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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 2.222.248.73 (talk) at 04:43, 25 April 2023 (→‎Lack of citations in introduction: Reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Alt-right, redux

I'd like to bounce off the above discussion from February 2022. The case of Cernovich being alt-right is more complicated than it seems. I make that case in the first collapsed section below:

My brief, well-sourced recap of the history of the alt-right, and the context within which Cernovich identified with it.

American paleoconservative Paul Gottfried coined "alternative right" to refer to right-wingers who dissent from GOP shibboleths.[1]: 51  Initially, the term alt-right "was applied to anyone that fell on the right of the political spectrum but had major problems with the conservative movement"; that included "libertarians, paleoconservatives, right-wing populists".[1]: 139  According to scholar of right-wing movements George Hawley, "not everyone who voiced sympathy for the Alt-Right in 2016 was secretly a white nationalist or a neo-Nazi".[1]: 141  With Trump's 2015 announcement, some populist conservative adopted the term "alt-right" to refer to anti-interventionism, anti-globalization right-wing populism, as a way to distance themselves from the free-trade, pro-war, pro-corporation GOP. Cernovich & others did label themselves as alt-right, but it was in that context. Concurrently, white nationalists adopted the same term, but to refer to blatant racism and white supremacy. The "populist faction" then abandoned the term in favor of "populist right", "nationalist", or "new right". The term "alt-lite" was never a self-description; it was exclusively coined and used by white nationalist as a pejorative (though the media did adopt the term "alt-lite" wholesale).[1]: 143 

According to scholar George Hawley, the core tenets of the alt-right are racism, and support for the mass expulsion of non-whites.[1]: 132,141  To say Cernovich belongs to that movement, in Wikivoice, is just misleading.

Here's a quick-survey of what WP:RS call Cernovich; the most common term seems to be right-wing or conservative. I included no right-wing WP:RS here, and note that several left-leaning sources like Vox also call him simply right-wing.

A non-comprehensive but representative survey of what other sources call Cernovich
"Right-wing/conservative"
"Alt-lite"
  • The ADL describes him as "alt-lite"
  • Alt-Lite personalities such as Mike Cernovich — The Alt-Right, a book by George Hawley, scholar of politican science.
Misc

I suggest the following wording for the lead:

Michael Cernovich (born November 17, 1977) is an American right-wing commentator, social media personality, and conspiracy theorist.

The next sentence is just fine as it is, and mentions alt-lite. DFlhb (talk) 23:51, 13 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Though I removed "alt-right" from the first sentence of the lead, I'm working on adding an "Ideology" subsection within the Politics section that would mention it, but better-contextualized. Several outlets (though a minority) have called him alt-right, so it should be discussed. DFlhb (talk) 07:29, 15 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Absolutely not. Cernovich is an extremely central figure in the alt-right, and this is core to his notability; it cannot be removed from the lead sentence under any circumstances. Even if some other sources exist that refer to him in other ways, there is extensive sourcing discussing him as a core, defining figure in the movement; see eg. [2][3][4][5]. Note that many of these don't just refer to him as alt-right but identify him as a key member of the early alt-right. There are also many sources supporting the centrality of the alt-right to Cernovich's biography already in the article, such as [1] - which you must be aware of, since your edits specifically trimmed a paraphrase from the precise sentence in that article that identifies him as an alt-right celebrity. Your own summary of the alt-right is WP:SYNTH at best; we need to describe Cernovich the way the sources do, and they consistently identify him as a core member of the alt-right. --Aquillion (talk) 07:57, 15 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nagle doesn't call him alt-right; please check the book. Summers does, but his analysis is significantly incomplete as it does not analyze the "alt-light"; I'll note it's a student paper. Zannettou et al. only calls him alt-right in passing; but doesn't include any analysis of the categorization. Passing mentions are not equivalent to in-depth analytical scholarship.
Have you read Hawley's Making Sense of the Alt-Right, and Marantz's Anti-Social? Both excellent pieces of scholarship, which cover the alt-right movement in detail (read them, and you'll see there's no SYNTH in my summary). "Key member of the early alt-right", as you say, is correct, but "core member of the alt-right", in present tense, is not. This should all be explained in the lead, since the break-up of the alt-right was largely caused by Cernovich himself; that was well-covered in WP:RS (e.g. here, by Marantz again). Here's my own review of sources, which IMO is more comprehensive than yours.
A survey of the scholarship, and credible sources, calling Cernovich "alt-lite"
  • The ADL in 2018 describes him as "alt-lite"
  • Alt Lite figure Mike Cernovich — from Ctrl-Alt-Delete, a report by antifascist writer Matthew Lyons for "Political Research Associates" (biased & opinionated, but they have an editorial & fact-checking process for published reports; Lyons has also been published in The Guardian among others). Ctrl-Alt-Delete was later turned into a published book.
  • Mike Cernovich is another major figure in the alt-light milieu. — Kill All Normies, by Angela Nagle, an academic who has been published by WP:RS.
  • Alt-Lite personalities such as Mike Cernovich — The Alt-Right, a book by George Hawley, scholar of politican science.
  • Ribeiro et al. 2020 lists Cernovich as an "alt-lite" YouTube channel. I don't count it as a mention in passing, since the entire article is about the alt-lite.
  • The SPLC notes that he called himself alt-right, but distanced himself from it after the movement became associated with white nationalists, agreeing with my summary.
  • A few names that could be classified as alt-lite are [...] Mike Cernovich (a pro-Trump blogger) — Making Sense of the Alt-Right by George Hawley again, political science scholar
  • Mike Cernovich, who might be properly labeled as part of the “Alt-Lite,” — same book & author, in a passage about the alt-right.
  • Alt-lite conservative Mike Cernovich — Trumping the Media, a book by Michael Mario Albrecht, a scholar who's also published peer-reviewed papers on politics.
  • Cernovich, 40, is probably the best-known alt-lite blogger — Shorestein Center, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Mike Cernovich, who is part of the so-called alt-lite (or "New Right") movement. Haaretz, July 20, 2017
  • The Daily Beast also covered the alt-right's breakup and radicalization.
  • Some of the most important personalities within the alt-light include: [...] social media figure Mike Cernovich Al Jazeera, October 13, 2017
  • From figures in the “alt-lite” like Jordan Peterson and Mike Cernovich — Sharpe, 2022
  • The Alt-Lite includes [...] [and] people as diverse as Mike Cernovich [...] — Hate in Precarious Times; Neal Curtis, a professor
  • the Gab community has not only become a haven for the more austere Alt-Right, but also the more mainstream right wing, conservative personalities, sometimes referred to as the “Alt-lite” (e.g. [...], Mike Cernovich, [...] — Reid, Valasik, and Bagavathi in Gangs in the Era of Internet and Social Media, published by Springer, eds. Melde and Weerman; another excellent piece of in-depth scholarship if you ever have the time
  • The Atlantic's Rosia Gray sets up a distinction between the alt-right and “new right” (or “alt light”), and identifies Cernovich as the latter.
  • Even the HuffPo, which can't be used for contentious labels, calls Cernovich a ringleader of the alt-lite.
As for the first sentence, "right-wing" is objectively used far, far more than either "alt-right" or "alt-lite" by sources (I'll note that alt-lite was only ever used as a pejorative by white nationalists, and later attributed to them by scholars discussing the people ostracized from the alt-right; I don't quite see that as these scholars endorsing the term alt-lite). My list of outlets calling him "conservative" was not meant to be complete; I found dozens more. As it is, the lead sentence is significantly inaccurate. DFlhb (talk) 15:10, 15 November 2022 (UTC); deleted my other "intermediary" comments to avoid the impression of bludgeoning, see the previous revision 20:14, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Hawley, George (2017). Making Sense of the Alt-Right. Columbia University Press. doi:10.7312/hawl18512-004.
  2. ^ Zannettou, Savvas; Bradlyn, Barry; De Cristofaro, Emiliano; Kwak, Haewoon; Sirivianos, Michael; Stringini, Gianluca; Blackburn, Jeremy (23 April 2018). What is Gab: A Bastion of Free Speech or an Alt-Right Echo Chamber (Report). WWW '18. Republic and Canton of Geneva, CHE: International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee. pp. 1007–1014. doi:10.1145/3184558.3191531. ISBN 978-1-4503-5640-4.
  3. ^ Nagle, Angela (2017). Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right. Alresford, GBR: Zero Books. ISBN 978-1-78535-543-1 – via ACM Digital Library.
  4. ^ Summers, Ryan (21 July 2017). "The Rise of the Alt-Right Movement". Media and Communication Studies Summer Fellows.
  5. ^ Greene, Viveca S. (1 April 2019). ""Deplorable" Satire: Alt-Right Memes, White Genocide Tweets, and Redpilling Normies". Studies in American Humor. 5 (1): 31–69. doi:10.5325/studamerhumor.5.1.0031. ISSN 0095-280X.

Categories

My category removals were reverted with no justification in the edit summary. The relevant guidelines are WP:COP, WP:BLPCAT and WP:CATDEF. The following categories are inapplicable:

Category:InfoWars people
Category:Alt-right writers
Category:Pickup artists
Category:Male critics of feminism

Other categories, like Category:American nationalists and Category:American conspiracy theorists are fully justified by sources. DFlhb (talk) 07:44, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I can see the concern with Infowars people. Can't see the problem with the others. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 08:10, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think they're defining characteristics (WP:COPDEF), since they don't meet the threshold of: [a characteristic] that reliable sources commonly and consistently refer to (WP:CATDEF).
For alt-right: it's used by a minority of sources, and has been contested by scholarly sources (Hawley, Marantz, see above); falls short of the "consistently" criteria.
For pickup artists: he's not notable for being one; apparently his old blog contained pick-up advice among other things, but practically no source describes him like that.
"Male critics of feminism" is likely the strongest, but he's neither notable for that, nor commonly and consistently called that. DFlhb (talk) 08:24, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

InfoWars host?

Cernovich has been a regular host of the far-right The Alex Jones Show on InfoWars.[1]

This was reinstated after my removal.

As far as I am aware, though Cernovich appeared on InfoWars 3 times (by my count) as an interview guest, he has never hosted a show; the plans must have been cancelled by either Jones or Cernovich. The only sources I can find on Cernovich hosting an InfoWars show were WP:RSBREAKING around the time of the CNN piece. Saying he has been a regular host appears to be misinformation on our part, and completely misstates what the CNN piece said (it was an announcement of an upcoming show, not a retrospective). DFlhb (talk) 07:53, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I found no WP:RS covering whether his "show" actually went through, or explaining when it was cancelled. If anyone finds one, then please reinsert the above sentence (though rephrasing it so it's not a distortion of what CNN says; something like: "In May 2017, Cernovich announced that he would become a regular host on Alex Jone's far-right InfoWars podcast"), followed by whatever sources say happened to his show.
Without such a source, it would be iffy to say the show was "announced" years ago without saying what happened to it. DFlhb (talk) 21:11, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Darcy, Oliver (May 3, 2017). "Right-wing troll Mike Cernovich goes professional with new hosting gig at InfoWars". CNN. Archived from the original on May 7, 2017.

Lack of citations in introduction

The entire introduction section does not have a single citation. While I personally know that most of the information there is true, it is bizarre seeing a Wikipedia article introduction written like an opinion piece. Would have added some citations myself, but the article is locked 119.42.59.208 (talk) 06:48, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:LEADCITE. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 07:15, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes; if this is to prevent alt right conspiracy theorists from changing this, I understand. But what counts as “controversial”? Sources is a problem as I noticed this section, which most will see, was unsourced: “He unearthed old tweets by Sam Seder and James Gunn joking about pedophilia, and initially succeeded in pressuring to get them fired, but both were reinstated after public outcry.”
I’ll probably comment elsewhere, but “joking about pedophilia” is a gross reduction of Seder’s tweet, which was MOCKING those who excused pedophilia. I couldn’t remember if Gunn’s tweet was similar. Considering Cernovitch has apparently (according to this introduction) excused “date rape” with the claim that it “doesn’t exist” (?), clarification and sources are absolutely needed. Elleoneiram (talk) 21:45, 26 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the refs per LEADCITE, as Nomoskedasticity said, but it's true that statements that are "likely to be challenged" should still be cited, so I brought a few back. And regarding the date rape comments, I've added the direct quotes, straight from the NYT, so you can see for yourself. DFlhb (talk) 22:50, 26 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
can we have a source for the pizzagate statement? 2.222.248.73 (talk) 04:43, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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