Shahid Bolsen | A Critical Review

Shahid is a YouTube phenomenon. Google search of him shows nothing but social media posts. He is disconnected from any real-world work and is clearly a “nobody” in general. He runs Middle Nation and has a 308K fan base with an average like count per video of 1K to 3.7K. He is an exceptional orator and has deep critical thinking skills; no one can take that away from him. Yet he has no books on Amazon, no films, he is not part of any organizations, no one mentions him, really, nothing. ¹. As stated exclusively a social media phenomenon that came from nowhere, and that is very concerning. However, remember that being famous or notable means nothing, since most notable people have nothing notable to say. ²

Below is the best treatment of xenophobia in South Africa, and he is not “black” or South African, yet no one gives a treatment for the money. It is a shame he is chained to UAE paymasters, or else he would be 9/10. He almost redeems himself after attacking Mark Ruffalo.

He has exceptional dissection skills on some topics. He is almost a Muslim Scott Ritter but not at the level of Glen Grenwald with trustworthiness and credibility. ³.  But what really discredited him was his normalization agenda— no one is biting into that mate.  He is clearly indebted to the Gulf States, which might be connected to his criminal past. But his hubris stops his full potential, as he is always right and people are inferior to him when they disagree. ⁴. Yet some of his insights is blindingly accurate, some especially concerning Arab states stink of a payoff. He does have an important campaign going on to eject America from the UN Security Council; now it will never work, but that is exactly what needs to happen. See Invoke Article 6 

FANBASE

You can tell a lot about a person by who they attract. Most of his fans are people who shower him with uncritical praise— regardless of the topic he is discussing. They almost never reply to the topic, only to their adoration of him. Now contrast that with the comments to serious pundits like Crystal Ball, Rani Khalek, or Double Down, Low Key, etc.

MURDER

Unfortunately, what Shahid is notable for is the 2006 Doha murder of a German citizen 58-year-old Martin Herbert Steiner ⁵. He does not hide it, as it is stated in his bio, obviously his version of the murder (which makes no sense). ⁶ He is the father of 4 children. Bolsen and his Ethiopian maid were accused of luring married Steiner to Bolsen’s Sharjah home with promises of sex. He claims Steiner got aggressive and he administered the lethal drug to stop him. He then went on a Dhs20,000 spending spree with Steiner’s credit card. After confessing to the killing, Bolsen took the police to the body and was eventually sentenced to death in 2007. It is rumored that he paid blood money and is now free or semi-free. ⁷ But accountable to some political force that allowed him to be free.

Now he in a room somewhere making videos dressed like the Men in Black,

HIS BEST WORK

Some of his best videos are extremely profound and are critical listening.

AS A PUNDIT

Hot cool rhetoric has its purpose, playing with words and manufacturing cute slogans with analogies that make you smile helps to convey a reality. They are not something I would present in a serious discussion about geopolitics. Shahid has done some amazing geopolitical analysis, but I would not say it is his specialty. His style resembles Jordan Peterson’s and appeals to a certain male demographic. ⁸

He is very sharp and also very inconsistent. A breath of fresh air sometimes. Very immature arrogant and intolerant of critique. Yet a very good pundit on summaries of contemporary issues. So maybe we have to ignore the bad and take the good. But everyone has his place and he is not Chris Hedges, he is not Norman Finkelstein, he has his own usefulness in this discourse.

He did a piece on slavery and when discussing the West he was hitting it out of the ballpark, then he got to Muslims and turned into an apologist. There is no expert on Slavery that could take what he did seriously, as an expert on the Arab slave trade his content was a joke.  Arab society is/was just as filled with contempt for non-Arabs almost to the same degree as the West. It was more insidious but escapable. And like most online personalities he is not an academic and his work is free from serious peer-review. Most of his audience are not educated enough to critique or challenge anything he says. Nothing he says could survive even a Wikipedia arbitration. But that is the downside of online. Almost all online profiles are like this. impressionable people who worship every word people say uncritically. And on the subject of criticism, you should see how he tries to intimidate those who disagree.

“both of them aren’t on the right side of history, they’re on the WHITE side of history.”—Shahid ⁹

This is his thing, cool and cute quotes. That is entertainment, that is memorable but where is the substance for serious people?

SAUDI CONNECTION

I suspect he has ties to Saudi and is not allowed to be too critical of MBS. He did a puff piece on MBS which is totally out of character given the other things he has said and the intellectual standard he has admirably laid out when being critical of others. He seems to be signaling to the Jewish elite that he is against Antisemitism and goes so far as to throw Candace Owen under the bus for Jew-hating. I would love to see him in a debate with Candace and see how she trashes him. And I am no fan of hers but he would not survive an engagement with her wit.

He is never seen outside of his choir and comfort zone. Why is he not on Thinking Muslim, Sabby Sab, or any of these other shows? He is into Western bashing, that is clear and he is obviously Western himself, but in fairness, he has addressed this apparent dilemma numerous times. And he is so polemic on this point that it is hard to take his critique as academic. He is exceptional on some other issues like South Africa, and my favorite is P-Diddy.

For someone so smart, I am less forgiving of his shortcomings. Because he must be willfully deceptive to know so much yet get some things so wrong.

SLANDER OR CRITIQUE?

Now before you watch the video below please know we do not support this video. So watch it in the interest of transparency with this caveat. It is so easy to call someone a Zionist agent. AHS has been called CIA agents, Arab agents, you name it. The shocking thing is what motivated these easy accusations— for not supporting Wesley Snipes ¹⁰.  I cannot see how Bolsen, given his staunch dedication to Palestine and his hard-hitting criticism of Israel can be a Zionist agent. It is shameful name-calling.  It is a very dishonest video and you can tell from the first second “Is it Shahid, or Sheed, I don’t even bother with his name”? You don’t need to do that! He is a Muslim and the guy criticizing him is a Muslim and in Islam that is not allowed. So if The Muslim Skeptic is a scholar or authority on Islam they already know this. ¹¹The rules of criticism are not hidden. The Qur’an says :

 “When you received it with your tongues and said with your mouths that of which you had no knowledge and thought it was insignificant while it was, in the sight of Allah, tremendous.” [Quran 24:15]

STANDALONE

A stand-alone personality isolated from everyone else. With no credentials. Someone in Saudi Arabia is funding Middle Nation (speculation not fact). He is very good, but not always very consistent. and seems to want to isolate his audience to make him to be the messiah. so that kind of cult personality is worrying. He would attack everyone, yet stands with no one.

Why is he not on the Thinking Musim attacking them to their face? Why doesn’t he go on Candace Owen and tell her like it is? So he is a coward operating on the Middle Nations.

He sounds like Malcolm X and for some that is enough.

When he gets it right 7/10 he knocks it out of the ballpark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PcyI20vtzc

Beyond that, he is vague and just polemic in his trashing of everything Western (despite being Western) and it gets tiring if you are above a certain age. I hate what the West has done but when you make them the devil of all devils without ever reflecting on the devil in Muslim society it means you are unbalanced. He even tried to wash out the Arab slave trade. You can only do so much of that before you have to own some stuff.

A radical, dogmatic Malcolm X wannabe; his gestures, editing, intro, rhetoric.  Pay attention to some of his videos; the camera angles, his gestures, his style of dress, how he holds his finger when making a point (done so when one believes their words are powerful- it’s orally italicizing your word of choice). He’s definitely taken by his own appearance and style of message.

The underlying American laws, and why they have so many, is because they have contempt for people…

Being American is a condition not a nationality… it’s like being traumatized

Americans hate American more than anyone (huh)

 

These are quotes he has said in his videos without any substance, supporting facts, or explanation. They just don’t make any sense. Ear candy for those who have a problem with the West. Well, we do have a problem with the West but these diatribes are not helping us cope or understand the West when they are so onesidded and unbalanced. The West is code for White civilizations and he would make an exceptional Afrocentric. If someone was to be a Jewish version of him, it would not be so nice.

And fell into the trap he warns people about by calling Candace Owen a Jew hater, how is she a Jew hater? I guess because the Zionists call her so. But here we are defending him against accusations of Zionism. He should offer her a public apology. She is many things but no evidence of Jew-hating. No evidence is required.

WHERE IS HE?

I suspect he is in hiding somewhere in the world based on his videos. He did an insulting video of Sami Hamdi, and questioned his knowledge so where is he in the video below? The thing about Shahid and his ego is that it is not so tough when he has to stand toe-to-toe with the people he disrespects. He will not stand next to Candace Owen (if she even knows he exists), and he will not be seen outside of his groupie circles which is concerning for someone so outspoken. Does he have true confidence? Or just stick to safe waters where he can bash the Muslim youth who dare to disagree with him in the comments?

FLASH CONCLUSION

I hate to have to rush a piece, we don’t believe in slander and unfair critiques of people, especially those who have demonstrated beyond question that they are on the same ethical page as us. We just do not have the resources to go any further.

I highly recommend Shahid’s better work and hope that this article will guide you through how to take his content going forward. Via open dialogue critique, we can be better served. No one is perfect, you could write a critique of AHS. We have so much to pull from in our 20 years, you can twist it and make us out to be agents. The only problem is when you try it on Vis-à-vis. So criticism is easy, and criticism in isolation is even easier. Even Malcolm X made mistakes, King has done seriously questionable things, every single one of us. We cannot run around calling people an agent, it is very immature and harms the struggle for justice. No one profits from divisions more than our common oppressor— none of them are divided on White supremacy.

UPDATE 2025

He is manipulative of facts, and it is hard to know what games he is playing. Many like him and unlike the obvious devils, these ones know how to mix truth in with their agenda to actually make some good points. But he is selective (we are coming back to that) on what he is willing to tell the truth about. Stuff that he can afford to give away. Like a Black Friday sale, where they sell the stuff cheaply that they can afford to sell. Recently, he attacked celebrities who support Palestine for only offering lip service. Wow. Including Roger Walters, Brad Pitt, Jolie, and Ruffalo. He made the point that they have money and don’t need to use Twitter like us. But he forgot to mention influence. Did someone as smart as him forget? of course not. He just made sure he didn’t mention that. Their influence is worth way more than their money can buy. Why did he leave that out? Because he is a self-serving polemic, and we abandoned polemic behavior 10 years ago. Do you know the personal cost to Mark Ruffalo and Susan for standing up for Palestine? Way more than any cost Shahid faces.

REFERENCES

1. On Wikipedia, there is only one reference to him and it is not positive[↩]
2. AHS, for comparison, did not come from nowhere; we keep a low profile but we did not come from nowhere. Our site is 20 years old and connected to epic documentaries and we have been peer-reviewed and appeared in content far and wide all over the world, especially at the peak of our popularity a decade ago. Most of our major articles have the names and bios of the people who contributed the content. I have to say all of this to frame our opinion of Shahid.[↩]
3. Scott, like Shahid, is all over the place and controversial; no one is going to cite either of them in an academic paper are a reliable source[↩]
4. He is not the only one with political insight or social commentary[↩]
5. Clorofome Killer Shahid Bolsen[↩]
6. https://shahidkingbolsen.org/biography/[↩]
7. Blood Money in Muslim Countries[↩]
8. That does not mean ideologically like Peterson, just the same type of cult personality, he speaks about a lot of stuff and presents himself (without sharing his qualifications) as an expert[↩]
9. Talking about Candace Owen and some other guy[↩]
10. This is just one example, another example is because we said there was slavery systems in Africa[↩]
11. Islam and Criticism[↩]