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WaPo Contributor Accuses Ben Shapiro Of Spreading Notre Dame Conspiracies — He Demands Correction

Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro demanded a correction from The Washington Post on Tuesday after the outlet published an article insinuating that he had spread conspiracy theories about the Notre Dame cathedral fire.

“This, from @chick_in_kiev, in The Washington Post, is the sheerest form of disgusting bulls***. I blamed no one for the Notre Dame fire, since it was an accident by all available evidence, and imputing malicious intent to me is simply gross,” Shapiro tweeted. (RELATED: These Photos Show The Damage Done To Notre Dame Cathedral)

He followed that up by asking whether WaPo intended to issue a correction.

What Shapiro actually said as the 800-year-old cathedral burned was, “Absolutely heartbreaking. A magnificent monument to Western civilization collapsing.”

WaPo’s Talia Lavin used that tweet to accuse Shapiro of fomenting the “already-raging” rumors that Muslims had been involved in the Notre Dame fire.

Given the already-raging rumors about potential Muslim involvement, these tweets evoked the specter of a war between Islam and the West that is already part of numerous far-right narratives; it was also a central thread in the manifesto of Brenton Tarrant, the alleged Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter.

Lavin also lumped Shapiro in with a Fox News parody account that published a fake tweet attributed to Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar saying, “They reap what they sow #NotreDame.”

Shapiro rounded out his criticism of Lavin by pointing out what appeared to be her endgame: silencing him.

“Perhaps my favorite of this piece is the ending, wherein Lavin calls for me to be silenced. So her lie was the precursor to a call for censorship. Of course,” Shapiro said.

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