Perhaps it's not ben shapiro or society that has become extremist. Perhaps it's the economist and the entire media industry that has become far leftist extremist and that's why they view everyone else as "alt right".
> Editor’s note (March 28th 2019): This article has been changed. A previous version mistakenly described Mr Shapiro as an “alt-right sage” and “a pop idol of the alt right”. In fact, he has been strongly critical of the alt-right movement. We apologise.
I'm not in ideological lockstep with them on many topics, but that sort of journalistic integrity is one of the things that distinguishes them from plenty of rags that are purely motivated by partisan ideology.
Journalist integrity would be the economist not lying and smearing someone who they disagree with in the first place. To call an orthodox jew an "alt-right sage" means the people working at the economist are lazy and incompetent or they are liars smearing a jewish individual for ideological reasons. You could follow the thread. You could probably also find the deleted tweets by the economist and their editor too if you want.
https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1111301001359904770
To label a pathetic smear campaign by the economist as "journalistic integrity" just shows the terrible state of journalism today. And the only reason the spineless cowards at the economist apologized is because Ben Shapiro has a big enough following to fight back. Otherwise, they would have stuck to their lies and slander. And I have to disagree with your last statement. The economist is most definitely one of the "rags that are purely motivated by partisan ideology.". But we are all entitled to our own opinions.
The economist is socially moderate-left (mostly socially progressive, but less so on certain issues such as Palestine, and generally not devoting time to fringe opinions at all) but very, very free-market oriented. The closest political orientation to them is "classically liberal", or in US terms, "libertarian", or "moderate Republican".