PragerU



Prager University is not an accredited academic institution and does not offer certifications or diplomas.

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", 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.

PragerU has gotten a large amount of funding from fracking billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks, alongside a host of other conservative advocacy groups. DeSmog Blog has covered this funding in-depth.

Prager "University" actually presents history and politics from a hard-right point of view. This includes rampant New Deal denialism, promotion of the Laffer curve, Europhobia, and an off the walls weird interpretation of liberalism. The channel also promotes extreme Zionist views, claiming the IDF to be the "World's Most Moral Army", and promotes fossil fuels as being "the greenest energy". It has called wealth income inequality "good". In a multitude of ill-informed videos, it furthermore espouses climate change denialism, militarism and defends American exceptionalism,  and British imperialism, and probably 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.

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, Patrick Moore debunking anti-GMO propaganda, and Paul Copan debunking factual relativism. PragerU also made a video criticizing rent control, which almost all economists believe is bad.

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”. It has made videos that hilariously whitewash things such as Ronald Reagan, Capitalism, Christopher Columbus, equality in the United States, and a video espousing the “The scientific revolution was caused by religion” myth, 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.

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.

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 that's not true, the environmentalist movement is too powerful anyway. And even if they aren't too powerful, they have bad solutions anyway. 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 websites 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.

Gender issues
You'll hear ol' Dennis gloat that "there are only two genders", despite scientific consensus, next!

"But muh freezepeach!"
Watch any one of our videos and you’ll immediately realize that Google/YouTube censorship is entirely ideologically driven."

Prager's organization has made hilariously bad arguments regarding freedom of speech to further their conservative persecution complex. 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.

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. 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. 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.