Ben Shapiro attacks those saying America committed “genocide” against Native Americans but allows that a “certain level of ethnic cleansing” took place
Shapiro: “That’s such a wild overstatement of history"
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From the August 7, 2020, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): Whenever people say things like "we committed genocide against the Native Americans. We enslaved, lynched, segregated, incarcerated Blacks for over 400 years. We stopped women from voting" -- who's this "we" Ke-mo sah-bee? Like, who're you talking about? I didn't do any of that stuff. Did Stan Van Gundy do any of that stuff? Whenever people says "we have all sinned," what they really mean is you have sinned and because I am acknowledging our communal sin, I am no longer a sinner. Whenever people say "we have to take collective responsibility," what they mean is you have not, therefore the responsibility remains on you. Dissociation is a way for you to say, "well, I've done my part, right. I've accepted my white culpability. So I'm a good guy now. You who have not, you continue to be the bad guy."
So when Stan Van Gundy says this stupid nonsense like "we committed genocide against Native" -- first of all, let's be clear about this, the United States did not commit genocide against Native Americans. That's a lie. The notion that the United States committed genocide against Native Americans is based on a false equivalence between disease spreading across the United States, decimating the Native American population -- which is not a genocide -- and an actual forcible genocide. If you want to say the United States committed a certain level of ethnic cleansing with regards to the Trail of Tears, there's some accuracy to that. If you want to say the United States committed genocide against the Native Americans in the same way the Nazis committed genocide, that is just not accurate. It's not real. Ok, that doesn't mean bad things haven't happened. But that's such a wild overstatement of the history.
In any case, even if you believe the United States, quote unquote, committed genocide against Native Americans, I didn't. You didn't. Who's we? When he says "we have enslaved, lynched, segregated, and incarcerated" -- I have never enslaved a Black person. I've never lynched a Black person. I've never segregated against a Black person. I've never jailed a Black person. So I don't know who this we is. When he says we, he means you have because you're bad.