PragerU

PragerU (or Prager University) is a non-profit organization and conspiracy theory peddling YouTube channel, founded by radio talk show host and professional wingnut Dennis Prager with his business partner Allen Estrin in 2009. The organization is an "education" outlet meant to be a "growing alternative to the moral and intellectual wasteland known as the Western university",Super-conservative PragerU aims to arm pro-Israel students for their campus ‘wastelands’ from the Times of Israel which instead promotes a hard right moral and intellectual wasteland, usually within the bounds of neoconservatism and social conservatism. PragerU is mostly known for its 5 minute videos, which each feature a popular conservative speaker, journalist, author, and so on. Their videos host a wide range of conservative people, from former Canadian PM Stephen Harper to conspiratorial wingnut Owen Benjamin.To their credit, they removed their video with Owen after he drifted too far down the anti-semitic rabbit hole. Here's a reupload of that original video.
PragerU has gotten a large amount of funding from fracking billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks,No, these aren't the Koch brothers, get your billionaires straight. alongside a host of other conservative advocacy groups.Great post by DeSmog Blog which covers the funding of PragerU and its content in regards to global warmingFracking Titans Spend Millions Proselytizing School Children from Rewire News Group DeSmog Blog has covered this funding in-depth.
Prager "University" presents history and politics from a hard-right point of view. This includes rampant New Deal denialism, promotion of the Laffer curve, American exceptionalism, and an off the walls weird interpretation of liberalism.Prager University - "Are You A Liberal?" The channel also promotes extreme Zionist views, claiming the IDF to be the "World's Most Moral Army","Israel: The World's Most Moral Army" - PragerU and promotes fossil fuels as being "the greenest energy".Fossil Fuels: The Greenest Energy - PragerU[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49Teja5YNCo "Why You Should Love Fossil Fuel" - PragerU It has called wealth income inequality "good"."Income Inequality is Good" - PragerU In a multitude of ill-informed videos, it furthermore espouses climate change denialism,"What They Haven't Told You about Climate Change" - PragerU"The Truth about CO2" - PragerU militarism,"Should America be the World's Policeman?" - PragerU American exceptionalism,"How Do You Judge America? Left vs. Right #3" - PragerU"What Makes America Different?" - PragerU pro-British imperialism,"If You Live in Freedom, Thank the British Empire" - PragerU and many, many more nutty reactionary beliefs.
Guest hosts on the site include Jonah Goldberg and Amity Shlaes.
Prager also has a video explaining reasons marriage is healthy to a couple for non-legal reasons, which is kind of dickish given his position on gay marriage.[http://www.prageruniversity.com/Life-Studies/The-Case-for-Marriage.html#.Ulde25rn9Ms Prager University - "The Case For Marriage"
Nevertheless, PragerU does offer a few worthwhile videos, such as Colonel Ty Seidule of the US Military Academy at West Point debunking neo-Confederate apologetics for the Civil War,"Was the Civil War About Slavery?" - PragerU Patrick Moore debunking anti-GMO propaganda, "Are GMOs Good or Bad?" - PragerU and Paul Copan debunking factual relativism."True for You but Not for Me" - PragerU PragerU also made a video criticizing rent control, which almost all economists believe is bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJvTTGOHFkU "Why Rent Control Hurts Renters" - PragerU https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/15/comeback-rent-control-just-time-make-housing-shortages-worse/ "Opinion: The one issue every economist can agree is bad: Rent control", Washington Post https://freakonomics.com/podcast/rent-control/ Rent Control - Freakonomics Podcast
PragerU has a channel aimed at young children called "PragerU Kids." Compared to the parent, the kids channel is very watered down, but maintains the main theme of “American values”. PragerU Kids It has made videos that hilariously whitewash things such as Ronald Reagan, PragerU Kids: Ronald Reagan Capitalism,PragerU Kids: Adam Smith Christopher Columbus,PragerU Kids: Christopher Columbus equality in the United States,PragerU Kids: Frederick Douglas and a video espousing the “The scientific revolution was caused by religion” myth,PragerU Kids: The Scientific revolution all of these designed for an unassuming young audience.
The sheer ludicrousness of Prager's crank videos make them ripe for parody. Innumerable "YouTube Poops" or YTPs (remixes that make fun of the original source material by editing its dialogue/pictures to change them to those that are silly and/or rude) have been made of his videos.YTP Dennis Prager ascends to godhood and respects women. BottledBanana, YouTube, 7 May 2019.Dennis Prager says the darndest things. Dragonflame Media, YouTube, 8 September 2019.
==Origins==
PragerU was created in response to a perceived left-wing bias in the American school system by Dennis Prager and Allen Estrin in 2009. Its aim was to promote the neoconservative belief system to the American people, particularly college students, through its website and YouTube.Nellie Bowles, Right-Wing Views for Generation Z, Five Minutes at a Time. Archived from the original at The New York Times, 4 January 2020.
==Views and videos==
 PragerU's content tends to align with the personal beliefs of Dennis Prager, which includes among other things:
* The left is on a quest to abolish Judeo-Christian values in the west and convert these societies to secular places, which will erode the west's freedom and bring us closer to a state-dominated society (like the USSR or Nazi Germany).
* The left is trying to promote degeneracy feminism, the radical gay agenda, and transgenderism, which will destroy society as we know it.
* The left is trying to erase history by having more nuanced views about the actions of the United States government & bringing more attention to events related to a historically oppressed group of people.
* Free-market capitalism is the best economic system ever and socialism will basically destroy society.
* Global warming is basically a myth. And even if it isn't a myth, it's not as bad as people say it is. But if it's not a myth, the environmentalist movement is too powerful anyway. And even if they aren't too powerful, they have bad solutions. And regardless of any of that, conservatives are the REAL pro-environment people, because they push for fossil fuel usage. They basically just inhabit multiple steps of the denialist staircase at the same time.
* Black people have it great in America and face basically no racial discrimination nowadays — and anyone who says otherwise is actually perpetuating racism and hurting black people, by painting black people as victims and as needing outside help to solve their problems.
* White Conservative Males are the most persecuted people in America because they are being systemically censored for violating a website's terms of service being brave enough to fight against the leftist establishment.
* Children today are spoiled brats that need to have authoritarian parents, otherwise they'll end up like those scary activists.
* A radical historical figure that was repressed by a conservative government was actually a conservative because they weren't like those BLM & Antifa rascals.
===Religion===
====God and morality====
====God's existence====
====Other religious junk====
===Science===
====Climate change denialism====
====Evolution denialism====
===History===
====Civil War====
====Robert E. Lee====
====Genocide Denial====
===Politics===
====Capitalism/Socialism====
====Immigration====
====Environmental issues====
====Gender issues====
You'll hear ol' Dennis gloat that "there are only two genders", despite scientific consensus, next!
==PragerU in real schools==
One of PragerU's objectives is for them to be included in school curriculums in the US. On their website, they host a petition that states:
In July 2023, they were included in Florida schools' curricula, which under DeSantis had already become very conservative.PragerU Says Florida Teachers Approved to Use Its Class ‘Curriculum’ July 24, 2023, Josh Fiallo, The Daily Beast A Media Matters review of these videos highlighted some of the indoctrination included in the videos. Among them was a video which nonsensically compared those engaged in climate change denialism with those who engaged in the a video which spouted pro-cop, anti-Black Lives Matter propaganda; a racist, apologist video regarding Britain's colonial rule of India, which framed India as a backwards colony that benefited from the British rule due to them spreading "the influence of Christianity and Western values through India" and discouraging or even outlawing "harmful traditions"; an apologist video for America's mediocre health care system that spouts tired conservative propaganda about the dangers of socialized medicine; whitewashed whataboutism viewpoints on slavery in America and apologist stances on Christopher Columbus; and an apologist video for gender roles, in which the video encourages conformity in order to "create a well-balanced family and community"."The lessons Florida public school students will learn from PragerU Kids" by John Knefel, Media Matters, 2023 July 27
Even ignoring the indoctrination, PragerU is a fucking useless educational tool due to ineptly structured lessons and terrible learning objectives. As an example of how bad the learning objectives are, a lot of them include "appreciate", a word that Bloom's Taxonomy explicitly advises against because it isn't quantifiable. Its lessons - contrary to its own stated goals - are unengaging because they largely consist of watching videos; educationally unsound because they rarely, if ever, meaningfully achieve their learning objectives; and difficult for teachers to implement due to missing steps.How PragerU Hurts Students (and Teachers), Zoe Bee This means that classes across Florida, especially ones with neurodivergent students, are going to become rowdy due to boredom and a lack of anything of substance being learned.
=="But muh freezepeach!"==
Prager's organization has made hilariously bad arguments regarding freedom of speech to further their conservative persecution complex.A dumb podcast of theirs, which can be summed up as "offensive=true" It has also displayed hilariously bad takes on the law regarding speech, such as suing in order to try to prevent YouTube from removing their videos for violating the terms of service.Mark Joseph Stein, "Another Court Throws Out PragerU’s Preposterous YouTube Lawsuit", from Slate
In 2017, PragerU sued Google claiming that YouTube censored their videos for political reasons. The lawsuit was accompanied by a petition and much whining, but was summarily dismissed several months later. The presiding judge stated that not only did PragerU fail to demonstrate that YouTube's age restrictions imposed on their videos are a First Amendment violation, but also that Google is not subject to the First Amendment because it's a private company and not a public institution.Harper Neidig, Judge dismisses lawsuit alleging Google censorship of conservative YouTube videos. thehill.com, 27 March 2018. And, of course, as mentioned above, PragerU videos have been actively advertised on YouTube for a considerable period of time. Companies that let you advertise on their platforms probably aren't trying to censor you.
To claim that Google is censoring PragerU because YouTube set some of their videos to restricted mode (to make sure children are unable to watch them) is ludicrous.PragerU is NOT being censored by Google/YouTube According to YouTube’s policies on Restricted Mode —
The videos set to restricted mode cover at least one or more of these instances. Furthermore, the videos are not removed from YouTube, or unobtainable through a Google search or through one’s feed.
In 2018, PragerU criticized YouTube for adding fact-checks to YouTube videos which cover climate change, since it relies on the viewer’s ignorance of science and scientific consensus to enforce its viewpoint.PragerU criticized YouTube for adding fact-checks to YouTube videos which cover climate change, Buzzfeed
==Anti-Leftism==
A major hallmark of the ideology of PragerU is their extreme anti-left stance (perhaps their biggest scapegoat for their ideology, like Jews for Nazis and Ukrainians for Soviets/Russians). Prior to this, they also held an anti-liberal stance (such as videos with Greg Gutfeld bashing liberals and mixing them with leftists). They later changed their stance with a video titled “Left or Liberal”, hosted by Dennis Prager.Left or Liberal? PragerU YouTube From then on, they have attempted to paint leftists as the worlds enemy (yes, the entire global left, disregarding various factions that oppose one another). The biggest video they made that was bigoted against leftists was “Why The Left Ruins Everything”, which was later retitled as “Why are so many Good Things being Destroyed?”Why Are So Many Good Things Being Destroyed? | 5 Minute Video YouTube
==In a nutshell==
==See also==
*Dennis Prager - The founder
==External links==
*PragerU article on DeSmog
*PragerU Is Conservative Junk Food by José on Youtube
*Shaun on Youtube
**How PragerU Lies to You
**How PragerU Lies to You - The British Empire
**How PragerU Lies to You: Charlottesville
**The Death Penalty feat. PragerU
*Big Joel on Youtube
**PragerU and Marriage: A Conservative Fever Dream
**PragerU and Justice: A Conservative Nightmare
**PragerU and Tradition: The Conservative Utopia
**PragerU for Kids: The Worst Propaganda
*FragerU- The Left VS The Right by DarkMatter2525
==Notes==
==References==
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