Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Anti-Semitic Trolls Attack Conservative Commentator Ben Shapiro’s Sister

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro was the journalist who was the biggest target of anti-Semitism last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Now, Shapiro’s sister has been caught in the crossfire.

The slew of abuse toward Abigail Shapiro, an opera singer, was first brought to light by Forward columnist Bethany Mandel. The invective included emails to her and nasty comments on her YouTube page, where Shapiro posts her performances.

She was also the subject of a comment thread on 4chan, the notoriously graphic and racist online commenting board. “I wanna Rape her, cut off her head, and send it to Ben,” wrote a typical commenter.

The Daily Heathen, an “alt-right” site, wrote an article titled “Ben Shapiro Now Using His Sister’s Khazar Milkers to Bring All the Goys to the Yard.”

Shapiro didn’t expect to be discovered by her brother’s racist antagonists — she and Ben aren’t even Facebook friends. Abigail has taken steps to combat the abuse — suspending commenting privileges on her YouTube channel and locking down her social media profiles. But she was determined to make the issue public.

“Now that they know who I am, I’m going to be living with these kinds of things forever — people sending me gross stuff,” Abigail told Mandel. “I’d rather it not be something I deal with privately. My name is going to be linked with Ben’s — at this point or down the line.”

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.