Despite the name, Prager University is not, to quote from the disclaimer pasted on the bottom of its homepage, “an accredited academic institution” -- nor does it “offer certifications or diplomas.”

Despite its claim that its videos are being “censored” by social media platforms, the site boasts that those same videos have racked up more than 2.45 billion views across YouTube and Facebook.

Despite -- once again, quoting from its homepage -- being “a place where you are free to learn,” it’s liable to leave you misinformed.

And despite being built upon this absurd collection of contradictions, PragerU is arguably one of the most influential right-wing propaganda networks put into motion since Fox News.

A 2018 BuzzFeed report told the story of one high school student whose political views did an about-face over the span of just a couple of months of watching PragerU videos. A PragerU brochure makes bold-yet-believable claims about its viewing demographics and its ability to sway their political leanings, noting that more than 60% of its YouTube viewers are under the age of 35 and 70% of surveyed viewers said a video had changed their minds. A March 2018 Mother Jones article called PragerU a “Right-Wing YouTube Empire That’s Quietly Turning Millennials Into Conservatives,” and the Los Angeles Times recently said PragerU was “having more success rallying young people to Trump’s side than many campaign committees aligned with the president.”

One could also argue that unlike websites like Breitbart, The Daily Caller, or The Daily Wire, which have well-earned reputations as hyperpartisan cesspools of misinformation, PragerU has been able to mostly avoid such stigma -- even though it shares a number of key associations with those sites.

PragerU cloaks its extremism in a veneer of respectability, and that’s crucial to its success.

The site, founded in 2011, is known for its polished and persuasive five-minute videos. Some videos focus on history, like the legacy of Christopher Columbus (apparently he’s gotten a bad rap) or the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt (the “New Deal” actually made things worse). Others tackle ongoing issues dividing the world such as religion (the West can thank “Judeo-Christian values” for its success) or the push for a $15 minimum wage (a bad idea!).

If you didn’t know much about the specific presenters, their bios give the impression that many of them are relatively mainstream right-leaning media figures. For instance, PragerU has videos hosted by multiple Pulitzer Prize winners, popular TV hosts, sports journalists, current and former Washington Post columnists, a Canadian former prime minister, a five-time Emmy Award winner, a nominee to head the Labor Department, a two-time presidential candidate, a former White House press secretary, as well as current and former faculty at respected institutions such as West Point, Stanford, UCLA, Harvard, and Princeton, among others.

Some of the site’s videos are … well, they’re fine. Comedian Yakov Smirnoff hosts a clip about the importance of laughter in healthy relationships. Col. Ty Seidule delivers a straightforward answer to the question of whether or not the Civil War was really about slavery (he says it was). Other clips, such as Adam Carolla’s ode to personal change, Jordan Peterson’s call to “fix yourself,” or Michele Tafoya’s “secret to success,” are just boilerplate self-help speeches we’ve all probably heard dozens of variations on in our lives. It’s the combination of respectable-sounding presenters with a handful of harmless clips that cover for the site’s hard-right ideology.