In late October, Elon Musk released a Wikipedia alternative, with pages written by his AI chatbot Grok. Unlike its nearly quarter-century-old namesake, Musk said Grokipedia would strip out the “woke” from Wikipedia, which he previously described as an “extension of legacy media propaganda.” But while Musk’s Grokipedia, in his eyes, is propaganda-free, it seems to have a proclivity toward right-wing hagiography.
Take Grokipedia’s entry on Adolf Hitler. Until earlier this month, the entry read, “Adolf Hitler was the Austrian-born Führer of Germany from 1933 to 1945.” That phrase has been edited to “Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and dictator,” but Grok still refers to Hitler by his honorific one clause later, writing that Hitler served as “Führer und Reichskanzler from August 1934 until his suicide in 1945.” NBC News also pointed out that the page on Hitler goes on for some 13,000 words before the first mention of the Holocaust.
Archive: http://archive.today/aEcz0
It will be cited as a valid source for presentations at schools around the world lol
But Elon is not a nazi! All he did was give out his heart to the crowd in a roman salut!
You’re not going to complain about a heartfelt roman salut, are you? That would be woke!
Everything that fascist touches becomes corrupted and useless
What’s the difference between this garbage and Conservapedia?
Conservapedia is worse, remarkably.
Not that remarkable, Grokipedia is largely plagiarized from Wikipedia whereas Conservapedia is fully hand-written by a bunch of idiots.
this one’s written by AI! how exciting and transformative! world changing!
Thanks for reminding me to leave a donation on Wikipedia, seriously if we lose Wikipedia we are fucked.
Your money is better spent on archive.org
How about both?
If you have enough money, why not 😇🙏🏻
… idk, if Wikipedia is pissing off Deepak Chopra, I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing…
edit: I think my downvote probably warrants a less flippant explanation. In the past decade, Wikipedia has started explicitly labeling pseudoscience and “alternative medicine” as such, as opposed to their original policy of being so “neutral” they would say things like “some people think this is bogus, but some people think not”. This has, understandably, pissed those people off, and I suppose in some sense they are right? But in this era of widespread and accelerated sanewashing, I think saying these (true!) things does matter, and the people getting pissed off are really just telling on themselves. I would invite you to read the Wikipedia articles on the quoted public figures for yourself, and verify that they really were slandered the way they describe.
tangentially-related Hank Green video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zi0ogvPfCA
I should have specified: I don’t agree with every part of the article, but I shared it for this excerpt:
The Wikimedia Foundation solicits donations from Wikipedia users every year, even though its expenses ($2 million to run hosting and servers) are vanishingly small compared to its profits. Wikimedia has increased its spending over 1000% since 2008 and sits on $97.6 million in assets as of 2016.
ah okay, I think sharing that entire article is kinda endorsing all the weird stuff in it, but thanks for specifying.
I know those are large numbers, but like, Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the internet? “$97.6 million in assets” is peanuts to that (compare it to any other website in a similar range!). The fact that they don’t have that much operating costs is a good thing, right? It means they’re efficient, which is what people love to complain about with non-profits.
Anyway, it’s not like they ask for much–I think the last fundraiser I saw they were asking for $2.75 a year, if you felt like they provided you that much value over the year. I certainly do, and I donate $10/year to them. If you don’t feel like Wikipedia is worth that cost to you that’s fair–but I think telling other people that they shouldn’t donate because it objectively(?) isn’t worth it is a strange thing to do.
Yet … They probably don’t need donations yet!
So the space obsessed man-child generated his own stupid encyclopedia, and for this generous all-giving knowledge resource he chooses a stylized BLACK HOLE for the logo.
It feels like the nerd equivalent to that quote about how the anti-semite arguing in bad faith enjoys seeing others frustrated by their hypocrisy. Here lemme just find that pasta…
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Jean-Paul Sartre
hes actually sex-obsessed with breeder fetish, the space thing is a cover for this.
Musk is clearly a Nazi.
First, there’s the Nazi salute. There’s no reason to do that unless you are a Nazi.
Second, Nazis called Hitler my Furer, and he’s rewriting it this way specifically for this reason. It is an honorific title and he’s showing honor to Hitler.
Third, Musk deflects from accusations he’s a Nazi (“that’s a crazy thing to say”) but he never responds by saying “What Hitler did was horrible and I’m not a Nazi and detest their ideology” which is what someone would say if not a Nazi.
The scary thing about this is Musk will soon control a large robot army. At that point, he could appoint white supremacists to lead the robot army and pick up where Hitler left off. This is a real threat for Jewish people as well as other minorities.
A robot army that will all self drive!!
Elon is so smart, bet there is some 6D Polytopia behind his plummeting (-50% in Europe) tesla sales.
Third, Musk deflects from accusations he’s a Nazi (“that’s a crazy thing to say”) but he never responds by saying “What Hitler did was horrible and I’m not a Nazi and detest their ideology” which is what someone would say if not a Nazi.
This is the most important point, IMO. Fascists who want mainstream acceptance know not to have swastika tattoos and not to openly say they love Hitler. They will always try to have some plausible deniability. Don’t get dragged into their bullshit arguments. There’s no point in debating whether the nazi salute was some other motion that was misinterpreted. Even if it was, the first thing a non-nazi would do would be to clarify that they are not a nazi and don’t want nazis to think they’re their allies. Even if Musk had completely inadvertently stumbled upon the love and support of the nazis via a series of misunderstandings (lol), at this point in time he is deliberately choosing to be part of them.
Here is Musk at 3:08:01 saying he’s not a nazi… and then going on to say you’re not a nazi unless you’re literally invading Poland and doing the holocaust. That is literally the only objectionable thing about the nazis. Not their “fashion sense or mannerisms”. Yes that was a direct quote. There is really only one type of person that would not mention as objectionable the nazi ideology or all the acts of violence that are not at the same scale as the holocaust.
“I’m not a Nazi, I just like the esthetics of someone else’s blood on my black uniform”
And all of the sycophantic muskanites love licking his boots.
Most people do, feeling of power or at least positive connection to someone’s feeling of power are very intoxicating. I even wonder how many 16 years old girls you knew when you were in high school. No justice or mercy there if you try to keep moral high ground and ignore that component. (I did, LOL.)
The thing about Nazis is that they’ve lost, so one could get pretty believable feeling of power from their own military and patriotic aesthetic in most of the western nations and socialist bloc, while Nazis would be something of that past with fraktur lettering and stylish evil. A bit like vampires.
Now, today both western and Soviet patriotic aesthetic have kinda rotten. The Soviet kind is associated with murderous madness between two strongest former members, the western kind is associated with paying 20x the right money to kill brown people in their homeland without even getting their oil in the end.
While Nazis, eh, lost. So haven’t lived till now and are remembered young and cute, so to say.
He’s just an edgelord. He thinks he’s funny and edgy and everyone wants to be his friend. Inside he’s a scared little boy who wants his daddy to love him but his daddy is a nazi who hates him.
do you know that you can an edglord doing nazi shit? a nazi. no matter the motivation, he’s still a nazi.
I fucking hate nazis.
Amen
I did know that. But I think you give him more credit of self-awareness than he has. Elon Musk is a vacuous ego with a lot of money. I don’t believe he has the depth of mind to actually hold any political ideology, for good or ill. I think he is singularly focused on being the Best Boy, and will ape anything that helps him feel that way.
You’re probably right. He was the lib-left’s Best Boy a few years back, was gonna solve climate change and do cool science shit and whatever, but then I forget what exactly happened but he kinda swung the other direction.
Motivation probably doesn’t matter too much. It just highlights the systemic problem of allowing one person to have that much money-power.
You make it sound as if Naziism is a political ideology and not just a hate cult. everyone who is a nazi because of self serving reasons is still a nazi, even if they are stupid or so drugged that one might question if they have any agency. they are still nazis.
Most nazis are really stupid and irrational and don’t need a reason either, still nazis.
even edgelord vacuous nazis are just that: nazis. No matter the reason, or if it’s meant “ironically”, they’re a nazi. There’s no excusing it, or softening it, they’re a full blown nazi.
He did the nazi salute on stage, at least twice, he holds extreme right-wing and white supremacist views, he is a nazi.
He’s a lot more than that
I don’t think he is one, not really.
I think he wants to be one, but isn’t one himself, which is perhaps sadder.
Isn’t “Furer” just the German word for leader? I’m pretty sure the word existed before Hitler and the Nazis I don’t think they invented it.
The word Führer is 99% used for Hitler. There are many variants that are OK to use though. Most notably Anführer (if Führer is leader, Anführer would be “the one who leads ahead”) which is the common word to use for leader. Others are composites like Bergführer (mountain guide).
The swastica also existed before the nazis but is now forever tainted.
The swastica also existed before the nazis but is now forever tainted.
It’s still widely in use in India, with the original connotations
Not just India, basically all of south and south-east Asia, maybe even elsewhere in Asia too.
What about someone who drives a car? Many Germans have a Führerschein in their wallet. It’s just a normal-ass word.
You can read right?
Führer = Hitler
Something-Führer / Führer-Something = not Hitler
technically yes. but no. it clearly means leader with nazi connotations. you with call a German mayor a fuhrer?
correct, just like how the swastika was originally not a hate symbol. But nowadays, Germans would not refer to anyone as “Führer”, unless they’re (neo)nazis.
Grokipedia would strip out the “woke” from Wikipedia
So are they removing the pages on Insomnia?
Simply put, Leon Hitler is a shitbag neo-Nazi.
I’m really not an American but Leon Skum sounds funny…
Just when that bastard would eventually get his comeuppance?
What a chode.
The man can literally afford to have a legal harem island, fund an entertainment company to create anything to amuse him, AND solve world hunger simultaneously…and he just fawns over Hitler.
His wealth is truly wasted.
Apparently owning the libs, snorting ketamine to the point of pissing yourself and dick jokes are more important than anything you mentioned.
Also Donald Trump needs a lot of money. The other tech dickheads bending over backwards are not enough.
Most of the world’s wealth is wasted under capitalism.
He enjoys the smell of his own farts and believes other people will as well.
Man calls unbiased site biased, releases biased site to replace unbiased site.
It’s the only way to justify his stupidity and cover up his lack of genius.
I mean it is biased, just not biased enough for Musk.
Or biased in the right direction
It’s about as unbiased as any site could be.
I mean the whole stupid Grokipedia thing is a shit show that will never take off, but Fuhrer is just “leader” in German. In it’s used context for Hitler it straight up means dictator and (iirc) only came into full on use after the plebiscite giving him full dictatorial power after Hindenburg’s death in 1934 (edit: He was already the Reich’s Chancellor and merged in Hindenburg’s powers with the vote to make himself full dictator / Fuhrer).
I’d welcome input from a German national - Is the word still used there?
German here: you can use “Führer” only with specific other context. There could be for example “Gruppenführer” -> the leader of a group. Or “Anführer” -> could be the elder of a tribe. If you clearly use it in a neutral context, no problem.
But if you use it just like that, it will immediately raise concern if you really meant to say it this way.
Führer is not just „leader“, it is tainted and using it as a substitute for Hitler in a factual text is super weird, like casually calling Jesus in his Wikipedia article „our lord and savior“ now and then.
Thank you for this comparison. That’s a fun one and one that’s made a little more ‘subtle’ in the US if only because of how common that language is among the populace in regions and how pervasive protestantism is in advertising/messaging.
Jesus would’ve hated America. I think according to the bible he lost his shit twice - both because of capitalism.
There was one other time, when he cursed a tree because he didn’t like its fruit, but yeah in general he disliked the nascent forms of capitalism and money people that he encountered.
Yeah I fully agree with this. I am thick in the middle of “Third Reich Trilogy” which gives an enormous amount of context to the word though.
If they changed it, it’s further evidence of scummy behaviour, but on its own it’s not a huge red flag for me with historical context.
Can’t recommend the books enough if you’re into that. The lad must have spent half his life in primary sources.
Is the word still used there?
Leader would be “Anführer” these days. “Führer” was probably a perfectly neutral word before 1933. Now you just can’t use it anymore without alluding to that period. You can call your mountain guide “Bergführer”. All such derived terms are unaffected, but “Führer” is basically off limits for anything outside the Nazi Germany context.
In it’s used context for Hitler it straight up means dictator
From what I gather I don’t think the German people meant it like that (read: they weren’t supposed to). Of course he was the solitary head of state and everybody knew that his word was above any other’s, but addressing him as “my Leader” is much more about ideology than politics. The honorific would’ve probably been “my Chancellor” if it had been about his political authority. As “Führer” he was the figurative savior of the German people after the perceived injustices encapsulated in the WW1 armistice. And he did lead them back towards a sense of national pride that was completely shattered after 1918.
Being a political figure was just a means to an end for him. If he hadn’t been dismissed as a bad artist by a Jewish professor and if WW1 had taken a different course who knows what he would’ve ended up doing with his life. His weapon was his voice and that weapon was fueled by all these toxic convictions. If your hatred is aimed towards entire peoples and nations I guess your only shot at revenge is becoming a politician.
The honorific would’ve probably been “my Chancellor” if it had been about his political authority
In his case it was very much meant as dictator.
There was debate after Hindenburg died and he took his powers with the plebiscite (as well as chancellor) about what his title should be. He didn’t want to harken back to Kaiser per the previous Reich so they went with Fuhrer.
It had been used within the party before that but came into common usage as his title at that time.
Is there another more ‘generic’ German term that would fit when talking about this period of time in retrospect? So you could have one line that says the German equivalent of ‘he was the leader in Germany during this time period, commonly referred to by the title Fuhrer’, and then no need to keep using “Fuhrer” anymore in the rest of the article.
Pretty sure its usually “Diktator” in that context.
Maybe Staatsoberhaupt. I would translate it as “leader”. But given how illegitimate his reign was, it is still a bit to soft.
Führer might only mean leader in Germany, but it’s rarely used outside of refering to Hitler nowadays.
Leader, in modern German, would be translated as “Anführer”, not “Führer” specifically because of the connotations. Also, using the term fuhrer in English, instead of translating as leader, clearly means it’s being used as a title, rather than a factual descriptor of what he was.
You can use Führer in context, but as it’s a title that was specifically created by and for Hitler, and never used before or since, it’s generally not used as a title for him, because people don’t want to give him the post mortem respect of addressing him by this title.
And for context, the entire German language Wikipedia entry of Hitler, calls Hitler Führer a total of 17 times. 8 of those are in direct quotes, 3 in indirect quotes, 2 of them are describing his official title “Führer und Reichsanzler” (outside of quotes only, to prevent double counting), 2 use the literal meaning of “leader” in the context of the party, NOT his title as dictator, 2 of them are talking about how he saw himself, and one is drawing a linguistic analogous link between “Führer” and “Geführten” (Leader and Followers).
Outside of quotes, there is not a single use of the term “Der Führer” as an actual honorific title (“The Führer”) for Hitler in the entire German language Wikipedia page (which is 30-40k words long).
Not German but moved to Germany. The word is still a normal word, it can be used, only in certain contexts not.
To me it is very very weird.
Especially in a comboword there is 0,0 issue: Reiseführer, Bergführer, etc. The no go zone seems very subtle to me, it’s more about pronunciation and context, not the word itself. Especially the word “Führerschein” is super weird to me when used in regular conversations. I automatically hear translated “license to be the Führer”, but it just means driver’s license and nothing else and no one finds it weird.
Exactly this. If you use it as part of a compound word or as a verb it’s totally fine. However “der Führer” (the Führer) is exclusively used to describe Hitler, and it usually has a negative or ironic vibe depending on who says it.
About the Führerschein… führen and fahren have the same etymological root… It is still used in “Führen eines Fahrzeugs” which simply means “driving a car” and that is where the term comes from.
At least in Austria it is also used outside of compound words. E.g. when talking about the Bergführer, you still mean the compound word, but the word “Führer” alone is still used in this context extensively. But of course it all depends on context.
“Führerschein” is super weird to me when used in regular conversations. I automatically hear translated “license to be the Führer”
Not weird for point of view of polish speaker - we use same word “prowadzić” for driving a car, running a company or just leading someone to some destination. From that perspective concept of leading a country and “leading” a car is perfectly intuitive
Führer means driver also. So literally Driver’s license.
Why would they use the honorary, German word Fuhrer in an English language wiki article though?
Exactly.
If you are describing hitler’s role in WW2? Yes, he was The German Fuhrer.
I would say that, honestly, I prefer the second version as it is more accurate to what he was. But any time you change something you have to ask “what does it mean that we are changing things?”
And since musk is, at best, someone who wishes he was as cool as the losers on LUE back in the day? This is very much not being done with a journalistic style guide in mind.
We also use “Dalai Lama”, for example. Changing it to “leader” would lose a lot in translation. There’s a very long list of more problematic things with Musk and this ego project than this particular wording choice.
I agree with the second half but disagree on the first. We do use Dalai Lama because thats what he’s known as across the world (at least fron my understanding) . We didn’t refer to Angela Merkel as Furher of Germany when she lead it so it seems weird to include this in the introductory summary of Hitler especially considering it’s an English article. I dont think you’re losing anything in translation in this example by calling him the “leader of Germany” at that time. Down below, in the verbose write-up, seems like the more appropriate place to use it.
I don’t think the Merkel comparison is accurate - no one called her Leader, we called her the Chancellor (Kanzler), because that’s the job title. “Chancellor” is a pretty specific word in English with a narrower meaning and clearer connotation than “leader”, which can be used in a huge variety of contexts. The problem is that English doesn’t have a 1:1 translation of Fuehrer as we do with Kanzler, and “leader” is too generic versus Chancellor, Prime Minister, President, etc. Maybe “Supreme Leader” would work, but I haven’t seen that used often enough for it to stick.
Hitler was literally the chancellor of Germany. That was his official title before he seized power and took total control and changed the title himself.
I know, but convention is to use a person’s final and highest title. Nobody refers to Julius Caesar as “quaestor”.
It’s a title he invented though, after taking control. Continuing to use it is honoring his memory in a way.
As a german, the word is very seldom used, and everybody cringes on use of it alone. We even use the english word guide instead for situations where it fits.
Thanks so much. I thought that would be the case but I wondered around things like “team leader” or “band leader” or whatever.
My guess was that it was forever tainted so I appreciate the context.
Not a german national, but I’m learning it at school, and they say that if you go to a german-speaking region, it’s better to say “chef”, because “führer” is still connected to that guy
You don‘t really call him just the Führer in academic works so anything that works like an encyclopedia shouldn‘t either. The title is charged with either mockery or admiration. It should have no place in this context, because it should at least try to be neutral if you ask me.
I’m in the thick of a 90 hour audiobook trilogy on the third Reich which is absolutely incredible (link) and Fuhrer is used liberally, partly to describe his ascent to absolute dictator as opposed to just Reich’s Chancellor.
I’m not defending shitopedia for one second! I’m just not sure it’s as outrageous as other shit that’s taking up our limited attention span at the moment is all.
Only his followers actually use(d) that title for him, everyone else when using that word about him, would say it’s the title his followers call(ed) him. Like how wikipedia is using it. Grok is just using it as his title, like a follower would.
You can think of it kind of like “dear leader” in north korea. Anyone calling him that outside of north korea is at least doing it sarcastically or using air quotes. This would be like if the news called him that with a sincere reverent tone.
It’s true and terrifying.
We have an extremely intelligent Nazi on his way to controlling a robot army.
It’s funny that they made a conservative Wikipedia (snowflake safe space much?) because those people don’t read shit.
I mean there was already the Conservapedia, that’s nothing new.
Fuhrer is just “leader” in German.
Yeah, go to Germany and call any leader “Führer” and see how well that goes. Uh, maybe not in Eastern Germany where they’ll probably like it.
That’s the official turd Reich history. If we don’t win this will be what children will learn in the Shitler youth soon.
Thats why many people have gotten active, and getting others active! Together we all can do anything!
