Wikipedia: A Confidence Game

The con man

The term “con man” may bring to mind images of shady, underworld characters, but reality is quite different. A good con artist needs to appear trustworthy and likable in order to win the trust of his victim. Con artists are charismatic, intelligent, have good memories, and know how to manipulate people’s hopes and fears. They attempt to blend in, to look and sound familiar, and often work diligently at appearing to be smooth, professional, and successful. A con man may wear an expensive suit and appear to work in a high class office.^[2] Or, conversely, a con artist may put him or herself in a weaker position to play on a victim’s sympathies: They may take on the role of illegal immigrant, a likable man down on his luck, or a woman with a small child who needs to use the bathroom. From city official to roofer, the con artist can appear to be just about anyone.

Two names came to mind as I read the above definition: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Oddly, they both belong to a list of US presidents who changed their names prior to taking office. Isn’t that odd? Top of the list is Gerald Ford (Lesley King), followed by Clinton (William Jefferson Blythe III) and Barack Obama (Barry Soetoro).

My idea here was to get a Wikipedia entry on the term “Confidence Game”, but oddly, there is none. There is a 2016 book on  the subject, and Wikipedia refers to it by name, but that’s it. The key to any con game is trust. Take, for example, the predecessor of Wikipedia in the confidence business, Snopes. It is a small-time intelligence-backed website that earned its reputation by offering enough truth to gain trust. That trust allows it to serve as a propaganda outlet. That is the key for the con man and should be as well for us too, the marks.

I subscribe to an Australian-based magazine called Nexus, which is behind a pay wall. I mostly skim it, but now and then it delivers something useful, as when I used it as the basis for my post, Apollo 11: Something went Somewhere. That’s been over a year ago, six issues, and nothing since has struck me as notable. There’s a little too much UFO and miracle cure stuff going on, and while there are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy, well, Nexus has not earned my trust just yet.

However, the most recent issue (May-June 2024) caught my eye with The Hidden Hands Behind Wikipedia, by T.J. Coles, a former postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University, and author of the book We’ll Tell You What to Think: Wikipedia, Propaganda and the Making of the Liberal Consensus (2021).  Hidden Hands is based on this book.

I have noticed that Wikipedia runs an annual fundraising drive, and have scoffed at it in the same manner I scoff at NPR/PBS’s drives. These supposed financial support tools are really just window dressing, as NPR and PBS are funded by undisclosed sources and are merely part of the disinformation system used to propagandize liberals who imagine themselves smarter than average. Wikipedia is running a similar scam. Coles, in this article, lists known funding sources for Wiki, including Jeff Bezos,  Warren Buffet, Jimmy Carter, Ariana Huffington, David Koch, Pierre Omidyar, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. He goes on to list corporate supporters, and that is done alphabetically, and yes, they are all there from AIG to Verizon.

So yes, I am going to help Wikipedia stay afloat by sending them $25.00.

The article goes on to ‘splain to us Wiki’s connection to various propaganda campaigns (Ukraine, for instance), and its use in bringing down selected targets and propping up others. Says Coles, “It is clear that Wikipedia’s top editors and intelligentsia are deeply connected to the US military.” In addition, many edits have been traced to CIA sources (duh, really?). Also, says Coles, “Wikipedia ruins reputations by allowing anonymous people to talk trash about high-profile individuals and blocking them from re-editing their pages.”

I have long distrusted Wikipedia, but I had no idea of the power and wealth behind it. Take, for example, Wiki’s treatment of a man I much admire, Peter Duesberg.

Long considered a contrarian by his scientific colleagues,^[4] Duesberg began to gain public notoriety with a March 1987 article in Cancer Research entitled “Retroviruses as Carcinogens and Pathogens: Expectations and Reality”.^[5] In this and subsequent writings, Duesberg proposed his hypothesis that AIDS is caused by long-term consumption of recreational drugs or antiretroviral drugs, and that the retrovirus known as ‘HIV’ is a harmless passenger virus. In contrast, the scientific consensus is that HIV infection causes AIDS;^[6] Duesberg’s HIV/AIDS claims have been addressed and rejected as erroneous by the scientific community.^[7][8][9] Reviews of his opinions in Nature^[10] and Science^[11] asserted that they were unpersuasive and based on selective reading of the literature, and that although Duesberg had a right to a dissenting opinion, his failure to fairly review evidence that HIV causes AIDS meant that his opinion lacked credibility.^[11][12]

That appears to me to  be a ruining of his reputation by allowing anonymous people to talk trash about him. Obviously, he cannot speak back. There is only slight and dismissive references to Duesberg’s seminal work, Inventing the AIDS Virus, a book I own and treasure

Ronald Reagan’s CIA Director WIlliam Casey said, and it is documented that he said it, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”  I have not checked, but I will bet that Wikipedia is not aware of this quote. There was no Wikipedia in 1981 when Casey made that remark, but if there is an afterlife, Casey now looks down from above (or up from below) with admiration. Little did he know how well Wikipedia would advance his cause.

Anyway, thanks Nexus for the Coles article, and yeah, I guess I’ll be going another year with you.