LOS ANGELES, CA - MAY 15: Mark Duplass speaks onstage at Los Angeles Times The Envelope Screening Series presents Netflix's "Wild Wild Country" at Netflix FYSEE At Raleigh Studios on May 15, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Tasia Wells/Getty Images)
Mark Duplass is the actor, director, and producer known for his roles on The Mindy Project and The League. On Wednesday night, the liberal-minded actor came under heavy twitter fire when he tweeted to his followers that they should consider following Ben Shapiro, a young, conservative commentator with views that many consider to be radical.
In 2016, Shapiro left his job as editor-at-large for Breitbart News, after a controversy with some members of the alt-right. He is now editor in chief of the Daily Wire.
Duplass took down his tweet once the controversy got underway. But it originally read, “Fellow liberals: If you are interested at all in ‘crossing the aisle,’ you should consider following @benshapiro. I don’t agree with him on much but he’s a genuine person who once helped me for no other reason than to be nice. He doesn’t bend the truth. His intentions are good.”
Duplass’s followers immediately slammed the actor for supporting Shapiro. This morning, after receiving a barrage of angry tweets, Duplass took down his original tweet and put up an apology.
— Mark Duplass (@MarkDuplass) July 19, 2018
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Here’s what you need to know.
Ben Shapiro Has Called Transgenderism a Mental Illness, And Wants Abortion to Be Illegal
Ben Shapiro has been called the conservative voice of this generation, and it’s not hard to understand why. The 33 year old Harvard graduate has a huge following on twitter (1.46 million people are following him as of now) and commands enormous audiences for his podcasts and lectures.
Shapiro seems to delight in attacking liberal ideals; like many other popular speakers, he seems to get a kick out of stirring up controversy. He has said, for example, that transgenderism is a “mental illness.” And he has called for abortion to be outlawed.
Shapiro is married to an Israeli of Moroccan origin. They are highly devout, observant Jews who believe in conservative values.
Shapiro, A Conservative, Is Also A Trump Skeptic
Shapiro has an awkward relationship with President Trump. He has never fully thrown his support behind the president. But as a conservative, Shapiro applauds whenever Trump acts in accordance with Shapiro’s values.
Most recently, the Trump-Shapiro relationship has been looking bad. Never one to shy away from strong language, Shapiro slammed Trump for his summit with Putin, which Shapiro called a “travesty”. Shapiro wrote dramatically about Trump’s “shameful capitulation” to Putin. He warned that Trump wants to “dismantle” America’s western alliances with Canada and with Europe.
Shapiro May Love to Be Hated, But Mark Duplass Has Been On A “Dorky” Kindness Kick
I’m going to perform one random, tiny act of kindness each day for the next 365 days. Anyone wanna join me? We could even do the dorky hashtag thing and share our stories. I know. I know. But it’ll be fun. Who’s in? #Kindness365
Earlier this month, Duplass announced that he was starting a year-long plan to do one, tiny act of kindness every day. Since then, Duplass has been humble-bragging updates about his daily acts of kindness to his massive twitter following every day. He likes to call the project “dorky” but he’s clearly not avoiding the spotlight about this. It’s hard to avoid noticing that Duplass likes to be liked. Perhaps it was this quality that prompted him to take down his endorsement of Shapiro after his followers slammed him.
Meanwhile, Shapiro’s followers keep tweeting about how shocked they are by the whole kerfuffle. Many of them are framing the mini-controversy as a free speech issue and are implying that Duplass was attacked because his followers don’t want to hear points of view that are different from their own. You can read some of their tweets below.