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Comment by paulette449 | Hacker News Reader

After reading this one-sided article, I checked out the rest of the website. Sadly I did not find evidence to support their statement that they "have no allegiance to any political party or tradition." And this article is a prime example. Ever since the right discovered that Wikimedia makes donations to "social justice" groups, they've been gunning for it. This hit piece is one of many.

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Does a political affiliation, explicit or implicit, invalidate their criticism of Wikimedia?

The parent is suggesting that Unherd doesn't fulfill their own claim (the quote), and whatever that implies on this topic (hypocrisy, dishonesty, whatever). They don't imply what you suggested.

either way it’s an unsubstantiated ad hominem attack, not even addressing the substance of the article but rather inferring the author’s are on “the right” and therefore it’s a “hit piece” and dismisses it immediately. The grandparent is taking a political stance

Gunning for it? I donated and then click the “I donated stop bothering me” button on mobile and it says “great we won’t bother you for a week”. I’m never donating again as they can’t even respect the donors. They don’t need the money either and now I feel twice the fool. Don’t fool me a third time. Donate the money to a charity that feeds the poor. I hope people continue to hammer them for their poor behavior

When I click that I get "Your support means the world to us. We'll hide banners in this browser for the rest of our campaign."

I haven’t checked the website or who is behind it, I came to the same conclusion that donations to WMF do not actually benefit the operation of that website a couple years ago and stopped all my donations.

I feel it is dishonest to request donations this aggressively and painting it like the website might shut down otherwise, which is not true.

Finance whatever groups you want with that money, but don’t make it look it it would benefit the website - But please, explain to me, why should I start donating again, maybe there is a factual error in the article or my own research? Or is all you come up with really just “something something the right”?

It's not very surprisingly that it got a real political bias:

>UnHerd was founded in 2017 by the billionaire hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall as its owner and publisher and conservative British political activist Tim Montgomerie as its editor

The only "left-leaning" political people they invite are either saying similar statements to what the conservatives says (no to LGBT, no to abortion or no to feminism) or it's the kind of radical and divisive left leaning person that is just a useful idiot to the conservative (such as leftists who claim anyone who doesn't follow their belief is somehow a paid shill).

Agreed. Thanks for pointing this out. Went to the main page and this was the top headline:

> Joe Biden’s pardons are a moral surrender Liberals have been cowed into submission

I won’t bother wasting time on it. I already have hundreds of tabs open with content I mean to read. I’ll work on clearing some of those instead.

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