The Problem of Wikipedia
Paul Craig Roberts
Over the course of my life I have watched integrity shrivel up and die everywhere in the Western world. It is not like it was ever really abundant, but there was a goodly amount of it, and it had authority. People, especially those in public life, weren’t shameless as they are today.
In the past decade I have watched the disappearance of free speech. An independent media disappeared in the last year of the Clinton regime when 6 mega-corporations were permitted to
concentrate 90% of the media into their hands. Today free speech protected in the US Constitution is not valued as highly as the “feelings” of self-described “victim groups” who are offended by everything from truthful statements to traditional figures of speech. Even scientific discussion of the genetic basis of intelligence gives “offense” as does the use of gender-specific pronouns such as he and she.
Obviously false statements can be self-declared as true as when a biological male declares himself female and competes in women’s sports. Those who object to the obvious charade are declared “transphobic” and have to apologize. Sometimes they are fired for insisting on biological fact.
Exercising press freedom, as Julian Assange did, today brings charges of espionage and is misrepresented as a threat to national security. The media speak with the same voice, and it is the voice that serves the ruling elites. Truth is nowhere in the picture. The only purpose of the media today is to control the explanations for the elites. The media throughout the Western world is merely a Ministry of Propaganda. The young, never having experienced a free press or free speech, do not know what they are.
America today is a country that my parents and my grandparents would not recognize. If they were to be resurrected, they would think they were living in George Orwell’s 1984. And they would be.
I, and others of my generation, which is now passing away, are unable to accommodate The Matrix that elites and their media whores have created for the peoples of the Western world. Consequently, we are marginalized, despite our accomplishments and our grand honors, and if we persist we are libeled and slandered.
For example, Wikipedia has described me at various times as “a conspiracy theorist,” an “anti-semite,” and “a holocaust denier.” These labels were used despite the facts that I have never written a “conspiracy theory,” I have many Jewish friends and financial supporters and have had Israeli house guests, and I have never studied the holocaust or written about it.
I have been described in this way by Wikipedia despite the absence of evidence because Wikipedia is part of the mechanism for discrediting those who challenge official explanations. Whether this is by intent or from the opportunity that an open source provides to one’s opponents to libel and slander I cannot say.
Zionists don’t like me, because on occasion I republish on my website articles by non-zionist Jews and Israeli citizens who are critical of Israel. It is still possible to criticize US policy without being labeled “anti-American,” but if you criticize Israeli policy, or republish someone who does, it means you hate Jews. For me, this is really funny. My hand-picked principal deputy in the Treasury was a Jew. My Oxford University professor, Michael Polanyi, to whom my first book is dedicated, was a Jew. The Nobel prize winner, Milton Friedman, a Jew, was a supporter of my academic career. My favorite academic co-author was David Meiselman, a Jew. Ron Unz, a Jew, republishes my columns, as does Rob Kall, a Jew. Jews contribute to the support of my website. But according to Wikipedia I hate Jews.
There are many Jews who respect the truth and who fight for it. They are not in the Israeli government, but they exist. Zionist call them “self-hating Jews.” In other words, even Jews who criticize Israeli policies are labeled anti-semites. They are accused of criticizing Israel out of self-hate. The question many have is why alone among all countries of the world is Israel so determined to prevent any criticism of itself. Why only Israel?
Until recently—and who knows, perhaps again tomorrow—Wikipedia was calling me a “holocaust denier.” The “evidence” was a book review I wrote of two of David Irving’s books, neither of which was about the holocaust, but in one of the books Irving reported his findings that there were massacres and deportations of Jews. He concluded that there was a holocaust of sorts, but that he had been unable to find any evidence that there was the organized extermination portrayed in the official holocaust story. I quoted Irving’s conclusions, and Wikipedia misrepresented my quotation of Irving’s findings as my views.
A struggle ensued between the Israel Lobby and CIA trolls that inhabit Wikipedia and a number of my readers who would inform me that they had corrected the false attribution only to contact me 24 hours later with the news that the trolls had re-established the misrepresentation. At the moment the passage reads more or less correctly:
Review of David Irving’s books, Hitler’s War and Churchill’s War
In 2019, Roberts wrote in a review of David Irving’s books, Hitler’s War and Churchill’s War that “Irving, without any doubt the best historian of the European part of World War II, learned at his great expense that challenging myths does not go unpunished… I will avoid the story of how this came to be, but, yes, you guessed it, it was the Zionists”.[37] Roberts reported without endorsement Irving’s conclusion that “No German plans, or orders from Hitler, or from Himmler or anyone else have ever been found for an organized holocaust by gas and cremation of Jews… The “death camps” were in fact work camps. Auschwitz, for example, today a Holocaust museum, was the site of Germany’s essential artificial rubber factory. Germany was desperate for a work force.”
The question that remains in my mind is why, of all the many book reviews I have written, was a few lines from my report of Irving’s findings singled out for inclusion in my bio? Was the purpose to have a cover for misrepresenting the views of a historian, who has spent 40 years studying the subject, as my views, a person who has not spent 5 minutes studying the holocaust?
Attorneys thought that I might have a libel case against Wikipedia and offered to take a look. I was more interested in Wikipedia’s invasion of my privacy. I haven’t given permission to be included in their corpus of work that somehow they must market. The holocaust libel case bothered me, because it implied my consent to the idea that denying or challenging some aspect of the holocaust was disreputable and a reflection on a person’s character. But if those who challenge the official holocaust story are correct, what is disreputable about being a “holocaust denier?” As I haven’t studied the holocaust or the works of those who have, I thought a libel case committed me to a position that I had not examined. The issue is further complicated by free speech and free thought issues.
Looking at Wikipedia’s account of me I noticed other strange emphasis. For example, Wikipedia thinks it is important biographical information that Darrell Delamaide in USA Today, Luke Brinker of Salon, and Michael C. Moynihan of The Daily Beast have described “Roberts as a conspiracy theorist” and “as partaking in Putin worship.” By refusing to respond to Washington’s provocations in kind, Putin has reduced the risk of nuclear war. Why is acknowledging this fact “Putin worship?” Is this accusation anything more than the portrayal of people who do not help Washington demonize Russia as “Russian agents?”
I have never heard of Delalmaide, Brinker, or Moynihan. Has anyone? What are their achievements beyond serving as name-callers in behalf of controlled explanations? This ilk copies the way holocaust views were fabricated for me by misrepresenting my report on historians’ conclusions about the assassination of JFK as words based on my own investigations.
To prove my political incorrectness and lack of sympathy for gender equality, Wikipedia emphasizes that I “opposed gender integration aboard U.S. Navy vessels,” as did the US Navy. I am also guilty of not believing in “the existence of white male privilege.” Apparently, whoever wrote this was so intent on presenting me as politically incorrect that it did not occur to them why, if white males are privileged, they, unlike all others, are not protected by quotas and protections against hate speech and hate crimes. It was the white male senior engineer at Google who was fired for saying that men and women are good at different things. Some white male privilege when white males cannot express their view and cannot even state a correct fact.
There are other equally stupid passages in the Wikipedia account of me. But it is pointless to change them. The problem with an open source material like Wikipedia, as opposed to a professional peer-reviewed source, is that anyone can alter any account to serve any purpose other than accuracy and truth. Wikipedia by being open sourced enables falsification. I have concluded that it is best just to dismiss Wikipedia as an unreliable source. Otherwise it is an endless battle as there are more trolls than truth-tellers. In a world devoid of integrity, an open source encyclopedia is unable to provide reliable information.
Readers have a poor opinion of Wikipedia and Snopes. An example:
HAH! This reminds me of Quackwatch! I won’t even listen to anyone who says anything about health unless they are labelled a Quack by Quackwatch! Same with Wikipedia! If
Wikipedia likes you, I do not! They are SO not a reliable source. I DO like them for looking up cities, with info and demographics, but that is ALL I will really use Wikipedia for! YOU NEED TO CONSIDER IT A BADGE OF HONOR IF WIKI DOESN’T LIKE YOU!!!! Bet you’re not popular with Snopes either! OH! And as for a conspiracy theorist! You know that ANYONE who does not believe everything they say is one of those! Another badge of honor! For those of us who listen to you, you are a hero, right up there with Ron Paul! Thanks for all you do, and hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Love to you and your family! Elaine
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