Far-right commentator Ben Shapiro announced yesterday that he would speak about furries and BDSM at his alma mater University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) yesterday. He addressed neither in his speech—but the mere mention of those topics is all anyone can talk about.
Furries are people that dress up in animal-like costumes and BDSM, (bondage, dominance, and sadomasochism) are sexual practices that involve pain and power dyanmics.
“I’ll be tackling how this once-prestigious university has devolved into a woke haven,” Shapiro tweeted yesterday, “plagued by controversies involving plagiarism, DEI initiatives, riots, furries, and BDSM.”
In his 20-minute speech, though, Shapiro didn’t mention furries or BDSM. He talked about how UCLA is overrun with a “coalition of losers,” which he says includes foreign students, LGBTQ people in support of Palestinian liberation, professors who teach useless subjects like sociology, and students making Palestinian protest encampments.
Almost 300 students were arrested at the university in the spring for participating in the encampments.
Despite the speech not covering furries or BDSM, though, those topics were all people could talk about in the replies to his tweet announcing the speech.
“Even furries have to think deep down that if everyone was a furry, it would be hard to build cities and launch satellites to space when everyone is barking and meowing at each other,” one X user responded.
“Furries belong behind bars,” another X user said.
Others accused Shapiro of being a furry himself.
“Dis u, genocider?” an X user tweeted, alongside a photo of a furry in a suit. “You are defending the most heinous crime against humanity of the 21st century at the reputational expense of Americans and Jews everywhere.”
“Furries? You just can’t go an hour without indulging your weird sexual fetishes, can you?” another X user tweeted at Shapiro.
But while a lot of the backlash on X was mocking, X CEO and fellow far-right figure Elon Musk appreciated Shapiro’s remarks.
“Wow,” Musk wrote.
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