Ben Shapiro, figure of the American conservative right, recycles Islamophobic clichés in his new film to attack support for Palestine

The new film produced by The Daily Wire, an American conservative media outlet co-founded by Ben Shapiroprovoked heated controversy in the United States. Titled Run Hide Fight: Infidelshe is accused of bringing the old Islamophobic reflexes of post-September 11 up to date, by deliberately mixing Islam, terrorism and pro-Palestinian mobilization. A crude way of transforming support for Palestine into an internal threat and of recycling, under the cover of fiction, the most hackneyed fantasies of the American right.

The film, presented as an action thriller, features an American campus stormed by “radical Islamist terrorists”. A pro-Palestinian encampment becomes a “caliphate”, armed men brandish the Daesh flag and impose sharia law. The process is clear: directly associate the mobilization for Palestine with Islamist terrorism. The trailer goes even further. It juxtaposes images of September 11, scenes linked to Daesh, images of Gaza, Palestinian flags and the pro-Palestinian student mobilizations of 2024. The message is barely concealed: bringing Muslims, Palestinians, immigration and terrorism into the same imagination.

The Daily Wire is one of the most influential media outlets on the American conservative right. Founded in 2015, it produces articles, podcasts, videos and now films. Ben Shapiro, one of its main figures, is known for his strong support for Israel and his repeated attacks against solidarity movements with Palestine.

For his detractors, Infidels is therefore not just an action film. He uses the old post-September 11 recipes: fear of Islam, fantasy of Sharia law, demographic threat and assimilation of Muslims to an internal threat.

Ben Shapiro also fully assumes this line. He says he wants to denounce what he calls “the threat of radical Islam,” believing that Hollywood would have refused to talk about it for decades.

Sue Obeidi, head of the Hollywood Bureau of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, called the film “xenophobic and Islamophobic.” It accuses its authors of recycling old anti-Muslim fantasies and of exploiting tensions around Palestine to fuel fear and discredit pro-Palestinian mobilizations.