The Foreign Troll Manipulating Wikipedia's Entry on Thailand's 2020 Protests

September 9, 2020 (Tony Cartalucci - ATN) - Wikipedia's credibility when it comes to politics is next to nonexistent. It regularly allows special interests to monopolize and manipulate entries on political issues important to Western foreign policy.

For Thailand - one individual - John Draper - a foreigner working at Thailand's Khon Kaen University - has been prolific in his editing of Wikipedia's entry for Thailand's 2020 protests.

 The entry reflects all the bias evident in the Western media's coverage.

When it came to evidence that the US government through its regime-change arm the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was funding core groups organizing protests he deliberately wrote it off as "allegations."

What is Behind Draper's Bias? 


When an individual who later contacted this blog to relay the story attempted to change the entry from:

Government responses have included delaying tactics, filing criminal charges using the Emergency Decree, arbitrary detention and police intimidation, the deployment of military Information Operations (information warfare) units, media censorship, and the mobilization of pro-government vigilante groups, allege a global conspiracy against Thailand involving Amnesty International, Axel Springer, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, the National Endowment for Democracy, Netflix, and the Open Society Foundation.

To (emphasis added):

Government responses have included delaying tactics, filing criminal charges using the Emergency Decree, arbitrary detention and police intimidation, the deployment of military Information Operations (information warfare) units, media censorship, and the mobilization of pro-government vigilante groups, which have presented evidence of foreign interference in Thailand easily accessible from the official websites of organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy, where up to 18 programs or organizations are openly listed as receiving funding from the US government and are openly involved in ongoing protests such as iLaw which is petitioning to amend the whole 2017 Constitution, to Amnesty International, Axel Springer, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, the National Endowment for Democracy, Netflix, and the Open Society Foundation.

...it was promptly changed back to its original version. The US NED webpage is easily accessible and Draper could have easily checked it to see if it was verifiable. And of course it is.

But Draper would instead claim - when switching it back to his version - that:

Your problem is Wikipedia:Verifiability, OR, put another way, the US military funds training of the Thai military - this does not make the US military a party.

The original entry by Draper is meant to imply that the pro-government groups are making "unfounded accusations." His choice to use the word "vigilante" to describe pro-government groups is also interesting and further implies bias.
 

The very nature of the US NED's funding - external support for programs involved in Thailand's internal affairs - constitutes foreign interference. It would be unimaginable for Draper's comments attempting to deny the US was a party to current protests - to hold credibility were it Russia funding similar programs in the US aimed at America's internal political affairs. 

It is a classic case of conflict of interest a career academic like Draper should be able to spot and speak out against, but he doesn't. It is also clear cut foreign interference - just as Thailand's pro-government groups have said. 

Draper's other problem is that he himself has written for US NED-funded fronts now involved in the current protests he is posing as an impartial expert on.

His own CV available here (PDF) - clearly admits he has written for US NED-funded fronts like Prachatai and Isaan Record - both involved in promoting current protests, defending individuals and organizations involved in the protests, and even helping organize protests by announcing days and times so readers can join them.

He is also a member of the "Project for a Social Democracy" which is directly involved in Thailand's internal political affairs and appears to have existed nowhere else but in the pages of the US government-funded media front Prachatai. His political bias is openly declared as his "Project for a Social Democracy" admittedly sought to ally itself with billionaire fugitive Thaksin Shinawatra's Pheu Thai Party and left-leaning Democrats sympathetic to many of Pheu Thai's policies.

Worst of all - he has even co-authored a paper with Pavin Chachavalpongpun who has literally spoken on stage remotely at ongoing rallies and is a close political ally of billionaire fugitive Thaksin Shinawatra whose Pheu Thai Party is among the current protest's sponsors.

For a career academic like Draper the concepts of conflicts of interest and objectivity should be in the forefront of all he does. Yet - just like the US-funded fronts he is attempting to cover up for and has regularly contributed to - there appears to be a complete lack of ethics.

It will be no surprise if the individual who contacted this blog has their entry erased again and eventually has their IP address blocked entirely from editing Wikipedia. This will be despite all of the above evidence.  Wikipedia as a concept is incredibly powerful - and anything incredibly powerful both enables the best of humanity, but also attracts abuse from the very worst. Unfortunately Wikipedia's leadership have chosen to lend themselves to the latter.

The fact that virtually every aspect of Thailand's current protests has the US NED's fingerprints on it including compromised academics on Wikipedia claiming the US NED "isn't" a party to the protests - illustrates just how malign and dangerous the protests and the real interests behind them actually are.