Last month Spotify banned PragerU from advertising on its streaming music service, and The Stream stands with PragerU in wondering why.

Spotify has simply said, “Our policy team has re-reviewed the ads that you have submitted through Ad Studio and determined that the content of the ads do [sic] not comply with our editorial policies.”

Spotify has not specified which content violated which policies. Their silence has now led PragerU to ask, in emails to viewers and supporters, whether the Southern Poverty Law Center was involved in the decision. The SPLC has had it in for PragerU since at least last June. PragerU is “not a real university,” they find it somehow necessary to note in an article on PragerU’s influence. (I doubt anyone is really confused on that.) From there they go on to register their disagreement with content in a PragerU video.

Influencing vs. Bullying

All of that is fine. American discourse depends on healthy disagreement. Bullying, though?

It would be easy to take apart the SPLC’s article attacking PragerU. But that would be missing the point. It would be missing the irony, too. The article is titled “PragerU’s Influence.” Meanwhile SPLC is using its own considerable influence to block PragerU’s, calling PragerU a “hate group.” It’s a false, bullying label.

Apparently the SPLC doesn’t believe that disagreement is crucial to American discourse. The closest PragerU comes to “hating” is in disagreeing with leftist ideals.

Disagree influentially, I might add. That might be PragerU’s real sin in their eyes. Their videos explain matters clearly, and they reach millions of people. PragerU’s video on the SPLC is a great example:

Spotify openly relies on the SPLC to identify “hate groups.” PragerU is getting wrongly punished, simply for disagreeing — as if that weren’t hateful itself.