Intelligence agencies have a long history of using propaganda as a tool of war, and the effectiveness of information warfare radically improved with the emergence of the internet, to say nothing of artificial intelligence and social media.

If you’re over 50, you can probably remember a time when your family had a row of encyclopedias on the bookshelf — usually obtained at considerable cost — which were perused whenever you needed to learn more about a particular topic.

Today, you can’t even give a complete set of encyclopedias away because, well, we have Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia has also become a favored propaganda tool, so to call it unreliable would be an understatement.

According to Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger — who left Wikipedia in 2002, the year after its inception — U.S. intelligence has been manipulating the online encyclopedia since at least 2008, if not longer. Sanger recently sat down to speak with independent journalist Glenn Greenwald (video above) about the subversion of the site he helped create.¹

The Blatant Bias of Wikipedia

Sanger says he noticed a bias creeping in around 2006, particularly in areas of science and medicine. Around 2010, he started noticing that articles about Eastern Medicine were being changed to reflect blatantly biased positions, using “dismissive epithets” to paint this ancient tradition as quackery.

In 2012, evidence also emerged revealing a Wikipedia trustee and “Wikipedian in Residence” were being paid to edit pages on behalf of their clients and secure their placement on Wikipedia’s front page in the “Did You Know” section,² which publicizes new or expanded articles³ — a clear violation of Wikipedia rules.

“It really got over the top … between 2013 and 2018,” Sanger says, “and by by at the time Trump became president, it was almost as bad as it is now. It’s amazing, you know, no encyclopedia, to my knowledge, has ever been as biased as Wikipedia has been …

I remember being mad about Encyclopedia Britannica and The World Book not mentioning my favorite topics, [and] presenting only certain points of view in a way that establishment sources generally do. But this is something else. This is entirely different. It’s over the top.”

Greenwald agrees, highlighting some recent examples of the “over the top” kind of establishment bias, such as Wikipedia simply declaring that the Ukraine-Biden scandal is a conspiracy theory designed to undermine Biden:

“The very first sentence reads: ‘The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was Vice President of the United States, engaged in corrupt activities relating to his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma.’

‘As part of efforts by Donald Trump and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump’s first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden’s reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign,’ the Wikipedia entry still reads.

So, notice: The Biden-Ukraine scandal is — according to Wikipedia — the ‘Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory’ but the Trump controversy involving Ukraine is ‘the Trump–Ukraine scandal’. Everything is written to comport with the liberal world view and the Democratic Party talking points.”

Wikipedia’s treatment of all things COVID-related is equally skewed. It presents only the establishment’s “truth” across the board, no matter how much evidence there is to refute it.

‘Truth’ Has Been Married to Ideology

“Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia devoted to truth,” Greenwald says. The problem is that “The premise seems to be that you don’t have truth anymore independent of ideological outlook.”

We know that a great part of intelligence and information warfare is conducted online, and where, if not on websites like Wikipedia? ~ Larry Sanger

Indeed, Sanger points out that Wikipedia’s official policy even declares that 80% of Right-wing media is unreliable, and “that really, really colors the articles and what the editors allow the articles to say,” he says. Just how did we get to a point where “truth” is tied to a particular ideology? Common sense tells you it simply cannot be so.

Intel Agencies Control Wikipedia

One explanation for why this ideological bias has taken over Wikipedia is that it’s intentionally being used as a propaganda tool by intelligence agencies and the globalist establishment that is seeking to implement a new global governance, a New World Order/One World Government.

To succeed in that Herculean effort, they can’t allow a multitude of dissenting viewpoints to proliferate, and intelligence agencies are working together to disseminate and uphold the Deep State’s narratives worldwide. Sanger puts it this way:

“I think that the Left … very, very deliberately seeks out to take control. Except it isn’t just the Left. We’re learning that now, aren’t we? No, it’s the establishment, and they have their own agenda.

I’m not going to try to offer any opinions — because it’s not something that I study — as to how they bring that about. But it’s clear that between 2005 and 2015 … Wikipedia moved onto the establishment’s radar, and we … have evidence that … even as early as … 2008 … CIA and FBI computers were used to edit Wikipedia. Think they stopped doing that? No.

And not just them. We know that a great part of intelligence and information warfare is conducted online, and where, if not on websites like Wikipedia?

They pay off the most influential people to push their agendas, which they’re already mostly in line with, or they just develop their own talent within the [intelligence] community. [They] learn the Wikipedia game and then push what they want to say with their own people. So, that’s my take on that.”

Google and Social Media Are Controlled Too

As noted by Greenwald, Google has played a significant role in Wikipedia’s growth and success by algorithmically placing Wikipedia answers at the top of most searches, and, of course — while they don’t discuss this in the interview — Google also has deep and longstanding ties to the military-intelligence-industrial complex and the globalist Deep State.

The same can be said for social media companies like Twitter and Facebook. As reported by Jimmy Dore in the video above, in early 2023, Elon Musk released documents showing Twitter’s former executives censored content at the request of the FBI and assisted the U.S. military’s online propaganda campaigns.

Twitter also censored anti-Ukraine narratives on behalf of several U.S. intelligence agencies. Similarly, Facebook censored accurate information that was damaging to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign at the direct request of the FBI. There’s simply no doubt that intelligence agencies are directly involved in controlling and directing public information flow, and Wikipedia is invaluable in that respect.

Anonymous Writers Have No Credibility

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t stress a key feature of Wikipedia that makes it unreliable, no matter what, and that is the fact that contributing authors and editors are all anonymous.

Clearly, the credibility of an author, regardless of the media format, is of importance when trying to determine the veracity of a given topic, keeping in mind that even experts in the same field will often reach different (and perhaps opposing) conclusions.

Not every expert will have read and evaluated the exact same evidence, for example, leading to differences in interpretation of data. This is normal and unlikely to change, as it is human nature to draw conclusions based on our own breadth of experience and knowledge.

It’s then up to the reader to make up their mind about which of the two or more experts they believe is most correct — a choice that in turn is dependent on the reader’s own prejudices and knowledge base. That said, it should be obvious that no one individual, or even group of individuals, can be the final arbiter of which expert opinion is “the truth.”

However, that’s exactly the position that Wikipedia has inserted itself into. They now decide who they think is right and which position is the correct one, and they simply censor opposing views.

Google Must Have Known They Were Promoting Unreliable Info

Considering that one of the primary factors that come into play when determining the credibility of an author is his or her credentials, affiliations and previous writings,⁴ how is it that Google promotes Wikipedia as an authority for every possible type of information by listing them at the top of its search results?

And how can Google use Wikipedia as a primary tool for its quality raters to establish credibility of other online material?^5,6 It doesn’t make sense, unless you realize that neither Google nor Wikipedia are about giving people accurate and unbiased information. Their function is to facilitate the programming of people with a certain set of narratives and viewpoints.

As early as 2011, the fact that Wikipedia editors were being paid by corporations to remove and suppress unwanted information was well known and had been declared scandalous.⁷ Yet nothing changed. At least not for the better.

A 2014 paper⁸ titled, “Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia” by Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu, compared 4,000 articles that appear in both encyclopedias and found 73% of Wikipedia’s articles contained political buzz words, compared to 34% in Britannica, and in nearly all cases, Wikipedia was more left-leaning than the Britannica.

Wikipedia Used to Smear and Defame Truthtellers

A key take-home from all this is that Wikipedia is not a reliable source. It’s a propaganda tool, and relying on it will frequently leave you wearing the dunce hat. Articles on science and medicine are definitely corrupted and biased in favor of establishment views and should never be used to make medical decisions.

According to a 2014 study,^9,10 which assessed the veracity of medical claims made on Wikipedia by cross-checking them with the latest peer-reviewed research, reported finding “many errors” in articles concerning the 10 costliest medical conditions. In fact, 9 out of 10 entries — 90%! — contained assertions that were contradicted by published research.

“Health care professionals, trainees, and patients should use caution when using Wikipedia to answer questions regarding patient care,” the authors warned.

That said, articles about historical events, current geopolitical issues and the biographies of public figures are not much better. Greenwald himself has seen his personal page transform from a neutral listing of his work history and accomplishments to an “ideological war” description that paints him in a bad light.

Many excellent scientists and doctors who veered from the establishment narrative on COVID have also been shamefully smeared and defamed by Wikipedia, and anyone who tries to clarify or clear up inaccuracies on the site is simply blocked.

Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, for example, has repeatedly tried to “correct provably false facts” about her background on Wikipedia, only to be told she’s “not a reliable source” and having her edits overridden by anonymous editors that guard her page, making sure her award-winning work is kept hushed and her character portrait tarnished.¹¹ Other examples of “sanitizing” certain pages and tarnishing others can be found in a June 28, 2015, article¹² in The Epoch Times.

Ditch Wikipedia and Use Other Online Encyclopedias

If you’re interested in learning more about Wikipedia, its history and inner workings, pick up a copy of Andrew Lih’s book, “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia.”¹³ In it, Lih asks, “If Wikipedia is a minefield of inaccuracies, should one even be tiptoeing through this information garden?” It’s a fair question, for sure.

Similarly, in a 2005 blog post critiquing Wikipedia, Nicholas Carr, author of “What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” noted:¹⁴

“[A]n encyclopedia can’t just have a small percentage of good entries and be considered a success. I would argue, in fact, that the overall quality of an encyclopedia is best judged by its weakest entries rather than its best. What’s the worth of an unreliable reference work?”

The good news is there are dozens of other online encyclopedias, many of which do not suffer from this entrenched ideological bias. Two great resources are encyclosearch.org and encycloreader.org, which allow you to search for answers across dozens of encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, at once. This way, you can compare a multitude of sources.

Examples of more specialized encyclopedias include Ballotpedia (an explicitly neutral encyclopedia of American politics), Scholarpedia, EduTechWiki, MedlinePlus (a medical encyclopedia), Encyclopedia Mythica (religion, folklore and mythology) and HandWiki (computing, science, technology and general).

Sanger is involved in the creation of encyclosearch.org, which he describes as an effort to “strike a blow against censorship and control of information by simply making it easier to find the all the other encyclopedias that are out there.”

Truth be told, Wikipedia is dependent on your lack of knowledge about how they really operate. Taking advantage of your desire for quick information, their goal is to shuttle your thoughts, opinions and knowledge into a silo that doesn’t allow anything in except what they put in there. And what they’re putting on their site is some of the most biased information you’ll find anywhere in media today.

• ¹ ZeroHedge August 3, 2023
• ² Wikipedia Main Page
• ³ CNET.com September 18, 2012
• ⁴ Hofstra University’s library Q&A Q: How can I determine if an author is credible? Answered by Georgina Martorella
• ⁵ The SEM Post.com May 17, 2019
• ⁶ Telapost 2019 Google Quality Rater Guidelines
• ⁷ Royal Dutch Shell PLC December 18, 2011
• ⁸ Working Knowledge, Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia November 7, 2014
• ⁹ Journal of the American Osteopathic Association 2014 May;114(5):368-73
• ¹⁰ Journal of the American Osteopathic Association 2014 May;114(5):368-73 (Archived copy)
• ¹¹ Sharylattkisson.com May 25, 2019
• ¹² The Epoch Times June 28, 2015
• ¹³ Amazon.com The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia by Andrew Lih
• ¹⁴ Roughtype.com Nicholas Carr blog

Article cross-posted from Dr. Mercola’s site.

This is why his prediction in October, 2020, ahead of the elections and after the clear media and Deep State takedown of the Hunter Biden laptop story, is so pertinent today.

If Biden wins, that’s going to be the power structure: a Democratic Party fully united with neocons, Bush/Cheney operatives, CIA/FBI/NSA, Wall St & Silicon Valley: presenting itself as the only protection against fascism. And much of the left will continue marching behind it.

If Biden wins, that's going to be the power structure: a Democratic Party fully united with neocons, Bush/Cheney operatives, CIA/FBI/NSA, Wall St & Silicon Valley: presenting itself as the only protection against fascism. And much of the left will continue marching behind it.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 23, 2020

Nailed it. Unfortunately.

The only thing Greenwald missed in his prediction is that “much of the left will continue marching behind it.” It’s not “much.” The vast majority of leftists are in lockstep with the rising tyranny emanating from Washington DC today.

With that said, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a charlatan. He’s a narcissist and a puppet of the World Economic Forum. He has had multiple opportunities to do what’s right for his people, but doing so would not achieve the goals of the Liberal World Order that controls him. And our own government, including people from both sides of the political aisle, are propping him up as the “Hero of Democracy.”

They’re not alone. Most other governments are doing the same thing. The totality of corporate media and Big Tech are playing their parts in the con job perfectly. As a result, millions of Americans support the war-prolonging aid being sent to Ukraine and the leader who is driving his nation into a full-blown humanitarian crisis.

Some will retort, “Zelensky didn’t invade Russia.” No, he didn’t. But he could have easily prevented the invasion by simply telling the truth. He was told long before the invasion that NATO would not allow Ukraine to join them, but he was also told not to reveal that their membership in the alliance was off the table.

As he told CNN:

“I requested them personally to say directly that we are going to accept you into NATO in a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no,” Zelensky said. “And the response was very clear, you’re not going to be a NATO member, but publicly, the doors will remain open,” he said.  {CITATION)

The irony is he was making the case that if he had been allowed to join NATO, then Russia wouldn’t have invaded. The opposite is true as well. If he had announced that he had been rejected by NATO and would no longer pursue membership, Russia would have had one less reason to invade.

Are the American people finally seeing through the lies of the Democrats and NeoCons? Are more starting to recognize that this is a long con to prop up Zelensky and bilk the American people out of their tax dollars at a time when our own economy is failing? Are they happy that the Zelenskys are too busy with Vogue photoshoot to help their own struggling people?

Why did we send $54 billion to Ukraine, so Zelensky & his wife could pose for Vogue?

You’re at war & you’ve got time for photo shoots? pic.twitter.com/XV5rz0meME

— ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) July 27, 2022

It’s a good question.

JD Heyes from Natural News highlighted the blacklist against Zelensky opponents in the media and politics. Noteworthy names on the list include Rand Paul, Tulsi Gabbard, and Glenn Greenwald who wrote about the list on Twitter:

Investigative Journalist Glenn Greenwald Reveals Truth About Ukraine’s Zelenskyy in Brutal Twitter Thread

There isn’t much that gets past investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, an originalist truth-teller who doesn’t allow his personal liberal political and cultural views to stand in the way of accuracy and honesty.

And he showed that quality again in a recently posted Twitter thread that dropped some brutal truths about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the leader the West has fawned over, showered weapons and money on, and the country where Hunter and Joe Biden managed to make a fortune, according to reports.

“Before Russia’s invasion and since, Zelensky has abolished basic liberties: shuttered opposition media, outlawed parties, imprisoned dissidents. As Ukraine demands money and arms from the West, they now want to export this repression to our countries with McCarthyite blacklists,” Greenwald began, noting that he, along with other figures including former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), have been banned from the country.

Before Russia's invasion and since, Zelensky has abolished basic liberties: shuttered opposition media, outlawed parties, imprisoned dissidents.

As Ukraine demands money and arms from the West, they now want to export this repression to our countries with McCarthyite blacklists: https://t.co/O2t03YHrMy

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 25, 2022

“You can see the full Ukrainian blacklist, obtained by @unherd. Beyond the individuals listed above, officially maligned are @JeffDSachs, @RandPaul, former Brazil President @LulaOficial, Col. Douglas MacGregor, Caleb Maupin, Marine LePen and many others,” he continued — the theme being that most of them are critics of Kyiv.

You can see the full Ukrainian blacklist, obtained by @unherd. Beyond the individuals listed above, officially maligned are @JeffDSachs, @RandPaul, former Brazil President @LulaOficial, Col. Douglas MacGregor, Caleb Maupin, Marine LePen and many others:https://t.co/tCEYDdc4TY pic.twitter.com/lDdKfhpoTS

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 25, 2022

“It takes extreme audacity for Zelansky and his henchmen to go around the world demanding other nations send massive amounts of weapons and money to him, then try to suppress dissent in our countries by smearing journalists and citizens who question,” Greenwald continued in a tweet containing a screenshot of his full statement to alternative media outlet Unherd.

It takes extreme audacity for Zelansky and his henchmen to go around the world demanding other nations send massive amounts of weapons and money to him, then try to suppress dissent in our countries by smearing journalists and citizens who question. My full statement to @unherd: pic.twitter.com/EY9CfbA8lJ

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 25, 2022

Greenwald went on to explain that he and the others ‘blacklisted’ by Ukraine were being classified by Zelenskyy’s government as “Russian propagandists” — a familiar smear of anyone who dares to point out the obvious: Before the war, Ukraine wasn’t the bastion of fairness, equality and democracy it is now being made out to be by Western globalists whose job it is to ‘pick a side’ in such conflicts.

For her part, Gabbard — who has been critical of the United States’ and NATO’s rank picking of sides in this war — says that she sees parallels between Russian authoritarianism and a growing authoritarianism on the American left.

“Tulsi, it is striking when you see Putin propaganda and you line it up against Biden propaganda,” Fox News host Jesse Watters said as he interviewed her in March. “Do you think that we’re at risk of kind of moving in that direction right now?”

Agreeing that under the left and Joe Biden the U.S. is definitely “moving in that direction,” she went on to claim, correctly (unlike the Poynter Institute ‘fact check’ claimed), that U.S. leaders and media are “afraid of even a single voice coming out as challenging the power elite.”

“This is why we’re seeing not only still most of the mainstream media very vigorously defending and pushing the Biden propaganda … It’s not enough that they also have Google and Big Tech basically working for them and with them to control what information we see and what information we don’t see,” she said.

“This is what’s so dangerous about the place that we’re in right now as a country, where this idea, this principle, this foundation of freedom of speech, freedom of expression is directly under threat and under attack. And you’re right, it’s not so different. What’s happening here is not so different from what we’re seeing happening in Russia, where you’ve got state TV and controlled messaging across the board. This is where we’re at,” she added.

Read more news about Ukraine at UkraineWitness.com.

Sources include:

• Poynter.org
• ThreadReaderApp.com
• NATURAL NEWS