World Socialist Web Site

World Socialist Web Site
Type of site
News, Opinion and analysis
HeadquartersOak Park, Michigan, United States
OwnerInternational Committee of the Fourth International
EditorDavid North (editorial board chairman)
URLwsws.org
RegistrationNo (Disqus account is required for commenting on articles)
LaunchedFebruary 14, 1998 (1998-02-14)[1]
Current statusOnline

The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) is a communist news and opinion website. It is affiliated with the Trotskyist Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). It describes itself as an "online newspaper of the international Trotskyist movement".[2]

The WSWS was established on February 14, 1998. The site was redesigned in October 2008,[3] and again in October 2020.[4] The WSWS supports and helps campaign for the Socialist Equality Party in elections. The site has no advertisements, except for material from Mehring Books, the ICFI's publishing arm. David North serves as chairman of the site's International Editorial Board.[5]

The Security Service of Ukraine has reportedly accused the WSWS of being part of a Russian information war against Ukraine.

Content and views

The WSWS periodically undertakes focused political campaigns, during which numerous articles, videos, interviews, and perspectives are published on the topic. Campaigns undertaken include defending Julian Assange,[6] Chelsea Manning,[7] and Edward Snowden,[8] civil rights and free speech,[9][10] and the opposition to utility shutoffs and bankruptcy in Detroit.[11][12]

Russia and Ukraine

The WSWS described the 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine as a "coup" backed by the United States and Germany and carried out by the Ukrainian far-right coalition Right Sector.[13] Furthermore, the WSWS criticized the coverage of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014 by the most German media outlets, describing it as "one-sided" and "anti-Russian propaganda".[14]

When Russian proxy forces in Ukraine shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014, killing 298 civilians, the WSWS said, "Washington has presented not one shred of evidence that Flight MH17 was brought down by a missile either fired by the anti-Kiev forces or supplied by Moscow". Regarding the 2015 assassination of Boris Nemtsov, an opponent of Russian president Vladimir Putin, David North wrote for the WSWS that the US might be planning a coup to replace Putin with a "Western-friendly oligarch".[15]

The WSWS condemned the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and called for Russian and Ukrainian workers to unite against war. However, it claimed that the US and NATO had "incited the invasion" and "are prepared to take the world to the brink of nuclear war". It said "In opposing the invasion of Ukraine, we denounce the policies of US/NATO imperialism".[16]

The WSWS calls the Ukrainian government a "fascist regime" and refers to the Russian invasion as "the US-NATO war in Ukraine".[17]

In 2024, WSWS accused the Security Service of Ukraine of political repression for arresting Bogdan Syrotiuk, the 25-year-old leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), a Trotskyist organization in Ukraine and Russia. They reported that he was charged with treason, accused of preparing publications "commissioned by representatives of a Russian propaganda and information agency, the World Socialist Web Site". His articles allegedly sought to justify Russian aggression against Ukraine.[17] The WSWS has campaigned for his release.[18]

Accusations of Google censorship

According to Julianne Tvetan writing in In These Times in July 2017, the WSWS drew attention to new Google search algorithms intended to remove fake news, which WSWS believed to be a form of censorship by Google.[19] Using evidence from SEMrush, an analytics suite for search engine optimization, the WSWS alleged that several sites, such as AlterNet and Globalresearch.ca, had received reduced traffic from Google due to changes in its search algorithm. According to the WSWS, between late April 2017 and the beginning of August 2017 its Google search traffic fell by 67%.[2][19] Google said that it had not deliberately targeted any particular website,[2] and Google vice-president Ben Gomes wrote that Google had "adjusted [its] signals to help surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content."[20]

Criticizing of the 1619 Project

In 2019, WSWS received considerable attention for its criticisms of the New York Times' The 1619 Project, which aimed to reframe American history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the center of the country's national narrative. WSWS described the project as "one component of a deliberate effort to inject racial politics into the heart of the 2020 elections and foment divisions among the working class."[21] According to The Washington Post:

On Dec. 16 [2020], Wall Street Journal opinion columnist Elliot Kaufman brought into the mainstream criticisms of the 1619 Project from four historians who had been questioning it for months on the World Socialist website, a fringe news publication founded upon the principles of Trotskyism. Some of what those professors wrote had gained momentum in the Twitterverse and sparked discussion about their analysis of the 1619 Project.[22]

WSWS received considerable praise from both liberal historians who contributed to their analysis and conservative commentators for its criticisms. For example, the National Review described it as "one of the few media outlets examining the 1619 Project in critical detail" and extensively cited contributions by historians Gordon S. Wood, who in 2007 was referred to as "the favorite historian of America’s liberal establishment", and James M. McPherson;[23][24] Phillip Magness, the research director of the right-wing American Institute for Economic Research told the Dartmouth Review that there was a "strange alliance" between conservative historians and the Trotskyists of WSWS, who he described as "old-school historians" following the data;[25] and Michael Barone in the conservative New York Post gave positive attention to historian Sean Wilentz's criticisms of the project in WSWS.[26]

Criticism

In 2014 article for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Glenn Kates criticized that the pro-Kremlin Russian online newspaper Vzglyad had used a WSWS article—titled "Obama Backs State Terror Against Eastern Ukraine"—as representative of American media in general. The WSWS was not cited directly; instead Vzglyad linked to Axis of Logic, a website that had republished the WSWS's article. Kates said this was part of a Russian media strategy of citing fringe sources from the West and falsely presenting them as "mainstream", to support Russian talking points.[27]

In a 2019 article for the socialist magazine New Politics, University of London academic Gilbert Achcar described the WSWS as "pro-Putin, pro-Assad and 'left-wing' propaganda" combined with "gutter journalism ... run by a 'Trotskyist' cult ... which perpetuates a long worn-out tradition of inter-Trotskyist sectarian quarrels in fulfilling its role as apologist for Putin, Assad, and their friends."[28] Responding in part to these claims, the WSWS stated, in regards to Syria, that, "Gilbert Achcar, also hailed these 'revolutionaries,' in many cases discredited former regime figures. No attempt was made to describe their political programme or to explain why feudal Gulf despots who outlaw all opposition to their rule at home would support a progressive revolution abroad".[29]

The Security Service of Ukraine has reportedly accused the World Socialist Web Site of promoting Russian propaganda to discredit Ukraine and justifying Russian aggression against Ukraine.[17]

Reason has said that a 2020 viral false account of New York University agreeing to racially segregated student housing was partially due to an inaccurate report on the WSWS. Reason commented: "As a socialist publication, WSWS sometimes criticizes the progressive left for being preoccupied with issues unrelated to class."[30]

Maria Haigh and Thomas Haigh of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee stated that WSWS publishers "challenge the view that fringe and highly partisan news websites and media ecosystems have contributed to the spread of fake news".[31]

References

  1. ↑ "This Year in Review: 1998". World Socialist Web Site. International Committee of the Fourth International. Archived from the original on May 20, 2016. Retrieved November 26, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 Wakabayashi, Daisuke (September 26, 2017). "As Google Fights Fake News, Voices on the Margins Raise Alarm". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 13, 2018. Retrieved January 13, 2018.
  3. ↑ "Welcome the redesigned World Socialist Web Site". World Socialist Web Site. ICFI. October 22, 2008. Archived from the original on November 30, 2008. Retrieved April 18, 2009.
  4. ↑ "Welcome the relaunch of the World Socialist Web Site! - World Socialist Web Site". Wsws.org. October 2, 2020. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
  5. ↑ "David North speaks in Berlin on the 15th anniversary of the World Socialist Web Site". WSWS. May 16, 2013. Retrieved May 3, 2021.
  6. ↑ Mazhar, Fatimah, "World's Most Widely Accessed Socialist Website Defends Edward Snowden", Carbonated.TV, archived from the original on March 5, 2016, retrieved February 20, 2016
  7. ↑ Rosenfeld, Ben (March 15, 2019). "IYSSE members discuss Manning imprisonment following rally". The Michigan Daily. Archived from the original on July 16, 2019. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
  8. ↑ VK (September 1, 2010). "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange rape allegations: What's behind them?". Hot Topics. Archived from the original on October 24, 2017. Retrieved October 23, 2017.
  9. ↑ Elliott, Tim (May 5, 2010). "Hunt was up against civil rights arguments". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on October 23, 2017. Retrieved October 2, 2017.
  10. ↑ "'Fake news' or free speech: Is Google cracking down on left media?". Salon. October 18, 2017. Archived from the original on October 24, 2017. Retrieved October 23, 2017.
  11. ↑ "IYSSE facilitates campus discussion about socialism". The South End. Archived from the original on October 23, 2017. Retrieved October 23, 2017.
  12. ↑ "Socialists to protest in defense of Detroit's DIA Friday, day after EM Orr tells business leaders he was once 'somewhat of a Socialist' himself". MLive.com. Archived from the original on October 23, 2017. Retrieved October 23, 2017.
  13. ↑ Lawriwsky, Michael (June 19, 2023). "The Worldwide Success of Russian Propaganda". Quadrant.
  14. ↑ Zubaryeva, Mariia A. (2015). "Аналіз інформаційної війни між Росією та Україною в інформаційному суспільстві". Informatsiyne Suspilstvo (in Ukrainian) (21): 6–11. Archived from the original on March 7, 2022.
  15. ↑ Boyd-Barrett, Oliver (2016). Western Mainstream Media and the Ukraine Crisis: A Study in Conflict Propaganda. Media, War and Security. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315559681. ISBN 9781317196006.
  16. ↑ "Oppose the Putin government's invasion of Ukraine and US-NATO warmongering! For the unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers!". World Socialist Web Site. February 25, 2022. Retrieved September 14, 2025.
  17. 1 2 3 North, David (May 17, 2024). "Stop the political frame-up of Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk!". World Socialist Web Site.
  18. ↑ "Ukraine charges Trotskyist with treason for writing for socialist website". Morning Star UK. May 19, 2024. Retrieved July 24, 2026.
  19. 1 2 Tvetan, Julianne (October 11, 2017). "How the "Fake News" Scare Is Marginalizing the Left". In These Times. Retrieved August 16, 2022.
  20. ↑ Sheffield, Matthew (October 18, 2017). "'Fake news' or free speech: Is Google cracking down on left media?". Salon. Archived from the original on January 13, 2018. Retrieved January 13, 2018.
  21. ↑ Wagner, Laura (October 16, 2020). "New York Times to Staff: You Can Only Trash Colleagues If You Have a Column". Vice. Retrieved August 17, 2022.
  22. ↑ Mettler, Katie (December 22, 2019). "Five professors say the 1619 Project should be amended. 'We disagree,' says the New York Times". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 17, 2022.
  23. ↑ Kirsanow, Peter (January 16, 2020). "History According to the 1619 Project". National Review. Retrieved August 17, 2022.
  24. ↑ F. Hayward, Steven (January 26, 2007). "The Liberal Republicanism of Gordon Wood". American Enterprise Institute - AEI. Archived from the original on February 28, 2026. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
  25. ↑ "Debunking 1619: An Interview with Phillip W. Magness". The Dartmouth Review. April 25, 2022. Retrieved August 17, 2022. You also had people from the far left jumping in. Some of the heaviest criticisms came from a website called the World Socialist Website, which has a Trotskyist Marxist perspective, but they're old school historians. These are people that bring a left-wing perspective to history, but they use a methodology that's rooted in evidence. That's rooted in factual analysis, following the data and following the facts and the archives to where they lead. So they give a spin on it that's very different from my own, but their evidentiary approach is very similar. So I'm in the middle of a very strange coalition. And there's also conservative historians that jumped in, but a very strange coalition across the political spectrum that looked at this thing and said, "There are defects."
  26. ↑ Barone, Michael (January 25, 2020). "Scholars are eviscerating The New York Times' 1619 Project". New York Post. Retrieved August 17, 2022.
  27. ↑ Kates, Glenn (June 9, 2014). "How To Project A Fringe Website Onto 'American Media'". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
  28. ↑ Achcar, Gilbert (October 10, 2019). "On Gutter Journalism and Purported "Anti-Imperialism"". New Politics.
  29. ↑ "The devastating impact of the 10-year US-orchestrated war on Syria". March 14, 2021.
  30. ↑ Soave, Robby (August 24, 2020). "Yes, Black NYU Students Demanded Segregated Housing. No, the University Didn't Agree to It". Reason.com. Retrieved August 17, 2022.
  31. ↑ Haigh, Maria; Haigh, Thomas (2019). "Fighting and Framing Fake News". In Baines, Paul; O'Shaughnessy, Nicholas; Snow, Nancy (eds.). The SAGE Handbook of Propaganda. Sage Publishing. p. 313. ISBN 9781526486233.
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