How Wikipedia Became a Propaganda Site

When it was founded in 2001, Wikipedia had an idealistic mission: to provide all the world’s information for free—gathered, updated, and fact-checked democratically by the people. But in recent years, as our politics have become increasingly angry and divided, so too have the key editors of Wikipedia who engage openly in battles over “the truth.” In this investigation, which was originally published by Pirate Wires, Ashley Rindsberg looks at how Wikipedia became a propaganda project, where a handful of editors are reshaping history before our eyes.

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As the wave of relief washed through the Democratic Party in July following Biden’s decision to step aside, both Democrats and Republicans instantly understood that one of Harris’s biggest weaknesses was also among the most critical issues of the race—illegal immigration at the southern border. 

Republicans were quick to point out Harris had been appointed border czar by Biden and the failure was hers to own. Democrats denied Harris had ever been appointed “czar,” calling the claim a GOP talking point.

Voters who googled the question would likely have encountered a Wikipedia article listing presidential czars—as valuable a resource as any. Visitors who accessed the “List of executive branch czars” article on July 24 would have been informed that Kamala Harris had, indeed, served as border czar. But those who came to the page a day later, specifically after 4:02 p.m. Eastern Time, would have found no mention of Harris at all.

Within minutes of Harris’s removal, the article’s Talk page erupted into an edit war with numerous editors pointing out that Harris’s name had only been added to the article the day before it had been removed from it, suggesting it had been added for political purposes. The resolution to this quandary hinged on a seemingly simple, even binary question: Was Harris border czar or not?

In cases of factual disagreement like this one, Wikipedia defaults to its core operating principles—including Wikipedia:No original research, which prohibits the inclusion of claims or assertions “for which no reliable, published source exists,” and Wikipedia:Verifiability, which ensures that “information comes from a reliable source.”

In this case, there was a dilemma. The media, in the wake of Harris’s overnight nomination, denied Harris had ever been border czar. “[T]he Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the ‘border czar’ title—which she never actually had,” wrote Stef W. Kight in Axios on July 24. Yet a month after Biden had made a speech tasking Harris with overseeing aspects of the border crisis, Axios reported, “Harris, appointed by Biden as border czar, said she would be looking at the ‘root causes’ that drive migration.” (In March 2021, Kight herself reported that Biden had put Harris “in charge of addressing the migrant surge at the U.S.-Mexico border.”) The BBC made a similar claim the day of Biden’s speech. (“Announcing Ms. Harris’s appointment as his immigration czar, Mr. Biden told reporters. . . ” the article read.) Other reports from that time, including one from CNN, noted that Republicans had attempted to pin the term czar onto Harris’s role for political reasons, prompting the White House to push back years before Harris’s candidacy.

The debate on the article’s Talk page became heated. “Wikipedia’s editors once again showing utter contempt of history itself and an embrace of Orwellianism,” one editor wrote.

“This is just a case of contemporary politics being played with [Wikipedia] content, as ‘the border’ is the #1, 2, and 3 issue of the Trumpists. Get the banhammer ready,” said another editor.

Impassioned as it was, the Harris “czar” flap was just one skirmish amid the ceaseless battles over Wikipedia articles with even remotely political resonance.

Wikipedia articles present their subject matter with a casually authoritative, almost stolid tone. But beneath the surface lies endless argumentation played out in rounds of procedural maneuvering that would shame the most deft legislative hand. User bans, discretionary sanctions, requests for comment, arbitration cases, topic bans, page bans, deprecated sources—all encoded in a shorthand jargon—lie behind the “consensus” displayed in an article’s seemingly ripple-free surface. In a way, this arcana of behind-the-scenes conceptual machinery is Wikipedia’s most impressive feature. It’s what keeps it from grinding to a halt on infighting and intransigence.

The problem is—like with the Harris border czar reference, which is still omitted from the czar article (and will almost certainly stay that way)—the consensus it achieves often lines up with the prerogatives of the Democratic Party and the media establishment that supports it.