Equipping Americans to defend what makes the U.S. great, Prager University is a highly successful online think tank that has a knack for creating short, sharp, animated videos that distill complex ideas to their essence.
Conservative radio show host Dennis Prager believes these videos can “change the world, five minutes at a time.” Allen Estrin, the executive director of PragerU, says the videos are “like potato chips; you can’t just watch one.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation interviewed Estrin, who has worked with Prager University for five years and has been the executive producer of the Dennis Prager radio show for 12 years. A former Hollywood screenwriter, Estrin’s talent lies in embedding effective storytelling into over 150 videos now online.
Traffic has gone from 1.6 million views four years ago to over 200 million in 2016. Estrin is startled with the “shocking growth” of this online university.
He discusses a recently released video, “Just Say Merry Christmas!,” about the need to stop denigrating American traditions and the national holiday. Estrin says when people don’t say “Merry Christmas” to him, a Jew, it’s “a micro aggression, to use the left’s language.”
He believes what took the left 100 years to do in education can be reversed, harnessing the power of the internet in just ten years, perhaps. PragerU’s success demonstrates a growing hunger for the forgotten knowledge and values of America, he says — truth has a way of resonating like a starburst.
PragerU created a video 18 months ago on the Electoral College, and it garnered 500,000 views on Election Day alone — today it has over 50 million views. Another successful video he discusses is one on forgiveness, which has generated heart-warming, life-changing feedback.
Pressure is mounting on internet providers since May to impose European hate speech codes that restrict American free speech in the name of fighting terrorist propaganda. The left appears to be piggybacking on this to include offensive speech to their ideological orthodoxy, so that videos confronting their sacred cows are labeled as “hate speech.”
PragerU has incurred increasingly “outrageous” censorship in the last six months by YouTube and others, according to Estrin.
“The left really works hard to derail us,” he says. Liberals complain to YouTube at how offended their ranks are at various offerings by Prager University.
YouTube actually banned or excised one of PragerU’s videos last week. It was a video titled “Born to Hate Jews” by Kasim Hafeez, a British Muslim who found his way out of cultural and family indoctrination. YouTube has since moved it from “hate speech” to “restricted” for dangerous content.
YouTube has put over 10 percent of Prager U’s videos into the censored “restricted” mode. The names of the videos most offensive to YouTube are:
What Should We Do About Guns?, Are The Police Racist?, Why Don’t Feminists Fight for Muslim Women?, Why Did America Fight the Korean War?, Who’s More Pro-Choice: Europe or America?, What ISIS Wants, Why Are There Still Palestinian Refugees?, Islamic Terror: What Muslim Americans Can Do, Did Bush Lie About Iraq?, Who NOT to Vote For, Israel: The World’s Most Moral Army, Radical Islam: The Most Dangerous Ideology, The Most Important Question About Abortion, What is the University Diversity Scam?, He Wants You, Israel’s Legal Founding, Pakistan: Can Sharia and Freedom Coexist?, and Born to Hate Jews.
A growing citizen petition against YouTube’s censorship of Prager University is here.
Responding to CNN’s David Gergen who reacted to President-elect Donald Trump’s recent Cincinnati speech, Estrin remarked that “the left is besides itself and can’t figure Trump out.”
For more information, watch some of the think tank’s videos, follow it on Facebook or subscribe to the YouTube channel.
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