Talk:Fascism

Talk page protection

Hi. Before the month of temporary protection comes to an end, I think it might be useful to reach an agreement and explore the lawful options regarding how to systematically tackle the issue of IPs and sockpuppeteers that will inevitably come to this talk page asking for "right-wing" to be changed to "left-wing". The presence of the banner on top and the constant archiving cannot be an efficient solution (trolls don't care about the banner, and don't read into the archives). The archiving can even become slightly aggressive and lead to controversies, as this one reported by myself in the AN/I. In that thread, User:Acroterion had more than one thing to say about the strategies for protecting the talk page, and I think it is worth to discuss about them directly here. I am not an expert of what is and is not technically possible on WP regarding page protection, but I think it's an important matter. As it might be inferred, I am against any generalized "ban" on further discussions on the topic "right-wing in the lede" that results in plain deletion or archiving of talk-page contributions of long-term and good-faith editors. I am – of course – in favour of a "ban" against vandalism, trolling, IPs, fascism-is-left-wing nonsense, etc., which is the point of this thread I just started. How do we implement the (hopefully selective) ban?

I take the freedom to quote here Acroterion's contributions to that thread, so that we have a basis to start with. --Ritchie92 (talk) 09:08, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• I semi-protected the talkpage a couple of days ago, in part to remove the incentive to aggressively archive contentious drive-by edit requests. I don't see a present reason for archiving things right away now that there isn't a daily parade of new editors and IPs landing on the talkpage to demand that the article be altered to fit their POV or to explain that academic sources should be ignored in favor of partisan commentary. The semi-protection of the talkpage is something of a last resort - as evidenced by the above, the repetitive partisan talkpage activity was eroding the patience of experienced editors. The protection is for a month, and I welcome suggestions for a longer-term solution that doesn't involve lots of archiving or daily patient explanations to agenda-driven new editors.. Acroterion (talk) 12:10, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

• Continuing my comment from above, I've semi-protected the talkpage for a month, which appears to have dealt with the proximate cause of the dispute in this thread. As WP:PROTECT notes, semi-protection of article talkpages is to be used sparingly. However, that policy was formulated primarily to deal with occasional individual vandals and POV-pushers. What's appearing on Talk:Fascism and similar pages is a steady stream of new editors and IPs who are convinced that fascism, for instance, is a handy universal label to apply to people they oppose, and expect the article to reflect that POV rather than reflecting academic and historical analysis. These editors are clogging the talkpages. I see no reason to believe that this will change when protection expires, and some longer-term solution will be needed.

• Right now, WP:PROTECT suggests that semi-protected talkpages redirect edit requests to WP:RFED, which isn't really set up to deal with that sort of traffic. I think we're going to need a project space page linked on long-term semi-protected talkpages that can handle this traffic, where editors with the patience and inclination to do so can winnow serious requests from the forum speech and trolling, allowing the article talkpages to be used as intended, and allowing editors on those topics some rest. That project page can link to WP policy, offer suggestions on reading archived discussions, and perhaps help to educate newcomers on how to approach perennially contentious topics. Acroterion (talk) 17:09, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

— User:Acroterion

As I have said before I (personally) do not see this as an issue, just say "not going to happen" and let it run its course. Once we have answered we can (if we want) ignore it, or respond with "NAy, nay, and thrice nay". I dislike the ideas of shutting down any question no matter how dumb until it has been considered.Slatersteven (talk) 09:19, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

The point is that many are not just "dumb questions", but purposeful partisan trolling, disconnected "edit requests", or weird self-made political theories. WP:NOTAFORUM must be enforced: Material unsuitable for talk pages may be subject to removal per the talk page guidelines. --Ritchie92 (talk) 09:34, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

True, and to my mind you feed them when you react how they want. We can enforce policy just by saying no, and then leaving the trolls to stew.Slatersteven (talk) 09:41, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Having watched this phenomenon for years, it is my feeling that it's not going to go away, and that it will make normal talkpage discussion here difficult for the foreseeable future. Terms like fascism and racism are weaponized, and their use in partisan circles has little to do with their actual meaning or significance. Accordingly, we get the random edit requests, which can be ignored fairly easily, and we get more productive threads clogged with partisan commentary and griping from naive editors, and outright trolling, pushing other editors' buttons. I don't expect it to get better, and in a few weeks we'll still have to deal with it. I would rather not extend protection without an alternate process. Probably VP/P would be the best venue for a broad discussion, since the problem is broader than this talkpage - it's just the most acute manifestation, and I believe we need a new or better process for the project as a whole to handle misinformed editors and malicious trolling, while not excluding new editors and IPs with useful suggestions. The situation is similar to the introduction of extended confirmed protection, and this might be a trial run for a new process. Talkpages are meant for discussion of article improvement, not for the education of individual people who want to argue with the sourced article content. Acroterion (talk) 12:17, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Fascism=Left-wing is a popular discussion point in far right websites drawing a stream of historical revisionists to this and other articles about the extreme right. I don't think it will end, and suggest permanent semi-protection. There is precedent: Mass killings under communist regimes was fully protected from 2011 to 2018. TFD (talk) 02:14, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I wouldn't want to see what happened there to become a precedent; full protecting an article for seven years isn't really a meaningful answer, and as a result of it the article was stuck in a really shoddy state (there was one particular edit to the lead that never had consensus but which stayed stuck there because it happened to be the version that got protected; the nature of edit requests for protected pages meant that after that consensus was required to remove it even though it had been a bold edit to begin with. But more generally our sourcing and editorial standards improved a lot over seven years, and nobody was realistically going to go through the fairly torturous and often-thankless process of fixing it in a draft or via edit requests.) I mean obviously semi-protection is different because it's not that hard for people to get the ability to edit, and the unusual thing here is applying it to talk anyway; but I'm leery about anyone pointing to that particular incident as a precedent for anything. It is more an article that slipped through the cracks than anything else. --Aquillion (talk) 06:39, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

• Permanent semi-protection is the way to go, IMO. In any case, if someone really wants to post, all they need to do is to register an account and make 10 edits. That's a pretty low bar. --K.e.coffman (talk) 02:18, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
• Permanent semi-protection including at article talk is critical here. It won't stop the socks, but at least it will require they create an account which is subject to checkuser. Simonm223 (talk) 12:28, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
• Permanent semi-protection is really the only way to be sure. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:17, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
• Permanent semi-protection I'm not sure that a complete ban on discussion of the placement of "right-wing" in the lead or its wording is necessary (the discussion above seems to be proceeding in an orderly fashion), but there definitely needs to be some measure to deal with the constant spam of newly arrived very aggrieved users who can't be bothered to read even the most recent talk page post, which already addressed the exact same questions. Just looking through the archives, you can see that's been going on for years, and has certainly intensified in the past few months. Maybe eventually it'll slow down enough that the semi-protection isn't necessary, but it doesn't look like that will happen soon. But in the meantime, if more experienced, long-term editors still want to discuss the issue, then that shouldn't be prevented. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 05:05, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Since there seems to be a general sentiment for permanent semi-protection, then it would be helpful to craft an edit notice to explain that, perhaps integrated with or in support of the FAQ. Acroterion (talk) 12:27, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose to permanent protection: Policy and longstanding community consensus expressly, directly disallows this, even in cases of substantial disruption. Look, insofar as I spend a lot of time responding to RfCs, I have seen a the uptick in disruption linked to articles relating to right wing politicians and politics, and I can well imagine how the drumbeat of comments from new editors in this space--predicated more in their perceptions about the WP:truth than our relevant content policies could grow tedious, but this proposal (aside from being something that cannot be authorized in this space as a procedural matter) would be a clear case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Let's recognize a few relevant points of policy and community consensus here (and please forgive me for the length of the following comments, but there is a lot of unpack and consider here, which I feel the !votes above do not take enough account of):

1) As Slatersteven points out, the article itself remains protected and thus these editors, no matter how vocal and persistent, cannot alter it. Therefor this proposal is in no way necessary to protect our froward-facing content and is being proposed merely to spare our editors the annoyance of regularly seeing new editors make poor and redundant arguments for changes to the article. And I'm sorry, but that is just not a compelling enough reason to violate the community prohibition on long-term protection, even if we give our regulars here every benefit of the doubt as to the fact that they propose this measure not to suppress countervailing views (and honestly, the distance between those two motives is short and subject to conflation and unconcious bias, even in very experienced editors).

2) At the end of the day, this remains the encyclopedia that anyone can edit: permanently protecting the article itself is already an extreme step, and there is a reason why the community, despite many long and arduous periods of disruption across many articles over the years (yes, including numerous talk pages that put this one to shame in terms of disruption), has consistently found permaneant protection of talk pages to be a step too far in using tools to shut down potential disruptive discussion, in that it is likely to shut down a lot more input than just that of the disruptive elements. Remember, WP:Consensus can change: I doubt very much that it is going to change with regard to the issues here that are the points of contention, but that's really beside the point--we simply do not shut down further discussion on a topic, no matter how convinced we are that we've got it right as it is. We sometimes censure or block individual editors who cannot WP:DROPTHESTICK, but what we do not do permanently shut down discussion to an entire class of editor (here, non-extended confirmed), many of whom will be acting in good faith, nor do we ever declare an issue "settled" such that any disagreement as to that point is discouraged. The banner at the top of the page already pushes the line on what our policies say should be done to forestall further discussion on a standing consensus: this proposal would clear that line by miles.

3) Even if we were going to adopt this approach in this particular case, it could not be done in this space, by a group of editors working on the article itself and arguing against an approach to the content, the discussion of which would be hindered or prohibited by this proposal. This is not a content issue, and therefor it does not fall under the purview of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. We already have a policy/strong community consensus that says in express, direct terms that permanent protection is not to be used in this way. As a procedural matter, that policy cannot be overruled in this space, no matter how many interested editors !vote for it, and no matter how convinced those editors are of the necessity. A carve-out of this nature would need to be made through either a WP:PROPOSAL at Wikipedia talk:PROTECT or at a central community discussion space like WP:VPP.

4) There are potential unintended consequences to this approach which could actually make the disruption to the article far worse: allowing edit requests functions as a kind of pressure release valve for new (or even just blatantly WP:NOTHERE) editors. They may nit get their way, but at least they have expressed their dissatisfaction over the issue--many probably move on thereafter and forget that they ever even commented here. However, if you thwart their ability to be heard at all, and give them the impression they are being WP:CENSORED, some will make it a mission to make sure they are heard. They way they would do that in this case is by registering a new account for the sole purpose of getting above the extended-confirmed edit count and returning here to enforce their view. At that point, their new status allows them not just to continue the rhetorical battle here, but also to directly edit the article, increasing disruption and allowing in-advisable changes to the content of the article itself that otherwise would not have been made. In extreme cases, such editors may even aggregate on off-project spaces to share their grievances at being shut out of the discussion and organize disruption. And that's not a fantastical projection in the slightest: it happens every day on this project.

So, on the whole, while I certainly can understand the vexation of editors here having to look at the same or similar requests over and over again, that is at the end of the day simply just the nature of the beast for certain articles, and something that has to be accepted by editors choosing to volunteer their time on certain disruption-prone articles. Regardless, our policies are clear on this matter: we do not permanently close down access to discussion and the consensus process to all non-registered editors, as it is too antithetical to numerous core principles of the project, and those looking to change this and establish a new standard should take their arguments to the appropriate policy/community pages. This of course does not technically prohibit an admin from applying temporary semi-protection to the page repeatedly, but at some point this is likely to be perceived as de facto permanent protection and would need to be discussed. Regardless, use of a permanent protect function on the talk page would clearly be against policy, and I can tell you that there are plenty of editors like me who, while 1000% sympathetic to the kind of disruption taking place on articles such as this right now, would nevertheless have to oppose that move as inconsistent with policy. This situation does raise the question (which Acroterion touches upon in their nuanced and thoughtful comments about the balance of interests here) of what new tools/processes we might develop to address situations where the disruption is particularly pervasive--that's definitely fruitful grounds for discussion, but as Acroterion has also already pointed out, VPP is probably the appropriate space for it, as it goes beyond any one article. Snow ^{let's rap} 19:30, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

• I'd be satisfied with permanent semi-protection. The other possibility would be for us to take this to Arbcom and request DS be place on the article; the problem here being that the dispute is mostly with whack-a-mole throw away accounts and other trolls so finding appropriate involved editors to create the case could prove bothersome. Simonm223 (talk) 14:11, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

You don't absolutely need a named account to bring an issue before ArbCom; you only need to make a case for substantial disruption. Rather, the real problem that I perceive with such an approach is that DS are not super effective with regard to random IP edit inquiries. However, I would submit to you that the way you have framed the issue there begs the ultimate question and thereby presents a false choice: you suggest that these are the only two tolerable options, and that we absolutely must do one of them. For starts, I don't think permanent semi protection is an option at all: we have a major policy that expressly disallows this, one which represents a highly valued community priority of not denying access to the consensus process to new editors or those who (for whatever reason) choose not to register. Furthermore, insofar as this is not a content matter but rather a process / community issue, we can't just override that important principle here as a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS matter. And if we tried, someone is bound to take the matter to ArbCom, AN, or VPP, and I can almost guarantee any of those forums would result in a community consensus to reverse, meaning nothing would be gained but a giant waste of community time.

I suppose you can make the argument for an WP:IAR approach, but I just don't see it, personally. It would be one thing if were talking about something directly impacting the article's content, but we're not: we're talking about a lot of annoying redundant edit requests. And if the balancing test is between the two options of 1) having a little clutter on the article talk page and its archives/regulars having to look at redundant requests on the one hand, and 2) disenfranchising every single un-registered editor from every further content discussion regarding this highly important article for an indefinite term of time, on the other hand, then I have to say that the annoyance of having to respond to (or hell, just note and ignore) the requests is by far the lesser of two evils--or in any event, the one policy/community consensus tells us to embrace first, of the options. Snow ^{let's rap} 05:05, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Our semi-protect has been off for less than what? A week? And we've already had "make it say left wing" edit requests, an edit-war over fascism being a far-right ideology and pretty egregious WP:NPA violations (an editor accused of being a fascist). I'd say the case for substantial disruption is pretty strong. And an Arbcom finding could overrule the Protection Policy, no? Simonm223 (talk) 12:26, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

"an Arbcom finding could overrule the Protection Policy, no?"

Probably? I don't think that particular question has ever been addressed by the community or the committee itself, but let's put it this way: given the rather broad respect for ArbCom's remit these days, I'd say if they decided to place indefinite page protection on article, I suspect it would not create a furor of objection from the community. But it probably would lead to extended debate, insofar as it does abrogate the long-standing community consensus that we do not permanently protect talk spaces (which is largely seen as curing the disease by killing the patient). In any event, if anybody thinks the matter is fit for ArbCom's review, there's no reason to discourage them from taking the matter to the committee. However, by comparison, we (a handful of editors on a talk page) are certainly not remotely empowered to ignore the express wording of WP:PROTECT, which says that permanent protection is not to be used on talk pages, which is momentous WP:CONLEVEL above anything we might decide here. As such, I doubt very much that any admin is likely to risk their own credibility with the bit by applying permanent protection against the express wording of the very policy that defines the limitations of one of the relevant tool, especially since it would be likely to be undone shortly thereafter in a very public way.

All of which means that the editors here who really feel that there are exceptional circumstances warranting permanent talk page protection will need to make that case in one of a few ways: 1) Take it to ArbCom (as discussed above), 2) Add wording to WP:PROTECT via a WP:PROPOSAL at Wikipedia talk:PROTECT (it would probably need to be advertised at WP:VPP and/or WP:CD, insofar as it would be a significant change to a major policy), or 3) One could maybe could get this cleared at WP:AN/WP:ANI; it's debatable that this is an appropriate approach towards abrogating such an important policy as WP:PROTECT, but at least if you got a large enough turn-out in an AN/I discussion, you'd have a higher WP:CONLEVEL than just half a dozen involved editors on a talk page. However, I must tell you bluntly that I don't think either ArbCom or the community (whether solicited through VPP or AN/I) are likely to support changing the policy or creating a carve-out for these circumstances. I don't doubt that the disruption here has been noteworthy (again, I volunteer a lot of time to RfC and I've seen how bad it can get in the last couple of years when it comes to major articles concerning certain political concepts and individuals), but the community has dealt with much larger and more problematic incidences of disruption over the years, and in none of those cases did it decide that permanent talk page protection was a justified response. Advocates for breaking with long-standing consensus to apply it here would need to make a very substantial case to get ArbCom or the larger community on board for changing that principle. That would mean a much more robust case for disruption than what you've discussed above. For example, when you say:

"Our semi-protect has been off for less than what? A week? And we've already had "make it say left wing" edit requests..."

The simpler solution (by far) is simply to ignore these requests, at least insofar as we are talking about the ones coming from drive-by editors who themselves have taken no time to address the standing consensus. Why is it that you feel just ignoring such requests is not in the power of the editors here? Such requests are a minor annoyance at best: they don't reach our forward facing content, and the clutter to the talk page is manageable (especially if one does not feed the trolls). Ignoring these requests would be much less of a headache than all the debate that would be required to create a carve-out for permanent page protection on this one article. And it leaves our many good faith IP editors with access to discussion and consensus processes: robbing them of that access would require more significant justification than "we don't want to see redundant edit requests, and we don't have the strength of will to just ignore them when they do occur." It's just not a reasonable, in-proportion reaction to the scale of the problem.

"...[and] an edit-war over fascism being a far-right ideology"

Which involved extended-confirmed editors. The article itself is already under permanent semi-protection. Adding that protection to the talk page would not have prevented any edit wars to the article itself (which non-extended-confirmed editors already are prohibited from editing). Look, I'm totally sympathetic to your views here, believe me, and if you can gain consensus to permamently protect the article through an appropriate forum, I won't lose any sleep over the IPs not being able to push the "its not right wing" angle here against consensus. But this has to be handled through appropriate processes and we do need to discuss the inevitable implications of making a major change to the manner in which our page protection policy operates, particularly insofar a it would open a window for certain talk pages to become "experienced editors only" spaces. That's clearly against policy and community consensus as they stand now. If that's going to change (with substantial consequences for the openness of this project when it comes to controversial topics), it needs to take place at a higher level than this talk page, and with a higher threshold of community involvement. Snow ^{let's rap} 00:29, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Fascism=socialism is a fairly popular issue on a number of fringe websites that encourage their followers to change this article. So is the gun control led to the Holocaust argument. While there is nothing wrong with these people participating, it is disruptive for them to jump into the discussion without at the minimum having some familiarity with Wikipedia principles. In particular NOSYN requires the article to report conclusions in reliable sources rather than form our own conclusions through evaluation of the evidence. TFD (talk) 17:08, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

• Request for admin involvement This discussion has been dormant for roughly two weeks, so far we have one strident oppose and otherwise unanimous local support; but the point has been raised that considering the relatively unique nature of the request, local support may not be sufficient. Of course, we've also fielded two further "make it say left wing" requests in that time. Because this nonsense is never-ending. So where do we stand? Simonm223 (talk) 12:08, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

A few options occur:

1) Probably the easiest to implement would be to post a notice at WP:VPP regarding this discussion. Given the potential implications of changing the current default approach to WP:PROTECT, it should generate further discussion. So long as the posting at VPP is neutral and does a decent job of discussing the existing approach outlined in the policy and the unique circumstances arguing for an exception here, any result that is reached after a second wave of discussion involving a significant number of editors pulled in from VPP would give a better WP:CONLEVEL argument.

2) However, even better in this regard would be just opening a separate (but overlapping) discussion at VPP, asking the same question being asked here, but in a more general "should we be able to apply longter protection to the talk pages of articles which exhibit qualities X, Y, and Z" (whatever those may be). If the answer is in the affirmative, it will mean the consensus here with regard to this page will have been pre-validated and we can ask an admin to apply the protection immediately after the VPP discussion closes. This will also make it easier to validate what will likely be perceived as a need to also adjust the language of WP:PROTECT to that effect.

3) Which leads to our third option: we could simply raise the issue at Wikipedia talk:PROTECT directly, through a normal WP:PROPOSAL process.

4) You could try your luck at just getting a single admin to validate this course of action at WP:AN. I dislike this option for a few reasons. I think it will only defer the larger question of whether this course of action is appropriate, or policy consistent (increasing the likelihood of a arduous ANI filing) and as an enforceable remedy will not quell further disagreement here to the same extent that the consensus of a broader community consensus will. And that's assuming you can convince an admin to stick their foot in the matter: I would not be surprised if most refuse to apply the page protect policy in anything other than strict conformity with its wording.

5) As someone else already suggested, we could take the matter to ArbCom to request the review it for suitability as WP:Discretionary sanctions topic. Or even just to get their opinion as an advisory matter regarding whether current policy allows us to indefinitely protect talk pages.

Of the options, I prefer 2 by a considerable margin, but in any event, those are all the paths forward from this point that I can perceive, under existing policies and processes. Snow ^{let's rap} 12:33, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Do you have any proposals for wording at VPP? I'm just interested in getting some action on this ongoing and complicated disruption issue, I'm rather neutral about how to go about achieving action (though I'm also in favour of reaching out to ArbCom if necessary). Simonm223 (talk) 12:39, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

The only problem with ArbCom is that they are presently short-handed: they've had a rash of departures recently and were already struggling with the current workload of full cases before that. I'm not sure they are in a mood to take an advisory opinion. But in principle, if someone can convince them, their input would be very useful. As to VPP, I think I could put together a prompt for consideration that faithfully and comprehensively represents both the existing consensus on the issue as codified in the policy and the argument for why an exception may be warranted for this and other articles seeing a high influx of non-registered and WP:NOTHERE users. But I'm afraid I'll need to deliver it perhaps as late as tomorrow, depending on how my schedule pans out today. Snow ^{let's rap} 12:51, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Incredibly biased (Focusing on the statement by Roderick Stackelberg)

Wow, this article is incredibly biased, what I find especially troubling and disturbing is how it included the statement from Stackelberg (who's not a particularly well-known and widely-recognized expert in the matter to begin with) that says "the more a person deems absolute equality among all people to be a desirable condition, the further left he or she will be on the ideological spectrum. The more a person considers inequality to be unavoidable or even desirable, the further to the right he or she will be"; essentially saying that everyone in the right is racist and discriminates while everyone in the left supports equality and peace and inclusion, it's basically saying that the right is evil and the left is not. The inclusion of this statement is incredibly shameless and should be eliminated altogether; beside, no other sources or statements are cited in support of this assessment and I doubt any reputable source could be found that would. By the way, another less important note: the scholarly opinion on whether fascism is right or left-wing in the political geometry is far from a consensus and many believe fascists can belong to both ideologies; anyone with common sense could recognize this as fascism is simply an ideology that promotes and uses authoritarianism and strict control of the media and the society, none of these tenets are mutually exclusive with far-left ideologies; saying that all fascists belong to the right-wing essentially says that only people in the right can be evil fascist villains and that is physically impossible for someone on the left to be authoritarian, something that can be easily disproven by simply looking to the examples of leaders of the likes of Kim Jong Un, Stalin and Pol Pot; they were in the far left and they weren't especially supportive of civil liberties were they? All in all, this article is extremely embarrassing and in need of serious revision and rewrite (no wonder many people accuse Wikipedia of liberal bias), but we can start by eliminating that disturbing and incorrect statement I mentioned above. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 177.225.172.224 (talk) 00:26, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

The view that the Left is more supportive of equality is generally accepted. Certainly very few on the right would suggest that wealth be redistributed according to each person's needs, because they believe that unequal rewards are either natural or encourage enterprise. People have different abilities and some people work harder than others. In fact there was greater equality of wealth in Stalin's Soviet Union than there is in today's successor states. TFD (talk) 01:17, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Yeah they were all equally miserable haha, you're hilarious --177.225.172.224 (talk) 20:45, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Roderick Stackelberg is of course a leading specialist often cited by scholars on Nazi Germany and European history--as demonstrated by a google scholar search here. Since the days of the French Revolution the "right" has favoured and the "left" has opposed monarchy, aristocracy, inherited titles, the established church (esp Catholic Church) and inherited wealth. To be far-left or far-right means to oppose the established political rules and "extreme-right/left" = to advocate violence to fight the established rules. Rjensen (talk) 03:10, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

@Rjensen: I like your explication for "far-" vs. "extreme-". Is there a source for it? I'd like to keep it in my back pocket for when these arguments come up again. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:13, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

thanks! here's a standard US textbook that's close: Edward Sidlow; Beth Henschen (2005). America at Odds. Cengage. p. 16.

The OP appears to be trying to view the Stackelberg statement through the narrow lens of race, rather than broad views of economics, which is what Stackelberg is talking about. Not everything is about race, nor do all discussions about equality boil down to race, at least outside of the United States, nor is everything to do with left and right a subject for grievance. Acroterion (talk) 03:18, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, especially the last thing. I think the IP's gut reaction that "absolute equality" equals good and "unavoidable inequality" equals evil is... well, it certainly has nothing to do with improving the article. Someguy1221 (talk) 14:34, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at village pump

For those who may have missed it - I've started the ball rolling at VPP. Simonm223 (talk) 15:01, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Racism

I'm not an expert, I would not dream of editing the page itself, I have no qualification to do so.

But I'm concerned that the definition needs clarification, and that this is becoming urgent in the modern Social Media world.

I have been in discussions with people on Social Media who are claiming that various groups are fascist. The DNC in the US, and the EU being two examples.

When I challenge people on how they could possibly call these groups "fascist" some of them point me to this article and claim that since Wikipedia defines fascism as an authoritarian regime, and this appears to be the primary qualification according to the page then they are justified in calling, for example, the EU fascist simply because it has authority.

Now obviously there are counter arguments, and I can just hear a number of people asking me as they read this why I would bother entering a discussion with people like that.

But I do think this sort of thing matters. Popularism is causing a lot of damage around the world and people are attracted to it by exactly this kind of argument.

As I said, I'm no expert, but I would urge people who are to consider if it is justifiable to put Racism front and center in the definition. I don't think any regime that actually called itself fascist made it into power without blaming one of more out groups for everything that was wrong in the state they were trying to take over. I don't think any near miss (a failed self proclaimed fascist who actually had some political success, like Oswald Mosley for example) wasn't cultivating votes by doing the same thing.

So isn't a policy of racism, especially the blaming of social ills on out group(s), a necessary pre-condition for calling someone fascist?

Can we not say that Fascism is a form of government that elevates racism to public policy, and then tag on the fact that they are universally authoritarian?

If this is of no interest to the academics concerned with editing the page, could you consider as an alternative making it clear up front that "authoritarian" doesn't just mean "has authority". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:982:A60A:1:783C:4444:A81B:B57B (talk) 15:34, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

The "far right-wing" and especially the "ultranationalism" bit from the first sentence are important. The EU is the exact sort of thing that fascists loathed (they hated any institution that had an international or, in modern terms, "globalist" character - it was one of their really big objections to mainstream socialism.) I'm not sure how we could make that more clear. We could perhaps mention race a bit more, though - the fascist devotion to an ethnostate is important to understanding what is meant by "ultranationalism" (ie. a German ultranationalism that excluded Jews), and the article should probably go into more detail on that. We'd need proper sources, though I suspect many of the ones already in the article do discuss it. But either way there's no reasonable way the EU could be called "ultranationalist"; ultranationalists are its most bitter opponents. --Aquillion (talk) 15:41, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

As our article on the subject says (and the one we link to) authoritarianism is a "strong central power and limited political freedoms".Slatersteven (talk) 15:44, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

There is an expectation that readers will understand the meaning of basic political terms such as authoritarian or be able to look them up in a dictionary or just click the links in articles. I don't think the people you meet on social media misunderstand the term, they are using superlatives. In other words they are exaggerating. If the EU were literally fascist, Brexiteers would be arrested or shot. TFD (talk) 17:58, 27 September 2019 (UTC)