Failing to Vet Your Reps

The Heterodox Camp Promoted Dennis Prager; I asked them to stop.

I wrote a letter to Heterodox Academy in 2018 asking them to stop promoting Dennis Prager on their then app, OpenMind. Prager thrives on partisanship. His favorite catch phrase makes that clear, “The Left destroys everything it touches.” So why was the first video you saw on the “Our Picks” section of the Conservative page of an app meant to bridge political divides a PragerU video? I thought Heterodoxy cared about collaboration with those who had opposing ideas?

Needless to say, the letter didn’t move the needle for FIVE MONTHS. Then I tried tweeting at the problem. I tweeted to Heterodox Academy some of the racist things Prager had written in his blog . They forwarded me to OpenMind and they took it down and replaced it with my suggestions in less than 24 HOURS.

Hours of working on a letter vs. Seconds of working on a tweet…

So please find below the letter that didn’t convince the Heterodox team to take the video down. Let me know your thoughts!

Dear Members of Heterodox Academy,

I imagine all of you are aware that Heterodox Academy has created tools, such as the OpenMind app, that attempt to reduce partisanship and promote diverse political dialogue. As an avid follower of the Academy, I have watched it grow and evolve over time, and it has been incredible to see the impact that it has made. In order to improve it, I want to make one request: Please remove Dennis Prager’s video, “How Do We Make Society Better?” from the “Our Picks” section of the Resources for Understanding Right/Conservative Perspectives. If Heterodox Academy’s mission is to promote individuals who will help bridge the gap between political ideologies and reduce partisanship, Dennis Prager should not be the conservative voice you use to describe the Left/Right divide.

It is apparent, through his blog, radio show, and online education platform, that Dennis Prager sees the world as a Manichean dichotomy of Good and Evil: The “Left” is an existential threat to the world and conservatives, joined by their liberal and centrist allies, are the only ones to stop them. He full heartedly promotes the idea that the United States is currently in a non-violent “Second Civil War” in which, “There will be unity only when the left vanquishes the right or the right vanquishes the left. Using the First Civil War analogy, American unity was achieved only after the South was vanquished and slavery was abolished.” The need for victory becomes ever more pressing given the outcome of a Leftist victory: “If the Left is not defeated, American and Western civilization will not survive.”

For Prager, the Left is a mortal enemy who continually prevents the forces of good from fighting such evils as communism, mass murderers, or Islamism. Those who do not wish to fight these evils lack moral clarity, choosing instead to fight false evils, like global warming, Confederate statues and Nazis, as “an act of moral onanism”. But attempting to define Prager’s Left presents its own challenges. He throws out the usual rhetoric when describing Leftist ideology: Anything that is against racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, or capitalism. But even in his convenient “Guide to the Difference Between Left and Right”, there is no reference to “who” the Left are, only to what they believe. We can assume, from Prager’s writings, that these Leftists who wage war on America include many groups. In his article, “Four Legacies of Feminism”, Prager criticizes feminist for promoting female sexual promiscuity, encouraging the pursuit of a woman’s own career over marriage, giving women the choice to work outside the home, and creating a generation of demasculinized men who are not worth marrying. Other groups that are targeted as leftists or who leftists support can be found throughout his columns: Jewish people in “Left-Wing Jews are Embarrassing Judaism”, African Americans and groups defending their rights in “Disturbing Lessons in the Chicago Beating”, immigrants and non-white people in “A Nation of Immigrants — Only If They Assimilate”, musicians in “Can a Conservative Conduct an Orchestra?”, the media in “How the Mainstream Media Operates”, universities, teacher and students in “Some of the Left Now Criticize the Students They Created”, and so on.

He never mentions Antifa in his works, but in his article, “Will the Second Civil War Turn Violent?”, he finds there to be no difference between their destructive/violent forms of protests and progressives’ marches and occupations of public spaces, “Left-wing thugs shut down speakers at colleges; block highways, bridges and airport terminals; take over college buildings and offices; terrorize individuals at their homes … loot stores, smash business and car windows, and even take over state capitals (as in Madison, Wisconsin).” He continues by saying that, “Left-wing officials sympathize with the lawbreakers, and the police, who rarely sympathize with thugs of any ideology, are ordered to do nothing by emasculated police chiefs.” In Prager’s eyes, the only other times since the Civil War that authorities have allowed comparable eruptions of “mob violence” are the lynching of blacks by white mobs and the race riots of blacks in Los Angeles, California (1992), Ferguson, Missouri (2014–2015), and Baltimore, Maryland (2015). When it came to confronting white nationalists in Charlottesville, Prager differentiated between Leftist Fascists and counter protesters when he described Heather Heyes as the later. He did say, however, that, “The Left has succeeded in making identity politics central to the American political life. This is inherently divisive.” It is in this phrase that one can understand the political ethos that drives all of Prager’s actions and words: The Left is the source of all of America’s problems and divisions. As he puts it, “The universities, the news media, the entertainment media, the fine arts, the courts, the high schools and the elementary schools (and soon, the preschools — once they’re government-funded and universal) — all ruined wherever leftism has achieved dominance.” Prager predicts that if left-wing mobs continue to grow these divisions and are not stopped by college presidents, mayors and police chiefs, than other Americans will eventually stop them by force.

Tying Leftism to the country’s problems is a sport for Prager. For example, the racial tension in the US can be boiled down to Leftist influence. Prager’s “conservative education channel”, Prager University, has put out videos saying that the Left’s policies and promotion of a “victimhood mentality” have led to the current criminogenic conditions of African American communities. He identifies the Left as the reason why people think America is a racist country and that it has cheapened the word “oppression”. He has firsthand experience of the unhappiness that the Left’s focus on race and racism brings to African Americans, “I almost always know immediately whether [blacks] are on the right or the left solely by their tone of voice. The cheerful black caller is almost always a conservative,” and considers the opinion that America is a racist country that oppresses its minorities a form of abuse, “Vast numbers of nonwhites are being raised to believe that America hates them. This should be considered a form of child abuse.” He often uses analogies to exaggerate his points, such as in his article “The Greatest Libel Since the Blood Libel” where he likens the Leftist interpretation of American racial history to the Blood Libel used to justify the torture of Jews and in his article “The Atlantic Publishes All You Need To Know About The Left” where professors who teach the idea of “one human race” are likened to Nazis. Additionally, he has said, on air, that modern leftism is “the most racist doctrine since Nazism” and promoted the idea that white nationalism is linked to Leftism. This is not far from the points made by political commentator and author, Dinesh D’Souza, in his book The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left and reporter, Jonah Goldberg, in his book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Change. It is apparent that the later text has deeply influenced Prager’s thoughts on the Left and how to solve the problem of Liberal Fascism, “[Jonah Goldberg’s] book leads to one conclusion: We are fighting fascism. How is that not a civil war? When you fight fascism, you are not merely fighting a “culture war.” So, shouldn’t the primary role of a conservative be to vanquish leftism?”

The vanquishing of Leftism, and consequently, the end of the Age of the Left started in the mid-1960’s, was close at hand in 2017, Prager says, “With the defeat in the last presidential election, the defeat of the left in two-thirds of the gubernatorial elections and the defeat of the left in a majority of House and Senate elections, this is likely the last chance liberals, conservatives and the right have to defeat the American left.” It becomes apparent after consuming much of his works that there is no compromise in Prager’s “war”, only victory or defeat. This is a war that has been started and perpetuated by the Left. A war that will inevitably lead to violence due to Leftist politicians, newscasters, police chiefs and educators refusing to stop left-wing thugs. A war that will decide the fate of not just the United States, but Western Civilization. Because if the Left wins this war, “evil will engulf the world.” So when Prager discusses how the Left and Right differ in trying to make the world better, he sincerely believes only one side is capable of such a feat. In the video promoted by the Academy, Prager never mentions the apocalyptic threat the Left poses, but he relentlessly pushes this fear in other videos, blogs, and radio shows. I implore you to deliberate among yourselves, given the evidence I have provided, on whether you want Dennis Prager to be the first conservative describing the differences between the Left and the Right and whether promoting Prager is helping to reduce partisanship, or grow it.

Sincerely,

James Dykman