CONTEXT
Slate writes about a topic that's been on my mind at least since 2006 or thereabouts. That was the time when old-fashioned conservative politics websites converted to aggressive, insulting slash and burn rhetoric, while inconvenient fact, true truth and sound reasoning faded away. That was the time I see the GOP as rapidly degenerating from old-fashioned conservative, pro-democracy politics to modern MAGA authoritarianism and kleptocracy. The issue is this: Polarized people on clashing sides of a political issue can rarely maintain rational, civil discourse. In the end, nothing but disagreement, bad feelings, broken democracy and a lot of false beliefs are left.
By Jan. 2009, MAGA elites began their final push to displace the old GOP establishment and replace it with MAGA extremism. Investigative journalist Jane Mayer wrote about the Jan. 2009 meeting of clashing elites in her 2017 book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. It was in that meeting that MAGA declared compromise with Democrats and Obama to be surrender. Compromise had to be replaced with "massive resistance and obstruction."
Project 2025’s Creators Want to Dox Wikipedia Editors.
The Tool They’re Using Is Horrifying.
The Heritage Foundation plans to “identify and target” Wikipedia editors it accuses of antisemitism
Last month, the Jewish-American news site Forward reported a shocking scoop: The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, is planning to “identify and target” Wikipedia editors. Through analyzing text patterns, usernames, and technical data and employing social-engineering tactics, Heritage aimed to reveal the identities of anonymous Wikipedia editors it believes are “abusing their position” on the platform.
In the culture of Wikipedia editing, it is common for individuals to use pseudonyms to protect their privacy and avoid personal threats. Revealing an editor’s personal information without their consent, a practice known as doxing, is a form of harassment that can result in a user’s being permanently banned from the site. Although this behavior is strictly prohibited by Wikipedia’s rules, Heritage has endorsed these scorched-earth tactics in response to what it perceives as antisemitism among certain editors covering the Israeli–Palestinian conflict on Wikipedia.
Let’s be clear: Wikipedia’s handling of this topic area is incredibly contentious. Many Wikipedians deliberately avoid pages like “Gaza War,” “Zionism,” and even the meta-entry on Wikipedia’s own coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. These pages are under extended confirmed protection, meaning that only experienced editors—those who have been on Wikipedia for at least 30 days and have made at least 500 edits—can make changes to them.
But even with these restrictions in place, tensions continue to run high. One side accuses the Tech for Palestine coalition of trying to hijack Wikipedia with Palestinian propaganda, while the other points out that Israel’s government seems to be mobilizing its own citizens to write about the conflict from their perspective. Although founder Jimmy Wales insists the Wikipedia community aims for neutrality, the editors don’t always succeed.The Heritage Foundation’s threats recall the methods used by pro–Chinese Communist Party editors in 2021, when a group called Wikimedians of Mainland China specifically targeted Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists. These Chinese nationalist editors were displeased with the way the Hong Kong editors were documenting the protests against Beijing’s rule. Rather than continuing the discussion on Wikipedia’s talk pages (places for editors to chat with one another and debate proposed changes), the pro-CCP editors resorted to doxing and reporting their opponents’ real-life identities to the state police, leading some Hong Kong editors to be physically harmed. It seems that both the CCP and Heritage believe that if you can’t win an argument in the digital space of Wikipedia, it’s fair game to destroy that person’s life offline.
In the documents obtained by Forward, Heritage employees announced plans to use advanced data sources and tools from companies like Moody’s and Thomson Reuters to unmask Wikipedia editors. These powerful applications provide a virtual fire hose of real-time information, including location and address history, cross-referencing usernames, and fingerprinting a user based on writing style.
Regardless of its effectiveness, Wikipedia’s latest decision aligns with its quasi-democratic principles. It reflects a commitment to online debate rather than the authoritarian tactics proposed by Heritage. But if the think tank succeeds in its effort to identify and target editors, the consequences could be profound. Faced with the risk of harassment or real-world retaliation, many volunteer editors—especially those covering politically sensitive topics—may simply stop contributing. Those who remain are likely to be the most ideologically driven voices, further eroding Wikipedia’s stated goal of neutrality.
The free encyclopedia will become too toxic to sustain.
Presumably, this kind of war can and will be engaged in with other disputed important topics.
