The kids are alt-right: an introduction to PragerU and its role in radicalization in the United States

Abstract

ABSTRACT With an annual budget of nearly fifty million dollars and over five billion views on social media, PragerU is a central node in the production of misinformation and radicalization in the United States today. Despite this, it has received little-to-no attention in contemporary scholarship. This paper begins to correct this dangerous oversight by introducing PragerU to an academic audience as a powerful far-right institution. We build on Rebecca Lewis’s concept of the Alternative Influence Network to show that PragerU is a unique and sinister institution with the ability to draw together disparate parts of the American right, using immense financial resources and advertising reach to do so. At its core, we contend that PragerU functions as a legitimizing hub for the US far right. It creates for itself a veneer of legitimacy as a seemingly moderate, centrist educational organization, even appropriating the term ‘university’. PragerU then shares that legitimacy, serving as a hub that unites the right, bringing together Reaganite neoliberals, Bush-era neoconservatives, Tea Partiers, Trumpists and the contemporary alt-right under PragerU branding. Combined with its staggering reach and the structural features of social media platforms (‘suggested videos’, recommendations), PragerU acts as a gateway to the extreme right, and the first steps on the path to radicalization. As a result, we argue that it can no longer be ignored by scholars seeking to understand the far right in the United States, and should be treated as an essential area of study into right-wing radicalization and the spread of misinformation on social media today.