Scholars and commentators have found antisemitism on Wikipedia related to user conduct, perceived anti-Jewish bias, and differences in framing or interpreting events related to the Holocaust. Criticism has referred to both the English Wikipedia and Wikipedias in other languages.
Wikipedia has dealt with antisemitic misconduct from its early days, with bias often reported and often penalized. In some cases, antisemitic bias resulted in additional oversight or anti-vandalism measures. For instance, in 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation published the results of an internal investigation into antisemitism in Croatian and Serbian Wikipedia articles from 2013 to 2021, which said that far-right activists had spread disinformation on the website, including Holocaust revisionism, and Wikipedia addressed that incident by banning the editors and administrators involved.
The World Jewish Congress accused Wikipedia of antisemitic bias in its coverage of Israel-related topics, particularly following the October 7th attacks in 2023.
In 2024, the English Wikipedia was criticized for deciding that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a non-governmental organization founded to address antisemitism and prejudice, was a "generally unreliable" source on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (see ). In 2025, the ADL published a report claiming to have found evidence that a group of at least 30 editors "circumvent Wikipedia's policies to introduce antisemitic narratives, anti-Israel bias, and misleading information."
Critics have also alleged that articles related to the Holocaust display national bias (especially in non-English Wikipedias), which may be antisemitic, and that their discussion pages include antisemitic comments.
Antisemitic misconduct In the early years of Wikipedia, there were isolated cases of antisemitic misconduct by Wikipedia contributors, as well as one larger-scale incident. In his book on Wikipedia culture, academic Joseph Reagle notes, for example, that a Wikipedian was blocked in 2005 for posting a list of purported Jewish editors.
In his "Nazis and Norms" chapter, Reagle highlights a broader 2005 episode when neo-Nazis apparently mobilized to preserve an article on "Jewish ethnocentrism". According to Reagle, neo-Nazis and other Wikipedians were polite in their discussions, in keeping with Wikipedia etiquette and in keeping with the neo-Nazi guidance to avoid offending Wikipedians with anti-Jewish criticism. Nonetheless, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales stated that he would set aside ordinary procedures, protect the encyclopedia, and ban users as needed "if 300 neo-Nazis show up and start doing serious damage."
Other misconduct has included antisemitic vandalism on Wikipedia pages and the creation of accounts with antisemitic names, the creative nature of which obscures their identification.Aksit, F. G. An Empirical Research: "Wikipedia Vandalism Detection using VandalSense 2.0". Wikipedia has responded, for example, banning a user for their anti-Jewish campaign. Antisemitic vandalism on Wikipedia pages typically result in quick reversals by site editors.
Some scholars have suggested that Wikipedia's collaborative editing policy makes the encyclopaedia vulnerable to antisemitic edits and vandalism. Once these edits have been made, editors resolve the issue by following the processes for article deletion and editing, which can lead to content disputes and edit warring. In other cases, references to the antisemitic views of notable individuals, such as Father Charles Coughlin, were deleted and then restored. Following such disruptions, Wikipedia may periodically restrict editing on its otherwise open platform.
According to Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, Wikipedia has repeatedly overcome efforts to insert the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews were responsible for the September 11 attacks into various pages. He says such edits are removed "promptly" but require "constant attention" from editors.
The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by US representatives James Comer and Nancy Mace, began investigating whether, as alleged by the ADL, Wikipedia editors have made "systematic efforts to advance antisemitic and anti-Israel information."
Following Egypt's loss to Argentina during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, edits to referee François Letexier's Wikipedia biography falsely claiming he was Jewish were widely shared online, fueling antisemitic conspiracy theories before it was removed and the responsible editor was banned. Similarly, after the death of singer Dolly Parton, her Wikipedia article was vandalized by replacing her picture with a swastika and calling her a "Jew lover"."Dolly Parton Wikipedia 'hijacked' as fans mourn cultural icon's death", The News International, August 26, 2026. Accessed August 26, 2026. "Less than an hour after the shocking announcement of Dolly Parton's passing, her Wikipedia page reportedly was hacked.... First, Parton's photo was allegedly replaced by an image of a swastika - a symbol widely linked with Nazi Germany. Secondly, the hacker vandalized her page's name by reportedly adding an anti-semitic slur, 'Jew lover.'"Carson, Alex. "Antisemitic vandals target Dolly Parton's Wikipedia page just hours after her death", The Jerusalem Post, August 26, 2026. Accessed August 26, 2026. "Dolly Parton's Wikipedia page was allegedly targeted by vandals with antisemitic content and offensive modifications within an hour of the public announcement of her death at age 80 on Tuesday.... The alterations included replacing her profile photo with an image of a Nazi swastika, changing her name to 'Jew lover,' and altering her display title to reference Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that claimed the lives of 20 children and six adult staff members."
Biased content In a 2010 Journal of Information Technology & Politics article, it was that suggested anti-Jewish bias on Wikipedia can take the form of "criticism elimination", such as the removal of an accusation that the NGO War on Want had employed "Holocaust and anti-Semitic themes". In 2018, journalist Yair Rosenberg said that "activist" editors were "quietly attempting to erase" mention of antisemitism within the Labour Party by either seeking to delete the article on antisemitism in the British Labour Party or by adding the word "allegations" to the article's title. Rosenberg also criticised Wikipedia because, at that time, the Jeremy Corbyn article did not include criticisms of antisemitism; three months later, such criticisms had been added as their own section on the Wikipedia article.
Non-English Wikipedia In writing about Arabic-language treatment of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 2013, scholar Carmen Matussek said that Arabic Wikipedia suggested this was a legitimate historical viewpoint rather than antisemitic black propaganda.Matussek, C. (2013). "Fertile Ground for a Poisonous Weed: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Arab World." Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, 7(3), 71–78. Writer and academic Agnieszka Graff has suggested that articles about popular individuals with antisemitic viewpoints were edited with a respectful tone.Graff, A. (2022). "Jewish perversion as strategy of domination: the anti-semitic subtext of anti-gender discourse." Journal of Modern European History, 20(3), 423–439. Journalist Ohad Merlin said in 2024 that Arabic Wikkipedia contained "outright antisemitism".
Historian , comparing coverage of the Gaza war on English and Hebrew Wikipedia in 2024, said that "where the distortions lie, are in the Hebrew Wikipedia."
Holocaust-related bias In 2015, history professor Eva Pfanzelter published qualitative data analysis that found "racist, anti-Semitic, revisionist or denialist remarks" in 9 of the top 60 threads about The Holocaust article. For example, some Wikipedians argued that Jews should not be allowed to edit the article and that research sources should be rejected if written by Jews. Another 7 threads alleged bias by other editors. Wikipedia editors responded by deleting various edits and blocking some editors. Pfanzelter stated that the discussions were "rarely neutral" and that "serious scholars would dismiss" its Good Article peer review, which had argued that the wording, such as murder and genocide, "betrays a bias towards the belief that the Holocaust was a bad thing".
Several studies have examined the concept of "memory wars"—a political dispute over the interpretation or memorialization of a historical event—in Wikipedia articles relating to the Holocaust. Scholar Mykola Makhortykh has suggested that writing articles on Wikipedia is a "discursive construction of the past", in which articles become a way to commemorate, memorialize or otherwise understand the past, and this may explain why editors are drawn to engage in such memory wars over important topics like the Holocaust.
In 2016, Wolniewicz-Slomka analyzed the framing of 2014 articles about the Holocaust in the English, Hebrew, and Polish Wikipedias, hypothesizing that memory wars would result in different national narratives in each version. In his analysis, he said that the articles were "descriptive, and with very little evaluation or appeal to emotions". In the Auschwitz-Birkenau article, in particular, he identified some instances of bias that favoured the culture of the target audience, but this was true for both Polish and Hebrew versions of the article; the English version had a combination of these biases, suggesting Polish- and Hebrew-language editors had also been involved in writing the English version. By contrast, the articles on the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom uniformly identified Poles as the perpetrators, but the Polish version also said that the Poles had strong antisemitic feelings. He concluded that "the main characteristic of the articles" was "their attempt to remain academic and scientific", while "judgmental or evaluative language" was rarely used.
Relying partly on the Wolniewicz-Slomka methodology, Makhortykh compared editor interpretations of the Babi Yar article in the English, Russian, and Ukrainian Wikipedias. According to Makhortykh, the differences were evident in that "both the Russian and Ukrainian articles interpret it in a fundamentally different way from the English Wikipedia". The English-language article presents Babi Yar as "a Holocaust site and focuses on the history of the [Nazi] massacres", whereas the Russian and Ukrainian articles also focused on the 1961 Kurenivka mudslide and "present it as a generalised site of suffering, and place significant emphasis on its commemoration". Makhortykh says:
Like Wolniewicz-Slomka, Makhortykh also found a "large number of similarities in frame distributions across all three Wikipedia versions", which he suggests "points to the influence of platform-specific norms on the way issues are framed". He concluded that "the platform's encyclopaedic approach ... strives to avoid moral evaluations" and that the "existence of policies and norms supporting this approach" also "prevents the use of Wikipedia for the propagation of views of Holocaust deniers or highly subjective interpretations of the past in general".
In a similar analysis of the 1941 Lviv pogroms, Makhortykh reported that the Russian Wikipedia, unlike articles in seven other languages, focused on "framing the event as a single episode of the Holocaust" and stressing "the participation of Ukrainian nationalists in the pogrom". Makhortykh suggests these differences could serve to both "emphasize the connection between anti-Soviet nationalistic movements and crimes against humanity" and to "appropriate and marginalize memory of the Holocaust in Russia".