The Ben Shapiro Show - June 27, 2026


Abolish The UN!

Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Donald Trump Woodrow Wilson Exhibit B. Russia Ukraine Exhibit C. Statement Henry Cabot Lodge Herman Goering Teddy Roosevelt Calvin Coolidge Saddam Hussein Greta Thunberg Yasser Arafat Ronald Reagan Hillary Clinton Bashar Assad Jimmy Carter Barack Obama Marco Rubio Helix Sleep TED Talk Hitler and 1 more
They Want To Cancel Jonathan Majors AGAIN Who REALLY Controls The Democratic Party?

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

206.3

Word count

2,785

Sentence count

195

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

17

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

After more than a century of failed internationalist experiments, the verdict is in. The UN does not stop wars, it does not end atrocities, and it doesn t stop dictators. So why are we all still pretending it does any of those things? It actually helps all of those people.

Transcript

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Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The United States helped build the United Nations to prevent World War III.
00:00:04.000 But we ended up with a global HOA that sends angry letters and loses your money and lets the worst people in the neighborhood sit on the board and run your life.
00:00:14.000 So, yes, it is time for America to end the United Nations.
00:00:17.000 Tear down the building in New York, turn it into a park so the leftists in Manhattan can finally go outside and touch some grass.
00:00:23.000 The squirrels in that park would have a significantly better record of creating international peace than the bureaucrats inside the UN building today.
00:00:29.000 After more than a century of failed internationalist experiments, the verdict is in.
00:00:33.000 The UN does not stop wars, it does not stop atrocities, it does not stop dictators.
00:00:37.000 So, why are we all still pretending it does any of those things?
00:00:40.000 It actually helps all of those people.
00:00:43.000 Let's go back to where it all began a liberal internationalist fantasy.
00:00:46.000 In the wake of World War I, dueling visions of a future world order began to emerge.
00:00:50.000 World War I shattered the old system of sprawling empires.
00:00:53.000 A new system of nation states began trying to find a way to coexist and prevent World War II.
00:00:58.000 Spoiler alert, it didn't work.
00:01:00.000 The 28th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, had a vision, a beautiful vision.
00:01:05.000 World peace, the equality of nations, everybody hashing everything out at a magical legislature called the League of Nations.
00:01:13.000 This was the precursor to the UN.
00:01:15.000 The League of Nations proposal had a particular clause called Article 10, which stipulated that if any member of the League were attacked, everybody else would then jump in to protect them, sort of like NATO, except for the whole world.
00:01:26.000 Which sounds nice in a Princeton seminar, but is actually totally insane and also at odds with the United States Constitution.
00:01:32.000 At the time, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge read Article 10 and said, hold up a second.
00:01:36.000 This means that an international body now has the power to decide if Americans ought to go to war.
00:01:41.000 It guts Senate war powers, it hands them to a council of foreigners.
00:01:44.000 Americans agreed, and the Senate refused to ratify the League of Nations covenant, and the U.S. sat out of the international body that the president had originally proposed to the rest of the world. 0.52
00:01:53.000 The League of Nations continued to exist, by the way, it just had no power, and it did nothing to prevent World War II.
00:01:59.000 The League basically was completely defunct for the entire rise of Nazi Germany, the rise of Soviet Russia, and the rise of Fascist Italy.
00:02:07.000 So then World War II breaks out.
00:02:09.000 You know, that massive global war the League was designed to prevent. 0.80
00:02:12.000 In fact, there is a case to be made that without the illusion of collective security that restrained particularly Britain, France, and the United States, that those countries may have rearmed sooner and adopted an effective containment policy toward Hitler's expansionism. 0.84
00:02:25.000 So World War II ends.
00:02:26.000 And what did the internationalists do?
00:02:28.000 They re-ran the experiment with better branding.
00:02:31.000 While the world was reeling from shock and horror after the war, the UN was launched with the soaring promise to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.
00:02:38.000 Spoiler alert, that didn't work either.
00:02:41.000 FDR had made the UN his legacy project.
00:02:43.000 He coined the term United Nations for the anti-Axis coalition during the war.
00:02:47.000 And then he sought a permanent institution anchored by something he called the four policemen: the UK, USSR, US, and China.
00:02:54.000 He even mused about becoming the first Secretary General of the UN after concluding his term as the United States President. 0.90
00:03:00.000 You may review those countries again: US, UK, USSR, like the evil Soviet government. 0.75
00:03:08.000 And China, which at that time was not, in fact, a communist government but would shortly become one. 0.77
00:03:14.000 Again, this whole idea was steeped in Wilsonian faith that if people just sat together in a room, then war could be managed like an HOA zoning dispute.
00:03:21.000 But underneath all of the rhetoric was the same question.
00:03:24.000 When international law, ill defined international law, undefined international law, law as decided by a random agglomeration of nations, voting, when that clashes with American constitutional law, who wins?
00:03:36.000 For the people who fetishize the UN, the answer is not the American voter.
00:03:40.000 So, who's actually in charge at the UN?
00:03:42.000 Well, it's called the Security Council.
00:03:44.000 There are five permanent members with vetoes the US, the UK, France, Russia, then the USSR, and China.
00:03:51.000 Why Russia?
00:03:52.000 Well, because Stalin ended up on the winning side in 1945. 0.77
00:03:54.000 That was after he started the war by joining the losing side, the Nazis, with the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact and grabbing most of Eastern Europe. 0.82
00:04:01.000 Why China? 0.65
00:04:02.000 Well, because originally China was run by a guy named Chiang Kai shek, who ended up as the head of Taiwan when he had to run to exile when Mao took over.
00:04:10.000 So, built into this system from the first day, this genius idea America's biggest adversaries would have veto power over all UN mechanisms.
00:04:18.000 You want to do something about the Syrian government massacring its own citizens?
00:04:22.000 Russia will shoot it down with a veto.
00:04:23.000 You want to do something about China?
00:04:24.000 Well, China is not exactly going to allow that to go ahead.
00:04:27.000 It's like designing a police department where mob bosses get to sign off on all the raids.
00:04:31.000 Even the logo is a tell.
00:04:32.000 The UN emblem shows the Earth from above at the North Pole flattened out, with all the continents compressed and the Americas shoved off to the side.
00:04:39.000 The symbolism is deliberate.
00:04:40.000 The global East and West are visually closer, no country more powerful than the rest. 0.54
00:04:44.000 Well, after World War II, the Allies set up Nuremberg.
00:04:47.000 Nazi leaders were prosecuted for crimes against humanity on the bizarre legal theory that was a mix of existing and new norms.
00:04:53.000 In 1949, the updated Geneva Conventions were codified into what we now call the laws of war how you treat prisoners, civilians, the wounded, and war torn.
00:05:01.000 Populations.
00:05:02.000 Well, well intentioned, they largely do the same thing.
00:05:04.000 They codify a morality that in reality pretty much nobody around the world actually shares.
00:05:10.000 And then all of those laws are militarized against the very people who put them in place in the first place.
00:05:16.000 And the big question is who enforces these laws?
00:05:19.000 The Nuremberg Nazis were prosecuted under international law.
00:05:22.000 The truth is the Allies could have just shot Hermann Goering upon winning the war and physically occupying Germany.
00:05:26.000 The Geneva Conventions are a little different because they were signed by Congress as a treaty, which, again, that's how.
00:05:32.000 America adopts international law as domestic law.
00:05:34.000 The UN, however, is doling out something entirely different, a standard of international law that does not exist.
00:05:41.000 It is Sudan voting on what they think America ought to do.
00:05:44.000 Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been explicit about this.
00:05:47.000 Don't allow international bodies to rewrite American law under the guise of diplomacy.
00:05:51.000 Now, UN defenders will trot out the same handful of successes.
00:05:54.000 In Korea in 1950, the Security Council authorized force after North Korea invaded the South.
00:05:59.000 Well, because the Soviets were boycotting over China's seat and weren't there to veto it.
00:05:59.000 Why did that pass?
00:06:03.000 And by the way, it didn't matter.
00:06:05.000 The U.S. had to spend all of the time and all of the money to secure South Korea in the Korean War.
00:06:10.000 In the Congo in the 1960s, the mask slipped.
00:06:12.000 The U.N. operation got sucked into a civil war and a Cold War rivalry.
00:06:16.000 The peacekeepers were incompetent.
00:06:18.000 The idea of a neutral, technocratic U.N. peace force swooping in with their blue helmets to fix failing states starts to look like what it was, a fantasy.
00:06:26.000 And during the Cold War, the Security Council spent most of its time doing nothing because, again, the U.S. and the USSR were the opposite sides of the Cold War and both were on the Security Council.
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00:07:29.000 Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly became a tool of the worst countries on planet Earth where they just vote routinely for random third world policies that mean nothing because none of them can be practiced.
00:07:39.000 In 1974, the arch terrorist Yasser Arafat showed up to address the UN wearing a holster.
00:07:44.000 Yes, he actually brought a gun.
00:07:45.000 To the hall where people are supposed to talk about these.
00:07:48.000 And one year later, the UN General Assembly declared that Zionism is racism.
00:07:52.000 Again, the only Jewish state, there are some 50 odd Muslim states, the only Jewish state was singled out as inherently racist, while all the actual racist dictatorships voted yes.
00:08:01.000 That resolution was not revoked until 1991, by the way.
00:08:04.000 If you want to know when a lot of Americans began to realize the UN wasn't neutral, well, you can start during this period.
00:08:09.000 The 1990s saw the permanent destruction of the myth that the UN is some sort of global guardian, just protecting people.
00:08:16.000 In Somalia, the UN's failed humanitarian interventions resulted in the entire Black Lockdown disaster in Mogadishu. 0.94
00:08:21.000 That should have been the UN's job, it ended up being American soldiers. 0.97
00:08:24.000 In Rwanda, an inept UN mission watched as a full on genocide unfolded. 0.81
00:08:28.000 Lawyers in New York were arguing about the word genocide while people were being hacked to death with machetes, and safe areas guarded by UN soldiers were not, in fact, safe.
00:08:36.000 In Bosnia, the UN declared Srebnica a safe area while Serb forces walked in, massacred everybody, and peacekeepers stood by under paralyzing rules.
00:08:44.000 In fact, in many areas in which UN peacekeepers were present, there ended up being giant sex scandals because it turns out the peacekeepers were, you know, abusing their positions of authority.
00:08:52.000 Bill Clinton almost became more interventionist in spite.
00:08:55.000 Of the UN, not because of it.
00:08:56.000 So if your main sales pitch for the UN is that it prevents atrocities, the UN has never prevented atrocities.
00:09:02.000 And then, of course, there is the corruption.
00:09:04.000 The oil for food program in Iraq was supposed to let Saddam Hussein sell limited oil to buy food and medicine under UN supervision.
00:09:10.000 And it turns out he just stole all of the money.
00:09:13.000 Lots of companies and intermediaries got rich.
00:09:16.000 UN oversight did nothing.
00:09:17.000 There is nothing more ridiculous about the UN and nothing more indicative of their corruption than their incessant condemnations of the state of Israel.
00:09:24.000 Since 2015, the UN General Assembly. 0.88
00:09:26.000 Has adopted 140 resolutions criticizing Israel.
00:09:29.000 Over that same period, fewer than 70 resolutions were passed against the rest of the world combined.
00:09:35.000 There are 190 some countries in the world.
00:09:37.000 Over half of all UN Human Rights Council's resolutions targeted Israel in its first decade of operation.
00:09:43.000 Meanwhile, China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan, they're all part of the UN's top human rights body.
00:09:49.000 China is on the panel monitoring free speech.
00:09:51.000 Iran is the vice chair of the UN Women's Policy Rights Committee.
00:09:55.000 Human rights, disarmament, terrorism prevention, Iran sits on that committee.
00:10:00.000 Everybody knows it. 0.99
00:10:00.000 It's a clown show. 0.99
00:10:01.000 Climate is the same story with different buzzwords. 0.73
00:10:04.000 Copenhagen 2009, that's Greta Thunberg's world premiere, was hyped as the last chance to save the planet.
00:10:09.000 It collapsed into a weak, non binding accord.
00:10:12.000 Paris 2015 was sold as historic, but the reality was countries were performatively limiting their carbon emissions without any judge or jury or penalty or enforcement mechanism.
00:10:21.000 The United States, the most powerful country on earth, was climate shamed by people who flew in private jets to the conference where they shamed them.
00:10:28.000 This is what international law often means in practice TED Talks with motorcades and shaming America.
00:10:33.000 All symbolism, no enforcement.
00:10:35.000 When it comes to military action, the UN has never been more irrelevant than it is today.
00:10:39.000 But there are a bunch of examples from over the years.
00:10:41.000 In 2003, the United States went to the Security Council to get an Iraq war resolution since Iraq was refusing to abide by a wide variety of UN Security Council resolutions.
00:10:50.000 France and Russia balked.
00:10:51.000 The United States and its willing coalition partners went in anyway.
00:10:55.000 Again, the UN doesn't mean anything.
00:10:56.000 They don't get to decide yes or no.
00:10:58.000 Bashar Assad's at Syria is Exhibit B. Russia Ukraine is Exhibit C. Statement emergency session, strongly worded statement.
00:11:05.000 The outcome is determined by NATO policy and American aid, not by a council chamber with Russia on it.
00:11:11.000 And of course, nowhere is the UN's moral compass more non existent than, again, on Israel.
00:11:16.000 The UN recognized Palestine as a state in 2012, despite the fact that it has no borders and no government.
00:11:21.000 They've also cranked out hosts of votes since that that activists have glommed onto as though these were some form of divine revelation.
00:11:28.000 Then there's the UN Refugee Works Agency.
00:11:30.000 It literally only works for supposed Palestinian refugees who have been quote unquote refugees.
00:11:36.000 For legitimately 80 years. 0.97
00:11:38.000 That's not a refugee gang. 0.56
00:11:40.000 And more than 100 staffers have been revealed to be Hamas terrorists.
00:11:43.000 And of course, nothing the UN has done has been able to draw borders, disarm terrorists, or build a functioning Palestinian government.
00:11:48.000 The UN doesn't even want to do any of those things.
00:11:50.000 The UN uselessness was put on blast most famously when Donald Trump showed up at the podium and mocked them all.
00:11:55.000 He mocked the bureaucracy.
00:11:56.000 He ridiculed the idea that the UN's job is to boss around sovereign countries.
00:11:59.000 He threatened to cut funding, and he has.
00:12:02.000 It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion.
00:12:06.000 The room would freak out that Trump was undermining what they called multilateralism, but Trump's point was and is correct.
00:12:12.000 The job of the American president is not to do what earns him plaudits from the UN General Assembly, it's to defend American interests.
00:12:19.000 And mostly that involves ignoring the UN.
00:12:22.000 Over a century ago, President Woodrow Wilson's utopianism gave way to a brand new vision of a liberal institutionalist world order, where presidents like FDR and Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama believe that if you write charters and hold conferences and pass resolutions, you can bureaucratize war out of existence.
00:12:38.000 There is a competing view of geopolitics.
00:12:40.000 Realist nationalists like Teddy Roosevelt or Calvin Coolidge or Ronald Reagan or President Trump, who say correctly, sure, nations have interests, creating more committees in Geneva or New York is not going to repeal that.
00:12:50.000 The best case scenario is that the UN is considered mostly necessary but useless.
00:12:54.000 The worst case scenario is that It's necessary, useless, and dangerous because internationalism chips away at sovereignty, and because internationalism is basically a way for the worst people on earth to pretend that they have moral authority.
00:13:07.000 So, let's just knock over the UN building.
00:13:09.000 Build a park.
00:13:10.000 Give it to President Trump to build a tower.
00:13:12.000 Admit what over a century of evidence shows the UN and the League of Nations before it failed to prevent world war, actual genocide, pandemics, and every other human rights abuse imaginable.
00:13:21.000 They have succeeded in creating an enormous, unaccountable bureaucracy that isn't worth the building it exists within.
00:13:27.000 Today.
00:13:28.000 Oh, yeah, and a bunch of bureaucrats who don't have to pay their parking tickets. 0.99