Not In My Name - Heritage Foundation's plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors

I am Jewish, I disagree with some of the recent Wikipedia decisions about the text for Israel and Zionism, but I believe in Wikipedia to find the right way through its own process.

This is not the place to get into my extremely complicated thoughts about Israel and Zionism as an American Jew, but I know one thing for sure, there have been few mainstream organizations more dangerous to American Jews then the Heritage Foundation and everything its scummy flavor of right-wing US politics represents. The Heritage Foundation is interested in turning minorities against each other, a process that history tells us inevitably works its way down to targeting Jews. Despite Heritage's endless posting about 'stopping antisemitism' they have been perfectly willing to, very recently, weaponize jews in a way that endangers us all.

An organization that allies itself with wannabe Nazis and friends of the far-right German political movement is not a friend of the jews. An organization that pushes the immensely antisemitic, Nazi-originated, idea of 'social marxism' is no friend of the Jewish people.

No matter what my thoughts are in regard to Israel, the Heritage Foundation is a danger to me as a Jewish person.

Wikipedia is one of the, if not the only, last major utopian project of the web. The innate hopefulness and informational richness of the Wikipedia project are symbols of the better web we hope to create. This challenge to Wikipedia by the Heritage Foundation is part of a larger movement by the American right to own the informational landscape and destroy independent thought on the web (and everywhere else, honestly). They often pull this BS under the banner of 'free speech', though they don't even seem to be bothering with that this time. Accusations of antisemitism are just their current most fashionable tool in that process.

As Molly White says:

[Musk's] recent attacks reveal his growing role in this broader campaign to delegitimize Wikipedia, and the right’s frustration with platforms that remain resilient against such control.

The Heritage Foundation doesn't act in my name, it's actions to abuse editors of Wikipedia (some of whom are undoubtedly Jewish) does not benefit me or anyone. Its practices, using invasive surveillance technology and hacked data, are part of a pattern of the right-wing attempting to deputize itself to perform extra-legal justice that conforms only to its own definition of "justice".

Wikipedia, arguments in good faith, arguments to preserve the life of people who are in danger, none of these are dangerous to the Jewish people. In most of the worst cases these arguments are ill-informed but their eventual resolution betters the web and us all. This is fine, I do not expect the internet to be filled only with people who agree with me. What is being Jewish if not relishing the long tradition of arguing over definitions and ways to live righteously? I participate, and encourage other people to participate. I will relink these two gems as well: How to Support Israel Without Being Racist; How to Criticize Israel Without Being Anti-Semitic.

The Heritage Foundation, on the other hand, has marshaled immense resources to usher explicitly antisemitic politicians into power and actively pays to promote antisemitic propaganda. It has a direct and immediate impact on policies whose creation and shape under Heritage's influence endangers Jewish people and our allies across the entire country and the world.

The Heritage Foundation's actions are not in my name. I must speak out in protest of them. I fear and dread their influence on conversations about Jewish people and Israel.

Equally bad are their disgusting tactics. The proposed abuse of Wikipedia editors for nothing other than writing text on the internet endangers us all, every single person who writes, or expresses themselves, on the web. We've seen exactly where this comes from, how it evolves, and we can make a good guess as to the direction it is heading. The Heritage Foundation implies through its actions a desire for nothing less than a future where the wealthy, male, white, and powerful get to speak and anyone else gets harassed out of the public sphere.

Not in my name.

Employees of Heritage, the conservative think tank that produced the Project 2025 policy blueprint for the second Trump administration, said they plan to use facial recognition software and a database of hacked usernames and passwords in order to identify contributors to the online encyclopedia, who mostly work under pseudonyms.