Prager "University": How Billionaires Proselytize Rightwing Ignorance to Children
The dichotomy of thought it
requires for a non-autocrat to identify as a “conservative" is truly
mind-bending. You must hate your own government, except for the ability
to oppress your "enemies" or control someone else's body. You
must love capitalism, but be willing to fight for government handouts for the
1%. You must demand unconditional patriotism, yet turn a blind eye
to attacks on democratic institutions and voting rights.
Of course, all of this goes
away with rational, logical thought. As soon as a person is able to apply
critical thinking, conservatism unravels. The plutocracy, which
benefits from the army of ignorant masses, knows this very well. This is
why they fight to undermine education at every turn: they smear those who seek
higher education as “liberal elites", and they attack science, math, and
even facts themselves as biased. Teachers are held in utter disdain, and in
recent years, they have moved from undermining from undermining public
education to outright calling for its complete elimination.
In it’s place is a replacement
for critical thinking: indoctrination. This is the goal of the plutocracy--
to collapse our remaining structures that promote critical thought with schools
that teach a point of view beneficial to the plutocracy. Think of how
successful they have been in the realm of journalism: what started as their own
24-hour news network has morphed into an entire industry that has completely
removed the principle of neutral reporting. Today’s conservative is wholly
unable to identify bias in reporting, and recently has devolved into being
unable to distinguish real from “alternative” facts.
Now, enter Prager University:
Starting in 2011, [Dennis]
Prager founded Prager University, an online resource that produces short videos
on Prager’s favorite extremist tropes. While the program claims it is directed
toward all students, including those at college, many of the videos are clearly
aimed at middle school and high school children, including those attending public
schools. The website is not accredited as an academic institution, nor does it
offer certifications or diplomas. Instead, courses are offered for free in the
form of five-minute animated video lectures.
If you have a Facebook account
and at least one conservative friend, then you’ve seen one of their
videos. They claim 100 million people a year watch them annually,
and that's not hard for me to believe. They are slickly produced, and
very brief. The first question I had when I saw one was to ask who
paid to make it. (Again, I apply logical thought.) If you
guessed members of the American plutocracy, you would be correct.
In fact, PragerU has been
generously funded by two of the richest people in America, brothers Dan and
Farris Wilks, who made their fortune in fracking. (Coincidentally, there
are plenty
of videos that attack climate change and renewable energies while pushing
dirty fuel with eye-rolling titles like Why You Should Love Fossil Fuels and
Fossil Fuels: The Greenest Energy.)
Dennis Prager, the man who
named this “university" after himself, is a LGBTQ-bashing, Muslim-fearing,
corporate apologist who happily pushes this plutocratic
propaganda. These video rants that make up Prager “university"
run the full gamut of the rightwing agenda. Titles include: Who Are the
Racists: Conservatives or Liberals?; The World’s Most Persecuted
Minority: Christians; Feminism vs. Truth; War on Boys; How the Minimum Wage
Hurts Young People, Why I Left the Left, and on and on and on.
Pretty much any crazy opinion
he has—there's a video for it. Three years ago, he went on a
tirade exclaiming the issue of rape on college campuses a “big lie”. Last April, there was a video for that.
Heck, there’s even one that justifies
his lusty ogling of other women. Seriously.
These videos remind me of a
relative’s unhinged rants on Facebook, except with slick graphics.
But at least my family member has enough sense to not adopt the moniker of
“university" to pretend there’s some sort of academic credential with
his all-capped diatribe. For Prager "University", this is
the aspect I find most disturbing. From
their website:
What's the PragerU Educators
Program?
It's a network that includes thousands of
professors and teachers who show PragerU videos to their students and/or use
our curriculum as a teaching supplement in the classroom. Members of this
community get free access to our video courses, study guides and other valuable
resources that can enhance their teaching.
Thier 2014 annual
report said a major priority for PragerU was in developing
relationships with educators “in college, high school, middle school and
homeschools”. The top of their Educators Program page shows a testimonial from a public
school teacher that forces this drivel on his students. One educator
testimonial said he requires his 12-year old to watch one video a day. I could
not find a list of schools, but Rewire identified 14 public schools in their story on Prager two years ago.
That’s a frightening
thought. I shudder to think that an educator at a school that I pay with
my tax dollars is requiring a student to watch PragerU video featuring
Adam Corolla—who’s big claim to fame was a sidekick on a 90s MTV sitcom “The
Man Show”—host a video that is literally entitled “Who NOT To Vote
For”. (Their target audience isn’t mentally developed enough for
subtle propaganda).
The rightwing is having
somewhat of a love-affair with Russia these days. They love the
authoritarian leadership, the ability to squash dissent, Putin’s wealthy ruling kleptocracy,
and their non-functioning government services.
It should be no surprise,
then, that they would envy their propaganda tactics. Russia has come
a long way from their forced re-education camps at a gulag, but the core
principle of indoctrination remains the same.
If conservatives want to
believe their incoherent fallacies, they are free to do that. They are
free to speak their mind. What they are not free to do is indoctrinate my
children to that garbage. Indocrtination isn’t education—it’s
the opposite. Unfortunately, if the ones behind Prager “university" have
their way, you won’t be able to tell the difference.
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