Wikipedia Lies

Wikipedia has no article on the subject of apartheid.

Wikipedia has articles on such subjects as "Israeli apartheid," "global apartheid," and "gender apartheid." Apartheid itself, however, per Wikipedia's standards for "notability" and significance, is not important enough to be the subject of an independent article. Instead, the subject of apartheid is relegated to one of a series of superficial articles on the history of South Africa.

That article, "History of South Africa in the apartheid era," shows Wikipedia at its mealy-mouthed and pedantic worst. Most of the pertinent "history" is just a laundry list of South African statutes, some described with such benign neutrality as to suggest that the oppressive regime was actually motivated by benevolent motives and administered with stern evenhandedness. While the social consequences of South Africa's military interventions in Angola and Mozambique are set out in some detail, the consequences of apartheid itself are either ignored or swept away in the broadest and most general descriptions. (None of the article's linked references provide any substantial information on apartheid's consequences, although Wikipedia's peculiar scruples compel it to provide links to sites documenting the deficiencies of the post-apartheid government in dealing with those consequences.)

Wikipedia also, quite peculiarly, silences the voices of black South Africans in discussing this "era". Only whites, whether from South Africa or other nations, are quoted. White Afrikaner attitudes are presented at some length (sometimes without logic, as with Wikipedia's suggestion that the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s somehow motivated the development of the apartheid regime, whose essentials were in place in the late 1940s); worse, they are presented with extraordinary sympathy, as with the Wikipedia declaration that "Brutal police and military actions seemed entirely justifiable." Black attitudes are simply ignored; in one flagrant display, Wikipedia goes so far as to cite the de Klerk Foundation's dismissal of the influence of economic sanctions in forcing an end to apartheid, but ignores the contrary view held by, among many, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.

In marked contrast, Wikipedia does not shy away from citing Archbishop Tutu in its discussion of "Israeli apartheid." Tutu is credited with promoting the use of the term in articles he wrote after visiting Israel. Wikipedia, which touts its strict "verifiability" standards, has included this claim in various articles for several years. But a genuinely careful and honest reader could scour the archbishop's cited text in vain for examples of that controversial phrase. Instead, while Tutu strongly criticized aspects of Israel's occupation policy in a 2002 address, he never used the inflammatory phrase Wikipedia falsely places in his mouth. An early version of the phrase was attached to an edited reprint of Tutu's speech by a partisan, unreliable British newspaper; the exact phrase was used only in a magazine headline over a piece coauthored by Tutu (not used in the actual text credited in part to him). The address usually (but falsely) cited as proof of Tutu's use of the phrase was actually published as "Israel, the unjust stewards"; Tutu's preferred title (as he said in the address itself) was "Give Peace a Chance, for Peace is Possible". The words Tutu actually spoke criticize both sides; he reserves his strongest criticisms for Israel for explicitly theological, not political reasons: Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: What is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless?

Why does Wikipedia so casually trivialize the consequences of apartheid? Why does Wikipedia so completely silence the voices of black South Africans? Why does Wikipedia credit words he never spoke to Desmond Tutu, erasing his clear and often-repeated statements that "in our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were the Jews"?

Wikipedians are racially insensitive. Wikipedia is a haven for both the traditional antisemitism of the right and its modern complement on the left. Wikipedia values its false and superficial "civility" more than accuracy and simple decency. Carrying out these peculiar ideas,

Wikipedia lies.