It's ironic that the team at PragerU hates communism so much since they produce dishonest agitprop that rivals anything the Soviet Union's most shameless propagandists produced. The "curriculum" — a word that really overrates what's now being used as educational materials in public schools in Florida and Oklahoma — is so overloaded with right-wing lies that debunking them all is nearly impossible. So many hats off to the team at Media Matters for combing through the extensive video library of the non-accredited right-wing disinformation mill run by Rush Limbaugh wannabe Dennis Prager. The cartoon videos aimed at children, which are also being considered for classrooms in Texas and New Hampshire, promote a wide-ranging amount of B.S. meant to poison children against reality: Videos that lie about climate change, glamorize genocide, fear-monger about urban life, and deny human rights abuses around the globe. There's even a video in which an American bigot compares being criticized online to the plight of Soviet dissidents thrown in a gulag.
It's all terrible, but I want to pull on one thread that especially illustrates why it is that conservatives are so obsessed with rewriting the past. It's not just that their snowflake-delicate egos can't stand the idea that their white ancestors may have done bad things. It's because lies about history are so useful for justifying ongoing lies about our present day. In this case, there's an important connection between the "Lost Cause" mythology embedded in PragerU videos and the attempts to whitewash Donald Trump's attempted coup that led to the insurrection of January 6.
