The SCP Wiki Is Political and So Are You.
First things first. We need to define things. A lot of discussions surrounding politics in fiction end up going in circles because nobody can agree on what terms like "political" or "politics" mean. So let's pull from the dictionary: "relating to the government or the public affairs of a country."
Now you might think at first glance that's a very narrow definition. But it's actually astonishingly wide because "the public affairs of a country" is so vague and broad that it means almost anything a government can do.
So in the interest of further defining it, let's briefly talk about what that means.
What can a government do?
How does your local or national government handle housing? Poverty? Law enforcement? Food security?
To be demonstrative: Let's pick one thing to refine our scope further. Food security is a major and important factor in any nation's national security. So there are usually laws about farm subsidies.
Payments are pulled from tax dollars and paid either directly or indirectly to farmers to ensure they continue to produce food even when it might otherwise be unprofitable.
Those payments can ensure that a government isn't beholden to a neighbor or foreign power when it comes to the basic function of feeding its people.
These payment are often a contentious issue among the politicians of a country. People who represent food producing areas love them. People who live elsewhere don't like their money going to what seems like a useless endeavor.
There can and often have been huge political fights (and even a war or two) over food security. Even something as simple as food is political. This is not an anomaly. Almost any topic you can name is political.
So ok. Now, you, dear reader have hopefully come to an agreement with me that almost anything can be seen through a political lens.
What does that mean when we apply it to something more simple like the SCP Wiki?
Art is Political
Written fiction is a kind of art. Art itself is political on a large scale and granular one. Of course there's the simpler bits like political arguments about funding for "the arts". But we're not going to take the time to cover that here. There are much better essays on the internet that can easily explain why all art is political.
Instead we should talk about what a story communicates to an audience that will make it political. Starting with the premise of the SCP Foundation itself.
The SCP Foundation is a technocratic authoritarian extragovernmental organization. In many interpretations it employs prisoners as a slave work force. It keeps information hidden from the public to protect both the public from danger and the Foundation itself from scrutiny.
At its most basic the SCP Foundation is a stand-in for governmental misconduct. The early wiki's stronger "secret government documents" vibe is not accidental. And it is not wholly divorced from the time period it was first formed in.
The W of it All
The US government has never had a spotless record with regards to honest disclosures or trustworthiness. But the events that took place on 9/11 have shaped American politics for the last three generations. Incidentally those three generations make up almost all of the site's writers and readerbase. The US public began to feel fairly strongly that sacrificing more of their freedom for safety wasn't a bad bargain.
And we ended up with things like the Patriot act. Or the Bush administration's war in Iraq. One meant to empower the government to investigate threats and eliminate them, sometimes without us ever knowing about it. The other a governmental action that was taken without regard for truth.
I do not think that SCP-173 was written with some express purpose of critiquing the US government. But there is certainly something to be said for the Bush Era politics that inspired the SCP Wiki's earlier works and popularity.
By 2007, there was a strong and deep mistrust of the US Government. The mistrust had begun to pile up. And the SCP Wiki was created in the shadow of changing public opinion about things like the Iraqi War, government surveillance, and almost as importantly, the failures of the government to protect its citizens during Hurricane Katrina.
Katrina showed that for all the sacrifices we'd made in the realm of freedom, our safety was still not assured. That crack between perceived safety and actual safety became bigger and bigger as the Bush administration carried on.
That hasn't necessarily improved all that much in the last couple decades. But what we're looking at in the early days of the wiki is a snapshot of some people having fun while also lightly critiquing things like the Patriot act. Or CIA interrogation blacksites. And also demonstrating how fear of things like weapons of mass destruction can lead to behaviors that might otherwise be reprehensible.
Justifying Authoritarianism
There's a key thing here though. The politics of the SCP Wiki are in showing that secret and immoral actions can be justified. It's not a great critique of the politics of the Bush era so much as it is a reinforcement of those political stances.
Many works do this. The most prescient outside example is probably Warhammer 40k. The SCP Foundation's premise justifies authoritarian actions by showing a world that wants to kill us. Inherently. Behind the scenes. In ways we may never know or see.
In a world like that, any measure taken to save not just some but all of humanity is justified. Murder or worse is used time and again in the early SCP Foundation's writing as a solution, not a problem. A hard point is made about how the Foundation is "cold, not cruel" because coldness is necessary when the world wants to kill you.
The SCP Foundation then is justified when it uses D-Class slave labor since it is in the pursuit of saving the world. Montauk is justified. Murder is justified. But the key to these statement's veracity is the implied "if you accept the premise".
That's the politics. Arguing over the premise here is literally arguing about a political point. And people do disagree on that premise. Some people write a softer and kinder foundation. Some people will tell you that it's impossible to ever write a morally righteous version of the SCP Foundation, but I think that simply shows a lack of imagination.
Others will find that writing the best story possible involves a deeply evil Foundation. And worse yet for someone hoping to avoid arguments: Some people do not think that evil is justified even if opposing that evil means the end of humanity.
To say that the SCP Wiki is not political is to instead accept the premise without question. To accept those politics as correct. That is also still taking a stance. Literally, the act of claiming the SCP Wiki isn't political is itself a political act.
Inaction is Taking a Side
It's easy to miss a political stance in a work when we aren't looking for it. It's doubly easy to miss if we on some level agree with the stance. A lot of people don't want to engage with a work any deeper than surface level. This isn't a failing on their part. Sometimes you just wanna relax and turn your brain off. Fiction is escapism as much as it is art.
But the SCP Wiki is so fundamentally and deeply entrenched in a political message that to be angry when that message is explored more broadly, expanded upon, or even contravened, is really more about you than it is about the work.
If you want to enjoy the SCP Wiki for what it is, go ahead. No one will stop you. But the writers on the wiki are not beholden to anyone's personal view of what the wiki should be. Or what the wiki's inherent message should be. Or what a story's politics should be.
It is not my or anyone else's responsibility to write a work that you feel comfortable with. And that is what someone is asking for when they say they want to avoid politics in fiction. Because that's impossible. When someone asks for that, they're asking for works that have politics they agree with. It's only "in your face" if you disagree with it. Otherwise it's just background.
And let's be clear, not taking a side is taking the side of whoever is currently ahead. Or in charge. Or oppressive. This will be an uncomfortable truth for a lot of people. Hopefully not so uncomfortable that you reject this message, but it's also accurate.
Not acting is still a choice. And choices shape who you are. The choice to remain on the sidelines means that's the person you are. A bystander. Who will sit idly by while people die or are attacked. And then benefit from the oppression and the absence of the oppressed once they're gone.
You're Wrong About Politics
There's one final wrinkle though. The lack of canon on the SCP Wiki means that you can actually write any version of the Foundation you want. If you want a tolerate and kind foundation, you can write that. If you want to use it as an avenue to expand on personal and deeply held beliefs, you can write that.
This means that expecting the SCP Foundation Wiki to be apolitical isn't just wrong because of all the reasons I've already outlined: It's also foolish. Given the level of freedom the writers have, of course they're going to write about things that you'll perceive as political. It's inevitable. So you can either learn to tolerate it, ignore it, or eventually be persuaded by it.
But it's all political. And it always has been.