Talk:Keith Windschuttle

Marxist past

I've restored the sentence

A Marxist before the 1980s, Windschuttle has moved sharply to the right.

It's absurd to suggest this is POV. Windschuttle is open about his Marxist past and his rejection of it.

"In The Killing of History, Windschuttle defended the of practices and methods of traditional empirical history against postmodernism, and praised left-wing historians such as Henry Reynolds who relied on traditional empirically-oriented approaches. Subsequently, he has adopted an overtly polemical position, attacking Reynolds and others and freely mixing political and empirical arguments." Windschuttle praised Henry Reynolds in his 1994 book TKOH because at that time he believed Reynolds' work to be the result of an empirically-oriented approach. It wasn't until about 2000 that he started checking the evidence for the claims made by Reynolds and others and found that the 'evidence' didn't check out. He found that rather than being 'empirical' Reynolds was 'political', ie had misrepresented the 'evidence' to be found in source documentation to support a political cause.

It's clear that Windschuttle now takes a position of polemical advocacy, and collects evidence to support his side of the case. You can find writing from him well before 2000 making political attacks on multiculturalism and so on. When he started checking, it was with the express purpose of finding errors. In Reynolds' case, he found only one minor error, yet that didn't lead Windschuttle to restate his earlier support. JQ 09:40, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

‘It's clear that Windschuttle now takes a position of polemical advocacy, and collects evidence to support his side of the case.’

The essence of Windschuttle ‘dispute’ with postmodernism is that history should be an attempt to portray what happened in the past (and why it happened) as accurately as the available evidence allows. It is not a case of ‘you are entitled to your truth and I am entitled to mine’. The truth about historical events should be advocated and untruths should be refuted. The basis for that is the collection and examination of the evidence. And where historians make errors with their evidence, that should be exposed and the proper response of a historian who has had it proved that they made an ‘error’ with the evidence, is to correct it in print asap. Attacking the person who proved you wrong by attributing a political motive to them for doing so isn’t the way to retain any semblance of respect.

“When he started checking, it was with the express purpose of finding errors.”

Of course it was to find errors, that’s why you check anything. What other purpose does checking the evidence serve than to find out whether what you are checking is accurate/correct/truthful?

I assume the ‘only one minor error’ you refer to is the only error Reynolds has admitted to, ie where the record of the words of Lieutenant-Governor Arthur that he feared ‘the eventual extirpation of the aboriginal race itself’ appeared in Reynolds work The Other Side of the Frontier changed to say he feared ‘the eventual extirpation of the colony’. Just because this is the only error Reynolds has admitted to doesn’t mean it’s the only ‘error’. Windschuttle’s writings contain many more criticisms of Reynolds than that one ‘error’. He includes the use by Reynolds of ‘unsubstantiated guesswork’ in reaching his (in)famous assessment of the aboriginal death toll by settlers’ rifles and Reynolds reliance on sources such as the missionaries Threlkeld and Gribble without revealing the fact that both had been caught out making false claims of mistreatment and murder of aboriginals by settlers.

How about Reynolds use of carefully selected quotes from replies to an 1830 government questionnaire sent to Tasmanian settlers? Reynolds quotes only the minority of respondants who advocated genocide or whose words can be made to seem that they favoured it and doesn’t inform his readers that most of the replies to that questionnaire were sympathetic to the aboriginals and most definitely against genocide. Windschuttle has absolutely no reason to become a supporter of Reynolds again.

As for his alleged attacks on multiculturalism, multiculturalism isn’t holy writ. Its benefits and potential drawbacks to Australian society, if carelessly handled, are up for discussion and debate.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 138.130.203.197 (talk • contribs) 00:12, 20 March 2006 (UTC+10 hours) (the above somewhat tardily signed by T.A. Yates, Brisbane = User:138.130.203.197)

NPOV/poor article

This whole article is WAY below Wikipedia standards. It is very sophomoric in its POV. Seems to be written by a Lyndall Ryan toadie. Who are you to judge a schoalrs "motives?" Are you a mind-reader? Also what is a "move sharply to the 'right?' What is "right wing" about exposing scholarship so deceitful that it would result in a jail sentence in any other profession?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 218.185.83.35 (talk • contribs), 28 April 2006.

W fails to understand

You know, some people, though intellectually capable in some areas, cant do architecture as they have problems with abstract thought. Some of these then deny this level of thought process exists or that if it does, that it is credible, usually because its stuff they dont understand. I wouldnt ever consider what Windschuttle says re massacres in Oz, as being anything I could take much notice of.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.54.9.128 (talk • contribs) 15:57, 18 June 2006 (UTC+10 hours)

Re the preceding comment: I think that we all (even Keith Windschuttle) can understand the kind of abstract thought that goes into the sort of history that Windschuttle criticises. A branch of 'history' where you don't need evidence for your claims about what happened and why. You simply make up a colourful story that suits whatever political or social agenda you want to push, attach footnotes that supposedly lead readers back to the source evidence for your claims and hope that no-one checks them and exposes your deceit. That is what post-modernist history was all about and unfortunately it is a world-wide problem. History is not supposed to based on an author's imagination. There actually is a difference between history and historical fiction. There may be a certain amount of creativity involved in making what you are writing about readable, even entertaining at times, but basically it is a matter of collecting and analysing the evidence and then presenting your conclusions (with footnotes that really lead somewhere). Unfortunately a lot of people fell for the line the post-modernists have pushed: "Windschuttle is right-wing...... he's against aboriginal rights...... he wants to overturn Mabo." I'm sure they would have suggested that he eats babies if they thought they would be believed. Try looking at the evidence presented by both sides and weighing it up. The evidence that Windschuttle presented about massacres and the level of violence in colonial Australia stands up to scrutiny. The documents referred to in his footnotes actually exist and they say what he says they do, unlike many of those of the other side of the debate. I am fairly certain I wouldn't want to have the kind of 'intellectual capability' that means not believing that there is any difference between the truth and a politically or ideologically convenient fiction. T.A.Yates.

If you genuinely belive that postmodernism is that way, I think you should go to the wiki article on it and explain to everyone how postmodernists are liars. I think that such an edit would be removed for being unsubstantiated and POV. 152.91.9.219 (talk) 02:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

If I did get around to writing something there, I’d think it would only be removed for being unsubstantiated and POV if I failed to substantiate it with reference to the work of post-modernist historians around the world. And why would I do that when there are so many examples available to me that do substantiate it? Such as the American post-modernist historian, Professor (now ex-Professor) Bellesiles who tried to rewrite the history of gun ownership in pre-Civil War America. According to his award-winning ‘history’ book, practically no private citizen in colonial America and in the pre-Civil War USA owned a gun. His motive was apparently to provide support for the political position of the gun-control lobby that their 2nd Amendment didn’t relate to an individual right to own guns. If nobody owned a private gun back at the time the 2nd Amendment was passed, how could have it have been intended to protect an individual right? Unfortunately for him, critics over there did a “Windschuttle” on him and checked his footnotes and found that they didn’t match up to what he claimed. For example, he’d claimed to have examined and drawn valuable data for his thesis from San Francisco probate records. These records had all been destroyed in the Great Fire of 1901, so how’d he manage to examine them? Perhaps he has a time machine. Most of the other records he claimed to have drawn supporting evidence from turned out to tell a very different story when examined by others. He wound up losing his professorship when his fraud was exposed.

Closer to home we have Lyndall Ryan whose footnotes cited as evidence documents that had never existed (such as editions of newspapers which were supposedly printed before the newspaper actually began operation), documents which had disappeared before she was born (perhaps she leased Bellesiles’ time machine) and also documents which when independently examined are found to say things completely different to what she claimed that they did.

Let’s not forget the contributors to that great work of postmodernist history, Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History. They triumphantly claimed that they had proved KW’s The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847 wrong. Imagine my surprise when I laid down good money, bought Whitewash and found that when you boiled it all on down, they had produced evidence of the death of a single Tasmanian Aborigine that KW hadn’t examined in his book (by the 2nd edition). Man, proving that KW hadn’t discussed that extra death just made all the difference, didn’t it?

I can go on and on with this but I don’t want to take up too much space. There are just too many examples; I’m spoiled for choice. The postmodernists who see “truth as socially constructed” as opposed to “the scientific-rational in which truth is 'found' through methodical, disciplined inquiry” shouldn’t be concerned if I call them liars when their ‘truth’ varies from that established by hard work, solid research and logical examination of the evidence. So long as there are people out there who prefer their socially constructed ‘truth’ to reality and fail to recognise the absurdity of their position, there’ll be a market for the twaddle they write. T.A. Yates —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.208.162.66 (talk) 09:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

You can't discredit an entire field based on the stupidity or deliberate deception of a number of people within that field. I don't wish to attack any of your examples, but they do not represent the field as a whole - they are anecdotes. I don't wish to fully engage with your problems with postmodernism, because you clearly have a well-formed and justified opinion on the subject, and such a discussion would either end up lengthy or heated, but simply put, I don't believe that postmodernism necessarily equates to doing away with methodical study. To me it is more rooted in an awareness that as humans, we necessarily occupy subjective experience, and our attempts at objective history and fact still take place within a particular historical and social context. I don't take this to mean that history is fiction, it is more akin to an extension of 'history is written by the winners' - at each stage, the things that are deemed notable of research, study, etc, are determined by proximate factors, by who is in power and what is valued. I can't guarentee that postmodernists in general take that view so your criticisms may be valid towards them, but I've always believed that a skepticism towards and awareness of metanarrative did not necessarily mean rejection. Things like logic, the socratic method, the scientific method, are all tools, not ends, and the results they produce can vary depending on who is using the tools and what they're looking for. That doesn't mean 'don't use the tools' or 'don't trust the tools' and it does not in any way mean that postmodernism can be used as an excuse for lazy or dishonest research. I guess I would just like you to blame the authors in question, not the field. Certainly if the people you've mentioned are liars, I am not going to defend them, but I do not believe the field is a field of liars. 152.91.9.219 (talk) 04:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it occured to me just after I posted, and I then checked, and I couldn't find any source in which Lyndall Ryan is considered or identifies herself as a postmodernist. I went on to search the other authors and Henry Reynolds was the only one who I could see was taking part in any substantial discourse about postmodernism, and he seemed to be arguing that it should be less prominent in schools. Can you explain to me what your source is for considering Whitewash a "great work of postmodernist history"? It certainly never came up in any of my reading on the subject, though my knowledge of postmodernist thought is more centred in Europe (growing out of the critical theory of people like Adorno and then Foucault and Lyotard's work, particularly) 152.91.9.219 (talk) 04:48, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by postmodernism? If you are referring to post-modernist art or architecture, I suppose that may be considered a matter of taste but even then there are pretty big issues. The postmodernist puts a urinal on public display, hang some tinsel left over from last Christmas off it, and calls it ‘art’. Of course, there are a lot of people who look at it and say: “That’s not art” or “Gee, isn’t he clever. He took a $20 second-hand urinal and 10c worth of tinsel, put it on a stand in an art gallery, called it ‘art’ and got some fool of a collector to pay him thousands for it. I wonder if the collector would be interested in buying my toe-nail clippings if I piled them in a heap and called them ‘art’?”

The reality is, of course, that the collector doesn’t really understand anything about art. He just buys this kind of junk because otherwise he’d have to admit that he doesn’t understand it. He buys it to fit in with everyone else who pretends to understand it.

I'm not a fan of Noam Chomsky but his remarks on postmodernism, which you can find in the Wikipedia article on Postmodernism, are particularly apt.

The ‘truth’ about postmodernism is that most people don’t understand it because there is nothing to understand. It IS intellectually vacant. But some people think, because of the convoluted, complicated language its practitioners use, that it must be very clever and that they’d better pretend to understand and agree with it or seem stupid.

Others have simply found it a convenient way of justifying applying their personal preferences or prejudices to everything without regard to objective evidence or objective truth.

If anything defines postmodernism as it applies to history and other fact-based fields, it seems to be the rejection of the concept of ‘objective truth’ either outright or by saying that it is impossible to achieve. Having rejected that, however, postmodernists continue to use the word ‘truth’ in their own fashion. Postmodernist ‘truth’ can be achieved by consensus. Their ‘truth’ is ‘socially constructed’. If we get enough people to believe that white troops massacred 60 Aborigines on this spot way back when, that becomes our ‘truth’. So what if there is good evidence is that the troops never got near to the Aborigines and wound up shooting just a couple of their dogs instead? Evidence means nothing, we have our socially constructed ‘truth’; in other words by claiming that something happened when in reality it didn’t, they have convinced people that it did happen. A lie becomes the ‘truth’. It’s a sham.

The notion that ‘truth’ does not exist in an objective sense is a convenient one for some people. It means that they can reject all evidence that contradicts their personal preferences or prejudices, accept any ‘evidence’ no matter how thin, unreliable or distorted if it supports their preferences or prejudices and claim to recognise a ‘truth’ that only they see. As a person who sees himself on the centre left of the political spectrum, it really ticks me off that the worst practitioners of this seem to be on the Left, the loony Left true, but it just makes the rest of us look bad.

Reynolds has been trying to define himself as an empirical historian and is desperate to distance himself from postmodernism. But if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and acts like a duck, I’m going to call it a duck even if it hasn’t hung a sign saying ‘duck’ around its neck. Reynolds has adopted the practices of postmodernist historians. He misrepresented and distorted the evidence to make it fit in with his ‘world-view’ regarding Aborigines vs. white colonist conflict.

Lyndall Ryan did a pretty good job of labelling herself as a postmodernist with her (in)famous statement "Two truths are told. Is only one 'truth' correct?" comparing her account of the demise of the full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigine (deliberate genocide by means of warfare and violence) with that of Windschuttle (some violence but the principal cause of the demise of the Tasmanian Aborigine was introduced disease – which does NOT fit the internationally accepted meaning of genocide, much as some would like to expand that definition).

Well, yes, only one truth is correct. It’s pretty certain that only one truth can be correct where you have two contradictory theories. See also her other famous comment when caught out making up figures: “Historians are always making up figures.” And the duck analogy also applies.

As for Whitewash, the same duck analogy applies. It may not say ‘postmodernist’ in the title but virtually every essay within has adopted some aspect of the practice of postmodernist historians. If you behave like you’re a postmodernist, who’s to blame if you get called one?

Of course, people who are considered to be traditional empirical historians have had failings. Sometimes they make mistakes, sometimes other evidence emerges that proves them wrong, and sometimes they just do it badly and let their personal biases intrude. But at least they are held to a standard where if they are proved wrong they are expected to acknowledge that fact and, if possible, issue a revised edition or further article with corrections in it. ‘Two truths’ isn’t considered to be an acceptable response to being proved wrong.

As for ‘history is written by the winners’, the goal of traditional empirical historians has always been to be accurate. Of course some will have their own opinions on political and social issues and their own biases (some towards their own ‘people’, some against). If you read a history of the British Empire written by a good empirical historian who was also a loyal and proud British subject, you’ll generally find that you can separate his/her personal bias on matters of opinion such as whether British rule of India was a good thing for the people there, from the facts and the evidence he/she presents about what happened on particular dates and why. You can make your own judgment on matters of opinion based on the evidence and your own personal biases. But the facts and the evidence presented, if he/she was a good empirical historian, will be as complete and as accurate as the evidence available to him/her allowed.

With a postmodernist historian, you can’t rely on the facts or the evidence presented. Since objective ‘truth’ is unimportant, non-existent or unachievable, they seem to feel free to misrepresent and distort as much as they have to in order to make their ‘truth’ believable. Of course, it all falls apart if people who believed in the postmodernist ‘truth’ are prepared to look at the evidence and be persuaded by it rather than cling to their beliefs. Which is why many of the postmodernists have adopted the tactics of vilifying and demonising Windschuttle and of misrepresenting and distorting what he has written. They need to dissuade people from actually reading what Windschuttle has written and then making their own judgments. Unfortunately they have been successful to a certain degree. Webley442 (talk) 04:11, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

As a general point, it's important to use the discussion to focus on improving the article, not on debating the topic at hand. Coming to the point, given Windschuttle's strong support for the position you've described, one of strict adherence to the facts wherever they may lead, it would be helpful to point to instances where he has discovered and pointed out facts that go against his general position (at the time, since his political position has evolved). To give an obvious example, it seems unlikely that every single report of conflict between whites and Aborigines underestimated the Aboriginal death toll. The article would be improved if we could locate cases where W has gone for a higher estimate than the one previously accepted.JQ (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 05:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Briefly (yeah, I know, me, brief?) I see a couple of problems with the proposition that W going with a higher death toll would prove that he is being objective. One, it's a pretty well known rule of thumb that in any shooting fight, estimates of the death toll tend to be higher than the actual figure. Why? People shoot and are inclined think that they've hit their target more often than they actually did. Having assumed that they did hit the target they tend to assume that it was a fatal wound. Also people like to brag about their fighting prowess, not admit that they missed. If you look at the ratios of ammunition expended to actual casualties where such records do exist, you find that there are often scores, hundreds, even thousands of shots fired to each recorded death. In colonial Tasmania the weapons being used are known to be pretty inaccurate; you have virtually no chance of hitting a particular man-sized target at much over 100 metres using the principal weapon available, the Brown Bess musket. It's also slow to reload and fire. So, statistically speaking, a lower estimate is almost always going to be more reliable than a high one. The really big problem though is that to support their contention of genocide, the postmodernists have used the highest death tolls that they can come up with in every conflict situation. It seems that they never say that the death toll in any particular conflict was likely to be lower than the claims made by any of the colonists involved. If two witnesses say 2 or 3 dead and 1, with a motive to lie, many years later says 50, they go with the figure of 50. Given that, what opportunity is there likely to be for W to find even a single example of a conflict situation where the 'previously accepted' figure was too low? Webley442 (talk) 06:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

"So, statistically speaking, a lower estimate is almost always going to be more reliable than a high one." In which case, it follows immediately that the best estimate is zero. Unfortunately, this is WP:OR. Can you quote W saying something along these lines? JQ (talk) 07:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, statistically speaking, zero isn't the best estimate. Since you can't have negative deaths in a fight, i.e. you can't have more people surviving a fight than were there in the first place, zero is at one extreme end of the range of possibilities. It is certainly one possible estimate because there have been fights involving guns and spears in which no-one died (i.e. lousy shots, everybody missed) but not the 'best estimate'. It might be WP:OR and thus in breach of Wikipedia policy if it was included in the article. This isn't the article. I could dig up some calculations of kill ratios that came out of various conflicts including WW11, Korea and Vietnam, if you really want a source but that would not be improving the article and frankly it's not an argument that W has made that I'm aware of. I was making my own argument in addressing your suggestion that if W had included an instance where the previous estimate was too low, that would somehow prove something. Not addressing anything in the article, just your suggestion. My impression of W's approach is that it is to gather all the accounts of a particular event that he can find and analyse them in terms of the information contained and their credibility given the circumstances, the terrain and the people involved. It's not really statistics based. Webley442 (talk) 08:44, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Hitchens

I'm dubious about the section on Hitchens for two reasons. First, there are many people who've shifted from left to right, and it's not clear why Hitchens is chosen. Second, although Hitchens is vehement in his support of the Iraq war and an aggressive response to Islamism, he doesn't seem, like Windschuttle, to have become an orthodox rightwinger (at least not yet). —Preceding unsigned comment added by John Quiggin (talk • contribs)

I've WP:BOLDly deleted the text user 82.36.238.183 (talk · contribs) added. Here's a copy:

For comparison, see also Christopher Hitchens, another former left-wing intellectual who has become a committed right-winger.

Prof. Quiggin is quite right.

1. If we wanted an example of a move from left to right, there are plenty of people to choose from — Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol and David Horowitz, for example.
2. Hitchens still regards himself as being "on the left", not as a "right-winger" and certainly as neither an "orthodox rightwinger" nor a "committed right-winger". For example, his hostility to Henry Kissinger has not softened at all (yay!). He claims that in supporting the overthrow of facist regimes (meaning the Taliban and the Iraqi Baathists) he is being more consistent with leftist ideals than those who opposed toppling those regimes.

I can't help wondering whether this sentence was added purely as an attack on Hitchens. Nevertheless, I'd be happy to see a cleaned-up version put back into the article.

—Chris Chittleborough 19:18, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Left-wing historian

Is the term left wing historian helpful? Unless Reynolds et al. freely admit to interpreting history from a left-wing perspective, adding 'left-wing' seems to be dubious commentary. Ashmoo 07:08, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The terms left-wing and right-wing are intellectually sloppy and fail to take into account the diversity of opinions on political matters that any individual may hold. For instance, many left-wing catholics are anti-abortion, a typically right-wing or conservative view. Add that to the fact that 'left wing historian' is clearly an attempt to allege political bias in Reynolds' work. This makes the section clearly biased towards Windschuttle's view that many historians associated with the left are politically motivated. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.176.48.24 (talk • contribs) 07:46, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Criticisms of Windschuttle's Reasoning and Replies to his Accusations

Shouldn't some of the rebuttals to Keith Windschuttle's accusations be published here to maintain neutral point of view? I'm also of wary of idealised (or psychologised) representations of what Keith WIndschutle's objectives are. Many of the criticisms of the inductivism of David Stove are relevant to Windschuttle's arguments (interestingly, the POV of the David Stove entry is in question due to a lack of these criticisms). Also relevant are documented incidents of double standards in Windschuttles writings.

Calling for "impartial objectivity", while ignoring evidence on contrived technicalities, or more importantly, cricising Cultural Studies (wrongly conflated with Post-Modernism) in The Killing of History, then employing a culturally relativistic approach to belittling Tasmanian Aboriginies in Fabrication. Specifically arguing that they had no words for humanity or compassion therefore were unable to concieve them. An approach contradicted again in Fabrication, where WIndschuttle accuses Abroiginies of a willingness to prostitute their women. Contradicting the earlier "humanity and compassion argument" because there were no words for prostitution. (Arguments by John Quiggin)

His foray into Science Philosophy, in Killing of History also drew some criticisms back in the day, particularly his extention of David Stove's critcisms of Popper (including a blatant staw man against Popper's position on knowledge.) Said Straw Man tactic was observed to be used against the "POMOs" at the August 2002 "Great Debate About History" held at the University of NSW. (Arguments I believe penned by Catherine Keenan)

Possibly the replies by Lyndall Ryan should be considered, given that she was the focus of some of the more material criticisms by Windschuttle, rather than the rather more pedantic (and utterly singular) attack on Reynolds. I think that she has published these replies (after spending a good deal of time going back over her criticised work.)

Raverant2006 13:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

If you are going to publish the rebuttals then do you publish the rebuttals of the rebuttals and so on? You’d wind up with a discussion page the length of several books. For example, Whitewash (edited by Robert Manne) was supposed to be the ultimate rebuttal of Windschuttle’s work, Washout (author John Dawson) dissected Whitewash and rebutted it quite thoroughly.

There is no need for psychologised representations of what Keith Windschutle's objectives are, he has stated them repeatedly; read his work, the best starting point being The Killing of History. In many of the comments, I’ve made on this page (and elsewhere) I’ve merely paraphrased Windschuttle’s own statements of his objectives.

The psychologised representations of Windschuttle's objectives I’m most wary of are those that suggest that his historical arguments must be influenced by his political beliefs. Look at the historical arguments, look at the evidence. Is the evidence accurately and fully disclosed? Does the evidence support Windschuttle’s arguments and not those of his opponents? Answer: yes. The political beliefs of a historian are only relevant if the historian manipulates the evidence to support a political position, which is exactly what Windschuttle criticises.

Interesting to see that the above refers to “documented incidents of double standards in Windschuttle’s writings” without identifying what the “documented incidents” are.

What evidence did he ignore? And on what contrived technicalities? From what I’ve seen, Windschuttle fairly states the case made by the ‘other side’; accurately describes the evidence they rely upon, presents other evidence that the ‘other side’ either didn’t mention or dismissed without giving adequate reason for doing so and then draws his conclusions giving reasons why some evidence is to be preferred. I am not the only one to make this observation about his work.

Instances in which I have seen this kind of accusation levelled at Windschuttle include the incident at Risdon Cove in which Windschuttle allegedly ignores the evidence of the ex-convict, Edward White, and bases his conclusion solely on the reports by the military officer and the surgeon. If you actually read Windschuttle’s account of this incident you can see that he fairly reports White’s evidence (at greater length than the other accounts, in fact) and that of the other two accounts. He gives good reasons why the contemporary reports of the officer and the surgeon are to be considered more reliable than that of the ex-convict, given many years later. These reasons are consistant with standard historical practice.

What I find ridiculous is the suggestion that we should believe the unsupported story told many years later by an ex-convict with every reason to make up a nasty story about the troops who were also his former jailers, i.e. the ones who flogged him and kept him from escaping. We are expected to simply presume that the officer and the surgeon both lied when no evidence to contradict their statements has been presented except the statement of an ex-convict.

Where did Windschuttle argue that that because they had no words for humanity or compassion therefore (they) were unable to conceive of them? Page number, please? I have seen him argue that people and societies are broadly influenced by certain factors including philosophical and religious standards. For example, he argues that Christian standards and Enlightenment philosophy influenced colonists and colonial administrators. He never argued that every colonist, everywhere, at all times, lived up to those standards, though some have attempted to ‘belittle’ him by suggesting that he did.

Is the accusation of ‘belittling’ aboriginals founded in some of the descriptions of Tasmanian aboriginal society in Fabrication including use of the terms ‘primitive’ and ‘dysfunctional’? Windschuttle used these descriptions, not as a gratuitous slur upon Tasmanian aboriginals, but as a small part of an accurate explanation for the demise of the full-blooded Tasmanian aboriginal. The term ‘primitive’ in this context is a technical one, a dispassionate assessment of their level of development. There is an obvious correlation between their ‘primitive’ society with its lack of luxuries and comforts and the desire of Tasmanian aboriginals to acquire Western luxuries and comforts (such as clothing, blankets, ‘exotic’ foods, alcohol, tobacco, metal tools, etc). This resulted in them engaging in conduct that, arguably, hastened their own demise. This conduct included attacking remote settlers’ huts to steal goods and also ‘selling’ aboriginal women and girls (be they members of their own tribes or captives from other tribes) to white men in return for such goods. The first invited the colonisers to respond with violence and the last, of course, removed these women from the full-blood gene pool, which was small to start with. The apparently common practice of aboriginal men allowing white men to sleep with their women in return for ‘presents’ sometimes as trifling as a loaf or two of bread (an exotic, luxury food to aborigines) provided multiple gateways into the aboriginal population for venereal diseases that had devastating effects, particularly on reproductive health and capacity, in a non-resistant population. Windschuttle was called racist for daring to use the word ‘prostitution’ for this ‘cultural practice’ but a rose by any other name…..

Even ordinary contact between aboriginals and settlers resulting from the desire to obtain goods as outright gifts or in return for labour, animal skins, game-meat or other kinds of trade was an opportunity for the isolated, non-resistant aboriginal population to catch diseases from the settlers. It was inadvertently introduced diseases for which they had little or no resistance that were the main culprits in the demise of the full-blooded Tasmanian aboriginals. Here, too, some of the critics pounce; what difference is there between deliberate genocide by violence and the extinction of a race by introduced diseases? The answer is, of course, a great deal of difference; the differences between ‘deliberate’, ‘inadvertent’ and ‘accidental’, especially when you consider that at the time the Western world had very little idea about the true nature of disease and its transmission or of immunity and resistance. The notion of disease being caused by ‘noxious vapours’ was still prevalent at the time. Bloodletting was still a popular remedy for all ills. They had no idea that a race isolated from the rest of humanity for perhaps 10,000 years would die in large numbers due to diseases that were much less harmful to the British settlers.

The so-called straw man argument at the “Great Debate” that so offended Catherine Keenan is apparently that Windschuttle made use of his limited time at the podium to go after the most extreme practitioners and forms of post-modernism rather than letting them off the hook by concentrating on somewhat less extreme examples offered up earlier. In other words, he didn’t allow himself to be lead astray by a red herring.

I suppose that insisting historians actually do the work and try to get it right could be considered by some as pedantic.

Which replies by Lyndall Ryan should be considered? The ones I’ve seen have basically consisted of her arguing that the reason the documents that she refers to in her footnotes don’t say what she said they say is that the correct documents were ‘accidentally’ left out or misplaced. When you look at the ‘new’ documents, however, you find that they don’t support what she says either. For example, in her book The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Lyndall Ryan claimed the diaries of a Reverend Knopwood as evidence for the deaths of 100 aborigines and 20 Europeans. When Windschuttle pointed out that the diaries don’t contain any mention of the deaths of 100 aborigines and 20 Europeans, Ryan responded that a footnote to another paragraph about kangaroo hunting contain references to reports by John Oxley, the explorer and these were meant to support the death toll. So, this is where the ‘missing’ footnote disappeared to, attached to the wrong paragraph in her book? Except these reports don’t contain the required death toll either. When asked by a reporter about the fact that her new reference doesn’t support her claim either and whether she had made up the figures, Ryan claimed, “Historians are always making up figures.” Should be “bad historians are always making up figures”.

T. A. Yates

Hitchens and Horowitz

User Apeloverage (talk · contribs) recently added the following lines to the article, which I've moved here for further discussion:

==See also==

• Christopher Hitchens
• David Horowitz

Both former leftists, who like Windschuttle have active right-wingers.

Some comments:

• It would help if that fragment had a verb ;-).
• As discussed above, Hitchens says he is still 'of the left', and should not be included in a list like this.
• Horowitz has certainly moved from left to right.
• "See also" is probably not the right heading. Perhaps "Other writers who have moved from left to right"?
• It might be possible to write up a good Wikipedia article on people who have moved from left to right politically.

What do other people think? CWC(talk) 14:19, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I've changed it in light of the comments above. --Apeloverage 14:54, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Good stuff! CWC(talk) 16:53, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Ben Kiernan citation

The Ben Kiernan citation may more properly belong on the History wars article. Note that Kiernan changed his mind on the Cambodian genocide, so using his early opinion to discredit Kiernan is poor logic. Paul foord 08:52, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The original Ben Kiernan citation included a reference to Kiernan's 'credentials' as head of the Yale University Genocide Project and basically was citing his 'opinion' as a 'genocide expert', i.e. Wikipedia implies that Kiernan's opinion on Windschuttle can be trusted by readers because of Kiernan's expertise and his work on genocide. If people are supposed to rely on Wikipedia as a credible encyclopaedia, there needs to be a full disclosure of the 'credentials' of such sources; either that or don't use the citation. The credibility of a source is an important issue and their past history of extreme bad judgment or wilful, ideological blindness on issues such as the crimes of the Khmer Rouge is extremely relevant to their current day credibility. The fact that Kiernan was denying Khmer Rouge crimes at a time that there were multiple accounts of Khmer Rouge atrocities coming out of Cambodia and when it was overwhelmingly obvious that they were homicidal monsters bears directly on his credibility.

It was as inappropriate to use Kiernan as a source of criticism of Keith Windschuttle's work without giving readers all the relevant information with which to judge Kiernan's credibility as it was for another user to cite the contributors to 'Whitewash' as critics of Windschuttle without revealing that those contributors included the very historians whom Windschuttle had directly accused of misrepresenting and fabricating history. T.A. Yates

The above exemplifies the reasoning of a demagogic mentality. Kiernan acknowledged his misjudgements about Pol Pot over 28 years ago, and since then has consistently opposed and condemned the Khmer Rouge, even at times when Western governments were supporting Pol Pot. So the question is what weighs more? The misjudgements of a young historian, or 28 years of careful historical study that speaks for itself? The demagogues seem to be implying that the young historian had some sort of inherent character flaw that could never be atoned for. The demagogues are an extreme minority. Many of the most serious Cambodia scholars from all sides of the political spectrum, including conservatively inclined senior historians such as Milton Osborne and David Chandler, defended Kiernan's credibility when he was attacked by an ideologue who happens to have striking similarities to Windschuttle.

"We have full confidence in Prof. Kiernan's integrity, professional scholarship, and ability to carry out the important work of the Cambodian Genocide Program. He is a first-rate historian and an excellent choice for the State Department grant." (Phnom Penh Post, June 30 - July 13,1995. See also The Wall Street Journal, 13 July 1995.)

Kiernan presented arguments against Windschuttle related to what he believes is important material that Windschuttle ignored and misrepresentation of evidence. Instead of dealing with the arguments at hand Windschuttle's supporters attempted to change the subject. Gee now, I wonder why? - L'Ecuirreil

Hmmm, the reasoning of 'a demagogic mentality'? As opposed to someone who just accepts the pronouncements of someone like Ben Kiernan as true without considering his track record or the merits of his arguments?

The 'arguments' Kiernan presented against Windschuttle were largely a sad rehash of the ideologically driven reasoning that got the study of history in this country into such a dire state in the first place. Along with the ideology, Kiernan led in with discussion of writers who had denied atrocities we know really did occur in East Timor and then moved on to Windschuttle. Robert Manne did something similar by referring to David Irving (the Holocaust denier) and Helen Darville (literary hoaxer) in his commentary on Windschuttle. It's a kind of guilt by association; mention someone in the same context as those we know produced false or fraudulent work and some people will find it easier to believe that your target is in the same category. The rest of Kiernan's commentary on Windschuttle amounted to simply restating claims made by Reynolds, Rowley and others (including himself) without offering any kind of detailed examination as to whether the evidence for those claims stands up under close scrutiny. It's a statement of faith, Kiernan chooses to believe what Reynolds and others have claimed; evidence is irrelevant to faith.

Kiernan also used what has been a standard tactic against Windschuttle; misrepresent what Windschuttle has written and then criticise him on the misrepresented material. For example, Kiernan suggested that Windschuttle's 'honesty' can be judged from the 'fact' that Windschuttle had claimed that Kiernan had 'noted' hundreds of massacres that took place in the 20th century when Kiernan had really 'noted' hundreds of massacres from the 19th century. If you actually read the article by Windschuttle that Kiernan is referring to (entitled "The fabrication of Aboriginal history" in The New Criterion Vol. 20, No. 1, September 2001), you find that Windschuttle wrote "Kiernan wrote of British colonists in the nineteenth century mounting “punitive expeditions” and committing “hundreds of massacres.” " and later Windschuttle refers to Kiernan's writings on one (1) alleged 20th century massacre. Whose honesty should be suspect here?

The black armband historians have convinced themselves and the gullible that exaggerated tales of genocide, massacre and general bad behaviour on the part of white settlers are necessary or desirable in order to somehow provide ‘support’ for claims for aboriginal land rights and for reparations for past wrongs. Windschuttle’s work is perceived to ‘undercut’ the work of the black armband historians, therefore he must be wrong. Does any rational person actually believe that aboriginal land rights are dependent upon genocide and hundreds of massacres having occurred?

That Kiernan finally acknowledged his misjudgements about Pol Pot was commendable. It would be great if acknowledging that he made a mistake about Pol Pot guaranteed that Kiernan had been cured of the bad judgment or ideological blindness that caused it but I don’t think that we can just assume that it did. In the past, I’ve had to acknowledge a personal tendancy to sarcasm but acknowledging it hasn’t cured me of the habit.

Continuing to support the Khmer Rouge for years after evidence of atrocities began to emerge was no minor mistake or youthful indiscretion. It is the sort of track record that will, and should, be remembered because it raises serious questions about Kiernan’s judgment and credibility. If this level of either misjudgement or ideological blindness is, or may be, a lifelong character trait then how can anyone rely on his assessment of Windschuttle’s work? L’Ecuirreil writes of “28 years of careful historical study that speaks for itself”. Does everything that Kiernan has done over the past 28 years stand up to scrutiny? Who knows, for sure, aside from L’Ecuirreil, of course? I’ve certainly not made an intensive study of Kiernan’s work and am not inclined to do so, given what I’ve seen of it so far. We should bear in mind the fact that, although not as well known as Reynolds, Ryan and some others, Kiernan is one of the historians who have published work claiming that the aborigines were subject to genocide. (Ben Kiernan, “Australia’s Aboriginal Genocide.” Yale Journal of Human Rights 1, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 49-56.) That puts him squarely in the ranks of black armband historians whose work is under suspicion as a result of Windschuttle’s revelations of widespread misrepresentation, exaggeration and fabrication of the evidence in this field. Is Kiernan’s assessment of Windschuttle’s work based on an objective assessment of the evidence, on protecting his own professional reputation or on his ideological and social preferences? How can we know if someone is a reliable source if we don’t look at his or her history? Once you know something of Kiernan's history, of his early denial of Khmer Rouge genocide, followed by an extremely late acknowledgement of it and of his much more recent claims of aboriginal genocide in Australia, it becomes pretty obvious that he is not a source that you can place a great deal of reliance on if you want an unbiased assessment of Windschuttle's work.

This is perhaps the main reason why it is inappropriate to include mere opinion from rivals, critics or from supporters in an encyclopaedia article. An encyclopaedia article is generally not the appropriate place for such opinions because it simply raises the question of the credentials and credibility of the source. The fact that L’Ecuirreil can cite some other historians who say that Kiernan is OK by them merely brings up the question of those historians’ judgment and whether their opinion, which may be based on familiarity with a very limited range of Kiernan’s work, is relevant to Kiernan’s assessment of Windschuttle’s work. It may well be that Kiernan is dead on target with his more recent work on genocide in Cambodia but still wearing ideological blinkers with respect to aboriginal history. It becomes a debate and an encyclopaedia article isn’t a debate. It should be as neutral in an area of controversy as possible. So I fully support the removal of the Kiernan citation from the article.

Kiernan’s attack on Windschuttle, excerpts from which were included in the citation, clearly indicates that Kiernan’s criticism is based on the effect that Windschuttle’s work may have on Aboriginal land rights claims and how ‘denial’ of genocide “undercuts Aboriginal claims based on justice”. For a historian, this shouldn’t be a professional concern. The current day consequences of the historical evidence aren’t within the historian’s purview. Once you start thinking that a historian is responsible for how the evidence and arguments that he presents may affect current day land rights or reparations claims, you open the door to acceptance of the practice of misrepresenting and fabricating the evidence to support such claims, i.e. to get the ‘right’ result. History becomes meaningless except as a tool to manipulate public opinion.

If the evidence indicates that genocide or some alleged massacres didn’t happen, then that is what the historical record should reflect. Historians shouldn’t consider the effect of their work on any claim for reparations or apology. How society deals with the consequences of history isn’t up to the historian. If an objective examination of the history of Aboriginal cultural attitudes to land and their ‘ownership’ and use of it, were to make it difficult in the 21st century for a tribal group to establish a land rights claim (perhaps because they may not be able to establish that they ever ‘owned’ that land in terms of exclusive, or reasonably exclusive, possession and use of it, i.e. because other tribes shared or used it), that is not the historian’s responsibility. It is not the role of historians to make land rights claims easy and if the effect of the historical evidence makes them more difficult, then that’s just how it is.

T.A. Yates

PhD

Did Windschuttle submit a PhD thesis, or did he withdraw without submitting? If he submitted and it was rejected fails is probably accurate, "did not complete" would then be a whitewash of the situation. Paul foord (talk) 07:56, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Unless there's evidence one way or another, "fails" or "failed" is inappropriate because it does imply academic failure such as a rejected thesis. There are lots of reasons that people choose not to complete degrees, including career, family and financial issues. Webley442 (talk) 14:12, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

A brief comment

I recently read Windschuttle's The Killing of History. He made some interesting points, and I enjoyed reading it, although in my view he was mainly demolishing strawmen, distorting many of his opponents' positions to the point of absurdity. Right now I'm reading an article of his in Quadrant, "The Struggle for Australian Values in an Age of Deceit". Not because I agree with his views, but because I want to know what's being said on both sides of the History Wars. In his article, Windschuttle writes:

"Britain and its colonial offshoots have always subscribed to civic nationalism rather than the racist nationalism that prevailed on much of the Continent. Civic nationalism meant that Britons owed their loyalties not to an organic whole based on their race, language or physiognomy, but to the political institutions they had created for themselves. Racist nationalism, the political theory and political appeal that was used to unify Germany and Italy in the nineteenth century, was of a qualitatively different kind. It is historically inaccurate to identify British and Continental nationalism as the same thing. The countries of British descent accept outsiders who agree to abide by the rules. A person of any race or ethnicity can become an American, or an Australian or a New Zealander. [...] [T]o argue Australia is a fundamentally racist country, you need better evidence than a few examples of folk racism expressed by individuals; you have to find substantial racist institutions, and these Australia has never had."

Note how he tries to blur past and present? In essence: Australia is not racist now, so clearly it never has been; those who criticise Australia's past policies should look at its present to see they're mistaken. A fairly crude and ineffective trick, which I would have thought would be beneath a historian. More importantly, however, what Windschuttle writes here is blatantly and utterly incorrect. Circa 1901 (Federation and the beginning of the official White Australia policy), and for several decades still after that, many Australians, including most leading politicians on all sides of the spectrum, did espouse racial nationalism, made many references to their pride in being part of the "British race", and advocated keeping out "racial foreigners" on the grounds of racial prejudice. People's self-definition as British/Australian, at the time of Federation and beyond, was grounded in concepts of "race". There was racially discriminatory legislation in the fields of immigration and employment, primarily targeting the Chinese. Mainstream politicians stirred up and encouraged anti-Chinese feelings. Pacific Islanders were deported from Queensland on racial grounds. There's such a plenitude of sources to back up these facts that I'm astounded Windschuttle could try to deny it. I'm not mentioning this in the article itself, in case it's construed as original research, but I did want to point it out. Windschuttle lacks credibility. Aridd (talk) 21:12, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Aridd, firstly, Windschuttle 'tries to blur past and present'?? History is a continuum, the past influences the present. His argument is not that there were no racist attitudes in the Australian past, but rather that they were very different to those held in places where there was serious interest in nationalism based on blood and race, like Germany leading up to the Nazis and the Deep South of the USA, and that the nature of this difference made it much easier for Australians to let go of them as attitudes progressed though the 20 Century. The pride in the 'British race' thing was based on what was considered the self-evident superiority of its accomplishments: the technology, the culture, the democratic institutions, the building of a vast Empire, rather than on some supposed genetic superiority. Incidentally, the British considered themselves superior to the French, the Belgians, the Dutch, etc, etc all of whom were 'racially' identical in terms of appearance to the Brits.

I recommend you read, calmly, Windschuttle's book: The White Australia Policy. It is quite eye-opening as to how much opposition there was in Australia (and Britain, for that matter) to the WAP right from the very beginning, including from leading politicians, how accepting of different races Australia had been right from colonisation (although in a more paternalistic way than we'd find acceptable today) and on the primary motive driving the WAP, which was to protect the conditions of the 'working man' in Australia, which were recognised as the best in the world, from being 'undermined' by the importation of cheap, exploited labour from India, China and the Pacific Islands, i.e. it was to prevent large landowners, farmers, factory owners from bringing shiploads of contract workers from say China, housing them in slums, paying them a pittance (which however translated to relatively good money when sent back to China) and thus replacing the higher paid 'white' employees. He also brings out a lot of interesting data on the Pacific Islanders and their role in the sugar industry. Webley442 (talk) 05:07, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Apologies for the very late response, but I've only started looking into the WAP again recently. If you look at the excerpt from Windschuttle which I quote above, it's factually incorrect. He says "The countries of British descent accept outsiders who agree to abide by the rules", and very strongly implies that this has always been the case ; that's what I meant by his trying to blur or equate past and present. When he says "Britons owed their loyalties not to an organic whole based on their race, language or physiognomy", it's simply not true in Australia's case. Yes, "non-whites" were objected to on economic grounds, to a large extent. But not only, or even primarily. If you look at the primary sources, what people were saying at the time, here are a few examples I have:

• “It has been a great comfort to Australia of late to find wider understanding in Great Britain and all the world that her policy is based […] on as noble an ideal as any that moves man. […] Racial purity is the sacred object, far more sacred to the new generation of Australians than any other worldly tie.” (Keith Murdoch (Australian journalist), “Australia Day: 133 years of progress”, The Times, January 26, 1921, p.11.)
• "The most serious objection to the coloured races is, of course, the ethnical; the economic objection might perhaps be waived were the other non-existent. In all Australian cities there are large communities of non-British Europeans who are greatly objected to on economic grounds, but whose presence is tolerated because they belong to the races with whom Australians may intemarry, and who may thus ultimately become absorbed into the general population. With coloured races it is different." (The Agent-General for NSW, "The White Australia Policy", The Times, February 17, 1908, p.8.)
• "In the first Federal Parliament, one of the earliest measures framed with a view to a national policy for Australia was an Immigration Restriction Act. It had for its aim an Australia peopled by the white man, not merely because of the economic danger of coloured races, but because the possibility of a continent racially pure had grown to be a matter of universal national pride. It is still that, and it will remain that." (M.L. Shepherd, Australian High Commissionner in Britain, “White Australia: An Enduring Ideal”, letter to the editor of The Times, January 7, 1922, p.6.)

Those are examples I found easily by myself. Either Windschuttle's research was incredibly sloppy, or he's deliberately distorting the truth, or he's delusional. The views expressed by Australians in positions of authority and influence at the time are easy to find in archives. I have many other references, primary sources. Australian leaders expressed a pride in racial identity, and presented "racial purity" as a national ideal - in itself, not just for economic reasons. Alfred Deakin's views in 1901, supporting the implementing of the policy, were that Australia should consist in “one people, and remain one people, without the admixture of other races” and that “The unity of Australia is nothing if that does not imply a united race.” (quoted in Frank Welsh, Great Southern Land, p.341, and Paul Kelly, The End of Certainty: Power, Politics & Business in Australia, p.3). That's not the "civic nationalism" that Australia has "always subscribed to" in Windschuttle's claim. What he claims is quite simply nonsense. He seems to be implying that, because economic objections were voiced to "coloured" immigration, they were the only reason for such objections. It's rubbish. It's a lie. The facts don't back it up. Aridd (talk) 21:07, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Aridd, you could have saved yourself time looking for your own ‘examples’. If you’d followed my advice and just read Windschuttle’s The White Australia Policy, you’d know that, in his research (apparently more thorough than yours), Windschuttle had found, reproduced in the book and commented on the same or similar extracts from various documents (and quite a few more than you found). You might also know that Windschuttle goes to considerable lengths showing that one of the favourite tactics of those anxious to ‘prove’ what an irredeemably racist country Australia was (and is), is to selectively quote only from such documents without revealing the other side of the story, ie the people who expressed very different views to those extreme racist views that some want to pretend were universally accepted in Australia.

You can ‘prove’ to some gullible people’s satisfaction that 21st Century Australia is a hotbed of neo-Nazi thought and action, if you selectively quote from that tiny minority and don’t reveal that most Australians have no truck with them.

If you’d read the book you’d know that Windschuttle deals with the history of the radical nationalist minority who were decidedly racist but he points out that this was a small self-appointed cultural 'elite'; a tiny minority acting as such self-appointed elites do in claiming that they are somehow representative of either the majority or are the leading thinkers in the country; that we all hang on their every word when, in fact, we usually ignore them completely.

If you’d read the book you’d know that Windschuttle shows that while there were racists who loved the idea of a White Australia Policy, supported the Immigration Restrictions Act for racist reasons and claimed that racial purity was the motivation behind the Act, the impetus that drove the Act through Parliament developed out of the anti-transportation movement, the anti-coolie movement and primarily the trade union movement, all of which were primarily concerned with economic and humanitarian reasons for preventing the importation of cheap or unpaid (as in the case of convicts) labour.

Since you obviously haven’t read the book, you are hardly in a position to criticise his conclusions or claim that his research was ‘sloppy’, or that he deliberately distorted the truth, or that he's delusional. If you'd read the book, you'd know he presented the facts to back up his case. Webley442 (talk) 10:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Note that Aridd was speaking of early 20th century Australia and never said that 21st century Australia is a "hotbed of Neo-Nazi thought and action". Your overreaction quite deftly betrays your emotional investment in presenting a pro-Windschuttle view, Webley.

Note: if you had paid attention to what I’d written, you should have realised that I never claimed that Aridd had said anything of the kind. My remark was simply to illustrate a point: that you can ‘prove’ anything if you are willing to selectively quote from a minority and don’t reveal the full picture. As for my ‘emotional investment’, it is in accuracy. I am pro-evidence, pro-verifiability, pro-honest argument . One of the main reasons that I became involved in editing this and related articles was that I observed that much of what was being put into the article misrepresented the situation and in particular, there were significant misrepresentations of what Windschuttle had written. I’d be equally concerned with correcting misrepresented arguments about, or versions of, what other historians had written but they don’t seem to have been made as much a target for such deceptive behaviour as Windschuttle has.Webley442 (talk) 03:14, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Windschuttle's work is historical revisionism

Historical revisionism is NPOV, to say it is historical revisionism (negationism) would be WP:POV, to state he was the latter would require verification. If editors find such and provide WP:Reliable sources for that then it would be appropriate to state in the article. Paul foord (talk) 13:12, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

While the term "historical revision" does have "both a legitimate academic use and a pejorative meaning", today it is used almost entirely in the negative sense. Virtually no-one uses it in a positive way anymore and therefore using it without making a full explanation in the article that you aren't implying the negative does offend against Wikipedia principles of NPOV. It's rather like saying "he's a gay fellow" and then saying that you simply meant he's happy. Frankly, people aren't going to assume that that is what you meant. It risks suspicion of simply being a sly way of creating a negative impression in the minds of readers of the article.

Self-published

Similarly the term "self-published" is misleading. The common implication in the use of that term is that an author couldn't get anyone to publish it and so had to pay for the printing himself. Being an author who also owns his own publishing house is a very different situation. Why would you have another publishing house publish your book when you own your own publishing house and can thus retain full creative control (and the publisher's share of any profits)? Once again, using the term without explaining that Windschuttle owns a publishing house risks suspicion of simply being a sly way of creating a negative impression in the minds of readers of the article. Webley442 (talk) 13:56, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Why someone might not self publish when they already own a small publishing house. (Macleay Press appears to be very much a niche publisher). Using an independant, and particularly a university press would add credibility to the propositions Windschuttle puts forward. I would assume being published by Melbourne University Press or University of Queensland Press, particularly given the resources they commit to works published would add something. Paul foord (talk) 09:42, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Authors of books and articles that contradict an established academic position often have difficulties getting a publisher and especially in getting an academic publisher like a university press to take them on. For one thing, a university press will almost invariably have its own ‘stable’ of authors who have published on the established academic position. If the university press then published a work which effectively accuses its own authors of fabricating and exaggerating, it could certainly argue that it was simply being ‘fair’ or ‘even-handed’ by publishing a ‘contrarian’ view but it is still likely to find itself accused of repudiating the work of the other authors. It may offend those authors with the result that they take their next work to other publishers. Secondly, publishers can be as much 'captives' of a particular view as anyone else and therefore may reject something they don’t personally agree with. I can think of a book on a controversial ‘crackpot’ scientific theory regarding the forces that created certain geological features in Washington State, USA that was rejected by academic publishers for about 40 years. The publishers stuck with the conventional theories even though they were themselves just theories with little or no evidence to support them. It wasn’t until after further scientific developments proved the ‘crackpot’ theory correct and the conventional theories incorrect, that the academic publishers were willing to touch it. The ‘crackpot’ scientific theory is now the generally accepted theory. Certainly Windschuttle could have shopped around to find some independent publisher to publish the book; presumably one that had not published anything previously on Aboriginal history and so didn’t have any 'conflict of interest' to discourage it from taking the book on. To what point? Critics would then use the fact that his publisher hadn’t published anything before on Aboriginal history as a basis of criticism. Webley442 (talk) 13:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Windschuttle taken in by hoax.

Keith Windsucker has been scuttled by this hoax. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.102.149 (talk) 12:00, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Windschuttle, it appears, has been hoaxed. [1] 123.50.141.89 (talk) 04:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC) Yes, I've put it in, citing both crikey and the Australian (which reports his response). --Rosabibi (talk) 09:52, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Cool. It's important that him being revealed as total right wing douche-nozzle this most essential arc of his career is noted in this esteemed journal of record. :D 123.50.136.11 (talk) 13:37, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Yawn...or perhaps, so what? Every editor takes the risk that someone will slip a hoax by them, especially if the subject area of the hoax article is a field in which the editor doesn't have specialist training. Webley442 (talk) 08:46, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Not a forum, asshole. 123.50.143.110 (talk) 07:31, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

And yes I know, WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. 123.50.143.110 (talk) 07:46, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

My point, for those too dense to work it out, was that someone slipping a hoax by the editor of a magazine is too trivial for inclusion in an article on that person. Otherwise, what else would we be considering worthy of inclusion: spelling mistakes he may have missed, punctuation errors? Webley442 (talk) 09:50, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

There is a vigorous debate going on in the press at the moment as to whether the hoax was "trivial" or not. But regardless of the arguments either way, a story that makes national headlines for several days (and has received coverage in the international press) is worthy of inclusion. Spelling mistakes and punctuation errors don't often get that kind of publicity. (although I note that Quadrant's sloppiness on those kinds of details has rated mention in recent stories...)--Rosabibi (talk) 14:19, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The commission of the hoax (and the insistence of some on including it here) seems more like desperation and malice on the part those who are offended by the fact that he proved widespread fabrication, misrepresentation and exaggeration in the field of Aboriginal History. Unable to bear the fact that his critics couldn’t come up with credible evidence that he was wrong there, someone creates a hoax article (being very careful to make sure it is in a highly technical area that Windschuttle isn’t trained in) and submits it to a small magazine he is editor of, knowing that the magazine does not have its articles peer-reviewed (nor do any similar magazines; Quadrant isn’t a scientific journal like that in the Sokal hoax). Those exulting in the success of the hoax obviously seem to think it proves something. It doesn’t. Windschuttle’s criticisms of Aboriginal History are that the AUTHORS of various books and articles falsified their work, not that the editors (who were not historians who were experts in the field) failed to catch the falsifications. Webley442 (talk) 23:48, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree with your opinion of the either the hoax or Windschuttle himself, but that is really not relevant to whether or not it should be included in the wikipedia entry. It sparked a high-profile public debate and it makes not sense to leave out the occasion on which Windschuttle received such a huge degree of public visibility, coming to the attention of people who had not previously followed his career. I suspect that in a few years time, people who would not be able to name a single one of Windschuttle's books will remember this particular event. Peer review is not about this kind of basic fact-checking. Basic ethics would dictate a phone call to the CSIRO inviting them to respond to the allegations made in the article - not much work and would have avoided the whole debacle. I would have thought that would be prudent from a legal point of view, apart from anything else. --Rosabibi (talk) 11:21, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The reason there is a public debate is that it is what the Americans call a "cheap shot". Some people are pointing that out and others are scrabbling to defend it.

Fairly obviously you are not a lawyer. There is nothing in the article which would support a legal action against the publisher, i.e. Quadrant. The hoax parts of the article say that the CSIRO abandoned plans to do various things with human genes for perceived moral or ethical reasons. You can't sue someone for saying you chose not to do something out of a concern for moral or ethical issues as it isn't a statement that would be perceived as capable of causing you any detriment/harm/loss. You wouldn't get into a courtroom with a case like that. And if you'd ever dealt with the CSIRO, you'd know a phone call doesn't get you very far. Actually finding out who is or was in charge of particular projects and THEN finding who is authorised and willing to speak to outsiders about potentially controversial research is like finding your way through a maze, as a colleague of mine found out when he tried to ask what he thought were some fairly innocuous questions about nuclear research a few years ago. Webley442 (talk) 12:49, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The article didn't say the research was abandoned for moral or ethical reasons but for the public perception of such issues - a percpetion which the article said was entirely misplaced. If you publish false claims about an organisation you could expect to find yourself in court - I don't imagine it will happen in this case because the false claims have been so publically debunked that there is no need for the CSIRO to do so. But anyway, this conversation is beside the point - the fact that we (and so many others) are bothering to have this argument is evidence that the event is noteworthy and therefore should be included in Windshuttle's bio. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rosabibi (talk • contribs) 14:17, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

It was the author of the article saying that the moral or ethical perceptions were misplaced; she wasn't saying that the CSIRO claimed that it was misplaced - just that they abandoned it because of the perceived issues. Try asking a solicitor or barrister with experience in civil litigation about the article. He/she will tell you that there isn't anything in the article which would give the CSIRO a cause of action against Quadrant. Saying that an organisation merely considered or planned at one point to do some research along the lines of research being done around the world (and researchers around the world are currently involved in research on using human genes inserted into bacteria, plants and animals)isn't actionable. You need to be able to demonstrate that the false statement caused you some harm or loss. Webley442 (talk) 23:24, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

The article did not cause harm or less because it was swiftly revealed to be a hoax, and the whole thing became a joke - not something that Windshuttle foresaw at the time of publication. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rosabibi (talk • contribs) 13:01, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Windschuttle didn't need to forsee that it was a hoax to be certain that Quadrant couldn't be sued for publishing the article. All he needed to do was to read the article and see that the article didn't accuse the CSIRO (or anyone else) of doing anything illegal, immoral, unethical or of doing anything incompetently or outside its charter. All the article "accused" the CSIRO of (falsely as it turned out) was deciding NOT to do something for reasons a considerable proportion of the general public might agree with. The article also argued that that it shouldn't have made that choice. That amounts to mere opinion, nothing actionable in a court. The author of the hoax seems to have done a very careful job of crafting her work. She put nothing in the article which was actionable so Windschuttle didn't need to be concerned on that account and do further checking. As someone who has had past experience in getting things published, she had to know that editors don't obtain copies of every article or document footnoted in an article (if they did, nothing would ever get published as the checking process for one edition of the magazine would take forever), so she must have known that no editor was going to locate a copy of the Plant Biotechnology Journal for July 2003 to check her footnotes. The best any editor is going to do is check that there is such a Journal and since it and every other source mentioned in the article do exist, along with all the people mentioned in the article with the exception of the author, "Sharon Gould", an editor has to take the contributing authors at face value and assume that they are being honest with their footnotes. As far as I'm aware Windschuttle has never critised any editor for failing to verify footnotes. It's something an editor wouldn't do unless he/she had foreknowledge that a particular author was inclined to provide false or incorrect footnotes. His criticism has always been of authors who create false or misleading footnotes, not the editors. Webley442 (talk) 14:01, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I've removed the claim without citation that Windschuttle criticised editors for not checking all footnotes. If anyone wants to restore it, they should come up with a citation that supports the claim. See my comments above regarding the criticism Windschuttle has made with respect to footnotes. Webley442 (talk) 02:10, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The extinction of the Australian pygmies, (2002), Quadrant

In the Quadrant Keith Windschuttle and Tim Gillin, (June 2002), 'The extinction of the Australian pygmies' Windschuttle argues for the fringe theory of multiple waves of Aboriginal settlement (see the discussion at Talk:Indigenous Australians/Archive 6#Second wave and Talk:Indigenous Australians/Archive 6#First Australians for background) and notes the disappearance of a pygmy people in the 20th century (extinction is the word he uses however genocide would also fit), he explains they were assimilated into the broader Aboriginal community stating in the postscript that 'The missionaries deliberately disrupted traditional tribal betrothals so that a fair amount of inter-marriage took place.' This is out of sync with his other writings on Aboriginal history. -- Paul foord (talk) 12:15, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Not really. (a) Windschuttle doesn't argue that no-one, anywhere in Australia, did any kind of harm to Aboriginal people, just that it wasn't as widespread as some like to pretend; and (b) he argues that a lot of the harm that was done to them was not by evil white settlers out to exterminate them but rather by "well-meaning" do-gooders who tried to force Aboriginal people to conform to the do-gooders' perception of how life should be for them. Christian missionaries who disrupted traditional religious and social practices in order to "civilise" them are one example as are those in the 19th and early 20th centuries who encouraged Aboriginal separation and isolation from the evil influences of white society ...alcohol, opium, exploitation, etc and wound up confining them to missions and reserves where there was no economic or social progress.

Does the disappearance of distinct physical features as a result of voluntary inter-marriage (remember no-one said anything about forced inter-marriage) count as genocide? Webley442 (talk) 13:12, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Length of "Hoax"

The "Hoax" section is too long. It's longer than the section on the history wars. It's worth a mention, but it's being given undue weight at the moment, both in trying to make Windschuttle look good and in trying to make him look bad. 59.167.49.42 (talk) 09:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that the "hoax" doesn't belong in the article at all. It was not a significant event in the career of the subject of the article any more than someone throwing a pie in the face of a politician is worth mentioning in an article on that politician. Fairly obviously it is a matter of dispute as to the 'validity' and success of the hoax. If it's worth a mention at all, then some commentary on what the hoax was supposed to 'prove' plus comments made about it's success or failure in achieving those aims need to be retained, otherwise there's no context. If someone can trim it and retain a reasonable balance there, go ahead. Otherwise chop it all out. The article will read just fine without it. Webley442 (talk) 13:26, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

"Preponderance" of Australian historians

Changing "Windschuttle has exclusively criticised left-wing historians" to "Windschuttle has exclusively criticised the preponderance of Australian historians" creates a possibly/probably unintended meaning. It can be read as though Windschuttle criticised all Australian historians, even those not engaged in writing Aboriginal History, eg including those whose speciality may be the Australian involvement in World War I & II, etc, etc. The previous wording makes it reasonably clear that he argues that what is known as Aboriginal History has, since the 1970's, been predominantly written by a group of historians with left-wing ideological leanings and he clearly identifies those who he accuses of misrepresenting and fabricating historical evidence to support a political agenda with respect to Aboriginal History. Webley442 (talk) 11:34, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Number of Aborigines killed

Text along the lines of Windschuttle "argues that Aborigines had the better of the conflict with no more than 118 Aborigines killed by settlers as plausable, considerably less than the number of settlers killed by Aborigines" misrepresents the supposed source, i.e. Windschuttle. He found records from which he estimated that there were about 118 deaths (revised to 120 in the next reprint and 121 on his website) for which there is some kind of plausible account that he has located. Not that this was the maximum number killed, just that he had found plausible accounts for about this number. There is a difference.

Has expressly stated that he does not claim to have located every plausible account and that the number can and will be revised as and when other plausible accounts emerge.

However he also notes that in all of Whitewash, only one plausible account about the death of one Tasmanian Aborigine which he had not discussed in the revised edition of Fabrication, was presented. James Boyce went on for pages in his chapter of Whitewash about all the evidence Windschuttle supposedly ignored but didn't actually produce much of anything to back up the claim that all this 'evidence' exists. Still hasn't.

Windschuttle does not argue that there weren't more deaths for which there is no surviving account but goes into the issue of how do or should historians deal with deaths for which there is no record.Webley442 (talk) 12:24, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

The text "argues that Aborigines had the better of the conflict with no more than 118 Aborigines killed by settlers as plausable, considerably less than the number of settlers killed by Aborigines" is a clear misrepresentation of the alleged source. Read the book for a change or at least the linked article before inserting unsourced personal opinion. Webley442 (talk) 12:52, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately I only have Windschuttles book so just because something in it has since been altered does not make including the original data personal opinion. His own website is not a reliable source so the book itself should stand. There is no misrepresentation, the edit you deleted (posted in entirety below) covers everything you said anyway:

His review focuses in large part on the Black War against the Aborigines of Tasmania and argues that Aborigines had the better of the conflict listing 118 Aborigines killed by settlers as plausable, considerably less than the number of settlers killed by Aborigines. (note)Windschuttle counts only deaths reported in government documents and some undisputed reports as "plausable". Those deaths detailed in contemporary diaries, biographies, journals, newspapers and letters without official support are considered "less plausable" and generally not included in the final tally. For example, John Batman's journal account of an incident in 1829 lists two Aborigines killed in the encounter and estimated up to 15 to have died from wounds. Although Windschuttle admits in Fabrication that the two deaths were likely, neither those two nor Batman's additional estimated deaths were included in the 118 listed as plausable in Table 10. Windschuttle admits he may have missed a killing or two indicating that he does not consider that he had located all existing accounts of killings, writing "This figure is not absolute or final".(/note)

If you are concerned that it has no reference I will add one. This is not a fan site. If you compare it to a page for other fringe historians (David Irving for example) you can see that this one is excessively positive and requires much more critical treatment.Wayne (talk) 14:01, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

This article is a biography of a living person and the edit you are attempting to include is potentially libellous. Suggesting with your text that Windschuttle was setting an upper limit on the number of Aborigines killed - which would include all recorded and unrecorded deaths, when what he was doing was tabulating and estimating deaths RECORDED in available accounts, looks like an attempt to attack him & his professional reputation by imputing ridiculous claims to him, ie that he had established the upper limit of the deaths of Tasmanian Aborigines by settler violence. Comparing Windschuttle to David Irving is just another potentially libellous attack. If you persist, I will be requesting sanctions against you. This is not a fan site nor does it exist as an opportunity for you to defame the person who is the subject of the biographical article.Webley442 (talk) 22:37, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Where in the edit is anything libelous? Can you point out exactly where I suggested Windschuttle was setting an upper limit? If you persist in personal attacks and edit warring to push your own POV you can be banned from editing. Please argue for your edits in a civil manner or people wont take them seriously. Wayne (talk) 03:15, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

You seem not to realise the implications of your own text, perhaps unintentionally. Perhaps you worded what you mean badly?. It can be read as though KW is making wild exaggerated claims of what he can prove, that his table proves that no more than 118/120/whatever aborigines were killed by settlers, not that there are about that number reported in written records. That is a damaging claim. An equivalent would be to edit a scientist's bio to have him/her apparently making the claim that they had achieved cold fusion when all they say is they have studied aspects of it. Text must accurately reflect the sources. As per the header of this page, potentially libellous material must not be included.The Schoolteacher (talk) 03:56, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

The proposed text does strongly lend itself to a potentially libellous interpretation. Perhaps the best resolution of this is to cut out all the reference to the numbers and have it end at " that Aborigines had the better of the conflict." Then the next sentence can be the one about the British rule of law.203.202.43.53 (talk) 04:33, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

You have me confused now. My edit reads listing 118 Aborigines killed by settlers as plausable which is exactly what fabrication states. The edit specifically says that other deaths are listed as less plausable (Windschuttle actually says implausable which is even more restrictive) and goes on to say the list is not complete or final. If it is what Winschuttle himself says how can it be libellous. The numbers need to remain because this is one of the points most heavily argued by third parties. Wayne (talk) 05:45, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

It is difficult to believe that something this basic could confuse anyone. Your text reads as though Windschuttle had claimed to have established the maximum or total number of Aborigines killed by settlers, that is that no more than 118 were killed, including those for which there are no surviving records or accounts of their deaths. That would be something that would be impossible for anyone to determine and making it appear that he claimed that he could is (a) false, not even close to a reasonable summary or paraphrasing of the text in his book, and (b) potentially libellous, an attack on his reputation by imputing that he makes false or exaggerated claims. All Windschuttle claims is that, in the still existing records or accounts, there is some plausible evidence for approximately 120 deaths. He does not argue that there were zero deaths for which there are no records or that he found every record. Webley442 (talk) 09:05, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Good to see your friends in Canberra supporting you. Pity all three of you dont understand libel and are still unclear about what claims are actually made in Fabrication. My edit is what Windschuttle claims and I have made it more prominent that the total is not final which Windschuttle himself does not make clear, refer to Fabrication (2002) Chapter 11 page 398 where he implies that 118 is the maximum. Wayne (talk) 10:45, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I am very familiar with the elements of libel under both Australian and UK law. You must have the older printing of Fabrication, in the more recent one that I have, he has revised the figure up to 120 and it is very clear in the text that he is not making a general claim about the total number of killings but only about those getting specific mention in some record or another. Try reading what he says about the unrecorded death toll, in my printing it's pages 358 to 360 and then on the empirical evidence for killings, pages 361 - 364. You still aren't getting what everyone else who looks at your text seems to understand. Your edit goes far beyond what Windschuttle claims. Your text converts his claims about what is in the recorded accounts (he states on page 363 expressly that Table Ten is an "attempt to record every killing of an Aborigine between 1803 and 1834 for which there is a plausible record of some kind.") into a broader and more general and unsupportable claim about a total death toll. Webley442 (talk) 12:01, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Even if you don't personally believe that it is libel, Wikipedia has rules about potentially libellous material. Beyond that, your proposed text is not an accurate representation of what Windschuttle wrote. So even if you could persuade administrators that it's not libellous or potentially libellous, it still doesn't belong in the article. To quote an friend: "Text must accurately reflect the sources."Webley442 (talk) 12:34, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Hellooooooo listing 118 Aborigines killed by settlers as plausable. Overlooking that my copy says 118, are you denying that Windschuttle states in table 10 that 118 are plausable and that the rest he documents there are implausable? If you have an updated edition that says 120 then you are welcome to alter that, but the rest of the edit accurately reflects the source and expressly states it is not total death toll.Wayne (talk) 14:57, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Your own text is that Windschuttle argues "that Aborigines had the better of the conflict listing 118 Aborigines killed by settlers as plausable, considerably less than the number of settlers killed by Aborigines." 118/120/121 is an estimate of the deaths for which there is a plausible record of some kind not that there were only that many plausible deaths or a claim that it is implausible that there are deaths for which there were no records. You are implying that the source says the opposite of what he actually says. Your text implies that he is talking about a total death toll and nothing in the rest of your text clarifies that he is only referring to the deaths for which there is some plausible record. Just the opposite, it implies that he does not accept that there were no plausible deaths for which there were no plausible record or account.

Plus there are major problems with the rest of your text. For example: "Those deaths detailed in contemporary diaries, biographies, journals, newspapers and letters without official support are considered "less plausable" and generally not included in the final tally." If you have read Fabrication, you must know that is factually inaccurate. His list is derived almost entirely from reports contained in contemporary diaries, biographies, journals, newspapers and letters. Some he did reject as implausible for good reasons and if you have actually read Fabrication rather than just skimmed through it looking for bits you can use out of context, you should be aware of all this. He also "rejected" those reports contained in other historians' books which, when he checked out the sources footnoted, turned out to be fiction.

Where is your evidence for your unsourced claim that he "generally" did not include "deaths detailed in contemporary diaries, biographies, journals, newspapers and letters without official support"? As I mentioned above, it has been claimed that Windschuttle missed or ignored evidence contained in always unspecified sources but, as another author has commented, the easiest way to prove Windschuttle wrong would be to produce all this evidence, all the plausible records of deaths that he has supposedly ignored. Well, where are the papers listing these plausible documents? I've seen some of the implausible ones recycled with the elements that make them implausible not mentioned or carefully edited out. In Whitewash, supposedly the academic refutation of Fabrication with 19 or so contributors plus who knows how many research assistants, all they were able to come up with was a single diary account of the death of one Aborigine that Windschuttle hadn't come across, a couple of diary entries by angry colonists expressing what they would like to do, if they could, to the Aborigines who had been attacking settlers' homes and killing defenceless women and children, plus the Rosalie Hare account which is an implausible one, a mixture of 2 events that Windschuttle did discuss. All these accounts that he "generally" didn't include...where are they? They don't exist. Webley442 (talk) 04:25, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I was about to suggest that, rather than argue interminably over this, it might be best to take 203.202.43.53's suggestion and eliminate the discussion of numbers altogether, and have the text run "His review focuses in large part on the Black War against the Aborigines of Tasmania and argues that Aborigines had the better of the conflict. Windschuttle argues that the 19th century evangelical revival within the Church of England combined with Britains rule of law had a profound effect on colonial policy and behaviour which made the claimed genocide culturally impossible." It has occurred to me that I don't recall Windschuttle writing along the lines of "Aborigines had the better of the conflict", (I have an idea that it may have been Henry Reynolds who said something along those lines) or that Windschuttle used the phrase "culturally impossible". Are there page references for these? Windschuttle did argue that they were better adapted to the bush than the settlers and soldiers and those who tried finding, following or attacking them were at a disadvantage and almost invariably unsuccessful. That's not quite the same as having the better of the conflict. As for the "culturally impossible", I don't think he used anything that strong, just arguing that the Colonial Administration and most of the settlers had more enlightened attitudes than say, the Spanish conquistadores.Webley442 (talk) 05:46, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure you and 203 have discussed this at length and I could tweak the edit a little but overall it is factually accurate. Let me quote directly from Fabrication:

It (table 10) was compiled in the following way. I started with Plomley's 1992 survey...I also included those recorded by Aborigines that did not make it into any colonial documents. These are all the incidents from Robertson's diaries....There may well be some reports that Plomley, Robinson and I have all missed. As it stands now, the table lists a total of 118 Aboriginal deaths in this period...No matter how the figures might be revised in the future, the overall conclusion appears inescapable.....more than twice as many whites (187) were killed as blacks.

Windschuttle makes many remarks that the Aborigines suffered less than the colonists so "the better of the conflict" is just expressing his views more clearly. It was Boyce who said "culturally impossible" which was his interpetation of Winschuttles comments and can be reliably sourced. Leaving out Windschuttle's numbers will appear to be an attempt to reduce the denialist appearance of his fringe views so it would be better to include them and let the reader decide. Wayne (talk) 06:28, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Very clever, you found a bit of careless phrasing by Windschuttle which, by carefully editing out huge swathes of the surrounding material ie the sections covered by the repeated ....'s and by ignoring all the other discussion in his book about recorded and unrecorded deaths and how that should be dealt with, allows you to pretend that he was setting 118/120 as a total of the Aboriginal deaths rather than discussing it as a total of the recorded deaths and as an indicator of a low level of conflict. You really don't expect to fool anyone who has actually read the book and who know what's in the surrounding material with these kind of semantic games, do you, or is this directed at fooling people who haven't? If we go down that track, and in response other cites from Windschuttle are needed so that a casual reader isn't fooled, it will just wind up blowing out the size of the article and making it unreadable.

If you want to use Boyce's quote, fine, just clearly attribute it as a statement by one historian, not as something Windschuttle said or as some broad statement of fact.

If ""the better of the conflict" is just expressing his views more clearly" how about just using what he said, not your own personal interpretation of what he said? Some people seem to like to 'clarify' other people's point of view until it becomes unrecognisable as anything that was originally said, which, of course, is the intent. Since he argues that the full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigines died out through a combination of factors including introduced disease and the effects of what conflict there was, I'm pretty sure that summing up his overall view as saying that the Aborigines got "the better of the conflict" isn't really very accurate.

As for leaving out the numbers, it is looking more and more like the best option because an adequate discussion in the article of Windschuttle's use of the these estimates and the reasoning that he expresses would run to many pages and isn't suitable for a biographical article. Are we going to include every issue in Fabrication in the article as well as the various arguments over them? I really don't want to turn this into an edit war in which the article gets swamped by the addition of more and more material just so that someone can use it to vent their own personal opinions. Webley442 (talk) 10:48, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

So now it is careless phrasing and not what your hero really meant? And it's my fault for leaving out huge swathes of the surrounding material ie the sections covered by the repeated ....'s. Ok..here's some of what I left out where those ....'s are:

The only previous historian who has made a credible attempt to calculate the total number of casualties in Van Diemen's Land is Brian Plomley (This is revisionist BS for a start. Plomley himself states in his book (p.97) that he was only concerned with recording casualties from attacks on whites by blacks and that it was not accurate for black casualties. This is shown by his failure to include in his own book black deaths from Robertson's journals, which were his main primary source. Windschuttle tries to spin this by saying he is puzzled as to why Plomley declined to include a tally of black deaths which only goes to show his incompetence as Plomley actually explains why in his book). Table 10 is therefore an attempt to record every killing of an Aborigine between 1803 and 1834 for which there is a plausable record of some kind. The sole objective of the table is to produce as accurate a count as possible (more BS as Windschuttle ignores almost all primary sources, no matter how reliable, from before the 1820s).

I'm almost positive the better of the conflict or something similar has been used by other sources and it is far better than quoting a dozen paragraphs of Windschuttle to say the same thing and it is clear we are talking about the conflict not disease. I have no intention of fooling anyone, I hope to avoid spin intended to make Windschuttle look like a mainstream historian. As for turning the artical into an edit war, I can only rely on your GF to not war factual content.Wayne (talk) 14:14, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

What? More selective use of the text, more personal opinion on what Windschuttle 'really means' and more game playing? If you've read Fabrication and aren't just skimming it looking for useful bits that can be be taken out of context and used to make it appear that the author was saying something entirely different, you must be well aware of all the other text in Fabrication that, taken IN CONTEXT, makes it clear that your proposed text is not a accurate summary of Windschuttle's arguments. There are tens of thousands of words in the book on the issue of the Aboriginal death toll, discussing the reported deaths which Windschuttle indicates can be fairly closely estimated and the unrecorded death toll which can't. The 118/120 estimate is purely and simply an estimate of what's in the surviving accounts. He argues elsewhere that the unreported death toll as a result of direct violence by settlers would be much lower than other historians have claimed but not that it was zero.

You highlighted the wrong section of this bit: "Table 10 is therefore an attempt to record every killing of an Aborigine between 1803 and 1834 for which there is a plausable record of some kind."

Windschuttle's arguments in this section of the book are around the fact that there are a finite number of surviving plausible accounts and he's indicated that he is fairly confident that he located most of them. Who knows, that might change if someone discovers, hidden away somewhere, a previously unknown 'treasure trove' of diaries, journals and letters, but that hasn't happened yet.

If you are "almost positive the better of the conflict or something similar has been used by other sources", try citing it as a statement from those sources, when you can identify them, and don't attribute it to someone who never said it.

If you want to edit Wikipedia responsibly and aren't just looking to express your personal opinions, you can't just pick out tiny sections of a book and spin them to suit yourself. This article, after a very long time during which it was used as a platform for anonymous and often libellous attacks on the subject, has settled into something resembling a NPOV. You shouldn't expect that material that doesn't accurately portray what the subject of a biographical article said won't be re-edited to make it more accurate or removed entirely if it contains potentially libellous implications. Webley442 (talk) 03:07, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Have you read Fabrication? Your arguements make no sense as they are basically OR interpretations of what you think Windschuttle is saying. I'll stick to Windschuttles own explanations and use the terminology he uses along with secondary sources which from what I've read so far say much the same as I do. I will add that he claims the unreported death toll would be much lower than other historians have claimed although I will have to check it to kkep the wording neutral. I expect Windschuttle to revise his death estimates in the future anyway now that genetic testing has indicated the population was likely 20 times higher than he claimed so I wont be too hard on him.Wayne (talk) 08:08, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

"OR interpretations of what you think Windschuttle is saying"? You've got to be joking. Windschuttle makes the point over and over, in the sections of Fabrication that we are talking about, that he was making an estimate of the deaths for which there is a plausible record of some kind. You found one sentence in that section where he didn't include that 'disclaimer', and have been trying to suggest that he claimed that there was a total death toll including unreported deaths of not more than 118.

Perhaps you are being mislead by the 'secondary sources' that you are relying on? It's been a standard tactic of many critics to misrepresent his arguments and then criticise him for something that he actually didn't say. It's easier than proving him wrong on the evidence.

I don't have a problem with anything that accurately reflects what a source, in this case Windschuttle, says. My problem has always been with your OR interpretation of it. Your text reads like Windschuttle was saying that the total death toll including unreported deaths was 118. Fix that extremely misleading element and perhaps we can agree on something.Webley442 (talk) 02:16, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Attribution

The text falsely attributed the use of the term 'pimps' to Windschuttle. My text accurately portrays what Windschuttle did say on the subject. If you want to use the term 'pimps' properly attribute to whoever did use it.Webley442 (talk) 12:46, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Expansion

Windschuttle's book is long. How much of it can be included, esp. parts that can figure as cameos of his idiosyncratic views up the page, when they have been torn apart by specialist historians? Example (I have excerpted this dubious expansion from the page, in Webley's edit today)

'Windschuttle refers to accounts by the French anthropologist Francois Péron, others in the journals of George Augustus Robinson and by historian James Bonwick, of the violence and cruelty with which many Tasmanian Aboriginal men were observed to treat women and argues that this contributed to the willingness of some Aboriginal women to associate themselves with sealers and settlers rather than their own people, so reducing the full-blooded Aboriginal population's ability to reproduce itself. Windschuttle argues that the willingness of some Tasmanian Aboriginal women to engage in prostitution with convicts, sealers and settlers and the Tasmanian Aboriginal men who ‘actively colluded’ in the trade in their women aided in the transmission of venereal and other introduced diseases to the indigenous population.

Put that in, and of course you have to answer it. The answer would run, in just a briefest of glances at the historical criticism directed at the casual slipshod method Windschuttle employed to fudge this interpretation, something like this:-

Boyce dismisses Windschuttle’s argument as ‘uninformed slander’ based on a failure to read the only documentary sources that matter, the journals of French and British explorers. Examining Windschuttle's use of sources for the view women were treated like slaves and drudges, Boyce notes it comes from just one work by Ling Roth, 'written at the height of Social Darwinist orthodoxy' (1899), and that Windschuttle selectively quotes only two of Roth's sources: one from Péron, who noted scars on women, and interpreted them as signs of domestic violence, which he however never witnessed. Others interpreted this scarring as a cultural practice. James Cook had noticed Aboriginal men and women’s bodies were both incised with scars in the same manner. Péron was less sympathetic than other first observers on the d’Entrecasteaux expedition. Their observations, including those of the captain Baudin, do not support Windschuttle’s claims. Even Péron records an encounter at Port Cygnet with the Aborigines who shared a meal of abalone with the French explorers and, according to Péron provided 'the most striking example we had ever had if attention and reasoning among savage people’ Péron would have disagreed, Boyce believes, with Windschuttle's’s claim than ‘Traditional Aboriginal society placed no constraints on the women’s sexual behaviour with men,’ for he was repeatedly rebuffed when he tried to make physical contact with the Aborginal women. The captain Baudin believed that no one on his ship managed to have sexual relations with the women on Bruny Island. The behaviour adduced by Windschuttle from the other, late report by J.E.Calder (in 1829) is ‘self evidently a product of the extensive disruption of traditional life that had occurred by then.

’Only someone who is totally blind to the impact of changing power relations, of declining choices, of the profound impact of cultural disintegration and recurring violence and abuse, let alone the simple imperatives of survival, could cite the unfolding tragedy at Bruny Island in this period as evidence for the sexual mores and domestic relations of pre-invasion Aboriginal society.’ Boyce, in Robert Manne, pp.65-66

Evidently, if we start writing in extenso about every piece of Windschuttle's stillborn thesis, this article will balloon out endlessly. The other books he wrote have yet to receive coverage. (b) if this is to go in, the whole exposition will have to be reformatted, so that for every idea propounded by Windschuttle, immediately after, the comments and criticisms of academics pertinent to that matter would have to follow. (c) Remember Webley, this is a self-published book by a minority voice, with no doctoral qualifications in the historical period he descants upon. It is questionable whether the detailed coverage you now appear to wish to give is warranted by the book, especially since it is only one of several volumes W. intends to publish. It is noteworthy that you have chosen to expand the section where effectively Windschuttle argues Aborigines were womenbashers, happy to be sailors' molls to escape from their own kind's putative brutalty.' Perhaps the most execrably decontextualised part of his book, since it is constructed blithely with an almost total disregard for what was going on in the roughouse of white society there at the time. Nishidani (talk) 12:46, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

And yet funnily enough you seem to find room for every criticism of his work that you can find, including the ones which are frankly quite ridiculous? Does the term NPOV ring a bell? How about balance? I really don't think that you can get away with arguing that we can't have an accurate portrayal of what the subject of a biographical article has actually written and that only his critics' claims and distorted misrepresentations of his arguments should be mentioned. Are you seriously arguing that Fabrication isn't a credible source for what's in Fabrication?

As for Windschuttle arguing that the Tasmanian Aborigines were women bashers, he has accurately cited sources including eyewitness observers of a level of brutality towards women so extreme that it attracted the condemnation of early 19th century men. Don't put too much reliance on what Boyce claims, he has a history of making claims that are provably way off the mark. There is quite extensive mention in Robinson and Bonwick about it, so it's hardly Windschuttle's invention and Bonwick in particular goes into some detail. Ling Roth's interpretation is one thing but it is contradicted by other sources.

No-where does Windschuttle make the claim that the the brutality and the sexual exploitation of women was a universal practice of all Tasmanian Aborigines, just that it is documented as happening to some degree and it had serious implications, particularly with respect to disease.

As mentioned above, Windschuttle doesn't use the term 'pimps', attribute such a claim to the source who made it and don't slip it in amongst things you are alleging that Windschuttle said or argued.Webley442 (talk) 13:16, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

If you keep removing accurate statements of what Windschuttle argues and substituting what someone else claims he really meant, this is going to get to be a problem.Webley442 (talk) 13:23, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Answer my previous remarks, point by point. I am not expunging your text. I am asking how long an exposition of details in that long book are you thinking of producing, in your synthesis.

The imbalance you protest is in the sources, since Windschuttle is near-fringe, as far as I have been able to discover, and almost all area scholars in the subject are dismissive of him. If you can adduce more material favourable to him from competent sources, and not businessmen like Dawson, who shouldn't even be mentioned, by all means include it.

Developing a thread on who's right and wrong is immaterial to the project.

Grieves is a university historian, and describes Windschuttle's position as one depicting TA men as pimps. That is now clear in my edit. The text does not attribute that claim to Windschuttle but to one of his critics. Perfectly normal practice. Nishidani (talk) 14:42, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I've thought out a compromise solution. We have the general theory section. If you wish to expand on specific points, add them to the new section, where the response of mainstream scholars can be then added underneath each issue. Nishidani (talk) 20:57, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

References

Clumsy language in lead

'falsifying and inventing the degree of violence in the past'

You can perhaps 'falsify the degree of violence' . You cannot 'invent the degree of violence'.

Suggestions as to how to rewrite it are welcome.Nishidani (talk) 14:34, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Responses to the critics

This section has several problems. Too many quotes and far too long. KW is not an anthropologist or he would realise that much of what he writes about Aboriginal behaviour in reply is discredited. Another problem is that the entire section is sourced from his own website. If his replies to the critism were notable they will be mentioned in reliable secondary sources which should be used here as well as KW's own. Per WP:UNDUE, as a fringe view, most of that section can and should be summarised rather than being a quotefarm and I see no problem with getting it down to at least half or less of the current length.Wayne (talk) 05:37, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

The Responses section is considerably shorter than the sections containing the criticisms and that section is fairly heavy on quotes, too. Perhaps start by trimming the criticism down to a more reasonable size first?

As no restrictions have been placed on the space given to criticisms of Windschuttle, whatever direct responses there are to a particular point of that criticism have to be adequately represented. I see a considerable problem in trimming the section to half or less its length. It seems to me that the only reason that anyone would want to do that would be to bias the article by allowing the criticisms to stand as though they could not be answered, to give the critics the final word when, in fact Windschuttle's responses show much of the criticism lacks any merit, eg Boyce's claims that he failed to consult the accounts by the French and British explorers.

There is a reason why the previous version of the article settled into the form that it had, in which only limited mention of the criticisms levelled at Windschuttle were made. It avoided the article blowing out in size as detailed mention of criticisms require detailed mention of the responses.

The links are to the website which contains copies of his responses as previously printed in newspapers and elsewhere. The notion that a direct response by the subject of a criticism to the issues raised isn't appropriate in a biographical article and that we need a use a secondary source which mentions the response is a ludicrous proposition. It is not standard practice for any encyclopaedia.

Your claim that "much of what he writes about Aboriginal behaviour in reply is discredited." is your personal opinion or OR. My OR shows that there is in fact considerable anthropological support for his position. Depends on which anthropologists you read. Either way, it is irrelevant.Webley442 (talk) 08:42, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

The section indeed does have problems, and I'm trying to arrange some compromise, by making sections on specific points. It's clumsy as it is. One point. This is about the 'Fabrication' vol.1, Webley. You have stuff about his response to Inga Clendinnen, where Windschuttle is citing her for Tench's comments on the Aborigines at Sydney Cove, something that has nothing to do with the Aborigines of Tasmania, at least in the minds of serious scholars, unless it is Windschuttle's position that all 'Aboriginals' are the same, and what is said of them in the 17th century by Dampier in the North West is a valid gloss on Taswegian aboriginals in the 19th century. Sir James Frazer thought like that. A century of anthropology tells us otherwise. So that is to be chucked out, as immaterial. I'd appreciate a precise source for both Windschuttle's citation of the passage from Breen, and a ref to the pages where Breen makes those comments.Nishidani (talk) 12:06, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

One problem, Webley, is that you had Windschuttle introducing remarks about a critic, Shayne Breen, for one, who hadn't been mentioned in the criticism section. This means I'll have to add Breen's remarks to that section to make his reply comprehensible contextually.Nishidani (talk) 15:23, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

What Windschuttle said in respect of Clendinnen and Breen is pretty clear to every person that I know who has read it. It is that the critics employ a double standard. When Clendinnen wrote about the level of violence amongst a particular group of Aborigines, there was no criticism made of her comments but, because Windschuttle disputes the genocide theory, when he wrote about the level of violence in another group of Aborigines, the Tasmanian Aborigines, the critics line up to dispute it with some pretty shallow arguments and resort to appeals to emotion by calling him 'pitiless". The fact that it was two different groups of Aborigines is pretty much irrelevant to that point. No, all Aborigines weren't the same, but violence toward and repressive treatment of women were widespread practices. There have been a number of studies indicating that in male-dominated tribal societies it was the primary means by which men exercised control over women. Similarly with Breen, I left the specific criticisms that Breen made out because they weren't particularly relevant to the point that Windschuttle was making, which was that Breen was able to refer to the Tasmanian Aborigines' practice of using women as trading commodities without drawing any criticism. When Windschuttle referred to the same practice, he was condemned. Much of the criticism is in the same vein. Unable to properly address the specific issues he raised such as the extensive misrepresentation of sources, the critics resort to irrelevancies or ad hominem.Webley442 (talk) 10:54, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually what Windschuttle does there is shoot himself in the foot, and then dangle the mangled limb to the gallery, and I thought my edit at least saved him some embarrassment. You do not, in the serious world of academia, justify an interpretation of what Tasmania aboriginal culture was about, in Otway or the Derwent, by documenting the abuse of women in Sydney Cove. Windschuttle has some claims to the historical profession, but, unlike most ethnographic historians, he has not updated his awareness of what occurred in anthropology after 1914, when Sir James Frazer's work was demolished critically. Frazer illustrated one custom in Tonga, by referring to a report about Patagonians and referencing a note on the Scythians in Macrobius. You just don't do that anymore, unless you are Windschuttle.

Methodologically, he displayed a second error. He eliminated all of the context for both Clendinnen and Shayne, and by selective quotation snipped only the bits that allowed him to buttress his own view. He objects, as you do in your edits, if this is done to his work, but that is precisely what he has done here. He elided clear contextual evidence about Aborigines maltreating their women exactly as whites did at the time, which neither Clendinnen nor Shayne did. By this operation, he can then make his pseudo-paradox to claim victimhood, which he hates aborigines claiming. That is clear to 'to every person that I could ask for a neutral opinion of it'. Nishidani (talk) 11:39, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

The fact that it was two different groups of Aborigines is pretty much irrelevant to that point. No, all Aborigines weren't the same, but violence toward and repressive treatment of women were widespread practices.

Numerous frontier historians compare the violence of the convict and soldier settlements' men to their women, who were treated as sluts, and traded, to what reports from some aboriginal societies say of their men's attitude to women. I.e. the settler gender relations were marked by violence, as were those of several groups of Aborigines. Unlike sophisticated historians, who can see the problem in rhetorical simplifications, Windschuttle's book brims with a contrast between the high enlightenment paternal ethics of British settlement, and the raw primitive savagery of the colonized. That is why, as opposed to Shayne and Clendinnen, he is not taken seriously by specialists. He is a hangover of the 19th century, who cannot see what every first-rate historian of the 20th century is trained to see - the problem with the categories he adopted naively from the past, as if they were 'empirical' and not just a construction of the self-justifying world of Empire, which always framed its violence as a civilizing mission. As any anthropologist would tell him, 'Aboriginal society' like 'African society' or Amerindian society' is an empty term. Read Margaret Mead's 'Sex and Temperament' (1935). She's not my idea of an anthropologist, but the principle there, of discerning distinct and contrasting cultural patterns between three native New Guinea tribes all within a couple of hundred miles of each other, sharing a similar ecology, holds for Australia. You cannot apply what is said (in partisan accounts) of one social group, as a generalization to even contiguous tribes, without risking going beyond the evidence. (which in any case has been destroyed). Webley, this is elementary sociology, Ist semester, year one stuff. I know it's not popular with tabloids or blogs, but please refrain from pretending this is not obvious.Nishidani (talk) 12:59, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks like Webley never bothered to respond to this last, can't blame him, probably got bored, but having read it, I feel it's worth a comment or 2. One of the obvious flaws in the above is that, as Webley says above it, Windschuttle wasn't claiming that poor treatment of Aboriginal women by Aboriginal men in the Sydney area was evidence of poor treatment of Tasmanian Aboriginal women by Tasmanian Aboriginal men. He was simply stating that, desperate for something to criticise him about and not having actual evidence in their favor, his critics attacked him when he discussed ill-treatment of Tasmanian Aboriginal women by Tasmanian Aboriginal men but they hadn't attacked/criticised historians in the orthodox school who described mistreatment of Aboriginal women by their men (in the Sydney area or elsewhere) because those historians work within the context of the 'accepted' genocide paradigm while Windschuttle disputes it. Like most of the criticism, they find a spurious ground on which to attack him and then beat it up for all its worth. Another flaw is the comparison between poor treatment of women by Aborigines and that by whites. There is one huge practical difference that applied to Tasmania. The Aborigines were in a precarious position with a crashing population. Ill-treatment of women contributed to that population crash. The white population wasn't in that position so whatever they did to their own women, tragic and horrifying though it was, wasn't relevant to the issue at hand, which was what happened to the Tasmanian Aboriginal population. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.149.192.133 (talk) 02:37, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Very long/overly detailed

I find this article to be very long and overly detailed. Other opinions appreciated. Melonkelon (talk) 22:46, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

An unfortunate consequence of the subject being controversial. If you look at the history of the article, some users tried to turn the 'Keith Windschuttle' article into a 'Keith Windschuttle is wrong about everything' article. Rather than the article being a fairly simple straightforward summary of his career and of what Windschuttle argues in his books, it got loaded up with every criticism (valid, spurious or simply political) of his work that could be found along with misrepresentations of his work (see above in the section on 'Number of Aborigines killed' regarding the discussion about how some users wanted to represent his estimate of approximately 120 Aboriginal deaths for which there is some plausible written record in existence as though it was a claim that British settlers killed no more that 120 Aborigines in total). This, of course, ensured that other users felt the need to correct the misrepresentations and include Windschuttle's responses to the criticisms or other material to clarify the situation. Once this happens it is hard to reduce an article back down to the basics as each side doesn't want their material removed. There have been numerous edit wars with regard to this article.58.173.152.42 (talk) 03:21, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment and insight. Interesting to know. Melonkelon (talk) 04:02, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

This is more of an attack page than a biography. Some of the material bears no relation to the subject, and seems to have been introduced in order to insert an unpublished argument. Any editor so feeling should write a book themselves, and refrain from using Wikipedia for that purpose.

I intend to remove about 90% of the critical material here. Maybe it could usefully be used in a new article on a different subject, but it doesn't belong here in this BLP. --Pete (talk) 03:41, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

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