Type of site Internet encyclopedia Alexa rank 35,093 (October 2016) | Website English main page | |
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Available in Hungarian, German, English, Spanish, Swedish, Romanian, Estonian, French, Slovak, Czech, Portuguese, Norwegian, Croatian, Danish, Greek, Dutch Owner NFSE Media AB, Linköping, Sweden Slogan(s) The alternative encyclopedia | ||
Metapedia is an electronic encyclopedia which contains far-right, white nationalist, white supremacist, white separatist, antisemitic, Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi points of view. The site describes itself as focusing on European culture, art, science, philosophy and politics. It was officially launched on 26 October 2006 with the Swedish-language edition. The English section was launched on 28 April 2007. The Hungarian version has the most articles: 144,189 as of 27 September 2013.
Contents
History
The Swedish Metapedia was founded in 2006 by Anders Lagerström, a neo-Nazi 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 far-right 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.
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 adds in extremist/racist material that presents the subjects in a more "favorable" light. Topics covered include European history, Norse mythology, and white nationalist music. The Register states 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 historical revisionism and lauding Nazi Germany. For this reason, the German Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien) started an 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 Nazi German 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.