Elon Musk's recently launched Grokipedia, an AI-generated alternative to Wikipedia, now contains more than 800,000 entries that variously promote white nationalist talking points, praise neo-Nazis and far-right figures, and attempt to revive concepts associated with scientific racism, according to a comprehensive Guardian analysis.
White Nationalists Portrayed Positively
The tech billionaire, who promised to "purge out the propaganda" he claims infests Wikipedia, has created a platform where entries on prominent white nationalists, antisemites and Holocaust deniers appear designed to portray them in a favourable light while casting doubt on their critics' credibility.
Grokipedia describes Jared Taylor, founder of the white nationalist publication American Renaissance, as playing a "pivotal role in intellectualizing white preservation by advocating for a fact-based, non-violent approach to white identity politics". The entry offers no critical examination of Taylor's beliefs, instead questioning the legitimacy of the Southern Poverty Law Center's designation of him as a white nationalist.
Similarly, Kevin MacDonald, described by Wikipedia as an "antisemitic conspiracy theorist and white supremacist", receives favourable treatment in Grokipedia, which claims his research "focuses on applying evolutionary principles to human social behaviour".
Historical Revisionism and Extremist Praise
The platform extends its revisionist approach to historical far-right figures. William Luther Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries - a novel that inspired multiple hate crimes including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing - is described as leading an organisation promoting "the preservation and advancement of the European racial heritage".
David Irving, the British historian imprisoned in Austria for Holocaust denial, is portrayed in heroic terms as symbolising "resistance to institutional suppression of unorthodox historical inquiry".
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project on Hate and Extremism, condemned the platform, stating: "Grokipedia is another example of Elon Musk proliferating hateful disinformation and far-right propaganda. The site whitewashes white supremacists, anti-Semites and other extremists, providing 'information' that clearly distorts the truth."
Scientific Racism Revived
Multiple Grokipedia entries attempt to provide scientific backing for racist ideologies, reviving discredited concepts from earlier periods of scientific racism. The entry on racial nationalism justifies it in explicitly eugenic terms, claiming it "draws on evolutionary biology to argue that preserving distinct racial genetic profiles maximizes individuals' inclusive fitness".
The platform contains extensive entries on racial categories based on prewar physical anthropology, including detailed descriptions of purported racial skull measurements for categories such as "Negroid", "Mongoloid" and "Nordic" skull types.
Kevin Bird, an evolutionary biologist who frequently critiques scientific racism, described the racial nationalism entry as "a completely selective kind of fun house mirror world of interpreting the last like 30 years of biology". He added that he had "never seen a single document that is this extreme" in its selective citation and narrative building.
White Supremacist Regimes Celebrated
Grokipedia's entries on historical white-supremacist communities attempt to justify their existence based on economic performance. The entry on Rhodesia - the white minority-ruled predecessor to Zimbabwe - lionises the regime, claiming it "demonstrated effective resource management and institutional stability under constrained minority governance".
Similarly, the platform praises Orania, the whites-only community in South Africa that forbids non-Afrikaner residents, for achieving "economic prosperity through sustained growth and low unemployment".
Richard Cooke, author of a political biography of Elon Musk and a forthcoming cultural history of Wikipedia, noted: "Grokipedia is a copy of Wikipedia but one where in each instance that Wikipedia disagrees with the richest man in the world, it's 'rectified' so that it's congruent with them."
When The Guardian contacted xAI for comment, the outlet received an apparently automated reply stating only: "Legacy Media Lies."
