Kids' Cartoon From Conservative University Claims That Slavery Was 'No Big Deal'

Do NOT call prageru a "university".

Prager is to "University" as North Korean is to "Democratic People's Republic"
I don't understand PragerU... they put out all of this fascist propaganda, but they still have this video up on their YouTube channel that spells out in no uncertain terms that the cause of the civil war was slavery and the south's want to defend a "morally repugnant institution":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcy7qV-BGF4

Is this just the one thing they keep out there to point at and say that they're "fair and balanced"?
- That’s the video they point at when they say the Democratic Party was the party of slavery.
  
  They’re just hypocrites.
- Honestly Youtube sucks. I get flagged for "supporting criminal gang activity" because I had a video about Randy Stair that didn't even paint him in a positive light, most youtubers have to say "unalive" because mentioning death gets them demonetized yet PragerU can just straight up say we need to re-enslave black people and the response is "aww shucks"
- They just sell content to education institutions, nothing more, nothing less. They don't care what that content is for or against, only that someone finds it valuable. It's not about being "fair and balanced"; it's about playing both sides to make as much money as possible.
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=pcy7qV-BGF4
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
- Damn, PragerU was a different place 8 years ago.
I fucking knew it... Read the headline and came to the comments thinking "it's definitely that shithole PragerU isn't it..."

Conservatives LOVE projection and they use their victim complex as ammunition. "Libz own the colleges and indoctrinate our youth so it's totally fine now to have our own propaganda university teaching real history!"

I hate PragerU so much...
- Yeah - they don't seem to understand that there is a massive difference between "having biases" and "being biased." It's how they've excused the purposeful slant of FoxNews all these years.
the title is from he article— I didn’t pick it! (Rule 1)
- Would simply changing conservative university to PragerU not be more context/more descriptive? I can't even see it being called editorializing if it's more accurate.
Beat me to it lol. Recognized the art style immediately.
It's a goddamn pasta sauce.
Shouldnt it be illegal for them to call themselves a university? Its kinda like if i would call my hypotetical tea shop a hospital

Conservatives won't be happy until they've depicted Moses as a villain who deprived the pharaoh of his hard-earned Jewish slaves.

and how “beneficial” that would be compared to what they tried to do last time...

These videos are approved to be shown to children in Florida.

I am honestly scared for the next generation of children who believe that slavery wasn't that bad, and whatever other bullshit Prageru preaches

The divide between those who eat this bullshit and those who were responsibly raised will be fucking wild. Like think about that one dude in your life that hadn't heard about 'X', a thing that's common knowledge, and how baffling that was but now it's nonstop bafflement with a certain percentage of population.
- It’ll be like the “States’ Rights” people, but infinitely worse. Being raised in the south, you’re taught that the civil war was over states’ rights, not slavery. That slavery was just the one that historians tended to latch onto, because it’s the most inflammatory topic and makes the south look bad.
  
  And if you’re a good student and don’t bother to question that, you’ll enter the adult world believing that the south wasn’t fighting for slavery.
- Do you have a word or words that you've said more times than any other during the past few years? Because I do, and it's "I'm so glad I never had kids"
  
  I get that we need more people raising children on purpose to help guide them into being productive* members of society, but I'm not trying to subject my kids to that. So sorry, y'all on your own. I'll keep voting for schools and shit.
  
  *Productive as in a decent person, not productive for an employer or church or something
- You mean kind of like science deniers like flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers and regular people?
  
  The divide already happened.
That generation of Floridians is going to be seriously messed up. This could be a real problem (or maybe Florida will be destroyed by the Climate Crisis before it manifests, who knows).
- At this point I expect Florida to undergo an apocalypse, ordinarily I wouldn't be so dramatic, but they are literally using radioactive material to make roads
- They've got enough money that they can make the climate problems in Florida everybody else's problem, unfortunately.
And when they turn crazy because they won’t know what to believe anymore, Republicans will blame drag queens for that.

PragerU isn't a university. They just use the word to trick the unwary into thinking they might have a shred of legitimacy.

While simultaneously blasting actual universities as liberal propaganda machines.
- Every Conservative accusation is projection.

Disgusting. They won't be happy until slavery is brought back.

And the thing of it is, the white conservative racists want slavery back because they think it'll apply to black people. But little do they realize that big capital wants slavery back, too, and big capital will be all to happy put everyone into slavery, including white conservatives.
- They're all too happy to point out that white people were slaves too elsewhere in the world so that makes our slavery somehow not racist... They'll then hold these same beliefs as you state.
  
  Ignorance really is bliss huh...
It is back via convicts and our prison system
- That implies it ever left. The 13th amendment "outlawed" except as punishment for crime. Guess how many new laws and crimes were invented after that amendment was created.
It's not racist if they're fine enslaving white people too!

How I imagine the defense of slavery will be proffered.
- It's already what they argue. They argue that slavery was world wide and of every race so it's not racist and it's totally ok that we once had it...
They want the working class working for slave wages.
- Bold of you to assume they want the working class to have any wages at all. Remember spending scrip at the company store?
- Slave wages? Wages? Haha good one
This is unhelpful - they do not. What they do want is to minimize it and its impact so that they don't have to feel bad. They're trying to square "I love America" with "America has done awful things." And it leads them to diminishing the latter to preserve the former.

I watched some clips of a couple of these videos. I said "Ok, I'm sure it's conservative, but it can't be that bad, can it?" Surely, the Democrats are using at least some hyperbole in describing these videos, right? Right?

Nope. If anything, they've understated it. These videos are awful. The ones on climate change are particularly brutal, outright saying that because China and India are pollution leaders too, that makes it perfectly OK.

Subjecting Florida's children to 13 years of this drivel is going to turn out a generation of young adults that are going to make Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene look like Mitt Romney by comparison.

I went in with the same expectation, but holy-fucking-shit that is some WILDLY racist and delusional propaganda bullshit.
- Yup. While you and I may be preaching to the choir, I don't think a lot of people truly see how bad these videos are.
  
  It's not even just the disinformation, though that's terrible enough. The blatant racism is off the charts. If you thought the "blacks benefitted from slavery" thing was bad, that's just the tip of the iceberg. They weren't just saying that. Their main talking points in the few short minutes I saw were:
  
  Black people benefitted from slavery as it was better than the tribal warfare back home that got them captured in the first place.
  
  Every major civilization was built on the backs of slaves
  
  In some places, white people were used as slaves.
  
  Somebody had to do it, and they looked good for it.
  
  Even if it was bad, it was how 'Murica was built and the ends justify the means.
  
  Nobody alive today was born a slave so hey, it's all good now.
  
  And I only watched a clip that I saw on one of either the CNN or MSNBC videos on the subject. I can't imagine what sitting through an entire video would be like.
  
  I truly feel sorry for Florida's students who are going to have to learn this bullshit only to go out into the real world, find out that a Florida education is now worthless and that the real world isn't Florida.

Does anyone know why they are allowed to call themselves a university when they clearly are just a rightwing propaganda machine? They fooled me for a while thinking that it was a ultra-christian academic institution or something dumb like that but they are not even a daycare. Shouldnt it be illegal to call themselves a university? Its like if i open a bussines and call it a hospital but i only sell herbal teas and suplements, like holly shit.

That's why their channel is PragerU, not Prager University. The letter U is not protected.
Does anyone know why they are allowed to call themselves a university

Same reason Trump Steaks was able to call itself a university for a while.
Yeah, eating holly berries will do that to ya.
- ???

These assholes reaaally need to be Twilight Zoned into being slaves so they can see how not a big deal it was firsthand.

It seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot with this garbage. Definitely losing what few black folks were on their team
- They'll always have Kanye "Slavery was a choice" West!
- Keep paying attention. Something big is about to go down or it's already going down. They only time they act batshit like this is when they're doing something even worse.

They are trying to whitewash slavery because they need it to look good for when they bring it back.

Welcome to Post Oil Feudalism

They're in for a rude awakening when they realize subjugating the many doesn't work well when you're the few and you don't understand science or technology, and you give guns out like candy to everyone.
When?

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, **except as a punishment ** for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
- Cute that you think the right cares about what's in the Constitution anymore apart from the second half of the Second Amendment.

At some point along the line, Republicans decided that the more someone made liberals angry, the more conservative they were. And now they find themselves defending slavery. The "party of Lincoln".

And now they find themselves defending slavery. The "party of Lincoln".

Nothing new. They've been flying the traitors' flag for decades now, moaning on about their "heritage".
- Fun fact!
  
  When the Republican Party first gained traction, many states would have them labeled on the ballots as "Progressive Party".
  
  Teddy Roosevelt ran on a platform of environmental conservation, anti-corruption, anti-monopoly, consumer protections, corporate regulation, social welfare, and income and estate tax.
when were conservatives not in favor of slavery?
- Or tyranny.

Despite the name, PragerU is not an academic institution and does not hold classes, does not grant certifications or diplomas, and is not accredited by any recognized body.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PragerU#:~:text=Despite the name%2C PragerU is,accredited by any recognized body.

Pretty fuckin' stupid for that video to say that the US began the conversation on ending slavery when the Haitian revolution began in 1802.

You know, among all of the other fuckin' stupid things in that video.

It was famously already a well established argument by the time of the drafting of the US constitution. The southern states were deathly afraid their ability to keep slaves would be taken away, which was basically the entire driving motivation behind almost everything they did.
facts obviously don’t matter to these people

Lol of course its PragerU. I remember they had a similar video defending slave-owners a couple years ago, but at least that one was taken down pretty quickly.

Anyone claiming that should have to try it for a few months.

I'm gonna start keeping a whip in my glove box for such an occasion. Slavery was no big deal? Clean my fucking interior.
It’s better than being killed after all

Yeah, for the slave owners maybe. /s

Fuck Dennis Prager, that smug piece of shit.

Santa not being white

"NOO!! HISTORY AND FACTS MATTERS!!"

Like seriously. These conservatives are the worst.

when they say this about Santa or, my favorite, Jesus, I always love watching their faces turn red when I say, “prove it”. sometimes, I think their heads might just pop!
https://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/santa-claus-was-a-black-muurish-european/

Fact do matter. St Nick was black and was willing to slap a dude:

https://www.stnicholascenter.org/who-is-st-nicholas/stories-legends/traditional-stories/life-of-nicholas/bishop-nicholas-loses-his-cool#:~:text=As Arius vigorously continued%2C Nicholas,The bishops were shocked.

I've seen pictures of Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass did not look like he thought slavery was "no big deal".

He looked like he'd have beaten your ass to a pulp for even thinking it.

You didn't like that? Maybe you would appreciate my up and coming Puppet show featuring Mitch McConnell as an abortion eating transgender with her lover Donald Trump the illegal immigrant from some shithole country.

Prager isn't even good by the standards of fake youtube universities.

Historical revisionism… so hot right now.

Along the same lines, but not to this level:

A few years back, we had a family member who is at a very extreme end of the political spectrum give my kids a book set that they "saw in a facebook ad" that said it was all about wholesome family values. It was called the "Tuttle Twins."

Not knowing what it was, we started reading them with our kids. The first book we read was fantastic(we read out of order). It talked about pencils, and followed the entire supply chain. Very informational, entertaining, and educational. It wasn't until the 2nd book, and on that the agenda crept in. Funny how when they talked about crime, all of the cartoons of criminals were diverse. When they talked about landscapers and gardeners, they were all depicted as hispanic. It kept getting worse and worse. Talking about education being corrupt, about how much immigration impacted people, and tried to justify a lot of things. We stopped reading early on, but I browsed them all to make sure I wasn't imagining it. Then I googled them, and I realized how bad the propaganda was.

That made me look the up, yea sounds like insane propaganda

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/09/the-tuttle-twins-and-the-case-of-the-really-bad-libertarian-propaganda
If you just want the cool pencil story, it's lifted from this:

https://youtu.be/67tHtpac5ws

For the record I'm a very pro-market dude who still thinks Friedman was wrong on some very serious issues, but it's an amazing example of supply chains and interdependence that deserves to be shared, regardless of your views.
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/67tHtpac5ws
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

There's nothing redeemable about PragerU.

PragerU is a think-tank, not a university.

It's a septic tank.
- When the people in your think-tank have shit for brains...
A white Christian nationalism propaganda factory.

Conservatives have infested the planet, spreading their diseases of deception, manipulation, bigotry, homophobia, racism, misogyny, antisemitism and xenophobia.

It is inappropriate to do business or keep relationships with conservatives. Do your part to fight conservatism. Exclude them from your daily life.

Bold of you to assume conservatism wasn't literally the norm everywhere. It's called conservative (wants to conserve) for a reason.

I'm not saying progress is bad, but thinking it was the starting point until the conservative demons spread out the entire globe is quite delusional
You do realize mindsets like this are a significant contributor to the political division we see today, right? This is not the way.

Instead of shutting them out of your life and trying to cancel them, try to educate. Show them why certain views are wrong and show them the outcomes of their beliefs. Rome wasn't built in a day.
- I have spent a lifetime trying to reason with conservatives. I have learned that they cannot change their foundational opinions. Changing one's mind is not a quality of a conservative.
  
  Every act of bigotry, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, antisemitism and misogyny comes from conservatives. They are famously anti-science, anti-medicine and anti-worker. Yet, you say I am the one creating division. You are clearly wrong on this one.
- @MrSnowy
  
  Instead of shutting them out of your life and trying to cancel them, try to educate. Show them why certain views are wrong and show them the outcomes of their beliefs. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
  
  Because for a lot of people "they don't care". They think that they're strong and you're weak and they can get away with what they want to do because you literally can't stop them. From their perspective, trying to "reason" with them just shows how weak and powerless you are. A lot of fascists think like this and it's why people trying to convince them never quite seem to make headway. Also, they know that weak people object to their views, but, again, they don't care.
- No, the political division we see today is because the christofacists have realized they lost their shitty "culture war" and are hellbent on destroying democracy and hurting the people they hate. Don't blame the victims. That bullshit is fucking obnoxious. Just hold hands with the people who want to strip away your rights and human dignity and everything will be great!
- There’s no both-sides-ism in this. Those who wish to believe the ‘positive aspects’ of slavery would just as well cut your throat as well as mine. If you keep sticking one hand on a hot stove and smacking your neighbor with the other cause you’re in pain, the problem is not your neighbor, it’s YOU
- Enough of this free market of ideas rhetoric, we know that a debate isn't truly what the fascists want, what they want is a smoke screen they can use to hide behind and pretend that their ideas are just as legitimate as anyone else's. Even though weather one prefers chocolate or vanilla should be a matter of opinion, not whether or not the Jews should be going back to camp, because they definitely should not. Anyone who wants to argue otherwise is quite literally a fascist.

No wonder US propaganda is a matter of study subject in schools in Europe

What country is Europe?
- Found the Floridian.
- The one with the Eiffel tower

If slavery 'was no deal' and 'actually beneficial' to those enslaved because of some skills or whatever, why not enslave those that are pro slavery and that keep spreading this bs?

I mean, if it's so beneficial... 🤷🏻

Wait for the "war was fought to protect them from the north"...
Would love to see Robert E. Lee working at the cotton fields while chained tbh

Prager Urine

Conservative "university"

I keep seeing articles refer to them as "a university" or "Prager University" lately, what's up with that? I thought they were officially PragerU because as a media outlet they're not allowed to call themselves a university, but the U implies it enough to lend credibility.

Are these writers just taking the bait? Or did PragerU finally realize you don't have to follow the law if you're rich and conservative?
aka Lie Factory

Imagine a world where pedophilia/rape is legal and there is no escape for the victim. No big deal? Growing up, I held Thomas Jefferson in esteem. It is still teaching a whitewashed history. Lies are still rampant in the quest to steal minds to their racism.

Demote PragerU to Prageru. Don't give it any credibility by using their capital U. It isn't earned.

every day, i lose more and more faith in humanity

Come on, guys. It's just a bit of cultural genocide, abuse, mind control and forced labour. It's not that bad. /s

Straight up meme material. Is this actually legit?

literally being taught in FL schools. it’s fucked up.
- That is fucking removed lmao

And apparently this is approved curriculum for Florida.

I think it was quite a big deal, really.

Can we just kind of get that state off the books somehow? Like, just give it to cuba?

I'd say my country had some kind of treaty that Florida must be returned but I don't want that shithole to be part of my country
- Yeah, seems like we have a sort "No you!" on our hands lol

Soon to be taught in Florida schools…

I'm sure they'd agree that you shouldn't judge for the crucifixion of Jesus and the persecution of Jews/early Christians as that kinda stuff was no big deal in the culture of the past right? What about majority of the present culture which views abortion as no big deal from their perspective? Popularity doesn't make something moral.

Wow..................like seriously..........what the f***?

I think this article( and by extension you guys) are misrepresenting the pragerU clip. All its said was at the time, slavery was prevalent across the globe and it was "no big deal" for their societies of their time.

Who is to say that we arent going to look back and treat the prison system the same way or we would classify terminal online as slavery to corporations. Obviously slavery was inhumane but the people at the time didnt see it that way.

Obviously slavery was inhumane but the people at the time didnt see it that way.

You can't think of a segment of the population that did see it that way? The people who were enslaved, or abolitionists perhaps?
I think it was quite a big deal to the slaves, even at the time.
- And also for the kingdoms that relied on selling them to stay afloat. They all ended up falling in the 19th century
I do not agree with your interpretation whatsoever, but to argue that slavery was “no big deal” at the time is also factually invalid.
A large number of people did see it as inhumane.

Also, right before that part they further normalize slavery, which often involved intermittent torture to keep them in line:

Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no?
people who own slaves rarely think what they’re doing is wrong, especially because it benefits them so much. the slaves, on the other hand, rarely see it the same way.

abolitionist movements and slave revolts go back to Ancient Rome and before. Ever heard of Spartacus? wow...
- How do you feel about the fact that slave labor was most certainly involved in the production of your smart phone, somewhere along the supply chain?
No lol there were abolitionists before Columbus's voyage. People have always been capable of grasping how evil it is. They intentionally chose to ignore that aspect of their perception to maximize their profits.
- Well, didn't the clergy with a medieval mindset actually fight for natives' rights? Think of Bartolomé de las Casas
Child and marital rape were "no big deal" across the globe for thousands of years. Should we teach that to children as well?
- Well, if we want to contextualise some periods it should. Like, imagine someone told you 40 year olds married 14 year olds without giving you the context of the period
Oh look, the education system is already working as intended.
Why may it have been considered "no big deal" at the time?

Because the people who thought that way believed that the people being enslaved were literally sub-human.

So the question is still why is it relevant in any context whether slavery was considered acceptable at the time?
- It was normalised across the globe throughout human history. That is, I suppose, a valid point. Although I would say it's a pretty big deal that it was normalised across the globe throughout human history. And of course, there's more slaves today than there was during the entire period of the Atlantic slave trade, which is horrific and barely discussed.
- Slavery is still rampant worldwide and is involved in the production of many goods that end up on us soil. How do you feel about your smart phone and cheap gadgets?
Who is to say that we arent going to look back and treat the prison system the same way or we would classify terminal online as slavery to corporations.

Then I will accept that judgement. Why do we need to forgive the past for it's wrongs just out of fear for being judged ourselves?
Just to be clear, slavery is 100% legal in the United States if it is punishment for a crime. Read the 13th amendment. Many people already see the prison system as an abhorrent extension of slavery. Legally speaking, it literally is.

Also, Christopher Columbus was tried in Spain and imprisoned for his atrocities in America. There was never a point in time where slavery was unanimously accepted. Institutional racism was born because enslavement between two equal humans is so clearly wrong. Slavery was so clearly a big deal that one party needed to be dehumanized to justify it.