• DarraignTheSane@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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”?

      • gramathy@lemmy.world
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        That’s the video they point at when they say the Democratic Party was the party of slavery.

        They’re just hypocrites.

          • ThunderingJerboa@kbin.social
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            I mean yes its a technicality but its also a pointless argument seeing as most political parties aren’t the same after 100+ years. Hell even in a span of 20 years, it is quite crazy to see progress since for a while the democrats basically avoided the whole lgbt topic entirely but now is one of its “pillars” for party ideals.

            • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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              Exactly, just as conservatism has changed and gotten more extreme in the last 40ish years. My point though is that far too many people treat the political parties as constant throughout their history, and it’s worth pointing out that modern iterations of a given party are a stretch from even 20 years ago, almost to the point that they’re different parties entirely today.

          • aidan@lemmy.worldM
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            The ideologies did not switch. The Republican party was more appealing to Protestants, was largely anti-union, etc many other things, but largely was the party of “individualism”. The Democratic Party has always been more interventionist- but started to ideologically evolve after FDR. Barry Goldwater and certain other Republicans opposed the 1964 Civil Rights because they argued it was federal overreach. This attracted some Democrats who just went with what ever party they saw as letting them keep being racist, as for actual politicians who switch IIRC Strom Thurmond was the only one(but I may be wrong). But a big part of the “switch”(Carter won in the south the first time, Bill Clinton won a few states in the South, Reagan won traditionally blue areas) is that anti-government interventionism(especially after Reagan) switched from being a more urban thing to a more rural thing. Thats not to suggest that a lot of Republicans didn’t pitch their policies in a way to appeal to voters(who may be racist), they did. But the ideologies of the parties didn’t swap. Republicans stayed more or less the same, Democrats evolved.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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”

        • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          The problem is that social media companies have completely capitulated to fascists, with absolutely zero attempt to put up a fight.

          Everyone knows, and I mean literally everyone, that if the rules were enforces fairly on social media then something like 60% of conservatives would have to be banned. They regularly say things that are openly racist, sexist, and incite violence on the reg.

          But social media companies only care about money, and to make money they want as many people as possible to show up. So while they know these cesspools exist on their platforms where people say the most heinous shit imagineable, they tolerate it because it makes them money and avoids the big fascist rage party if they fairly enforced their rules.

          • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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            The fucked up part is, I have been banned or suspended from a few social media platforms for completely innocuous reasons. Which is just frustrating when I get a 3-month band on Facebook for racism for making a self-deprecating joke about being white, but white supremacist groups are allowed to just openly operate and the people who gave me death threats for being transgender “were found not to be in violation of policies”

            • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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              Right before the API changes I got a 1 week ban from reddit for “report abuse.”

              I reported a post on r/Ukraine that SHOWED A BEHEADING. When I reported that shit it was a full on, uncensored beheading video.

              Apparently that’s “report abuse” for some fucking reason. But the antisemites who sent me blatant racism? Not enough to bet them banned.

      • Glide@lemmy.ca
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        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.

        • 4am@lemm.ee
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          I mean their founder guy or whoever did a rant about how it’s ok for siblings to fuck and that inbreeding isn’t real, just to give you an idea of what kind of people they actually are…

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      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…

      • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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        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.

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        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.

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      Shouldnt it be illegal for them to call themselves a university? Its kinda like if i would call my hypotetical tea shop a hospital

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

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

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    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

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      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.

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        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.

        • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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          Was definitely taught that…

          Even given some garbage about how Lincoln only came up with ending slavery late in to keep England out of the conflict… and that he regretted it.

        • Givesomefucks@kbin.social
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          I mean, the war didn’t start because the North wanted to end slavery in the South…

          It started because the federal government wouldn’t force northern states who had abolished slavery to return escaped slaves to Southern states.

          The part about abolishing slavery nationwide didn’t come up until the war was going on, and that was more an economic sanction than anything else.

          So it really did start because of state rights, it’s just it was the northern states fighting for that and the Southern States wanting a federal government that was willing to force states to do stuff.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            Then it’s weird that all the articles of secession for all the states that seceded mention slavery right at the top.

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              States’ rights to act as a sanctuary for escaped slaves. Did you not even read the comment you replied to?

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            I’m not sure about that. I think it was more started on the fact that it was clear the Republicans at the time were aiming not to abolish slavery but to stop its expansion. Which in political terms means slave states were basically fucked as more states were introduced. Many people see Bleeding Kansas as a prelude to the civil war because it was about seeing if a new territory will be pro or anti slavery. Like yes the southern states were hypocrites about states rights but from their perspective* however skewed that was. The threat of anti slavery was expanding while those who were sympathetic to it were losing power in house and senate. So secession/war over slavery was inevitable, it was merely a can the founding fathers sort of kicked down the road for others to figure out.

            • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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              Like, I get the idea that they thought ending slavery outright would shortly follow, but that was easily 50+ years away. By seceding and then initiating an attack on the US, all they did was bring about the end of it more decisively and quickly. If they hadn’t overreacted, things would’ve stayed the same for an unfortunately long time.

              • ThunderingJerboa@kbin.social
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                I wouldn’t say fifty years. I mean there were 2 states added to the US in 6 years from 1861 (Nevada and Nebraska, I am not including West Virginia since they wouldn’t have existed in a non civil war scenario). I think they saw it as a beginning of the end for them and their oh so loved “WaY Of LiFe” so they struck out when they were in theory at their strongest.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        You mean kind of like science deniers like flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers and regular people?

        The divide already happened.

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        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

    • TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com
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      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).

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        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

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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          What’s ironic is that the decline of Florida will probably lead to their government throwing money at corporations to build there. The corps will bite, but they’ll need intelligent and skilled workers to actually run their business. They aren’t going to find that in Florida. They’ll have to woo people from outside of Florida to move there, which will be a tough sell. If they can’t get enough people, the corporations will leave too, and Florida will become so bad that liberals in neighboring states will be weighing the ethics of refusing Floridian refugees.

          Let’s say though that the corporations do manage to find workers from elsewhere. Those workers will live in newly constructed luxury homes with brand new, reliable infrastructure. They won’t bother with places outside of their bubble unless they also become gentrified. This would create a demand for workers in these new, fancy places. And so, Floridians will find themselves either serving an outsider upper class, or taking orders from outsider managers and senior workers. They’ll become a servant lower class to an upper class of other Americans.

          Don’t get me wrong, this is fucked up, and it’s going to hurt the common folk, not the politicians who deserve it. It’s tragic.

    • Syrc@lemmy.world
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      And when they turn crazy because they won’t know what to believe anymore, Republicans will blame drag queens for that.

  • Ech@lemm.ee
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    PragerU isn’t a university. They just use the word to trick the unwary into thinking they might have a shred of legitimacy.

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    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.

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      I went in with the same expectation, but holy-fucking-shit that is some WILDLY racist and delusional propaganda bullshit.

      • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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        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.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
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        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…

        • Also ignoring that the various types of “white slavery” were in fact very different than the chattel slavery employed against African people. The kind of slavery we practiced in America treated (black) people as literal property. Including their own children, who could be born into slavery.

          I’m not sure ignorance is the right word. “Willful disingenuity” is what leaps to my mind, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily.

      • blackbelt352@lemmy.world
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        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.

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      It’s not racist if they’re fine enslaving white people too!

      How I imagine the defense of slavery will be proffered.

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
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        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…

        • diprount_tomato@lemmy.world
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          That doesn’t change the fact that American slavery was one of the worst slavery businesses ever (and the bar is pretty low), hand in hand with the Arab slave trade

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      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.

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    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.

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

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    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”.

    • Ech@lemm.ee
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      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”.

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        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.

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

    Welcome to Post Oil Feudalism

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      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.

    • randon31415@lemmy.world
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      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.”

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        Cute that you think the right cares about what’s in the Constitution anymore apart from the second half of the Second Amendment.

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          The only amendments that conservatives recognize are the second and 5th, you would think that they would wonder why there is no first third or fourth amendment, but math isn’t exactly their strong suit.

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            They’re all about the first when they’re mad they got fired for spouting Nazi bullshit on twitter. They just don’t understand it very well.

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          If the Constitution lets them abuse black people (see the school to prison pipeline), then the right is all for it.

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      Weird how actual slavery was “no big deal” but paying taxes is the worst thing ever because it’s tantamount to slavery and theft.

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    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.

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    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.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      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.