Right-Wing Outlets Attacked Wikipedia After Charlie Kirk's Shooting
slate.com"Right-wing outlets" have been criticizing Wikipedia off and on for probably most of Wikipedia's history, and the basis for this criticism is not hard to understand. Harrison (apparently "the author of The Editors, a novel inspired by Wikipedia.") comes across as not interested in examining the argument, only in uncharitably dismissing it.
Wikipedia's page on Charlie Kirk claims, and has claimed for years, that
> Kirk promotes the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, and has described universities as "islands of totalitarianism."
at the top of a section currently titled "Promotion of falsehoods and conspiracy theories". Since May 6 2021 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charlie_Kirk&diff...) there has been such a "Promotion of conspiracy theories" section, and even before that there was considerable edit warring over attempts to describe him as a "conspiracy theorist" in the first paragraph of the lede. (It doesn't appear to have this currently, but I have seen it like that since the assassination.)
The second part is a personal opinion, and unrelated to the first part. Two of the sources listed relate to the first part. One of these is from "Varsity Online", an "independent student newspaper for the University of Cambridge", which claims:
> Charlie Kirk, who was due to speak at the Union debate, has spoken out against what he sees as the proliferation of ‘cultural Marxism’ on campuses, and claimed in December that the gilet-jaunes protests in France were a “middle class rebellion against cultural Marxism”...
There is no attempt in this article to elaborate on what they think Kirk meant by this, nor to determine what he did mean by it. Which is presumably why they have the second source, which is an academic paper which attempts to define the term and brand it a conspiracy theory. The problem is, the paper doesn't mention Kirk. Using a term is not sufficient to establish that someone is pushing a related conspiracy theory; talking about, for example, the JFK assassination does not establish belief in any of the related conspiracy theories. Someone can easily hear a term like this and think it an accurate description, without having any idea about the conspiracy theory tied to it.
This sort of thing should be considered a blatant violation of WP:SYNTH and WP:BLP, and in my experience Wikipedia editors put immense effort into doing this sort of thing for prominent right-wingers while being considerably more, ahem, conservative in the description of left-wingers.
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We can see this even in the willingness to apply basic labels.
For example, Ta-Nehisi Coates "is an American author, journalist, and activist", who "wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy" but doesn't get called any kind of leftist or "progressive" for it. The page doesn't even use terms like "anti-racism". (They do at least have this all over the page for Ibram X. Kendi.) Noam Chomsky "is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism." He "has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media.", but this doesn't get him any labels in Wikipedia's own voice. Michael Moore "is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and author" and you have to scroll down the page to see any reference to any terms describing any kind of leftism.
On the other hand, Kirk as of now "was an American right-wing political activist, entrepreneur, and media personality." and he has variously been called more fringe things during the edit warring. Ben Shapiro "is an American conservative political commentator, media host, and attorney." Candace Owens' "political positions have mostly been described as far-right or conservative.", in the second sentence (good on them for not treating it as an objective matter this time). Steven Crowder "is an American-Canadian conservative political commentator and Internet personality."
For me at least, the search https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Awikipedia.org+%22is+an+Amer... pulls up mostly people, while the search https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Awikipedia.org+%22is+an+Amer... pulls up mostly websites and organizations. This is a clear form of bias (cf. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...) that results from looking at media through the lens of the current interpretation of WP:RS.
Not sure I understand the issue with the cultural Marxism stuff. Are you arguing that Kirk might have used the phrase in some novel non-conspiracy-theory sense?
> Are you arguing that Kirk might have used the phrase in some novel non-conspiracy-theory sense?
I'm saying it wouldn't even be novel.
Okay but that's still ambiguous. Is that because you yourself believe that there's an intentional academic effort to "subvert Western values" - as Wikipedia puts it - i.e. you believe it's not a conspiracy theory because it's true. Or is that because you think the term "cultural Marxism" has other meanings?
> Okay but that's still ambiguous.
I don't think the way I said it was ambiguous at all, but I will expand.
I do think the term has other meanings, such as the natural one that results from the common adjective + noun construction used to mean "not really the thing described by the noun, but something roughly analogous mediated by the adjective". (Some critics might snark that the adjective "social" is commonly used in this way.) In this case, something that is not Marxism, but which treats culture analogously to how Marxism treats class and economics. Which is to say: identifying oppressor and oppressed groups, asserting a need for revolution, having a particular notion of what equality (or "equity") looks like, adopting a strongly collectivist/anti-individualist attitude, etc.
It also could refer to the specific work of the Frankfurt school, with or without the belief that those ideas are inherently "subversive", with or without the allegation of "intentional academic effort" to spread those ideas.
(And it certainly doesn't depend on caring about the religion or ethnicity of the original academics. Just like any generic reference to "elites" isn't inherently anti-Semitic.)
I can understand that that's a possible (even literal) interpretation of the phrase cultural Marxism. However the Wikipedia page for cultural Marxism is heavily referenced and suggests a scholarly consensus that the term is used differently. Now, it could be that the scholarly consensus is wrong; but that's not the fault of Wikipedia. It could be that Wikipedia is cherry-picking or misrepresenting articles or scholarly sources; after an admittedly brief look, I don't think it's misrepresenting them, and after some searching I couldn't see very many scholarly articles with the opposing view. I did find some articles on websites with a right-wing slant which attack the Wikipedia entry, but that's to be expected even if the scholarly consensus were correct.
> “Jewish donors have a lot of explaining to do. A lot of decoupling to do,” he said. “Because Jewish donors have been the No. 1 funding mechanism of radical, open border neoliberal quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits. This is a beast created by secular Jews. And now it’s coming for Jews, and they’re like, ‘What on Earth happened?’ And it’s not just the colleges. It’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.”
> About two weeks later, Kirk again made a similar argument.
> “Jews have been some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas and supporters of those ideas over the last 30 or 40 years. Stop supporting causes that hate you,” he said on his podcast. “Until you cleanse that ideology from the hierarchy in the academic elite of the West, there will not be a safe future. I’m not going to say Israel won’t exist, but Israel will be in jeopardy as long as the Western children, children of the West, are being taught, with primarily Jewish dollars, subsidizing it, to view everything through oppressor/ oppressed dynamic. Until you shed that ideology, you will not be able to build the case for Israel, because they view Israel as an oppressor.”
https://www.factcheck.org/2025/09/viral-claims-about-charlie...
I leave others to decide whether they think that's anti-semitic or sounds like a conspiracy theory.
As a Jew and a Zionist I agree with him. It is a legitimate criticism of my tribe. I still love and support my people and Israel though, so it's hard to describe myself as antisemitic. I happen to think we have contributed more to civilization than we have deranged it.
It's OK to have complicated feelings about complicated questions.
Do you agree that criticising the actions of the Israeli government and military is the same as hating Jews? Because that seems to me to be what Kirk is saying there.
Criticising Israel does not amount to antisemitism. Spreading blood libel about Israel, such as the genocide lie, does.
Despite the consensus of the UN and the International Association of Genocide Scholars...?
UN employees participated in the 10/7 attack. You and I are not going to agree on their neutrality or authority.
Some members of a specific agency the UNRWA were investigated and fired for being "involved" (unknown if they participated). There's also the IAGS as well as rulings by the ICJ that Israel violated international law and arrest warrants from the ICC. Far-fetched to imagine that this is all some anti-Semitic conspiracy.
> unknown if they participated
There's clear public footage of Faisal Ali Musalam Naami (UNRWA employee) participating, at least. The Telegram chats also show widespread support for Oct 7 and other overt antisemitism - https://unwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/UN-Watch-UNRW...
You can UNRWA is just one small part of the UN, but so was the commission of inquiry behind the genocide accusation, which consisted of 3 individuals with some questionable backgrounds.
> arrest warrants from the ICC
Why would Israel hand anyone over to a court whose jurisdiction it never consented to?
I never suggested they would. Just that there's a strong expert consensus that Israel is violating international law.