Metapedia

Metapedia is a Wikipedia spin-off project, established circa 2005-2006, that promotes an anti-American (Euro-centric), racist, and anti-Semitic view of politics, culture, the arts and sciences. Available in English and now in ten additional languages, Metapedia also maintains links to WikiSlavia, in Russian and Siberian. The site labels the Holocaust as "the holohoax" and denigrates both the character and intelligence of Jews, black people and other non-European peoples. The site falsely accuses Conservapedia of promoting a "neoconservative" worldview and ironically claims it is "rife with Marxist phraseology".^[1]

Conservapedia condemns evolutionary racism, which Metapedia explicitly supports.

History[edit]

The archives of Metapedia indicate that its history begins on August 9, 2006, with the first talks on the development of the Swedish-language version. This version launched on October 26, 2006, and grew fairly quickly. They then expanded to a Danish version, and then into German and English (May 15, 2007), French (May 29, 2007), Portuguese, and Czech.

On July 27, 2007, Metapedia began linking to WikiSlavia, while continuing its own expansion into various other languages of Western and Eastern Europe (Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, Spanish).

As of October 2014, the English language Metapedia site has about 20,200 articles.

Copyright issues[edit]

Metapedia sets forth no reliable copyright policy. Editors are allowed to copy and slightly modify material from Wikipedia. Articles edited in this way are then released under the GNU Free Documentation License as is required.

Administrative policy[edit]

Metapedia does not permit anonymous editing. Anyone wishing to edit Metapedia content must first establish an account. However, anyone may establish an account with no more effort than Wikipedia currently requires. Metapedia states that the use of an "open proxy" is forbidden.

Agenda[edit]

Their mission statement says that they are "pro-European" in character. But the most detailed clues to their agenda come from the content of their articles. A strong bias against anything "non-European" pervades their commentary on virtually every subject that they treat.

"Pro-European" in this context does not mean "anti-American" in the sense that many current European leaders choose to describe themselves and behave. Rather it means in favor of the original races that settled the region. Thus the editors and administrators of Metapedia stand against the interests of any other races, and against movements that, in their view, seek to lay the groundwork for discrimination against themselves.

Critical analysis[edit]

The English-language version of Metapedia currently has slightly more than 20,000 articles. A random sample includes a rather superficial treatment of some subjects, and a more detailed treatment of others, but in some cases with highly dubious historical accuracy.

• Metapedia often protests vigorously against certain modern turns-of-phrase. They assert, for example, that the phrase "Native American" first applied to White Anglo-Saxon Protestants and not to American Indians. While Conservapedia treats the phrase "Native American" as simply a phrase requiring disambiguation, Metapedia treats the phrase and its current usage as an example of deliberate linguistic revisionism. They trace the first usage of the phrase to 1845 and the Native American Party. Oddly enough, their source is not someone who would be sympathetic to their aims at all, but rather an author seeking to encourage her readers to treat all peoples with the respect due fellow human beings.^[2]

• Their treatment of world religions is often dangerously superficial. Their article on Judaism is very short. But then they link to a much longer article titled "Jewish ritual murder", which discusses at length the infamous blood libel against the Jews, as if those lurid tales were, or at least might be, actual "fact".

• Adolf Hitler is, if anything, a German national hero, according to Metapedia. Another odd fact about Metapedia's article is that they claim that part of it consists of modified text from Wikipedia. A word-for-word comparison suggests that a Metapedia editor or editors might indeed have copied Wikipedia's original article and then modified it to create a text far more sympathetic to Hitler than was the original text.

• As at least one of their detractors (see below) has alleged, Metapedia explicitly denies that the Holocaust ever occurred. They also head their article with this disclaimer:

“

Make sure that you won't be prosecuted in your country for what you write, before editing this page.

”

They then carry a link to an article titled "Revisionism laws information" that carries a few sparsely documented or undocumented examples of "persecution" of those who sincerely refuse to believe that Hitler's mass-execution policy was real or ever bore any fruit. (Editor's note: the Holocaust is amply documented and documentable by personal interviews by surviving witnesses and, in at least one memorable case, a former inmate.)

• Their article about Conservapedia dismisses this project contemptuously as "just another attempt to suppress the real Biblical (sic) truth about the differences between the races." In this context, one should note that their treatment of the Bible is even more superficial than is their treatment of Judaism. Therefore their assertion of "biblical truth" is an assertion without evidence, for which they lay no foundation. In fact, the Bible says that all the races of man descend from Noah through his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The Bible gives absolutely no warrant for ethnic discrimination, and certainly none for discrimination against Jews.

Reaction[edit]

Conservapedia has not been blocked on Metapedia.

Metapedia itself cites at least three items from news organs and blogs, all of which castigate Metapedia as "the encyclopedia for racists, by racists."^[3][4][5] While many of the criticisms of this article betray a superficial understanding of Metapedia, other statements from these sources have provided valuable leads for the investigation and critical analysis given here.

Gallery[edit]

Below please find actual screenshots from Metapedia illustrating the articles mentioned above. These screenshots have been subject to only two alterations:

1. They have been saved in the Joint Photography Expert Group format that MediaWiki can handle most easily of all.
2. They have had private IP information scrubbed from them in order to prevent identity theft, harassment, or defamation of the investigating editor.

• 

  Main Page

• 

  Main Page showing language links

• 

  Development history, late

• 

  Development history, early

• 

  Copyright information, which is lacking

• 

  Login and create-account screen

• 

  Mission statement

• 

  Native American article

• 

  Judaism article

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  Jewish ritual murders article

• 

  Hitler article

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  Holocaust article

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  Revisionism laws information

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  Conservapedia article

• 

  Bible article

References[edit]

• Note that Conservapedia forbids linking to hate groups.