Elon Musk, speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a live-streamed event on X, adapted a well-known adage to slam Wikipedia.
Both Musk and Netanyahu have come under attack from the Left for years with Netanyahu currently battling the Left in Israel as he attempts to reform the judiciary so its leftist justices cannot control the Israeli government. During the event, the two discussed the topic of knowledge and encyclopedias.
“I’ve kind of read the encyclopedia out of desperation because I didn’t have anything else to read,” Musk said.
“You read the whole encyclopedia?” Netanyahu —whose father, Benzion Netanyahu, was a scholar and professor of history at Cornell University and also was the editor of the Encyclopedia Hebraica — asked.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Musk admitted.
“That’s desperation,” Netanyahu kidded him.
“It was desperation,” Musk acknowledged. “I’d run out of books.”
“I think probably it was a better encyclopedia than these digital encyclopedias today, unfortunately, which are edited that don’t necessarily bring out the balanced views of things,” Netanyahu said.
“The funny thing about, say, Wikipedia, is like, there’s an old saying, like, history is written by the victors,” Musk said. “It’s, like, well, yes, but not if your enemies are still alive, have a lot of time on their hands to edit Wikipedia.”
“History is written by the people who can harness the most editors,” Netanyahu replied.
“Yeah, I mean — whoever the losers are, they got a lot of time on their hands, so, what do they do, edit Wikipedia. Literally,” Musk said.
Elon Musk and Benjamin Netanyahu slam Wikipedia for its bias. pic.twitter.com/FkDLheKJAY
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) September 18, 2023
In December 2022, after it was reported that Wikipedia was voting on deleting the entry for Musk’s Twitter files, Musk responded, “Most of Earth: ‘The MSM is biased.’ Wikipedia: ‘Cite MSM source to confirm this claim.’ Wikipedia has a non-trivial left-wing bias.”
Most of Earth: “The MSM is biased.”
Wikipedia: “Cite MSM source to confirm this claim.” 🤣🤣Wikipedia has a non-trivial left-wing bias.@jimmy_wales, what are your thoughts?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 6, 2022
In July 2021, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger warned Wikipedia could no longer be trusted, saying it had become “propaganda” for the Left-leaning “establishment.”
Sanger told UnHerd’s Lockdown TV he had helped create Wikipedia in 2001 so it could offer “multiple points of view” on “hot button issues.” He asserted that conservative voices had been “sternly warned if not kicked out” if they differed from the prevailing narrative, saying, “You can’t cite Fox News on socio-political issues. It’s just banned now. … It means that if a controversy does not appear in the mainstream centre-Left media, then it’s not going to appear on Wikipedia. … If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power.”