Debunking a PragerU Video About U.S. Immigration

PragerU gets a lot wrong in their propaganda videos. Here is what they get wrong in their video called "A Nation of Immigrants." →

Thanks to Define American for their support making this video.

Specifically, thanks to Paul Rivet for providing animations and William Johnston-Carter for help with research.

Music by Electric Needle Room. Produced and hosted by Matt Beat.

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PragerU, which is short for Prager University, is an organization that creates short, animated videos to promote a conservative agenda. So what does PragerU’s version of “conservative” look like? Well, their website says they believe in “economic and religious freedom, a strong military that protects our allies, and in the religious values that inform Western civilization, also known as Judeo-Christian values.” So I guess religious freedom is cool to them but they like Jewish and Christian values better?

Anyway, the conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager and his colleague Allen Estrin created it in 2010 to fight what they perceived a “liberal bias” in the American education system.

It’s propaganda. PragerU is straight up propaganda. Their mission is not to inform and educate, but to indoctrinate. And if you want to release propaganda, that’s fine. I’m quite ok with that. But the problem with PragerU is that they present themselves as a legitimate educational institution.

On their YouTube channel, they state “PragerU is an online video resource promoting knowledge and clarity on life's biggest and most interesting topics. We gather some of the world's best thinkers and distill their best ideas into free, 5-minute videos on things ranging from history and economics to science and happiness.”

My point for reading that is that I’ve found a lot of people don’t know they make propaganda videos. Unsuspecting folks may think they are simply an educational channel, when they are not. When I first came across them, I know I thought that. And PragerU is highly influential, especially to younger folks. Their videos have billions of views. They also recently started a program to try to get their videos in more social studies curriculums. Craig Strazzeri, the chief marketing officer of PragerU, said thousands of educators have already signed up, adding: “Ideally, every school in American would show PragerU videos in the classroom on a regular basis to help educate the next generation.”

Educate? More like “indoctrinate.”

If you Google “PragerU Debunked,” you’ll get thousands of videos and articles debunking PragerU videos. Often however, the videos are like 30 minutes long, because of how much bull crap the debunking videos have to call out.

But that is precisely what I’m going to do in this video. I’m going to fact check a five-and-a-half minute video PragerU made called “A Nation of Immigrants,” and hopefully do it in well less than 30 minutes, although that intro was already way too long.

#immigration #prageru #mrbeat