An article on Wikipedia about the growing scandal over Pakistani-heritage grooming gangs targeting young white women in the United Kingdom and politically-correct government cover-ups of their crimes was nominated for deletion last week by Simon McNeil, a Marxist socialist and science fiction author from Canada who edits as “Simonm223” on the online encyclopedia. He claimed the article was a biased split of the article on child sexual abuse in the UK pushing a “fringe” view. McNeil was criticized on social media for the move, many noting a blog post he wrote that supported exposing children to sexual kinks and fetishes at Pride marches.
On Wikipedia, McNeil has a long history of left-wing bias such as praising far-left Antifa terrorism, downplaying Chinese repression of Muslims, and anti-Israeli editing. Editors on Wikipedia previously labeled the grooming gang scandal a “moral panic” last year to minimize the issue.
On June 16, a review was released by Baroness Casey of Blackstock validating concerns about officials at all levels in the United Kingdom covering up predominantly Pakistani grooming gangs over racism fears. Michael Gove, a senior member of the previous Conservative government, stated officials in Rotherham tried to have them kill a story in the Times about the grooming gang problem. Though they supported the Times, Gove stated previous governments complied with similar requests. Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced a national inquiry into the matter, which critics interpret as a face-saving measure due to his previous criticism of those raising the issue.
Responding to heightened attention on the grooming gang scandal, an editor created a page covering it last week. McNeil nominated the page for deletion a day later arguing it was a “POV fork” of the “Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom” article and advancing a “fringe” view. “POV forks” are articles that essentially recreate an existing article favoring a specific point of view in violation of the site’s neutrality policies. However, the article on child sexual abuse in the UK details numerous instances of child sexual abuse, such as the scandals around Jimmy Saville and child sexual abuse investigations spawning from that scandal, which often have their own Wikipedia articles.
Many left-wing editors who voted against keeping an article on the scandal argued for merging its contents to a sub-section in that article, which would bury it amongst other scandals in a “group-based child sexual abuse” section, some suggesting the article itself pushed a racist attack. While many argued the title was biased, one editor noted that many sources considered reliable on Wikipedia used the term, including the left-wing Guardian and the BBC. Some agreed there were issues with neutrality, but that the latest development made it worthy of an article and suggested addressing neutrality over removing the page. After several days, the deletion discussion was slightly tilted against keeping the page, leaving the outcome unclear.
Criticism of the deletion attempt prominently appeared on X shortly after that point with focus particularly on McNeil, who initiated the deletion effort. “Stakeholder Consultant” or “echetus” posted to X noting the deletion attempt and mentioning the blog post McNeil authored that encouraged bringing children to Pride marches and specifically supported exposing them to the kink and fetish play that has controversially appeared at such marches. Stakeholder also noted McNeil’s Bluesky account under the same username he has on Wikipedia, where McNeil frequently discussed his Wikipedia editing, and the personal website linked from there containing the blog.
Stakeholder’s post was shared thousands of times and received hundreds of thousands of views, inviting an alarmed response from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who owns the X social media platform and frequently criticizes the left-wing bias of Wikipedia. Others discussed McNeil’s history on Wikipedia with “barnghoul” noting a discussion about the Cass Review that opposed “gender-affirming care” for children where McNeil used a fashion and life-style outlet to include attacks on the government having a “gender-critical” bias, referring to feminists against treating transwomen as real women, among other comments. Alex Baldwin, a former mod of the main reddit community for the GamerGate anti-corruption movement in gaming, recalled McNeil’s pro-Antifa bias on the far-left group’s page, something Breitbart has reported previously.
In his 2021 blog post, McNeil identified himself as openly bisexual and states he regularly brought his young daughter to Pride marches so she can “grow up with a broad understanding of the ways love and enjoyment of others can manifest.” He also expressed support for it as a political cause and the inclusion of Black Lives Matter activists and the pro-Palestinian “Queers Against Israeli Apartheid” group. McNeil argued that those opposed to the presence of marchers wearing kink and fetish gear due to children attending were either “Nazis” or “carrying water for Nazis” citing anonymous discussion forum 4chan specifically as responsible.
McNeil defended an image of a little girl attempting to “pet” a man in dog-themed bondage gear by stating none were “touching the girl, menacing her or causing her any discomfort.” He stated she was “happy to be there” and trying to pet one as if he “were a puppy.” Claiming this was “just play” and the clothes were as revealing as swimwear, McNeil described the image as “three very good boys . . . playing dog” with the “little girl . . . around the right age for play-acting games . . . enjoying the scene.” He added he was never concerned about his own daughter being exposed to kink or fetish gear and suggested concern about children attending marches where it was present was homophobic
On his website, McNeil mentions he is a science fiction author from Canada who published a book in mid-2015. He has written in Typebar Magazine about the state of science fiction with attacks on Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and cited a review he did in the same outlet on a Wikipedia page about a fantasy novel. Many of McNeil’s blog posts are critical of the science fiction and fantasy genre community, especially those he views as right-wing, and have occasionally been mentioned by SFF blog File 770. He wrote numerous blog posts attacking the Sad Puppies who challenged the increasingly left-wing tilt of the genre’s Hugo Awards, including ones associating it with GamerGate and tying both to “fascism” and Donald Trump and attacking Breitbart News.
He also expressed support for excluding book publisher Baen’s editor-in-chief Toni Weisskopf from the Worldcon science fiction and fantasy convention that hosts the Hugo Awards. Weisskopf was criticized for its policies allowing free speech on the publisher’s discussion boards due to people discussing a possible civil war if one occurred following the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. McNeil also defended the Chinese government following a controversy where authors were excluded from consideration for a Hugo Award due to concerns their views would offend the Chinese Communist Party, expressing doubts the CCP was aware or involved and instead suggested it was the fault of America-centric white racism.
Such views align with those expressed on Wikipedia, including his profile page where he identified himself as a pro-Palestinian Marxist socialist. On the Antifa page, he denigrated journalist Andy Ngo after he was attacked by the far-left group and praised terrorist Willem van Spronsen’s attempted bombing of an ICE facility describing him as trying to “liberate” a “concentration camp” with his actions. McNeil removed allegations of torture and brainwashing at Chinese re-education camps from the Xinjiang conflict article and details linking pro-Beijing politicians in Hong Kong to criminal Triad organizations. He also supported removing a page on Iranian policy advocating Israel’s destruction, which has since been removed. McNeil was among editors attacking then-acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin for raising bias concerns with Wikipedia’s owners claiming it was demanding “submission” to the far-right and that a “neutral” site would be even more slanted against conservatives.
Discussion of McNeil nominating the grooming gang article for deletion on social media preceded a significant turn in the discussion with many more arguing to keep the article. Many editors were subsequently tagged as “single-purpose accounts” suggesting they had little to no activity outside the topic, even though many had large portions of their edits on other topics prompting others to remove the tags. One user’s post noting some of the comments on X was removed and deleted with another later noting the post by Stakeholder to explain the rush of votes in the discussion and this comment also being deleted.
Commenting on the discussion, McNeil acknowledged the posts on X and stated he was getting “quite a lot of off-wiki harassment” over the discussion. He suggested this was evidence of “coordination” and suggested the one who closes the discussion consider that when weighing the votes. He alluded to his Bluesky account receiving messages as part of this claimed “harassment” and stated this together with votes on the discussion were “pretty clear evidence of off-wiki coordination.” The harassment alleged involved two accounts, which corresponds to posts he made on Bluesky.
His posts included screenshots of users asking him to not try deleting the grooming gangs article with one calling him a “pedo” based on his blog post. McNeil refers to these comments as a “harassment campaign” conducted “by racists trying to pedo-jacket a bisexual anti-racist” adding “Yeah, it’s Pride Month alright.” One response from him to the attention stated “the three categories of people who want less kink at pride are children, nazis and nazi children.” McNeil later stated he contacted the Wikimedia Foundation’s emergency team regarding the X post and sought sanctions against an editor noting his left-wing bias and referencing the blog post. That editor claimed to be from a town affected by grooming gangs.
Previously, another version of the grooming gang article was criticized after editors renamed it “Grooming gang moral panic in the United Kingdom” and associating the issue with the far-right. Media criticized the name choice for minimizing the scandal. The previous article was eventually merged into the article on child sexual abuse in the UK despite a previous discussion resulting in a decision to keep the article.
Despite studies finding a left-wing bias on the site and prominent criticism, including by co-founder Larry Sanger, Wikipedia is relied on by media and academia as a source of information. This has led to them copying off the site as with Wikipedia’s biased GamerGate article and various conservative figures, sometimes spreading hoaxes. Bias on LGBT issues has been particularly egregious with the site’s front page last week promoting a gay sex spot, editors facing bans for questioning use of “tree” as a pronoun or refusing to use pronouns at all, and profile pages being banned from expressing support for traditional marriage to outcry from Christian and family groups.
T. D. Adler edited Wikipedia as The Devil’s Advocate. He was banned after privately reporting conflict of interest editing by one of the site’s administrators. Due to previous witch-hunts led by mainstream Wikipedians against their critics, Adler writes under an alias.
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