers as well,

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3 people found this helpful

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Entertaining and informative as expected

Current, informative and entertaining. It's worth it just to listen to Ben's impersonations when reading quotes.

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Ben Shapiro is irrefutable and entertaining.

The woke garbage is still growing. Maybe it's wrong to be right. "The Woke Dead"

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Another winner Ben

Great stuff Shapiro, another sharp and meaningful analysis of todays culture and mindset. But for the love of Moses, STOP DOING IMPERSONATIONS, they suck. Again love your work, all the best from Toronto.

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eye-opening

+ Source of hope to overcome the current division of the American society +

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Outstanding

Totally enjoyed this and would highly recommend, points are right on the money and hopefully we can straighten out the current mess.

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Good read

As a member of the silent majority Ben speaks about, I found this book to have a lot of great points. He goes at length to discuss the authoritarian left but doesn't discuss the same playbook being used by the far right. He briefly differentiates between liberals and the authoritarian left but for most of the book you're left with the impression that the two are one in the same, which only perpetuates this idea of "you're either with us or with them".

If you're looking for a book to explain what left leaning authoritarism can look like, this is it. For contrast I would suggest you read The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno.

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An important message sullied by the messenger.

Ben did himself a huge disservice by narrating his own book with insanely high levels of sarcasm, weird impressions, and annoying repetitions of him screaming “THE SCIENCE!” through an entire chapter. His ideas end up coming across as whining and therefore fall short. For a more even tempered look at the same problem of authoritarian leftists I would recommend John McWhorter’s more centred Woke Racism.

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