The Daily Wire is a right-wing American news network that’s fallen on hard times. Said times followed a series of business and creative decisions which failed to pay off. Among the failures was a movie called Run Hide Fight which bombed with critics but did generate a positive response from viewers — all on the back of a meager $1.5m budget. This led to the spin-off Run Hide Fight: Infidels, which takes the ‘mass shooter’ premise and adds a heavy dose of Islamophobia.

Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo is one of those who called out the Islamophobia. And in response to the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, he’s now released the following video:

So @benshapiro put out a video asking me to explain why his new movie is Islamophobic, challenged me to name more than 5 movies with Muslim villains, & called me a “terror-hugger” & “spokesperson for Qatar.”

Here’s my response to Shapiro’s gaslighting, with lots of receipts: pic.twitter.com/AR0oje8mug

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) August 11, 2026

“Bigoted, Islamophobic, and clichéd”

Hasan begins his point by noting:

After more than 10 years of ignoring little old me, Ben Shapiro finally devoted an entire 13-minute video to responding to a tweet of mine. See, the co-founder and editor emeritus of the now-struggling Daily Wire got triggered by a tweet from me calling the Daily Wire’s new action movie, ‘Run Hide Fight: Infidels’ bigoted, Islamophobic, and cliched. I mean, just look at the trailer about an ISIS attack on a US college campus, which begins with references to Allah, moves onto images of Muslims on prayer mats, and ends with the literal Islamic call to prayer. How many lazy, sweeping Islamophobic tropes can you squeeze into a single two-minute trailer?

Originally, Shapiro put the following point to Hasan:

Why is it Islamophobic to portray ISIS as villainous? https://t.co/siDfFXMKs7

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 7, 2026

As Hasan has now explained:

Why is it Islamophobic to literally just quote ISIS doing ISIS things? Happy to explain, Ben, because you, gaslighter, the trailer that you just showed your viewers moments earlier doesn’t just quote ISIS doing ISIS things. It shows the main character, the hero, the ex-American special forces soldier played by Jonathan Majors — the actor who incidentally was convicted of assaulting and harassing his former girlfriend — it shows him saying this is about Islam. Not ISIS, Islam.

Islamophobia — Divide and conquer

Quoting the film’s main character, Hasan says:

‘There are three ways Islam will conquer the West. Through immigration, through the wombs of our women, and by using our nation’s freedoms against us’. That isn’t Islamophobic? Islam will conquer the West by taking advantage of American women?

The idea that People of Colour are replacing white populations through demographic means is what’s known as the ‘Great Replacement Theory’. Ironically — given Shapiro’s Jewishness — it’s a theory that originated with antisemites. As the Conversation reported:

The “great replacement theory,” whose origins date back to the late 19th century, argues that Jews and some Western elites are conspiring to replace white Americans and Europeans with people of non-European descent, particularly Asians and Africans.

The conspiracy evolved from a series of false ideas that, over time, stoked the fears of white people: In 1892, British-Australian author and politician Charles Pearson warned that white people would “wake to find ourselves elbowed and hustled, and perhaps even thrust aside by people whom we looked down.” The massive influx of immigrants into Europe at the time fostered some of these fears and resulted in “white extinction anxiety.” In the U.S., it resulted in policies targeting immigration in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Hollywood history with Islamophobia

Getting to Hollywood’s history of using Muslim villains, Hasan named the following movies:

Okay, let’s try. Delta Force, Iron Eagle, Navy Seals, Not Without My Daughter, True Lies, Executive Decision, The Siege, Rules of Engagement, The Covenant, American Assassin. I could keep going…

In fact, when film historian Jack Shaheen examined over a thousand Hollywood movies released over the course of a hundred years and before 9-11, featuring Muslim or Arab characters, 936 of them – 936 – had negative depictions of Muslims or Arabs.

Hasan added:

Oh, and don’t even get me started on TV shows with Muslim villains like 24, which Shapiro just dismisses out of hand, even though four out of nine seasons of 24 featured Muslim terrorist villains. And of course, there’s also Homeland, Tyrant, Sleeper Cell, Threat Matrix, The Unit, Jack Ryan, The Terminal List, Dark Wolf. Again, I could keep going and Shapiro knows it.

Decline

If there’s something positive to glean from all this, it’s that the Daily Wire does indeed seem to be failing:

In part, this is because its right-wing stars are facing the same issue that most right-wing pundits face; declining interest over time. This is most obvious with the network’s leading light Ben Shapiro, who regularly used to get millions of views and now gets tens of thousands.

It’s not for nothing that Shapiro is engaging with Hasan; it’s because he needs the attention. As grim as the network’s latest movie is, just remember that what you’re seeing is the last, dying gasp of a failed right-wing media empire.

Featured image via Brittanica / New America

By Willem Moore

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