Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 58

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Communist regimes

There have been questions on what even constitutes a 'communist regime'. Wayman and Tago states unequivocally state: "There are 18 consensus cases of communist regimes in the period studied (we exclude borderline cases such as Afghanistan, which was never clearly stabilised as a communist regime, but rather in a constant state of war"[1]. I think that is ample evidence that an academic consensus exists here that communist regimes existed and there were 18 of them. --Nug (talk) 20:44, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

You may think so. I'd prefer to see the actual source, the context in which the statement was made, and the conclusions the article actually drew regarding what 'communist regimes' were and whether it sees any reason to isolate them as an object of study when discussing 'mass killing'. From looking at the abstract, it seems mostly to concern itself with how 'dataset effects' are affecting studies of such events. Cherry-picked context-free quotes from a single source cannot possibly establish 'academic consensus'. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:03, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Having read the article in question (it can be found on JSTOR, which offers free limited-access accounts), it seems self-evident that the 'consensus' being referred to in the quote above isn't any general consensus in academia - instead, it refers to a consensus amongst the specific sources being used analysed in this specific study. This is of course unsurprising, as academic texts on specific relatively narrow subjects (in this case on how different definitions of types of 'mass killings' - 'democide' vs 'genocide and 'politicide' - can produce very different results) rarely contain bold assertions regarding general academic consensus on subject matter beyond the scope of their immediate objective. The study is well worth reading, if only to demonstrate how attempts to compile definitive 'totals' for 'mass killings' in diverse contexts are prone to pitfalls, and accordingly shouldn't be taken as read without further independent analysis. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:12, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I think in this context, the 18 consensus cases of communist regimes is the total set under investigation, and the types of 'mass killings' - 'democide' vs 'genocide and 'politicide' would represent subsets of the 18 cases: 4 (out of 18) cases identified as geno-politicide and 13 (out of 18) cases identified as democide. --Nug (talk) 05:05, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Exactly. The 'set under investigation' constituted 18 regimes meeting the criteria as set by the specific authors of that study, for the purposes of that study. Nowhere did they even remotely suggest that there is any sort of more general 'academic consensus' about anything. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:26, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Well that the 18 regimes are identified as consensus in the context of mass killing studies is a good thing, otherwise there would be claims of OR/SYNTH if they weren't. They would be a subset of what is already listed in Communist_state#Current_communist_states and Communist_state#Former_communist_states, I don't see anyone contesting those articles. --Nug (talk) 06:46, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

You seem to believe that if you repeat the same ludicrous misinterpretation of the source often enough, it will somehow become valid. It won't. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:56, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I guess we could pretend that a basic consensus for what was/is a communist state doesn't exist, for this article anyway. --Nug (talk) 09:25, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

It's also not very helpful if you cannot name the 18 consensus communist states. TFD (talk) 00:56, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

The Wayman & Tago data is available for download, I'll download and check later. --Nug (talk) 05:05, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

The files in question contain no list of '18 consensus communist states'. They contain nothing that isn't already in the article but some statistical analysis datafiles for Stata software. No textual data at all making any statements about 'consensus'. Nothing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 07:03, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes they do. The files contain data for 163 countries using the COW country codes, and each country is designated as either a democracy, autocracy, communist or military. --Nug (talk) 09:25, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Citation needed. Actual citation of something people can verify. Something actually written out by the authors of the article cited which directly states that there is an academic consensus that there are 18 communist regimes/states, and tells us directly which states there are. Not vague WP:OR about COW codes. And after you have provided the citation, please tell us exactly what existing or proposed text for this Wikipedia article you are proposing to cite the article for, since so far you have provided none, and we are under no obligation to engage in endless round-in-circles abstract discussions regarding sources. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:41, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

The Wayman & Tago paper is already cited. The paper presents data in tables as well as provides a link to the published dataset, therefore it forms a part of the discussion, so it is perfectly valid to look at the dataset mentioned in the paper to identify those 18 communist regimes the authors refer to. You can easily open and read the Stata data files[2] using the open source R application. --Nug (talk) 18:34, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

No, I am not going to download an application to look at a dataset, since (a) it is self-evident that it cannot be WP:RS for an assertion that there is an academic consensus that there are 18 communist regimes/states, and since (b) you have again failed to state what the purpose of this discussion is. This is not a forum, and I'm not interested in vacuous time-wasting games concerning material that cannot possibly be supported by the source discussed here. If you want to propose changes to the article, do so, in a thread where you explicitly state what you are proposing, and explicitly state, in full necessary detail, which texts you are proposing to cite to support such changes. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:05, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

You made the following claim: "The files in question contain no list of '18 consensus communist states'. Upon being informed that they do, you're refusing to "to download an application to look at a database"? This seems to me like textbook shifting of the goal posts. A list is still a list if it's in a dataset. Why even bother going into a discussion of data if you're not willing to look at data? The idea that each facet of the dataset needs to be written out in the study that analyzes it doesn't make sense and is completely arbitrary, wholly unsupported in the context of data analysis and academic researchAShalhoub (talk) 09:35, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree, it does seem strange. It's a little like asking for a citation and when provided with the paper saying 'I'm not going to download a scientific paper just to check the citation' Vanteloop (talk) 10:02, 29 December 2021 (UTC

The database contains data. It does not contain any assertion that there is an academic consensus about anything, which is what Nug has been trying to claim. Just how difficult is this elementary statement to understand? Frankly, I find this entire discussion increasingly facile, and get the distinct impression that some contributors to this talk page are more intent on preventing progress towards a resolution than in engaging in meaningful discussions. More so since Nug has failed to indicate what exactly the purpose of this particular thread is anyway. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:38, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

The paper contains the assertion that "There are 18 consensus cases of communist regimes in the period studied", the paper provided a link to the dataset that identifies those 18 communist regimes. The only thing holding up progress is this pretense that "sources disagree over what constitutes 'communist regimes'". Even Paul Siebert previously agreed: "Wayman&Tago (Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 47, No. 1 (january 2010), pp. 3-13) says that there were 18 Communist states, according to a consensus among genocide scholars. Let's just take this list." --Nug (talk) 22:40, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, we know the cherry-picked quotation is there. Your utter refusal to acknowledge the context of the quote, and your WP:OR-based insistence that the authors were taking it upon themselves, in a narrow discussion regarding differing interpretations of data, to make grandiose claims about 'academia' in general having a 'consensus' concerning '18 communist states' is telling. It is partisan BS, and a misuse of sources. As for Paul Siebert, he is not WP:RS, and accordingly anything he may or may not have written is of no relevance here. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:21, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Ah, so Paul Siebert is now also spreading partisan BS and misusing sources too for suggesting there is a consensus among genocide scholars concerning the 18 communist regimes. With regard to your "and your WP:OR-based insistence", you may want to look at this thread Wikipedia_talk:Neutral_point_of_view#NPOV_vs_NOR. That your reject Paul's view on this (which I agree with) shows very clearly here who is holding progress up here. --Nug (talk) 00:15, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

If you are genuinely incapable of understanding a simple statement like 'As for Paul Siebert, he is not WP:RS', and why I thus concluded that whatever he may or not have said isn't pertinent, I can only conclude that you lack the competence to usefully contribute to any discussion on this topic. Not that you have actually explained what the purpose of this thread is anyway. So unless and until you do, I am not going to engage in this exercise in time-wasting obstructionism any further. This is an article talk page. A place where actual (existing or potential) article content is discussed. Not a platform for facile point-scoring through endless misrepresentation of anything and everything you disagree with. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:33, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I am commenting here, because the topic is related to the discussion of source selection (the only topic that deserves attention now). The "18 regimes" was initially proposed by me during the DRN, and Nug is perfectly aware of that. He forgot to mention that "18 regimes" are not the regimes that perpetrated genopoliticides, but ALL regimes, and, as soon as we discuss Harff's approach, we must discuss her findings and her conclusions. She concluded, that no significant linkage between Communism and genopoliticide was found, for only four regimes out of 18 engaged in genopoliticides. Interestingly, this Harff's opinion (as well as views of Mann or Valentinio, or Werth or many other authors) is carefully attenuated in this perfectly neutral and well sourced article.

Furthermore, as soon as we started to discuss Harff, let me point out that this source is very old. It was published before the "archival revolution" in the USSR, and the data used by the authors are obsolete, Cold war era data. Thus, I checked her Table 1, and the first line is 1943-47 politicide in the USSR that killed 0.5 to 1.1 million repatriated Soviet nationals. I saw no mention of those deaths in modern sources that discuss victims of Soviet repressions. Wheatcroft, Ellman, Rosefielde, and other authors never tell about that. I decided to check if my conclusion was correct, and I found this source. It is the first in the list, it is peer-reviewed, it is cited by peers, it is telling specifically about repatriation of Soviet citizens, and it is recent. All of that makes it much more trustworthy. This source says:

"Although repatriation was unmistakably compulsory and arrest was frequent, declassified Soviet archives have demonstrated that Cold War-era works vastly exaggerated the scale of repression."

Moreover, the Gulag article cites a source (Zemskov V.N. On repatriation of Soviet citizens. Istoriya SSSR., 1990, No.4) that provides a detailed statistics of a fate of repatriated civilians: out of 4.1 million of repatriated citizens, only ~7% of repatriated citizens were imprisoned in Gulag, and others were sent home, conscripted etc. There is no information about a million of killed in some "politicide", which means that the first line in Harff's table 1 tells about a politicide that never was, which adds no credibility to other lines in her table 1. That means by using Harff as a source, we create a POV-fork: we tell a story of a politicide that never occurred, according to new sources. This is a very complex situation, because we cannot combine Harff and Zemskov in one narrative without a danger of OR. We have a very unusual situation when different groups of sources tell different stories and present different facts, but there is no dispute between them. We need to develop a general approach to this situation.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:51, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Paul's statement: "The "18 regimes" was initially proposed by me during the DRN, and Nug is perfectly aware of that. He forgot to mention that "18 regimes" are not the regimes that perpetrated genopoliticides, but ALL regimes" is a total misrepresentation of what I said. I've always maintained the "18 regimes" was the total set of ALL communist regimes considered by Wayman & Tago, and I never said they all perpetrated genopoliticides or democides. Please stop making stuff up about what people have said, it weakens your other arguments. --Nug (talk) 23:03, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: Did you actually read Nug's comments? They never said there were 18 communist regimes that committed such atrocities. They said communist regimes existed and there were 18 of them. and explicitly stated in this very section that: 18 consensus cases of communist regimes is the total set under investigation, ... 4 (out of 18) cases identified as geno-politicide... (editorialised by me). We must stop misrepresenting their arguments if we expect them to continue to participate in the discussion. Please strike your misrepresentations Vanteloop (talk) 00:00, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

"I think that is ample evidence that an academic consensus exists here that communist regimes existed and there were 18 of them" certainly sounded as though they were saying the Communist regimes—whether they committed mass killings or not—were 18 in total, when it is more correct to say Tago and Wayman analyzed 18 Communist regimes case studies, which is different. The consensus is referring that those are 18 states (out of all other nominal Communist states listed at Communist state) that may have engaged in mass killings, not that there were 18 Communist regimes in total (I believe to have gotten at least this correctly), which is what I thought this yet new opened thread was about. Either way, I would wait to hear Siebert's response before assuming bad faith; they may have been confused as me by the first statement that seemed to imply Communist regimes in total were 18. Davide King (talk) 00:18, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

He forgot to mention that "18 regimes" are not the regimes that perpetrated genopoliticides, but ALL regimes This is simply not true, regardless of how confused Paul tends to get. Nug mentioned that exact thing multiple times. I am not assuming bad faith, the reason why Paul misrepresented Nug's view is not what I am discussing. However whether his comments were a misrepresentation is beyond debate, and should be withdrawn. Vanteloop (talk) 00:28, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert:, can you give me a pointer to where you find: no significant linkage between Communism and genopoliticide was found? I do not see that in Harff&Gurr 1988, Harff 1992 or 2003. Are you taking this from Wayman&Tago where they discuss democide vs. genopoliticide? fiveby(zero) 13:19, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@Fiveby: The exact quote from W&T is:

"A third set of findings concerns which regime types matter. Either democracy or autocracy (which, again, are, very crudely speaking, the inverse of each other) will be significant in the democide prediction but never in the geno-politicide prediction. Hence, a supporter of Harff or of Valentino, skeptic of strong regime effects, using geno-politicide data, could show that the regime does not matter, whereas a supporter of Rum mel, using the democide data, would show that regime does matter." W&T, p. 11)

However, the problem is broader. Thus, as I demonstrated above, Harff used the data (Harff&Gurr, 1988, Table 1) where Soviet politicide of repatriants is listed. However, these data were taken from unspecified sources and they are obviously obsolete. Modern studies do not confirm that mass killing of repatriated Soviet citizens ever occurred (as I demonstrated above). Therefore, we have a problem: by using Harff's data without reservations, we implicitly tell a story about 1 million scale mass killing of repatriated Soviet cirtizens, which, according to modern data, never occurred. However, we cannot say that, because there is no dialogue between "genocide scholars" and experts of Soviet Russia history, and we have no source saying that Harff uses obsolete data. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:23, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert:, thanks. What i didn't like was where you stated she concluded where it was actually W&T that were making an observation. You should note p. 114 fn. 4 here from 2017: Harff & Gurr (1988) and many revisions through Harff (2003) em. added. But i think her general comments illustrate the broader issues you raise with carcass counting. fiveby(zero) 18:32, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@Fiveby: This is just a talk page discussion, so some degree of impreciseness during a preliminary discussion is forgivable. With regard to Harff's own conclusions, she couldn't make a conclusion about Communism for one simple reason: she is not thinking in this category. In that her article and elsewhere, she speaks about revolutionary politicides, and the main linkage between politicide and revolution is armed struggle (usually during a civil war). That is a quite reasonable and logical conclusion, but its scope is broader than the scope of this article. This article actually takes Harff's valid conclusions out of context, and it does not allow creation of a proper context for discussion of her obsolete data set. As a result, this author (as well as many other authors this article cites) are taken out of context, and undue weight is given to some their statements. This is a problem that can be solved only after a major rewrite of the article. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:52, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@Fiveby: WRT Harff-93, yes, that article differs in some aspects from her earlier article. The period of time it covers is different (1955-2001), which may partially affect her conclusions. However, similar to her previous article, she does not discuss Communism explicitly, and her table includes just four states (Afghanistan is a borderline case) that can be theoretically considered Communist.

She speaks about a role of "exclusionary ideology", which increases a risk of politicide by a factor of 2.5. However, according to her, Communist ideology as a whole does not fall into the "exclusionary ideology" category. Only "strict variants of Marxism-Leninism, as in the German Democratic Republic, Laos, Vietnam, PRC and North Korea" can be considered as exclusionary Marxist-Leninist versions. Interestingly, she doesn't name Cambodia or USSR. Furthermore, she does not seem to be an expert in. e.g., North Korea or Vietnam. Many experts consider Ho more a nationalist than Communist. Similarly, Lankov, a leading expert in North Korea, wrote that Kim Il Song made a sharp turn in domestic politics in 1956, and removed all Soviet Koreans from power, de facto banned any mention of Marx or Lenin, and converted NK society in a rigid autocratic Confutian regime.

Anyway, first, Harff is not writing about Communism specifically, so all her works are taken out of context. Although some of her data are unreliable of outdated, and some her assumptions about a Communist nature of some regimes are questionable, she still sees no significant correlation between Communism and mass killings, and she does not link the worst case of "communist mass killing" (i.e. Cambodian genocide) with Communism. Yes, she does not say that openly, but the reason is that she is not focused on Communism. Harff and many other authors are used in this article in such a way that their opinion is directly misinterpreted. We need to fix that. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:55, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@Fiveby: And, wrt Harff's note on p.114, I am pretty familiar with that source, I quoted it in the past several times. She writes that she is increasingly critical of country experts (for many reasons). However, before we start speak seriously about Harff and all her theorisings, we should determine a relative weight of her views, as well as the views of all "genocide scholars". That is easy to do when "genocide scholars" and "country experts" are in a dialogue, i.e. when these two groups cite each other and criticize each other. For example, two leading experts in mass killings and mass mortality in Stalin's USSR, Rosefielde and Weatcrift, had a long dispute, when they published a series of papers where they criticized each other's claims and conclusions, and finally they came to some consensus that was summarised by their colleagues. The "genocide scholars" vs "country experts" situation has nothing in common with that: the former interpret some facts found in the works authored by the latter, but the latter do not cite the works authored by the former. "Genocide scholars" criticise "country experts", but "country experts" just ignore "genocide scholars". In that situation, it is hard to tell a priory what should be a relative weight of the viewpoint of those who sees more commonality in the events in different countries and/or put them in a broader context and the relative weight of a viewpoint that stresses specific factors.

In this article, the first group of views was arbitrarily selected as a majority POV, but virtually no evidence was provided to support this approach. We need to develop a common approach to determine a relative weight of country-specific sources and the theories of "genocide scholars". Paul Siebert (talk) 04:03, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Paul, when you say but "country experts" just ignore "genocide scholars", have you considered their silence could be in fact a case of Qui tacet consentire videtur? --Nug (talk) 11:42, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

That is weird, since were you not the one complaining about Siebert taking your lack of response and silence that you conceded their arguments? Argument from silence and argument from ignorance can also be fallacies. Here, you appear to consider Karlsson a good source, and this disproves your claims because they totally ignored Harff and Valentino, and are dismissive towards Rummel; therefore, we have at least a case where a core scholar of this article was called out and not ignored. Contrary to what you once said, it is not me who has to make up his mind. Davide King (talk) 12:04, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@Nug: Yes, I considered that possibility. However, I don't find it realistic. Just think: Mendeleev became famous not because he just assembled all elements in one table, but because hus generalizations and conclusions appeared to be useful for explanation and prediction of properties on chemical elements. Similarly, Darwin's theory or Bohr's theory, and many other generalisations are valuable primarily because they are useful for experts in more specialized fields.

The overall scheme is as follows: (i) various experts in some narrow topics (group A scientists) produce some knowledge and find some facts; (ii) theorists (group B scientists) combine these facts together and propose some general rule; (iii) group A scientists start to use them and find them useful (which confirms validity of those theories and serves as an indication of their acceptance) or find them useless or wrong (thereby debunking them). That is how science works.

In our case, a situation is different. (i) Country experts study each specific country or a group of them, find facts and propose explanations; (ii) "genocide scholars" use these facts and propose some generalisations and different explanations; (iii) country experts ignore them. How can that be interpreted as any implicit acceptance? Paul Siebert (talk) 16:06, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

after your argument is addressed you "disappear" and magically re-appear in a different talk page section ... I am starting to get an impression that you are not interested in a productive dialogue ... @Paul Siebert: (editorialised by me) You accused Nug of this behaviour, and yet when we have pointed out that you misrepresented arguments twice you disappeared and popped up elsewhere. Vanteloop (talk) 14:32, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

References

@Paul Siebert:, oh i agree in with regard to Harff typology and limited application for the article. But her work isn't really used much right now: terminology section (which should go anyway), some comments on Rummel and general comments on genocide studies which are probably fine, and Most Marxist–Leninist regimes which came to power through protracted armed struggle... which is not really appropriate due to "protracted armed struggle". Unless i missed something, a bit of cleanup should fix concerns with Harff. But others have used the same dataset, i'm thinking of Fein 1993. That's probably a discussion for source analysis. fiveby(zero) 12:14, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

As noted by Siebert, Fein does not separate all mass killings in Communist states into one category as we do, and she does not include the most deadly events (famines) into the Communist genocide category. She wrote only about a small subset of events described in the article that we currently discuss, and incidentally considered Cambodia more fascist or totalitarian than Communist, as did Beirnan. I think it would be helpful if you could say how you think the article should be structured, for I think Fein and Harff are much more appropriate for B than A or C, though I still wonder why we should treat Communism as a new main topic when genocide scholars discuss it and treat it as a subtopic within the broader context of general genocides and mass killings, and their possible causes and patterns. Davide King (talk) 12:23, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

My thinking as to sources is probably more fine-grained than yours or Paul's, with more emphasis on what authors state and shying away from larger interpretations. I was just commenting that Fein used Harff's dataset and, taking a different perspective, did comment on Communism. As far as article structure, i am not sure what exactly the B content will look like. I'd suggest an extended lead section(s), introducing concepts and arguments that will appear later in the article, but most important refusing any content that pushes a conclusion. Nothing that needs quoted, nothing that requires attribution, simply introduction for the reader. A list by country that is broader than the current sections, not focused merely on numbers (A?). Last the broader arguments (B?), probably organized somewhat chronologically to emphasize historiography and the arguments of authors rather than editors. fiveby(zero) 16:30, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

See my full response here. Davide King (talk) 18:02, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

That quote does not support your assertion that 'she concludes no significant linkage between Communism and genopoliticide was found'. To try to pass that off as fact is another example of you misinterpreting the statements of others. It is clear W&T saying a supporter of hers could make that argument is not evidence that is what she concludes, that is your OR. Unfortunately this has become a trend in your flawed source analysis process. Vanteloop (talk) 22:00, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

As I wrote here, Siebert can explain better many of my own thoughts, so I am going to quote them in regards to grouping: "For example, many authors argue that it is fundamentally incorrect to combine Stalinist repressions and Cambodian genocides in a single category."1 Indeed, even genocide scholars disagree among themselves (e.g. Jones discussing Stalin and Mao together, and Pol Pot separately, which makes more sense) and lack consensus on terminology, timeframe, etc. (Weiss-Wendt 2008, p. 42), so how are we supposed to write a NPOV article if we not only present those sources as the majority view on Communism but even do not present them correctly? This is our issue in regards to grouping (e.g. treating unrelated events by majority of sources as related by cherry picking a few minority sources, which are more nuanced that we make them appear to be here), this is what I believe Aquillion, TFD, Siebert, and I have disputed and criticized as OR/SYNTH, not that Communist regimes are not a thing, as it is absurdly made appear here.

This is the same reason why Mass killings under capitalist regimes was deleted and Mass killings under fascist regimes does not exist either; just because some events happened under nominally capitalist, Communist, and fascist regimes, it does not mean that all the events are related to each other, if they are not discussed as such by majority of reliable sources. Genocide of indigenous peoples is in fact a good example on how to write such article; the problem is that the are no sufficient (majority) sources about the topic as a whole for capitalism, Communism, or fascism. There are not only a bunch of articles and books written specifically about "Genocides of indigenous peoples" (compare this with "Communist mass killings" or "Mass killings under communist regimes"; "Mass killings" "communist regimes" actually proves what Siebert and I have been saying all along, namely that the events are discussed within their country context, not Communism as a whole as a single phenomenon) but we even have "a critical bibliographic review".

Do you now better understand how C is a mirage, and B is the better option?

Notes

1. If majority of sources actually supported the groping or Communism as a whole as a single phenomenon, there would be no issue and we would not even be discussing this; the issue is that none of the several few sources that do are either experts on Communism (Rummel, Valentino) or are controversial (Courtois, Rummel), and at best represent a minority view. We cannot write a NPOV article if we treat the minority viewpoint as the majority view through a flawed structure, can't we? General sources for notability are also not useful because a OR/SYNTH article clearly is not notable precisely because we have synthetized it, especially if such criteria is used in support of the status quo, as it appears to be the case; indeed, TFD, Siebert, and I have supported 'Deletion' in the latest AfD but in fact we support 'Rewrite' around the same topic but NPOV — we mainly disagree about how to achieve this but we generally agree on this article's many issues. Another significant issue is that this article, and its supporters, make no difference between mass killings, excess deaths, and demographic losses, which majority of sources actually do because they are writing in the proper context, not within the "global Communist death toll" framework. B should get rid of this. Davide King (talk) 05:21, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Off topic

AndyTheGrump, your participation is welcome at WP:MKUCRSA, which you may find more useful, fruitful, and interesting than here. In particular, source analysis, as you did above, is very much needed and your help would be much appreciated, as it would give everyone a breath of fresh air. Davide King (talk) 15:58, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I have no intention in participating in any discussion of this topic anywhere but on this talk page, or possibly at a relevant noticeboard (e.g. WP:RSN etc if required). As I have already made clear, I consider actions taken by some individuals (on both sides of the dispute) to assume control of the article by negotiating content amongst themselves in a 'dispute resolution' process that has only included a small minority of those wishing to see the issues with this article rectified to be improper. The DR thread should have been shut down once it became apparent that significant input regarding the future of this article was going to come from elsewhere. Instead, it has become a talking-shop, serving no useful purpose since nothing decided there can in any way be even remotely binding on article content. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:46, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I can certainly understand and respect that, I only hope that you participate here because you raised interesting points and have been a breath of fresh air. If I may, do you think what I wrote here is factual or a decent summary? Do you agree that Communism is not discussed as a new main topic but as a subtopic (e.g. Communist regimes should be discussed in a general article about mass killings, as is done by majority of the literature), and that the only notable main topic in this regards is either the one you proposed (e.g. debate) and/or the "victims of communism" (e.g. the emphasis is on communism, not Communist regimes)1 anti-communist narrative (e.g. example as summarized by Neumayer 2018 in an attempt to criminalize communism as a whole? The linked example is a genuine attempt to fix this article.

Notes

1. To remain on topic, no one is the denying that Communist regimes are a thing but I think Siebert point in comparison to the United States still stands (the United States is a clear entity that Communism is not). Even ignoring those, the article should be about Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot because by Communist mass killings and Communist regimes, they mean those three Communist leaders. Davide King (talk) 16:56, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

2. There have certainly been more than 18 nominally Communist regimes, but 18 Communist regimes are possible case studies for mass killings, and only 4 of them (Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, and which is the other?) fit the geno-politicide criteria. I think this latter criteria is more important and accepted by sources because democide is so broad that all states have engaged in it. Davide King (talk) 17:02, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

In this thread, I am responding to Nug's claims regarding what I consider to be an entirely undue interpretation of one specific source. That is all I intend to discuss here. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:14, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Can a consensus be reached on this article, for anything?

Multiple discussions occurring at the same time, on this talkpage. I'd be surprised if there's consensus reached for anything. GoodDay (talk) 01:08, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I think that the RFC, and supporting it's result would provide a foundation/ starting point. North8000 (talk) 01:43, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, this is the purpose of the RfC. It invites the opinions of uninvolved editors and will be closed with a decision. Vanteloop (talk) 01:50, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree. An article called Colonial genocide has potential because if I search the term in Google books, I immediately find books such as Colonialism and Genocide, Debates on Colonial Genocide in the 21st Century, Entanglements of Modernity, Colonialism and Genocide and Civilian-Driven Violence and the Genocide of Indigenous Peoples in Settler Societies.[3] When I search "mass killings under communist regimes," I get nothing. The only hits found in reliable sources are articles about this article. The only other source that uses this term is the neo-Nazi wiki Metapedia

That's why there are neutrality and no OR policies. Because if we leave it to editors to create their own topics, there can never be consensus.

TFD (talk) 02:41, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I tend to agree. I have realised that the whole "Estimates" section contains figure that are either more that 30 years old or were taken from unknown sources. Why only those sources are there? Because there is NO fresh sources on that topic. If newer sources from peer-reviewed publications were available, they would already be added. That is a good argument in support of the thesis that the whole topic is a fringe/minority view.

The only exception is two sources authored by country experts. Why those experts were selected? Because, unlike other country experts, they wrote about more than one communist country (although still not about "Communism in general"). In reality, we have tons of sources about human life loss in each separate case, but they are not about "Communism in general", and are not suitable for "Estimates" in this format.

Similarly, we have tons of sources about causes of each separate mass killing/mass mortality event, but the "Causes" section contains just few relevant sources, and others are directly misinterpreted or falsified (thus, one source that was published in 1980s ostensibly says about Goldhagen, who published his first book in 1990s. Why these falsifications? Because the sources that directly link Communist ideology with mass killings are virtually absent.

And so on, and so forth.

In connection to that, if propose the following. Lets collect good quality recent sources about specific events at WP:MKUCRSA and summarise what they say. That will be a good demonstration of a relative weight of each POV. Paul Siebert (talk) 03:11, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

When in doubt, WP:NUKEITTOHELL. ––FormalDude ^talk 03:43, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, but that is open to gaming by civil POV pushers, by always moving the goal posts, constantly digressing off into multiple tangents, walls of text, keep repeating the same points even though they have been refuted multiple times in the past, etc, etc, so that it appears that consensus can never be achieved. --Nug (talk) 04:03, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Please stop personal attacks against neutral editors. It is projection: those are the tactics you and your colleagues used in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list. TFD (talk) 04:15, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Actually, I have to agree. I find it very difficult to conduct a discussion with you Nug. Your arguments are frequently directed at petty details, you ignore major point of your opponent's argument, and after your argument is addressed you "disappear" and magically re-appear in a different talk page section with the same argument as if it had never been addressed. I am starting to get an impression that you are not interested in a productive dialogue, and your goal is by filibustering preserve the current terribly POV content of this article by any possible means. I would be happy if subsequent course of events demonstrated that I was wrong. In connection to that, please, provide rational and reasonable counter-arguments to my previous arguments, and, please, explain your own approach to source identification. We need to continue our source analysis. Paul Siebert (talk) 04:33, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I find WP:GASLIGHTING can also be an issue to contend with. I don't know Paul, you must be retired that you can devote so much time here, I actually have other commitments in real life, so if I "disappear" it usually means I'm either working or sleeping, eating, going to the cinema, etc. The page becomes so rapidly bloated in the mean time it is often difficult to find the thread. --Nug (talk) 04:46, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

That is fun. For more than 12 years you are building hypotheses on who I am, and what I am doing. No, I am not retired, and I am not planning to.

Nug, this is not an argument. If you have no time to answer, don't do that. However, it seems that you have no time to answer my questions, but you have enough time to conduct other discussions and/or raise the same arguments as if they have never been debunked. That doesn't look a fair game.

Actually, I proposed a very simple and transparent thing: let's develop common rule for selection and evaluation of sources. That is a totally fair game: we develop commonly acceptable rules, and then we analyse what the sources, which we found using these rules, tell. I gave some initial example of how this procedure may work, and what I got in responce? Some petty criticism, and a full rejection of this approach under a totally artificial pretext. And you made no attempt to make any counter-proposal.

Do you realise that we cannot move forward if we have no agreement on the procedure of source selection? Paul Siebert (talk) 04:59, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you mean the Policies and Guidelines related to reliable sources and due weight? We don’t have to re-invent the wheel here for a particular article—the Wikipedia community already has established guidance for this sort of thing. If you want to try to gain a community consensus to modify the reliable sources guideline or the NPOV policy, I don’t see why you couldn’t try to do so, but I do not think that his would be a good use of anybody’s time if the intended application is to a single article. — Mhawk10 (talk) 13:25, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, I demonstrated that some sources (e.g. Rummel) express minority or insignificant minority view and are outdated. Do you have any counter-arguments? Paul Siebert (talk) 15:28, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Nug, you are correct. I have mentioned to Paul Siebert multiple times that their behaviour requires a heavy dose of good faith to intepret as constructive. I have thrice (or more?) asked this user to read WP:SATISFY to correct their behaviour, because of their reasoning such as this If a user abstains from further participation in a discussion, that means they either accepted the arguments, or they lost interest to the discussion. When dismissing other users arguments out of hand and fillibustering in multiple sections causes good-faith editors to disengage with them , they think they have 'won'. This is evidenced by their behaviour removing entire sections of this article above explicit objections of 3+ users that were still ongoing. The user is clearly knowledgeable and committed on this subject, so I warmly hope they correct their behaviour and join us in trying to work constructively in a consensus building process. Vanteloop (talk) 11:37, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Vanteloop: WP:SATISFY is just an essay, which have no official status. In contrast, WP:NPA is our policy, and it define personal attacks as accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. You continue to comment on my behaviour, and your comments are just declarations. Please, stop it. If you continue, I may report you. Paul Siebert (talk) 15:23, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I noticed that you had a time to post this baseless accusation, but you had no time to respond to my detailed responces to your question.

• At 01:58, 24 December 2021 (UTC), you claimed that I am "the one who derailed the discussion because you were unable to answer this simple constructive criticism."
• At 02:02, 24 December 2021 (UTC I pointed your attention at the fact that my detailed answer was posted at 01:09, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I see no response to this my post, but, instead, you continue your baseless accusations. I expect you to to be very polite and very careful in your responces in future, otherwise I am going to consults with admins if this your behaviour constitutes a gaslighting and filibustering tactics. Paul Siebert (talk) 15:35, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Furthermore, to be clear your accusation my request for ciations was 'disruptive' and then refusal to strike constitutes a clear assumption of bad faith, I suggest you take this second opportunity to clarify otherwise This comment remains unanswered, and your accusation of bad faith still stands, which has a chilling effect on any constructive discussion here and I dont see how any editor can reasonably be expected to engage when merely asking for evidence is met with the instant accusation of bad faith. I suggest you be careful your reports do not boomerang as they have previously. I have posted two notices on your talk page about your behaviour, and you have been publicly chastised by a neutral moderator - and yet you continue, I'm sure the admins will take note of that. Vanteloop (talk) 16:08, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I have answered to that post, although I am not sure I completely understand it. And, yes, when some users presents a result of their source analysis, which was done in accordance with WP:NPOV, to accuse that of original research is a disruptive behaviour. Paul Siebert (talk) 16:47, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

You have now answered with 'I don't understand' to that post. I await your apology now I have explained, and then we can have a good faith discussion. Vanteloop (talk) 17:01, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I already answered, and I owe no apology to you. Please, stop it. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:19, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

This was also not very kind either. We have strong opinions and disagreement, I get it, but c'mon ... And I actually agree with you (Nug) that using country experts for A and genocide scholars for B may be OR/SYNTH, like I believe TFD also noted, but you deny that the structure itself is not problematic at all (Siebert is totally correct on this), which is even worse considering that if the only way to have a NPOV article is to add further OR/SYNTH, it is neither Siebert's nor mine fault but your insistence on such flawed structure. Then acting as though the fault is ours, without making no self-criticism, for not having consensus, despite what the AfD and the DSN said, is totally disingenuous. Indeed FormalDude, if we can not get any consensus even after this RfC, that may be the only way. Contrary to one discredited argument of the AfD, no information is actually going to be lost, and at this point it is better to reduce it to a stub than have serious NPOV and OR/SYNTH violations, which may act as citogenesis, stand for another decade. Davide King (talk) 15:51, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Nug, aren't you a photographer? TFD (talk) 06:16, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

TFD, you ought to try searching for "democides within communist regimes" or "excess mortality under communist regimes" on Google scholars which I think is a more appropriate article title than "mass killings". MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 12:21, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

The only google search results for those terms is this talk page and the one for GULAG.[4][5] TFD (talk) 14:46, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

We already have Democide for that (democide is Rummel's creation — Rummel is mainstream mainly for the democratic peace theory, not on Communism), and there are not sufficient scholarly sources about excess mortality under Communism as a whole (Courtois, Rummel, and others make no separation between excess deaths and mass killings, hence their much higher estimates and for Rummel also due to unreliability and methodology), only by separate countries (e.g. Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin). Just because the Soviet Union was a Communist state, it does not mean this justifies making an excess mortality article about Communism as a whole; it would be OR/SYNTH unless a majority of scholarly sources do it for us. Unless there are academic studies and books fully dedicated to Communism as a whole (e.g. not just Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot), and not mere chapters in works about genocide and mass killing in general, they should be discussed in this context; hence, we should expand Mass killing or have a separate article about mass killings without limiting it to Communism because that is what majority of scholarly sources do, otherwise we are just cherry picking stuff from such works about Communism, totally ignoring the context. Davide King (talk) 16:04, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Through using the search term "communist genocide" on google scholar, I was able to find this book which tries to make a direct connection between communism and genocide in Romania. Maybe this book could be used to expand the currently existing section about romania in the article. X-Editor (talk) 02:15, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

That is a book written by a militantly anti-communist construction engineer (part of the old Romanian aristocracy most hardly hit communist party rule) who relies primarily on personal memories and discussion the author claims to have had, citing almost no scholarly reference. The term genocide is used extremely liberally and includes, in the author's view: capture of POW, war reparations, land reform, denazification, education reform, laicization of the state, urbanization, all forms of art during the period, local campaign to prevent the execution of the Rosenbergs, etc. In short, everything which hurt the privileged position of the old Romanian aristocracy is genocide for this engineer.Anonimu (talk) 09:27, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

For the record, I've seen many items posted, including posted as being facts which I don't agree with. Including ones that seem to go against/ negate / deprecate possible outcomes of the RFC. Lack of a response by me does not mean that I agree with them. It means that IMHO the next step here is to complete the RFC and support the result of the process, even if it against my opinion. IMO a starting point for any progress here will be to decide the scope of the article(s) which is what the RFC is doing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by North8000 (talk • contribs) 15:06, 24 December 2021 (UTC)North8000 (talk) 19:11, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

TBH, if this article is ever nominated for deletion 'again'? I think I'll be going with deletion. It's gonna take years for this article to reach a status that everyone agrees with. Just too many chefs in the kitchen. GoodDay (talk) 16:47, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Indeed GoodDay, that was one of my reasons for !deletion; I did not dispute that the topic was notable (I even have a sandbox about the proposed same topic but NPOV and secondary coverage about the proponents) but I did dispute that the current article is OR/SYNTH and thus not notable, and have so serious NPOV violations that we have tried to fix for over a decade, that keeping it as it is, it is not only unhelpful but even harmful for citogenesis. I believe that if rather than being canvassed through right-wing media, we got much more users who knew how Wikipedia works and were aware of the article's history and the decades-long discussions, perhaps they would have !voted differently and we would not be here to open new threads every day without actually doing anything to fix the article as it stands. It would be better to delete it, have a draft, and only when we finally get some consensus and there are no longer significant OR/SYNTH and NPOV issues that it may be created again. Davide King (talk) 21:51, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, if the article hasn't reached consensus by the time it's (if it is) re-nominated for deletion? I'll be voting for deletion or at least putting the article in Draft status. GoodDay (talk) 22:04, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Gerlach - red and white terror

[6] < This addition is not in any way related to topic of the section, which is about whether political ideology may have been one of the causes for mass killings in communist regimes. Simply because some author mentioned "red terror" somewhere doesn't automatically mean that everything they wrote is automatically relevant here, text needs to fit to the actual topic under discussion.--Staberinde (talk) 13:17, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Well yes, if Wikipedia contributors create restrictive section topics built around the narrow confines of discourse constructed by those wishing to make sweeping claims about a correlation between 'communism' and 'mass killing', and to inflate the figures beyond anything modern mainstream historiography can support, anything that anyone else has to say on the subject won't fit with an 'actual topic under discussion'. Actual commentary from mainstream academic sources isn't however constrained by such discourse though, and accordingly, per WP:NPOV, neither should a Wikipedia article be. Section titles should be built around sources, not around contributors' personal preferences. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:27, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

If you want to suggest changes to article structure, reorganizing sections or whatnot, then you are free to do so. It doesn't change the fact that this addition isn't related to ideology in any way.--Staberinde (talk) 14:05, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

The purpose of the latest RfC above is to discuss changes to article structure. If it goes the way I'd like it to (it seems to be, as of now), the issue should be resolved, since the article structure will no longer be built around a narrow perspective, and will instead open itself up to the broader mainstream academic discourse that the structure presently excludes. Meanwhile, I repeat that per WP:NPOV, if relevant and properly sourced content is being excluded from articles because of section topic titles, the problem is with the section titles, not the content. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:20, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

And further to this, having looked online to see what Gerlach is saying, I have to suggest that any assertion that he isn't discussing 'ideology' is simply false. I don't have access to the full text, but from what I can see, it is obvious that he is discussing ideology - both that of the communists, and of the anti-communists who opposed them. He is discussing 'red terror' in a context where an 'anti-communist' ideology persecuted not just actual communists, but those it chose to label as such, in pursuit of a climate of fear. He is putting 'red terror' in context, because that is what historians do. Or should do. What Wikipedia should be doing too. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:48, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

But the placement takes Gerlach out of context. The paragraph and section are about mass killings under communist regimes, the preceding sentence a comparison to anti-communist deaths "caused by capitalism". Gerlach's comparison is red/white terror during social upheaval in capitalist countries. You honestly don't see "when both sides engaged in terror" and red/white as problematic due to the placement? fiveby(zero) 16:43, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

If Gerlach is 'out of context', it is because the article is structured in a manner to exclude his perspective on the topic. Indeed, it is structured to exclude anything that actually provides the sort of discussion of the broader historical context to individual events that mainstream academia seems to consider necessary. The article as it currently stands is built around a single, narrow perspective - one promoting all-encompassing generalisations about 'communism' and 'mass killing' that represents only a small subsection of the material on the events under question. Which is why, per WP:NPOV, any article must instead be built around a the broader discussion found within relevant academic disciplines. An article presenting a debate as a debate, rather than as a platform promoting a single, polemical, perspective which excludes the entirely on-topic views of Gerlach and others. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:49, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

That's a new one: It is the article's fault that adding out of context text looks like WP:COATRACKing. BTW, the article isn't about 'communism' and 'mass killing', it is about 'communist regimes' and 'mass killing'. --Nug (talk) 21:39, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Are you actually capable of responding to comments you don't like without misrepresenting them? AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:52, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump:, please look at the preceding sentence: Opponents of this hypothesis, including those on the political left, state that these killings were aberrations caused by specific authoritarian regimes, and not caused by communism itself, and point to mass deaths in wars that they claim were caused by capitalism and anti-communism as a counterpoint to those killings. citing Anti-Communism and the Hundreds of Millions of Victims of Capitalism. Following that with "when both sides engaged in terror" is implying something about the prior sentence which Gerlach doesn't speak to. Some observations concerning anti-communist violence are probably appropriate for the article, but this is certainly misplaced and a misrepresentation of the source. fiveby(zero) 13:24, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Whatever results this latest RfC will or will not achieve can not be predicted at this point, and even if any restructuring will happen it won't happen within the next few weeks anyway. Before such hypothetical future changes happen, the article should remain coherent in its current form. It really is that simple. Now if Gerlach does discuss ideological aspects in his work, then it is quite possible there could be something there that is worth including in ideology section right now. But then I have to ask is why isn't anything relevant actually proposed, and instead people are trying to retain statement that has no connection to ideology?--Staberinde (talk) 15:58, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

He clearly does consider these deaths from white terror to be included "under the banner of anti-communism" (See here), which is relevant to the section and a good follow up to the preceding sentences which discuss "mass deaths in wars that they claim were caused by anti-communism and capitalism as a counterpoint to those killings". He includes both state and non-state actors in this violence, who were, interestingly enough given the controversy surrounding this article, "often mobilized by baseless or hugely exaggerated atrocity propaganda." One option is to move this material to the section on Red Terror, which interestingly enough completely omits any mention of the white terror which accompanied it, demonstrating how bad this article is at giving appropriate and balanced historical context to these events. A lay reader could easily come away with the impression that the Bolsheviks alone practiced terror during the Russian Civil War, given how many people are directed to this article from far-right websites. There is also the glaring omission that, loosely connected to the issue of white terror, the Bolsheviks had a strong fear of counter-revolution and white terror, something that James Harris discusses in his work. That this fear of counter-revolution was a significant motivator for the state violence practiced by the Bolsheviks and especially the Stalinist regime is something that should be mentioned in the article, and glancing over the body I don't see it referenced anywhere.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 17:11, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Gerlach may discuss many different things in that book. All that doesn't matter here, because I am looking at the concrete text that was added into "Proposed causes" section of this article, and that text simply does not discuss proposed causes for mass killings in communist regimes in any way.--Staberinde (talk) 20:42, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Staberinde, that is the problem of this whole article and its current structure — that we are forced to follow the structure of Courtois, Rummel, and few others who wrote about Communism as a whole or a single phenomenon is absurd and clearly violates NPOV. We cannot write an article if such views are a minority view, and if the majority views (country experts and specialists) are not allowed because they do not write in such context, can't we? As already mentioned by C.J. Griffin, I agree that sentence may be better served for the section about the Red Terror but it does highlight the fact that we cannot have a NPOV article if the only proposed causes must be within such a context, when majority of scholars discuss each event separately or by country, and comparative analysis and general studies are clearly the minority. Davide King (talk) 21:38, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

This argument does not make sense, it is like saying articles on the comparative analysis of religions are POVFORKS of single religion articles because since there are 100 times more scholars that discuss each religion separately than there are comparative religion scholars discussing comparative religion, then the views of comparative religion scholars are a minority viewpoint. NPOV doesn't work like that, it seeks the majority and minority viewpoints within the branch of comparative religion scholarship itself, not across the different branches of comparative religion and single religion scholarship. --Nug (talk) 23:59, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

No, it is your argument that makes no sense. It is quite ok to have an article about a comparative analysis of religions, provided that that article is devoted to the analysis itself. However, if such an article describes, e.g. Christianity in a totally different way than the Christianity article does, that is not acceptable. Incidentally, that is exactly what this article is doing. Paul Siebert (talk) 02:28, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Can you please stop making such strawman? Because that is clearly not what I said. Also you should stop making such unwarranted comparisons, as you did for World War II. Comparative religion is a pretty established topic, so much so that we even have a full article about it. Comparative communism is not as established and mass killing is not the results I get, nor is their focus on them to establish it is a new, separate topic; there are comparisons between the Italian and French parties, and there may be comparisons between some Communist regimes, but they are compared based on society, not on mass killings, and those few who do are not comparative scholars of Communism but of genocide, and they do not discuss Communism as a whole like Courtois or Rummel but mainly limit themselves to Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot (universally recognized cases).

The Oxford Handbook of Communism has chapters about "Sport under Communism" and "Religion under Communism" but no "Mass killings under Communism" or "Communist death toll" chapters; Communist terror, revolutions, and violence, apart from being much more nuanced than assumed, are in fact in support of B, as I have always argued. I am actually curious about discussing as a whole, and I am very much interested in comparative Communism; too bad that you limit all this to mass killings and the Communist death toll, which is so reductive.

P.S. Thanks to Siebert for their response (I did write this before their response but I was not sure whether to post it). Now can Nug please let Staberinde the chance reply to my post? I already knew Nug would disagree with what I wrote. Davide King (talk) 05:07, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

There are fairly obvious problems in trying to cram that specific Gerlach sentence into Red Terror section too. Gerlach comments about red and white terror in an extremely broad sense, including very wide range of events from Paris Commune to Indonesia. This article's Red Terror section is very clearly about Red Terror in Russia only. Now one could try to create a more general Red Terror section, to cover all the various red terror's like Bela Kun's Hungary, Finnish Civil War and whatnot, and in such section that sentence could start making some sense, but I am fairly sceptical about such course of action. As for the more general question about whether the separate country sections should go more into detail about local causes and circumstances, that could be worthy of consideration. It would probably increase article size quite substantially though.--Staberinde (talk) 16:16, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I think you gave very fair comments. The problem is that the topic is so complex that to have a NPOV article about it we would indeed need to do that but we obviously cannot do that for the exact same reason you outlined. I actually agree with you but I think you should consider Gerlach in the context of this article, which has gotten the structure totally wrong and reversed to represent minority views as majority and vice versa. I want you to seriously consider whether writing a NPOV article about it is even possible at this point, and under the current seriously flawed structure. Gerlach is clearly the least of the problems. Davide King (talk) 22:46, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Cause vs enabler, ideology vs regime

A few structural observations. The conversation seems to focus on whether or not the ideology is a cause of the killings. IMO this structural double-narrowing is not a good thing and might cause the reality to get missed.

First, this article is about mass killings under regimes that have existed. It's quite plausible that factors that have gone along with those regimes (totalitarian government, creation of a need to completely change the public to conform, or mis-usability of that need to justify bad actions not necessarily driven by it.) have served as enablers of mass killings. Next, "cause" is a subjective word which can include or exclude enabling factors. So, IMO:

1. Consider enabling factors that have occurred due to being communist regimes
2. Realize that the word "cause" can exclude important enabling factors. E.G. Those enabling factors may be the difference of what allowed a bad person to kill their opposition. Some might call those enabling factors a "cause", others would not.
3. Note that this is about killings under regimes that have existed or do exist, not directly about about whether an ideology causes killings.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:17, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@North8000: Thank you for your comments, all of that seems mostly correct. However, so far, the goal is to check each source for potential V and SYNTH problems: we are discussing each paragraph in this section, and we already removed some sources that do not support the article's text, and that are used in a manner prohibited by NOR. After we finish this work, it will result in a more clean text, which will be subjected to further analysis and modification. I expect that by that time the RfC will come to some logical end (most likely, to "B" or "C"), and in that case all arguments presented by you will be very instrumental. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:28, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

And one important consideration is missing in your post: as a good review by Karlsson says, most authors prefer to focus on a discussion of specific causes for each regime. That is not only a demonstration of the thesis that they see not much commonality between them, but it also reflects the fact that our knowledge about each regime is evolving in different conditions. Thus, for the USSR, we must always keep in mind the "archival revolution" of 1990s, which revolutionized our knowledge about that regime, and lead to a formation of two new schools of thought (revisionist and post-revisionist), which almost replaced the old (and now obsolete) Cold War era school. Nothing of that kind happened in, e.g. Cambodia: the study of that regime was greatly facilitated by the fact that it was replaced by Vietnam, who took all necessary steps to reveal all facts and details of the genocide that was perpetrated by Khmer Rouge (that was a unique case when the crimes of that regime were stopped and publicly condemned by another Communist regime, whereas Western society initially accepted that information skeptically). As a result, in a Cambodia case, all important information was available to scholars since 1980, and no significant evolution of mainstream views on that tragedy occurred in last 40 years. A situation with China is different from both USSR and Cambodia. All of that contributes to the modern trend to discuss Communist regimes separately, and that is an additional argument for making more stress on country-specific studies, which should be discussed first, and then, in a small section, attempts to make some generalizations should be discussed and critically analyzed. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:50, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Certainly structure B will not facilitate that. As laudable as Vietnam's intervention in Cambodia is, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam also had it's own episodes of mass killings. Also many author have proposed common "enabling factors" (to use North8000's terminology), Rummel, Harff, Finlay, Valentino and Bellamy, to name a few. To focus on country specific factors would exclude their scholarship in its entirety. --Nug (talk) 19:02, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

What source authored by Harff discusses "communist politicide" as a separate topic?

What concretely Finlay writes about communist "mass killing", communist genocide, Communist violence? Note, the only source that seems relevant is supplemented by a disclaimer (This paper is produced as part of the Contentions and Transitions programme at Geary; however the views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Geary Institute. All errors and omissions remain those of the author) that indicates that this source was not peer-reviewed.

What exactly Valentino says in his chapter devoted to a comparative analysis of murderous and non-murderous Communist regimes?

What exactly Bellamy says about common factors (except that those mass killings were perpetrated by one Cold war camp)? Paul Siebert (talk) 21:00, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

You tell me Paul, which subsections should their views go into: "Ideology", "Political systems" or "Leaders"? --Nug (talk) 21:50, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't think the names of this subsections are correct. I am going to change them after we finish cleaning SYNTH/POV.

Indeed, a section devoted to "Enabling factors" is supposed to discuss "Common enabling factors", otherwise it is unclear why this section is separated from the sections that discuss each concrete regime. Therefore, "Political system" is supposed to contain a discussion of commonalities in political systems of each regime that lead to mass killings. Clearly, Valentino, whose main claim is that regime type does not matter, does not fit into this scheme. Harff does noyt fit either, for she found no correlation between politicide and regime type. A huge number of country-specific sources do not fit this section either.

Similarly, what is "Leaders" section supposed to discuss? Commonalities between Pol Pot's and Stalin's personality? Do you really believe it is a mainstream topic?

Clearly, the section with this structure must be moved to the bottom and made 3-5 times shorter, for an overwhelming majority of sources discuss concrete regimes (and their political system), concrete leaders, concrete ideologies, and they do that in a context of concrete regimes, not "communist regimes in general". Paul Siebert (talk) 23:21, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

When I spoke about moving the section to the bottom, I meant the C-version. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:22, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@North8000:, you are indeed correct. That's why structure C where the regimes are listed with an overview of the episodes are given is necessary to give context and make clear to the reader that the article is about mass killings under regimes rather than under ideologies that structure B would imply. Perhaps the section title "Proposed causes" is somewhat clumsy and a better section name is needed, but it current contains three subsections on the enablers, being "Ideology", "Political systems" and "Leaders", which isn't an exhaustive list and other enabling factors could be added as well. --Nug (talk) 18:55, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

"Enabling factors" is an improvement, thank you.

However, it does not resolve the issue, because the section discusses common enabling factors, whereas some specific enabling factors were identified for each event in each regime. We need to carefully analyze a representative set of sources (as NPOV requires) to establish a relative weight of common and specific enabling factors. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:46, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Thankyou for making the case for article structure C, the article currently covers common factors but we also need to have sections on the specific regimes to mention the regime specific factors as well. --Nug (talk) 21:55, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

In contrast to you, I am neutral in the RfC discussion, I am just explaining what each version (A to D) are supposed to talk about. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:12, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Valentino does not classify Vietnam, or Afghanistan and Angola, as Communist mass killings but as counterguerilla and (sub-state/insurgent) terrorist mass killings; it is OR/SYNTH that just because they were nominally Communist, then they must be grouped together. Davide King (talk) 11:15, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Valentino does classify mass killings by North Vietnam and the subsequent takeover of South Vietnam by the north as a communist mass killing, and the killings of civilians by the American military during the Vietnam War as a counter-guerrilla mass killing, but you are right about Valentino's classification of Afghanistan and Angola. However Rummel does lists Afghanistan and Angola as a communist mass killing. --Nug (talk) 18:58, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I assume you are referring to this: "Valentino attributes 80,000–200,000 deaths to 'communist mass killings' in North and South Vietnam." (Valentino 2004, p. 75) However, it is not in the chapter about "Communist mass killings", and Valentino actually includes it as one of "possible cases" at p. 75; again, I am clearly distinguishing between universally recognized cases and possible cases, so I stand correct by this, while you are right that Valentino considers it a "[possible] Communist mass killing" case. So scholars disagree, why I am not surprised? Do you at least now see and better understand why I think the grouping as a fact or uncontroversial is problematic? It is OR/SYNTH that just because a mass killing happened under a nominally Communist regimes, or because Rummel (who seemed to apply a proto-"generic Communism") included Angola and Afghanistan, while Valentino (for whom regime types are not as important) did not, they must be grouped together as if it is a fact or uncontroversial when scholars disagree. As I said many times, if this article only covered Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, with just a short paragraph about other states and possible cases, and other relevant events listed through 'See also' links (including the background context) or passing mentions, that would already be a small improvement about the section dedicated to states. Davide King (talk) 05:40, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

• Sure, causes and enabling factors are not the same. However, as currently described in this section, the regimes (and the ideology of these regimes) were causes of the political repressions, not just enabling factors. So, no. Please do not make this change without consensus.My very best wishes (talk) 16:38, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Not sure if other's posts may have suggested a change, but the operative point of my OP was just to avoid two types of narrowing of the discussion that may be / have been happening. North8000 (talk) 17:26, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

@My very best wishes:@North8000: Maybe a possible compromise: "Proposed causes and enabling factors" to capture the full gamut of potential reasons? --Nug (talk) 18:26, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, "Causes and enabling factors" would be fine (I would exclude "proposed" as excessive). My very best wishes (talk) 18:58, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not in deep enough here to propose specifics like that. I was more trying to a suggestion for the discussion which seemed to overly narrowing to the question: "does the ideology cause mass killings?". Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:46, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

There is a reason why "proposed" preceded the word "causes", by removing it you unintentionally added another WP:SYNTH into the article. The word "proposed" was there to highlight that what is written under said section is opinionated and subjective rather than something that is fully factual and documented by tertiary sources. I am fine so long it is Proposed causes and enabling factors or Proposed enabling factors. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 19:07, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Good point. --Nug (talk) 19:26, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

To the contrary, "proposed" is editorializing, an attempt by a wikipedian to cast doubt on the content included to the section. Simply saying "Causes and enabling factors" is a neutral title. My very best wishes (talk) 21:49, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Some recent edits

This edit did not fix any NPOV issue but violated it. WP:NPOV says: "Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." One is an academic book written by an expert on the topic of genocide and mass killings (Gerlach), the other is a news article about the deletion nomination of this article and the opinion is of a 19th-century French specialist (Tombs). At the very least, the way it is put (right after Gerlach and starting with However rather than like this) looks like WP:FALSEBALANCE and bothsidesism. The section is about proposed causes, and the relevant part is not the criticism of mass killings, which is besides the point and obvious, but that anti-communists and the political right see them as an indictment of communism/socialism tout court (e.g. communism was the main cause) and the political left in general, and the academic counter-argument.

We also need less WP:SYNTH, not more. I am referring to this wording: "Some, such as the Chinese Communist Party, have attempted to suppress discussion and study of such killings." In fact, the news source is referring only to Tiananmen ("China's Communist leaders have made any discussion of the brutal quelling of the student-led demonstrations -- in which hundreds, maybe thousands, were killed -- taboo, but dissidents say the public could yet hold them accountable.") I think that this may be SYNTH for the same reason a similar wording from 'Terminology' that was moved is also SYNTH: "Holocaust – communist holocaust has been used by some state officials and non-governmental organizations." As noted by The Four Deuces here, "[i]t is not properly attributed because none of the sources say, 'communist holocaust has been used by some state officials and non-governmental organizations.' Instead, it is an anaylisis, which is not permissable per no synthesis." Considering the controversies and disputes among us, we should avoid the use of news sources (WP:SCHOLARSHIP), which are way below university-level textbooks, books published by respected publishing houses, and mainstream magazines (WP:SOURCES). If something is due and notable, it will be published by the academic press, which we should use as reference in its place. Davide King (talk) 16:36, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

 Comment: see also MOS:EDITORIAL: When used to link two statements, words such as but, despite, however, and although may imply a relationship where none exists, possibly unduly calling the validity of the first statement into question while giving undue weight to the credibility of the second. Karl Krafft (talk) 16:54, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

This entire paragraph is bad. It exists solely for the sake of balance and absolutely nothing else. How is that encyclopedic, when it does not add anything noteworthy/informative/interesting to the article? Additionally, as you said, it is an opinionated source which is not WP:RS, therefore, it serves no purpose to the article in question other than for balance, and exclusively for the sake of it, plus is a clear WP:POV issue. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 18:41, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

The source isn't noteworthy. He's basically a professor who writes columns from a right-wing perspective. Recently, he falsely claimed that Gladstone's name had been removed from a building at the university of Liverpool because his father owned slaves. In fact it was removed because as an MP Gladstone voted (unsuccessfully) against ending slavery in 1833. TFD (talk) 22:21, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Double standards? Kristen Ghodsee writes from a left-wing perspective, and is frequent contributor to Jacobin, a leading voice of the American left, but you don't seem to have a problem with that. --Nug (talk) 23:38, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

At least Ghodsee has some expertise about Communist regimes, while Tombs' speciality is about 19th-century French and is actually revisionist about colonialism, which does not bone well. So while she may not be a country expert, like more mainstream specialists like Ellman and Wheatcroft, she is used correctly for her speciality in anthropology and memories. In addition, she is actually mainstream about the whole "victims of communism" categorization, and that is all that matters.

• David-Fox, Michael (Winter 2004). "On the Primacy of Ideology. Soviet Revisionists and Holocaust Deniers (In Response to Martin Malia)". Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 5 (1). Bloomington, Indiana: Slavic: 81–105. doi:10.1353/kri.2004.0007. S2CID 159716738. Malia thus counters by coining the category of 'generic Communism,' defined everywhere down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals. (Pol Pot's study of Marxism in Paris thus comes across as historically more important than the gulf between radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge's murderous anti-urbanism.) For an argument so concerned with justifying The Black Book, however, Malia's latest essay is notable for the significant objections he passes by. Notably, he does not mention the literature addressing the statistical-demographic, methodological, or moral dilemmas of coming to an overall communist victim count, especially in terms of the key issue of how to include victims of disease and hunger. Plus, pretty much any scholarly criticism of the Black Book.
• Neumayer, Laure (November 2017). "Advocating for the Cause of the 'Victims of Communism' in the European Political Space: Memory Entrepreneurs in Interstitial Fields". Nationalities Papers. 45 (6). Cambridge University Press: 992–1012. doi:10.1080/00905992.2017.1364230. ISSN 0090-5992.
• Neumayer, Laure (2018). The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War (E-book ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 9781351141741.
• Neumayer, Laure (2020). "Bridges Across the Atlantic? Intertwined Anti-Communist Mobilisations in Europe and the United States after the Cold War". Revue d'études comparatives Est-Ouest (2–3). Presses Universitaires de France: 151–183. Retrieved 7 December 2021 – via CAIRN.
• Dujisin, Zoltan (July 2020). "A History of Post-Communist Remembrance: From Memory Politics to the Emergence of a Field of Anticommunism". Theory and Society. 50 (January 2021). Springer: 65–96. doi:10.1007/s11186-020-09401-5. S2CID 225580086.

In short, the difference is that Ghodsee is used within her speciality (anthropology and memories), and while she may hold some revisionist views, or left-wing perspectives, about individual countries, and country experts are certainly better than her, her views about the body county are, in fact, well within the mainstream and she is used correctly. Ghodsee has also not falsified history like Tombs did, as noted by The Four Deuces. Davide King (talk) 00:39, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

The whole section is a POV synthesis

The problem is not in that small paragraph, but is the section as whole.

• First, its title implies that some consensus exists that all those events had common causes. That is simply not true: majority (or an overwhelming majority) of sources propose specific causes for each event. Therefore the "Causes" section should discuss specific causes of each event under each regime, and only after that we can have a small section devoted to attempts to discuss a role of some common factors. That emphasizes the absolute need in a representative set of sources that reflect majority view on this issue.
• Second, on;y a fraction of sources that discuss, a linkage of, e.g., Communist ideology and mass killings see a significant linkage. Other sources say that no such a linkage exists. Therefore, a correct title of a subsection on ideology, should be "Role of ideology". Accordingly, the whole section should have a title "Discussion of the role of possible common factors".
• Lastly, the whole section is a synthesis, where majority of sources are dramatically misinterpreted. I already wrote about that, and I don't understand why this my legitimate concern has not been addressed. Thus, if you take a look at this paragraph,

  "Historian Klas-Göran Karlsson writes: "Ideologies are systems of ideas, which cannot commit crimes independently. However, individuals, collectives and states that have defined themselves as communist have committed crimes in the name of communist ideology, or without naming communism as the direct source of motivation for their crimes." Academics such as Daniel Goldhagen, Richard Pipes, and John Gray have written books about communist regimes for a popular audience, and scholars such as Rudolph Rummel consider the ideology of communism to be a significant causative factor in mass killings. In the introduction to The Black Book of Communism, Stéphane Courtois claims an association between communism and criminality, stating that "Communist regimes ... turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government", while adding that this criminality lies at the level of ideology rather than state practice."

In reality, the first source (Karlsson) says that ideology served as justification of some crimes (he does not specify those crimes), but he does not say it was a cause ("First of all, it should be noted that the phrase ‘crimes of communism’ can be misleading and has been replaced in this research review with the phrase ‘crimes of communist regimes’. Ideologies are systems of ideas, which cannot commit crimes independently."). In general, Karlsson makes no generalisations, in contrast, he analyses three different schools of thought in Soviet studies (totalitarianism, revisionism, postrevisionism), each of which provide different models. The chapter about China is authored by another scholar (Schoenhals), whose narrative is different, and who discuss no commonalities with other regimes. The same can be said about Cambodia. In other words, the phrase about ideology as some cause of mass killings was taken out of context. Although Karlsson is a good source for this article, and it should be used, this source was badly misused in this section. He says nothing about ideology as a "cause". This source literally says that Communist ideology was used to justify some crimes, but it does not say it was a cause.

The next sentence (about Goldhagen et al) literally says that those authors wrote that Communists were bad. What relation does it have to ideology as a cause? Rummel and Courtous are, more or less ok.

What is especially interesting, is the usage of Harff as a source for the statement:

"Rudolph Rummel consider the ideology of communism to be a significant causative factor in mass killings"

I checked this source, and I found only one mention of the word "Communist" in it. It was "...or why they engaged in political mass murder of communists and other political undesirables, such as free masons."

In summary, if we translate this paragraph to a human language, we get:

"Ideology

Karlsson said Communist ideology was used to justify some crimes, Goldhagenm, Pipes and Gray have written books about bad Communists, and Rummel and Courtois blame Communist ideology of mass killings"

Clearly, this is a typical example of POV SYNTHESIS, for only two sources out of 7 were used correctly, and one of sources was directly falsified. The only text that may stay in the article is:

"Rudolph Rummel consider the ideology of communism to be a significant causative factor in mass killings. In the introduction to The Black Book of Communism, Stéphane Courtois claims an association between communism and criminality, stating that "Communist regimes ... turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government", while adding that this criminality lies at the level of ideology rather than state practice."

I am going to make these changes in close future, and I am expecting that falsifications and POV synthesis will not be restored, for that is a severe disruption.

I am going to check other paragraphs of this section, for I strongly suspect other parts of it contain similarly severe misinterpretations, synthesis and or falsifications.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:17, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• No, just briefly summarizing what multiple sources say on the subject of the page is not WP:SYN. That is what we do (and suppose to do) on WP pages. My very best wishes (talk) 01:58, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Actually, upon reflection, I realised that the "Ideology" section is a classical illustration of a blatant SYNTH that pushes some specific POV. Below, I reproduce a fragment of WP:SYN:

This second paragraph demonstrates improper editorial synthesis:

N If Jones did not consult the original sources, this would be contrary to the practice recommended in the Harvard Writing with Sources manual, which requires citation of the source actually consulted. The Harvard manual does not call violating this rule "plagiarism". Instead, plagiarism is defined as using a source's information, ideas, words, or structure without citing them.

The (...) paragraph is original research because it expresses a Wikipedia editor's opinion that, given the Harvard manual's definition of plagiarism, Jones did not commit it. Making the second paragraph policy-compliant would require a reliable source specifically commenting on the Smith and Jones dispute and makes the same point about the Harvard manual and plagiarism. In other words, that precise analysis must have been published by a reliable source concerning the topic before it can be published on Wikipedia.

Now compare it with, for example, this:

N '"Academics such as Daniel Goldhagen, Richard Pipes, and John Gray have written books about communist regimes for a popular audience, and scholars such as Rudolph Rummel consider the ideology of communism to be a significant causative factor in mass killings. In the introduction to The Black Book of Communism, Stéphane Courtois claims an association between communism and criminality, stating that "Communist regimes ... turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government", while adding that this criminality lies at the level of ideology rather than state practice.

Clearly, the above paragraph is original research because it expresses a Wikipedia editor's opinion that the books by Goldhagen, Pipes and Gray provide some general foundation for the claim made by Courtois and Rummel. Making the paragraph policy-compliant would require a reliable source specifically linking books by Goldhagen, Pipes and Gray with the claims made by Rummel and Courtois. In other words, that precise analysis must have been published by a reliable source concerning the topic before it can be published on Wikipedia.

I am going to analyse the rest of this article and check other violations of NOR. I will be posting the results of my analysis on the talk page, and, if no reasonable counter-arguments will be presented in one week, I am going to weed out that SYNTH.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:06, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

References

@Paul Siebert: Hopefully this can solve the neutrality and synthesis problems in the article. X-Editor (talk) 04:25, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: it was User:Davide King who introduced the sentence structure you now object to. The last AfD was originally opened on the basis of contentious text also introduced by User:Davide King. This is precisely the reason why I advocated a roll back of the article to the July 2021 version. I fixed up that sentence so the referencing is more clear[7]--Nug (talk) 06:20, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Please, stop blame shifting. I changed that because that was indeed the original way it was put it and because it previously even failed verification and made it appear that Harff, or Gurr & Harff, was discussing Gray and other works that were published even after or before it, as noted by Siebert. Ironically, that same sentence you changed introduces further SYNTH per the same reason Siebert explained in the OP. See also Archive 51. Davide King (talk) 13:40, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

User:AmateurEditor extensively rebutted Siebert here. --Nug (talk) 17:41, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

That is a far cry from "rebutted", and I was present the whole time, and I do not think they "rebutted" anything. Davide King (talk) 01:58, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Paul Siebert's analysis of the section is spot on, and gets to the core of what has always been the problem with this article. It is built around providing evidence to support one specific premise: that of Rummel and Courtois, which looks for a single unifying ideological cause linking 'mass killings' with 'communism'. That the article resorts to synthesis to do this isn't accidental: it has to do so, since the premise isn't supported by most mainstream academic sources discussing individual events, which instead see causes (and ideology) as more proximate and contextual. It presents a minority POV - one discussed little in mainstream historiography, as is evident by the way the same few sources have been used again and again - as something to build the article around. Structuring an article this way can never be neutral, even if token efforts are later made to 'correct' the problem by adding mainstream sources arguing against the POV. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:50, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

"it has to do so, since the premise isn't supported by most mainstream academic sources discussing individual events, which instead see causes (and ideology) as more proximate and contextual. It presents a minority POV - one discussed little in mainstream historiography, as is evident by the way the same few sources have been used again and again - as something to build the article around." I don't intepret it that way, and I think the AFD showed that enough people agree on that point that the notion that something about this topic implies that mass killings are an inherent component of communism is, to use your term, a minority viewpoint. An article titled "terrorism in Europe" isn't an implication of an inherent link between Europe and terrorism; nobody questions whether fascism is inherently antisemitic, or whether Spain is inherehently imperialistic. What matters is not some philosphical justification of essence, but the fact that those concepts are tied together by virtue of the the acts of people calling themselves fascists or Spanish. All this article is doing is dicussing mass exterminations that disproportionately occur under regimes callings themselves communist (more specifically Marxist-Leninist, which is probably a detail that could be elaborated on). Nobody denies those occured. There is no precedent on wikipedia that I'm aware of that requries for example a book specifically about that article topic, for the article to be able to exist, and several people in this discussion listed that as a requirement for this article to exist. Since those books (by Rummel and Cortois) apparently do exist, the goalpost shifted to the burden of proof that Cortois and Rummel aren't a minority viewpoint. The goal posts will shift again. At the end of the day, this is just going to come down to an ideological vote amongst editors. AShalhoub (talk) 16:22, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I think this is a good assessment. I'll also point out that since the AfD finished, one user has proposed taking out at least two sections entirely. To try and delete the article bit by bit could be interpreted as an attempt to 'backdoor' in a deletion since the original attempt failed. Furthermore, a user who has on multiple occasions misrepresented sources and other users taking it upon themselves to re-write the article should be a red flag for all users. Vanteloop (talk) 17:07, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

It is indeed coming down to "an ideological vote amongst editors" but we are not the ones doing this; if it was any other article or topic with the same numerous issues for over a decade (you cannot deny it anymore after the DRN and the latest AfD), it would have been deleted long ago; indeed, it was created by a sockpuppet or banned user in an attempt to troll. If Courtois and Rummel were the majority views, and their views were as supported as you claim they are, it should be very easy to fix the article. The problem is that they are not, and we have Karlsson 2008 supporting this. Davide King (talk) 01:58, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

AShalhoub, you have the burden of proof backwards. If Rummel and Cortois's perspectives aren't minority, where, amongst all the material concerned with analysing the events discussed in this article, are other sources supporting them? AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:47, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't think this issue is relevant for the article's existence. But, here's one source. From the source (page 328): “No other state in history,” wrote genocide scholar Richard Rubenstein, “has ever initiated policies designed to eliminate so many of its own citizens as has the Soviet Union.”1 His contention can be challenged. In absolute numbers, the death toll inflicted on the Chinese people by Mao Zedong’s communists was significantly greater than the Soviet one. And per capita, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge government (see Chapter 7) devised policies that destroyed fully one-quarter of the country’s population in less than four years. A striking feature of these cases is the links among them. Mao’s communists were in many ways Stalin’s protégés; the Sino-Soviet split of the late 1950s, which irretrievably sundered the world communist movement, reflected Mao’s conviction that the Soviets had betrayed Stalin’s great legacy. The Khmer Rouge, in turn, took its inspiration from both Stalinism and Maoism, but particularly from the latter’s ultra-collectivism and utopianism." Shall we include it in the article? It has 992 citations. AShalhoub (talk) 19:38, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

@AShalhoub: We are not discussing article's deletion. We are discussing a specific section that gives an undue weight to generalizations made by non-experts, and ignore the opinia of experts who provide totally different explanations. Thus, Lewin argues that the term "communism" is not applicable to Soviet conditions, because it worked as a cover for a nationalist, agrarian despotic, statist or state capitalist ideology, or simply a ‘brutally repressive police state'. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:27, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

This illustrates a key problem in this discussion, which is many editors have this view (x/y/z isn't true communism), when it happens to be that x/y/z are three of the deadliest regimes of human history.AShalhoub (talk) 19:38, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

No, that is not a question of the views of some editors, but about the predominant views expresed in sources. And, before speaking about all of that, we must establish what majority of sources say on that. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:20, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

If you had found some sort of consensus that the crimes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot should not be analyzed in the context of communism, I think the article would already reflect that. AShalhoub (talk) 07:42, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

As noted here by Robert McClenon, "[t]he quotes all seem to be making one point, which is that there are atrocities under communism. Duh. We knew that. Those who were arguing to delete the article were not arguing that there had not been mass killings under communist regimes. There were. That wasn't and isn't the issue. Just because large numbers of single-purpose accounts were brigaded for the purpose of arguing that there were mass killings under communist regimes doesn't mean that anyone said there weren't." So please, stop doing this. Have you not noted that they are mainly, if not overwhelmingly, about Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot? Which is exactly what I have been saying such sources say the whole time. This is an example of aspersions that the moderator mentioned — the problem is that Siebert, I, and a few others are actually versed in academic writing and sources, and if you were too, you would know that "no true communism" is a right-wing strawman. Ironically, it is only and mainly anti-communists and tankies who agree Communists states were communism/socialism; academic views are much more nuanced, and is simply what Siebert and I are saying. Davide King (talk) 01:58, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

If you were a domain expert in this field, which is the picture you paint, you could publish an meta-analysis of your own in a reputable journal and have it included in this article. Unfortunately, it seems we both have the same standing here, a nice democratic aspect of wikipedia which I quite like (also relevant to the treatment of wikipedia by current communist regimes). That being said, I'll point out that you and Paul Siebert seem to disgree on whether or not Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao are not true communists, as you say this notion is a right wing strawman, whereas he says this is proven by the majority of sources.AShalhoub (talk) 07:40, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Please, stop that nonsense about needing to publish our own meta-analysis when Siebert and I are not doing any of that but simply reflecting and summarizing what scholarly sources say and that OR does not apply, as noted here. No, we do not disagree; indeed, Siebert is correct that this is proven by the majority of sources, the right-wing strawman I was referring to was to your own "no true communism" strawman, which is indeed a right-wing strawman because, as noted correctly by Siebert, what I am saying is supported by the majority of sources, e.g. it is mainly anti-communists and tankies who agree they were true socialists/communists; scholars disagree, and see it more within the societal context and background (e.g. bureaucratic authoritarianism/collectivism, neo-tsarism, state capitalism, neither capitalist nor socialist, and so on), and perverted such socialist ideals (e.g. Mann 2005, p. 350: "Stalinist, Maoist, or Khmer Rouge atrocities were socialist versions of modern organicism, perverting socialist and class theories of democracy just as ethnically aimed atrocities perverted nationalist theories of democracy.").

Tucker, influenced by George F. Kennan's writings on how the Soviet Union had reverted into a tsarist autocracy, emphasized that the Soviet Union was not guided by socialism or ideology but more by ruling class.[1] This perspective emerged significantly from ideas of neo-Freudian psychoanalysis, evaluating Stalin as a deeply paranoid tyrant and in the process creating a more tsarist-type government.[10] Moshe Lewin cautioned historians not to "over-Stalinize" the whole of Soviet history, while he also stated that the Soviet Union developed a "propensity for authoritarianism" after Marxian principles had failed to be established.[11] Lewin argued that the Soviet Union recapitulated a "bureaucratic absolutism" almost Prussian in nature, where the "monarch was dependent on his bureaucracy".[12]

Do you seriously think all those scholars committed the "no true communism" fallacy? We may disagree about how to fix the article, but there is no disagreement between Siebert and I on this, or on the article's general problems. Davide King (talk) 21:58, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@Davide King:, I have noticed that you changed your post after I replied to it, specifically where you mentioned you and Paul Siebert being specially credentialled. This is a very dishonest tactic to employ in a good faith discussion, and in this and consistently characterizing your opponents arguments as nonsense you seriously undermine your argument that your contributions to this dicussion are more valid than other editors. AShalhoub (talk) 08:22, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Excuse me. What do you mean that I changed my post after you replied to it? Can you please show the difference because I am genuinely not understanding what you are referring to. Were you referring to this? I did not change my post, it was simply a edit summary. If so, note that I made a big caveat by saying if they are not backed up by the best reliable sources within the context of false balance; were you referring to me saying "the problem is that Siebert, I, and a few others are actually versed in academic writing and sources, and if you were too, you would know that 'no true communism' is a right-wing strawman"? Well, I provided evidence of this of repsected historians who you may think they doing the "no true communism"; as I said, it is mainly anti-communists and tankies who agree that they were "true socialism", and it seems that you were not aware of the socio-economic nature of Communist regimes is not as easy as you make it out to be. So far, you have provided only one source, which is about genocide in general and does not discuss Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot together as we do (only Stalin and Mao are discussed together), while I did provide plenty of them (e.g. Lewin, Mann, Tucker, and others) in support of my claim about their socio-economic nature being much more nuanced than being editors' fallacy.

Also when did I say that Siebert and I are "specially credentialled" [sic]? Please, do not put me words I never said. I certainly did not mean to say what you think I wrote, I am just saying that analysis of source on the talk page is perfectly fine, and this is not OR; all I am saying is that Siebert's source analysis was positively reviewed in an academic journal, so while they may not always be right, I find the criticism of them deeply unfair and unjustified just because you have different views about sources. We are also not discussing deletion, and you said many editors have this view (x/y/z isn't true communism)" — I have showed that this view is, in fact, held by respected historians, do you think they commited the fallacy? You need to understand that Siebert and I are not putting forward our own views, we are only summarizing what scholarly sources say and support from what we have read about them; so it is not me who is saying "isn't true communism", it is mainstream and respected scholars who are saying that Communist regimes did not establish communism/socialism. Davide King (talk) 08:53, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Looking again, I think you may be correct that you didn't actually change your post, just made several successive edits, so I'll continue the discussion. My source that you cite above does discuss Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao together, even in the one excerpt I quoted, and explicitly denotes links between them. Further, it is a recent source, and extensively cited. Is your point that the entire book is about genocide, and not discretely about those three regimes? I'll say again that this is a completely arabitrary requirement, not supported by any other precedent on wikipedia. An article doesn't need to have a book written about its subject, in order to be able to exist. Books on the MKuCR topic of course do exist, but you appear not to like the sources, although they are written by tenured experts and heavily cited. This is my view is a case of "moving the goal posts," but anyway. The point is, sources which talk about genocide outside of the context of communism as well as within are absolutely fair game to include in this article, and there is no reason to insist otherwise. AShalhoub (talk) 09:59, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. Again, apologies if I may have sounded too hard but this is stressing me so much and I am tired of having to discuss the same points again and again without reaching some consensus on how to fix the article. Do you realize that source is about Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, three Communist leaders, not Communist regimes or Communism as a whole, which is what this article is attempting to do? In addition, please look at this — the problem is that it seems as if you guys are trying to prove a point that we and I have already agreed is not in dispute, which is that communist regimes have committed atrocities and mass killings. I went for !delete but that was because the article and topic as currently written is OR/SYNTH and in serious NPOV violations, which made the general criteria notability null; indeed, I have proposed this topic, which is the same topic but NPOV.

Please, refrain from making accuses as me not liking the sources, that is clearly not the reason; if they represent a majority view, it should be easy to prove and provide a source that summarize the literature for us and say Courtois, Rummel, Valentino, and the like do indeed represent the majority view, but even defenders of such an article do not go that far and acknowledge that they are all minority views — how can we write a NPOV article (remember that WP:NPOV does not mean without bias but giving "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic", it means proportionately to their weight in the literature, so we should heavily rely on country experts and specialists but they tell a totally different story, do not see communism as a main or significant cause, and do not engage in body counting for Communism as a whole), and you should stop make such arguments in light of the AfD finding our arguments legitimate enough to overturn consensus to 'Keep' into 'No consensus.' I have proposed to do that, go tell "outside of the context of communism as well as within are absolutely fair game to include in this article, and there is no reason to insist otherwise" to Nug, who have repeatedly denied the use of such sources because they do not write in such context.

The problem is that such sources are not even properly represented, and are synthetized to discuss Communism as a whole when they mainly limit themselves to Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, who are universally recognized to have engaged mass killings; if one look at the title, one would expect us to actually discuss such mass killings, not turning the topic into a Communist body count, and mixing such mass killings with any excess deaths and demographic losses, as is done by those who attempt to do a "global Communist death toll." Please, take a look at this, especially the comparison with sources about Genocide of indigenous peoples. If this article was not actually OR/SYNTH, and was so notable, it should get similar results. It does not.

Davide King (talk) 21:31, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Vanteloop, the AfD closed as no consensus, with the (long and considered) closing statement by four different individuals noting that the question as to whether the perspective presented in this article (e.g. Rummell and Cortois's) was mainstream or not was one of the key unresolved issues there. You can't simply dismiss such concerns by stating that the AfD didn't result in article deletion. If Wikipedia is to have content on this specific subject (e.g. the Rummell/Cortois perspective), it needs to do so in compliance with NPOV - a 'no consensus' close in no shape or form constitutes an assertion that existing content cannot be substantially revised, and it is common at AfD discussions (even for less controversial subjects, which close as 'keep') for the closer to state this explicitly. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:47, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

@AShalhoub: Yes, the article "Terrorism in Europe" does not imply the inherent linkage between Europe and terrorism. However, such article is not discussing "Europe" as a cause of terrorism either, and it hardly has a section the discusses "European ideology" as a cause of terrorism. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:09, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• Last citation from the page is simply a poorly written text. One should say more specifically and in more details what exactly every cited academic thought about the relations between the mass murder and communism ideology and practice. Yes, Stéphane Courtois claims an association between communism and these crimes (rather than "criminality"), and not only in the Introduction, but more importantly, in Conclusion of the book (starting from page 727). Yes, Pipes say essentially the same (and a lot more!) by dedicating chapters to the deep historical connections and analogies between communism and Nazism (in his book "Russia under the Bolshevik regime", for example), but it must be explained and directly cited. As about two others, obviously, every historian who supports the concept of totalitarianism supports the overall idea of the political system being responsible for the murder. I would probably exclude Goldhagen (not sure), but Rummel is definitely in this league. Just cite what he said on the democide. My very best wishes (talk) 17:33, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, I think you make a good point, the current sentence is not the best and the views of the authors [[[Rudolph Rummel], Daniel Goldhagen, Richard Pipes and John Gray should be separated out into individual sentences. --Nug (talk) 17:41, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  Indeed. Importantly, all mentioned authors including Stéphane Courtois (one of the leaders of French National Centre for Scientific Research) are mainstream historians, as opposed to some of their opponents who belong to historical revisionists. Do they represent the "majority view" on this specific subject (i.e. mass killings under...)? I think they do, as clear from the current version of the page. If not, this should be clear from citing other works on the page, along with works that are currently cited.My very best wishes (talk) 18:16, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  Courtois is controversial/minority about Communism, and is revisionist about the French Revolution too. Please, stop confusing the "revisionist school" from historical revisionism; since the 1990s, they have been vindicated and the mainstream went closer to them than the old "totalitarian model", resulting in the "post-revisionism" synthesis. Also do not confuse legitimate historians like Davies, Fitzpatrick, Getty, and Wheatcroft from truer historical revisionists in Russia who want to rehabilitate Stalin. Gray is not an expert, Goldhagen has been extensively criticized, and Pipes is outdated and one-sided; again, if all those authors are due, it should be used to find secondary coverage about them within the scope of this topic, rather than cherry pick them and cite them to themselves; they are primary sources about what they wrote and thought, and if we have to attribute everything, especially when we do not treat this as a debate (like correctly noted by AndyTheGrump but as a scholarly consensus when it is not the case, then what is the point? Davide King (talk) 01:58, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

I propose everyone to stop discussing cherry-picked fragments and read sources. Thus, a careful reading of Karlssen (a source that is extensively used in this article) demonstrates that he says that we should speak not about ideology, but about crimes of concrete regimes, and about specific causes. Thus, for the USSR, he outlined "totalitarian", "revisionist" and "posrevisionist" schools of thought, and the first one is obviously obsolete. Clearly, most authors cited in this section focus mostly on the USSR (although they speak about "Communism" in general), and most of them belong to an outdated "totalitarian" school of thought. When I read Karlssen, I saw reverences on the authors that are pretty familiar to me (they usually appear among the sources retrieved by google.scholar when an unbiased search procedure is used). These names are Getty, Wheatcroft, Davies, Ellman, Fitzpatrick, Ellman and others. Their opinia are totally ignored here, and a stress is made on the "totalitarian" (outdated) school of thought. That critical omission is a severe NPOV violation, which I am going to fix.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:20, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• "the first one is obviously obsolete" is an example of WP:OR. And I doubt about using any "schools" on this page. The views by these people (e.g. Ellman and Getty) are very different, and every expert must be cited on its own merit. But every cited source must be clearly on the subject of the page, i.e. it should say something specifically about the "mass killings under communist regimes" rather than making some generic statements. My very best wishes (talk) 20:30, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Thank you for just proving why this article is unfixable and a NPOV article cannot be written if we must only use sources that discuss Communism as a whole and focus on killings and death tolls. If such scholars are ignored, or there is nothing to presume they are anything other than presenting minority views at best, an NPOV article with this structure is not possible. Davide King (talk) 01:58, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
• A general note. Since many users too frequently characterise a quite legitlmate attempt to analyse relative weight of sources during talk page discussions as WP:OR, it would be very useful for them to familiarize themselves with this discussion. Further attempts to resort to WP:OR arguments of that type will be considered an attempt to derail the discussion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:45, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
• I agree with the critique above. This is not the first time users have attempted to insert OR into this article by making arguments on the talk page, such as dismissing scholars they disagree with on the basis of their position on an issue. A wikipedia talk page is a self published source and research done here is not inherently notable. Such research could be published elsewehere and then reviewed as a reliable source or not. This is so that the article reflects views espoused in reliable sources (per policy) and not an original thesis by an anonomous editor that is presented in wikivoice. Vanteloop (talk) 21:10, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
• Interim conclusion about the first paragraph. The discussion lead to a significant improvement of the first paragraph (thank you guys for your joint efforts), although it is still far from perfect. However, let's keep it for a while as a zeroth iteration.
• Second paragraph

It says:

"Professor Mark Bradley writes that communist theory and practice has often been in tension with human rights and most communist states followed the lead of Karl Marx in rejecting "Enlightenment-era inalienable individual political and civil rights" in favor of "collective economic and social rights." Christopher J. Finlay posits that Marxism legitimates violence without any clear limiting principle because it rejects moral and ethical norms as constructs of the dominant class, and states that "it would be conceivable for revolutionaries to commit atrocious crimes in bringing about a socialist system, with the belief that their crimes will be retroactively absolved by the new system of ethics put in place by the proletariat." Rustam Singh states that Marx had alluded to the possibility of peaceful revolution; after the failed Revolutions of 1848, Singh states that Marx emphasized the need for violent revolution and revolutionary terror."

If we translate it to a layman's language, this paragraph says:

"Bradley says that Communists rejected human rights; Finlay says Marxism legitimized violence; Singh says that Marx emphasized teh need of a violent revolution."

How all of that is connected to the topic of this article? Clearly, the above paragraph is original research because it expresses a Wikipedia editor's opinion that since Bradley, Finlay and Singh wrote that Marxism supported violence, that provide some general foundation for the claim made by Goldhagen, Courtois and Rummel. Making the paragraph policy-compliant would require a reliable source specifically linking the views of Bradley, Finlay and Singh with the claims made by Rummel and Courtois, or, at least, to other sources or opinia that link Marxism with "mass killings", and not to just "violence". In other words, that precise analysis must have been published by a reliable source concerning the topic before it can be published on Wikipedia. {{tq|In reality, the opinion of Bradley was directly misinterpreted, because he said (p. 151-153), that, (i) whereas Marxism rejected individual rights, Communists advocated some socialist version of human rights, although violation of those rights was a common practice in Communist states, and (ii) the story of human rights in Communist states is more complex that some people think (if you want more details, read the source). In other words, not only Bradley does not link ideology with Communism, he says the opposite. Furthermore, adding an opinion of some poet about Marxism is a clear sign of a desperate lack of sources to support this POV. It should be removed if we want Wikipedia to be respected. My conclusion: the whole paragraph should be removed as a misleading synthesis.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:00, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

No, that's not how OR works. Having an attributed quote by a reliable source, and then another attributed quote by a different reliable source is not OR. By your logic, every wikipedia article would be delerted under OR, unless it was an exact copy of an Ecyclopedia Britannica article. I would also be careful about doing this If we translate it to a layman's language, this paragraph says to justify an overhaul of the article considering how often you have misintepreted and then dissappeared when exposed. Your conclusion is rejected. Vanteloop (talk) 23:19, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: Please revert your improper removal of text[8]. Bradley talks about "communism", not just communist regimes, so he is talking about the ideology. He talks about Marx rejecting the very idea of human rights and the regimes following suit. He talks about state-orchestrated mass killings and what have come to be called gross violations of human rights being "almost commonplace in communist-led states." That is accurately reflected in the sentence he is being cited for and it is directly relevant to that section. --Nug (talk) 23:26, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Re-read Bradley. In fact, he mentions ideology in only one aspect:

"In fact the entanglements between human rights and communism in the twentieth century were more ambiguous than the chasm between ideology and these staggering numbers would suggest."

If you want to write your own article that concludes that Bradley links ideology with mass killings, you are more than welcome to do that ... elsewhere. Wikipedia is not a proper place for that. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:43, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I removed the paragraph per WP:SYNTH, but that text was re-added and supplemented with a grossly insulting edit summary. I respectfully request for evidences

• that Bradley links Communist ideology with mass killings;
• that Finley discusses legitimization of violence by Marxism in a context of mass killings under Communist regimes, and that he draws a causal linkage the latter and teh former;
• that the opinion of a poet and philosopher Singh about Marxism is relevant to mass killings.

If no evidences will be provided in one week, I am going to remove this paragraph.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:32, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Finlay makes the linkage between Marxist theory and mass killings in his paper Violence and Revolutionary Subjectivity: Marx to Žižek:

"This is, however, only the first way in which Marxist theory is related to violent excess though, if we assume a meaningful relationship between Marxist theory and communist practices in government, then we can say that the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat has probably produced the largest body count historically. (The excesses of Stalinism during the 1930s particularly need hardly be rehearsed but a statistic of 700,000 persons executed by the communist leadership during 1937 and 1938 may suffice as a general illustration.) The weakness of Marxism as a theory of revolutionary violence in this regard is that it lays down no clear limits to the kinds of violence available to dictatorship. This establishes the outer dimension of its role as a permissive doctrine, i.e. a philosophical framework within which the possibility of using violence is validated but without setting any clear limits to how much violence can be used and against whom."

I suppose you will now argue that the phrase "produced the largest body count historically" has nothing to do with mass killings. --Nug (talk) 05:43, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

No, I am partially satisfied with Finley (in terms of SYN, but not in terms of NPOV, but that is a separate story). Please, bring the article's text is accordance with what he says, and let is be a zeroth iteration on our future work (similar to the first paragraph). I am waiting for similar evidences regarding other two authors. Paul Siebert (talk) 06:01, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay, that seems satisfactory, I'll update in the next day. --Nug (talk) 10:52, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@Nug: ping. What about other two sources (Bradley and Singh)? Paul Siebert (talk) 15:26, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Ok, since no updates were made, I delete two sources (which seem irrelevant), and keep just Finlay. @Nug:, please, update the text as you promised.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:01, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

With respect to Bradley, he seems to be saying that because Marxist theory deprecated individual political and civil rights in favour of collective economic and social rights when defining human rights, state-orchestrated mass killings were at times almost commonplace in communist-led states, but over time the communist view on human rights became more fluid but remained largely a polemical state posture. Is that a fair interpretation? --Nug (talk) 20:14, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't agree.

• The first paragraph says that Marxism had some specific vision of human rights: it rejected individual ("bourgeois") human right and instead championed collective economic and social rights.
• The second paragraph says that, despite Communist human right phraseology, mass killings were common in communist-led states.
• The third paragraph says that the human right issue is more complicated that some people thinks. And one important factor that lead to that complication is that the very concept of human rights had never been stable and universally accepted. The relationship between human rights and Communist states was manifold, and after 1945, some communist regimes contributed to the creation of a global human rights order.

In other words, this source does not discuss any connection between Marxism (and its vision of human rights) and mass killings. It literally says: "A human right issue was a complex problem that was seen differently in different parts of human history and in different political systems. Communists had their own vision of human right issue, which was unequivocal; despite that, mass killings were common in Communist states".

Therefore, this source is totally irrelevant to this section: it discusses vision of human rights, and it mentions mass killings just to provide a necessary context. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:43, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not so sure, as I don't have full access to Bradley's book, so I will need to check further. But certainly the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines individual political and civil rights and not Marxist collective economic and social rights, so it appears that the only contribution that communist-led states made to the adoption of the UN convention was to galvanize the other UN members into action with the horror of the mass killings that had become common place in those communist-led states. --Nug (talk) 21:40, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

"... it appears that the only contribution that communist-led states made to the adoption of the UN convention was to galvanize the other UN members into action with the horror of the mass killings that had become common place in those communist-led states." Yet an another overgeneralization by Nug. According to The No-Nonsense Guide to Human Rights (2006), the Soviet Union contributed to the inclusion of economic and social rights, though this is may be overstimated because they also had a strong basis in U.S. legal and political culture through the New Deal, and the Soviet-bloc, along with other developing states like Chile, pressed the UN General Assembly to include economic rights. Davide King (talk) 05:52, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Third paragraph

Literary historian George Watson cited an 1849 article written by Friedrich Engels called "The Hungarian Struggle" and published in Marx's journal Neue Rheinische Zeitung, stating that the writings of Engels and others show that "the Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that feudalism, which in advanced nations was already giving place to capitalism, must in its turn be superseded by socialism. Entire nations would be left behind after a workers' revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age, and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history." One book review criticized this interpretation, maintaining that "what Marx and Engels are calling for is ... at the very least a kind of cultural genocide; but it is not obvious, at least from Watson's citations, that actual mass killing, rather than (to use their phraseology) mere 'absorption' or 'assimilation', is in question." Talking about Engels' 1849 article, historian Andrzej Walicki states: "It is difficult to deny that this was an outright call for genocide." Jean-François Revel writes that Joseph Stalin recommended study of the 1849 Engels article in his 1924 book On Lenin and Leninism.

The first source is Watson, and, it does not seem to be too notable: it was cited just 20 times. I found only one review on this book, which is by no means impressive, and it confirms insufficient notability. The reviewer (Robert Grant, Bowling Green state university, Ohio) describes the author as "a veteran anti-socialist and classical liberal.'". He further comments on a description of Marx's views by Watson, and his conclusion is:

"It is true that Marx's historical relativism, like the parallel, 'biologistic' ethics of Nietzsche, did much eventually to lift the normal constraints upon such political measures; but did Marx ever call for genocide in the sense of the actual, literal killing of unwanted or inconvenient populations? Watson's evidence seems dubious. He reminds us, salutarily, that even as late as the 1930s 'advanced' thinkers such as Shaw, Wells, and Beatrice Webb (all of them also keen imperialists and eugenicists) were defending, and even advocating, the mass starvation or the (more 'humane') gassing of entire races and peoples, to say nothing of the physically or mentally 'unfit'. (Incidentally, that repulsively glib, sinister maxim, 'You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs' is here attributed to Beatrice Webb; doubtless correctly, but it would be useful to have chapter and verse.)

But the case is not so clear-cut with Marx and Engels. To be sure, they were imperialists and, it seems, racists too, believing in the historic mission, and privilege, of 'advanced' nations. 'Germany takes Schleswig with the right of civilization over barbarism, of progress against stability', wrote Engels in 1848 (a statement attributed to Marx on the cover, but to Engels in the text). And Marx (or Engels) wrote also that 'dying nationalities', such as the Czechs and Poles, ought to accept 'the physical and intellectual power of the German nation to subdue, absorb and assimilate its ancient eastern neighbours'.

Such attitudes were wholly normal for their time, and by no means confined to socialists. By today's standards, of course, what Marx and Engels are calling for is not very amiable, being at the very least a kind of cultural genocide; but it is not obvious, at least from Watson's citations, that actual mass killing, rather than (to use their phraseology) mere 'absorption' or 'assimilation', is in question. The ease and suddenness with which Watson slips from the above quotation to 'racial extermination' is not reassuring. There is a world of difference between losing one's physical life and losing one's cultural identity. Losing one's cultural identity, after all, can be perfectly acceptable and comparatively painless, so long as one simultaneously acquires another, as the history of American immigration testifies. We ought, if we value truth, to be absolutely clear as to which of these things we mean. Actually, in his preface Watson is clear: 'they wanted whole races to be killed'. But he nowhere shows that they did." (The Lost Literature of Socialism by George Watson. Review by: Robert Grant. Source: The Review of English Studies, Nov., 1999, Vol. 50, No. 200 (Nov., 1999), pp. 557-559. Published by: Oxford University Press. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/517431)

Interestingly, besides a direct and complete refutation of this Watson's claim, the author makes a statement (the one that I emphasized), which almost literally coincides with the argument that had already been presented on this talk page. To summarise: this book is a not too notable and very questionable source, which is almost ignored by other authors (just 20 citations) and severely criticized in in only published review. In addition, the author is not just a "literary scholar, but a "veteran anti-socialist", which does not add credibility to his statement. It seems Watson's interpretation is a minority view, and should be treated as such.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:14, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Who is Robert Grant? Here is a review by Antony Flew of Watson's book where he states "The connection between socialism and genocide could hardly be made any clearer." --Nug (talk) 04:20, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

The Foundation for Economic Education is a think thank, and was not found to be reliable here. Robert Grant wrote a review in the academic peer-review journal The Review of English Studies, which is published by the Oxford University Press. Do you seriously not see any difference? Please, stop this false balance and verify at all cost; NPOV and WEIGHT are just as important — on is written in academic journal, the other is written in an American conservative think thank that is not reliable. Davide King (talk) 04:35, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@Nug:, Robert Grant is the author whom the editorial board of the peer-reviewed The Review of English Studies invited to write a review on Watson's book. And that review was possible to find via google scholar (in contrast to the FEE).

That is a difference between me and you: whereas you cherry-pick a biased source to support another biased source, I provide all sources that I found using a totally transparent and neutral procedure.

It is absolutely unclear for us how you found the Flew's review: what search procedure did you use, how many sources you examined, how many of them you rejected because they did not support your POV, etc. All of that is totally unclear, because the criteria that you are using for source selection are totally unknown. Therefore, since the sources that I find using a totally transparent and neutral procedure differ from sources found by you, I conclude that they are likely to be cherry-picked. And, keeping in mind that you refuse to discuss a common approach to source identification, I conclude that cherry-picking is a core approach in your search strategy.

Of course, I may be wrong. If you explain us your search procedure, it may be possible that your approach is more neutral than mine. However, so far, you keep your approach in secret, and refuse to discuss it, which is a strong indication that you are cherry-picking. Paul Siebert (talk) 05:04, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

There is no requirement that a citation be available on google scholar for it to be included in a Wikipedia article. Furthermore, an author on the mass killings being described as an 'anti-socialist' by one person doesn't mean that source cannot be used. It would be like discrediting a source on evolution because a critical review called them a 'veteran Darwinist' Vanteloop (talk) 09:44, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

In addition, don't you think that by questioning the publication in the OUP journal and by pushing the source that was found unreliable during the previous RSN discussion you undermine our belief in your skills? Remember, WP:CIR, and such blatant mistakes are forgivable for newcomers, but we, established Wikipedia users, must show more respect to ourselves and to our opponents. Paul Siebert (talk) 05:15, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

The more I am reading sources, the more I realise that the section's title should be changed from "Proposed causes" to "Discussion of possible common causes" (for only a fraction of authors see any significant common causes in those events), and, accordingly, the subsection "Ideology" should be renamed to "Role of ideology" (for many authors reject the very idea that Communist ideology was a cause). Paul Siebert (talk) 05:08, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

This analysis is as flawed as your previous. However you have not responded to the criticism of that one before moving onto the next, which I am sure you will do again Vanteloop (talk) 09:49, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I am going to respond to your posts only after you apologise for your previous personal attacks. Paul Siebert (talk) 15:48, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Nice try, but you cannot ignore posts rebuking your proposals on the talk page if you plan on impementing them. Vanteloop (talk) 16:33, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

• Interesting. I think both professors should be regarded as experts on the subject and cited. And I do not think Grant actually refutes anything. According to him,

Marx (or Engels) wrote also that 'dying nationalities', such as the Czechs and Poles, ought to accept 'the physical and intellectual power of the German nation to subdue, absorb and assimilate its ancient eastern neighbours'

That sounds just like Joseph Goebbels, except that Nazi implemented such ideas in practice. My very best wishes (talk) 05:58, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Antony Flew's speciality is philosophy of religion and FEE is not a reliable source; George Watson's speciality is English literature. I fail to see how you can consider both professors [I assume you meant Flew and Watson] [to] be regarded as experts on the subject [sic] and cited. Grant is much better because it is at least published in an academic journal, but I fail to see the relevance of The Review of English Studies to this topic, other than to dismiss Watson as undue because of Grant's views being much more nuanced. I am starting to think Siebert was onto something when they said this may be a case of CIR. Davide King (talk) 09:10, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay, so FEE is considered an unreliable source, but in this case FEE is acting more as a blog for Flew's review of Watson's book. However it is definitely WP:UNDUE to claim that Grant's opinion outweighs Watson's opinion on the matter. As MvBW states, Grant isn't actually refuting Watson's claim that Marx and other socialists of the era were a racist, but that everyone was a racist back in the 19th century. Perhaps if some "expert on the subject" had reviewed Watson's book maybe some more weight could be given. But no such review exists. --Nug (talk) 10:04, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Do you really see no difference between a review by Flew in an unreliable source and that by an expert (do you seriously think that reviewers in academic journals are not qualified, or chosen in the first place, as experts in peer-reviewed academic journals?) in an academic journal specifically devoted to Watson's exprtise? But Grant does refute Watson's main argument that Marx and Engels were the creators of genocide, and put them in the proper context, and Grant is indeed the "expert on the subject" who had reviewed Watson's book, having done sone in a peer-reviewed academic journal specifically devoted to Watson's speciality. If you think Flew and Watson are due but Grant is not, it is absurd. Perhaps you should conced that Watson is undue, and thus so are Flew and Grant. Davide King (talk) 21:43, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

You and your fellow again are cherry-picking. Grant clearly said that Marx was, to some degree, racist (according to the XXI century's standards), but such attitudes were wholly normal for their time, and by no means confined to socialists. And, similarly, to cherry-pick one sentence from an extended quote and claim that 'dying nationalities' is a Goebbels-style propaganda is by itself a pure demagogy, for the whole quote clearly says that losing national identity may be not a big tragedy in some cases, as the example of the fate of immigrants in the US demonstrates. Please, stop your demagogy. (Keeping in mind that accusation of misbehaviour are considered a personal attack only when they are not supported by an adequate evidence, this my statement is not a PA: the quote directly mentions the names of such thinkers as Shaw, Wells, and Beatrice Webb, who were by no means Marxists, but who expressed the ideas that by modern standards could be considered a justification of genocide. I refuse to believe you didn't understand the author's thought, so this your demagodic statement should be considered as a disrespect to other participants of the discussion).

WRT the constructive part of your proposal, I do not think Grant has more weight than Watson. However, keeping in mind that Watson's book does not seem notable (20 citations, just one review), I think they both UNDUE, and should not be included in this article. Paul Siebert (talk) 15:25, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Yet again, fair criticism and difference in opinion on what is due weight is met with personal attacks (accusations of demagogy, really?)Vanteloop (talk) 16:35, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

In addition, when we speak about Marx, it is necessary to keep in mind that he was not supporting primordialism, and his views were closer to what is currently called modernization theory. Therefore, according to him, nations were a quite recent phenomenon, and the XIX was a time when formation of nations had not finished yet. Therefore, disappearance of some nation and/or amalgamation of two or more nations into a bigger entity looked quite naturally to him (and to modern theories, by the way). Therefore, any speculations about "cultural genocide" are not serious. Paul Siebert (talk) 16:41, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Anyone have access to Walicki? George Watson (scholar) claims a citation, but offhand that doesn't look plausible. Watson first 1998, Walicki last 1997. The article quote and summary does not represent Watson adequately. But it was the issue of race, above all, that for half a century has prevented National Socialism from being seen as socialist...It is now becoming possible to believe that Auschwitz was socialist-inspired. The Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide... The article text is by no means a good representation of Watson, i doubt Walicki is making the same argument, and should the article really be going down this path? fiveby(zero) 16:33, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

It seems the hard copy of Walicki is available from my library. I can go and check. What concrete statement should I check? Paul Siebert (talk) 17:06, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I was thinking of checking whether or not Walicki actually mentioned Watson, and what argument he is making on p. 184, if it is even comparable. I don't know that it is even worth bothering. Watson is not only a comparison to Nazism, which i think everyone has rejected for this article, but an actual claim of Auschwitz was socialist-inspired and National Socialism was socialism. If the article is going to quote Watson it should adequately represent what he is saying, does anyone really think we should be making Watson's argument in the article? fiveby(zero) 17:22, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the library is closed for vacations. I will go and check the source next week, but I agree with you that all this paragraph is a ridiculous minority POV. I briefly checked the literature about Marx genocide, Engels "The Hungarian Struggle" genocide, "The Hungarian Struggle" genocide Marx, and I conclude that one has to have some very specific POV to find the sources that are currently used in this paragraph. I am going to delete it completely as UNDUE. We cannot devote a space to this minority POV is teh article that is discussing such a broad topic. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:51, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Agree with removal of entire paragraph. Revel is a similar argument, and cites Watson, his chapter beginning: Can Communism be compared to Nazism?. I don't think we can paint Walicki with them same brush without yet reading tho. As long as the article is sidestepping Courtois, it shouldn't be allowing such sources. fiveby(zero) 20:02, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not so sure removal of the paragraph is warranted, Walicki seems to be saying similar things to Watson, so that's at least two scholars supporting the essence of the paragraph. Unfortunately Walicki book isn't available for preview, a trip to the library would fix that, but in the meantime a 1993 paper with a similar title Marxism and the "leap into the kingdom of freedom" written by him (cited 176 times) outlines some of his views that would likely be repeated in the book (pending confirmation). It is in Polish but google translate gives a reasonable translation to English[9]:

"An equally interesting contribution by Engels to the specificity of Marx's philosophical speculations are his journalistic articles from the Spring of Nations. They illustrate the common idea of ​​both of them about the superiority of the cause of human progress over the fate of individuals, social classes and entire nations. For Engels did not hesitate to say that entire nations are reactionary, that this is what the Slavic nations of the Habsburg monarchy turned out to be (except for Poles), and that their opposition to the German-Hungarian revolution qualifies them for total extermination. "The next world war - he wrote - will wipe from the face of the earth not only reactionary classes and dynasties, but also entire reactionary nations [...], after all these small, stubborn nations not even a name will remain".

It is hard to deny that it legitimized the policy of genocide. No wonder then that these Engels articles were carefully studied by Stalin. It is also justified to suppose that they influenced the ideas of Hitler, who experienced a period of fascination with Marxism in his youth."

I'll check if my local library has a copy of his book. --Nug (talk) 21:35, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Fiveby, perhaps the reason why Watson was not contextualized for his fringe nonsesnse (Nazism and Auschwitz being socialism, and linking Hitler to Marx through genocide) is that it would have been removed as undue and fringe long-time ago. Davide King (talk) 21:43, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

My sense is what these authors are saying is that that Marxist literature was written in such a way that it was open to interpretation by leaders like Stalin who thus (mis?)used it as an "ideological" justification for their most excessive policies. --Nug (talk) 21:57, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

That seems a good summary, the problem is what is the expertise of those authors and what is their weight? If they are going to talk about Marxist literature, I would expect them to have some expertise about it by having published scholarly works about Marxism. Flew and Watson are clearly undue and do not meet this criteria, while Walicki may fit it ("He specialized in philosophy of sociopolitics, history of Polish and Russian philosophy, Marxism and liberal thought" from his English Wikipedia page); however, I completely agree with Fiveby's comment that we cannot "paint Walicki with them same brush without yet reading tho. As long as the article is sidestepping Courtois, it shouldn't be allowing such sources." I would wait to hear more from Fiveby and Siebert about this. Davide King (talk) 22:08, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

What does "sidestepping Courtois" mean? Antony Flew was also a philosopher, as was Marx, so I think he is sufficiently qualified to comment on Marx’s philosophical outlook. George Watson has previously published political and ideological critiques in books such as Is Socialism Left?, The English Ideology, studies in the language of Victorian politics, Politics and Literature in Modern Britain, Idea of Liberalism: Studies for A New Map of Politics, so I think he is well qualified in the study of the literature and language of political discourse. --Nug (talk) 22:26, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@Nug:, i think it was during the Afd, amidst a long discussion of Courtois, where you stated something along the lines of "the article makes no comparision of Nazism to Communism". Certainly the article does not expand on his moral argument. That is whay i meant by "sidestepping Courtois". fiveby(zero) 14:58, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@Fiveby: Watson discusses the influence of Marxist literature on both communist and nazi regime leaders, but we don’t need to mention that link to nazi regimes in this article about communist regimes, and also we don’t need to mention the link to communist regimes in nazi related articles either. But we can certainly mention both in Criticism of Marxism. It is acceptable separate them out in this fashion per WP:MSWAS --Nug (talk) 23:00, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@Nug:, forget about Watson, he is a bibliographer and literary historian, and he is a Liberal party activist. By no means his views should be considered as neutral scholarly views. If you want to write this article from a point of view of some political group (rely on writings by one political activist and support it with another activist), this is a direct road to a topic ban for POV-pushing. I believe we are not interested in the development of the events in this way.

Watson should be removed per WP:UNDUE (along with Grant), and the only question is what should we do with the rest of the paragraph. We have no reason to keep it, and we got no reasonable counter-arguments from you so far.

I am still waiting for your response to my post below.

By the way, what should we do with the previous paragraph? You promised to do something. Do you still have any objections with deletion of Barley and Singh? If no response will follow from you today, I am going to delete them.

We are still waiting for your response at DRNMKUCR. I think it would be fair if you explained your vision of your future participation in it: if you withdraw yourself from the process, please, notify the Moderator, otherwise, please, respond. --Paul Siebert (talk) 23:12, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Nug, it seems that your words ("Marxist literature was written in such a way that it was open to interpretation by leaders like Stalin who thus (mis?)used it as an "ideological" justification") is an almost correct summary. Although I would say that some Marx's statements are written in this way, and they are open to interpretation when are taken out of context.

Yes, some Marx's statements, when taken out of context, could (and had been) used for justification of many atrocities and crimes. The literature about that, and especially about a role of Marxist ideology in justification of crimes against humanity, is abundant. However, if some idea was used for justification of something, it is not sufficient to speak about a causal linkage. Thus, if Christian ideology was used for justification of mass killing during, e.g., Albigensian Crusade, it would be quite incorrect to name Christian ideology among the proposed causes of that mass killing. Therefore, the whole section should be renamed, and it should be rewritten in accordance with the idea that you summarised (that some totalitarian leaders used selected fragments of Marx's writings to justify their crimes). Paul Siebert (talk) 23:18, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

The standard of what should be in the article is what is discussed by reliable sources. For example, we may believe religious terrorism is motivated by a misunderstanding of ideology, however it is not wrong to discuss the view (and criticism) that the two are linked. In your example, if several notable scholars argued that a primary cause of the Albigensian Crusade was that Christian ideology could be used to justify mass killings more easily than other ideologies it would be right to include it in the article, even if that view had been criticised. Vanteloop (talk) 06:19, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, as Vanteloop says. Also both Christian and Communist ideologies did define enemies, the Antichrist in the former, class enemies and Völkerabfälle in the later, which had to be destroyed before paradise on earth could come into being, so the seed is there. --Nug (talk) 13:41, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, that means you have equally poor understanding of both Christianity and Marxism. The concept of Antichrist had nothing in common with religious mass killings (none of Medieval and later mass killings were committed under a pretext of a fight with Antichrist), and assimilation of some small "reactionary" ethnic groups was considered as one of preliminary steps of the world revolution. As it has been already pointed to you, these views were quite normal in those times, and, in that sense, Engels's views on Slavs were much more moderate than, for example, Theodore Roosevelt's view on native Americans.

Anyway, I got no evidences and arguments in support of keeping this paragraph, so I am going to delete it. Paul Siebert (talk) 14:55, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

But these sources go far beyond Communism and mass killing. They are indictments of socialism, specifically racially genocidal and therefore a basis for the racial policies of the Nazis. There is no "misunderstanding of ideology" in Watson, but an attempt to construct a direct link. Is everyone going by the article text and quotes, or reading Watson and Revel? Is this a preview of what the B content will be? fiveby(zero) 16:22, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, you are absolutely right.

In addition, we can, and we should discuss how Stalin or Pol Pot cherry-picked some quotes from Marx to justify their mass killings. However, to discuss all of that in the section "Proposed causes/Ideology" implies that Marxism (as an ideology) was a cause of mass killings, which is by no means the same as justification.

If some mentally ill person or a sociopath kills people under a pretext of implementations of some (wrongly understood) Christian ideas, can we claim Christianity was a cause of those murders? Clearly, no. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:04, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@Fiveby: WRT "Is this a preview of what the B content will be?", let me explain (again) my vision of the B type article. This article will be a discussion of the thesis that Communism had a significant linkage with mass killings. That will include:

• the discussion of the claim itself (who claims that, and what exactly is claimed; different authors make different claims, thus, Rummel's claim differs from Courtois/Malia's ideas);
• the discussion of a historical context those claims were made in (for Courtois, it was a reincarnation of a Vichy syndrome etc, Rummel is libertarian, Brzezinsky is an anti-Communist and a US state official, etc);
• the criticism of those ideas (criticism of Courtois is massive, it includes the criticism by his co-authors, e.g. Werth);
• alternative theories (Mann's interpretation of mass killings as perversion of democratic ideas, Valentino's concept of a role of leader's personality), and alternative generalisation approaches.

That is one of possible structures of the B-style article, but if you have fresh ideas, I will gladly discuss it with you. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:23, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, that is a good way to structure it, thank you. And if we are going to discuss the "global Communist toll", it will be totally different from the current section, and be placed in the context of scholarly criticism (e.g. rather than put first the minority and the the majority criticism, we may use David-Fox's criticism of Malia—"the literature addressing the statistical-demographic, methodological, or moral dilemmas of coming to an overall communist victim count, especially in terms of the key issue of how to include victims of disease and hunger"—as the start) and that of anti-communist field, cause advocating of victims of communism (not of Communist regimes), criminalization, and Holocaust obfuscation and trivialization as noted by Dujisin, Neumayer, Radonić, et al. If we can integrate your proposed structure here with my proposed sandbox, I think that would be a great start and may also get you and The Four Deuces closer on the topic and way to fix it. Davide King (talk) 01:45, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert:, this is why i am skeptical of the B approach. Watson is junk, i can't see the full review, but what you have quoted actually looks rather forgiving in my opinion. Then take a source such as Kiernan, going by The Specter of Genocide (don't have The Pol Pot Regime), he has something valuable to say and appropriate for the article. But under your construction i see Watson as more relevant and Kiernan less so. There will be no lack of sources such as Watson, and if taken to RSN the standard response will be, it's published in a reliable source so quote, attribute as opinion, and include criticism. I think the article may end up being forever mired in mainstream/majority/minority/fringe arguments. I preferred the plan you initially put forward after the AfD, and before the RfC. fiveby(zero) 15:53, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@Fiveby: I agree that B was poorly written, but I supported this text because otherwise this RfC would never have started.

My version of B was:

"The article should discuss the concept that links mass killings with Communism as a primary causative factor, including proposed causes and critiques of the concept."

Indeed, if we interpret the current version of B literally, this article will be limited with discussion of Rummel's findings (who found a strong correlation between his "democide" and Communusm), Harff's works (who found no significant correlation between genolopoticide and Communism) and, probably, Fein. Keeping in mind that NPOV requires us to provide all significant views an opinia on the subject, and taking into account that other authors (except few other genocide scholars) do not discuss correlations at all, we cannot discuss make "mass killings" a subject of the B-type article. That would be a direct violation of NPOV: we discuss MKuCR only in a context of their correlation with Communism.

That means, the subject of "B"-type articles are not mass killings, but the theories that see correlations between Communism and mass killings. That directly follows from NPOV, which leaves us no other choice. To make the scope broader, I replaced "correlation" with "linkage" (which allows us to include Courtois, and similar authors).

This article will not discuss facts about mass killings (let me reiterate: NPOV does not allow us to do that), it will discuss Rummel (strengths and weaknesses of his views), Courtois (support and criricism), VoC (its anticommunist position), Brzezinsky, etc. It will explain who and why maintains that Communists allegedly killed 100+ people and so on. Essentially, it will be saying the same things as the current version of the article, but it will present that as opinia, not as facts, for neutral facts are explained in specialized articles as Gulag (which says 1.7 million perished in Gulag as opposed to Rummel's 30-50 million), Great Chinese famine (which says that it was a man made famine exacerbated by numerous objective and subjective factors, as opposed to "mass killing" as Coiurtois calims), etc. Paul Siebert (talk) 22:12, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

The problem with Paul's vision of B is that it has a narrow focus on Communism as a causative factor. Everyone agrees that mass killings did occur under several communist regimes, so as a reader I want to find out which regimes and what the causative factors or enablers were. Scholarship does exist that looks at common causes and there is also scholarship that looks at country specific causes. Hence a C type article (not withstanding the current structural issues) would best fulfill that goal, with a section on common enabling factors and country specific factors under the respective country sections. --Nug (talk) 02:39, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I find your position illogical. If Communism is not a causative factor, then what causative factors are common for those events?

If no significant common factors exist, what commonalities this article is discussing?

If different states killed people for different reasons (no common causative factors), then why should we add all those facts together? Just because they all declared they were Communist?

If there were no common factors, why the whole section is devoted to a total death toll, and the article does not present more precise, better itemized and more recent figures?

If there was no common factors, and no commonality, why the whole section is devoted to some fictitious common terminology (which is simply a lie, because overwhelming majority of authors do not use it)?

In other words, if Communism was not a significant common factor, why this article (which clearly implies a significant commonality) is organized in that way. Paul Siebert (talk) 03:02, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

And, if no significant common factors existed then there is no reason to speak about any commonality, and, therefore, there is no reason to speak about that as a single topic. However, I recall you voted against deletion of this article, because "it is a notable topic". How can loosely connected events be a single notable topic? Can you explain that? Paul Siebert (talk) 03:07, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Ok, let's take a look at that from the perspective of the "Ideology - Political system - Leaders" triad. It is the only section that holds this article together. If we remove it, it is unclear why all this content should be combined in one article: "Terminology" is a garbage (most authors do not use it, and some of them object to usage of those terms), "Estimates" contain only obsolete data, and these data imply some significant commonality, but what this commonality could be? The only conceivable commonality is common causes or common rule. Since most Communist states were independent, the second factor cannot be considered, so the only factor is common causes. If Communism is not a significant common factor, than what "ideology" are we discussing in the "Ideology" section? Let's remove it completely, and add just a mention that some (small) number of authors claim that Communism was a common factor.

Next, "Political system": what commonality can be in political systems of those states? The only conceivable commonality was that they were Communist or totalitarian. If we agree that Communism was not an important factors, then we should speak about totalitarianism, not Communism. But that will be a totally different article. If we want to limit our scope with Communist states, but we agree that Communism was not an important factor, than what holds the content together except the word "communist"? I don't understand it.

Finally, "Leaders". What exactly this section is supposed to say? That each Communist state was ruled by a brutal leader? Ok, that is true for some periods of their history, but is that a real reason do discuss all events in one article? I don't think so.

In summary, we either discuss Communism as an important common factor, or this article cannot exist. We are not going to start a ner RfC right now, so, please, stop your absolutely illogical claims about the absence of a common causative factor. Paul Siebert (talk) 03:30, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

?? Where did I say there was absence of a common causative factor. There were obviously a number according to RS, being ideology, political system and leaders. The article no more implies Communism is a significant factor than Valentino implies it in grouping communist regimes together in one chapter "Communist Mass Killings", as far as I understand it, Valentino concludes that the leaders was the main causative factor. I don't think there is any real academic consensus on causes, that's why three are listed. --Nug (talk) 07:10, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I want to object the removal of Watson from the article. As a literary historian, his input on the written works of Marx is significant. Watson did purvey wp:fringe views, but the citations at the moment of the paragraph's removal did not quote his views. Particularly, while the source of the citation did mention a correlation between Socialism and Nazism as was stated multiple times, that was not used as a citation, instead, Watson's analysis on the written work of Marx was in fact what was cited. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 20:31, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

How widely Watson's interpretation of Marx are accepted by peers? I found just one review, and that review contains a severe criticism of Watson's interpretation of Marx. Other authors seem to ignore Watson, and it seems his analysis is an insignificant minority view. Do you have any evidences that Watson's interpretation is supported by other authors in peer-reviewed or university level publications? Paul Siebert (talk) 21:04, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Watson's papers are peer-reviewed, reprinted and freely available in the library of congress. If he was insignificant that would not be the case. I should note that he has been cited by multiple other sources, 20 to be exact which is sufficient for notability. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 22:58, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Have you read this talk page section? I explained all of that. The review is available from Jstor (see above). This review was published in some OUP journal (top reliable source), and it contains a severe criticism. Other sources in the list provided by you do not discuss this concrete Watson's claim. Thus, one of those sources (Stiebler) says: "Only after we had finished this article did we learn aboutThe Lost Literature of Socialism by George Watson (Brownlow 1999, pp. 27–29), the contents of which are here therefore not taken into account", which needs no comments. Most other sources are irrelevant top the topic (just look at their titles).

This, as well as the fact that Watson's claim is exceptional (the claim that Marx's idea inspired genocides is definitely exceptional), does not make Watson an acceptable source. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:10, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Just to avoid misunderstanding: 20 citations is acceptable if the works that cite Watson's book are relevant to the topic and explicitly support author's statement. If a work just mentions Watson's name, but says that the book's content was not available to the author (as Stiebler says), or if the source tells about Jungian perspective of sexuality (e.g. Thompson), or if a source is just a Master's thesis, we cannot speak about "20 citations as a proof of notability". Paul Siebert (talk) 23:29, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Walicki expresses similar views as Watson regarding Marxist literature in his a 1993 paper titled ‘’Marxism and the "leap into the kingdom of freedom”’’ (cited 176 times): ”It is hard to deny that it legitimized the policy of genocide. No wonder then that these Engels articles were carefully studied by Stalin. It is also justified to suppose that they influenced the ideas of Hitler, who experienced a period of fascination with Marxism in his youth.” Note that Walicki English language book of the same name has 250 cites, so Watson isn’t all that fringe given what Walicki states. —Nug (talk) 00:15, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I believe Levivich gave a good criteria for sources; any source that does not account the 1990s and the archives revolution (e.g. pre-21st century) is likely outdated. Plus, if those views are mainstream and notable, rather than minority views, it should be easy to find coverage in equally reliable academic secondary sources that summarize this for us; we really need to stop not only the "He said, she said" formula but also stop to use their own works, which are primary sources about what they said, to reference this. If they are truly due and notable as you say, it should be easy to find secondary coverage that express the same points and that say Walicki's views are mainstream, or that cite the same quotes we use, otherwise we are too likely to engage in cherry picking rather than follow the mainstream literature. Do any of those cites use Walicki in the same way we do, or in releation to this topic? And are those same cites mainstream and from the academic press? Davide King (talk) 05:52, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't know what the archives revolution has to do with Watson, unless you are suggesting there were secret writings of Marx that were only released in the 1990s, which is nonesense. You are presenting a false dilemma, that the view needs to be mainstream or it has to be deleted. Wikipedia allows minority viewpoints, and this viewpoint is properly attributed to the author per policy. --Nug (talk) 08:23, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

It has to do because the topic of Communism is politicized and controversial, and that the archives revolution helped to reduce the heat, and made many Cold War era and 1990s sources outdated by now, including Watson, who is not even an expert about Communism or mass killings. As a result, Levivich's criteria1 is relevant, since mainstream sources in the 21st century have taken in account the archives revolution of the 1990s. The problem is that all such viewpoints have been automatically assumed to be significant, when they are not. If they are so significant, it should be easy to also provide secondary sources about them, in addition to their own work. Davide King (talk) 13:45, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I think you are overstating the impact of archives revolution, for example it has confirmed the views of Robert Conquest in his 2008 book The Great Terror: A Reassessment. --Nug (talk) 18:35, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I believe you can get a better reply from Paul Siebert, but yes and no because it depends of what you mean by it. Conquest did actually revise lower his estimates in light of the archives, so yes — but his estimates are mainly supported by the popular press, whereas historians writing in the academic press (Wheatcroft) still thought that his revised estimates were still too high, and they relied on hearsay and outdated sources rather than the archives, so no — I am not overstating it; again, you seem to confuse my summary of scholarly view as my own personal views (you appear to do this with Siebert too — you are free to disagree with us and think that our summary of scholarly sources is wrong but you need to provide evidence to back this, and your arguments against Siebert have never been convincing to me); if there is overstating, it is not from me but from Ellman, Getty, Wheatcroft, and the like, all of whom do support that the his revised estimates were still too high in light of archival evidence. Conquest is certainly relevant for the Cold War era and from an historical viewpoint, but they are outdated as the mainstream view, as is the Cold War era "totalitarian model", which has been taken up by "revisionist" and "postrevisionist" schools. The fact that you rely on outdated sources does not help and may be telling; surely, if you are right as you claim, there would be plenty of 21st-century sources fitting Levivich's criteria for best sourcing. Davide King (talk) 02:33, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Rummel says that camp mortality alone was 28,563,000, the consensus after "archival revolution" is that is was 1.7 million max. Of course, that is a minor overstatement...

With regard to the rest, I may overstate the "archival revolution", or I may be right. Only the analysis of a representative set of sources may give an answer. I proposed, for many times, to do that, but you refuse to participate. It seems you do not feel confident, and you suspect that that source analysis may confirm my point of view. Am I right? Paul Siebert (talk) 02:48, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

This "archival revolution" is related to estimates of death tolls, and has irrelevant to the literary analysis of Marx's writings. --Nug (talk) 02:52, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

It is not only related to that because it also discounted many Cold War era myths, including the "totalitarian model", which was already outdated by the 1980s. If we still rely on sources that do not take account of this, we are presenting a very biased and cherry picked picture under the guise of WP:VERIFY, with no respect for WP:NPOV or WP:WEIGHT. Davide King (talk) 03:03, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, is a literary analysis of Marx's writing really relevant to the article's topic? Do serious historians or genocide scholars use this literary analysis in their work? Paul Siebert (talk) 03:11, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

we really need to stop not only the "He said, she said" formula but also stop to use their own works - This whole section is "He said, she said, Rummel said this, Valentino said that...", hence my proposal to remove the entire section from the article. If we are gonna use this argument, at least let's be consistent here.

And to answer your other concern, again his views are fringe, but they were never cited. Only his analysis of written work by Marx was cited. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 07:29, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

His analysis of Marx is also fringe, or at the very least controversial, precisely because we cannot separate it from his fringe claim that Hitler was a Marxist. The problem is not only the "He said, she said" but that we are attributing their views to their own works, rather than look at secondary coverage to both verify they are being presented correctly and what is their weight and/or whether they are due. Davide King (talk) 13:45, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@Nug: Walicki cites Watson (his earlier work published in 1985). And he reiterates the idea that Hitler's genocide was inspired by Marx. Are we going to seriously talk about that as a majority/significant minority viewpoint?

Nug, you must realize that the idea that Marxism and Marxist ideology laid foundations for genocide is a serious and exceptional claim. I doubt this claim could be left unnoticed by other authors: they should either support it and develop it further, or reject and criticize (as Grant did). But we don't see any indication of a serious discussion of this claim by experts. Note, I do not claim that there is no such discussion, I just say that I have no information about that.

The claim, which Walicki made in passing, that Engels's words in one of his political pamphlet were "justification of genocide" is a small paragraph, and even Walicki does not develop this thought further. If Walicki treated this idea really seriously, he would develop it. But neither him nor other authors who cited his book didn't do that. Therefore, we cannot seriously write that this Engels's article represents an integral part of Marxist ideology and, it was a serious factor that enabled killing of millions of people (I write "serious", because we hardly can afford a luxury to discuss minor aspects in the section that discuss such global events as mass killings in several big Communist countries). Especially, keeping in mind that, per Mann and other authors, Communist regimes were usually effective in prevention of ethnic cleansing. I propose you to show respect to Wikipedia, and either to discuss this claim seriously (if a significant amount of reliable sources exist on that account), or not to discuss it at all. Paul Siebert (talk) 21:51, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Walicki cites the chapter Hitler’s Marxism in Watson's book The Idea of Liberalism: Studies for a new Map of Politics. Note that Norman Davies cites the same chapter from Watson in his book Europe: A History, so I hardly think you can say Watson is fringe if Davies is citing him in general works on European history. In regard to your claim that "Communist regimes were usually effective in prevention of ethnic cleansing", I suggest you read the paper The origins of Soviet Ethnic cleansing. --Nug (talk) 02:23, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Davies was rebuked by Wheatcroft, and is neither a specialist on Communism, the Soviet Union, or the Stalin era. This just further highlights how country experts tell a totally different story, and we cannot write a NPOV article if do not follow Siebert's suggestion for a common approach to sources. You keep presenting either outdated sources or non-experts on Communism; the fact most of sources for this topic are not experts on Communism should be telling and ring an alarm. Davide King (talk) 03:03, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Wheatcroft's criticism of Davies was related to his citing of Conquest with respect to the death toll, not his cite of Watson's literary analysis of Marxism. --Nug (talk) 06:46, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

No, it is not so easy. I do not think it is only in respect to that because it is about the Stalinist period and repressions, and how Davies summarized and presented it, see p. 341. Absence or lack of criticism does not mean acceptance, much less endorsement. It is far more likely to imagine Wheatcroft totally ignored that because it is fringe. I did miss Walicki's claim that it is "justified to suppose that they influenced the ideas of Hitler, who experienced a period of fascination with Marxism in his youth." More WP:REDFLAG. I am also pretty sure that his mention of Watson, or the quote you provided, is not the reason Walicki is cited many times by looking at them and their context.

Do ask yourself some questions — do you really think that such a strong claim would not be in the literature of Marxism, if it really was a mainstream view? Do you really think that Juncker would honor Marx if he actually was the founder and promoter of genocide as claimed by Watson? Do you really think we can have a NPOV article with a bunch of minority views, as long as they are attributed, irregardless of their context, relevance, speciality, and weight? We cannot respect NPOV if we rely only on authors who, in line with the "totalitarian model", compare Communism and Nazism, or in the case of Watson even claim that Nazism was socialism, and Hitler was a Marxist; you cannot support keeping Watson without providing this context of his views. If it is mainly such authors to write about the topic, it tells more about the topic than anything. Davide King (talk) 07:49, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

This article does not make any comparisons between Communism and Nazism. I find it interesting that while you require the highest academic standards for this article, you are perfectly happy citing an "investigative journalist" Jeff Coplon for other articles. What's Jeff Coplon qualifications? And what happened to WP:UNDUE, basing an entire section on Coplon's article? Surely this is a better source. --Nug (talk) 09:33, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

But several of its proponents (Courtois, Malia, Watson) indeed do, and the global body counting is an attempt to prove that Communism was worse than Nazism, which remains controversial, or hold fringe views like colonialism or Nazism being forms of socialism. Are you WP:HOUNDING me now? As you can see here, it is actually cited in another source (Sysyn 2015), so there is no double standard, and it actually reports scholarly views, which is ironically exactly what is needed here, e.g. rather than use Watson for what he said, we should use a secondary source about them for they they said, as I did there for Lewin et al. It would now be you having double standards if you remove it, as it has got secondary coverage, I used mainly to report other scholars' views, and is properly attributed, including Conquest's response to the article. Thank you for proving that you have lost with Siebert and I on rational arguments and now you have resorted to attacks, insinuations, and false balance fallacies. Yes, that is indeed a good source, but it is unclear what are your edit suggestions. I have no double standards and I ask you that you recuse yourself from this last comment. Davide King (talk) 11:04, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I was just suggesting better sources and I see you have subsequently improved it. With respect to the global body counting issue, there have been genuine academic attempts to define the total number by mass killings scholars, and there also has been no doubt politicization of the body count as well, and this should be covered in Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes#Estimates. But painting genuine academic estimates "an attempt to prove that Communism was worse than Nazism" is also participating in the politicization of it, which we shouldn't do as Wikipedia editors. --Nug (talk) 19:22, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. I do not doubt that but you need to acknowledge and recognize that such attempts have been extensively, criticized, controversial, and politicized, which I believe you just did, so thank you again; however, I ask you to please stop casting further aspersions about my personal views, for all you know I may be the most rabid anti-communist on this talk page but I have to be neutral and respect the sources — in this talk page, I am trying only to present scholarly views, and everything I have wrote is supported by scholarly sources (you are free to disagree about my reading of them but please do not assume I am expressing my own personal views, which do reflect the scholarly consensus, as I mostly agree with the mainstream or non-fringe views on many issues). What I mean by this is that "an attempt to prove that Communism was worse than Nazism" was not my personal view but a significant view of scholars (indeed, the scholarly criticism of the Black Book), and that Neumayer and other scholars have written academic articles and books about it, so I am not politicizing anything. Davide King (talk) 05:51, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

MarioSuperstar77, you wrote that Watson did purvey wp:fringe views, but the citations at the moment of the paragraph's removal did not quote his views." This is precisely why they are undue and should be removed; we are failing NPOV and VERIFY in not accurately presenting Watson's fringe views. We cannot cherry pick, or separate the reasonable from the fringe, we ought to present both and the context of Watson's claim, which is the fringe view that Nazism and Nazi concentration camps were socialism, and that Marx was the founder of genocide and Hitler goes back to him. Since this is clearly fringe, it is also undue and majority of academic sources, even those who appear to take a similar position, they actually do not because they are much more nuanced and the context is different. Davide King (talk) 05:52, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

No, we don't have to present both discussion of Marx and Nazism per WP:MSWAS. I agree with User:MarioSuperstar77 that it is acceptable just to present his views on Marx --Nug (talk) 08:17, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

That is an essay, not an actual policy. We cannot separate his fringe claims because his views on Marx are based on the fact he saw Hitler as a Marxist, which should make it WP:REDFLAG, an actual policy. Davide King (talk) 13:45, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

No need to copy and paste entire paragraphs

It has already been noted that this talk page is almost impossible to follow. This current strategy of copying entire sections of the article to the talk page paragraph by paragraph is not constructive, especially when each paragraph is accompanied with a wall of text. The article page is right there, we can refer to 'the third paragraph in section x' with no ambiguity. We also have a sub-page for that. Obviously some quotations from the article are needed but not whole blocks. This goes for all editors, but especially @Paul Siebert: I have already requested you modify such behaviour, which was met with no response. I am humbly asking again for the sake of the article. Vanteloop (talk) 23:16, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, such walls of text are hardly readable. But I think the problem is different. Please see Wikipedia:Don't bludgeon the process (I do not mean you). My very best wishes (talk) 03:59, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

References

Discussion of sources for this page at DRNB

• I just saw this. While this is fine to discuss (if people think this is helpful), I think this is mostly waste of time. Among the debated sources, there was only one (Victims of Communism Memorial) previously regarded as mostly unreliable at RSNB, but even in that case there was no official closing. Overall, this looks to me as an attempt to eliminate sources that some participants simply do not like. I would advise against it.

Some comments (such as one by Levivich) are well intended, but do not show understanding of the subject: Google Scholar has over 1,900 results for "mass killing" "communism" since 2017 [10]?? No, almost all these sources, are not on the subject of this page. There are relatively few academic books, specifically on this subject that must be used on this page, one of them Black Book of Communism. My very best wishes (talk) 01:44, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

The reason there are 'very few books' on the subject is because it does not form part of any mainstream academic discourse. See WP:FRINGE.

As for Google scholar, could you tell us what percentage of the results you give refer to mass killing by communists, how many refer to mass killing of communists, and how many merely use the terms in the same article. On second thoughts, don't bother... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:53, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

• Indeed, most Google scholar hits are about repressions against communists and other unrelated subjects; I am happy you agree with me on this. However, having only a few academic books on subject X (I am happy you agree with this too) does not mean that the subject is fringe. A lot of subjects is covered in only a small number of academic books; this is nothing special. My very best wishes (talk) 03:27, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

What is 'special' is that this article is promoting a single specific minority perspective on subject matter widely discussed elsewhere in academia, where simplistic attempts to assert that 'mass killing' is inherent in 'communism' are seen as inadequate explanations for anything, and as mere political posturing. But you know that already, don't you... AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:34, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

No, I think the political violence in communist countries is actually a "majority perspective". More important, the political repressions in general (not just "killings") are indeed inherent for the communist regimes as a matter of fact (and I actually lived in one of such countries). Sure, the large-scale violence is also inherent for certain other political systems, such as Nazi Germany, Mafia states, dictatorships, etc. The only problem of this page is focusing exclusively on killings, but this is justifiable because the killings were an important part of political repressions in such countries. My very best wishes (talk) 03:55, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:NOTFORUM. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:59, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

My apology, I only now realized, it is actually about this DRNB page. My very best wishes (talk) 04:42, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict)A brief reminder: during the last AfD, the admin panel concluded that

We therefore strongly recommend that the DRN process be resumed and pick up the attempts at source analysis carried out in this discussion, which show promise in breaking the deadlock.

In light of that, does anybody have any objection to collapse this section as totally irrelevant?--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:45, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

While that was only my advice, I think this is relevant and very much on the essence of the problems with the page. Maybe someone else will be willing to comment? I therefore object to collapsing. My very best wishes (talk) 04:50, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

After quickly looking, I agree with final comment by the moderator of this discussion [11]. My very best wishes (talk) 05:00, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

RfC: Neutrality tag

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is a clear consensus against removing the WP:NPOV maintenance tag from the article, and on top of that, an agreement that there is still a lot of work to do here, and the tag should remain on the top of the article for now. Editors in favor of keeping the tag relied on two main points: the recently closed AfD, which participants used to show there is an overall issue with the neutrality in this article; and the usual procedure for removing maintenance tags, which recommends that a tag should only be removed after the initial issues are resolved. While some participants believe the tag would be more useful if used in the specific sections where issues might be present, a discussion has shown that the overall article needs attention (which might include its title and structure). (non-admin closure) Isabelle ^🔔 22:39, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

---

In September, a {{POV}} tag was added atop the article. Is it still the case that the tag should be in the lead of the article?

• Option A No, the {{POV}} tag is not necessary atop the article, nor in any section.
• Option B The tag should be moved to particular sections where neutrality is contested, using {{POV section}}.
• Option C Yes, the {{POV}} tag should be placed atop top of the article.

— Mhawk10 (talk) 06:19, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Survey: Neutrality tag

• Option B. It does not seem to be the case that the neutrality of the entire article is meaningfully contested in a way that warrants a tag on top of the article. I've yet to see any meaningful objections that characterize the terminology section as being non-neutral. The same goes for the sections on Cambodia, Legal status and prosecutions, and Memorials and museums. I'm seeing some opposition to the inclusion of particular Soviet content, as well as particular PRC content, but it makes more sense to me to actually tag the appropriate sections rather than to lump the whole article together as non-neutral. Section-level tagging would also serve to focus on content discussions within particular sections, which would seem to be more helpful than the current system of going back-and-forth and getting nowhere over the article more broadly. — Mhawk10 (talk) 06:19, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
•  Comment: As long as we are relying on genocide scholars, who are a minority, and only one side of historiography, we are always going to have NPOV issues for the whole article. "Terminology" should go as SYNTH, not as NPOV, because the first three sentences are about Mass killing in general, and because there is no consensus even among genocide scholars, as we already acknowledges; as has been noted, it also mixes scholarly terminology with legal one. Davide King (talk) 07:23, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
  • A minority among whom? Ecologists are a minority among scientists, but they seem to be the relevant people in the field of ecology. Genocide scholars seem to be the relevant people to look towards to analyze genocides from a scholarly perspective. — Mhawk10 (talk) 07:37, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
    • We would have no problem if genocide scholars and mainstream historians supported and relied on each other, but that is not the case. Genocide studies is a relatively new field, have had issues with mainstream political science, and they are not bent on Communism as this article appears them to me. As noted by Siebert, "when some author group some fact into one book chapter, that does not implies a new topic is created." This is why need to drop them off and focus the article on Courtois et al. theories about Communism being the greatest murderer of the 20th century from a mainstream scholarly POV, that is the notable topic. You mention genocide but Communist/Soviet genocide is even more controversial — see Weiss-Wendt, Anton (December 2005). "Hostage of Politics: Raphael Lemkin on 'Soviet Genocide'". Journal of Genocide Research. 7 (4): 551–559. doi:10.1080/14623520500350017. ISSN 1462-3528. Davide King (talk) 08:19, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
      • I'm sorry, but are you supporting your argument that these scholars should be ignored due to POV issues with a reference to the Journal of Genocide Research, which is run by... the International Association of Genocide Scholars? If there's disagreement within the field, that's fine—there often is. But to dismiss the field wholesale because of the concept of Commmunist Genocide being messy (with the exception of the particular Cambodian genocide) doesn't do service to WP:NPOV, which would compel us to include all the significant views published by RS on a topic in a manner consistent with the principle of due weight. What articles like that one show is that genocide scholars do serious work and, while they disagree with each other at times, they're more than well-equipped to engage in scholarly inquiry in this area. — Mhawk10 (talk) 08:44, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
        • No, what I am saying is that we cannot have an NPOV article if we do not identify majority, minority, and fringe views, and genocide scholars are clearly a minority for not being relied by country experts when discussing the events. As was admitted by major contributor AmateurEditor, the article is based on minority views, especially in regards to proposed causes; how can we write an article from a minority POV? We got the whole structure wrong — it is those who we currently dismiss as controversy and criticism that are majority views, and genocide scholars and all others that represent a minority view. Academic fields are also not all the same and do not hold the same weight, and you seem to overlook all their problems, especially in comparative analysis, which is what this article tries to do by creating a commonality between all those events — contrary to what we do here, majority of genocide scholars do not treat this topic as a separate topic but write in general terms; it is for the same reason I do not support similar articles categorized by other ideologies and system like capitalism or fascism — "when some author group some fact into one book chapter, that does not implies a new topic is created." I think Paul Siebert can explain you this better than I did. Davide King (talk) 10:16, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• Option C, given that my addition of an unreliable sources tag was removed with the reasoning that it was covered under {{POV}}, the large amount of content dispute occurring in the article as well as the continued use of...dubious...sources throughout the article, it should be clear that the tag should remain where it is. Dark-World25 (talk) 08:37, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• Option C. We've just had an AfD discussion, where it was quite obvious that neutrality of the article was disputed by a significant proportion of participants (or at least, a significant proportion of those who actually understood what the RfC was about). I really don't understand why this even needs to be discussed, under such circumstances. AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:38, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• This needs DR or other collaborative approach, not a contentious RFC immediately following a contentious AFD, but if I had to pick it would be "A" (invited by the bot, plus I was already here.) Most bias claims seem to be about the mere existence of this article, and we just went through and AFD on that. North8000 (talk) 13:36, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree in a collaborative approach, but that is clearly not the reasoning being the NPOV tag — the reason is that is not only selectively about sources but they represent a minority view, no matter how significant, and that there is a contradiction between historians and scholars of Communism, and country experts and specialists in general, and genocide scholars, whose comparative approach, which is what we are trying to do here by positing a commonality, has failed and/or is rifled with problems. We simply cannot write a NPOV article from the POV of a minority, and/or if everything has to be attributed and cited to A rather than B or C. Davide King (talk) 00:42, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
• Trout the nom for a waste of time RFC, on the heels of our biggest AFD ever, and while here is an open DRN and an open RSN. No RFCBEFORE? No discussion about what is necessary to clear the tag? I don't think I've even seen an RfC over a tag before. Levivich 13:41, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Option C since we're voting, because the NPOV problems haven't been cleared yet (and they apply to the whole article, including but not limited to the title and the lead). Levivich 16:51, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Talk:Socialism#RfC about the POV tag in the article, if you really want to see one. While I'm here, procedural close. At the very least, the RSN needs to be concluded before we can determine if the tag is appropriate or not. BilledMammal (talk) 10:01, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

    That RFC hasn't been properly closed. Someone should make the request at Wikipedia:Closure requests. -- GoodDay (talk) 15:06, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

• Procedural close. Per North8000 and Levivich. This RfC should not have been started. ––FormalDude ^talk 14:41, 2 December 2021 (UTC) (Summoned by bot)
• Option C Since the purpose of the article is to present evidence to prove that genocide is a core component of communist ideology, rather than reporting sources that make this conclusion, it is POV. TFD (talk) 15:50, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• Option C. Other people have detailed the specific reasons, but all else aside there have been long-running POV disputes over essentially the entire article (not just one or two parts of it) for years, none of which have come anywhere close to resolution. Obviously it needs the article-level tag to indicate that fact and to encourage new people to enter the discussion in hopes that it will eventually go somewhere. --Aquillion (talk) 18:53, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• C I don't really care where the POV tag ends up, but considering the entire article has been called POV repeatedly in the AfD that just closed, a global tag seems warranted. Definitely Not A. BSMRD (talk) 18:58, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• C Should be procedurally closed but otherwise Status Quo until actual effort is made to resolve the decade long concerns of editors. Slywriter (talk) 21:12, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• B - Heck knows, it's close to impossible to get 100% neutrality in these types of articles. GoodDay (talk) 21:24, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• Multi-Whack! If we can't stop arguing about arguing, maybe an RfC to RfC the RfC is in order. And then we can dispute the closure of the RfC of the RfC. It'll be Turtles all the way down. MarshallKe (talk) 23:45, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• B - we need focus here, and methodically sort out the specific issues. Indiscriminate WP:TAGBOMBING is disruptive. --Nug (talk) 00:16, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
• C many long standing unresolved issues, so no need to change anything. ActivelyDisinterested (talk) 00:54, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
• C - The tag should be at the top of the article. The title of the article is itself problematic, as has been mentioned. The AFD closers did not state that the article is neutral or partly neutral. Robert McClenon (talk) 08:00, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
• C although I admit to giving it no more consideration than I already have, being a nice day to go out. ~ cygnis insignis 08:15, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
• C and procedural close — I agree that the title is itself problematic, and thus the main topic and its structure as a result. As long as we are relying on genocide scholars, who are not relied on by historians and country experts, cherry pick and misrepresent sources (e.g. works about genocide and mass killings in general, authors like Mann whose main thesis is that many genocides, such as Rwandian genocide, were a result of democratic transformations in those countries, hence the book's title Dark Side of Democracy, but we cherry pick his mention of classicide and Communist regimes,1 Kotkin, who does not support the view that the Holodomor was a genocide/mass killing and is talking about demographic losses, not mass killings, and many other examples), and only push the view of the most extreme one-sided, Cold War-like of Communist historiography, we are going to have NPOV issues for the whole article. Mention of WP:TAGBOMBING, which says is the unjustified addition of numerous tags to pages or unjustified addition of one tag to multiple pages, is clearly contradicted by the AfD and not tag bombing. Wanting to remove them in light of this, and lack of consensus, is disruptive.

Notes

1. What we need to do to fix NPOV issues is to look at secondary/tertiary coverage — is there any credible academic source that emphasizes classicide and Communist regimes in Mann's work? If there is not, they are likely undue and/or cherry picked; if there is, in what context is it cited and what is its status — majority, minority, fringe? Is it part of scholarly literature and discourse, or is it in isolation and limited to genocide studies? We need to ask the same questions about Valentino and any author that we discuss here. Rather than write "A says B", and cite it to A itself, we need to find if there is C, and whether C is quoting A in the context of Communist mass killings, e.g. this topic, or not (e.g. it could be about mass killings in general or criticism of Communism, or a totally different topic). Davide King (talk) 11:24, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

• A or B We should not tag the article as a whole. There is simply no doubt that there were mass killings under communist regimes, and we should not do anything that makes this appear dubious. Section tags can be decided on a case-by-case basis, but tags should be used with caution. Adoring nanny (talk) 13:28, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

  Ah, POV pushing by removing the {{POV}} tag I see. I suggest reading through the AfD and especially both the nomination and the deletion votes by Paul Siebert and Davide King to understand why the topic is problematic. Dark-World25 (talk) 14:14, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

  Good lord, how are people still saying this. IT IS NOT IN CONTENTION THAT MASS KILLINGS OCCURRED UNDER COMMUNISTS. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN IN CONTENTION. No one here thinks that Communists didn't kill anybody, and no one here wants to "hide" killings by Communists. It's just tiresome at this point. BSMRD (talk) 15:55, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

  Bold capitalised printing isn't required. AFAIK, nobody here has optical difficulties. GoodDay (talk) 16:55, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

• A or B, the whole article doesn't have neutrality issues. If a section is not deemed neutral, then that section should be tagged and worked on.--Ortizesp (talk) 18:15, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
• Option A Cloud200 (talk) 21:00, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
• Option B Maybe certain sections have such problems, but certainly not the whole article. --TheImaCow (talk) 12:32, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
• Option C The primary sources grouping all of these together are either highly politicized and unreliable (Rummel/Courtois) or non-experts (Valentino).--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:12, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

  You cannot say Rummel's data is unreliable in light of Wayman and Tago's analysis of his dataset in 2010. Also Harff has grown more critical of country experts who challenge these systematic empirical studies. --Nug (talk) 17:11, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

• C Disputes obviously persist, so removing the notice altogether is wrong; bikeshedding over details of tag placement isn't going to solve content problems, so let's leave the tag as it is and move on. XOR'easter (talk) 17:26, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
• C It´s not only specific sections with a disputed validity, the existance of the article itself is not even something we have consensus on. The issues with this article are still far from being resolved. 24.51.233.5 (talk) 16:30, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
• B Tag the section so the problem areas can be identified and solved. Tagging the whole article is not helping identify the issues so they can be rectififed and the article can be improved. Deathlibrarian (talk) 22:03, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
• C – I haven't reviewed the article, so I have no opinion about whether it is neutral, but from this talk page and the DRN discussions, it seems that major neutrality-related concerns affecting the article as a whole are still being discussed and are not remotely resolved. Therefore the tag should remain for the time being. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 00:43, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
• C Judging by the recent AfD and the talk page here, the neutrality of this article seems to be disputed by many editors and should remain for now. RoseCherry64 (talk) 10:56, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
• Option A. Such tag does not serve any good purpose here because this article has already attracted a lot of contributors who are in the state of constant dispute. Tag bombing only creates unnecessary tensions here. My very best wishes (talk) 21:24, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
• I agree that procedural closure with no action is the only option, per Levivich, FormalDude, North8000, MarshallKe, Davide King and others.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:50, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Discussion: Neutrality tag

Mere hours after the AfD was closed? Ok. GoodDay (talk) 08:28, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

So much for the DR lol. BSMRD (talk) 08:44, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think an RfC on where maintenance tags should be placed precludes a DRN. — Mhawk10 (talk) 08:47, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I know, it's just amusing. I have no real opinion on this so I probably won't vote. I do think the Dispute Resolution has become... less efficacious, considering the vastly increased activity and attention on the article. BSMRD (talk) 08:53, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mhawk10: Admins panel recognosed that there is a major disagreement about neutrality of this article, and this disagreement must be resolved via dispute resolution tool. The tag cannot be removed until that disagreement is resolved. By starting this RfC you literally propose a community to overrule this decision by merely !voting. This is a disruption of a normal process, and if I were you I would withdraw this RfC ASAP. Paul Siebert (talk) 15:50, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Two things:

1. This is an RfC on where the dispute tags should be placed. I take the view that it should be section-by-section. You may not. But, admins did not close the AfD with instructions in this regard; to imply that they made such a statement is simply wrong. And, even if such a statement were to be made, the proper place to resolve issues with the placement of maintenance tags is surely the article talk page, rather than a discussion that is centered around the question over whether or not to delete the article.
2. Admins did not conclude that DR was the only pathway forward for resolving the dispute. I have actually only encountered the article and all of the related walls of DR text after !voting to the AfD. I am not a party to the DR and I take the view that the DR is at a point where we need to fire off RfCs to start to actually move anywhere—especially since the DR has achieved very little in terms of approaching a consensus among those involved. I am not the only one who thinks this, nor am I bound to enter into a months-long DR that is running into the same exact issues that killed the WP:Mediation Cabal. On top of that, the DR is not about answering the philosophical question whether to place a maintenance tag on top of the article or only in the specific sections to which it applies.

Your aspersion that this is somehow disruptive to the normal process is unfounded, and I kindly suggest that you strike it. — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:22, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mhawk10: The neutrality tag is just an indication of a major disagreement over an article's neutrality. It is removed only after the disagreement is resolved. I put this tag because I see serious and fundamental problems with the article's neutrality, and I provided quite convincing arguments in support of this my actions. By starting this RfC you invite other users just put my arguments into a trash and to !vote for removal of this tag without analysing if neutrality issues have been resolved. This is an utter disrespect and a misuse of the AfD procedure. I don't find my statement an aspersion.

A more correct AfD question would be: "Do you think that the neutrality issues that lead to the NPOV placement have been resolved, so the tag may be removed or placed to some individual sections?" That question would be more in agreement with a procedure, but it would be still illegitimate in light of the conclusion of the admins panel, which explicitly recognised that there IS a major neutrality dispute, which is still unresolved.

Therefore, I don't find your arguments convincing. If this AfDRFC will not be speedy closed or withdrawn, I may ask admins if it is in accordance with our rules. Paul Siebert (talk) 16:39, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Paul, I am not proposing another AfD, nor do you have to find my argument convincing for an RfC to be held on an article talk page. If you don’t like the proposal to move the neutrality tag into article sections, you can simply !vote and make your arguments. I think that this is a fine RfC to place, so I see no need to withdraw it. Especially considering the exact locations of the neutrality dispute seem to be unclear and not strictly defined in the admin close of the omnibus AfD, I think this is appropriate. — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:47, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mhawk10: I fixed the typo. Of course, I meant RfC.

With regards to the rest, if one user placed a NPOV template and provided a reason for that, you should discuss a reason first, and only if the reason will be found frivolous or already resolved, a discussion of the tag removal may start (or it may be removed automatically). The opposite is a disruption. Do you want me to discuss this question at ANI? Paul Siebert (talk) 16:55, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Paul, with due respect, if you are going to take me to ANI over my decision to launch an RfC over whether it is better to include the tag in particular sections or if it is better atop the page, I cannot stop you. That being said, I don’t think that a discussion over where is the best place to apply maintenance tags in this article is disruptive. — Mhawk10 (talk) 17:09, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

The option A says: No, the "POV" tag is not necessary atop the article, nor in any section. That needs no comments.

And, discussion of the tag's placement without discussing an original reason for that is inappropriate.

Furthermore, the question " Is it still the case that the tag should be in the lead of the article?" implies that some significant changes happened in the article that resolved the problems. That question if misleading, because NO significant changes has been made.

It could be quite correct to start this RfC after some work has been done to resolve the problems with NPOV-violations. However, no such work have been done yet, and the attempt to resort to voting is a misuse of the procedure. Actually, that RfC is a direct attempt to undermine the results of the recent AfD, which confirmed that the article has severe problems. Although they are insufficient for article's deletion, they are quite sufficient to keep this tag. If the RfC will not be withdrawn, I'll put this text to ANI. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:31, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

If you have a policy-based reason against A (I !voted for B but included A for completeness) then you can make the case against A. If your implication is that I am trying to remove all mention of the neutrality issue from the article (which I agree would not be appropriate) then the implication is wrong. — Mhawk10 (talk) 17:36, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

"A" directly means that you are trying to remove all mention of the neutrality issue from the article.

Discussion of the tag placement without discussing the reasons is hardly appropriate. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:42, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

It looks premature and uncalled for (there are more pertinent and important RfCs that we should be doing, like the main topic, its structure, its core sources), and the issues have already been confirmed by both AfD1 and DRN. But by all means, go ahead. If this lead us to a discussion about sources' majority, minority,2 fringe status — it may move us forward.

Notes

1. As noted by the AfD closure, 'Keep' side's main argument was not that the article was neutral and/or there were no issues but that it was a notable topic and issues could be fixed. Having the first RfC to be about whether or not we should have tags until such issues are fixed is disingenuous to say the least.

2. The China section relies on Dikötter, Valentino, and the Newsweek rather than country and famine specialists. Majority of sections do not accurately summarize majority views on each event but present a minority POV within the context of genocide and mass killings,3 e.g. the section about the Red Terror does not really explain the context and background of the Russian Civil War and White Terror, which is how majority scholarly sources treat the topic, and/or present popular history sources like Figes and Pipes, or outdated sources pre-1991, and even one from 1927 (!). It certainly is not a summary of the events but a presents specific POV within the context of a Communist death toll, hence why most 'summary style' events are more about how many people died, or how the main cause was communism, rather than fairly summarize the events according to majority scholarly sources. Paul Siebert can explain this better than I did, and I would love to see their take on each sources by sections, and how it would look like if we relied on majority sources, e.g. Ó Gráda for the Great Chinese Famine, or Ellman and Wheatcroft, who ignore the global Communist grouping and/or death toll and focus on the Soviet Union, especially the Stalin era.

3. Just look at how many of the sources' titles are general topics about mass killings to see how majority of events are discussed separately, not together, and so are Communist states — even those who discuss together Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot (three leaders of three specific periods of three different Communist regimes), some like Jones separates Stalin and Mao from Pol Pot, and Fein sees Pol Pot more in line with fascism than Marxism. Davide King (talk) 10:28, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

GoodDay, I don't understand the reasoning in your vote. Neutrality means fairly representing the facts and opinions with the weight they have in reliable sources. We can do this among other ways by seeing how a topic is treated in tertiary sources such as reputable encyclopedias and academic textbooks. Just as sources may disagree on their analysis, so can editors. But which facts and views have greatest weight should never be a matter of disagreement, since we have a clear policy to determine it. TFD (talk) 21:57, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think every section in the article has NPOV problems. GoodDay (talk) 22:00, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

We cannot tell that until the issue of the article's overall neutrality is addressed. The section on Romania for example could be neutral for an article on mass killings under romanian communist regimes, but be undue for inclusion as a separate section of this article. TFD (talk) 22:18, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I'll accept whatever the decision/result of this RFC turns out to be. GoodDay (talk) 22:21, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• I’m seeing some mentions that the title is contested. Does anyone plan to open a move request to try to get the community to resolve that dispute? — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:11, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
  • First, I propose that Robert McClenon open and neutrally write any RfC, if they want. Second, even before discussing the title, we need to agree on what exactly is the main topic and how it should be structured — I do not know whether this can be done in a single RfC or in two separated ones but we clearly need to agree on what the main topic is, and which sources support it, and analyze them, as suggested by Dark-World25. Davide King (talk) 23:50, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

While I agree with Siebert and those at ANI that Mhawk10 was not a behavioral issue and that they simply put 'Option A' for completeness, even though I think Robert should have started the first RfC and that this was premature and useless, the fact that several users have supported 'Option A', even though the AfD's conclusion is 'Option C' (not every single section may have the same NPOV issues but many sections would have to be tagged, and considering the controversy and dispute it just makes more sense to place it at the top), is telling and may be disrupting, not least because we simply cannot fix the article if there are users who still think it is either perfectly fine or has no NPOV issues. Davide King (talk) 23:55, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Davide King - What RFC are you saying I should have been allowed to start before we were distracted by this tagging dispute? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:06, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, essentially about what you have outlined so far and below too. We need one or more RfCs about:

1. What is the main topic, and its structure and core sources

• (majority, minority, fringe — is majority discussing Communism as a separate or special topic, or simply as part of genocide and mass killings discourse in general?)

2. Theory-based and focused

• (e.g. Courtois' thesis and link between Communist states and mass killings, and whether the link can be extended to communism itself)

OR

3. Events-focused and based

• (e.g. summary of events according to majority scholarly sources and country experts, not genocide scholars, so rather than discuss them as death toll events, we simply say what happened and summarize majority views, in which case the article must be refocused away from mass killings1 and Communist regimes, and focused on Communist leaders (e.g. Valentino's thesis) and limited to Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, plus the Red Terror within the context of Russian Civil War and White Terror)

WHETHER

4. It is part of scholarly mainstream literature and discourse, or is in isolation with one-sided historians like Courtois and/or a minority of genocide scholars.

5. If it is more of an anti-communist propaganda topic in the (right-wing) popular press (100 million, oversimplifications and generalizations about the causes) that is used to dismiss left-wing politics in general as part of an anti-communist/totalitarian field of memory to criminalize communism as a whole, not just Bolshevism/Leninism/Stalinism.

6. If it is part of Holocaust obfuscation (double genocide) and trivialization in equations with Nazism, and politicization of Holocaust memories.

I think I have already provided sources in support of this (e.g. Neumayer 2018 and others), but if you feel the need, I can provide them for each claim, and I am sure Siebert can also provide more. Some of the same points may be discussed in the same RfC, so we may not need literally six RfCs — I hope you can organize and summarize those disputes in one or more RfC, and add anything I may have missed. Davide King (talk) 03:20, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Notes

1. I found this comment by Siebert about terminology particularly revealing and helpful, and why we need to drop it and move away from mass killings, which is a proposed umbrella term, including Valentino (who gave this article the current name), "to discuss all XX century coercive deaths inflicted by governments and paramilitary organizations. It was proposed as a category for statistical analysis and general theorizing, and it has no special implication to Communism [emphasis mine]."

Davide King (talk) 03:46, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, any tagging dispute is a distraction from resolving a content issue. This is different from other article tagging disputes only in that the underlying content dispute is larger, and so the tagging issue is potentially a larger distraction from a larger issue. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:06, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I disagree with the idea that we can remove the top-level tag and work on the sections, because that is based on the assumption that the section organization of the article is correct. It only makes sense to work on the article section-by-section if the sections are correct. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:06, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Also, we should only remove the top-level tag after we have resolved any disputes about the meaning of the title of the article. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:06, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I am still willing to work with any editors at DRNMKUCR on any other RFCs that can run while this tagging RFC is in progress. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:06, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

An RFC & DRN occurring at the same time, about the same article. Rather confusing. GoodDay (talk) 01:39, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Closure

I've put in a request for closure of this RFC. GoodDay (talk) 21:29, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Stalingrad

A well documented mass killing that I’m assuming is not going to be included ~ cygnis insignis 18:12, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

That's related to war, this article is about peace time mass killings. Note this article doesn't mention the Russian Civil War. That said, I just noticed this section Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes#Soviet_killings_during_World_War_II, probably should be removed as being out of scope. --Nug (talk) 18:21, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

No, because that were mass murders of civilians, not combatants during Russian Civil War (currently mentioned in section about Red Terror), and during WWII. For the same reason the Holocaust is the most notable of Nazi crimes. My very best wishes (talk) 03:58, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh yes, I totally agree, I think, the distinction is often seen as a matter of consent, perhaps va political / geographical obligation, when totalling the victims of mass killings ~ cygnis insignis 14:17, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay, so you are both saying the distinction should be combatant/non-combatant rather than wartime/peacetime? That makes sense. But I'm not seeing the connection to Stalingrad, the article Battle of Stalingrad doesn't list non-combatant casualties, could you elaborate? --Nug (talk) 18:38, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I do not see Battle of Stalingrad on this page. One could make a connection with the Siege of Leningrad, but only if such connection appears in RS. My very best wishes (talk) 21:39, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Combatants versus non-combatants? It depends. For example, how would war-time executions by SMERSH qualify? I am not sure. Whatever sources say. My very best wishes (talk) 21:43, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

apologies, I’m trying to fathom the depths to which an article’s scope loses meaningful resolution ~ cygnis insignis 08:42, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

[Comments moved.]

Dude, you seriously aren't following the conversation when you respond in the wrong section. And no, nobody is attributing all mass killings under Communist regimes to communism, there are currently three proposed causes or enabling factors: ideology, political system and leaders. --Nug (talk) 22:04, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

By the way, what source says that causes are ideology, political system and leaders? Is this idea accepted by other authors? Paul Siebert (talk) 22:14, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I recall you mentioned Valentino attributed communist mass killings to something, what was it? I'll add it to the Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes#Proposed_causes_and_enabling_factors section. --Nug (talk) 22:22, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

It would be highly desirable is you switched from your acrimonious tone to a normal and collaborative one. Keep in mind that you are not a DRN party anymore, so my voluntary obligations are not in force.

I perfectly remember what I said about Valentino, and if I am asking about causes, there is some serious reason.

Valentino says nothing about Communist mass killings specifically, his point is that some Communist regimes (as well as other regimes) perpetrated mass killings, and that was because their leaders found that instrumental.

My question is different. Who decided that "proposed (common) causes" are "ideology, political system and leaders"? Is that statement found in some source, or that is just a conclusion of some Wikipedia user? Paul Siebert (talk) 22:50, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Recent removals

Given the currently standing RfC on this page [12], I think we must wait the official closing prior to making such changes because they are made in the disputed section that is the subject of the RfC. My very best wishes (talk) 04:20, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Tombs should not have been reintroduced per WP:FALSEBALANCE and for the fact that the main subject on the cited source focuses on Wikipedia rather than Communism in itself. This is pretty Synth-ish. Additionally, when you revert, don't revert over non-controversial additions to the article, that is disruptive. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 13:11, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

This is synthesis made by the source, not by wikipedians. Therefore, not a WP:SYN. I can't check the source (paywall), but assuming that the summary was correct, it say he "equated erasure of communist party mass killings to being "at least as bad as Holocaust denial". That is on the subject. What's the problem? Should this be rephrased? My very best wishes (talk) 21:37, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

You read none of the comment past my comment about the synthesis. It should not be rephrased, it should be removed, period. It violates at least 2 guidelines: MOS:SELFREF, WP:FALSEBALANCE, and might violate 2 more: WP:POV and WP:SYNTH due to the way this source is utilized to push a narrative. Additionally, as I stated multiple times, this adds nothing informative to the article since this is entirely an assertion that anyone other than this historian may have, and exists solely for the sake of balance with the added bonus of it being WP:FALSEBALANCE. This source is trash, there is no arguing it. Bonus points for being hidden behind a paywall so not many user can thoroughly review it. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 22:58, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Do you mean this edit [13]? If so, then no, The Telegraph is generally a reliable source, see here, and more importantly, the author is apparently a historian. If you think the source was incorrectly summarized here, please rephrase. As written, this text on the page does not mention WP, only article does. Perhaps it should?I would think so. But in any event, this is not a self-reference, this is view by author of the publication. My very best wishes (talk) 03:12, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

The issue is that Tombs is used as a false balance after Gerlach (the 'However' is further proof of such editorializing), who is an actual genocide scholar, while Tombs is an historian of 19th-century France which has nothing to do with the topic. Indeed, I actually moved Tombs in the section about ideology, but Vanteloop moved it back there. Surely that is more relevant, since Tombs is talking about ideology? Davide King (talk) 05:44, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Once again, you failed to appropriately read my reply. Furthermore, I am skeptical that you understand Wikipedia's guidelines. The perennial sources pages is what I would like to call "a rule of thumb", and is only relevant assuming the source itself remains appropriate. If one day, out of nowhere, a reliable source stated that the Earth is flat, would you still agree to use that source as a citation? This article with Tombs is the exception, not the rule, it should not be used as it is piss poor and by all means unencyclopedic. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 14:17, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Restored the content, I also agree we should wait on the RFC. There is no rush after all. Seems like something that should be in the article and is well sourced. I am not seeing a great reason to remove it either. Just noticed me edit summary had a typo, so that is great. PackMecEng (talk) 03:10, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

The edit summary also repeats the accusation ~ cygnis insignis 03:32, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Please, see WP:BRD and WP:ONUS. That has been challenged, so the onus is on you, not on us, see the "Some recent edits" thread above. It is a news source about the attempted deletion of this article, from which we take a passing quote from a specialist of 19th-century France about the attempted AfD and not the topic, and that includes Cliff May, more extreme than Courtois. As it was already noted in the AfD's talk page by BSMRD and Paul Siebert, they are hardly neutral or accurate (Tombs falsified1 the reason why activists wanted to remove Gladstone's statue),2 and to quote Siebert, "judging by the Telegraph article's tone, the author's intention was by no means to create a balanced story. Of course, he picked the scholar who was expected to express a viewpoint of a certain kind." Davide King (talk) 04:07, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

this revert and the edit summary are incorrect in many aspects.

First, that type series of reverts is a "rag team" edit war, and is disruptive. This type activity may be reported.

Second, this edit is not "well sourced", it is an op-ed by a non-expert (Tombs is an expert in XIX century history of France.

Third, the source was taken out of context: Tombs wrote specifically about the recent AfD, not about Communism.

Using this type sources in this questionable way opens a Pandora box: if Tombs's opinion is cited, noone can prevent addition of radical leftist sources (which we all would like to avoid).

Finally, I have no idea why and how the RfC's outcome can affect the fate of this concrete source: it is irrelevant and questionable independent on what option (A - D) wins.

I strongly recommend PackMecEng to self-revert. Paul Siebert (talk) 04:25, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

• For the reasons explained above, I completely agree with PackMecEng. Actually, I removed this at first, but then self-reverted after realizing I was wrong. Robert Tombs is a reputable historian, his view was reliably published, obviously relevant to this pag,e and therefore should be kept. My very best wishes (talk) 04:31, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

• This read more WP:ILIKEIT than objective analysis. Tombs is a reputable historian about 19th-century France, not Communism or genocide/mass killings, which is the topic of this article. He has taken historical revisionist views about colonialism, in spite of what he is quoted as saying there, and has taken extreme anti-communist views about an anti-racist activist. See the links I provided here. Davide King (talk) 04:39, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Are people really still trying to put this inane Telegraph piece into the article? Tombs is (barely) a reputable historian, in a completely different field from the one being discussed. His conservative bias is well known (and willingness to falsify and exaggerate in favor of that bias) as discussed above, as is the Telegraph's, discussed in our article on them. This adds nothing to the article, other than attempting to use the Holocaust to shield the topic from criticism by promoting the fringe views of an irrelevant historian. With regards to the RfC, this piece has nothing to do with the structure of the article, and could be safely removed regardless of the RfC's results. BSMRD (talk) 04:44, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

He is an expert in XIX history of France, see, e.g. this. He hardly a non-reputable historian, but he authored no peer-reviewed works on Communism Paul Siebert (talk) 05:02, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm aware of his work on France, but whenever he steps outside of that area it is inevitably some fringe view in service of his ideological professions, be it colonialism or communism or race. In my personally estimation, that severely damages his credibility even for the work he is qualified for, but I suppose he could be a suitable source if this page was about the Paris Commune. Unfortunately it isn't, despite editors treating him like some worthy authority on this topic. BSMRD (talk) 05:06, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

So can we remove any cites by Engel-Di Mauro, who a Professor of... Geography? --Nug (talk) 05:35, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Nice WP:FALSEBALANCE. Unlike Tombs, who has promoted historical revisionism about colonialism, Engel-Di Mauro's views about the body-count are pretty mainstream (e.g. scholarly criticism of the Black Book), and it was at least written in an academic journal published by the academic press. Davide King (talk) 05:39, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict)If you'd like to, you are welcome to go ahead. I will say however, the citation Di-Mauro's name is attached to is an article published in an actual peer-reviewed journal with real authors and citations, not one extremely questionably relevant historian's opinion in the Telegraph. BSMRD (talk) 05:41, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Engel-Di Mauro's paper is cited by... nobody. --Nug (talk) 05:49, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

(EC) The Engel-Di Mauro source in question, by an author with no relevant credentials, claims that "Capitalism's war-related death toll so far exceeds 150 million," citing Wikipedia. "The data are mainly from Wikipedia," the author explains, specifically our List of wars by death toll. Also according to the author, the death tolls from both the Spanish flu and the COVID-19 pandemic are directly attributable to capitalism: "But why not just cut through the rhetorical rubbish and use the death toll from the 'Spanish' or 'Kansas' flu as a retort to anti-communist demagogues? Using the same inflationary logic, that would already be about 100 million deaths right there, equalling the '100 million victims of communism' within a mere handful of years. After all, since communists are accused of causing mass mortality through their policies, we can just as easily accuse liberal democratic capitalists for their failure in preventing the spread of the flu and for negligence in matters of basic healthcare. In fact, negligence would be an understatement. It was planned capitalist conflagration and deliberate military policies that caused such a grim mortality figure. Even if one relies on more recently recalculated estimates that put total deaths at 50 million, liberal democratic capitalism can be blamed unequivocally for, at a minimum, a period of historically unsurpassed yearly rates of mass death. In the current conjuncture of the COVID19 pandemic, it appears not much has changed in this respect within liberal democracies. ... About two million have died of COVID-19 worldwide so far. This is directly imputable to businesses pushing profitability into tropical forests and exposing workers to zoonotic diseases while undermining public health and relentlessly eroding and pre-empting healthcare provisions almost everywhere." [emphasis added] Will the same editors who contend that Tombs is WP:UNDUE or even WP:FRINGE continue to defend this laughable source?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:06, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Wow, that is seriously fringe. Unlike Engel-Di Mauro, Robert Tombs is a notable scholar. --Nug (talk) 06:22, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Nug, that is because it is mainly a tertiary source and is recent. Karlsson 2008 is also cited by nobody relevant and is the only source that I would argue support your structure. You guys clearly missed the point of the article and how it is used here — it is just showing how the Communist death toll is methodologically flawed and can be applied to any ideology or system; The Black Book of Capitalism did the same thing — rather than doing the same thing of The Black Boof of Communism for capitalism, it attempted to show how flawed such approach and methodology is. Do you honestly think that is the problem of the article? Do you not think Watson is a bigger issue? I support a total rewrite, and perhaps in such rewrite none of this will make it, but considering the current structure, it is perfectly acceptable for balance and is properly attributed. Davide King (talk) 06:29, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

To reiterate, this "laughable source" [sic], which was clearly decontextualized, was discussed at RSN, and is published by the academic press, while Tombs' opinion was published in a popular press newspaper about the AfD nomination of this article. This is false balance at its finest. Davide King (talk) 06:43, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Engel-Di Mauro is one of the editors of The Routledge Handbook on Ecosocialism, which was published by the academic press, but sure — they are fringe; a fringe author would not be chosen to write and edit an academic handbook. As was also already noted by The Four Deuces, "criticism [of the body count] seems to be representative of a large number of experts." In that, they are a reasonable tertiary source about The Black Book of Communism and the Communist body count, which is exactly the context they are placed in within this article. Davide King (talk) 06:56, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I note that Engel-Di Mauro is Editor-in-Chief for the Capitalism Nature Socialism journal, which published his paper. According to the section ”Peer Review” in Taylor&Francis’ editorial policies: "The details of the comments as well as the overall recommendations by peer reviewers will be considered by the Editor when making a decision, but ultimate responsibility for acceptance or rejection lies with the Editor." (their emphasis) so there is definitely a conflict of interest and thus his paper can’t be considered anything more than an un-reviewed opinion piece by a non-expert (his area of expertise being geography). At least Tombs' opinions were independently published, unlike the opinions of Engel-Di Mauro. —Nug (talk) 08:21, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

That does not sound like a conflict of interest according to common definitions. We are not using that source for their original research alone but as a tertiary source about the criticism of Communist body counts from uncontroversial claims like the 100 million figure being widely used and common; you did not reply to what I said, namely that it is used in its proper context, in the context it is used it is supported by scholarly criticism of the Black Book, and is in line with memory studies and how the cause is advocated as an anti-communist POV (Neumayer et al.). If you are fine with Watson, and ignore his fringe views, I do not see why you should ask that we remove this source when we are currently using it for uncontroversial and attributed statements, which are also supported by other sources. Davide King (talk) 08:49, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

At least Engel-Di Mauro's opinions are relevant to this article and the context in which they are placed (§ Estimates), and not about the proposed deletion of this article, which may be bordering in itself on Holocaust obfuscation, and at least a form of slippery slope and lack of understanding of how Wikipedia works, for comparing the AfD nomination of this article to Holocaust denial. Davide King (talk) 08:54, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Davide King, perhaps you are not aware of this, but Engel-Di Mauro is also cited in the "Comparisons to other mass killings" section: "Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro et al. argue that 'since the time of the Russian Revolution, capitalist institutions as a whole have caused close to 158 million deaths by waging war alone, with liberal democratic varieties of capitalism contributing at least 56 million of those fatalities. This monstrous impact, unprecedented in the history of humanity, doubtless reaches hundreds of millions more deaths when the centuries of genocides and slavery systems are considered and when murders in the home, at work, in prisons, and in the streets (including by police) are counted as well.' This would be a higher death toll than the 100 million estimate from The Black Book of Communism, which Engel-Di Mauro et al. argue is a 'simultaneously fictitious and slanderous claim'." These are fairly extraordinary, WP:REDFLAG claims.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 09:06, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

That is because I always used the source in the context of body-counting, and when it was supported by other sources; it was X-Editor who added it, not me, so you should discuss that with them. Davide King (talk) 09:10, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I also would really appreciate if you could analyze everything, especially Watson, who claimed that Nazism and its concentration camps were forms of socialism, that Hitler was a Marxist, and that Marx invented genocide; surely those are just as equally WP:FRINGE and WP:REDFLAG claims? Indeed, none of Watson's fringe views have been contextualized, perhaps because if someone was aware of this, they would have gotten rid of them a long time ago, yet they are still there. Davide King (talk) 09:13, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

If you want other editors to participate in the discussion, then you need to reference the disputed text. Engel-Di Mauro's article of course is a reliable source for facts. The fact that it was published in 2021 is not a deficit but a definite advantage since we are supposed to use the most recent sources.

Comments by Tombs outside academic publication have no weight. Nug, can you explain why Tombs falsely claimed that Gladstone's name was removed from a building because his father owed slaves, when in fact it was removed because as an MP he voted against abolishing slavery? Also, why are you arguing that the 100 million figure is accurate when it has been debunked by expert who have reviewed it? I don't mind that the article should mention that anti-Communists invented the figure in order to compare Communism unfavorably with Nazism, but we should not pretend that it has any credibility. TFD (talk) 10:47, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Is it though? Engel-Di Mauro's article pins the blame for Covid19 on capitalism: About two million have died of COVID-19 worldwide so far. This is directly imputable to businesses pushing profitability into tropical forests and exposing workers to zoonotic diseases while undermining public health and relentlessly eroding and pre-empting healthcare provisions almost everywhere. As I recall VoC foundation was said to be unreliable on RSN because it blamed communist China for Covid19. --Nug (talk) 12:39, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I would very much like see to The Four Deuces' response to that, and also because I am tired, but let me just tell you that the part you quoted is actually cited to Wallace, Rob. 2020. Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19. New York: Monthly Review Press (unlike Tombs, Engel-Di Mauro has cited references to back up his claims; that article was, in fact, co-written by the journal's editorial board, so it was not just him, and there was editorial fact-checking), and was clearly not the reason why it was found to be unreliable; the COVID-19 claim made them fringe, not unreliable, which was already agreed on in the previous RSN discussion. You should see that more as showing how flawed the body count is because by the same standards, other ideologies' body count may well be equal or even higher. Davide King (talk) 13:13, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Should all mention of that person be removed from the article? He does not ring me as someone who is reliable. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 14:22, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I fail to understand why Nug is so adamant to keep Tombs in the article. With this article, I made every judgement using policy and common sense and not a single paragraph in this article, not a single one other than Nug's addition with a citation from the Telegraph was so obviously out of place that I had to say something about it. Generally speaking, I do not like the structure of the article and the way the sections, paragraphs and sources therein feel ill-fitted, but none of them violate any WP guidelines. The paragraph with Tombs is WP:FALSEBALANCE, MOS:SELFREF and I had not mentioned it yet because I was unsure, but the "however" that precedes the paragraph is editorializing. Outside of Wikipedia's policies, I also commented that this paragraph added nothing informational to the article and existed solely for the sake of balance, or in other words, this paragraph amounted to say "The paragraph right before me sux trololol" eccentuated by the editorialism. Although there is no Wikipedia policy for that, it does not mean it warrants being in the article. This is not that different from fancruft where someone will add unnecessary notes to the article that amounts to literally nothing like stating that this "character" eats apples which is a common occurence in real life, as much so as people who state that denying the atrocities of Communism is as bad as Holocaust denialism. You see the connection I made, this is such a worthless addition that on those grounds alone it should not have been included. Nug, if you really want Tombs in the article, find a better and more relevant source than this because it is bad and it is only going to lead to another AfD - didn't you want to keep the article? MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 13:58, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

My comment also concerns Vanteloop, my best wishes and PackMecEng who are adamant to keep this trashfire of a paragraph. I know you want to make sure this article is not thoroughly whitewashed, but adding literal op-eds into the article will not prevent that, in fact, people will immediately fight to get it removed because it is by no means an encyclopedic addition. It does not matter what profession the person is either, if a scientist said one day "There is evidence to the Earth being flat" should they be included? MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 13:58, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

?? Where did I add it or was adamant on keeping it? My concerns here were around Engel-Di Mauro. --Nug (talk) 19:26, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Apologies, I misemembered, it was Vanteloop's addition to the article, not yours. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 22:39, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

scientists have said that ~ cygnis insignis 14:15, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

• How can anyone think news media is a good source for this article? We should be only citing WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Levivich 17:41, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

No, the official policy here is Wikipedia:Verifiability, and the place of publication has been specifically validated in a community discussion. My very best wishes (talk) 18:19, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

You've been here too long to argue that all RSes are equally reliable. We should prefer scholarship over newsmedia whenever possible. Here, it's possible. You've got to be kidding me if you're going to tell me that a newspaper like The Telegraph or even The New York Times is the same as a peer reviewed academic publications. Levivich 18:21, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

You said: "We should be only citing WP:SCHOLARSHIP" on this page. I am saying: this is not so according to the policy. Of course the scholarly sources are preferred. No one suggested otherwise. But just excluding all other types of sources on this page would be against WP:NPOV, and that is exactly what some contributors do. My very best wishes (talk) 18:30, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

We need to include newspapers as sources to meet NPOV?!?! That is the opposite of how NPOV works. If the viewpoint isn't published by academia, it's not WP:DUE for inclusion in this article. The tell-tale sign of POV-pushing is trying to use substandard sources (a Telegraph article) because the quality sources (scholarship) doesn't say what you want to say. That's why there are source restrictions in some DS areas (and why we need one here). Levivich 18:43, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

@Levivich: Interesting, I myself started to think about the need to impose on this article source restrictions similar to the Holocaust in Poland topic. The argument in support of that decision include:

• This article is a constant source of conflicts, and one of the main reason is usage of very questionable sources;
• Its talk page archive is among the longest archives in Wikipedia, and the same arguments frequently repeat, which exhausts and frustrates many experienced editors;
• The article has severe problems that caused the longest AfD in Wikipedia history;
• The need of careful approach to sources was acknowledged by the panel of admins who closed that AfD.
• Although the admin panel encouraged us to continue the DRN process, it was closed because one party expressed no interest in participating in it.

What do you think about submitting a full scale arbitration case? Paul Siebert (talk) 18:53, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I think comparison of the issues of this article with the issues of Holocaust in Poland topic trivializes the Holocaust to some extent. Also given the recent dim view of WP:BLUDGEONing shown by Arbcom, a case may result in unintended consequences, --Nug (talk) 19:08, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure about a full case, but I think it might be a good idea to file a request at (prepare for alphabet soup) WP:ARCA asking for WP:APLRS to be authorized for WP:ARBEE and applied to this page. Levivich 19:48, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

It could be be argued that existing mechanisms work, for example RSN has been successfully used to remove the VoC source. MKuCR may be a difficult topic, but certainly not in the league of WP:APL. --Nug (talk) 20:26, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I do appreciate you have come to respect that, but there are users who do not respect the discussion about Engel-Di Mauro. Again, it is properly attributed, and it is one thing to remove him from "Comparisons to other mass killings", and a whole other to remove it outright. Certainly, it would be better to wait for the RfC to be closed and its aftermath, but I think that both Levivich and Paul Siebert's suggestions may be warranted. Davide King (talk) 12:55, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I do not believe he reciprocates your thoughts, or anyone else's for that matter. In his entire time here, he has never admitted being wrong which most other editors did to some extent when proven wrong. He thinks that he is right about everything and he thinks that he knows Wikipedia's policies better than anyone else which is demonstrably false, and therefore, he feels entitled to teach you how to think and tell you what should be inserted into the article. He did this with anyone he talked to here, so I am not sure whether it is constructive to argue with him. Deny him his recognition. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 18:35, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

"Engel-Di Mauro's article of course is a reliable source for facts." The Four Deuces, I'm not sure how familiar you are with the discussion, or the source (which is free-to-read), as your comments tend to be drive-by in nature and lacking in specificity—note that there has been no previous discussion of citing Engel-Di Mauro for unattributed matters of fact—but Engel-Di Mauro's data is derived from Wikipedia's List of wars by death toll. Even if the figures from Wikipedia are reliable, the author attributes all deaths from World War I, the Russian Civil War, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, among others, to "capitalism," which is ultimately an unfalsifiable opinion (especially considering that avowedly communist or state socialist governments were major participants in each of those conflicts, with the exception of World War I).TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:30, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

It is quite clear that Di Mauro belongs to the extreme part of the opinia spectrum, and he is a leftist twin of Rummel. Yes, he takes his figures from Wikipedia, but modern figures in Wikipedia are much more reliable than obsolete and uncritically analyzed data in Rummel's database. In connection to that, I am wondering why Di Mauro is considered questionable, but Rummel still is a core source for this article. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:36, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

And, it general, why you guys converted the whole article into a dispute between extreme right and extreme left sources instead of moving all of them into the "Controversy" section at the very bottom, and focusing on what serious sources say? Paul Siebert (talk) 19:39, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

If we concede that you are correct here, Wikipedia is not a reliable source, and it is explicitly banned from being used. Whether a scholar using Wikipedia to extend the known information they have on the topic is a guideline offense or not, that I am unsure, however. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 19:56, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I added Engel-Di Mauro to the section "Comparison to other mass killings" because Mauro was already cited in the article and would provide a counter-argument to the opinions of the other people mentioned in the section, which I re-added to the article from a previous version of the article. I wasn't aware that the source could be problematic. X-Editor (talk) 21:11, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

TheTimesAreAChanging, so you think that it's fine for wikipedia editors to attribute all mass killings under Communist regimes to communism, yet for someone to link killings carried out by capitalist regimes to capitalism is "ultimately an unfalsifiable opinion." While I realize that the Soviet Union was a partcipant in WWII, there is academic consensus that the war was started by the Axis powers and the Soviet Union defended itself. (While Nug thinks the Soviet Union was responsible for the war, there is no support for that view.) TFD (talk) 21:47, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

• Well, I think it would be the best if everyone just agreed to follow the existing policies, such as WP:Verifiability instead of claiming that a special set of rules should be applied to this page and removing well sourced views by mainstream historians. My very best wishes (talk) 16:41, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• Do you know that WP:NPOV is non-negotiable and is, alongside WP:NOR and WP:VERIFY, one of the three core content policies? Also when did we remove well sourced views by mainstream historians, and who are those historians? Siebert and I have been long-advocated to use country experts, who are the mainstream historians, and the best quality sources in general and to follow WP:SCHOLARSHIP. If you are talking about Tombs, his expertise is 19th-century France and relations with Britain, not Communism or genocide/mass killing. To again quote Newimpartial, if you think "any summary of the revisionist debates as 'Robert Conquest wins and his opponents are all FRINGE' [that] is not a very accurate statement." Davide King (talk) 17:19, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

"Do you know that WP:NPOV is non-negotiable"? Yes, it is exactly what I am talking about. That's why this should be included. It is amazing to me that WP participants (who are presumably not experts) are dismissing reliably published views by history professors, such as Robert Tombs. My very best wishes (talk) 16:17, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

It's more amazing to me that an editor with your tenure thinks that because something was written by a history professor, therefore it's an WP:RS, as if RS was based solely on who the author is. Even more amazing is the idea that because someone is a history professor, they are an expert on communism or mass killings, as if "history" was a topic area in which one could be an expert. (Hint: "history" is too broad, it's like saying someone is an "expert in science", and this guy isn't an expert in the relevant kind of history.) Levivich 16:30, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, such questions came out in a number of other discussions. For example, can/should we include reliably published views about COVID-19 by someone who is an expert in evolutionary biology or biotechnology? One can say: "hey, that's virology, they are not experts!". I believe such views should usually be included if this is not a repetitive content and something informative - per WP:NPOV. It well could be that someone with a biotechnology background may have a better understanding of certain aspects about COVID-19. Same is here. I do not see that much difference between biology and history - in terms of people having an expertise in their field. This is speaking in general. If there is consensus do not include this specific source, that's fine, I simply do see the arguments convincing. My very best wishes (talk) 16:52, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

We absolutely should not include random biotechnologists opinions about COVID, especially if they just spout something off to the Telegraph. BSMRD (talk) 17:23, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Then it is clear you actually do not know what you are talking about. WP:NPOV is about "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic", not "I happen to like what Tombs said, it was published in a WP:RS, and that is due/NPOV, and it is amazing how anyone would oppose such inclusion." If it was at least published in a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the academic press (Engel-Di Mauro) and either published something about Communism or has some expertise about Communist regimes (Ghodsee) and genocide/mass killings (Gerlach), and summarized the literature about the topic—not passing quotes about the AfD nomination—rather than to engage in slippery slopes (as if we are really going to nominate the Holocaust next, though the fact he thinks this article is on par with that may well be an example of Holocaust trivialization and obfuscation) and insults Wikipedians by comparing them to Holocaust denialists, it would have been useful. Davide King (talk) 16:58, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• I never said "I happen to like what Tombs said". I only said that: (a) the place of the publication was vetted by community as "generally reliable", and (b) the view belongs to a history professor we have a page about, hence he is arguably an expert; and (c) the view is exactly on the subject of this page as plainly obvious from the diff [14]. Hence this arguably belongs to the page. This is all. My very best wishes (talk) 17:10, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
  • You're basically arguing that history professor + generally reliable source = WP:DUE for inclusion, and I don't agree with that. There is much more to WP:NPOV than that. We should summarize the best reliable sources, not just include everything any historian has ever written about a topic in any reliable source. Levivich 21:03, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Just to clarify, when I started this thread, I was talking about several removals restored in this edit [15], not specifically about this source. I agree, this is not a top but reliable source, aand could be (not must be) used per policy. Personally, I would include it. Yes, it say among other things, that this Wikipedia page, "seems to me careful and balanced". So what? I do not see any policy-based reason to exclude. My very best wishes (talk) 04:53, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Uyghur genocide sub-section

I removed this sub-section on the basis that no mass killings are taking place there, making this sub-section WP:UNDUE for an article on mass killings. It was restored based on the argument that some "scholars fear that a genocide (aka mass killing) will happen." That is not a good reason to include this material, as Wikipedia articles on mass killings should document those instances that have already happened or are happening, not engage in speculation on the possibility of future mass killings.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 16:28, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Strongly agree. This article has enough issues, we don't need speculative mass killings that haven't happened but "might" clogging it up. BSMRD (talk) 16:31, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Unless the source cited states that the events are occurring because (in the opinion of the author) China is under a 'communist regime', it is synthesis to include it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:38, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:CRYSTAL Paul Siebert (talk) 16:52, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

To add to what others have said, it also does not appear to be within the context of this article, and it highlights how problematic it is that just because a mass killing happened under a nominal Communist regime, therefore it must be added or we must have an article about the grouping, even if the latter does not represent a majority viewpoint. It totally ignores the societal context of each Communist regime — is China capitalist only when it comes to its economic successes and Communist when it comes to its human rights abuses? Certainly, it makes me question their WP:CIR when they complain about Engel-Di Mauro, and then add this, engaging in SYNTH by twisting two good academic sources in the context of MKuCR, which is not the one the authors place them. The latter is a problem of the whole article, too. Davide King (talk) 20:22, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

This is why I have long recommended that we change the name of the article to "Victims of Communism" and focus on the claim that communism is inherently homocidal. Instead of focusing on the credentials and academic influence of the people who made this claim, and omitting those who lack them, we could write about the claims they made and explain their degree of acceptance. TFD (talk) 21:01, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

You brought up this proposal for a name change to VoC just two months ago (see Talk:Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes/Archive_54#Name_change), there was no support for it. You also proposed it over a year ago (see Talk:Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes/Archive_44#Deletion/renaming) and there was opposition to it back then as well. I suggest you WP:DROPTHESTICK. --Nug (talk) 22:16, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

what’s wrong with that title, I have been contemplating an article with that name to widow this one. ~ cygnis insignis 22:29, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that is TFD's intent in continually pushing for a name change to VoC? --Nug (talk) 22:39, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

no, you are ~ cygnis insignis 22:48, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Nug, since I last made the suggestion, you and other editors have filled up another four pages of discussion threads and made no progress. They say the defintion of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. In fact there are now 57 archived pages and you have participated in them for over 10 years, without making any progress. Can you please provide me with a timeline for bringing this article to good article status? I notice too that most of your erstwhile colleagues have long since abandoned the discussion to move on to other articles. TFD (talk) 23:06, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

A good summary by sociologist John Torpey: "In view of The Black Book's relatively scanty scholarly contribution, it is hard to read the book in other than political terms. In this regard, The Black Book may be seen as an effort to legitimize the claims to memorialization and reparations of those who suffered under Communism. Such claims have become high stakes in an era that frequently rewards those who can demonstrate that they, too, have been victimized in the past." This is what this topic should be and is what I believe TFD is referring to, and I would like to hear from Levivich and Paul Siebert's thoughts on this and TFD's proposed topic. That some users may understand this to mean that it would be too broad and about the events, when it would be about claims to memorialization and its relation to Holocaust trivialization and obfuscation, which is currently missing or put at the bottom when it should be upfront (just like criticism of the body count is the mainstream view and should go first), is not a good reason to not do this. That users have failed to comprehend this is not TFD's fault. Rest of quote, which explicitly say "victims of Communism" and shows TFD had been right all along, and how this article attempt to prove this through veiled antisemitism and Holocaust trivialization, which makes Siebert's point about it reflecting a rightist POV all the more accurate and telling:

"Courtois puts the matter succinctly: 'In contrast to the Jewish Holocaust, which the international Jewish community has actively commemorated, it has been impossible for victims of Communism and their legal advocates to keep the memory of the tragedy alive, and any requests for commemoration or demands for reparations are brushed aside. ... [A] single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as a unique atrocity has also prevented an assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world.' What are we to make of this extraordinary outburst?

In reality, the situation is exactly the opposite of what Courtois asserts. What has happened in recent years is not that the 'single-minded focus on the Jewish Holocaust' has crowded out other demands for recognition and compensation, but rather that this mode of dealing with past misdeeds has become generalized to all kinds of groups--only some of which, however, are successful in making their claims. Part of the reason that the victims of Communism have been relatively less successful in gaining recognition of their suffering lies in the fact that the victims of the Nazis seem so clearly defined, whereas those of the Communists appear to have been more random and the dividing line between perpetrators and victims more fluid. The Black Book aims to sharpen the boundaries defining the groups persecuted by Communists, as both Courtois' term 'class genocide' and Margolin's discussion of the 'racialization' of Communist enemies suggest. Victims of 'genocide' are more likely to gain recognition than a grab-bag of 'class enemies'." [This was already back in 2001, and the MKuCR article was created in 2009]

It is clearly a notable topic, more so than the current SYNTH/NPOV-violating MKuCR structure, which conflates mass killings under Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot with the global Communist death toll, which is different from mass killing, but we do not make this clear because we got the whole structure wrong, and we are trying to prove it as fact rather than presenting it as to what Torepey said, which is how it should be structured. Davide King (talk) 09:24, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

So you agree that there were mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot? You keep saying the article is "SYNTH/NPOV-violating", but Robert Tombs says "I have read the Wikipedia page, and it seems to me careful and balanced."[16], so who do we believe, you or a world renowned scholar? --Nug (talk) 10:44, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Nug, this world renowned scholar {of French history) made the false claim that a building named after Gladstone was renamed because his father owned slaves when in fact it was renamed because Gladstone himself as an MP had voted against ending slavery. He actually wrote, "Gladstone was not a...defender of slavery."[17] One of the things that most bothered me about Communism was how they re-wrote history in order to score political points. I had hoped that would end with the fall of Communism, but unfortunately anti-Communists are just as bad or worse. I have always thought that if one's views were correct, then the facts should be sufficient. In any case, an editorial in The Telegraph isn't a reliable sources. TFD (talk) 12:31, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I have to agree with what TFD and Siebert wrote about, and add that now you are recycling debunked points:

• Yes, I do agree, and I never disagreed to begin with, so what is your point? Are you again falsely accusing me of denying the mass killing events? As you can see in my !comments in the RfC, I actually suggested an article about mass killing under Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, though I believe both TFD and Siebert gave valid points for how it would not be useful and have similar issues with this one, albeit it would at least be properly focused on universally recognized and proven mass killing events.
• As for the NPOV and all other relevant issues with this article, denying that the article has problems does not help at all, and at this point is downright disruptive to say so in light of the latest AfD, the closed RfC, and the moderator's comments at DRN.
• As for Tombs, I am just going to quote what TFD said: "Per[s]onally, I would say 'who cares?' if a person who falsified facts in order to push a political views said this article was 'careful and balanced.' While this may not matter to you, it does to other editors who are more concerned with accuracy than supporting a political position." How can you criticize Engel-Di Mauro and use Tombs to support this is beyond me. I would add to what TFD said that he has engaged in Holocaust trivialization by comparing the AfD nomination of this article to being "almost as bad as Holocaut denial." I remember you once used a book by a far-right publisher to prove a point, why are you doing this again? Davide King (talk) 12:34, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Could you stop trying to weasel Tombs back into the discussion? This shit for a source was indefensible. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 14:23, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

It is also irrelevant, since what matters is that a panel of admins concluded that "the Wikipedia editing community has been unable to come to a consensus as to whether 'mass killings under communist regimes' is a suitable encyclopaedic topic." Tombs does not overturn this fact and using it as an argument, or weaseling it back into the discussion, should now be seen as disruptive. Davide King (talk) 15:04, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Creating a fork?

Would it be creating a fork, or indeed pointy, if the title Victims of Communism was developed as an article? It maps well to agencies that deliberately developed the narrative, a literally concrete place within the sphere of US hegemony? ~ cygnis insignis 15:52, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

• There is a wikimedia fork in the form of a navbox on a memorial at the English wikipedia, apologies for my lack of notification to users here, preceding its deletion, and more interestingly an extensive arrangement of images at commons:Category:Victims of communism ~ cygnis insignis 14:52, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• The thread also notes the changes to Victims of Communism our page history that emerged from reactivation of the proposal to align the page to its reactionary foundations, chiselled narratives and postwar apologetics for strategically placed fascists. ~ cygnis insignis 15:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• I merged two wd items to Q9315058 ~ cygnis insignis 15:53, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

It would be acceptable under Wikipedia:Content forking#Articles whose subject is a point of view (POV). There are for example separate articles about conpiracy theories and the actual events they attempt to explain.

There was a similar situation in reverse where some editors complained that Jewish Bolshevism (aka Jewish Communism) did not provide the "reasons" that the conspiracy existed, which to them was the "overrepresentation of Jews" in Communism. So they created the article "Jews and Communism." That article however was deleted. I had argued that it lacked notability: while there were many sources for Jewish involvement in Communism in different times and places, there was no literature that linked them. However the closing administrator said that there was no consensus on that issue. The article itself was POV, since it tried to prove that Jews were in fact overrepresented in Communism and was actually based on an article published by the Institute for Historical Review, which is a holocaust denial website. (See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jews and Communism (2nd nomination).) Not surprisingly, the fascist website, Metapedia, copied both Mass killings under communist regimes and Jews and Communism.

Incidentally, I had started the first AfD and many "Keep" editors claimed it was disruptive for another editor to start a second AfD less than two months after the first one.

TFD (talk) 17:30, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I suppose an analog would be an article Victims of rape that "maps well to agencies that deliberately developed the narrative", implicitly denying that any rapes occurred. --Nug (talk) 17:46, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Not a good analogy, since no one is DENYING that mass killings occurred. A better analogy would be an article about John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories that blamed the international Communist conspiracy. The article would not DENY that Oswald was a Communist or that he killed the U.S. president, but like most literature on mass killings, it would not pin Oswald's crime on a mistranslated essay by Engels.

Anyway, look on the bright side. We'd be able to talk about Watson and Tombs and many other anti-Communist writers without any weight restrictions.

TFD (talk) 18:49, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

So you don't deny that mass killings did occur under the communist party led governments of the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia, and that these countries are grouped together in reliable sources that discuss mass killings? --Nug (talk) 21:26, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Please, stop this nonsense, we never denied anything. As for the grouping, I think that Siebert gave a good answer here about the group type sources and grouping, and how there are different types of Communist grouping that you totally ignore, and do not support the type of article you want. Davide King (talk) 14:35, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Comparing victims of non-consensual intercourse to victims of a political ideology is a false equivalence. X-Editor (talk) 21:28, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure those victims documented by Memorial (society) didn't consent to be killed. --Nug (talk) 21:39, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

What are you trying to argue? X-Editor (talk) 04:31, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Creating an article entitled 'Victims of Communism' would present a splendid opportunity to violate both WP:OR and WP:NPOV at the same time. Not that this would be new territory for some of the regulars at this talk page... AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:10, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump, why do you think that? How is it any different from Jewish Bolshevism? TFD (talk) 19:51, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

The Jewish Bolshevism article has also presented many opportunities for WP:OR and WP:NPOV violations, as should be fairly obvious from its history. You seem to have dealt with at least one yourself: [18] AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:08, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

TFD, can you please explain me (again) what the article "Victims of Communism" is supposed to discuss?

In my opinion (and I expect majority of Wikipedians share this view) the VoC article will become a collection of stories about all (real and perceived, lethal and non-lethal) victims of Communism. Paul Siebert (talk) 21:40, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh joy. The Wikipedian's Compendium of Things We Know About the Nasty Reds. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:12, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly how an average Wikipedia user will interpret it. "Victims" is a very broad and very vague term. Thus, I found some source about Cultural revolution (actually, I was looking for something else, but that source has drawn my attention). That source discuss victims of Cultural revolution (roughly 20 million) and deaths (0.75-1.5 million). That demonstrates a huge difference between the term "victim of Communism" and "mass killings". Paul Siebert (talk) 23:39, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I would summarize it as follows:

Victims of Communism, or Communist genocide, is an interpretation of MKuCR that assigns responsibility to Communist ideology or Communists collectively, typically assigning a total death toll of at least 100 million. This approach became noteable after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe with the publication of the Black Book of Communism. The position draws a moral equivalence between Communism and Nazism. As a consequence, various museums of and memorials for the victims of Communism have been established by center right governments in Europe and North America.

The interpretation has been used to discredit European Communists and socialists who aligned with the Soviet Union during WWII. It is also used to discredit government intervention in the economy which is seen as a precursor to Communism. Accordingly, states that are Communist or could be compared with it, such as China, Russia and Venezuela, are seen as unique threats.

TFD (talk) 02:19, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

And the source you cite for that can be found where? AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:07, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

One source is Kristen Ghodsee. "A Tale of “Two Totalitarianisms”: The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism." History of the Present (2014):

The signatories to this Declaration proclaimed that the “millions of victims of Communism and their families are entitled to enjoy justice, sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings in the same way as the victims of Nazism have been morally and politically recognized” and that there should be “an all-European understanding . . . that many crimes committed in the name of Communism should be assessed as crimes against humanity . . . in the same way Nazi crimes were assessed by the Nuremberg Tribunal.”

The current upsurge in East European commemorations for the victims of communism originates from a regional desire for victimhood status.

In addition to the desire for historical exculpation, however, I argue that the current push for commemorations of the victims of communism must be viewed in the context of regional fears of a re-emergent left. In the face of growing economic instability in the Eurozone, as well as massive antiausterity protests on the peripheries of Europe, the “victims of communism” narrative may be linked to a public relations effort to link all leftist political ideals to the horrors of Stalinism

Furet had initially been tapped to write the introduction to the book, but after his death in July 1997, the task fell to the editor Stéphane Courtois who asserted that there were 100 million worldwide victims of communism, a number four times that of the victims of Nazism.

In museums such as the Hungarian House of Terror and the Lithuanian Museum of Genocide Victims, more space was allocated to the victims of communism than to the victims of the Holocaust.

The double genocide thesis and its production of the “victims of communism” discourse not only aims to prevent a return of leftist politics. It can also be used to justify acceptance of neo-fascism.

TFD (talk) 05:00, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

• Quickly looking at this source, I do not see where author disputes the idea of the Communist ideology or regimes being responsible for political repressions in a number of countries. She does not. She also does not deny any crimes by such regimes, including mass murder. See seems to deny only that certain crimes by such regimes amounted to genocide, and that they were on the same scale as Holocaust. Speaking about the " Victims of Communism Memorial"-related things, she seem to miss the point. This is not all about victimhood, but about rejecting such ideology and practice. The Nazism was condemned and rejected by German people, but the Soviet imperialism and Stalinism were not (50% of people in Russia support Stalin). Hence the Russian imperialism continues: the attempts to restore the USSR and attacking other countries in 2014 and now. My very best wishes (talk) 05:58, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

• How would you describe the topic she is writing about? The fact that you think she agrees with your conclusions is irrelevant. What topic do you think the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is dedicated to? TFD (talk) 06:36, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

• These are not my conclusions, but my understanding of what she is saying. The topic is difficult to define, and the article has no Abstract. This reads like a personal commentary/opinion in response to Prague Declaration. Apparently, she is concerned about the rising right-wing forces in Europe. Sure, this is a very much reasonable concern, but it is not really on the subject of this page. My very best wishes (talk) 01:57, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

TFD, you seem to be proposing to 'fix' the current issues this article has (building itself around a single perspective, and rejecting any source that doesn't conform to that perspective) by creating another one, doing the same thing. As much as I personally agree with Ghodsee's take on things, I've got to say that is a spectacularly bad proposal, unless the objective is to replace a single time-sink-unresolvable-conflict article with two such time-sink articles - mirror images of each other. Underlying this all there is genuine academic discourse around 'communism', 'violence' and 'killings', but it is one where few participants agree over either the scope of the debate, or the general terms to be employed - and a great many participants seem not to think that dealing in generalisations is useful at all. If Wikipedia is ever going to justice to this topic (if Wikipedia is even capable of doing justice to this topic, which seems debatable) it won't come about by creating further PoV forks to build articles around, and to argue over. No, the only half-sensible way to tackle this amorphous and ill-defined topic is to start from the premise that this is discourse, it is debate, it is politics. Stop trying to tell readers that PoV X, or PoV Y is even the place to start when trying to make sense of it all. Present it as a debate, where little is agreed, and many participants don't particularly see the need for agreement, and you might actually arrive at something approximating proper encyclopaedic coverage of this ill-defined topic. That is all that Wikipedia can possibly do, according to its own 'NPOV' policies. If it is actually capable of doing so at all - as I suggested at the recent AfD discussion, I have serious doubts as to whether Wikipedia can ever resolve this, given the inherent structural (and cultural, and political, and...) problems evidenced here. Maybe there are some subjects (important subjects) that Wikipedia should just not try to cover. Bad articles can be worse, much worse, than no article at all. Leave coverage to real experts - experts with opinions they can express, as experts, without the requirement to meet arbitrary 'neutrality' requirements that academia has never seen as of merit when dealing with such matters. You can't crowd-source imaginary academic agreement from amorphous academic discourse. And nor can you achieve 'neutrality' by creating multiple PoV forks around people you agree with, and ignoring the fact that they are part of a broader discourse. It doesn't work. See the history of this article... AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:42, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree that "the premise that this is discourse, it is debate, it is politics." Therefore I support an article that explains what the argument is and its degree of acceptance in reliable sources. The debate begins with the premise that there is a connection between mass killings and Communism. It doesn't begin with the observation that there were a lot of mass killings under Communist regimes and a debate about how to explain them. That is the premise of this article. That of course is what Nug (Martintg), My Very Best Wishes (Biophys) and the other veterans of the Eastern European Mailing List have argued for 10 years. Of course it could be that both topics are notable in the same way that the assassination of JFK are both notable or it could be that only the interpretation is notable as in the case of Jewish Bolshevism and Jews and Communism. But an article about Victims of Communism is not a POVFORK, it's merely explaining an interpretation which is definitely notable. Whether or not the topic it tries to explain is notable is another issue. TFD (talk) 07:19, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

To put it another way, was Ghodsee a genocide scholar trying to calculate how many people the Communists killed and explain why they did that or was she trying to explain why that topic has energized the Right? TFD (talk) 07:29, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

You are telling pork pies again. I've had relatively little involvement in this article or input on talk page compared with you. --Nug (talk) 07:43, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump, I hope that you do not give up because your comments have been interesting, a fresh good air, and I do agree with them, though I would not fault you if they think this talk page is a mess, and if I did not help either. If you disagree with TFD's proposal, what do you think about Siebert's? I think their proposed structure would be following what you have outlined above, or at least close to it, and making it a debate and discourse in politics, and leave coverage to real experts. I think the issue is that there are some users who are completely opposed to turn this into anything but a list of killings by Communist regimes, but you should not give up, and your proposed structure may be well represent B, if the RfC's closure will see it as the best way forward. Davide King (talk) 15:41, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

I give up. If I (firmly on the left) want to understand why people calling themselves 'communists' or 'socialists' were willing to do engage in mass murder on the most horrific scale (as some clearly were), I'll look elsewhere, since I'm clearly not going to get anything of consequence here. And I do want to know, regardless of whether some on the right are using the topic for rabble rousing or not. I'm not going to find answers here though clearly. And neither will the genuinely curious reader Wikipedia is supposed to cater for. Not in this crowd-sourced Kindergarten, where everything is framed around the inherent evils of the Other Lot, and actual academic debate (which extends well beyond arguments about the supposed inherent evils of communism, and looks instead at the inherent propensity for evil in humanity as a whole, or instead rejects such grandiose ambitions and intellectually-numbing generalisations and looks at nitty-gritty detail where 'communism' isn't a useful category) gets drowned out in facile arguments about secret email lists and about who has been wasting their time here the longest... AndyTheGrump (talk) 08:33, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

IOW you don't have the confidence in Wikipedia editors to write an article about a notable topic. But at least it's more likely than for them to write an article about a non-notable topic, such as this one. Nug, please avoid personal attacks on other editors. Don't think that using Austraiian rhyming slang will fool anyone. We've all watched "Fools and Horses." TFD (talk) 11:02, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

What do AndyTheGrump actually propose? If they support deletion of this article, I do agree and I certainly support them in this but it is simply not going to happen unless a panel of admins engage in a supervote. Do they really think that keeping the article as it is, it is any better than TFD's proposal? I do agree that objection to TFD's proposal is indeed a lack of confidence, which is not a good argument. For the umpteenth time, TFD's proposal will not be a list of any incidents under Communist regimes (that is actually an argument against this article, which is events-based rather than theory-focued) but about what Torpin, Ghodsee, and many other scholars have said, namely "an effort to legitimize the claims to memorialization and reparations of those who suffered under Communism. Such claims have become high stakes in an era that frequently rewards those who can demonstrate that they, too, have been victimized in the past." Davide King (talk) 14:31, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Probably not directly prohibited but IMO a bad idea. You have 3 vague terms in there that are mostly subjective: 1. What counts as a victim? 2. What counts a communism? 3. What counts as the victim status being caused by communism? So the article will be an eternal debating society and I don't see what useful content it would contain other than "who's winning the eternal wiki debate at the article?"  :-) Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:45, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Adding to that, in contrast to this article (where the title just said that they occurred under such regimes) that title would mean that for everything in it, it has been determined that communism is the cause. North8000 (talk) 15:44, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

I do not understand why you do not think it applies to the current title and structure as well; if it had been determined that communism is the cause, we would not even be here, and there would be no SYNTH issues per TFD; it is not sufficient that they happened under a nominally Communist regimes, else Mass killings under capitalist regimes, Mass killings under fascist regimes, and so on can be created and there should be no issue if that is the standard — none of them would entail that capitalism or fascism was the cause, just that they happened under a number of capitalist or fascist regimes, which is not a sufficient ground to write an article about it and I do not think they should exist for the same reason I oppose this article, unless we actually have a good scholarly literature that discuss the topic as a whole, like is done for Genocides of indigenous peoples, and not different country-specific groupings. For the current version to not have any issue, communism would have to have been the primary cause; on the other hand, "victims of Communism" would present this theory, that communism was not the primary cause, as such and not as facts. Certainly, we can worry about the name later on, since I think we do agree on seeing B as the first or best option. Davide King (talk) 01:35, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:OTHERSTUFFDOESNTEXIST and WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS aren't a valid arguments. --Nug (talk) 02:01, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Can you please let North8000 actually respond to me? Those are essays about arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, not in normal talk page discussions. In addition, several users in the AfD explicitily suggested creating such articles. I do not support creation of them, but if this article is going to be kept and this is the standard (a few minority sources), surely such articles would be fine as well and I expect you to support the creation of at least one of them, and be consistent, which is something we both seem to appreciate and can agree with. Davide King (talk) 02:08, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Davide King:(First to note, my main comment was based on the "3 vagaries" and your question is not about that.) Well, the narrow answer is that because I was commenting on a potential new article, not this current one, which has AFD's and a current RFC making determinations. But I did make a distinction between the discussed new title and the current title, and so I'll expand on why I made that distinction. First, the proposed new article title explicitly states a cause-effect relationship whereas at most the title of this article might just imply a cause-effect relationship. The explicit statement would be a two-edge sword for folks (if any) primarily concerned about the article making communism look bad/good. On one hand it makes a more explicit statement about communism being the cause. On the other hand, it would tend to exclude material where communism can't be shown to be the primary cause. And, IMHO, the answer to the question lies in that middle ground which that would probably exclude. North8000 (talk) 02:10, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

I think that you should see "Victims of Communism" more like Cultural Marxism and Jewish Bolshevism, e.g. we would describe the theory of communism as main cause and the Communist death toll, and what its proponents believe and the scholarly critical analysis. As for the title, it is the WP:COMMONNAME and POV names are allowed, e.g. Boston Massacre; the current name can be said to do the same thing you outlined by implying, even if not explicitily, a cause–effect relationship between Communist regimes and mass killings just because they did indeed happened under Communist regimes. As for communism being the primary cause, such material would be a clear minority because majority of mainstream scholars do not actually support that (e.g. the introduction to the The Black Book of Communism); indeed, the article would mostly focus on that theory, so it would not exclude it. As I said, we may also discuss, in the same article or a separate article, scholarly views about the link between communism and mass killings, e.g. the material you feel would be excluded, if that is the issue, e.g. you feel we present only the extreme anti-communist views and not the more nuanced scholarly views. Davide King (talk) 02:23, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

We have at least one source (Ellman) who explicitly states that the term "victims of Stalinism" (which is a subset of what majority of authors see as VoC) is an intrinsically vague term, whose meaning strongly depends on political views of each concrete author. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:00, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

To add to what Siebert have wrote, that again falsely assume that this article is going to be focused about the events like it currently is — it will not. Please, read Ghodsee and Torpin's summary of the topic — as noted by TFD, none of them are scholars trying to calculate how many people the Communists killed and explain why they did that but rather to explain why that topic has energized the Right, which is what their proposed topic is about and is the really notable topic. Davide King (talk) 21:14, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: Imagine your proposal is accepted, and the article was renamed to "VoC". Now please answer these questions:

1. What can prevent other users from adding more and more instances of wrongdoing (with lethal or non-lethal consequences) that were ascribed to Communism by at least one RS?

2. What if other users will start an RfC about the article's subject, and majority of votes will be: "The article is about all nasty things Commie did"?

In other words, have you ever considered a scenario when your proposal to rename the article will be accepted, but your vision of the article's scope will not? IMO, that may be very, very possible.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:10, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

I do think that is a serious concern, and that is why "Victims of Communism" is not a good name now, though it is the common name; however, if we can merge your proposed structure with that of TFD (distinguishing between scholarly views about the link, and popular press and anti-communist organization's views), it would be good. If merging is an issue, we may have two separate articles, which is something that TFD seemed to touch on in a previous post. Either way, I suggest that you two work together to find a compromise and good solution. I do think that TFD's proposal is a good one, and that if we actually follow it, without naming the article "Victims of Communism", your proposed structures would be very similar and a name change may be warranted. To play devil's advocate, we will just have to revert them like we have done so for the Uyghur genocide. As much I do understand your concerns, and indeed I do share them, I do not think they make a good argument against TFD's proposal. To summarize, please work together on the structure and topic, and on what you do agree, and we will worry about the name later on when the article is finally fixed. Davide King (talk) 21:14, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

A note that the title "Victims of Communism" now redirects to a disambiguation page. ~ cygnis insignis 22:39, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Every article about fringe theories attracts advocates who try to use the article to promote their views. As Andy the Grump pointed out by linking to one of my reverts in Jewish Bolshevism, some editors tried to add material listing Jews who were Communists, in order to show that there was some truth to the conspiracy theory. But it was a lot easier to remove this material than it was from "Jews and Communism."

There is a current ongoing dipute at Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory. The argument, made by Jordan Peterson and others is that while there is a conpiracy theory, the truth is that there really are cultural Marxists and their followers are trying to undermine Western civilization. In the past, 9/11 conspiracy theories and Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories have attracted similar advocacy from editors.

The best approach is to define the topic in the lead, as recommended by Wikipedia:Disambiguation. This article for example begins by saying, "Mass killings under communist regimes occurred throughout the 20th century. Death estimates vary widely...." So we expect information about these deaths and how many there were. If we begin an article by saying "Victims of Communism, or Communist genocide, is an interpretation of MKuCR," we expect to find an article about said interpretation.

Unfortunately, there is nothing to stop editors from turning any article into a propaganda piece. If the overwhelming major of editors believed that JFK was murdered by Communists then the article would say that. But given that there has never been consensus for this article (depite what a previous closing administrator said), I do not expect that the problems will be insurmountable.

TFD (talk) 01:05, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Robert Tombs said that downplaying the connection between genocide and ideology would also prevent the teaching of crimes under Facsism and colonialism, and that it is morally indefensible, at least as bad as Holocaust denial. So you are saying mass killings under communist regimes is just a hoax or did it really happen? --Nug (talk) 17:28, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for proving my point Nug (made here [19]), about editors "us[ing] the Holocaust to shield the topic from criticism by promoting the fringe views of an irrelevant historian". BSMRD (talk) 19:05, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

That is aq loaded question: "a form of complex question that contains a controversial assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt)." Not only is that type of tactic disruptive, but using this tactic implies you have no valid arguments.

As has been pointed out, Tombs is not an expert on Communism or mass killings, and falsely claimed that Gladstone's name had been erased from a building because his father owned slaves when in fact it happened because as an MP he voted against the Act that abolished slavery. Tomb's comparison of deleting this article to Holocaust denial is particularly outrageous. Using the Holocaust to support a political position trivializes this unique crime in history. As you know, no one claims that Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot committed mass killings and I suggested we have an article about it.

In fact there are no other articles about ideologies and mass killings. Where are Mass killings under fascist regimes and Mass killings under liberal regimes? Certainly they killed more people, but there is no body of literature to establish notability and their opponents in Wikipedia have not been so disruptive as to create them.

Colonialism incidentally is not an ideology, it is a system that apparently China uses in its oppression of Uyghurs, Tibetans and other minorities in non-Chinese territories it conquered in the 1600s. It should be clear to you that colonialism has been carried out under liberal, conservative, fascist and communist regimes.

TFD (talk) 03:16, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Tagging Dispute

I see that there is a tagging dispute, and it seems to be complicated by a dispute over the date of a tag. That is really wasteful. Most tagging disputes are stupid, because what is worth disputing is the content of the article, not tags saying that the content of the article should be improved. I have other concerns also, which is just as well, because if I didn't, I would consider reporting all of the tag warriors to Arbitration Enforcement. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:46, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

The SYNTH tag discussion was an attempt to identify the specific content issues that lead to the tagging in the first place. Looks like the issue related to tag dates has already be resolved at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Cygnis_insignis. --Nug (talk) 01:51, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Victims of denazification

Is this mentioned by Courtois or a totallynotnazi thunk tank as a peacetime mass killing? ~ cygnis insignis 09:15, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

The Execution of the Romanov family is probably the most famous first victims of communism, shooting the adults okay, but killing the kids as well, how is that justified? But they preceded the rise of the Nazis by quite a few years. So your question isn't that clear, could you elaborate? --Nug (talk) 12:31, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

By your logic, British soldiers were the first victims of Democracy? Levivich 17:44, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

"How it started/ how it's going" 🙂 SN54129 12:02, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Since the Ancient Greek city state of Athens invented democracy, I'd say the Persians were probably the first victims of democracy. --Nug (talk) 18:56, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

and Anastasia in all likelihood. The query is bout exclusivity of victimisation in this article ~ cygnis insignis 13:58, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

In that case I don't think so. --Nug (talk) 18:56, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

you don’t think Courtois mentions that? ~ cygnis insignis 15:26, 15 January 2022 (UTC)