Metapedia

Not to be confused with meta.wikimedia.org or Matapédia (disambiguation).

Metapedia

Metapedia logo
Web address	English main page
Slogan	The alternative encyclopedia
Commercial?	No
Type of site	Internet encyclopedia
Registration	Optional (required only for editing)
Available in	Hungarian, German, English, Spanish, Swedish, Romanian, Estonian, French, Slovak, Czech, Portuguese, Norwegian, Croatian, Danish, Greek, Dutch
Content license	GNU Free Documentation License 1.3
Owner	NFSE Media AB, Linköping, Sweden
Launched	October 26, 2006 (2006-10-26)
Alexa rank	35,093 (October 2016)
Current status	Active

Metapedia is an electronic encyclopedia which describes itself as focusing on European culture, art, science, philosophy and politics. The site contains generally right-wing and sometimes far-right social and political viewpoints, and it makes room for a wide variety of articles on white nationalist and white separatist topics. The controversial content of the site has led to left-wing and especially far-left critics condemning it for including articles which they consider to be white supremacist, racist, antisemitic, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-feminist, Holocaust denying, and neo-Nazi propaganda, though the site has dismissed most of these claims as ad hominem smears, defamations, libels, name calling, and guilt by association labels. It was officially launched on October 26, 2006 with the Swedish-language edition. The English section was launched on April 28, 2007. The Hungarian version has the most articles: 144,189 as of September 27, 2013.

In the mid-2010s, Metapedia entered a degree of internal conflict, and, by the end of the decade, appeared to be no longer accepting new contributors. Email requests from would-be editors to join the encyclopedia project received no response. In the early 2020s, the site began reinstating some of its previous administrators who had been banned from the site.

History

The Swedish Metapedia was founded in 2006 by Anders Lagerström (born October 14, 1977), a white nationalist publisher from Linköping, Sweden.

Anders Lagerström has long been involved in extreme right-wing organizations. In 2000, he was sentenced for having sprayed tear gas in the face of a police officer. In 2002 he started the Nordic publishing house, which specializes in issuing and selling Nazi literature and white power music. Lagerström is also a prominent figure in the Nordic Association. The Nazi organization wants it to form a 'Nordic nation'. On the organization's website it says the following about how this imaginary nation should look like: 'It means a society populated by a people and a government and the media are completely under Nordic control.'

Metapedia does not mention Lagerström's connections to the Swedish white power movement on any of its sites, instead stating it is an "alternative encyclopedia ... which focuses on culture, art, science, philosophy and politics".

Swedish historian Rasmus Fleischer wrote that "In 2007, another network began to crystallize within Europe's radical right but with a vastly different ideological character. Activists from the Swedish group Nordiska Förbundet made a coordinated effort to use the internet to propagate a more 'positive' image of neo fascist, third position and national revolutionary politics. They created a blog portal (Motpol.nu), a web community (Nordisk.nu) and a wiki site (Metapedia). Today there exist a dozen editions of Metapedia. making it a vital medium for dissemination of the ideology labeled here as "multi-fascism". Metapedia tends to promote antisemitism in a cautious way, not stating too much in words but instead using the hyperlinked wiki format to make insinuations about a Jewish conspiracy. The site promotes factual topics in regards to mass killings under Communist regimes, as well as mass killings during both World Wars.

In the late 2010s, Metapedia, which had used the pre-2010 Wikipedia template as its template (much like Encyclopedia Dramatica still does), was redesigned and now uses the present (since 2014) Wikipedia template.

A breakaway from Metapedia, named Rightpedia, was later launched by some users who were banned from the site. The site has since ceased operations.

Content

The site's mission statement states one of its goals is "to present a more balanced and fair image of the pro-European struggle for the general public as well as for academics, who until now have been dependent on strongly biased and hostile 'researchers' like Searchlight, Anti-Defamation League, Southern Poverty Law Center, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, and such." The Metapedia logo features the head of a sculpture ("Youth") by the German artist Arno Breker, whose works were endorsed by the Nazi authorities as the antithesis of degenerate art.

The site has more than 20,000 articles in English, many of which are ported directly from Wikipedia and are listed as "Articles in need of neutralization" where the website then attempts to balance, correct, or remove anti-white material to present the subjects in a more pro-white light. Topics covered include European history, Norse mythology, and white nationalist music. The Register claims that "a good percentage of Metapedia's content seems to be dedicated to Woden, the White Order of Thule, runes, and other subject matter which would undoubtedly have found favour with Aryan hocus-pocus aficionado Heinrich Himmler." Crítica de la Argentina says it has glowing descriptions of Adolf Hitler and other Nazi figures. Daniel Goldhagen describes it as seeking "to create (currently in 18 languages) an anti-Semitic informational universe."

According to the North Rhine-Westphalian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Metapedia's articles are characterized by what they describe as Historical negationism and lauding Nazi Germany. For this reason, the German Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien) started a politically oriented indexing process, which would consider as to whether Metapedia is "harmful to young people".

In early 2007, within half a year of the launching of the original Swedish version, Metapedia received much Swedish media attention for its similarity to Wikipedia and some of its contents, in particular for its positive characterization of many German National Socialist personalities, for cataloguing Jews in Swedish media, and for characterizing Swedish companies as either "Swedish-owned" or "Jewish-owned". This led to an investigation by the Chancellor of Justice (Justitiekanslern) to decide whether the site should be prosecuted for inciting hatred or for violating the Swedish Privacy Law (Personuppgiftslagen). After reviewing the site's contents, the Chancellor of Justice decided to terminate investigations, since nothing had been found that violated the Freedom of Speech Act (Yttrandefrihetsgrundlagen) or the Privacy Law. In January 2009, in a response to further attention given to the site, the Swedish Chancellor of Justice opined that Metapedia presented a positive image of Adolf Hitler, but decided not to restart an investigation since this was not illegal.

Operation

The operation of Metapedia depends on MediaWiki, a free and open-source wiki software platform written in PHP and built upon the MySQL database. Metapedia is headed by Lagerström and Lennart Berg, who also runs the supporting NFSE Media AB.

See also

• Alt-right
• Gab (social network)
• Conservapedia
• Infogalactic
• White nationalism
• New Right
• Pro white
• Human biodiversity debate
• Neo-Nazism in Sweden
• WikiSpooks - A wiki that shares similar views to Metapedia in regards to some more controversial topics.

External links

• English Metapedia