prager, dennis

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see prager u(blank 2/19) ? primary on shillenberger ggl monetization

SEE PRAGER U 2 3 26

MERRI OK

SEE RYAN WALTERS OKLA PURITY TEST

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an 8 25

Next to his long-running radio show, Dennis Prager, now 77, is best known for PragerU — which isn't an actual university, but rather, a program of far-right propaganda videos launched in 2009. One of PragerU's admirers is Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's ultra-MAGA public schools superintendent. And according to CNN, Walters is now using PragerU to screen applicants for ideological purity and to make sure teachers in the state's public schools aren't "woke."

The screening process, CNN's Sunlen Serfaty reports, gets underway on Friday, August 15.

"Teachers from 'liberal' states who have relocated to Oklahoma and are seeking to work there must take a controversial new assessment, given for the first time today, that 'keeps away woke indoctrinators,' according to Oklahoma’s top education official," Serfaty explains. "Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's superintendent for public instruction, told CNN that if applicants do not pass the test, they will not earn a teaching certificate to be able to teach in public schools in the state this school year, which begins for some Oklahoma districts on Monday."

Serfaty adds, "The decision to use the assessment, developed by PragerU, a conservative media company whose teaching materials are now approved for use in public schools in ten U.S. states, opens a new front in the education culture wars just days before schools are to open their doors."

IFrame Content

PragerU's materials, according to the CNN reporter, have "been embraced by the political right for offering curriculums that champion ideas aligned with the Make America Great Again movement."

According to Serfaty, Walters' "multiple-choice assessment for teachers" contains "around 50 questions." One proposed question, Serfaty reports, "deals with gender — asking teachers to select from a series of multiple-choice answers which chromosome pairs determine biological sex."

"Another question asks why freedom of religion is important to America's identity," Serafty notes. "Other questions include asking for the first three words of the Constitution, naming the two chambers of the U.S. Congress, and identifying the number of U.S. senators…. The test specifically evaluates educators on areas including their understanding of 'American exceptionalism' and their 'grasp of fundamental biological differences between boys and girls,' Walters said."

*Read the full CNN article at this link.

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yikes an 7 25

critics of far-right Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters often attack him as a highly performative MAGA troll. Walters' antics include purchasing Donald Trump-themed Bibles for classrooms and promoting the false, repeatedly debunked conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.

But Slate's Molly Olmstead, in an article published on July 22, emphasizes that Walters' buffoonish qualities don't make him any less dangerous. And she emphasizes that his plan to screen education applicants for MAGA purity shouldn't be taken lightly.

"This month," Olmstead explains, "Oklahoma's education department announced an innovative new approach to screening aspiring teachers in the state: any applicants from 'woke' states would need to first pass an ideology test created by the right-wing group PragerU. It was an announcement that seemed engineered to draw national news coverage and inflame liberal audiences. Under this plan, teachers from states with 'progressive education policies' would be tested on the U.S. Constitution, American exceptionalism, and 'the fundamental biological differences between boys and girls.'"

Olmstead continues, "The screening is guaranteed to test teachers for a deeply MAGA-inflected understanding of U.S. history, government, and society: PragerU, a right-wing group with a stated mission of countering leftism in education, is already known for its white nationalist-adjacent content for schoolchildren."

IFrame Content

PragerU is the brainchild of Dennis Prager, a far-right talk radio host and Trump supporter.

"Walters' proposals for the school system have included a mandate that all public schools teach the Bible; a plan to collect children's immigration status when they register for public school; and new social studies standards proposals that would have high school students 'identify discrepancies in 2020 election results,'" Olmstead observes. "Each of these announcements solidified Walters' reputation as a relentless attention-seeker, calculating every action from his office to appeal to the power players of the MAGA movement…. These stunts have paid off. Walters has been profiled in outlets all over the country, and he has become the face of the Christian nationalist campaigns into public education."

The MAGA Republican's stunts, Olmstead argues, raise the question: "Is Walters all superficiality, a media-obsessive without the stamina or standing for real, transformative politics? Or is he actually capable of remaking Oklahoma's schools — and signaling what MAGA could bring to schools across the country?"

"In sign of just how bizarre American politics have become in this second Trump era," Olmstead warns, "Walters may be a bit of both. As traditional institutions and procedures buckle under MAGA politics, Walters has proven that with the right national climate, slapdash own-the-lib pronouncements can become serious policy. He's a performer, but he also happens to be a major change-maker…. It may be tempting not to take people like Walters seriously, but he has proven that with enough volume, some gimmicks stick."

*Molly Olmstead's full article for Slate is available at this link (subscription required).

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9 24

msnbc press show chuck todd? prager u ryan walters says schools unions tcher marxist 5x no challenge?

prager says back to basics many times, schools 1930’s socio pts out segregated

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rww

Ryan Walters Taps Christian Nationalists and Right-Wing Propagandists To Overhaul Oklahoma’s Social Studies Curriculum

(https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post_author/kyle-mantyla/)By Kyle Mantyla (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post_author/kyle-mantyla/) |

Last month, Oklahoma’s Christian nationalist state superintendent of education Ryan Walters announced (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/oklahoma-superintendent-orders-public-schools-to-teach-bible-as-white-christian-nationalists-go-on-offense/) that the Bible must be taught in all public schools in the state. Now, Walters is taking things a step further, announcing (https://www.thedailybeast.com/oklahoma-official-wants-project-2025-creator-kevin-roberts-to-overhaul-state-curriculum) that the state’s social studies curriculum will be overhauled in order to further promote his Christian nationalist worldview.

“The revised standards will incorporate the introduction of the Bible as an instructional resource that Superintendent Walters announced last week as well as the ensuring that social studies reflect accuracy and not political slanted viewpoints,” stated the press release (https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24796756/walters-announces-revisions-to-social-studies-standards25.pdf) issued by Walters’ office on Tuesday. Walters’ claim is laughable, given that the state’s new curriculum will undoubtedly reflect the “political slanted viewpoints” of the various far-right activists he has appointed to the executive review committee.

Among the participants is Kevin Roberts, the hard-right activist who has pushed the Heritage Foundation into increasingly extreme MAGA territory (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/6-ways-the-heritage-foundation-makes-america-less-free-less-just-and-less-safe/) and is leading the Project 2025 effort (https://religiondispatches.org/project-2025-how-trump-loyalists-and-right-wing-leaders-are-paving-a-fast-road-to-fascism/) to seize control (https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/guide-project-2025-extreme-right-wing-agenda-next-republican-administration) of the federal government should former President Donald Trump win the 2024 election.

In 2023, Right Wing Watch reported (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-abcs-of-moms-for-liberty-summit-speakers/):

In a speech celebrating the 50th anniversary of Heritage’s founding, Roberts said the 2024 election “may be our last, best chance to rescue this nation from a woke, socialist left bent on its destruction,” mocked “non-vaccine vaccines” and “useless masks,” declared that there must be no bargaining with the “woke left,” and asserted that “dismantling the woke and weaponized Administrative State” is a matter of national survival. A Heritage ebook about critical race theory suggests that systemic racism cannot exist because racial discrimination is illegal.

Joining Roberts is Everett Piper (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/everett-piper/), the former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, a right-wing (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/right-wing-bonus-tracks-hold-the-line/) commentator (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/christian-college-president-everett-piper-slams-pete-buttigiegs-faith-and-proclivities/), and self-proclaimed proud (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/dec/7/proud-to-be-a-right-wing-religious-nut/) “right-wing religious nut.”

In 2017, RWW reported (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/values-voter-summit-agenda-reveals-religious-rights-hostility-to-constitutional-values/):

Everett Piper (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/everett-piper/) is the president of a Christian college who has found success on the Religious Right speaking circuit by attacking (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/world-congress-of-families-closer-everett-piper-wcf-critics-hate-god/) the “ideological fascism” of gay-rights supporters and other liberals, who he says area waging a “war against Christians” in academia and the broader culture. Piper gave a rousing culture warrior’s closing keynote to the 2015 summit of the World Congress of Families, which works to restrict LGBT rights and reproductive freedom around the globe. Piper has described (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/world-congress-of-families-closer-everett-piper-wcf-critics-hate-god/) WCF’s critics as “a hateful people who hate anyone who dares stand in their way of hating God.” At a 2015 conference organized by anti-gay activist Jim Garlow, Piper described the Obama White House as “seemingly more aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood than Franklin Graham.” Piper was listed earlier this year as a member of the education committee of the secretive far-right Council for National Policy (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/council-for-national-policy/).

Commentator Dennis Prager (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/dennis-prager-heterosexual-aids-and-campus-rape-are-liberal-lies/) will be lending his “expertise” as well, which is ironic given that the educational materials (https://www.mediamatters.org/dennis-prager/research-file-we-watched-every-prageru-kids-video-here-are-lowlights) produced by Prager’s own organization (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/pragerus-awful-defense-of-statues-honoring-robert-e-lee/) are rife with (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/animated-frederick-douglass-calls-slavery-compromise-prageru-video-rcna99246) disinformation (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/desantiss-florida-approves-climate-denial-videos-in-schools/) and right-wing propaganda (https://www.mediamatters.org/prageru/lessons-florida-public-school-students-will-learn-prageru-kids).

In 2023, RWW wrote (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-abcs-of-moms-for-liberty-summit-speakers/):

Dennis Prager is a prominent far-right propagandist (https://www.prageru.com/press/10-years-and-5-billion-views-prageru-is-the-undeniable-conservative-media) whose PragerU videos have been viewed billions of times. Prager argued against (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/pragerus-awful-defense-of-statues-honoring-robert-e-lee/) the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from the U.S. Capitol. Prager is allied with Christian nationalists and promotes their false claims (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/charlie-kirk-keeps-spreading-baseless/) about U.S. history. When Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to Congress and chose a Quran for his ceremonial swearing in, Prager slammed him for not using a Bible, saying, “If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress.”

Unhinged far-right (https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1583484388808921089) broadcaster (https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1636060178792497160) Steve Deace (https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-deace/blazetv-host-steve-deace-praises-parent-not-accepting-their-lgbt-child-claiming-lgbt) has also been named a member of Walters’ committee, despite his repeated (https://www.mediaite.com/tv/a-blaze-tv-host-is-calling-for-the-execution-of-covid-officials-over-biomedical-facism/) calls (https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1567569247294947329) for violence (https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-deace/blazetvs-steve-deace-vaccine-proponents-start-hanging-people-now-lets-just-skip-trials) against his political opponents, including openly declaring (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/steve-deace-wants-to-see-trump-hang-some-antifa-members/) that he wants to see “antifa members hanging from gallows in Trump ties.”

IFrame Content (https://player.vimeo.com/video/432166126?h=42eda74240)

Finally, and most alarmingly, Christian nationalist (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-christian-nationalists-at-wallbuilders-insist-christian-nationalism-is-nothing-to-worry-about/) pseudo-historian (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-keeps-spreading-false-christian-nationalist-history/) David Barton has been named to Walters’ committee. As RWW has noted before (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/what-it-means-that-the-new-house-speaker-is-an-acolyte-of-christian-nationalist-pseudo-historian-david-barton/), Barton is almost single-handedly responsible for creating the Christian nationalist myths that the far-right uses to justify its push (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/christian-nationalists-seek-to-go-on-offense-to-take-advantage-of-the-far-right-supreme-court/) to enact harmful public policies that weaken the separation of church and state, undermine women’s rights, and deny legal equality to LGBTQ Americans.

RWW profiled (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/what-it-means-that-the-new-house-speaker-is-an-acolyte-of-christian-nationalist-pseudo-historian-david-barton/)Barton in 2023 after Rep. Mike Johnson, who credited Barton with having a “profound influence on me and my work and my life,” was elected Speaker of the House:

David Barton has built an entire career out ofmisusing (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-misrepresents-charles-finney-to-claim-political-involvement-is-key-to-bringing-about-national-spiritual-revival/), misrepresenting (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-is-constantly-unveiling-new-and-misleading-claims-about-american-history/), and outright falsifying history (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-bartons-history-simply-cannot-be-trusted/), the Bible (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/is-david-barton-biblically-illiterate-or-just-deliberately-misleading-his-audience/), and current events (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-doesnt-just-lie-about-history-he-lies-about-current-events-too/) and doing so to promote his Christian nationalist political agenda (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-and-chad-connelly-are-recruiting-pastors-for-gotv-in-midterms-hoping-to-duplicate-2021-success-in-virginia/). He has been highly influential (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-went-70-for-71-in-shaping-the-gop-platform/) not only within Republican politics (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/anti-gay-psuedo-historian-david-barton-tapped-to-run-ted-cruzs-super-pac/), where he has many fans among current (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rep-barry-loudermilk-wants-david-barton-to-chair-trumps-1776-commission/) and former (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/house-speaker-paul-ryan-reportedly-listens-to-hack-historian-david-barton-all-the-time/) GOP legislators (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/huckabee-americans-should-be-forced-at-gunpoint-to-learn-from-david-barton/), but also internationally (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ukrainian-leaders-are-using-david-bartons-theocratic-pseudo-history-to-build-their-nation/). On top of that, Barton’s Christian nationalist pseudo-history (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-bartons-god-filled-government-curriculum-is-now-ready-to-be-used-in-public-schools/) is shaping (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/how-david-barton-is-secretly-shaping-curricula-across-the-nation/) both Christian (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/staver-bartons-book-is-required-reading-for-all-liberty-university-law-students/) and secular (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-named-to-texas-school-board-experts-panel/) educational institutions (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-will-be-training-christians-to-conquer-the-mountain-of-government/) across the country.

Barton, who has repeatedly (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/does-david-barton-have-a-ph-d-even-he-doesnt-seem-to-know/) misrepresented (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-removes-video-claiming-he-has-an-earned-doctorate/) his academic credentials (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-once-again-insists-ive-got-a-ph-d/) and personal history (https://wthrockmorton.com/2015/02/25/oral-roberts-university-there-is-no-record-of-david-barton-ever-playing-basketball-for-oru/), had his book on Thomas Jefferson pulled by his own publisher (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/08/09/158510648/publisher-pulls-controversial-thomas-jefferson-book-citing-loss-of-confidence) in 2012 after it concluded that “basic truths just were not there.”

Undaunted, Barton has soldiered on, repeatedly declaring that Christians who share his far-right worldview are supposed to be choosing our elected leaders (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-says-the-bible-instructs-religious-leaders-to-recruit-political-candidates-for-office/) and ruling the world (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-and-andrew-wommack-say-that-christians-are-supposed-to-be-ruling-in-this-world/) because everything must operate according to biblical principles (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-everything-should-operate-according-to-biblical-principles/).

Barton falsely insists (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/for-the-fifth-time-david-barton-falsely-claims-the-constitution-is-full-of-direct-quotations-out-of-the-bible/) that our Constitution (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-claims-the-founding-fathers-used-the-exact-language-of-the-bible-to-write-the-constitution/) and entire system of government (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-biblical-law-was-incorporated-into-the-constitution-through-the-seventh-amendment/) are based on the Bible and thus asserts that everything from the minimum wage (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-jesus-opposed-the-minimum-wage/) to the income tax (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-misrepresents-the-bible-to-claim-that-jesus-opposes-the-income-tax/) to the teaching of evolution (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-founding-fathers-were-against-teaching-evolution-revolution-was-fought-to-end-slavery/) are unconstitutional because they supposedly violate Biblical teachings. Barton also believes that there should be literally no limits (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-there-should-be-no-limits-on-the-second-amendment/) on the Second Amendment, meaning that average citizens are entitled to own tanks, fighter jets (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-second-amendment-guarantees-an-individual-right-to-own-a-tank-or-fighter-jet/), and even nuclear weapons (https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1174008280299069441).

Predictably, Barton takes a far-right position on issues like abortion—going so far as to proclaim that life actually begins before conception (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-life-begins-before-conception/)—and on LGBTQ issues (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-intolerance-of-gays-is-a-sign-of-spiritual-revival/), asserting repeatedly that AIDS is God’s punishment for sin (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-aids-is-gods-penalty-for-those-who-engage-in-shameful-sexual-acts/) and therefore a cure (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-suggests-we-cant-cure-aids-because-it-is-punishment-for-sin/) will never be found (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-the-bible-says-there-will-never-be-a-vaccine-for-hiv-because-aids-is-the-penalty-for-homosexuality/).

In his press release, Walters’ proclaimed that the “unparalleled expertise” of these panelists “will help craft new academic standards that will serve as a mode for the nation and help Oklahoma students for years to come.” In reality, what will likely emerge from this process is a curriculum warped by political bias and riddled with intentional disinformation designed to indoctrinate students with right-wing propaganda.

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mma 5 24

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): Well, those types of slogans, of course, have been chanted and posted since after October 7th. Huh. What took him so long? Joining us now is Dennis Prager, radio host, founder of Prager U, one of my absolute favorite people in America. Dennis, you do such a great job every day. I'm so excited to talk to you. What about his approach today and should we assume it's heartfelt and he's standing strongly with Jewish Americans?

DENNIS PRAGER (GUEST): So I'll have an answer for you that you probably won't expect. I don't care about heartfelt in almost anything except perhaps, you know, my children and my wife and my closest friends. In life, what people do is much more important than what their heart feels. So, I am happy if he says these things whether or not they're heartfelt. All I can tell you is what he won't say and I want to salute him for what he did say, okay? I'm not a fan of his. But it's critical to give credit where it is due.

But, what he won't say is where all of this Jew hatred comes from. And it comes from only two sources, the left, not liberals, the left, I always make a distinction and the newest generation of immigrants from Muslim countries, not long-time Muslim residents of the United States who go back many generations like neighbors of mine who are terrific human beings. But, this newest wave of Jew-hating Muslims, and there are Muslims who don't hate Jews, but they're a minority. And he won't say that. He won't say where it's from.

So, it's like -- isn't one of the first things we want to know when somebody is murdered who did it? Isn't who did it a very important consideration? The who did it has not been addressed here. It's the people who have taken over his party, the left and this new Ilhan Omar type Muslim immigrant to the United States who brought with them from the Middle East a hatred of Jews that we have not known since the Holocaust and the Middle Ages.

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mma 4 24

google is profiting from PragerU’s climate denial ads on its search engine

Special PROGRAMSCLIMATE & ENERGY

WRITTEN BY ILANA BERGER

PUBLISHED 04/16/24

Google is allowing right-wing propaganda organization PragerU to run climate-denying ads on its search engine even though the tech giant previously committed to prohibiting ads that feature claims that contradict the “well-established scientific consensus” about climate change.

In 2021, Google updated its ad policy to prohibit ads for or on content that “contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.”

Yet, nearly three years later, Google is still profiting from ads that contain climate change misinformation.

When Media Matters searched for phrases like “climate change,” “global warming,” and “climate crisis” on Google Search, the search engine returned PragerU ads that promised its website reveals “the truth about climate change” — or what it calls the “fake climate catastrophe.”

“Climate policies are causing inflation and keeping poor countries trapped in poverty,” the ad-description text read. “Get the facts with our Climate Change and Energy playlist.”

[ggl screenshots see monetize ads]

When clicked on, the ads lead Google Search users to a video on PragerU’s website titled “Do We Have to Destroy the Earth to Save It?” In the video, anti-renewable energy activist Michael Shellenberger tells the audience that “pushing the planet toward wind and solar energy would actually cause more harm to the environment than good.” (While all extractive processes have environmental impacts, scientists agree that the consequencesof burning fossil fuels on the climate along with the declining costs of both renewable energy and renewable-energy storage make those cleaner technologies essential to a sustainable energy future.)

Shellenberger is known for spreading misinformation about wind energy and downplaying the impacts of climate change. In 2020, Shellenberger wrote an article in which he claimed that “climate change is not making natural disasters worse.” A 2022 report produced by hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists argued that climate change has increased the intensity — and in some cases the frequency — of extreme weather events.” Shellenberger has also defended former President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that “windmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before” and “driving them [whales] crazy.” In 2023, he produced a documentary that alleged — again, without concrete evidence — that “government officials have been lying” about the role offshore wind turbine construction has played in causing whale deaths.

The video featuring Shellenberger is one of 30 videos on PragerU’s “Get The Truth About The Climate” playlist.

Other videos on the playlist feature an assortment of well-known climate deniers, including former BP chief scientist Steve Koonin and nuclear energy consultant Patrick Moore, who has repeatedly and falsely claimed that he co-founded Greenpeace.

In a video titled “Is there really a climate emergency?” Koonin claims that climate change is not settled science, an argument he also detailed in a 2021 book called Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.

Another video on the playlist called “The truth about CO2” features Moore, who claims that rising CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere do not present a danger to humans and that “we're already seeing the positive effects of increased carbon dioxide now.” “We should celebrate CO2 as the giver of life that it is,” Moore adds.

Video

CitationPragerU ad in Google's search engine, accessed April 4, 2024

PragerU is deeply rooted in climate change denial

Along with the Daily Wire, PragerU is financially dependent on generous donations from fossil fuel billionaire Farris Wilks.

Recently, PragerU Kids, a PragerU offshoot that produces conservative “educational” content targeted at school age children, has partnered with five different states to bring right-wing propaganda into public school classrooms.

Media Matters reviewed PragerU Kids’ ”educational” content and found it was rife with misinformation about climate change. In one video, a cartoon narrator explains why embracing climate denialism is akin to participating in the Warsaw uprising, when Polish Jews attempted to liberate Warsaw from German occupation during WWII.

Since 2021, researchers have demonstrated that Google has failed to follow through on its promise to address climate denial. One study found 100 monetized YouTube videos that seemingly violated Google’s climate change misinformation policy. The videos had accrued more than 18 million views. Despite those seeming policy violations, only eight of the hundreds of climate-denying videos studied were eventually demonetized. Google has also profited significantly from ads placed by fossil fuel companies attempting to “greenwash” their reputations as drivers of the climate crisis.

### Climate solutions coverage on broadcast news programs declined in 2023

04/16/24 9:49

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Far-right PragerU co-founder admits to 'indoctrination' campaign: 'We bring doctrines to children' - Alternet.org

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https://www.mediamatters.org/dennis-prager/dennis-prager-vast-majority-your-kids-teachers-lie-about-whites

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columbus with bad accent? on msnbc

July 24, 2023

Kelcie Moseley-Morris @ Georgia Recorder: Male anti-abortion religious leaders mull murder charges for pregnant people at national event.
Jacina Hollins-Borges & Sophie Lawton @ Media Matters: Right-wing antifeminist influencers are starting to get a little uncomfortable with all the woman hating.
John Fea @ Current: Jack Hibbs is still talking about American history. And it’s getting worse.
Alex DeLuca @ Miami New Times: Conservative Group PragerU Says Florida Is First State to Approve Its “Curriculum.”
Erik Maulbetsch @ Colorado Times Recorder: Boebert Promotes Antisemitic Conspiracist in Taxpayer-Funded Press Release.
Joe Jervis: DeSantis Team Secretly Made Infamous Anti-Gay Clip.
Colby Hall @ Mediaite: ‘That’s Why I’m an Idiot’: Harvard Alum Pete Hegseth Comes Clean About His College Education.

Tags: Jack Hibbs Jack Posobiec Jason Storms Lauren Boebert Pete Hegseth Ron DeSantis Rusty Thomas Reproductive Right s Round-Up Operation Save America PragerU

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rww 3 23

right-wing commentator and youth organizer Charlie Kirk continues to host TPUSA Faith’s monthly Freedom Night in America events at churches around the nation where he consistently spreads historically baseless claims about the Constitution and the founding of this country.

On Wednesday night, Kirk and right-wing radio host Dennis Prager of Prager U appeared at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, where the duo misrepresented American history in order to promote the Christian nationalist agenda. During his remarks, Prager assured the largely Christian audience that despite their theological differences, they were all on the same side because it is his calling as a Jew to bring Christians “to God, and to the Ten Commandments, and the Bible.”

“I have a love affair with America’s Christians,” Prager said. “It’s reciprocated. I feel very loved by America’s Christians.”

Kirk kicked things off by asking Prager, who is Jewish and who has produced several books and lectures on the Torah, to explain just how vital the Bible was to the founding of this nation.

"Can you just speak a little bit about America’s founding roots and how the American founders knew the Torah,” Kirk suggested. “Deuteronomy was the most quoted of any book—secular or religious—in the writing of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the Declaration of Independence. We teach our kids in government schools that America was a secular nation, but in reality, it was the Bible that founded the philosophical tradition of the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world.”

The assertion that the Bible, and Deuteronomy in particular, were “the most quoted” sources during the founding era is a claim that Christian nationalists love to make, despite the fact that it is false.

As we have explained before, this claim relies on misrepresenting a 1984 study that examined the writers and sources of ideas that were most often cited in “the political writings of Americans published between 1760 and 1805.” The study found that the Bible was the most frequently cited source solely because many of the pamphlets included in the research were sermons that had been reprinted for mass distribution (and these sermons, predictably, contained frequent references to Deuteronomy). When the sermon pamphlets were excluded, quotes from the Bible appeared no more frequently in the political writings of the era than citations of the classical or common law. In fact, when the study focused solely on the public political writings from 1787 to 1788, when the U.S. Constitution was written and ratified, “the Bible’s prominence disappears” almost completely.

So, contrary to Kirk’s confident assertion, Deuteronomy was not the most quoted of any book—secular or religious—in the writing of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the Declaration of Independence.

Prager, of course, readily agreed with Kirk that “the founders quoted Deuteronomy more than any other biblical Book and any other secular book,” before adding an irrelevant bit of information designed to bolster Kirk’s false claims.

“The founders knew the Bible—the Torah, in particular—so well that [Thomas] Jefferson and [Benjamin] Franklin suggested that the Great Seal of the United States depict the Jews leaving Egypt,” Prager said. “These two were the least religious. They were not doctrinally Christian. They were God-centered—even Jefferson—but it just shows you how much the Torah meant to the founders of this country.”

While it is true that upon completion of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Jefferson and Franklin recommended the creation of a Great Seal for the new nation that featured an image of Moses, that recommendation was rejected by the Continental Congress. It was not until 1782 that a design featuring an eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch was finally chosen for the Great Seal.

None of these facts, of course, actually matter to Kirk because his goal isn’t to tell the truth or present an accurate view of history, but rather to convince Christian conservatives that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that they have a biblical obligation to ensure that it remains one. We’ve seen this same strategy used time and time again by pseudo-historian David Barton and other Christian nationalists.

Tags: Charlie Kirk Dennis Prager Christian Nationalism

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https://www.mediamatters.org/dennis-prager/dennis-prager-says-if-theres-racist-graffiti-college-or-high-school-he-assumes-it-was AA

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fox stepford mat'l

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-keeps-booking-pharmaceutical-heir-whose-mom-paid-specialist-deprogram-her-wokism

no lnx vid

Fox News keeps booking a pharmaceutical heir whose mom paid a specialist to “deprogram” her from “wokeism”

Mount Holyoke alum Annabella Rockwell works for conservative edutainment organization PragerU, which she credits with freeing her from liberal indoctrination

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

PUBLISHED 11/29/22

A spectre is haunting college campuses — the spectre of wokeism. It is an ideology and a cult that separates children from parents, rendering each unknowable to the other. Misery and alienation: This is the goal of these indoctrination centers. But all is not lost. A small band of rebels stand in their way. They are the ragtag freedom fighters at PragerU.

That, at least, is the story the producers and talent at Fox News are telling their viewers.

Leading the charge for liberation is pharmaceutical heir and PragerU director of development for Palm Beach Annabella Rockwell, who can trace her lineage back to the Mayflower, thank you very much. Rockwell fell victim to the siren song of wokeism her first year at Mount Holyoke, a historically women’s college in Massachusetts.

“I studied history and politics at Mount Holyoke,” Rockwell said in a November 15 interview with her boss, Dennis Prager. “Every class was, you know, history, but history with race, history with gender.”

By the time Rockwell graduated in 2015, she was “totally indoctrinated,” she said in a recent interview with the New York Post. Her mom, Melinda, “enlisted the help of a deprogrammer who charged $300 a day as well as Annabella’s old tennis coach, Scott Williams,” to overcome her daughter’s “brainwashing.”

Rockwell had the support of her family’s personal fortune, but she needed something else: a light in the darkness. As she told Fox News’ top star and white nationalist Tucker Carlson on Monday evening, her salvation came at the hands of PragerU, where she now works, when one of its videos came up on a social media feed. This heartwarming story shows how PragerU funnels young people into reactionary politics – and just so happens to be a great branding opportunity to further spread that organization’s propaganda.

“I had to unlearn my four years of wokeism by watching five-minute PragerU videos online for free,” she said.

“Amazing,” Carlson responded. “It is a cult. Its aim is to separate you from the people who love you most.”

Video CitationFrom the November 28, 2022, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

Teaching history without race or gender is obviously better, which is exactly the type of top-notch scholarship you can get from Prager and his absolutely real university.

Fox News’ Outnumbered analyzed Rockwell's hero’s journey on Monday afternoon, prior to her debut on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Co-host Emily Compagno, a paragon of intellectual rigor — who also knows more than a little about learning history without regard to race or gender — weighed in with the insight and precision that’s become her trademark.

College students are “being taught to hate their country; they’re also being taught to hate their families,” Compagno argued. “And that is step one of true indoctrination.”

Video CitationFrom the November 28, 2022, edition of Fox News' Outnumbered

But, like the totalitarian cult of wokeness itself, Rockwell wasn’t yet satisfied with her conquest. She pushed forward, appearing Tuesday morning on Fox & Friendsto share her tale of woe and redemption, explaining how she finally broke free of her ideological prison.

In 2020, at the height of what has been referred to as the largest protest movement in the history of the United States, Rockwell saw the light.

:{:{}:

VideoCitationFrom the November 29, 2022, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

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“It wasn't until seeing the riots happening that I realized, OK, this is so hypocritical. Like, why are we fighting for equality and empowerment by burning down people's [PVT PROPERTY = > HU RIGHTS] businesses?” Rockwell explained. “It just doesn't make sense to me.” (One way to make sense of the George Floyd uprisings is to study “history with race.”)

Rockwell closed out the interview with another plug for PragerU. Whatever else the organization’s shortcomings, it appears that marketing is not one of them.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/pure-misogyny-dennis-prager-women/

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https://www.mediamatters.org/dennis-prager/dennis-prager-january-6-smokescreen-nazis-used-reichstag-fire-thats-all-it

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dennis Mark Prager (born August 2, 1948)^[1] is an American conservative radio talk show host and writer. He is the host of the nationally syndicated radio talk show The Dennis Prager Show. In 2009, he co-founded PragerU, an American non-profit organization that creates five-minute videos on various political, economic, and philosophical topics from an American conservative perspective.

His initial political work starting in 1969 concerned Soviet Jews who were unable to emigrate.^[2] He gradually began offering more and broader commentary on politics. His views generally align with social conservatism.

Early life and education

Dennis Prager was born in Brooklyn to Hilda Prager (née Friedfeld; 1919–2009) and her husband, Max Prager (1918–2014).[citation ^needed] Prager and his siblings were raised in a Modern Orthodox Jewish home. He attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York, where he befriended Joseph Telushkin. He went to Brooklyn College and graduated with a major in history and Middle Eastern Studies.^[] Over the next few years he took courses at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and at the University of Leeds; he then left academia without finishing a graduate degree. After he left graduate school, Prager left Modern Orthodoxy but maintained many traditional Jewish practices; he remained religious.^[1]

Career

Beginnings

Prager speaking at the California Capitol Building in 2008

In 1969, while he was studying in England, he was recruited by a Jewish group to travel to the Soviet Union to interview Jews about their life there. When he returned the next year, he was in demand as a speaker on repression of Soviet Jews; he earned enough from lectures to travel, and visited around sixty countries.^[2][3] He became the national spokesman for the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry.^[4]

The start of Prager's career overlapped with a growing tendency among American Jews, who had been staunchly liberal, to move toward the center and some to the right, driven in part by the influx of Jews from the Soviet Union.^[5] In 1975, Prager and Telushkin published an introduction to Judaism intended for nonobservant Jews: The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, which became a bestseller. Among the questions addressed in the text were: how does Judaism differ from Christianity, and can one doubt the existence of God and still be a good Jew, and how do you account for unethical but religious Jews?^[1][6]

Prager ran the Brandeis-Bardin Institute from 1976 to 1983; Telushkin worked with him there.^[1] It was Prager's first salaried job.^[3] He soon earned a reputation as a moral critic attacking secularism and narcissism, both of which he said were destroying society; some people called him a Jewish Billy Graham.^[3]

1980s

In 1982, KABC (AM) in Los Angeles hired Prager to host its Sunday night religious talk show Religion on the Line,^[2] which got top ratings^[7] and eventually led to a weekday talk show.^[8][9] He and Telushkin published another book in 1983, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism.^[1]

According to a review in Commentary, the book depicts anti-Semitism as a "sinister form of flattery"; the authors wrote that hatred of Jews arises from resentment over Jews' acceptance of the doctrine that they are God's chosen people, charged with bringing a moral message to the world.^[10] The book describes Jews as both a nation (stateless for a long time) and followers of a religion and says that this identity is essential to Judaism; the book says that calls for Jews to culturally assimilate as well as opposition to Zionism are both forms of antisemitism.^[10][11] The book describes secular Jews as people who have lost their way, and who generally fall into the error of applying Judaism's mission to reform the world in ways that tend to be leftist, totalitarian, and destructive.^[10][11]

He also wrote a syndicated column for newspapers across the country. In 1985, Prager launched his own quarterly journal, Ultimate Issues,^[2] which was renamed to The Prager Perspective^[9] in 1996.^[1]

In 1986, he divorced and underwent a year of therapy, which the Encyclopedia of Judaism says contributed to his 1999 book Happiness is a Serious Problem.^[1] In 1990, he wrote an essay called "Judaism, Homosexuality and Civilization" that argued against normalizing homosexuality in the Jewish community^[12] and placed sexual sins on a continuum from premarital sex, celibacy, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, and incest; he argued that confining sex to heterosexual marriage desexualized religion, which was a great achievement of ancient Jewish tradition that was worth fighting to retain.^[13]

1990s

By 1992, he was remarried.^[12] By that time he was, according to the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a "fixture on local radio" and "a Jewish St. George battling the forces of secularity on behalf of simple 'goodness'", and generally socially conservative, with some exceptions; he supported a woman's legal access to abortion (although he said it was usually immoral), and supported and justified sex between non-married consenting men and women.^[12] In 1992, he became involved with the Stephen S. Wise Temple and gave talks there,^[1] and got a weekday night talk show on KABC.^[14]

In 1994, Prager also did an hour each weekday, via satellite on WABC, KABC's sister station in New York, before doing his KABC show locally.^[15]

During the 1994–1995 television season, Multimedia Entertainment syndicated a television show featuring Prager.^[16][17] Prager said he was "ambivalent about television as a medium for deep, intelligent programming" but that the show was "an incredible opportunity to reach a mass audience with my belief system".^[18] In 1995, he moved the studio audience on-stage with him where they could interact with him more directly.^[19]

Political commentary

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dennis_Prager_%2850752392617%29.jpg)

Prager speaking at a Turning Point USA event in 2020

Prager supported Jimmy Carter in the 1976 US presidential election.^[20] In 1994, the Anti-Defamation League published a report on antisemitism in the Christian right movement; Prager, who aligned with the social and political conservatism of the Christian right, attacked the ADL and its report.^[21] In 1995, he urged conservative Jews to be open to working with conservative Christians, like the Christian Coalition.^[22] In 1995, he named Jacob Petuchowski, Eliezer Berkovits, Harold Kushner, C.S. Lewis, Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and George Gilder as the people who had influenced his theology the most.^[23]

In 1995, Prager criticized the Illinois Supreme Court decision in the Baby Richard case that removed a child from his adoptive parents.^[24] With KABC he held a "Rally for Baby Richard",^[25] where he got support fromactors Priscilla Presley, Tom Selleck,and John McCook.^[8]

In 1996, Prager testified in Congress in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act. Prager testified that "the acceptance of homosexuality as the equal of heterosexual marital love signifies the decline of Western civilization."^[26][27] Prager worked with Bob Dole's campaign in the 1996 presidential election; when polls prior to the election showed that the Dole campaign did not have much Jewish support, Prager said this was because "American Jews are ignorant regarding the anti Israel aspects of the current Democrat Party."^[28]

Since 1999, he has hosted a nationally syndicated talk show on the socially and politically conservative Christian radio station KRLA in Los Angeles.^[1] KRLA is part of the Salem**Media Group that carries other conservative hosts, includingJames Dobson, Randall Terry, Janet Parshall, Sebastian Gorka and Larry Elder; it is a key voice of the Christian right that seeks to change American politics as well as the way that individual people live.^[29][30]

In 2006, Prager criticized Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, for announcing that he would use the Quran for the reenactment of his swearing in ceremony.^[31] Prager wrote: "Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress." In response, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch called for Prager to end his service on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council.^[32]

In 2009, Prager joined other Salem Radio Network hosts to oppose the Affordable Care Act.^[33] In 2014, while same-sex marriage in the United States was in process of being legalized, he wrote that if that were to happen, then "there is no plausible argument for denying polygamous relationships, or brothers and sisters, or parents and adult children, the right to marry."^[34][35] In 2014, he also said that the "heterosexual AIDS" crisis was something "entirely manufactured by the Left".^[35]

Prager endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, but said that Trump was his "17th choice out of 17 candidates". He clarified that he "was not a Trump supporter, when there was a choice" but added, "There is no choice now."^[36] Prager had previously said that Trump was "unfit to be a presidential candidate, let alone president".^[37] Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic described how Trump's adultery, character assassination of others, embrace of torture, bad behavior, whining, and use of profanity violate values and principles that Prager has upheld as essential to civil life and noted that Prager had said that endorsing Trump was in line with his principles because "[w]e hold that defeating Hillary Clinton, the Democrats, and the Left is also a principle. And that it is the greater principle". Friedersdorf wrote, "[I]f that's all principle means now, we haven't much need for public moralists to write weekly columns with appeals to Judeo-Christian ethics and the importance of good character. Just pick the political party you like best and let the ends justify the means on its behalf."^[38]

In 2017, Prager was invited to be a guest conductor for the volunteer orchestra of Santa Monica, California, as part of a fundraising concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Some of the orchestra members protested the invitation, which they considered promoting bigotry. The orchestra leader had invited Prager because he admired him, as Prager often discussed and promoted classical music on his shows and had guest-conducted a few times in the past, and because he thought Prager's presence might help raise more money.^[35][34] Guido Lamell, music director of the Santa Monica Symphony, in spite of the controversy surrounding Prager's presence, called Prager "a great man, leader and friend".^[39]

In February 2020, he told a caller: "Of course you should never call anybody the n-word, that's despicable," but complained about the word itself being considered unacceptable.^[40][41] In April 2020, Prager called the COVID-19 lockdowns "the greatest mistake in the history of humanity."^[42][43] He was subsequently criticized in the media for misrepresenting the seriousness of theCOVID-19 pandemi**c.^[44]

In a November 2021 Newsmax interview, Prager argued that "irrational fears" about people not vaccinated against COVID-19 had wrongly made them "the pariahs of America as I have not seen in my lifetime", more than gay men and intravenous drug users during the AIDS crisis, who he inaccurately said had not been ostracized.^[45][46] The Independent called his comments "alarming revisionism".^[45] In the interview, Prager also called concerns about climate change "idiotic" and "irrational".^[45]

PragerU

Main article: PragerU

In 2009, Prager and his producer Allen Estrin started a website called PragerU, which creates five-minute videos on various topics from a conservative perspective.^[47][48] BuzzFeed News described PragerU as "one of the biggest, most influential and yet least understood forces in online media." As of 2018 it spent around 40% of its annual $10 million budget on marketing; each video is produced according to a consistent style. Videos cover topics such as "racism, sexism, income inequality, gun ownership, Islam, immigration, Israel, police brutality" and speech on college campuses. BuzzFeed News wrote that "the biggest reason PragerU has escaped national attention is that it mostly doesn't do Trump," or engage with the political news cycle.^[37] Some of its videos had viewer access restricted by YouTube in 2017.^[49]

Personal life

On October 18, 2021, Prager announced that he had tested positive for COVID-19 the previous week and had received ivermectin and Regeneron's monoclonal antibody treatment.^[50] He said he had been taking hydroxychloroquine with zinc prophylactically "from the beginning", and that"natural immunity" from deliberately contracting COVID-19 was what he had "hoped for the entire time".^[51]

Published works

Prager's columns are handled by Creators Syndicate. He has been published in The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and Commentary. His weekly syndicated column appears on such online websites as Townhall,[citation ^needed]^ ^National Review Online, Jewish World Review and elsewhere. He also writes a bi-weekly column for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

In 2018, he published a commentary on the Book of Exodus; this was followed by another commentary on the Book of Genesis in 2019. Both were published by the Salem Media Group.^[6]

The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism (with Joseph Telushkin) (1986) ISBN 978-0-671-62261-9
Think a Second Time (44 Essays on 44 Subjects) (1996) ISBN 978-0-06-098709-1
Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual^[9] (1999) ISBN 978-0-06-098735-0
Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism (with Joseph Telushkin) (2003) ISBN 978-0-7432-4620-0
Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph (2012) ISBN 978-0-06-198512-6
The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code (2015) ISBN 978-1-62157-417-0
The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Path to Follow (2015) (for children) ISBN 978-1-5113-1709-2
The Rational Bible: Exodus (2018) ISBN 978-1-62157-772-0
The Rational Bible: Genesis (2019) ISBN 978-1-62157-898-7

Filmography

For Goodness Sake, 1993
For Goodness Sake II, 1996^[52]
Israel in a Time of Terror, 2002
Baseball, Dennis, & the French, 2011
No Safe Spaces, 2019

References

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mma

DENNIS PRAGER (HOST): OK, so here's a good example of we think Charles Blow is lying about Republicans. I mean, it is an out and out -- it is as much a lie as the sun is dark. OK? That Republicans are characterized by bigotry, intolerance, and oppression. Does he ever give an example? No. I'd like to know what those examples are. A party of bigotry.

Now, wait. Donald Trump was in power. Donald Trump was president for four years. What bigotry, intolerance, and oppression was expressed? Republicans had power. See, they act as if it didn't happen, as if a refutation of all The New York Times lies about Republicans cannot be easily refuted. Republicans were in power, and none of this happened. Black people were thriving compared to Democrats. Who was oppressed?

===

. Further details can be found in first ten minutes of this May 9, 2017 videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1qQqtuoRHg

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prager u amb[ several donation asks]

intro warns ppl they will be ejected after warning?!

bkdrop capitalism is the only solution to poverty?

clarity > over agreement

i am not offended by free speech

alexis our prof and advisor ; shadow? bruin reublican put names on www

known dennis p for 20 years reads blurb? columbia school of int'l affairs fellow?

vienna --- conf reagan allen co fdr univ, all 5 min long

battle of ideology left v rt

latest communic prof ling?

sir edmund burke good men to do nothing

crowd goes wild

no ref to McNutt? confrmation?

vienna helsinki acords RR

bruinrepublicans www red ice ? hannity today show

columbia inst (grad st) fellow

keith sing? commun tsing?

intro end 4:15

big gov?

Q&A marry early? 1967 vn flipped 90's prager, medved rt radio

rubric for truth? post mod does not beleive in truth; world come to end b/c of co2; warming consensus but none on why and absol no for catastrophe alarm MO of left Leftism ... bk 11 hysterias all fraud...end

prager U

Watch Dennis Prager's LIVE speech at UCLA on the main differences between the left and right. Does UCLA have enough safe spaces to handle triggered students? DONATE today, because donations are how we get more PragerU videos to more young Americans.http://l.prageru.com/2oRDYjL PAYWALLThank you to the Bruin Republicans for hosting Dennis! If you're watching this speech, congratulations! That means you know how to get around the YouTube censors, who are restricting this video.

LI 2 22 James Enstrom

President, Scienific Integrity Institute & Faculty Advisor at UCLA

Los Angeles, California, United States215 connections

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an 11 21

Far right wing columnist and talk show host Dennis Prager is now flip-flopping on his lie that gay men were not treated like "pariahs" during the height of the AIDS crisis, but now he claims Americans refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 are the "most hate group since slavery."

"There were 4000 "FU Dennis Pragers' just on one tweet last week because I had the chutzpah to say that the unvaccinated are pariahs, the way that gays were during the AIDS crisis," Prager said, as the video below shows.

Earlier this month Prager had falsely claimed, "During the AIDS crisis can you imagine if gay men and intravenous drug users, who were the vast majority of people with AIDS, had they been pariahs the way that the non-vaccinated are? But it would have been inconceivable and should have been inconceivable."

Prager's lie earned him a "Pants on Fire" rating from Politifact, which among other examples cites "the near-passage of an AIDS quarantine law in California; calls by prominent commentators for banning HIV-positive people from certain jobs or even tattooing them; jokes made about the disease by White House officials."

READ: The dark Trumptopia we inhabit is the world science fiction warned us about]

Prager, apparently desperate to play the victim, that the left has "a monopoly on victimhood. There are no non-left wing victims. That's what they believe."

"However, I would argue that they're that the unvaccinated are bigger are bigger pariahs. Were AIDS – or gays or people with AIDS –banned from travel? Were they banned from restaurants? Were they fired from their jobs? Were they were they deprived of a way of feeding their family?" he asked.

The answer to all those questions and more is "Yes."

"The unvaccinated are the most hated group since, I would say since slavery," Prager continued, which is not only false but offensively so, given slaves were legally property and regularly raped, maimed, whipped, murdered, had their families stolen from them, and had no rights.

READ: Charlottesville defendants found liable for civil conspiracy and ordered to pay millions in damages]

"Make me, tell me who would be equivalent?" he continued. "You can say anything you want. You could wish us death. And we are wished death. That's exactly right. They should not be allowed to hospitals – Jimmy Kimmel basically said that."

Many Americans are at this point outraged that the pandemic continues for the sole reason that the unvaccinated are extending the life of the deadly, nearly two-year-old crisis.

Nearly 90,000 Americans on average are still being infected every day, a 16 percent increase over the previous week, according to the latest CDC statistics. More than 1000 Americans every day are dying from the disease, for which vaccines have been widely available for the better part of a year.

Watch:

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On YouTube, Dennis Prager says “there might be secession” in the United States mma 10 21

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he got covid then used alt rx like joe r?

Conservative radio host Dennis Prager announces he tested ...

Search domain msn.comhttps://www.msn.com › en-us › news › us › conservative-radio-host-dennis-prager-announces-he-tested-positive-for-covid-19-which-he-said-he-was-intentionally-trying-to-contract-the-entire-time › ar-AAPFUdt

Conservative radio host Dennis Prager announced on Monday he tested positive for COVID-19, which he said he was intentionally trying to contract "the entire time." Broadcasting "The Dennis Prager ...

Dennis Prager Catches COVID And Claims He Did It On ...

Search domain huffpost.com [https://www.huffpost.com › entry › dennis-prager-catches-covid-on-purpose_n_616dc401e4b00cb3cbd6829b](https://www.huffpost.com%20›%20entry%20›%20dennis-prager-catches-covid-on-purpose_n_616dc401e4b00cb3cbd6829b)

Prager ? who has spoken out against the vaccine ? said the condition didn't warrant hospitalization. Instead, he's been treating the virus with monoclonal antibodies, zinc, azithromycin, as well as medications like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin,which haven't been proven to be effective against COVID-19.

Dennis Prager Is Now Testing Negative for Covid-19 - The ...

Search domain dennisprager.comhttps://dennisprager.com › video › dennis-prager-is-now-testing-negative-for-covid-19

Dennis Prager Is Now Testing Negative for Covid-19. Wed, Oct 20, 2021 • Videos. YouTube. The Dennis Prager Show. 32.4K subscribers. Subscribe. Dennis Updates His Condition- He Now Tests as Negative. Watch later. Copy link.

Conservative radio host Dennis Prager tests positive for ...

Search domain washingtonpost.comhttps://www.washingtonpost.com › nation › 2021 › 10 › 19 › dennis-prager-covid

6 days agoArrowRight. On Monday, the 73-year-old host of "The Dennis Prager Show" told his audience that his plan worked. Prager said he tested positive for the coronavirus last week. "I have engaged ...

Dennis Prager Announces He Has COVID After Hugging ...

Search domain thedailybeast.comhttps://www.thedailybeast.com › dennis-prager-announces-he-has-covid-after-hugging-thousands-to-get-it

COVID is "not a killer," Prager has said, adding that he would accept COVID lockdowns if the death toll in the U.S. ever reached 30,000. Some 724,000 people nationwide have now died from COVID.

Dennis Prager Says He Has COVID - Radio Ink

Search domain radioink.comhttps://radioink.com › 2021 › 10 › 20 › dennis-prager-says-he-has-covid

Prager told his audience that natural immunity is the most robust immunity you can have against COVID-19. He said he hugged thousands of strangers at rallies around the country "without being ...

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https://www.mediamatters.org/dennis-prager/dennis-prager-more-young-people-get-covid-better-it-them-and-society

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Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager raise the alarm on cancel culture and identity politics.

The First Amendment and free speech are under attack in America today. A growing number of Americans don't believe you have the right to speak your mind if what you have to say might offend someone, somewhere. They advocate for "safe spaces" to protect people from ideas they may find troubling, and will tear down or “cancel" anyone and anything that stands in their way.

In NO SAFE SPACES, comedian and podcast king Adam Carolla and radio talk show host Dennis Prager take the audience on a powerful and entertaining journey to expose how identity politics is threatening free speech everywhere in America. Along the way, Carolla and Prager show Americans how to have the courage to defend their First Amendment rights.

Influential personalities from the right and the left collaborated in this very relevant, thought-provoking documentary feature film!

Adam Carrolla

Dennis Prager

Jordan Peterson

Ben Shapiro

Adam Carolla

The Adam Carolla Show is the #1 daily downloaded podcast in the world!

Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager's radio shows and podcasts reach over 11 million listeners daily.

Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson's book 12 Rules for Life is a worldwide best-seller with over 4 million followers across his social channels.

Ben Shapiro

The Ben Shapiro Show consistently ranks in the Top 5 in the podcast industry with over 15 million podcasts downloaded per month.

Van Jones

Tim Allen

Cornel West

Alan Dershowitz

Van Jones

Tim Allen

Cornel West

Alan Dershowitz

lady liberty

“No Safe Spaces is a film every American should see. I could barely move when it was over. Powerful, emotional, and a call to action for anyone worried about the intellectual fascism happening in this country. A brave, timely, and important film.” – Megyn Kelly

carolla

“No Safe Spaces is smart, vital, urgent, and provocative..."

Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Editorial Reviews

Comedian and podcast king Adam Carolla wit radio host Dennis Prager take the audience on a powerful and entertaining journey to expose the growing threat to free speech taking place on university campuses, in social media, and at your place of work.

Product details

MPAA rating : s_medPG13 PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)

Product Dimensions : 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 2.72 Ounces

Media Format : Anamorphic, NTSC

Run time : 1 hour and 40 minutes

Release date : September 15, 2020

Actors : Adam Carolla, Dennis Prager

Studio : Mill Creek Ent

tag https://www.mediamatters.org/dennis-prager

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PragerU cloaks its extremism in a veneer of respectability, and that’s crucial to its success.

The site, founded in 2011, is known for its polished and persuasive five-minute videos. Some videos focus on history, like the legacy of Christopher Columbus (apparently he’s gotten a bad rap) or the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt (the “New Deal” actually made things worse). Others tackle ongoing issues dividing the world such as religion (the West can thank “Judeo-Christian values” for its success) or the push for a $15 minimum wage (a bad idea!).

If you didn’t know much about the specific presenters, their bios give the impression that many of them are relatively mainstream right-leaning media figures. For instance, PragerU has videos hosted by multiple Pulitzer Prize winners, popular TV hosts, sports journalists, current and former Washington Post columnists, a Canadian former prime minister, a five-time Emmy Award winner, a nominee tohead the Labor Department, atwo-time presidential candidate, a former White House press secretary, as well as current and former faculty at respected institutions such as West Point, Stanford, UCLA, Harvard, and Princeton, among others.

Some of the site’s videos are … well, they’re fine. Comedian Yakov Smirnoff hosts a clip about the importance of laughter in healthy relationships. Col. Ty Seidule delivers a straightforward answer to the question of whether or not the Civil War was really about slavery (he says it was). Other clips, such as Adam Carolla’s ode to personal change, J:{ordan Peterson’s call to “fix yourself,” or Michele Tafoya’s “secret to success,” are just boilerplate self-help speeches we’ve all probably heard dozens of variations on in our lives. It’s the combination of respectable-sounding presenters with a handful of harmless clips that cover for the site’s hard-right ideology.}:

[pix From PragerU's February 2014 video, "Feminism 2.0."

Peterson’s “Fix Yourself” video is a perfect example of PragerU’s ability to use gateway videos to pivot to something much darker.

Peterson posted “Fix Yourself” -- a standard clip about self-reflection and improvement -- in January 2018. But a few months later, he came up with a video titled “Dangerous People Are Teaching Your Kids,” in which he rails against professors who are “indoctrinating young minds throughout the West with their resentment-ridden ideology.”

These people “have made it their life's mission to undermine Western civilization itself, which they regard as corrupt, oppressive, and patriarchal.” This “gang of nihilists,” as Peterson puts it, is made up of “post-modern neo-Marxists” whose ideas “should be consigned to the dustbin of history.”

Peterson’s views make him an extremist, and he’s far from the only one with a PragerU platform. YouTuber Steven Crowder’s video about Columbus Day engages in wild historical revisionism and claims that criticizing Columbus is “an exercise in hating Western civilization, which is really just an exercise in hating yourself.” The site posted (and later deleted) a video by slur-slinging right-wing conspiracy theorist Owen Benjamin demonizing leftists. Author Douglas Murray appeared in a video claiming that the decision of European countries to take in refugees from the Middle East and North Africa was a form of “suicide, the self-annihilation of a culture.” Ben Shapiro’s treatise on Western superiority was built upon bad facts and bad arguments. Shapiro’s Daily Wire colleagues Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, and Matt Walsh railed against feminism, political correctness, and the very concept of self-esteem, respectively.

It’s no huge surprise that PragerU’s content often mirrors the views long championed by its namesake, Dennis Prager, a radio-host-turned-digital media mogul.

No one article can truly encapsulate Prager’s decades of political commentary, but he did a pretty decent job summarizing his own worldview in a March column in the National Review. In the piece, he explained why he didn’t believe the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to disrupt the 2016 election:

But the biggest reason I never believed the Russian collusion charge was that the charge emanated from the left. And the Left lies about everything. Truth is a liberal value, and truth is a conservative value, but it has never been a left-wing value. People on the left say whatever advances their immediate agenda. Power is their moral lodestar; therefore, truth is always subservient to it.

…

If you always doubt a leftist claim, you will almost always be closer to the truth. I employed that rule in concluding the collusion story was a fraud, and it served me well.

There’s a big difference between critical thinking and reflexive contrarianism. A 2011 blog post shines further light on how Prager sees the world:

Ever since I attended college, I have been convinced that either “studies” confirm what common sense suggests or that they are mistaken. I realized this when I was presented with study after study showing that boys and girls were not inherently different from one another, and they acted differently only because of sexist upbringings.

To Prager, if evidence doesn’t support his existing beliefs, the evidence must be wrong. This is instructive when it comes to understanding what kind of education one might get from a diet of PragerU videos.

Like many of his PragerU presenters, Prager himself is a far-right extremist on a number of issues. He’s claimed that theGreen New Deal “will lead to bloodshed, loss of liberty, loss of human rights.” He has a long history of making false claims about HIV and AIDS -- specifically that it’s not something straight people need to concern themselves with. He’s compared a wife’s “obligation” to have sex with her husband whether she wants to or not to a man’s obligation to go to work even if he’s not in the mood. He’s argued that legalizing same-sex marriage would open the door to legalized incest and polygamy, compared the Supreme Court’s Prop 8 ruling to a coup, and said that banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity would lead to “fascism.” He’s also one of several conservative commentators who were adamant that the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard wasn’t motivated by anti-gay hate.

He’s stated a belief that people saying “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas” is a sign that “Americans today are less free than at any time since the abolition of slavery (with the obvious exception of blacks under Jim Crow).” Prager also argues that discussion of campus rape culture is “a gargantuan lie” pushed by feminists “to get votes.” In 2012, Prager equated the NCAA’s punishment of Penn State University for its role in covering for assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s serial sexual abuse of young boys with the act itself, writing, “The lesson the NCAA is teaching young people — that history and truth don’t matter if enough powerful people don’t want them to matter — can be as injurious to society as the cover-up was to the victims of Sandusky.” In 2006, he wrote a column arguing that Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN), a Muslim, should not be allowed to be sworn into Congress unless he did so with his hand on the Bible, not the Quran as he planned on doing. In that column, Prager compared the Quran to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics.

[pix From PragerU's November 2016 video, "Just Say 'Merry Christmas.'"

PragerU's funding largely comes from extremely religious GOP mega-donors with ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Thanks in large part to the backing of fracking billionaires and Daily Wire funders Dan and Farris Wilks, Prager was able to fund PragerU, creating an outsized platform for his extremist views.

An April 2015 report in Rewire put a spotlight on the organization and its plan to get its videos incorporated into public school lessons. At that time, according to Rewire, the Wilks family had given more than $6.5 million to PragerU. A brief look at some of their beliefs shows why they made for such a perfect fit for Prager:

In 2013, at a Pastors and Pews event sponsored by the American Family Association, Dan Wilks had this to say about education: “I just think we have to make people aware, you know, and bring the Bible back into the school, and start teaching our kids at a younger age, and, uh, you know, and focus on the younger generation.”

His brother Farris went on to add: “They’re being taught the other ideas, the gay agenda,every day out in the world so we have to stand up and explain to them that that’s not real, that’s not proper, it’s not right.”

A Reuters report about the brothers’ support of Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign helped further illustrate their extreme positions on things like LGBTQ rights and climate change:

In sermons, recordings of which were reviewed by Reuters, Farris Wilks has called homosexuality “a perversion tantamount to bestiality, pedophilia and incest.” “It’s a predatorial lifestyle in that they need your children, and straight people having kids, to fulfill their sexual habits,” he said.

Climate change, he says, is God’s will. “If (God) wants the polar caps to remain in place, then he will leave them there,” he told congregants at a service in July 2013.

With large chunks of money coming in from these extremely religious GOP mega-donors with ties to the fossil fuel industry, it’s not exactly shocking that the site would have videos with titles like “Climate Change:What’s So Alarming?” “Do 97% of Climate Scientists Really Agree?” “The Paris Climate Agreement Won’t Change the Climate,” “Fossil Fuels: The Greenest Energy,” and “The Truth about CO2.” PragerU also has an entire series about the Ten Commandments, which Dennis Prager describes as “all that is necessary to make a good world.” And George Will, Kimberley Strassel, and David French all have videos explaining why campaign finance reform and/or public disclosure laws are actually tyrannical, anti-democratic, and/or a way for progressives to ruin the lives of people they disagree with.

[pix]From PragerU's January 2017 video, "What’s Holding the Arab World Back?"

PragerU’s extremist, factually inaccurate propaganda has even drawn criticism from some on the right.

Whether it’s gaslighting viewers about President Donald Trump’s “very fine people” comments after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally or engaging in some truly bizarre Vietnam War revisionism, PragerU has no apparent problem with blatant misinformation in its videos. Some of these distortions are too much for allies (and occasional allies) to handle.

Writing in The American Conservative, Paul Gottfried slammed a PragerU video by Dinesh D’Souza for labeling fascism a leftist worldview based on a factually bereft understanding of Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile’s belief system:

[Prager and D’Souza] zoom to the heart of Gentile’s neo-Hegelian worldview in thirty seconds and state with absolute certainty that he was a “leftist.” We have to assume that Prager, D’Souza and the rest of their crowd know this intuitively, inasmuch they give no indication of having ever read a word of Gentile’s thought, perhaps outside of a few phrases that they extracted from his Doctrine of Fascism. Their judgment also clashes with that of almost all scholars of Gentile’s work, from across the political spectrum, who view him, as I do in my study of fascism, as the most distinguished intellectual of the revolutionary right.

According to our two stars in what has been laughably named “Prager University,” Gentile proves that “fascism bears a deep kinship to today’s Left.” After all, “Democrat progressives, in full agreement with Gentile, love and push for a centralized state, which manifests itself in stuff like recent state expansion into the private sector.” Among the questions that are left begging are these: “Do the modern Left and Gentile agree on the purpose and functions of the state?” “Would Gentile and Mussolini, who glorified Roman manliness, have rallied to the present Left in its support of feminism and gay marriage?” Did Gentile back in the 1920s favor the kind of “the stuff’ the administrative state is pushing right now?” The answer to all these questions, which of course wouldn’t be acceptable at Prager University, is an emphatic “no.” Control of the national economy by the Italian fascist state, down until its German-puppet version was established as the Italian Social Republic in September 1943, was about the equivalent of that of New Deal America.

In a blog post for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, Alex Nowrasteh picked apart a PragerU video narrated by Michelle Malkin titled “A Nation of Immigration,” saying it is “poorly framed, rife with errors and half-truths, leaves out a lot of relevant information, and comes to an anti-legal immigration conclusion that is unsupported by the evidence presented in the rest of the video.” While it’s unsurprising that the pro-immigration Cato Institute would disagree with Malkin’s conclusions on ideological grounds, Nowrasteh’s dissection of Malkin’s factual errors is illustrative of PragerU’s reliance on omission to advance its narrative.

Reason’s Billy Binion has obliterated PragerU’s claims of censorship on multiple occasions.In one article, he rebutted Prager’s argument that “YouTube's decision to restrict approximately 20 percent of his online 5-minute video shorts on the grounds that they contain mature content -- thus hiding those videos from the approximately 1.5 percent of users who elect for restricted control” was evidence that PragerU was being punished for hosting “a conservative perspective”:

Unfortunately for this argument, Google records show that the Huffington Post, Vox, Buzzfeed, NowThis, and The Daily Show all have much larger swaths of content restricted under YouTube's policy. Seventy-one percent of videos from The Young Turks -- a leftist channel -- are blocked, dwarfing PragerU's share.

In a separate piece, Binion debunked Prager’s claims that Google search’s autofill suggestions were evidence of bias against PragerU.

It’s not enough to just say that PragerU isn’t an actual university. It’s outright propaganda, and those appearing on the channel are propagandists.

As an institution, PragerU has proved to be toxic, and it should be best understood as -- as its “About Us” page notes -- a “digital marketing campaign.” If one of Prager University’s goals really is to “[make] the world a better place, five minutes at a time,” it deserves a failing grade for its current output.

Many of the same social media influencers who attended Trump’s “Social Media Summit” on July 11 have rallied to defend his racist attacks against U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-D), Rashida Tlaib (MI-D), Ayanna Pressley (MA-D), and Ilhan Omar (MN-D). And a number of them are bankrolled by the Kochs, the Bradley Foundation, and other large right-wing foundations.

In a tweet July 14, Trump called for the minority freshman lawmakers, fierce critics of his policies, to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” All four are American citizens, and three of the four were born in the United States.

Since then, Trump has doubled down on the attacks, saying the lawmakers “hate our country,” and did nothing to abate chants of “Send her back!” at a recent campaign rally in North Carolina.

In the face of widespread outrage, Trump’s friends from the Summit have gone out of their way to justify his actions.

The Heritage Foundation condemned Trump’s comments, but also suggested that he made them out of love for the country and that the “destructive and divisive nature of the rhetoric of the members of Congress in question” was to blame.

The Media Research Center (MRC) used its “Newsbusters” site to criticize mainstream media coverage, writing that “Trump didn’t say anything violent” and publishing another piece titled, “The ‘Squad’ Won’t Condemn Antifa Terrorism….WHERE Are The Media?”

And Will Chamberlain’s Human Events published a piece arguing that there’s a double standard at play because Trump’s targets aren’t white, claiming that “Ilhan Omar…really is a danger to the U.S.,” and concluding that Trump’s chanting supporters can’t be blamed “for wanting to protect America.”

Although the mainstream media has done a good job of covering Trump’s inaugural Social Media Summit and his racist attacks, there has been very little reporting on who bankrolls this online echo chamber of right-wing, anti-immigration, and white nationalist pundits.

The Heritage Foundation

The Heritage Foundation has been one of the top supporters of Trump’s anti-immigration push on the right.

Those who attended the Trump summit from Heritage include Robert Bluey, vice president of communications and executive editor of the group’s news website, “The Daily Signal”; Bridgett Wagner, vice president of policy promotion; Maria Sousa, digital director; Lyndsey Fifield, social media manager; and Jessica Anderson, vice president of Heritage Action for America.

The Sarah Scaife Foundation is a major source of revenue for the Heritage Foundation, providing the group with at least $18 million since 1985. The foundation also funds a number of other anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim organizations, including the Center for Immigration Studies and the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Billionaires Charles and David Koch and their partners in Stand Together (formerly known as the Seminar Network) have given over $5.7 million to Heritage since 1998 through their various family foundations, and the Koch network’s preferred donor conduit duo of DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund has chipped in another half million since 2010.

The Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation has provided at least another $5.9 million to Heritage since 1998 and the Mercer Family Foundation, run by one of the “blow-it-all-up billionaires” behind Trump’s rise to power, Rebekah Mercer, has given at least another $1 million since 2015.

Heritage generally steers clear of the xenophobic language prevalent among other Trump influencers. Heritage researcher Jason Richwine, coauthor of a controversial report concluding that allowing illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship would cost taxpayers trillions, resigned from Heritage when it became public that he had argued in his Harvard dissertation that, “The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations.”

Media Research Center

Brent Bozell’s MRC operates “NewsBusters,” a site that claims to be “documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias.” It has a section entitled “Trump Coverage Studies” that attempts to refute mainstream media stories on Trump.

MRC has received at least $7 million from the Mercer Family Foundation since 2015; $2.4 million from the Bradley Foundation since 1998; and $1.4 million from the Sarah Scaife Foundation since 2012.

MRC claims to “not associate with known white nationalists,” and took down a piece it had promoted last year from a white nationalist website, which stated that Black people “are a threat to all who cross their path,” after it was reported by MediaMatters. It was not the first time, however, that NewsBusters had linked to or promoted white nationalist websites.

Bozell was a fierce critic of Trump prior to the 2016 election, but since repeatedly attacked the press for criticizing the president.

Project Veritas

Project Veritas, a 2015 grantee of the Trump Foundation, is run by James O’Keefe, a right-wing activist and provocateur who uses deception and manipulative editing in his “investigations.”

Due to O’Keefe’s methods, Project Veritas has been plagued by legal issues over the years, and the group is barred from seeking donations in Florida, Maine, Mississippi, Utah, and Wisconsin.

Project Veritas’s funders are difficult to identify as the group receives the majority of its funding through donor conduits. DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund have given the group over $4.8 million since 2011.

O’Keefe has been criticized for associating with radical white nationalists for years and has appeared on InfoWars — conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ infamous radio show denounced by ex-staffers as a “den of racism and harassment” — multiple times. After InfoWars was removed from social media platforms for promoting violence and hate, O’Keefe tweeted, “InfoWars targeted, taken off social media. These tech companies’ practices are opaque and given their power must be made more transparent. We will expose the entire rotten tech machine.”

InfoWars has also hosted Patrick Casey, the leader of the white nationalist group Evropa, which helped plan the deadly Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. Evropa has since rebranded itself as the American Identity Movement.

Most recently, O’Keefe has teamed up with Ginni Thomas, a former Heritage staffer and wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, and the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) chief marketing officer, Bill Meierling, to launch a new dark money operation to “protect President Trump.”

Prager University

Prager University, a social media video project of Dennis Prager and an attendee at the Trump Summit, has been banned and/or restricted on YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, and Twitter for providing a platform for hate speech.

Anti-Semitic Owen Benjamin, anti-LGBT Steven Crowder, and former Turning Point USA Communications Director Candace Owens have all contributed to Prager University. Owens left Turning Point USA after many campus chapters called for her resignation following her statement that “Hitler was an ‘OK’ leader until he tried to take his message global.”

In studying Prager University, the sociologist Francesca Tripodi writes that Prager’s project creates “a dense network of extremist thinkers” that “allows for those who identify as mainline conservatives to gain easy access to white supremacist logic.”

Prager University has received at least a million dollars since 2010 from the Bradley Foundation. Bradley internal documents examined by CMD show that Bradley funds Prager for its strong reach across social media platforms and because it “distills (conservative/Judeo-Christian) principles into content-rich, entertaining five-minute video ‘courses’ taught by public intellectuals, many of whom are Bradley Prize winners.”

Turning Point USA

Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA has a history of racism that extends beyond former employee Candace Owens. The group’s former chapter president at University of Nevada, Las Vegas used racial epithets and exclaimed “white power” while hugging another individual who shouted “we’re going to rule the country” and “fuck the niggers” in a video that went viral earlier this year.

Kirk also named Kyle Kashuv, widely known for his racial slurs, to be Turning Point USA’s high school outreach director. Kashuv resigned from the post when he was outed by a former classmate who said he “used the N-word frequently,” ranked women’s attractiveness by race, and referenced his “Jewish slaves.”

Turning Point USA has received close to $300,000 since 2014 from GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein‘s Ed Uihlein Family Foundation.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/heres-how-an-obscure-california-conservative-commentator-is-indoctrinating-a-new-generation-of-right-wingers/

no lnx

Here’s how an obscure California conservative commentator is indoctrinating a new generation of right-wingers

The Economist magazine with Donald Trump on title page.]

Written by Alex Henderson August 23, 2019

Los Angeles native Larry Elder — a libertarian/conservative firebrand, African-American talk radio host/author and the self-described “Sage from South-Central” — has often cited Dennis Prager as his mentor and described him as a key factor in his career in right-wing media. The “mentor” part is important, as the 70-year-old Prager has set out to be exactly that to younger people on the right. And the Los Angeles’ Times’ Evan Halper, in an in-depth article, describes the ways in which Prager has been indoctrinating right-wingers of the future via his L.A.-based Prager University.

PragerU, as Halper notes in his piece, isn’t literally a university. Rather, it is a collection of short [5 min?!] online propaganda videos addressing topics ranging from the economy to multiculturalism to climate change. And the goal is to indoctrinate right-wingers who are 30, 40 or 50 years younger than him.

Bradley Devlin, a leader of the College Republicans at UC Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay Area, told the Los Angeles Times that PragerU is viewed as a learning tool among young conservatives on campus.

“People watch these videos in between classes,” Devlin told the Times. “They watch them on the line at Starbucks. They point out the unsustainability of leftism and intersectionality and the false promises of the left.”

Prager viewed himself as a right-wing “educator” long before he started PragerU in 2009. Elder is now 67, and Prager took him under his wing back in the 1980s (Elder sounds like he’s talking about an older brother when discussing his relationship with Prager). But in the digital age, Halper explains, PragerU has given Prager a chance to reach out to Millennials via social media and let them know when a new video is available.

Halper notes in his piece that PragerU has more than his share of critics, who view many of thevideos as wildly misleading. For example, the Weather Channel has described PragerU’s videos on climate change as “a course in climate misinformation” (Prager is a climate change denierdespite a mountain of evidence from scientists all over the world showing that climate change is a painful reality).

Another critic is Tara McGowan, chief executive of the nonprofit Acronym — which advises liberals and progressives on digital outreach. McGowan, in Halper’s article, is quoted as saying that PragerU is “a sophisticated campaign to indoctrinate young people. The amount of money they are putting behind it is alarming and significant. They seem to have created a savvy way to push an ideology onto an audience and get a tax break in the process.”

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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/candace-owens-departs-turning-point-usa/

Conservative activist Candace Owens has departed from her role at right-wing youth organizing group Turning Point USA as communications director to focus on her gig at Dennis Prager’s “Prager U” and to work on her own spin-off movement and book.

“I am both excited and sad to announce that I will be officially moving on from my role as Communications Director for Turning Point USA,” Owens wrote in an Instagram post yesterday evening. “My dream has always been simple— to wake up black America—To turn the lights on within a community that has been used and abused by the Democrat party for decades.”

She continued, “With the#BLEXIT movement, the Candace Owens podcast, and my upcoming book— I no longer feel I can be a dedicated communications director to an organization that is rightfully growing rapidly.”

Owens said that she will still be speaking at TPUSA conferences and will continue to chair TPUSA’s annual Black Leadership Summit.

In 2017, Owens began her career under the moniker “Red Pill Black” on YouTube. Her videos reached viral success and she worked her way to guest slots on Alex Jones’ Infowars outlet, going as far as to appear in-studio with Jones for a co-hosting feature. With her message that black Americans have been taken advantage of by Democrats, she eventually landed the role of Turning Point USA communications director and became a semi-regular guest on Fox News. Last year, Owen was given a major thrust into the public consciousness when rapper Kanye West tweeted, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.”

...[twit]

In recent months, Owens has started a podcast with Prager’s digital outlet called “The Candace Owens Show” and launched the “Blexit” movement, which encourages black Americans to step away from the Democratic Party and join the Republican ranks. She also appeared on Capitol Hill last month at a hearing on the threat of white nationalism in America, where she managed to derail what was planned to be a serious domestic terrorism discussion. Owens insisted that the Southern Strategy—the Republican Party’s well-documented post-Civil Rights Act plan for building power by exploiting racial resentment among Southern white voters—was a “myth,” a ridiculous and ahistorical claim she got from a Prager U video.

Tags: Candace Owens PragerU Turning Point USA

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/02/24/youtube-video-serious-climate-science-denial-problem

“What are we in for next?” asks the narrator on the YouTube video.

“Will the temperature resume an upward trend? Will it remain flat for a lengthy period? Or will it begin to drop? No one knows, not even the biggest, fastest computers.”

The video — with the clickbait title “What They Haven’t Told You about Climate Change” — has been watched more than 2.5 million times on the Google-owned video platform.

Produced by the conservative group PragerU, the video sees Canadian lobbyist and fossil fuels advocate Patrick Moore run through a long-debunked argument that because the world’s climate has changed before, there’s no problem with burning record amounts of fossil fuels.

Moore claims, for example, there has been “no significant warming trend” in the 21st century — not mentioning that nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005, or that the world’s oceans have been heating rapidly.

Despite the clear errors, the video has gathered more views than any other climate science denial clip on YouTube. All up, PragerU claims the video has been watched 4.4 million times across all platforms.

A search on YouTube for the most viewed “climate change” videos has Moore’s effort ranked 13th — searching for “global warming” has it ranked 19th.

But where the problems really start, are when YouTube’s “up next” algorithm takes a guess at what you might want to watch next after seeing Moore’s video.

[prager u vid]

Recommending Denial

When I viewed YouTube without signing in, almost all the videos suggested by the algorithm would sit firmly in the climate science denial folder.There’s so much of this material on YouTube that it’s not hard to find once the algorithm opens the door.

There’s a Nobel Laureate who apparently “Smashes the Global Warming Hoax” — just don’t mention the 76 other laureatesasking for “rapid progress towards lowering current and future greenhouse gas emissions.”

Then there are two other videos, both titled “The Truth About Global Warming,” and both delivering the opposite to what its title claims.

Before you know it, you’re in a world of “climate cults,” “global warming hysteria,” and claims of failed predictions and Al Gore getting “slammed.”

For an unsuspecting viewer, watching just one video can lead you quickly into an alternate universe where facts, physics, and real-world experiences are replaced by conspiracies, cherry-picking, and fossil fuel–backed propaganda.

All of this exists after YouTube declared in January 2019 that it had been working on its recommendations algorithm and making “hundreds of changes to improve the quality of recommendations for users on YouTube.”

Google White Paper

But could YouTube and its parent company Google finally be getting to grips with misinformation to marginalize, rather than ban, counter-factual content?

YouTube says it’s making changes with an eye on content that “comes close to — but doesn’t quite cross the line of — violating our Community Guidelines.”

“To that end,” the official blog post explained, “we’ll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways — such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.”

At a conference in Munich on February 16, 2019, YouTube's owner Google released a “white paper” in which it defended its record in tackling disinformation on the video site, listing a series of steps it was taking to weed out disinformation. “We aim to provide content that lets users dive into topics they care about, broaden their perspective, and connect them to the current zeitgeist,” the paper said.

But when it comes to factual claims, Google said: “But as we describe in our Search section, in verticals where veracity and credibility are key, including news, politics, medical, and scientific domains, we work hard to ensure our search and recommendation systems provide content from more authoritative sources.”

This included “information panels that contain additional contextual information and links to authoritative third-party sites” on topical content “that tends to be accompanied by disinformation online.”...

no pix linx

Can YouTube Solve Its Serious Climate Science Denial Problem?

Read time: 6 mins

By Graham Readfearn • Sunday, February 24, 2019

Climate denier video clips on YouTube

“What are we in for next?” asks the narrator on the YouTube video.

“Will the temperature resume an upward trend? Will it remain flat for a lengthy period? Or will it begin to drop? No one knows, not even the biggest, fastest computers.”

The video — with the clickbait title “What They Haven’t Told You about Climate Change” — has been watched more than 2.5 million times on the Google-owned video platform.

A search on YouTube for the most viewed “climate change” videos has Moore’s effort ranked 13th — searching for “global warming” has it ranked 19th.

But where the problems really start, are when YouTube’s “up next” algorithm takes a guess at what you might want to watch next after seeing Moore’s video.

YouTube PragerU climate science denial video screen shot

PragerU video on climate models.

Recommending Denial

When I viewed YouTube without signing in, almost all the videos suggested by the algorithm would sit firmly in the climate science denial folder. There’s so much of this material on YouTube that it’s not hard to find once the algorithm opens the door.

There’s a Nobel Laureate who apparently “Smashes the Global Warming Hoax” — just don’t mention the 76 other laureates asking for “rapid progress towards lowering current and future greenhouse gas emissions.”

Then there are two other videos, both titled “The Truth About Global Warming,” and both delivering the opposite to what its title claims.

Before you know it, you’re in a world of “climate cults,” “global warming hysteria,” and claims of failed predictions and Al Gore getting “slammed.”

Google White Paper

But could YouTube and its parent company Google finally be getting to grips with misinformation to marginalize, rather than ban, counter-factual content?

YouTube says it’s making changes with an eye on content that “comes close to — but doesn’t quite cross the line of — violating our Community Guidelines.”

Screen shot of YouTube's link to the Wikipedia entry on 'global warming' above a search for 'climate change']

Some YouTube users in the U.S. may see a link to the Wikipedia entry on “global warming” when searching for related videos.

Given that climate denial videos take positions contradicted by every major scientific academy in the world, many scientists would surely hope that YouTube takes “blatantly false claims” about climate change as seriously as it does flat earthers or 9/11 truthers.

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Using machine learning and a team of humans, YouTube has said it is rolling out changes just in the U.S., and this would affect only a “small set of videos in the United States.”

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In 2018, YouTube started adding pop-up links to Wikipedia, with brief factual descriptions, to some climate change videos. As reported by BuzzFeed, this angered some producers, including PragerU.

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Craig Strazzeri, PragerU’s chief marketing officer, told BuzzFeed: “Despite claiming to be a public forum and a platform open to all, YouTube is clearly a left-wing organization.”

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“This is just another mistake in a long line of giant missteps that erodes America’s trust in Big Tech, much like what has already happened with the mainstream news media.”

Clearly, for PragerU, it is more important to politicize YouTube’s mild attempts to correct misinformation with a tiny pop-up message than to get its facts straight.

Echo Chambers

“YouTube and other social media platforms have exacerbated the misinformation problem in a number of ways — whether it's creating echo chambers for science denial, making it easy for misinformers to micro-target audiences, or funneling its users to extremist content,” says Dr. John Cook of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication.

“In the case of YouTube, their algorithms result in extremist content like climate denial receiving millions of views. However, YouTube's response has been entirely inadequate. Adding a generic link to Wikipedia under denialist videos is like slapping a tiny bandaid on a large, open wound.”

While at the University of Queensland in Australia, Cook led a study showing that 97 percent of climate scientists agreed that global warming was caused by human activity. Cook also led the production of a free Massive Online Open Course, through the university, to explain the science of climate denial, producing many debunking videos that also appear on YouTube.

“It's a challenging problem,” says Cook. “Interventions like adding a ‘fake news’ warning on online misinformation can actually backfire and promote the myth.”

“Nevertheless, there is a great deal of research into how to inoculate the public against misinformation without triggering adverse effects.”

He says platforms like YouTube should be working with misinformation researchers to develop strategies that “reduce the negative impact on society” of climate denial videos.

For now though, YouTube has a serious climate science denial problem.

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paragon house

"This is a no-holds-barred analysis of contemporary liberalism and the havoc it is wrecking in American culture. From race, to abortion, to feminism, to immigration, to education, the ideas and public policies produced by the Left are collectivist and demagogic, hindering self-government and damaging lives," say Jesse Lee Peterson and Brad Stetson.

Through the prism of Peterson's fascinating life experience and his history of grassroots community work on the streets of riot-torn south-central Los Angeles, Peterson and Stetson examine the violations of common sense and sound thinking that the current civil rights establishment constantly perpetrates against the American public. Peterson and Stetson point the way out of the statist mentality overtaking our public life, advocating a new culture of self-responsibility and moral renewal able to resuscitate the sagging spirits of an American public accustomed to looking everywhere but within for the solutions to their personal and political problems.

Endorsed by bestselling authors Shelby Stele and Dinesh D'Souza, this insightful work–with a foreword from bestselling ethicist Dennis Prager and "A Declaration of Racial Commonsense" signed by some of the leading social critics in the nation–is certain to provoke intense debate and discussion.

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/09/07/prageru-war-cars-video-attack-electric-cars-koch-funded-lauren-fix

According to a recent video hosted by automotive expert and media personality Lauren Fix, there’s a“war on cars” raging in this country that is threatening the chief of all American values — our very freedom. No, this isn’t the war on electric vehicles that the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers have been waging (and which we’ve been tracking on Koch vs. Clean). Rather, says Fix, “there’s been a concerted push by government bureaucrats and environmentalists to transform car ownership from a source of pride to a source of guilt.”

What Fix doesn't mention in this video is her ties to funding from the Koch brothers. In addition, the organization behind the video she hosted, Prager University (PragerU), is a not a university but rather a non-profit founded by conservative talk show host Dennis Prager, with a stated mission to spread “Americanism” through five minute internet videos. Videos, which include such titles as “Fossil Fuels: The Greenest Energy” and “Why You Should Love Fossil Fuel.”

Fix, who goes by “The Car Coach” and has a media reel longer than the 52 minutes per day the average American commuter spends behind the wheel, expands on this alleged “war on cars” in the PragerU video:

“The very reason people love cars — personal freedom — is also why regulators can't stand them. Government — at all levels — craves control. And when it comes to your car, they want you off the road. So do the environmentalists with whom they have made common cause.”

Fix's “The War On Cars” video has been viewed more than 2.1 million times on Facebook and Youtube according to PragerU.

Ironically, Fix spends more than one minute of the five total in “The War on Cars” video attacking electric cars. Apparently the “personal freedom” held so dear by the video’s host doesn’t extend to the freedom to choose a plug-in electric vehicle with no tailpipe emissions, negligible maintenance costs, and let's not forget, ”instant torque and blazing speeds.”

Why would a video that purports to celebrate the personal automobile pivot to bash the most exciting technological innovations that the automotive industry has put forth in decades?

Let's consider the messenger.

PragerU Video Host Is Sponsored by Koch Funds

Besides her media work, Fix runs Fix Motorsports, LLC with her husband, Paul Fix, who also races cars. Paul’s #44 car is sponsored by Fueling U.S. Forward, the pro-fossil fuel PR campaign that is funded by the Koch brothers and which Koch vs. Clean has been tracking for more than a year. We noted this race car sponsorship months ago, but the funding tie to media personality Lauren Fix was previously unreported.

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According to a recent video hosted by automotive expert and media personality Lauren Fix, there’s a “war on cars” raging in this country that is threatening the chief of all American values — our very freedom. No, this isn’t the war on electric vehicles that the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers have been waging (and which we’ve been tracking on Koch vs. Clean). Rather, says Fix, “there’s been a concerted push by government bureaucrats and environmentalists to transform car ownership from a source of pride to a source of guilt.”

What Fix doesn't mention in this video is her ties to funding from the Koch brothers. In addition, the organization behind the video she hosted, Prager University (PragerU), is a not a university but rather a non-profit founded by conservative talk show host Dennis Prager, with a stated mission to spread “Americanism” through five minute internet videos. Videos, which include such titles as “Fossil Fuels: The Greenest Energy” and “Why You Should Love Fossil Fuel.”

“The very reason people love cars — personal freedom — is also why regulators can't stand them. Government — at all levels — craves control. And when it comes to your car, they want you off the road. So do the environmentalists with whom they have made common cause.”

Fix's “The War On Cars” video has been viewed more than 2.1 million times on Facebook and Youtube according to PragerU.

Why would a video that purports to celebrate the personal automobile pivot to bash the most exciting technological innovations that the automotive industry has put forth in decades?

Let's consider the messenger.

PragerU Video Host Is Sponsored by Koch Funds

Screen shot from Paul Fix Facebook video.

On Facebook, “The Car Coach” Lauren Fix refers to Fueling U.S. Forward as one of “our sponsors.”

Screen shot from Lauren Fix's Facebook page.

Fueling U.S. Forward’s sponsorship of the duo's racing is unique, as all of the campaign’s other funding efforts have been spent on events. (We reached out to Paul Fix and Lauren Fix for comment but received no responses. A spokesperson for PragerU would not comment on how the hosts were selected for particular videos nor who wrote the scripts, instead pointing us to the FAQ page.)

In “The War on Cars,” host Lauren Fix repeats many of the claims made in the recent Fueling U.S. Forward videos which deceptively criticize electric vehicles as being especially bad for the environment and as “toys for the rich.” Fix also cites a long-debunked study by consulting firm Arthur D. Little which the other Fueling U.S. Forward videos also relied on.

Debunking 'The War on Cars'

The PragerU video neglects to mention the federal bailout of GM and Chrysler, which pumped nearly $100 billion of taxpayer money into these private companies to keep them afloat through the Great Recession. This government bailout of the automotive industry straddled both the administrations of Presidents Bush and Obama.

Nor does the video mention the long history of the federal government’s wide and varied support for the personal automobile. As Stephen Miller wrote on Streetsblog:

“Fix says nothing about the ubiquitous government mandates that force developers to spend billions on parking, or the massive public subsidies that sustain auto sprawl, or the pervasive regulatory apparatus that’s supposed to protect us from the danger of cars, but still can’t prevent 40,000 traffic deaths in the U.S. each year.”

We don't need to spend too much time debunking “The War on Cars” here, because most of the deceptive or misleading points have already been covered in our earlier responses to Fueling U.S. Forward videos attacking electric cars. And also because the same fact-checker who debunked the earlier Fueling U.S. Forward videos has again taken to YouTube to correct the claims in this PragerU effort.

But for the record, here are the most egregious claims that Fix makes in the video and how they are misleading.

First, there is the claim that electric vehicles cost more to operate over the life of the vehicle than gas-powered cars. This refers to the aforementioned Arthur D. Little comparison of electric and gas-powered cars that has been repeatedly disproven and debunked, and the findings of which have never been replicated by any other studies examining the same question (namely, do electric cars offer an environmental advantage over gas vehicles). The Arthur D. Little study relies on some absurd assumptions about how people would use electric vehicles that don't reflect real world driving habits.

Here's a closer look at that study's most egregious assumptions:

Second, Fix claims that electric car batteries require rare earth minerals, which is simply untrue, and which we have examined in greater depth in multiple posts on the Fueling U.S. Forward video “The Dirty Secrets of Electric Cars.”

Finally, the PragerU video repeatedly plays to the concept of “range anxiety,” saying that electric vehicles inhibit “freedom” by traveling less than 100 miles per charge. This neglects the fact that many electric vehicles (even those being sold for less than $30,000 after incentives) already get more than 200 miles of range. It also totally ignores the existence of plug-in hybrids, which can switch to a gas-powered backup after exhausting the battery's charge. These plug-in hybrids currently represent some of the most popular plug-in electric cars on the market (including Chevy's landmark Volt), and allow drivers to travel the vast majority of their miles on electric power, but have the gasoline as backup for longer trips.

Here's more from the Youtube debunking on these battery and range anxiety issues:

Ultimately, the PragerU video is correct in that there is a war on cars underway — a war on electric cars. But that war is being waged and funded by the oil refining billionaires that sponsor the video’s host.

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prager, dennis

PragerU is deeply rooted in climate change denial

Early life and education

Career

Beginnings

1980s

1990s

Political commentary

PragerU

Personal life

Published works

Filmography

See also

References

PragerU cloaks its extremism in a veneer of respectability, and that’s crucial to its success.

Peterson’s “Fix Yourself” video is a perfect example of PragerU’s ability to use gateway videos to pivot to something much darker.

It’s no huge surprise that PragerU’s content often mirrors the views long championed by its namesake, Dennis Prager, a radio-host-turned-digital media mogul.

PragerU's funding largely comes from extremely religious GOP mega-donors with ties to the fossil fuel industry.

PragerU’s extremist, factually inaccurate propaganda has even drawn criticism from some on the right.

The Heritage Foundation

Media Research Center

Project Veritas

Prager University

Turning Point USA

Recommending Denial

Google White Paper

PragerU Video Host Is Sponsored by Koch Funds