What Ron DeSantis wants to teach kids: Racism and inequality don’t matter, and politics can’t solve injustice
Since at least the 1960s, the American right has worked to create a parallel set of civil society institutions: think tanks, interest groups, foundations, educational institutions, many forms of media, churches and religious communities and much more. Their ultimate goal all along has been to transform American society to fit their vision.
Liberals, progressives, and others who believe in a genuine democracy and humane society have no comparable network of institutions.
The right-wing social engineering project is predicated on such ambiguous concepts as “traditional” American values and untrammeled “freedom,” which in practice means a society dominated by the moneyed classes and specifically by white Christian conservatives. In an increasingly global, pluralistic, and diverse society, that goal is clearly antithetical to democracy and the long-term health of the nation.
As seen in Florida and numerous other states, PragerU, the powerful right-wing media, advocacy and pseudo-educational organization, is playing an integral role in that project. PragerU is clear in its mission, which it describes as being “a free alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education.”
Knefel highlights two specific examples of the ways PragerU’s “educational” videos and other materials are literally whitewashing African-American history and Christopher Columbus’ role in the genocidal white European colonial and imperial project that decimated the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
As far as DeSantis and PragerU, they want to indoctrinate kids at a young age into a far-right belief system. The goal is to create a generation of right-wing media consumers who adopt their framing on issues both historical and current, whether that’s the George Floyd uprisings in 2020, trans rights, feminism and women’s liberation or any number of other issues.