The Far Right Infiltration of Hip Hop
Rumble, DJ Akademiks, and the hidden danger of platforming so-called "Hip Hop" provocateurs
Aside from this newsletter and my show Hip-Hop Can Save America!, I also work on an excellent podcast, colorfully titled Unf*cking the Republic, that dives deep into economic and political issues to explain, frankly, just how f*cked we are in this country, and what (and who) helped get us here.
One of the most fascinating, yet troubling episodes for me personally is one where we break down the rather insidious work of Prager University. Primarily a multimedia repository, PragerU focuses heavily on distributing highly produced video offerings and other content designed to look and feel like unbiased, thoughtful explanations as to the ways of the world, including “fireside chats” with its patriarch Dennis Prager. On the surface, they feel like short, smart TED Talks, but, like the rest of the content, they are purposefully designed to irradiate viewers with potent, right wing propaganda.
Slowly. Over time. And in the most unobvious way possible.
Like hiding cancer in a delicious piece of candy… that’s also made of cyanide.
Fueled by billionaire benefactors and mysterious, dark money contributors, the radical right wing movement has found enormous success in recent years – if you can call it that – keeping an unflinching, conspiracy-laden hold on millions of Americans, most notably through mainstream broadcast outlet FOX News, but more and more through digital media organizations and alternative networks. Prager University isn’t actually a university at all, in much the same way that FOX News, isn’t. But it is another in an ever-expanding list of similarly right-leaning media networks, a list that includes outfits such as The Daily Wire, OAN or Sinclair Broadcast Group.
Here’s an excerpt from our UNFTR episode that breaks down what PragerU is able to do with tens of millions of dollars of outside, dark money bequeathed to them to produce and promote their innocent-on-the-surface, but in actuality, fiendishly designed videos:
In 2018, BuzzFeed published a comprehensive piece about PragerU’s meteoric rise. The story began with an anecdote about a then-sophomore in high school who came across a PragerU video online called “Iran and the Bomb,” featuring now New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. He then started loading up more and more of PragerU’s videos. He was hooked. As the kid told BuzzFeed: PragerU was instrumental in reshaping his “beliefs”—beliefs he didn’t know he had a few weeks earlier.
After watching a few hours of content, his brain was literally rewired.
The most memorable line in the entire story was so poignant, in fact, that PragerU reportedly leveraged it in its marketing material despite the mostly negative tone of the article itself.
Here it is:
“It took two months for Prager University, one of the biggest, most influential and yet least understood forces in online media, to mold a conservative.”
And by conservative, they mean ultra conservative. The anti-woke folk. The CRT critics. The book banning brigade. The anti-trans everythingers.
A Useful Idiot Black Man
As UNFTR noted, PragerU and other networks of their ilk are flush with cash, and utterly relentless. They know how algorithms work, and boy, do they work ‘em. Because they know that once they get you, they got you.
And it’s worse than you might think. In the episode, we pointed out what Marissa Streit, Prager’s CEO, said was coming next:
“Young people are online 10 hours a day, every day. They have an insatiable appetite for content that engages their sensibilities in different ways. PragerU must now counter the left wherever it is dominating—from universities and K-12 to Cartoon Network, YouTube, and PBS Kids.”
She even went as far as referring to PragerU as an “antidote” to PBS Kids.
PBS Kids!!
Ok. So, it seems that, in its most basic form, the idea is to target young, largely uninformed, still ideologically malleable white people, draw them into the finely tuned, right wing digital ecosystem through a seemingly organic and familiar looking entry point, and once they are there, continuously feed them all manners of right wing propaganda, “molding them” into the shape of their pre-established, hard-right political and social image.
Seems… Pretty simple actually.
And when they need even more molded minds to achieve their goal to “educate millions of Americans and young people about the values that make America great,” they just target much younger kids.
A bit much, but OK. Got it.
I have to imagine though, at some point they must have considered: If only there was a way to – Oh, I don’t know – attract, say, hundreds of thousands of folks from a certain segment of the population that never really votes for them… Doesn’t align at all with those so-called values… And in fact, are often the direct target of so many of their policies… So that they too could be “molded”… Wouldn’t they think that was just grand?
I can almost hear it now, in a conference room at The Heavenly Father’s Foundation (or any of the several behemoth think tanks financing this right wing media revolution)...
“How?! How can we possibly pull Black people into our fold? Candace Owens can only do so much… And it isn’t much!!”
“I hear you. Damn it. We were so close! If only Black people hadn’t already been sick and tired of Kanye West before we got to him.”
“Yea. I thought we had something there when they were hanging the ‘Kanye Was Right!’ banners.”
“I know. Between him and Kyrie Irving, it was all coming together so nicely.”
“{Sigh} We need, like, a Black Kid Rock to shoot bottles of malt liquor or something…”
{All chuckle}
“Wait! You know, you might be onto something. If only there was a Black influencer who wasn’t quite as rich as Kanye, not quite as visible – but visible enough… Certainly not smart enough to figure out what we’re doing… Someone a lot of Black people pay attention to for whatever reason — the more negative the better… Someone who would do anything for a few extra dollars… A “useful idiot” that has a digital connection to hundreds of thousands of young Black kids that can lead them into our ecosystem like lemmings…”
“Well, we were going to borrow DJ Vlad from the Feds but then we found out he was white—”
“No, no. It has to be a Black. Someone who ‘keeps it real’ and all that crap, but is perfectly fine selling out or poisoning the minds of their own people….”
“Ah, right. If only there was someone like that…”
[DREAM SEQUENCE HARP MUSIC followed by RECORD SCREECHING TO A HALT]
Enter DJ Akademiks
Livingston Allen, the not-an-actual-DJ, has been making quite a name for himself as a Hip Hop-affiliated “cultural commentator.” Essentially, he sits on video platforms like a shock jock and rants and raves about the most controversial, negative, violent stories, issues, or current events that could possibly be found in Black and/or Hip Hop culture – issues that certainly continue to plague those communities, but by no means fully represent them.
Yet, by amplifying and in some cases glorifying tales of violence and gang activity that have seeped into the music, or viciously sparring with detractors or other similar figures in the ratchet/drama/gossip/beef filled corners of the genre, Akademiks has claimed the mantle once owned by folks like Star and Buc Wild, trafficking solely in the aspects of Black culture that feed into already pervasive and damaging stereotypes.
Thus, in Hip Hop vernacular, Akademiks is widely seen as a “culture vulture,” one who profits off of, but contributes nothing truly valuable to – and in his case, even damages – Hip Hop and/or Black culture.
Yet, he does have legions of legitimate followers entertaining his form of entertainment, and a large percentage of them are Black. He has amassed millions of overall social media followers, including 500,000 on Twitch, a platform he was repeatedly banned from.
While even a short de-platform would present a top tier problem for any other streamer making an income from streaming on Twitch, it likely didn’t faze Akademiks much, as soon thereafter came the announcement that:
“Rumble has signed the leader in the hip hop and cultural commentary space to exclusively stream on the platform.”
Rumble is a YouTube-esqe, right-leaning digital platform, funded in part by Peter Thiel, the billionaire enigma that UNFTR called a “rich, tax evading, libertarian asshole hell bent on destroying democracy,” and a “nihilist prick.” (For really good reasons. Peep the episode after you’re done here.)
It is entirely possible that Rumble recognized such a partnership could perfectly retool what Owens could never do and the accidental-or-maybe-purposeful pseudo-spokesman Kanye West ultimately failed to do – trick encourage a wave of young Black people to join the ranks of their molded, conservative soldiers, one video view (and then subsequent algorithmically chosen video views) at a time.
Rumble called DJ Akademiks “the leader of Hip Hop and cultural commentary.” This phrasing is highly problematic to those who recognize that Hip Hop – and the communities from whence it came – are full of beauty, joy, brilliance and excellence, characteristics so often overshadowed by the kind of media coverage and if-it-bleeds-it-leads attention that folks like DJ Akademiks peddle.
It’s like calling Jerry Springer the “leader of American discourse,” or Maury Povich the “leader of relationship analysis.”
Yea. I mean, sure. I guess. But still...
Or like how many Republicans want to cringe when they are reminded that Donald Trump is the “leader” of their party because he really doesn’t represent what the Republican party is actually about.
But, just like Trump proved to be a useful idiot for the Steve Bannons and Steven Millers and PragerUs of the world, so too is DJ Akademiks, this so-called “leader,” being tasked.
Except this time, the disillusioned, ill-informed, and highly persuadable kids in the perfectly-ripe-for-molding crosshairs – are mostly Black.
I want to believe that DJ Akademiks knows nothing of the puppeteering that he is now a part of, and that even as he was seen yukking it up with Trump at a recent UFC fight and has stated his support for the twice-impeached, currently indicted ex-president, he might indeed just be going with the flow. “A platform is a platform to me,” he stated in a post-Rumble-announcement episode of his Off The Record podcast on Spotify. He might be self-aware enough to know that rocking with Rumble would be seen as controversial, but this is a guy who literally made his name by being a controversial, contrarian-like figure (see his days opposite podcast mogul Joe Budden on the relatively short-lived Complex web series, Everyday Struggle.)
Controversy is Akademiks’ lifeblood. Drama is his lane. To him, more audience could simply mean more audience. More money, more problems – which he then capitalizes on… for more money!
Akademiks isn’t the only loosely-influenced-by-Hip-Hop-culture personality making a living as an online provocateur. Figures like Adam22 of the No Jumper podcast have also trafficked in troubling material — after first winning over a large contingent of Black and Hip Hop-affiliated followers. This, from a recent Media Matters article titled, The No Jumper podcast is mainstreaming neo-nazis and hate figures to its audience of millions
Over the past year, No Jumper has delved into platforming viral hate figures, including white nationalists, neo-Nazis, misogynists, and notorious antisemites. The show has a massive reach on social media, with over 4.5 million YouTube subscribers, 1.2 million Twitter followers, 3 million Instagram followers, and 2.1 million TikTok followers. Clips from the podcast are also available on Snapchat and the show has a large Discord following. Additionally, clips of viral hate figures’ appearances on the show have been posted on TikTok by various users. ...
Grandmaison, who is white, now invites white supremacists and racists onto a show that has many Black staff members and was born out of covering hip-hop and Black culture. This transitional period for the podcast comes at a time when Grandmaison faces criticism for reports of past predatory behavior.
It’s Not Political
When you watch the infamous Deadspin video clip, “Sinclair's Soldiers in Trump's War on Media,” with all the Sinclair TV stations literally parroting the exact same right-wing-talking-points-disguised-as-a-plea-for-non-biased-news, verbatim, it exposed the depth to which the overseers of right wing propaganda distribution will go to piledrive their message anywhere, everywhere, all at once.
UNFTR showed us just how much money they’ll spend to do so.
It is therefore eyebrow-raising to see the hard pivots that figures like Adam22 and DJ Akademiks have made recently, moves that if not planned and financed by these powers-that-be, undoubtedly have them gleefully toasting each other in their plush think tank headquarters.
Again, he seems to not really have any clue about the true role of these platforms, further defending his move on Off The Record stating, “This isn’t political. Rumble could use this as an opportunity to bring in some people who are culturally — that would be my audience — again, not for political reasons, but as a platform. They care about numbers.”
Well, yes. But as we now know, they care for very political reasons.
Despite Akademiks’ repeated insistence that because he personally doesn’t engage in political commentary, that his “business move” can’t possibly political, doesn’t change the fact that his existence on that platform is very much being used for political purposes, and that these nefarious puzzle pieces are moving right under his e-nose.
Whether or not he understands all these behind-the-scenes machinations or whether he is a double-agent, duping us all, Akademiks is now a significant player in a tangled web of unconscionable ideology peddlers, the likes of which created FOX News, The Daily Wire, and Sinclair Broadcast Group. Outlets that, like PragerU, are ready, willing and highly able to infuse a radical right political belief system into anyone — particularly our youth — given just a little time and an internet connection.
Anyone.
Whether they are white high schoolers in Denver, or Black Hip Hop fans in states where just a few thousand votes might be all a Republican needs to win a presidency.
In defending his move to Rumble, Akademiks repeatedly missed (or omitted) the real issue. Whether or not he personally agrees with any of the right wing politics, social views or conspiracy theories that thrive on the platform, doesn’t matter. Even if he does, it’s perfectly fine for him to espouse those viewpoints to and among his followers.
But he should understand that in this Rumble relationship, his personal viewpoint, his non-political, music-and-culture only commentary, might be what his audience is coming there to see from him, but it isn’t what he was brought there for. He was welcomed to the platform to be utilized as a conduit by which an enormous right wing ecosystem can finally begin to mindhack an audience that was previously largely unreachable.
An audience even more attainable because unlike Adam22, DJ Akademiks is Black.
I’m all for attempting to influence an audience to follow your belief system. I do some of that myself. What is troubling in this case is that while he might think “a platform is just a platform,” and that he is simply reaching more people to introduce and amplify his way of thinking, Akademiks is actually turning them over — sacrificing them — his own audience, his own people, to a group intent on using that audience to further their own anti-democratic, anti-equality, anti-human rights enterprises. A group that has no intention of ever letting that audience figure out what’s actually going on, no intention of letting them attain the power to resist, and no intention of ever letting them go.
Make all the parallels you see fit.
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Sigh. How can we show kids/people the fun of true skepticism and real research? In a way, South Park demonstrates real skepticism. Maybe some game designer could use their formula as a beginning. For that matter, maybe those South Park guys could do it.
We got Akademics and Kanye far right, Talib Kweli on the extreme left, and Hip Hop still thriving in the middle.