Who’s really blocking Wikipedia though? Is that real?

YMMV. I’ve been on intranets that keep a whitelist and block everything else. And since Wikipedia wasn’t whitelisted, it was blocked by default.

If my work environment was like that I’d be spending my workdays applying to other jobs as soon as I realized they live in the fictional trump cult version of “reality” meanwhile retaining evidence of their workplace political malfeasance to report if possible.

If you’re a consultant, you’re going to be working inside other people’s networks. And those networks are going to have their own rules.