Hello everyone.
This is a video responding to a Prager University video titled
"If You Live in Freedom, Thank the British Empire" hosted on the PragerU YouTube channel
currently with about 1 million views.
The video is narrated by H.W. Crocker III, described by PragerU as a military historian and best-selling author.
So, a few months ago I made a video about PragerU titled "How PraguerU Lies to You"
where I put forward the radical, shocking idea that Prager University
isn't actually a university, but is instead a YouTube channel
funded by fossil fuel billionaires with the aim of promoting a biased and factually incorrect
far-right worldview, all of which I think you'll find is undeniably true and beyond dispute.
Now, in that video, I mentioned that there were a few PragerU 'courses' -
and remember, by courses I mean YouTube videos -
that were worthy of a more in-depth look.
And so I've decided to take a peek at what is probably the worst of the bunch today.
In fact, it is to me the most blatant propaganda PragerU have ever published.
Before we get to it though, I should mention that there are several other YouTube channels who have produced
their own responses to this video, which you'll find if you do a Youtube search for
"PragerU British Empire response".
Now, usually, seeing this sort of thing dissuades me from making my own video on the subject
as I consider the topic covered ground.
But with this video, I just couldn't help getting in on the action myself.
It is just that bad.
As always, I'd recommend that you watch PragerU's video first so you can be sure
I'm not misrepresenting them, although I will be showing short clips here as I go.
Right, then. Let's get to it.
[PragerU video] "Freedom was an Englishman's right,
and wherever he went, he took that right with him, whether he was an English colonist in America
governing himself through a locally elected assembly-"
Okay, so I'll have to stop it there. That was quick.
Doesn't bode well, does it.
Now I have to ask if this guy, H. W. Crocker,
knows about the American Revolutionary War.
And I ask this not just because of that brief clip describing the American colonists
enjoying all that freedom they had, but also because of this later clip.
[PragerU video] "This is our own history too.
If you love America, you should also love the power that gave us our sense of inalienable rights.
Rights traceable back to Magna Carta.
It all started in America with the British Empire, a great, liberty-loving empire.
It is the Empire's legacy, the English-speaking world
that remains the great, global guardian of freedom today."
So the United States should thank the great "liberty-loving empire"
that gave it its sense of inalienable rights.
Now, nowhere in this video is it ever mentioned how the United States came to be
or that they fought a war against that great, liberty-loving Empire in order to be free of its control.
I mean that doesn't really make any sense, does it?
If your only information about the United States or the British Empire came from this video,
you would conclude that the British Empire peacefully passed the freedom baton to the United States,
appointing them the new defenders of justice and freedom and liberty and
all the other words that are used completely meaninglessly.
[PragerU video] "The British always thought of themselves as liberators, as bringers of freedom.
The British believed the final and necessary justification of their empire was a moral one."
Now here, I'm afraid, Mr. Crocker has fallen
- perhaps deliberately -
for some very out-of-date propaganda there.
Claiming not to be conquerors or invaders,
but actually liberators, has been a tactic of aggressors all through human history.
The Roman Empire, for instance, disguised various aggressive campaigns as merely acts of defense.
They exaggerated minor threats to justify overwhelming force and so on.
Even Nazi Germany claimed to be acting in self-defense when they invaded Poland,
staging a series of false flag attacks carried out by the SS in what was called Operation Himmler.
Hitler declared in response to the attacks that he faked that he was mobilizing his "defense forces"
until the safety of the Reich and its rights are secured.
The British Empire may have claimed at times to be liberating and freeing people,
but that was just the smokescreen for its real aims: territorial expansion,
access to resources, power, glory, all the usual rubbish.
I'd advise looking into the events preceding the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War, fought between the British Empire
and the Zulu Kingdom, if you'd like a handy example of the British Empire's use of
extremely flimsy pretexts for provoking and justifying wars with people it was just invading.
Speaking of flimsy pretexts... how's that for a link there?
[PragerU video] "Even Gandhi praised the British Empire, paraphrasing Jefferson, saying that he believed
that the best government was the government that governed least, and that he found that the British Empire
guaranteed his freedom and governed him least of all."
Now, this is really amazing, this bit.
I think it's probably the slimiest, most deceptive argument PragerU has ever uploaded,
and that's a field with some pretty stiff competition.
So what's wrong with this quote? Did Gandhi say this?
Well, kind of.
This quote is actually a paraphrase, and I consider the tactic of writing it
alongside a little cartoon Gandhi as if he said those exact words to be rather shady, to say the least.
However, he did express that sentiment in 1915 as quoted in "The Speeches and Writings of M. K. Gandhi",
published in 1922.
Now, in the West, if Gandhi is known for anything,
it's being a proponent of nonviolent resistance to the British rule of India.
So why would Gandhi, who thought that the British Empire was the best government ever,
(according to this PragerU video at least)
also be leading a resistance movement against it and asking that it leave India?
What a puzzle we have here.
Now that quote from the PragerU video is from 1915,
as I said, however, their little cartoon there
is actually traced from a photograph of Gandhi outside Downing Street 15 years later,
which is a little deceptive there.
What could have happened in those intervening 15 years?
Anything that could have perhaps altered Gandhi's appraisal of the British Empire's governing abilities?
Well, we'll see.
Content warning for particularly nasty descriptions of violence in this next section, folks.
And we'll start with the Rowlatt Act,
otherwise known as the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919,
which was a legislative act passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in Delhi on the 10th of March 1919,
"indefinitely extending the emergency measures of preventative indefinite detention,
incarceration without trial, and judicial review enacted in the Defense of India Act 1915 during the First World War,"
to quote Wikipedia there.
Indefinite detention without trial.
That's the great liberty-loving Empire at work there.
Now, Gandhi responded to the passing of the Rowlatt Act by promoting nonviolent civil disobedience,
an act for which he himself was arrested.
Gandhi's later resistance against the British Empire,
the Salt March, the Quit India Movement and so on are a little beyond the scope of my video,
so right now we'll limit ourselves to this one particularly horrible event.
So, on the 13th of April 1919, thousands of civilians gathered at a public garden in Amritsar
to celebrate the Punjabi New Year Festival, as well as to protest
the recent actions of the British imperial government,
including the passing of the Rowlatt Act.
Fearful of a rebellion, Colonel Reginald Dyer of the British Army
ordered the main exits of the garden blocked,
then ordered his troops to open fire without warning on the group of civilians.
He later explained his actions were not to disperse the meeting, but to punish the Indians for disobedience.
British Indian sources gave a figure of 379 dead with more than a thousand wounded,
whereas the Indian National Congress estimated that around a thousand people were killed in the massacre.
That's just one of the British Empire's terrible violent massacres of innocent people there,
none of which are mentioned in the PragerU video, and we have to wonder, why not?
Well, not really.
It's because they're shameless propagandists presenting a biased, one-sided view of history.
PragerU takes the approach of sticking their head in the sand and pretending such events never took place.
So, who knows what they think about it?
However, we do know what this guy in particular, Crocker, thinks about the incident
as he describes it in his book, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire",
and I'd like to note the "Three cheers for colonialism!" tagline there.
Also, I'd like to note that his "Gandhi praised the British Empire" non-point
takes top billing among a list of similarly silly ideas.
Anyway, here's how Crocker introduces Dyer, the colonel who ordered the massacre:
[Reading] "Dyer was a hero of the old school.
He had been born in India and spent his childhood there before being educated in Ireland and at Sandhurst.
He had a gallant record that extended from service in the Northwest Frontier to Burma.
Most of all, he was a man who stood by the British imperial principles of justice, fair play and decency--
delivered by force if necessary."
...Jesus.
On the massacre, Crocker writes: "Dyer ordered his men into line and without delay gave the order to fire:
379 Indians were killed and more than a thousand were wounded.
The mob was dispersed--and so was the feared rebellion in the Punjab.
Dyer became a hate figure to anti colonialists--"
Imagine that.
"--and was repudiated by liberal opinion and the British government at home."
And for what, just for murdering a bunch of people?
Jeez.
Crocker, PragerU's lecturer, is here justifying the deliberate massacre of unarmed civilians
and calling the man who ordered that massacre a hero.
And that's a direct quote, that is his own word.
We see what he really thinks of liberty and justice and freedom here.
They're just words to disguise the only thing he really respects, which is force.
You know, "Do what we say or we'll shoot you dead, and then declare ourselves heroes for it."
It's hard to miss the white supremacist vibe here.
And if you think that's a little too much, I'd like to point out that the first section of another of Crocker's books,
"The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War", is titled "Why the South Was Right"!
That book is glowing in its praise for the Confederate States,
which for anyone who doesn't know,
fought a civil war against the United States because they wanted to uphold slavery.
It consists of fawning profiles of southern generals and harsh criticisms of northern ones,
very boring descriptions of battles, which is the worst sort of historical writing,
and it ends with a bizarre bit of fan fiction
talking about how great everything would have been if the South had won the war.
Well, actually it ultimately ends with these words, which were the national motto of the Confederate States.
Just in case there were any doubts as to where the author's sympathies lie, there.
Now, let me just say, I am fine being considered politically correct
if that means thinking slavery and the mass murder of innocents is bad
by the way, I just thought I'd throw that out there.
You know, if that's what being politically incorrect means, then count me out, you know.
[PragerU video] "The British did not try to nation-build in the way we think of it now.
They were under no illusions about making Arabs or Afghans or Zulus into Englishmen.
They were more than content to leave people alone, to let them be themselves,
to govern them with the lightest possible hand."
So then, Ireland.
Now, I've used this line of argument before, but I would really like to see this guy
explain to the Irish that the British were content to leave people alone and let them be themselves.
And there's too many things to even talk about here, of course.
Cromwell's conquest of Ireland,
the mismanagement of the response to the Great Famine which led to mass starvation and emigration,
the prohibition of the Irish language being taught in schools,
Margaret Thatcher, generally.
That was sort of a shared burden, that one, though.
And all the problems with the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland that are currently
still now ongoing, thanks to Brexit.
"But hold on there a second, Shaun,"
say all ten of you diligent folks who actually go and watch the other video when I suggest it,
"PragerU's video actually references Ireland
in the single instance of admitting that the British Empire was not completely perfect."
Let's have a watch.
[PragerU video] "...even where the British have merited criticism, as in Ireland,
there is more to the Imperial story. During negotiations to create the Irish Republic, for instance,
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who could speak Welsh,
reminded the Irish nationalist and Gaelic extremist, Éamon de Valera,
that the Celts never had a word for 'Republic'.
It was an idea given to them by the English."
So... what was that?
Crocker admits that the Empire "merited criticism" in Ireland, which is putting it rather lightly,
but as a counter-argument, quotes David Lloyd George talking about the origin of the word 'republic'.
Which has nothing to do with anything, you know?
Not only is it completely disconnected from any of the criticisms that the British Empire merited,
it's a misquote.
Now, there are different accounts of this particular conversation,
but none of them are so ludicrous as to credit the English with the concept of the Republic.
That's from the Latin, you know, as is this Irish word, which has its roots in "populist" there,
which was one of two competing Irish translations of the word Republic at the time.
Not that any of this matters, of course.
What a really bizarre way to avoid actually mentioning any of the crimes of the Empire.
Never fear though, if we want to see exactly what Crocker thinks about the Irish,
we can just once again take a peek at his Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire,
where we see him talking about Ireland's "recidivist barbarisms".
He says, "There is much to admire about the Irish,
but it is also easy to see why the English, when not regarding them as comical,
tended to see them as shiftless, ignorant, stubborn, contumacious, and cruel."
Crocker concludes that "the English left Ireland language, laws, and parliamentary government,
but did nothing to tame the stubborn pugnacity of Ireland's Celts."
Geez, "left Ireland language"?
It already had a language! Honestly.
If you had to guess when this racist drivel was written, you'd guess like
1910 or something wouldn't you, not 2011, which is when it actually was released.
Now, not mentioned in the PragerU video,
of course, are any of the Empire's various other crimes, which again are too numerous to mention here.
There's nothing about the Empire's use of concentration camps in Africa,
its massacres of indigenous Australians,
overseeing a famine in India that killed and displaced millions of people during the Second World War,
though I'm sure Crocker could find someone loosely associated with each of those events
who had once said the word "republic" or "liberty" or something.
You know, don't look at all the bodies, just say words like "freedom" and "liberty" over and over.
Now I earlier said that those words were being used meaninglessly, and just to back that up a bit
I'd like to quote again from Crocker's Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War.
He says, "The Confederate States of America, in short,
had formed a republic with a limited government that guaranteed individual and state rights-"
(unless you were a slave, of course)
"-and unlike the Republic up north, didn't insist on subjugating states that didn't want to be a part of it.
The Confederacy might have had slavery, as the United States did, but it was no tyranny."
Again, unless you were a slave.
Now, the United States of America is presented throughout this book as the aggressor,
as denying the sovereign states their inalienable rights to own other people.
You know, as being anti- all those good words like "liberty" and "freedom" and so on.
Crocker's allegiances will change with the conflict.
He'll sing the praises of the United States in the PragerU video,
whereas in his books he writes fanfiction about it being defeated and conquered by an enemy.
It's a bizarre trend among people who claim to love Western civilization
to find themselves praising its greatest enemies.
For instance, new PragerU collaborator Candace Owens recently got herself in some hot water
for claiming that Hitler would have been "fine" if he kept his ambitions inside Germany.
Now, I'd like to close out today by asking who on earth this video was made for.
You know, anyone in or near a former British colony will immediately recognize it as bullshit.
Maybe it was made for... Americans who don't know about the Revolutionary War, I guess,
British nationalists who refuse to admit the Empire wasn't purely altruistic,
maybe just the far right in general.
I don't know, genuinely. Let me know what you think in the comments.
Maybe it was made for the world's worst homeschooling teachers.
You see, this one has a study guide with questions to answer afterwards as well.
"The British were more than content to leave people alone, to let them be themselves,
to govern them with the lightest possible hand.
True, false.
It's fucking ridiculous.
That's all from me today folks.
Sorry to go back to the PragerU well so soon,
but I saw this video and how many views it had and had to start typing a response immediately.
Thanks, as always, to all of my patrons who support me over on Patreon,
whose wonderful names should be on the screen right now.
If you'd like to join them in supporting the channel, click that Patreon link below the video and go check it out.
I'll also include links to my Twitter and CuriousCat pages, if you fancy giving me a follow
or asking me a question.
Also, a quick behind-the-scenes note here.
We're coming up on 200,000 subscribers, which is very exciting.
We'll probably pass that within a couple of days, actually,
and I'll be putting out a quick Q&A video sometime soon to celebrate,
so look forward to that.
Right, thanks folks, and I'll see you next time.
More like...
crock of shit!
Thank you.