Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes

Due to the editing restrictions on this article, a sub-page has been created to serve as a collaborative workspace or dumping ground for additional article material.

RfC about the main topic

What is, or should be, the main topic of this article?

1. Communist genocide/mass killing
2. Crimes against humanity/Mass killings under Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot
3. Double genocide theory
4. Excess deaths under Communist regimes
5. List of Communist mass killings
6. Mass killings under Communist regimes
7. Scholarly analysis of Communist regimes
8. Victims of Communism

What is the status of the current article's main topic?

1. The topic does exist and it is mainstream
2. The topic does exist, but it is a minority or fringe view.
3. The topic does not exist and the article should be deleted/merged, or a new, clearer main topic established.

You are free to add more main topic possibilities. Below, I will summarise how each main topic could be structured. Please, do not just state your support for a main topic or that it does exist, without providing an analysis of sources; same thing for those who do not think the topic exists. Davide King (talk) 06:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

You are free to express your lack of support if you do not support any of those topics as standalone articles and answer the second question only. However, it is important that if you support one or more topics, you clarify that and answer the second question as this will help us reach a consensus on how to structure the topic. In short, those supporting at least one topic should answer both questions while those not supporting any of those topics can answer the second question only. Davide King (talk) 12:33, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

• 7 and 8 as separate articles. Those are the only two clear and notable main topics. Structured as outlined below, those are the only two clear main topics that would respect NPOV as extensively discussed by me in above threads and at Discussion here. 7 would include and discuss 1, 2, 4 and 5 while this article would discuss 3 and 8 which are essentially the same thing. I argue that 1, 2, 4 and 6 should be discussed at 7 because they do no warrant a standalone article because they do not represent a consensus among scholars but only that a few authors have proposed the theory. As extensively discussed below, the author and source used to support those main topics as standalone article either fails or are problematic. Those authors are either non-notable (Valentino according to C.J. Griffin and Karlsson according to Paul Siebert here) or non-experts and too much politically biased (Courtois, Rummel et al.), with only Rosefield being perhaps the exception as he is the only Soviet and Communist studies scholar; yet, his Red Holocaust is controversial and represents historical revisionism in presenting Communism and Nazism as equal; so we are left with no scholarly sources for a standalone article.
• Since this theory has appeared very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature, many users, including me, have been guilty of assuming that the topic exists and it is supported by scholarship when that is not case. If this was not enough, I argue that keeping this article as it currently is, it is not only unhelpful but it is actively harmful and may be a cause of circular reporting or citogenisis since results on Google Scholar of "mass killings under communist regimes" result in reference to this article, which is violating original research, synthesis and NPOV as is extensively discussed in my reasoning below and by others on this talk page and its archives.
  • 3 and even if 2 was true, it would only warrant 3/8 or 7 as main topic, as outlined below, for an article about mass killings under Communist regimes. When scholars do not even agree on the terminology and there is no consensus among genocide scholars and Soviet and Communist studies scholars on it, this should not be a standalone article but it should be discussed in an article about scholarly analysis of Communist regimes, at each proponent's page (as I have done at Benjamin Valentino) or at Mass killing. Finally, I conclude an implicit, systematic bias may have been at play here that avoided the article not to be deleted/merged when it should have been deleted/merged, as I see no other reason how one, who makes an analysis of sources, can conclude it is a main topic widely accepted by mainstream scholarship when it is not the case at all.
  • My argument is that this article is a mix of all those topics I listed below. The article takes the Communist genocide/mass killing concept from Mann, Straus (who is merely reviewing rather than proposing the concept) and Valentino, even though the first is about Classicide, the second is about genocide and the third is a chapter about genocides and mass killings in the 20th century (with Communism simply being one type), then listing all mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pol, and adding all excess deaths under all Communist regimes, even as only few scholars and from one side list all non-combatant victims (famines, wars, etc.), to suggest all those are victims of Communism, its more accurate title that, however, does not really solve all those issues (undue weight, original research, synthesis, more than one topic, NPOV, etc.) I have highlighted. I support 7 as a separate article and 8 as a renaming and full, complete restructuring and rewriting of this article. Davide King (talk) 07:24, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

Summary of main topics

Note that the names I give are simply an example and you can support a main topic as I summarised while opposing the name I used and vice versa. You are free to propose a name for the main topic as those are not definitive and are simply possible example for each main topic.

1. Communist genocide/mass killing – this main topic would mainly discusses Communism as a new category of genocide and/or mass killings as outlined by Benjamin Valentino in Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century ("Communist Mass Killing"). Scott Straus' "Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide" merely reviews Valentino's work.
2. Crimes against humanity/Mass killings under Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot – this main topic would mainly discusses crimes against humanity and mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot as outlined by Klas-Göran Karlsson et al. in Crimes Against Humanity under Communist Regimes and would likely be merged with Crimes against humanity under communist regimes.
3. Double genocide theory – the main topic would be the double genocide theory as outlined in "From 'Double Genocide' to 'the New Jews': Holocaust, Genocide and Mass Violence in Post-Communist Memorial Museums", The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe and "Holocaust Revisionism, Ultranationalism, and the Nazi/Soviet "Double Genocide" Debate in Eastern Europe".
4. Excess deaths under Communist regimes – the main topic would be about excess deaths under Communist regimes as outlined by Stéphane Courtois, Steven Rosefielde and Rudolph Rummel in The Black Book of Communism, Red Holocaust and Death by Government, respectively. I suppose the only difference with the topic of Communist mass killing(s) is that this one would include all famines, war deaths, etc.
5. List of Communist mass killings – the main topic would be a List article and structured as "a list, with links to main articles about the notable incidents, and links to similar lists about Capitalist genocides, US, British Empire, etc." as outlined here by Verbal.
6. Mass killings under Communist regimes – the current article which essentially includes and discusses all of the above, except the double genocide theory.
7. Scholarly analysis of Communist regimes – the main topic would be a scholarly analysis of Communist regimes, including background, context, the rising of living standards, modernisation, lives saved (as discussed by Michael Ellman et al.) and political repression, religious persecutions, mass killings and famines with context and scholarly debates, as discussed here, in a single article rather than having so many Communist-related coatracked articles.
8. Victims of Communism – the main topic would be the theory as outlined here and here by The Four Deuces. In my understanding, this theory appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature but a minority, if not fringe, among scholars. It would be described as a popular theory outside academia and scholarship, being pushed by the Prague Declaration, anti-communist organisations and fringe media such as The Epoch Times and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation which have recently added COVID-19 victims as victims of Communism. A good source for a start is the introduction of The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War (2018) by Laure Neumeyer (Routledge).

You are free to add main topics you have individuated and to describe how you would structure the proposed article. You are free to add more research and analysis of sources. I believe it is about time we actually weight all our discussion and have a RfC about it because I agree with Paul Siebert that this is being fruitless, without a RfC.
Davide King (talk) 06:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

1. This should be covered at Benjamin Valentino, no need for a separate article.
2. What is the connection between Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot? They were often at odds. This has the same problem as the current article.
3. No, double genocide theory is considerably narrower. It only applies to the parts of Eastern Europe that were occupied by both Nazi and Soviet powers at some point.
4. I think that excess deaths should be addressed by country, such as Excess deaths in the Soviet Union, Excess deaths in the Khmer Rouge, etc. This does not meet the criteria in broad-concept article because to be an expert on deaths in one country does not indicate expertise in a different country.
5. Undecided on the merits of creating such a list.
6. Issues with the current article framing have been extensively discussed above. Lumping together various subjects into one is also not ideal.
7. I think it already exists, at Communism.
8. Moving the current article to this title would be an improvement, then we could rewrite from there. (t · c) buidhe 07:00, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

   Buidhe, thanks for your comments. As you can see from by vote above, I agree most of those topic are problematic but I have added them because this article actually discuss them together. As for 4, I am not sure that may warrant standalone-articles as they may be discussed in an Estimate section at each Communist country's history. As for 7, my proposal is to make it about scholarly analysis of Communist regimes, i.e. we would essentially report scholarly research and what is the consensus, the disputes, etc. in the scholarship field of Communist regimes. Communism is mainly about the philosophy and movement; and should not be limited to Communist regimes. It also does not include scholarly research the way I am intending and proposing for 7. Davide King (talk) 07:33, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Reasoning

Extended content

6 and 7 are the only two clear and notable main topics that would respect NPOV. All other main topics either do not exist or exist but are a minority view, so even if the latter was true, it would still not warrant a standalone article because its proponents, to quote Paul Siebert, are "a bunch of 'genocide scholars', who are attempting to propose their own buzzwords, are a just marginal group of authors, who are being essentially ignored by real experts in Russian Civil war, Stalinist repressions, Chinese Cultural revolution, Cambodian genocide, etc (see gscholar results, which you ignored)." They can be discussed as part of topic 6 and 7 but we can not base a main topic on them when they represent a minority. The current article and all other main topics are either non-notable (see Google Scholar et al. analysis below), filled up with original research, synthesis and NPOV violations by giving undue weight to the few authors or scholars who proposed the topic, even though they are not experts in Communist studies. If this was not enough, I would still argue that several of sources used to support the topic do not actually support it, certainly not as currently structured. As an example, we can not use Valentino to support the topic and talks about Afhganistan and other Communist regimes not mentioned nor discussed, or that Communism is to blame, when Valentino does not do either. Valentino does not discuss Afghanistan as Communist mass killing but as counter-guerilla mass killing, so we should not either, otherwise that is synthesis. Valentino does not assert that genocide is caused by any particular ideology but rather says that it occurs when power is in the hands of one person or a small number of people, so we should not have a POV-pushing about how some authors feel Communism is to blame when they are not discussing the same main topic. In other words, we should respect and follow the structure literature follows. I mentioned Valentino, but this goes for any source. We should not mix them up as the current article does. So if you are supporting one main topic citing Valentino as proof that the main topic exists and is notable, then you actually ought to follow Valentino analysis and not discuss or make conclusions Valentino never made or wrote about it, nor discuss Communist regimes not mentioned in the literature just because both were Communist regimes; that is original research and synthesis. As another example, if you vote for the main topic to be "The Big Three", then the article ought to discuss those three only as given sources to support the main topic do. As noted by Paul Siebert, Valentino did not lump all Communist regimes together; he did not write about Afghanistan as Communist mass killing, yet this article does so, even though Valentino and other scholars did not discuss it at all. There is also no agreement on the reading of Valentino. Those who support the topic argue that Valentino does support the topic too (he does support topic 1 but he is used to support topic 2, 4 and 5) but others and I disagree. As argued here by Rick Norwood, "[t]he [Valentino] chapter does not assert that genocide is caused by any particular id[e]ology but rather says that it occurs when power is in the hands of one person or a small number of people. A quote shows that the author's views are the opposite of the views given in this article, 'Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing.'" Here and here, C.J. Griffin and Rick Norwood, respectively, gave a perfectly good summary of what is wrong with those main topic I do not support 1–2, 4 and 6 as standalone articles. Here, Commodore Sloat went through the source and in my view gave a convincing argument for why they do not support the topic. As noted here by Fifelfoo, "the sources quoted are either FRINGE or don't actually theorise any cause, or explicitly claim the cause is greater than, or less than, communism." Even The Black Book of Communism only "presents a number of chapters on single country studies, it presents no cross-cultural comparison, there is no discussion of "Mass killing[/Any other bad thing] in Communism." As noted here by The Four Deuces, Valentino mentions that "other '[m]ass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out in other countries,' but this article uses a passing mention as a coatrack to provide extensive text on these other countries. As a result, the article does not follow the topic in the sources, doesn't explain what their authors concluded, but instead becomes a list article." Here, here and here, C.J. Griffin and Rick Norwood, respectively, gave a good summary of how many of the authors who may be used to support the topic are either non-expert, fringe, or non-notable. Here, The Four Deuces explains how George Watson, whose Lost Literature of Socialism we use in the article, who wrote that Adolf Hitler was a Marxist and argued that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were responsible for coming up with the idea of genocide, is fringe. Here, Aquillion came closest to the crux of the matter, namely that "several of the sources cited at length [...] are not as high-profile as we treat them here, which makes me think we might be giving that argument undue weight; and more generally the entire topic of the section is presented as an uncontroversial academic theory, which is certainly not a complete summary of it." As also noted here by BeŻet, the current article feels like "there is an attempt here to group all the mass killings together and just imply it is because of 'communism', while we are talking here about many different conflicts and historical events with wildly different historical backgrounds." The only sources that may support the current topic are Courtois, Rosefielde, Rummels and Valentino; and I just went through to explain why they are problematic but let us go deeper. Sources in the article gives a misleading look, as most of them are either about a singular country (it would be original research and synthesis to lump those with the main topic), are not about the main topic or are about a different topic (i.e. they should be discussed as part of Genocide and Mass killing articles, especially since many are not actually Communist studies scholar but genocide scholars. In addition, some sources only gives a passive mention about the estimates or are simply not discussing the main topic. As an example, we cite Matthew White, who is a popular historian writer and self-described anthropologist; yet, not only he is undue and non-expert on the topic but even ignoring this, he is only discussing the estimates in passive mentions and the book is titled Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History. This is not a book about Communist mass killings and many sources follow this same pattern. In conclusion, my argument is an article that respects NPOV can not be created with such sources. Those sources are the only few that may support the topic; and that is why I propose this, including a comparative analysis of Communist regimes such as under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, to be discussed in a single article about scholarly analysis of Communist regimes, respecting due weight; and only in the future, either to space issues or there is a scholar literature to support it, we may have separate articles. Until then, the best solution would be to have topic 6 and 7 as a separate articles; and that both articles would mention and discuss all those other topics, giving each due weight, so they would not be deleted or removed. In my view, this is a good solution and compromise, as it would solve most of the issue related to original research, synthesis and especially NPOV, while content would be moved and better discussed and contextualised in topics 6 and 7. The currently-structured article is more harmful than helpful and may be a cause of circular reporting or citogenisis as well as confrimation bias. Finally, I would note to be aware of ownership of content and that anti-communism, while not as widespread or relevant as in the Cold War, must be keep in mind since I have read many comments that were for Keep essentially being per sources or that Communist mass killings happened, which no one denies and both of which have missed the issue of the unclear main topic and other users' counterargument or analysis of sources. In other words, Communist mass killings appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature, so we are all influenced by the former, but scholarship is a different beast and is not one-sided as discussed popularly. This is not just my personal views but the views of several legitimate scholars as mentioned here by C.J. Griffin. That mass killings under Communist regimes did indeed happen does not justify we do not respect the guidelines about a clear, main topic; and that this does not change the fact a literature based on a main topic as currently structured in the article does not exist or is a minority at best.

This seems to be a good summary of main arguments against the currently-structured article. You are free to add those in favour of the currently-structured article.
Davide King (talk) 07:01, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Google Scholar et al. analysis of sources

1. "communist genocide" and "communist mass killing"
2. "crimes against humanity under communist regimes"
3. "double genocide theory"
4. "communist death toll", "communist death tolls" and "communist deaths"
5. "communist mass killings"
6. "mass killings under communism" and "mass killings under communist regimes"
7. "analysis of communism", "analysis of communist regimes" and "communist regimes"
8. "communist victims" and "victims of communism"

You are free to add more research and analysis of sources. Davide King (talk) 06:48, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Continuing from here, we are left only with Courtois (The Black Book of Communism), Rosefielde (Red Holocaust), Rummels (Death by Government), Straus ("Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide") and Valentino ("Communist Mass Killing" in Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century). However, the only books who may support the topic are really only The Black Book of Communism and Red Holocaust. Rummels' work is about democide, which is another topic and is not exclusive to Communist regimes. Both Straus and Valentino's wrork is about genocide, with Communist proposed as a new category. In addition, Straus is mainly reviewing Valentino and others' work rather than proposing the main topic as Valentino did. Those are not all the same thing.

So we are left only with Courtois and Rosefielde's work. The Black Book of Communism is controversial; this does not mean it is unreliable but that it presents one views of the events. In addition, several users, as discussed above, gave convincing arguments in my view for why even The Black Book of Communism does not actually support the topic, only its introduction does. However, as noted here by The Four Deuces, both the introduction to The Black Book of Communism and Rummel's Death by Government were published outside the academic mainstream and not subjected to peer-review; indeed, it is the introduction the major source of controversy. If this was not enough, The Four Deuces also gave a convincing argument for why neither source actually support the topic, namely that "the first one was about the evils of Communism in general, while the second was about mass killings by governments in general." This is a problem with many of the sources themselves, with fringe sources such as George Watson supporting the first topic and other being about genocide and mass killings in general, i.e. this should be discussed at Genocide and Mass killing articles.

In addition, even some of the authors of The Black Book of Communism dissociated themselves from it. This was not merely about the estimates but about how Communism was compared to Nazism and even argued it was actually worse because it killed more; and in general of linking all mass killings, famines and excess deaths to communism as ideology. Rummel was a political scientist, published several of his works such as the aforementioned Death by Government outside academic mainstream press and without peer-review, his estimates have been extensively criticised and in general he is not really relied on as a mainstream source on Communist regimes. In other words, those are not experts about Communist countries and some are not notable. According to C.J. Griffin, the only exception may be Rosefielde, yet Red Holocaust is problematic. In the article, we write:

According to Jörg Hackmann, this term is not popular among scholars in Germany or internationally.[i] Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine writes that usage of this term "allows the reality it describes to immediately attain, in the Western mind, a status equal to that of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazi regime."[k][12] Michael Shafir writes that the use of the term supports the "competitive martyrdom component of Double Genocide", a theory whose worst version is Holocaust obfuscation.[13] George Voicu states that Leon Volovici has "rightfully condemned the abusive use of this concept as an attempt to 'usurp' and undermine a symbol specific to the history of European Jews."

That this is Holocaust trivalisation is also supported by Heni, Clemens (Fall 2008). "Secondary Anti-Semitism: From Hard-Core to Soft-Core Denial of the Shoah". Jewish Political Studies Review. Jerusalem. 20 (3/4): 73–92, 218. An analysis of sources through Google Scholar et al. shows they do not actually support the topic; they certainly do not support the topic 6, i.e. the article as currently structured, which mixes all those topics together. In my view, sources only support the topics 7 and 8 as extensively outlined above.
Davide King (talk) 07:08, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Here, Rick Norwood gave a good and concise analysis for why sources used to support the current article do not actually support it. Some of those I already analysed here, but they discussed others as well. "All of these examples are from brief quotes supplied in defense of the article. All suggest or state that the books are not explicitly linking mass killings with communism." In addition, I would note that none of those are discussing mass killings under Communist regimes as the currently article does; or, in other words, Communism, Communist mass killing and mass killings under Communist regimes "[are] not the book[s'] main focus." Davide King (talk) 12:59, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

In this sense, the currently-structured article, apart from synthesis and other issues, also violates WP:RS/AC. Davide King (talk) 13:49, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Comments

I will support what @AmateurEditor:, will support. All section (including this) became so much flooded with information, comments, like an online blog or chatlist, 30 days would not even be enough to investigate or read fully. You should a little bit stop flooding, you expressed countless times your stance. More WP:WALLOFTEXT will likely to be ignored, don't expect anyone to be convinced just becuase they will be fed up being bombarded with lengthy long essays (upwards, down, Jesus, just this section has 3 flood subsections, practically you discuss with yourself...).(KIENGIR (talk) 01:36, 19 November 2020 (UTC))

This comment amounts to unsupported and unsubstantiated personal attacks. We have Aquillion, BeŻet, Buidhe, C.J. Griffin, The Four Deuces and Paul Siebert who all gave very convincing and reseanoble summaries of the problem of this article. You seem to assume that since mass killings indeed happened under Communist regimes, then there ought of be an article documenting them, but this completely misses the point of mine and all those users' arguments. Maybe it is not us the problem but those who essentially amount to ownership and a bias in favour of keeping this article, which showed when you argued for Communism to be a category at both Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism. So it is not me or all those users who are 'pro-Communism' or 'Communists'; it is those who are in favour of keeping this article exactly as it is that are the problem to any solution. Davide King (talk) 03:41, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

RfCs should be concise. Bear in mind that we are inviting editors who are not familiar with the article to comment. I would withdraw it until we can offer a concise question. TFD (talk) 04:18, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, this is a fair criticism I can agree with. However, since we have been discussing this at length, I supposed this could be helpful in helping us understand where we stand on the main topic and whether it does actually exist or not, and whether it is mainstream, fringe or something else. I agree that for those who have not actually followed the whole discussion is problematic but something must be done, as it is clear this article has problems and denying this will only take us farther apart from finding a solution. Davide King (talk) 04:32, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

No, it has not nothing to do with any "personal attack", just don't try again with this. Your answer is evading away of what I said, there was no no need for mass pinging or describe again what you think, and assuming content inssues. Also, I did not own any article, as well never supported any bias (just because you were not aware correctly about some procedures and guidelines), as well I did not say anything about your or other user's stance of "pro-Communism or Communists" or whatsoever, please avoid such speculations. Simply you have to see not the number of repeating arguments or the length will convince people, but possibly they will make them WP:TLDR.(KIENGIR (talk) 07:47, 19 November 2020 (UTC))

The reason why I started this RfC was exactly to avoid we continued to have long and fruitless discussion as above. We should discuss this one only now and decide one clear, main topic. So you would have a point if this was just another thread, but it is not; it is a RfC. Maybe The Four Deuces can help in make it more concise, but I tried to summarise all the arguments above exactly so that those who have not followed the discussion could understand it. Davide King (talk) 08:19, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Well, anyone who ended up here saw an RFC header, and after three subsections + 1 collapsible (!) section full with lengthy contemplations mostly from one user, so this is the point to stop and let others to have time and read, if they did not lost so far the incentive for it. In case the discussion will grow in a near exponential way/amount as well here, then regardless of any intended goal this "section" won't be different like the others.(KIENGIR (talk) 14:43, 19 November 2020 (UTC))

I agree with KIENGIR that that RfC is poorly formulated, and it will not lead to anything useful. There should be preferably a single question with a binary answer. Davide King, taking into account that RfC is supposed to be closed by an uninvolved user, I doubt they will be able to adequately summarize all responses to each question. Therefore, it is quite likely there will be no closure, and it will be archived. I propose you to withdraw it, to discuss that with other participants of the talk page discussion, and to reopen the RfC again when a better question has been proposed.

I disagree with KIENGIR's position: "I will support what @AmateurEditor:, will support." That is a partisan approach, and RfC is not a !vote. If you have no own ideas, voting means nothing. Remember, if an RfC was closed just by a vote count, its trustworthiness is low, and its results may be contested. By the way, walls of text are partially a result of the discussion between me and AmateurEditor, and its length is not only my fault. --Paul Siebert (talk) 16:20, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• Why not a RM to Victims of Communism? (t · c) buidhe 19:10, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert:, I hope you noticed my "partisan position" is an irony to the situation described (TDLR/comment commando e.g.), you can be sure I know RFC rules etc., I would add I have my own ideas, and shared as well, and I don't think your discussion with Amateureditor would be the problem (if it would be like so, I would have told it).(KIENGIR (talk) 19:18, 19 November 2020 (UTC))

KIENGIR, actually, I was disappointed because I wanted to see you ideas, not whom you support.

buidhe, thanks to AmateurEditor, I've read more on that subject, and now I see the problem at somewhat different angle.

First, the "aggregator sources vs single country sources" is a false dichotomy. In reality, several groups of "aggregator sources" exist, and only one group combines Communist states together. Other groups combine together backward countries with resource economy and strong political tensions (obviously, China, Cambodia and Soviet Russia fit these criteria, but many non-Communist states fit too). Another group combines East Asian genocides (China, Cambodia, Indonesia), but excludes USSR. Some sources combine Cambodia, Rwanda and Yugoslavia. I haven't finished reading, but it seems other types of aggregator sources exist. Therefore, "MKuCR" is a poor choice of a topic, because it artificially leaves certain types of aggregator sources beyond the scope. That means, the article and its topic violates our neutrality policy.

Second, I found that the fraction of the authors who really cares about proper terminology is negligible. They freely use "political genocide", "mass killings" etc for the same event, so any discussion of terminology is a kind of original research.

Third, the group of sources that combines MKuCR in one category is doing that in a context of the total number of victims, and that is done to convey an idea that Communism was the greatest evil. Therefore, if we group mass killings that happened under Communist regimes, it is necessary to explain that that is just one approach, out of many, and that grouping is accompanied to convey some very concrete idea. It is also necessary to say that that approach, and that idea is advocated by a limited group of authors, who has some supporters and some opponents. It is also necessary to briefly outline the views of other schools on the same events.

Therefore, the article should be totally rewritten. Currently, it tells "How many people were killed, why Communism is a primary cause of that, and how concretely those killings took place". A new version of the article should say: "Why some authors combine mass killings in Communist states together, which events fall into that category according to them, which conclusions do they draw from that, how their theories are accepted by other scholars".

If you think renaming to "Victims of Communism" will better serve to that goal, please, explain me why. In my opinion, both titles are bad. I would prefer "Communism and mass killings", or something of that kind: that article should discuss a linkage between Communism and mass killing, according to some authors.

I do not insist on that title, if you can propose some better title, you are more than welcome to do that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:00, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I absolutely support that "the article should be totally rewritten" and I think we actually have a plurality of support for doing just that. However, I disagree with your name proposal. I do not see how Communism and mass killings is any better than the current article. I would say it is even worse because it gives an ever greater link between communism and mass killings, which is not supported by WP:RS/AC.

Even Communist regimes/states and mass killings would be problematic because there have been Communist regimes who did not engage in mass killings (I am sure those theorists would argue because they were short-lived but we can not use what if arguments to argue that communism is inherently linked to mass killings) and even Valentino and others said that not all Communist regimes did that, so it would be a misleading and problematic title.

Ironically, Victims of Communism would be the perfect title because that is exactly the narrative pushed by its proponents and is a term actually used, unlike mass killings under Communist regimes. I argue that in light of your correct analysis of the terminology section, we should be especially wary of using mass killings or any of that terminology for the article's title because "any attempts to develop a universally-accepted terminology describing mass killings of non-combatants was a complete failure."

I also agree with The Four Deuces that we should not repeat the events, we should only report the theory. Only a scholarly analysis of Communist regimes, not limited to mass killings, can support the context and background you propose and I support. We should simply report the estimates, link the various events but not going in detail as the current article does. If you want to do that, then we should have a Scholarly analysis of Communist regimes where we discuss background, context, the rising of living standards, modernisation, lives saved (as discussed by Michael Ellman et al.) and political repression, religious persecutions, mass killings and famines with context and scholarly debates, as discussed here, in a single article rather than having so many Communist-related coatracked articles. Davide King (talk) 05:48, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I can agree it was poorly formulated, but I believe the essential questions were correct. What is the actual, clear main topic? Does the topic exist? If yes, is it mainstream, or is it a minority or fringe view? If no, should the article be deleted/merged, or a new, clearer main topic established? I think the main issues were the overtly length but that was because I was trying to explain the issues and discussion to those who have not followed it and having to explain what each main topic would entail and be structured like. I think it would still be helpful if we could answer those questions and see where we stand. I do not think this is something that can be solved by univolved editors because one ought to follow our discussion to understand our arguments. Because so far, one just thinks of The Black Book of Communism and believes the topic does exist, ignoring our arguments that sources do not support the current article. Davide King (talk) 05:35, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, my ideas I won't repeat especially the reasons I draw the attention, so everything I stated on that section should be regarded especially inside its framework.

@Buidhe:, if we'd do the renaming you propose, would it end this issue completely? Will this stop the highly increasing comments and other issues regarding the article?(KIENGIR (talk) 17:25, 20 November 2020 (UTC))

The main problem with that article that it pretends it provides a summary of some well defined topic. That is not the case. The article creates a false impression that the linkage between Communism and mass killings was clearly established and acknowledged by a scholarly community, and the only remaining problems are how many victims were killed and what term describes this event better. That is not true, that is a minority POV, and that article is a stain on Wikipedia. Do we need this article? My answer is: definitely yes! However, its topic should be defined correctly. Below I explain why I believe "Communism and mass killing" may resolve the problem.

My rationale will be added here:

• Wall of text

A long text will be added here if my proposal will face an opposition.

• End of the wall of text

Conclusion

The title "Communism and mass killings" will allow us:

• to clearly explain that a limited number of authors argue that Communists killed more that all words wars, Nazi and anybody else, AND that means Communism was much greater evil that Nazism.
• to explain how they came to that conclusion, where they obtained the numbers, and how they interpreted them.
• to tell who supports this view, and how they interpret them.
• to explain what political movements use these ideas, and how they are used.
• Finally, we explain how a scholarly community accepts these views, and what other theories say about MKuCR.

That would be a good article that would cover an interesting and important topic (which is relevant to resurrection of antisemitism and nationalism in many modern countries.

The article should not tell about each separate mass killings, because each of them has its own article, so links should be sufficient. providing a summary is possible and desirable in such articles as World war II, which tells about some clearly defined topic. In contrast, MKuCR is NOT a clearly defined topic (I have already explained that briefly, but I can elaborate on that in my future WoT if I'll see that is necessary). Which topic is really clearly defined is the idea about the linkage between mass killings and Communism. This idea should be a subject of the article, and "Communism and mass killing" is the best title for such an article. Other titles, such as "Double genocide theory" may also serve that goal, however, the latter refers to some concrete term "Double genocide", which is not used by all authors whose views will be discussed in that article. In contrast "Communism and mass killing" (or vise versa) is an umbrella term that can cover all theories of that kind, including double genocide.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:11, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, do you think you can create a sandbox about your proposed article? We literally have Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/sandbox for that. I think it would also be helpful if Buidhe and The Four Deuces did that, so we can see what are the differences, if there are any, or if we disagree only on the title. I could help with copy editing both sandboxes. Davide King (talk) 08:29, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Exactly. I think we need to come to some common vision of the article, and only after that an RfC can be initiated. Although @AmateurEditor: seems to have a different vision of the problem, I would be glad if they joined us too. Meanwhile, it would be good if you withdrawn your RfC as a proposer, because it is a little bit premature. IMO, other editors may feel uncomfortable if their input is too frequently requested, so their participation in the second (future) RfC will be lower that it is desirable.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:32, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, that makes sense. Buidhe already removed the RfC tag, so it is already withdrawn, although I think it would still be helpful if you and others could give a short summary of your thoughts on each listed main topic as Buidhe did here to get an idea on where we stand. Davide King (talk) 08:01, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I have not been reading the posts on this page for the last few days, but I am always willing to work with people on improving this article and I am interested to see what material will be included on the sandbox page, if that happens. AmateurEditor (talk) 08:03, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, I have a question. Which of the following more correctly summarises your view:

1. The article, in its current form, correctly reflects the current state of knowledge of the subject;

2. The article has to follow available aggregator sources, and, although there might me a contradiction between what sources say and what other authors claim, that contradiction cannot be fixed without doing OR.

Thanks. --Paul Siebert (talk) 19:18, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, neither is exactly how I would explain my view but, if I had to choose one of those two, I would say that 2 is closer to my view. I don't presume to know the full current state of knowledge of any topic and I would not trust any wikipedia editor who claimed to. This article exists to reflect the aggregated topic found in the aggregator sources and so it's organization/structure should be whatever allows us to most effectively cover all aspects of the topic found in those sources, following policy guidance. Single country/non-aggregator sources can still be used as supplemental sources for info related to the topic or sub-topics covered in the article but cannot serve as the basis for the article's existence or structure (articles on the single countries/event topics should be based on those single country/event sources). Where there is an unresolvable conflict/contradiction between sources of any kind (and it is not simply a mistake/error in the source, since no source is perfect) then we should present both sides fairly, following policy. We should not be "fixing" contradictions between sources. Choosing one side over another could be a NPOV violation. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:34, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Spurious tags

The section and heading tagging is getting a bit out of hand and should be removed. PackMecEng (talk) 04:57, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

There would be no need for it if this article actually followed guidelines. We are discussing all this and there is a RfC, so they should stay until the matters are actually solved. I may remove the two about the section and leave just the two at the top. Davide King (talk) 05:11, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

While I appreciate you bringing up issues, at great length, on the talk page overly tagging an article can start to be disruptive. Especially when they all essentially repeat the same thing. PackMecEng (talk) 05:14, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I did this. I hope this is a good compromise that avoids overtagging. Davide King (talk) 05:18, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Yup, fine by me I suppose. I saw it after my previous post, sorry about that. PackMecEng (talk) 05:19, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Related discussion

Please see related discussion at Talk:List of genocides by death toll (t · c) buidhe 19:23, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi Buidhe. If you're going to ping or canvass or notify or whatever discussions that I am involved in to other wikipedia discussion pages (whether talk or board) I would appreciate it if you pinged me and let me know. Volunteer Marek 19:57, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

And now the list inclusion criteria is challenged: Talk:List_of_genocides_by_death_toll#List_inclusion_criteria (t · c) buidhe 03:26, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Please, more input is needed at this discussion. (t · c) buidhe 00:10, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

WP:NOTFORUM

Why this page exists This page exists because millions of human beings were exterminated to satisfy the ideology of Communism. As a matter of philosophy, Communism extends no empathy to the bourgeois human beings, showing a sociopathic tendency common to genocidal regimes. It is vital that current and future generations learn from this experience and most importantly to learn to identify such sociopathic idiologies that could lead the the slaughter of millions of lives.— Preceding unsigned comment added by [[Special:Contributions/ 2601:644:680:6D80:6438:BD29:EBF3:8F30| 2601:644:680:6D80:6438:BD29:EBF3:8F30]] ([[User talk: 2601:644:680:6D80:6438:BD29:EBF3:8F30#top|talk]]) 01:56, 24 November 2020 (UTC) I'm sorry, IP contributor, but Wikipedia is not a memorial, nor is it a venue for moral education. Our mission does not include preventing human rights abuses. (t · c) buidhe 05:50, 24 November 2020 (UTC) The actual reason this page exists can be seen at the top of this talk page, under "Frequently asked questions". AmateurEditor (talk) 07:20, 24 November 2020 (UTC) The purpose of an encyclopedia is to educate and inform, in this case it is the MOST important education and information, that concerning the danger of genocide, or in this case, the euphemism "mass killing". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:644:680:6D80:857F:326D:6582:97DD (talk) 20:43, 25 November 2020 (UTC) Just to be very clear, that is not what Wikipedia is about and following NPOV prohibits us from pushing the fringe view that "mass murder is a key feature of [communism, socialism, the left, or whatever one wants to call it] found in its earliest documents. Hence all socialists (which the Right defines very broadly to include such people as Joe Biden) have the potential to eliminate their populations and replace them." Wikipedia is "an online free-content encyclopedia project helping to create a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." Now, please, do not post this same thing again, or it will de deleted or reverted per FORUM. Davide King (talk) 22:44, 25 November 2020 (UTC) The importance of remembrance to prevent future atrocities Mass killings must be remembered in complete detail because future generations must learn not to commit these crimes again. Wikipedia is part of this collective memory. Any regime that slaughters millions is criminal, whether it is Khmer Rouge or the Nazis. Wikipedia must testify to these crimes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:644:680:6D80:6438:BD29:EBF3:8F30 (talk) 00:37, 25 November 2020 (UTC) As noted by Buidhe above, Wikipedia is not a memorial and I suggest you to stop opening new threads repeating the same thing again; Wikipedia is not a forum and we are actually trying to improve the article. This article exists because "a rough consensus of Wikipedia editors" a decade ago established "the topic is found in high quality secondary sources and meets Wikipedia policy requirements." Consensus can change, especially when so-called "high quality secondary sources" do not actually support the topic or meet "Wikipedia policy requirements" for a standalone article, when they are based on original research or synthesis. Davide King (talk) 01:05, 25 November 2020 (UTC) There is a question about how much the mass killings owed to Communist ideology and how much to the histories of the countries in which they occurred. By comparison the Clinton administration was responsible for 500,000 deaths in Iraq, while the Bush administration killed 1,000,000 people. But is the difference due to where the two presidents fell along the left-right spectrum or because of the circumstances at the time? TFD (talk) 03:43, 25 November 2020 (UTC) Agree with Davide, this thread should be closed, we have enough, btw., these examples by TFD are not of the same weight, but let's not start an n+1 thread/discussion.(KIENGIR (talk) 08:05, 25 November 2020 (UTC)) Quibling about sources is what Holocaust deniers are famous for. I know you are upset that communist genocide has ruined the reputation of communism, but you know what? The reputation of communism is well earned by their sociopathic policies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:644:680:6D80:857F:326D:6582:97DD (talk) 22:29, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Fein 1993 wording

Davide King and TFD, given the 1RR rule, I think we should discuss the recent edits to the Cambodia section here because I think there is a subtlety being lost with the changes. The sentence was "Helen Fein, a genocide scholar, states that the xenophobic ideology of the Khmer Rouge regime bears a stronger resemblance to a phenomenon of national socialism, or fascism rather than communism.[184]" (in which "national socialism" had a wikilink to Nazism). Davide King changed it to "Helen Fein, a genocide scholar, states that the xenophobic ideology of the Khmer Rouge regime bears a stronger resemblance to a phenomenon of Nazism, or fascism rather than communism.[184]" in order to delete the duplicated wikilink to Nazism. However, the edit also changed the wording from "national socialism" to "Nazism", which changed the meaning from the source slightly, so I changed it back. Davide King reverted my revert, saying "the common name is Nazism, which is obviously what they are referring to, not Left-wing nationalism, and we say "or fascism"; so why not simply use common name and link to the main article". TFD then removed "or fascism" from the sentence, saying "the author attributes Nazism or "national socialism" rather than fascism", so that the sentence is now "Helen Fein, a genocide scholar, states that the xenophobic ideology of the Khmer Rouge regime bears a stronger resemblance to a phenomenon of Nazism rather than communism.[184]". Checking the source, found here, the reference is to page 819 and this is the relevant paragraph (I added bold for discussion purposes):

Communism, the leading ideology since 1945 until the present, promised social change even as it authorized killing on the basis of class and politics, identifying dissidents as "enemies of the people." But upon closer examination, the xenophobic ideology of the KR regime resembles more an almost forgotten phenomenon of national socialism, which Becker (1986) calls fascism. Such regimes themselves evoke the threats that demand purges, promoting paranoid myths of persecution or anticipated persecution as a means of inciting solidarity (Fein 1991).

Fein is clearly referring to a generic "national socialism" and not to the specific Nazi party, based on three things:

1) xenophobic ideology is not "an almost forgotten phenomenon" of Nazism. It's one of the things they are most remembered for;

2) "Nazism" refers to a single regime, but Fein is talking about multiple regimes ("Such regimes...") that fall under a category that Becker calls "fascism" and she calls "national socialism";

3) Fein mentions "Nazi" elsewhere in her article, so it is a deliberate choice that she did not use that term here.

We should use the words she chose and not substitute our own preferences. Some people don't actually think the Nazis were socialists. The closest we can get to a source is a quotation, so I propose this (without any wikilink on "national socialism"): "Helen Fein, a genocide scholar, states that the xenophobic ideology of the Khmer Rouge regime bears a stronger resemblance to "an almost forgotten phenomenon of national socialism", or fascism, rather than communism.[184]" AmateurEditor (talk) 05:22, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I see no distinction between Nazism the ideology of the Nazi Party of Germany and generic national socialism. In any event, we could make Nazism generic by not capitalizing it, and vice versa for national socialism.

The "almost forgotten phenomenon" to which Fein is referring is xenophobia, which is why phenomenon has an indefinite article ("an"). IOW she is saying that xenophobia is an almost forgotten phenomenon of Nazism as practiced in Nazi Germany. It literally means dislike of people from other countries.

Her source uses the term xenophobia once in the 1998 version of her book: "The records show the constant xenophobia of the Khmer Rouge who routinely killed foreigners discovered in the country." (Becker, p.267)[19] While we are all aware that Nazis hated people of most other races, their view of foreigners in general is largely forgotten. In the Malmedy massacre for example, American soldiers were murdered not because of their race, but because they were foreigners.

My concern is that we use terminology that is clearly understood by readers. If we use term national socialism, then we need to explain what it is.

TFD (talk) 15:16, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, I agree. If we use national socialism, it is not clear whether it means Nazism or Left-wing nationalism and I too see no distinction between Nazism as teh ideology of the Nazi Party and generic national socialism. By the way, who is Steve Heder and is he notable? We use him to state that "the example of such racialist thought as it is applied in relation to the minority Cham people echoed 'Marx's definition of a historyless people doomed to extinction in the name of progress' and it was therefore a part of general concepts of class and class struggle." This seems to be the same fringe view echoed by Watson that Marx and Engels came up with the idea of genocide. I see that we use many people who do not seem to be notable enough to even have their own article, hence why this article does not represents scholarly consensus and we are representing minority views, or simply the views of some academics from one side of historiography, as facts and mainstream theory. Davide King (talk) 16:02, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Heder is an expert, but I don't know what weight his theories have. That's the another major problem with this article. Opinions are presented without explaining their relative weight in the literature, which is required by policy. I am aware of the view that opinions should be provided equal weight. But in reality, most readers want to know which views prevail. Unless one really cares about a topic, one is most likely to accept the highest weighted opinions as most likely to be true. TFD (talk) 18:29, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

TFD, WP:WEIGHT defines just three categories of sources for weight concerns: "majority", "significant minority", and "extremely small minority" (or fringe). All the sources used in the article are correctly treated as "significant minority" views or weight purposes. The subsection WP:FALSEBALANCE applies to fringe or out-of-mainstream sources, none of which are included in the article now. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:26, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Do you not think that there are degrees of weight? For example, don't you draw any distinction between the consensus of expert opinion or a view held by 51% of experts (the "majority" category) or between "alternative theoretical formulations" published in peer reviewed journals and absolutely ridiculous views such as lizard people (the "fringe" category)? Do you not think there is no difference between a view held by a 49% minority and one held by a 10% minority?Notice that weight refers to "in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." Do you think that implies that there are only three possible weights? Opinions are not like toothpaste that comes in only three sizes. TFD (talk) 20:41, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

TFD, I do agree in the abstract that there are degrees of weights beyond those three categories, but practically-speaking we cannot know them at the one-percentage-point level of granularity you are suggesting (or even a ten-percent-level of granularity). The WP:WEIGHT policy mentions just the three large groups and all our sources for this article fall in the second group at the moment (none are fringe and none are claimed to be the majority opinion). In terms of weight within that second group, there is no policy guidance to follow that I am aware of. The only practical method is to assign the weight of a source as only the individual opinion of the individual author, using in-line attribution, rather than writing anything in Wikipedia's voice. In this way, as more sources are added, the proportions of viewpoints in the article will ever more closely approach the proportions in the body of published reliable sources as a whole. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:47, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

I think this is the issue, that we are just using a bunch of opinions, which I find interesting but are not encyclopedic and which are admittedly a minority, although I would argue some of those, such as Watson, are fringe or borderline fringe, and many others are not that significant; we also do not give the proper weight to scholars such as Ellman, Getty, Ghodsee and others who disagree with the whole concept of counting the body and blaming it alone on ideology, or that communism, and by extension socialism and the left, is prone to mass killings. This is still presented as an uncontroversial academic fact or theory, when admittedly all of those are at best "significant minority views."

If the whole article is based on minority views, even significant ones, then what is the point? If there is no consensus or a mainstream view among genocide scholars and Soviet and Communist studies scholars, what is the point of this article other than showing how bad Communism was and that it is prone to mass killings, even though that is not what the sources says and Valentino says "most regimes that have described themselves as communist or have been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing" and that he is mainly discussing what he terms "radical communist regimes", which I am assuming he is referring to "the Big Three."

That is why the article should not be deleted (I have already moved most of the content to other relevant articles, so nothing is going lost; and this goes back to the beginning where I stated I find the article and the opinion "interesting" but not encyclopedic) but completely rewritten and restructured to be about the theory or narrative, rather than the events which indeed took place but are besides the point since the main topic should be about the victims of Communism narrative. Buidhe, The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert, do you already have in mind a draft or sandbox on how such a restructuring and rewrite may look like? Davide King (talk) 15:33, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

The point of the article is to describe the topic as found in reliable sources as Wikipedia defines them. If there is material in Ellman, Getty, Ghodsee, etc. that is missing, then we should add it. If you want greater/less weight for a source, then we need to have justification for that based on Wikipedia policies. I thought I had provided evidence earlier that Ellman and Getty may not be considered "mainstream" (although I agree they also fall under the "significant minority" bucket with the other sources used so far and should not be given less weight for that reason). AmateurEditor (talk) 02:44, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, if something is not clear in the source, changing it to make it clear in the article is original research on our part. It may be that Fein intended to include left-wing nationalism when using the generic term "national socialism". FYI, notability is a policy that relates to topics only, for sources we follow WP:RS, which says to include "all majority and significant minority views" and does not define "significant minority". WP:WEIGHT includes three categories of source, one of which is "significant minority", and gives the following test: "If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents". To err on the side of caution, we are treating all sources in the article as "significant minority" views, rather than majority views, and including in-line citations for all the sources in the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:26, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, and "[i]t may be that Fein intended to include left-wing nationalism when using the generic term 'national socialism'" is original research on your part, so which is which? This is a problem with other sources in the article, where we seem to have a different reading of what given ref is actually saying and whether it supports the topic, on which we either disagree or have a different understanding of it. You wrote "'Nazism' refers to a single regime, but Fein is talking about multiple regimes ('Such regimes...') that fall under a category that Becker calls 'fascism' and she calls 'national socialism.'" Does Fein actually clarify who are those "[s]uch regimes"? That would be helpful in clarify what she meant. Either way, I think the best solution would be, as you proposed, to not link anything and use her own words. "We should use the words she chose and not substitute our own preferences", that is fair, but then you wrote "[s]ome people don't actually think the Nazis were socialists." It is not "[s]ome people", it is the mainstream view that the Nazis were not socialists and it is the fringe view, pushed by some right-wing authors, especially in the United States, that the Nazis were socialists or left-wing. Davide King (talk) 19:37, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, it is not original research on my part retain the source's use of "national socialism", which is all I am proposing. About other such regimes, Fein says her use of "national socialism" is synonymous with Becker's use of "fascism". I think we agree with using the direct quote and not linking anything, but if you do want to investigate the source itself further, it can be found here. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:47, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, I was not referring to that as "original research" but to your comment that "[i]t may be that Fein intended to include left-wing nationalism when using the generic term 'national socialism.'" If I was doing original research for reading it as no difference with Nazism, which is boosted by the fact she says national socialism is synonymous with Becker's use of fascism, then so were you by stating she may have well referred to left-wing nationalism, which is not the case as she was clearly referring to fascism. Either way, it is not a big issue and I am fine with using the direct quoation and the exact wording you suggested, which is what I did here. Davide King (talk) 15:16, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

TFD, replacing a generic term from a source with a specific term for the article is original research on our part, as is replacing a generic term with a different generic term. If we need to explain generic "national socialism" to the reader without inserting original research into the sentence, then we could include a link to National Socialism (disambiguation). AmateurEditor (talk) 19:26, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

We should never insert a link when a term is ambiguous, we should explain it in the article, per technical language. And "Rewriting source material in your own words, while substantially retaining the meaning of the references, is not considered to be original research." In any case, per Use common sense, if you don't understand what the author means, you shouldn't add her material to the article. And since you introduced the theory, could you please provide a reliable source that distinguishes Nazism and generic national socialism? TFD (talk) 20:54, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

TFD, the point is that we are not "substantially retaining the meaning" from the source by replacing a generic "national socialism" with the specific "Nazism". I think using a disambiguation link would be common sense in this situation (the National Socialism (disambiguation) link begins with an explanation of most common use but includes other uses), but I am fine with leaving "national socialism" unlinked. There is no justification for assigning a more specific meaning to the source's words than what is in the source itself. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:47, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Can you find a source that defines "generic national socialism." Most of the disambiguation page refers to parties outside Germany that adhered to the ideology of the Nazi Party of Germany. The rest are parties that have no connection with fascism, which rules them out. TFD (talk) 03:35, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

We don't need to have a definition of generic "national socialism" to recognize that the term is being used that way by Fein (and that our changing it to be a reference to Nazism alone is incorrect to the source). If you don't think anything other than the Nazism can be referred to as "national socialism", then you should try to get the National Socialism (disambiguation) page changed to be a simple redirect to Nazism. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:48, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

I also agree with direct quoting, it should not be manipulated what the author stated.(KIENGIR (talk) 06:32, 1 December 2020 (UTC)).

Why would we provide a direct quote when we don't understand what an author said? AmateurEditor, so you don't know what generic national socialism is, but you know that is what Fein meant? That would make a great introduction to a textbook: "The authors don't understand the subject, but decided to write the book anyway." TFD (talk) 17:03, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

We use a direct quote to avoid changing the intended meaning of the author and introducing original research on our part. Better safe than sorry as far as OR is concerned. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:29, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Usage of a direct quote just creates a visibility of lack of manipulation. If I remember that article correctly (I read it about 10 years ago), Fein does not use the concept "Communist mass killing". Instead, it compares a "revolutionary genocide" (Cambodian) with "counterrevolutionary genocide" (in Indonesia). Therefore, even direct quoting leads to misinterpretation: we imply the author accepts the "Communist mass killing" concept, which does not follows from what the source says. That raises an interesting question. As AmateurEditor correctly noted, to avoid a sine of original research, it is desirable to write the article based on some set of aggregator sources. However, to avoid a sine of POV-pushing, it is desirable to make sure the set of aggregator sources the article is based upon describe the subject fairly and without a bias. I am not talking about each single aggregator source, but the set of them must be neutral. Since Fein presents a comparative analysis of two different mass killings, that source should also be considered an aggregator source. However, the viewpoint of the author is underrepresented in the article, and even direct quotes do not fix that.

In connection to that, I propose to examine the choice of aggregator sources the article is based upon. Since that is a more general topic, I propose to move in to a separate section.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I agree and I thank you for expressing more concisely something I thought. I believe most sources currently used in the article are like Fein, in that they do not even use the concept of "Communist mass killing" and make more of a comparative genocide analysis, even between Communist and non-Communist regimes, which is not the main topic of this article, hence it is synthesis or original research. The problem is that the aggregator itself is synthesis and original research, as shown by the fact Fein does not use the concept of "Communist mass killing." Davide King (talk) 05:21, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, thank you for creating a separate section for the new discussion. About Fein using the "concept" of communist mass killing (I dislike the word "concept" as if this is a strange idea; it is not a "concept" so much as it is a "topic": the large-scale killing of non-combatants by communist regimes), Fein mentions it in the first sentence of the paragraph I quoted above: "Communism, the leading ideology since 1945 until the present, promised social change even as it authorized killing on the basis of class and politics, identifying dissidents as "enemies of the people."" AmateurEditor (talk) 06:27, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Do you agree with my definition of what can be called an aggregator source for that topic?--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:00, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

I will respond in the next section below. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:49, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Aggregator sources selection criteria

As AmateurEditor correctly noted, to avoid a sine of original research, it is desirable to write the article based on some set of aggregator sources. However, to avoid a sine of POV-pushing, it is desirable to make sure the set of aggregator sources the article is based upon describe the subject fairly and without a bias. I am not talking about each single aggregator source, but the set of them must adequately reflect the current state of knowledge. I have serious reasons to suspect the current set of aggregator sources is not doing that job well, and I propose to think about a better set of sources. First, let's agree on what an aggregator source is. I propose the following definition (for that topic).

"An aggregator source is any article of book that provides a summary or a comparative analysis of more than one mass killing event in at least two different states, and at least one of those mass killings took place in some Communist state"

Do you agree with that definition? (I would appreciate if every participant of that discussion voiced their opinion explicitly).--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:19, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

I think in order to be useful, "An aggregator source is any article of book that discusses more than one mass killing event in at least two different states defined by the author as 'Communist'". If the source is comparing, eg. mass killings under Stalinism and Nazism, it is relevant to comparison of Stalinism and Nazism but not this article. (t · c) buidhe 04:33, 2 December 2020 (UTC) OK, Siebert makes some good points below. Well, if it were up to me we'd just delete the damn thing since it seems virtually impossible to cover it in an encyclopedic way. (t · c) buidhe 05:09, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Well, do I understand you correct that if the source discusses Cambodia, Indonesia and China, it is not an aggregator source for that article, but if it discusses just Cambodia and China, it is an aggregator source?

If your answer is "yes" that means we artificially separate those authors who believe there were more commonality between Cambodia and, e.g. USSR from the authors who believe that Cambodian genocide had more common traits with Indonesia than with USSR. In my opinion, that would be a direct violation of neutrality policy.

The same can be said as follows:

• If the article's topic is a MKuCR concept, then the definition of an aggregator source is close to what you propose. However, that means the focus of this article should be the MKuCR theories, including their acceptance and criticism. The events themselves should not be discusses in details, and all facts and figures should be provided with attribution and commentaries.
• If the article's subject are the events (mass killings A, B, C, D, E, F...), then the aggregator source is any article that performs a comparative analysis of more than one of mass killing events. In that case, it does not matter if all of them took place in some Communist state: any comparative analysis that involves at least one event from that list can be considered an aggregator source.

--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:40, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I support the view "the article's topic is a MKuCR concept, then the definition of an aggregator source is close to what you propose. However, that means the focus of this article should be the MKuCR theories, including their acceptance and criticism. The events themselves should not be discusse[d] in details, and all facts and figures should be provided with attribution and commentaries." However, I propose the article to be called Victims of Communism, which is the term actually used to describe this topic, as there is no agreed terminology among genocide and other scholars. The article would describe the MKuCR topic which appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature, where it is called "victims of Communism", and the concept or theory of MKuCR proposed by some authors and scholars, structured exactly as you proposed in the first example. We could divide this into Popular and Scholarly literature sections, would you agree?

Buidhe, I agree "if it were up to me we'd just delete the damn thing since it seems virtually impossible to cover it in an encyclopedic way" but that is simply not going to happen because the theory, which is not widely accepted among scholars and is a minority, if not outright fringe view, at least as currently structured and reported in this article, is held as mainstream among our imagination and is legitimised by the Prague Declaration, meaning anyone who disagree that Communism and Nazism were equal is an apologist for genocide and mass killing, even though the equivalency thing was first proposed by revisionist right-wing historians such as Courtois, Furet, Nolte and others; and it amounts to Holocaust trivialisation and overlaps with the double genocide theory, both of which are widely popular and promoted in anti-communist, right-wing and far-right circles, and is hardly 'centrist.' However, a restructuring and whole rewriting, with a renaming, could work, that is why it would be helpful if we start a draft or sandbox to start this. Davide King (talk) 05:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

See the next section

IMO, "Victims of Communism" implies the article's subject is the victims themselves, not some theory, so I am afraid other users wil start to add more and more facts about real of perceived victims of Communism to the article, and it will become a collection of various facts. If other participants of this discussion agree that the article's topic is some theory that links Communism and mass killings, the title should be different. We can either keep the current title of change it to "Communism and mass killing" to emphasize that the article's focus is a link (or a lack thereof) between Communism and mass killing.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:46, 2 December 2020 (UTC) We have had long, long discussion over the title and the current one Mass killings under communist regimes was the best compromise in the end. Are we going to start repeating all the archived arguments on why the name should be changed? We agreed long ago that use of small c "communist regime" was preferable to using big C "Communism" because the mass killing were primarily due to the implementation of what the regimes viewed to be Communism rather than due to the Communist ideology directly, that why the proposed titles Victims of Communism and Communism and mass killings don't make sense. --Nug (talk) 16:22, 2 December 2020 (UTC) Nug, actually it should be capitalised because the capitalisation refers to the Communist party regime, not to communism. Of all sources, The Black Book of Communism makes this distinction and capitalises Communism, so we should do the same for Communist-related articles. Finally, I would like to note that consensus can change, I was not involved in this article until recently and that the arguments by Siebert et al. for why the article is problematic, synthesis and violates NPOV are still valid and should not be dismissed but taken seriously. Davide King (talk) 19:10, 2 December 2020 (UTC) Nug, another possibility could be Communist death toll but I believe Victims of Communism is more accurate because that is the narrative used in popular literature and by some scholarly sources, albeit minority views, that it was "Communism" to blame, hence those are "victims of Communism." The topic should not be about the events themselves, which we already discuss in detail at the relevant articles, but about "a linkage between mass killings in Communist states and Communism", i.e. as a theory or concept that is very popular in mass media and popular literature but it is a minority views in academia, hence why my proposal to divide it into Popular and Scholarly literature. Davide King (talk) 19:56, 2 December 2020 (UTC) Paul Siebert, editors could only interpret VOC that way if they used the etymological fallacy: that the present-day meaning of a phrase should be similar to its historical meaning. For example, Semites includes Arabs and Jews, but anti-Semitism refers only to prejudice against Jews. Some editors disingenuously argue that Arab nationalists cannot be anti-Semitic because they are pro-Arab. In the case of VOC, we would follow the definition used in reliable sources and in the literature of the proponents of the concept, which is that the Communists murdered 100 million people for ideological reasons. That's why in fact I supported keeping the original name of the article, Communist genocide. Both those titles are more common than MKuCR, which is the title of only two articles, this one and the one in Metapedia. TFD (talk) 17:57, 2 December 2020 (UTC) The Four Deuces, I agree. Victims of Communism is the actual name for this topic and concept. Paul Siebert, I believe The Four Deuces gave a very valid explanation for why your concerns are overblown and that we should start focusing on the restructuring, which will show that Victims of Communism is the accurate name for the theory and concept. Davide King (talk) 19:13, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, TFD and Nug, please, stay focused. The current section is about the criteria for the aggregate source selection to make the topic coverage more comprehensive and neutral. That is NOT something that can be found in archives, that is a totally new question. Again, that section is NOT about the article's name, and NOT about the article's topic. If you want to discuss these two questions (or other questions), please, do that eslewhere. I would be grateful if you all clearly answered the following questions (I reproduce them below for your convenience): Do you agree with the following?

• If the topic of the current article is a linkage between mass killings in Communist states and Communism (in other words, the idea that mass killings in Communist states had some essential common traits, and therefore, they should be discussed as some single phenomenon; I denote that topic as "A"), then an aggregator source that can be used for this article is ""any article or book that discusses more than one mass killing event in at least two different states defined by the author as "Communist"." (a definition "X"). However, that means the focus of this article should be the MKuCR theories, including their acceptance and criticism. The events themselves should not be discusses in details, and all facts and figures should be provided with attribution and commentaries.
• If the article's subject is the discussion of the mass killing events that took place in Communist states, so the primary topic is theh killings that happened in Communist states (the topic "B"), then the aggregator source is "any article or book that performs a comparative analysis of more than one mass killing events, and at least one of those mass killings took place in some Communist state". (a definition "Y") In that case, the article's topic is not supposed to change, but the set of aggregator sources must be significantly expanded to achieve neutrality.

In this talk page section, I don't want to discuss what should be the article's topic. I want clear answers to a simple question: "do you agree that if the article's topic is "A", the aggregators sources are defined as "X", and if the topic is "B", the aggregator sources are "Y""? If you don't, how would you define what should be considered an aggregator source for this article? Thank you in advance for your cooperation and you short and clear answers. --Paul Siebert (talk) 18:09, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, as I stated above, I agree the article's topic should be A. While I am not yet sure on the aggregator criteria, I suppose it is fine, but I think it would be helpful to start a draft and sandbox to see how it may look like with different source aggregators and choose which one is the more appropriate. Davide King (talk) 19:56, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, if the article topic was A ("a linkage between mass killings in Communist states and Communism"), then an aggregator source (that is, a source upon which the existence of the article was justified) would be one in which that article topic was discussed as a distinct topic for multiple Communist states. An aggregator source would not be X ("any article or book that discusses more than one mass killing event in at least two different states defined by the author as "Communist"") because such a source may discuss those mass killing events in a way that has nothing to do with the states being communist. That is, a source may discuss mass killing in two communist states among several other non-communist states as part of a discussion of a different topic altogether, such as "mass killing in Europe". If the topic in the source is not about "communist states", then it does not act as a justification of the topic A article's existence. It may still be used as a supplemental source for relevant details (assuming there are other sources that do discuss the article topic distinctly and justify the article's existence).

If the article topic was B ("the mass killing events that took place in Communist states"), then an aggregator source is one in which mass killing in multiple Communist states is discussed as a distinct topic. Definition Y ("any article or book that performs a comparative analysis of more than one mass killing events, and at least one of those mass killings took place in some Communist state.") is incorrect because again there might be a source that discusses multiple mass killing events in communist and non-communist states together without making the communist state killings a distinct topic of its own.

There are an almost infinite number of topics found in reliable sources (more than six million of which have articles in the English wikipedia, currently). A single source can have any number of topics discussed within it, limited only by the length of the source. In order to justify a wikipedia article, there really just has to be sufficient material found in reliable sources to support an article without any original research/synthesis by wikipedia editors being required. But the sources that justify the article's existence do have to discuss the topic of the article as a distinct topic. One important point to remember: sources do not have to be unbiased. WP:NPOV is a requirement for wikipedia editors to present sources fairly, not for sources to be free of bias or opinion. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:42, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree. (what a surprise :-) ). Jesus, since I last time read the things here, again exponentially roboust talk page material has been generated, will need time to read carefully the next section, and I think I am not alone....(KIENGIR (talk) 10:20, 3 December 2020 (UTC))

AmateurEditor&KIENGIR, it seems there is some logic problem with what you say. The topic "A" is not mass killings per se, but some set of theories that link mass killings with Communism. In that case, the aggregator sources you are talking about are the objects of discussion, the article cannot and should not be written from their perspective.

With regard to the topic "B", it is not some theory(s), but the events (human deaths and the events that lead to them). Per our policy, All facts and significant points of view on a given subject should be treated in one article except in the case of a spinoff sub-article. Therefore, if the Great Chinese famine is discussed in some source in a context of Bengal famine, that source MUST be presented in this article. If some source discusses Cambodian genocide in a context of Indonesian genocide, it MUST be presented in that article. And the Great Purge must be discusses in the same terms, and using the same approach and sources both here and in the Great Purge article. If some source links mass killing with low political culture, backward economy, or sees more common features in Asian genocides than in Communism linked genocide, that viewpoint MUST be duly represented in that article.

In contrast, if we select only those sources that discuss mass killings primarily in a context of Communism, and group them together according to that trait, we artificially narrow the range of sources that tell about that subject. I respect your opinion, but we have the policy, and what you propose directly contradicts to that.

If we chose the option "B", this article must be fully consistent with specialized articles (Great Purge, etc), which means it must use the same sources (or the most essential subset thereof), and it cannot describe these events from different perspective, and it cannot made generalizations that are not universally supported by main authors who write about each specific event or each specific country. And, importantly, it must include all comparative general theories related to these events: if Cabmodian genocide is compared with Indonesia, Bosnia or Rwanda, that discussion MUST be presented here, because that is required by our policy ("All facts and significant points of view on a given subject should be treated in one article ...", and, since the subject of the article are mass killings, not some theory, then all significant points of view of Cambodian genocide must be presented).

To avoid duplication of the text, I suggest User:Nug to consider that a response to his post below.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:00, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, for an article about topic A ("some set of theories that link mass killings with Communism"), we would need sources that specifically contain topic A. That is, we would need sources that discuss a set of theories/multiple theories that link mass killings with Communism. It would not be enough to just have one source that discusses one theory and another source that discusses a different theory with neither of them referencing the other. Creating an article about the set of theories based on those two sources would be a form of original research because the topic of the set of theories does not exist in either source. It would fail the general notability guideline for topics, which says a topic must have "received significant coverage in reliable sources" (""Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content."). In this case, topic A does not exist in either source and is only emergent when wikipedia editors group different sources together.

For an article about topic B, "the events (human deaths and the events that lead to them)" that took place in communist states, the key words in the WP:NPOVFACT sentence are "on a given subject" ("All facts and significant points of view on a given subject should be treated in one article except in the case of a spinoff sub-article."). If an event or communist regime is included in a source about a different subject, then it should be included in the article about that other subject (such as an article about the comparison of the Cambodia Genocide with the Indonesia killing). If the source that discusses a comparison between the Cambodia Genocide and the Indonesia killing contains relevant material to the article on topic B, then it can still be used there in a supplemental capacity. If there is a source that discusses mass killing generally without mention of topic B, it should only be used in the topic B article in a supplementary capacity if it has relevant material. You probably aren't suggesting this, but to be clear: we cannot use a source that does not mention topic B to imply that topic B is not accepted as a topic by that source, because that would be synthesis. Based on past discussions with you, I believe you are saying that we must include sources with other explanations of communist killing events that do not relate to communism as the cause and I agree those sources can be included as supplemental sources but they cannot serve as the basis for the article.

About Mkucr (which is about the set of mass killings under communist regimes, not about a set of theories), it would not be enough that one communist regime killing was discussed in one source and another communist regime killing was discussed in another source. To justify Mkucr as an article, we must have sources that discuss mass killing under multiple communist regimes (and we do). Single regime/single event sources can still contribute to the article in a supplementary capacity. But if all we had were the single regime/event sources, the topic would fail WP:GNG. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:58, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

I am sorry, AmateurEditor, but all of that is not important now, because I recently realised the article has much more serious problem: it tells about the same events as a number of other articles, and it discusses several theories that have already been discussed in other articles, which means it is a huge POV fork. Our policy does not allow that, especially, taking into account that this article describes the facts from a totally different perspective than other articles do. We either fix that, or the article will be deletd. I would be grateful if you commented on how my proposal to fix it and to save from deletion. Therefore, the only option is "A" (the theories and generalization). This topic is definitely notable (The BB is considered one of the most notable books, although one of the most controversial), and discussion of all controvesies surrounding the theories that links Communism and mass killings would be a very interesting and useful story. --Paul Siebert (talk) 06:07, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree this discussion, while interesting, is not going anywhere. I suggest we take a break, The Four Deuces and Paul Siebert to work together on a draft for a rewriting and discuss all this again only after that is done to hear what everyone else think of it and whether it should be implemented. Davide King (talk) 15:51, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't want to waste my time for draft preparation until the major disagreement has been resolved. However, I propose to look at that at a different angle (see below).--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:52, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

None of this explains why Metapedia is the only other 'encyclopedia' doing this and having this article. What should be done, if it must be discussed, is to have an article about, e.g. Soviet genocide (Soviet genocide), where we discuss events that have been described or called as genocide, explain why and present what is the consensus among scholars. Same thing for Colonial genocide (colonial genocide), Nazi genocide (Nazi genocide), etc. None of those should be redirects because they redirect to a description of the events whereas those articles should be about discussing which events were genocides, why they were and what is the consensus among scholars; and Nazi genocide is not certainly limited to the Holocaust, that was not the only event for which they have been guilty of genocide. There are sources that discuss both of those, yet we only discuss Communist genocide as a stand-alone article; this show there is an implicit anti-communist bias. This article should present the theory that link all those events together and explain why those authors link them and present the opposing views. Capitalism and genocide (capitalist genocide) should present the views of the authors who see a link between the two, not detailing the events which we already discuss elsewhere.

Do you even disagree with any of this? What you actually propose should be incorporated at Genocide, Mass killing, etc., where we create a section specifically discussing Communist genocides and mass killings; after all, Valentino's book is not about communism but about genocides and mass killings in the 20th century, hence it should be discussed in those articles. This article should merely presents the theory, narrative of "victims of Communism" and explain the views of the authors who see a link between Communist regimes and those opposing it, as proposed by Buidhe, The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert and I. This is not a deletion and in my view it is a fine compromise, so what is the issue? Davide King (talk) 15:40, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, wikipedia operates under its own policies, not what some other website/encyclopedia chooses to do or not do. Metapedia is irrelevant to this discussion. If you are concerned that this article exists but other articles do not, then find sources justifying those other articles and go create them. The existence of one wikipedia article does not depend on the existence of other wikipedia articles. Having this article is not "anti-communist bias" on the part of wikipedia. Remember, WP:NPOV applies within articles, not between articles. "Victims of Communism" as a topic is not neutral, so I don't see how it is better than what we have now. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:58, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, does not the fact Metapedia as the only other encyclopedia to have this article raise alarms? How is "Victims of Communism", an actual topic as noted by The Four Deuces ("The only narrative that makes the claim that all these deaths are related and provides a tally is that of the Victims of Communism/Communist Genocide, originally expressed in the Introduction to the Black Book. It is covered extensively in reliable secondary sources independent of the proponents. Therefore it is possible to write a neutral article without synthesis."), not neutral but the currently-structured article is? The article is titled Mass killings under communist regimes but it should be titled Victims of Communism because essentially it is that what is saying, except this is presented as an uncontroversial fact and mainstream view, rather than a narrative and at best significant minority view.

This is justified because the events did indeed happen but ignores the fact that the link between communism and mass killing, and the link all communist regimes as a single phenomenon, is a theory and narrative proposed by some authors, journalists and a few scholars. This also misses the point that, as explained by Paul Siebert, if the main topic is the set of events themselves, it is (1) a POV fork because all these events already have their own articles; and it is (2) synthesis because it "combine[s] material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources."

You are essentially supporting a POV fork and you admitted it yourself, albeit you do not think it is, by writing this "is about the set of mass killings under communist regimes, not about a set of theories", but we already have articles about them and it is synthesis to mix them all together just because they happened under a Communist regime. This can be easily solved by following the proposal suggested by Paul Siebert which would keep the article rather than delete it. You are essentially proposing the events themselves as the main topic whereas Paul Siebert et al. are proposing the theory that link them all together.

As also noted by Buidhe, your topic, which is the current one, violates our guidelines. In our view, it lumps different topics together, taking the Communist mass killing concept from Valentino, even though Valentino was not about "the set of mass killings under communist regimes" but "Communist mass killing" as a subcategory of mass killinɡ; similarly, Courtois was about the evils of Communism in general and Rummel about mass killings by governments in general; in other words, all three's main topic was not about the events as you propose but as the theory or concept, hence the proposal of Communist mass killing as subcategory of mass killing, Communism as evil and worse than Nazism, and how government is the biggest killer but democratic governments are the least likely to kill. In other words, the sources themselves actually support the topic summarised by Siebert (i.e. the theory) rather than yours (i.e. the events).

So these three authors are mixed up together to list all mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pol, and add all excess deaths under all Communist regimes, even as only few scholars and from one side list all non-combatant victims (famines, wars, etc.), to suggest all these were "victims of Communism", its more accurate title that, however, does not really solve all those issues (undue weight, original research, synthesis, more than one topic, NPOV, etc.). Davide King (talk) 06:54, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Again, what metapedia does or does not do has no bearing on what wikipedia does. I don't pay attention to metapedia and I suggest you don't either. Besides the fact that wikipedia articles must be judged on their own merits according to wikipedia policies, there are millions of articles in wikipedia that exist nowhere else (assuming we are not counting the thousands of mirror sites), so having an article topic appear somewhere else is not a problem. If you are suggesting that metapedia's having an article means the topic itself is inherently biased because metapedia is inherently biased, then I think you haven't thought that through: I'm sure there are any number of articles there with counterparts here that you would not object to. I also suggest you verify other editor's points yourself before repeating them. People are often incorrect; in this case, a quick search of this article's archives for "metapedia" will show you that not only is metapedia not the only other encyclopedia with an article on this topic, but TFD acknowledged that it wasn't back in 2015. Having said that, again, metapedia makes no difference to us here. The word "victim" is non-neutral because it assumes regime culpability for those killed. Some sources excuse famine deaths in particular as inadvertent. Because there is no consensus name for the topic of those killed by communist regimes, we are required to follow WP:NDESC and make a "non-judgemental descriptive title". That there were large numbers of non-combatants killed by communist regimes is indeed an uncontested fact (it's the details that are contested). I will address Paul Siebert's POVFork argument in that section below, but you are incorrect about this article being synthesis. And if you believe the topic to be synthesis, then changing the name wouldn't change that, so you appear to be contradicting yourself there. If you are saying that the "victim of communism" topic is a different topic, then it's irrelevant to this article. Similar but distinct topics can both exist as separate articles. It's the same topic in different articles that poses a problem. And remember, a topic may exist in a source even if it is not the main topic of the source. Per WP:GNG: "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material." I'm reluctant to respond to your repetition of Buidhe's point because something may have been lost in translation, but "Communist mass killing" and "the set of mass killings under communist regimes" are the same thing. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:01, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Note that The Four Deuces' other encyclopedia is Conservapedia. Ah well, we are good when the only other two 'encyclopedias' are Conservapedia and Metapedia! While I agree "[W]ikipedia articles must be judged on their own merits according to [W]ikipedia policies", you missed the point it is still alarming these are the only two 'encyclopedias' to cover the topic; if the topic, as currently-structured, was a notable and as widespread as you claim it is, we would see it appear in other, actual and proper encyclopedias. "If you are suggesting that metapedia's having an article means the topic itself is inherently biased because metapedia is inherently biased, then I think you haven't thought that through [...]" Again, you are just assuming things. What are these articles you are referring to? Anti-communist mass killings should be similarly deleted, so your point, "I'm sure there are any number of articles there with counterparts here that you would not object to", is moot.

You write "[t]he word 'victim' is non-neutral because it assumes regime culpability for those killed" but we already do so! The current article and sources used already treat these as victims of communism and that government and the ideology were to blame. In addition, I would like to see these "sources [that] excuse famine deaths in particular as inadvertent" because that is not what we say; all the estimates used include these famines. They consider the Great Chinese Famine and the Holdomor as part of the Communist death toll and, as noted by Getty and Paul Siebert, over half of the 100 million deaths which are attributed to communism were due to famines; so if, as you say, "[s]ome sources excuse famine deaths in particular as inadvertent", the proponents of the concept (Courtois, Rummel, et al.) certainly do not; and these who do, like Getty and others, do not accept or support the concept.

I also take it as an insult you wrote "I also suggest you verify other editor's points yourself before repeating them", like I cannot think for myself and I have not already analyised both your and their points! I am actually willing to change my mind in light of evidence, but neither your nor Nug, nor others, have been willing to do the same. That you think "[I am] incorrect about this article being synthesis" is your word against ours, so just repeating this will not change anything; I believe Paul Siebert et al. gave enough convincing evidence and reasoning arguments. "And if you believe the topic to be synthesis, then changing the name wouldn't change that, so you appear to be contradicting yourself there." This misses the point we are not proposing a name change; Paul Siebert is more concerned about the structure and they, Buidhe, The Four Deuces and I are supporting a rewriting and restructuring, not just changing the name. Again, Buidhe and The Four Deuces have shown how Victims of Communism is actually discussed in secondary, independent reliable sources and it does not violate POV title because it is the common name, there are exceptions and this fullfills it. You are supporting a topic about the events that is already discussed elsewhere and that this article should be about the theory or concept that links all these events into a single phenomenon. You want that we do both, that we report the events, of which we already write in other articles, and the theory or concept supported by some authors that links communism and mass killings as a single event and phenomenon. That you think "'Communist mass killing' and 'the set of mass killings under communist regimes' are the same thing" is part of the problem. Davide King (talk) 04:37, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

If you agree that "[W]ikipedia articles must be judged on their own merits according to [W]ikipedia policies", then we no longer need to continue discussing other encyclopedias/websites and what they do or don't do. Per policy WP:NDESC, the descriptive title should "reflect a neutral point of view" and avoid "judgmental and non-neutral words". Per guideline WP:BIASEDSOURCES, "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective." About the disagreement over famine deaths, we have a whole section on that in the article called "Debate over famines". If you want me to change my mind about something, prove that I am incorrect by citing both the specific policy language being violated and also the specific article language that shows this violation (not your paraphrasing of it). This is not really a matter of opinion. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:32, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, none of this really addresses my points, so it is a waste of time and I expected more from a good user like you. Paul Siebert et al. clearly explained the policy and guidelines' violations. The problem is not biased sources, but that they are cherrypicked and synthesised with Courtois et al. and presented as an universally-accepted terminology and view. Attribution does not mean much when these are minority opinions and come only from one side, and do not even treat this as a single event or phenomena. You essentially want this article to be about the events, but we already have articles for all of them, so this article should only be about the scholarly theory and narrative that Communism killed 100 millions and was worse than Nazism (Courtois), that it was a "Red Holocaust" (Rosefielde) and the biggest killer of the 20th century (Rummel). Davide King (talk) 08:34, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul, thanks for the notification, but indeed I was curious as well about this thread...here I mainly agree with Amateureditor, and yes, it's irrelevant what would be on Metapedia or other encyclopedias, the former anyway copy-paste many articles and content from Wikipedia, etc. Will check as well the ongoing thread down.(KIENGIR (talk) 11:17, 8 December 2020 (UTC))

KIENGIR, you probably noticed that I myself never use references to Metapedia or other encyclopaedias, because I also believe that type arguments are not working (imo, the argument was not that the same topic is found in Metapedia, but that it is found nowhere else but Metapedia). Anyway, I started this thread to resolve the problem with "aggregator sources" selection criteria. My point is that the current selection resembles circular reasoning, which is usually typical for non-neutral editorial style:

1. The editor finds some topic (for example "mass killings under Communist regimes"), but performs no check to verify if it is mainstream.

2. The editor selects only those sources that describe that concept.

3. Other sources are either ignored or moved to "Debates over..." section"

4. Bingo! You got a perfectly non-neutral article!

In contrast, a neutral way would be the following:

1. Make a list of all major events (no matter how they are called in literature). In our case, these events are all mass mortality events in Communist states.

2. Summarise all significant opinia about those events (for each event taken separately or grouped according some criterion: if O'Grada writes about Chinese famine and Irish famine, his opinion still must be taken into consideration. If Fein writes about Cambodia and Indonesia, tis article should also be included).

3. Demonstrate that most sources describe those events as "mass killing", "democide", "classicide", "politicide", and that they agree that there were more commonality between them than with other events.

4. If they do, then the article's concept is valid, and aggregator sources are selected correctly.

I did, partially, that work, and I found that mainstream scholarship do not describe these events as such. I also found that some scholars group Cambodia with Indonesia, or Stalinism with Nazism. I also found that Valentino, which is considered THE aggregator source, is also misused in this article, because he did not include Afghanistan, and he wrote majority Communist regimes did not commit mass killings. He also set a strict criterion (no less than 50,000 killed in no more that 5 years), and many events listed here do not pass this criterion. That means Valentino included only a part of the described events, and I don't see why Valentino, who excluded Afghanistan, is considered an aggregator sources, but other authors who excluded USSR are not considered aggregator sources.

Anyway, the problems with policy violation are even more serious, so I suggest you not to waste your time with that thread.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:08, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I know you directed this comment to KIENGIR, but I want to make three points. 1) This topic is mainstream as far as I can tell. The four aggregator sources I normally point to are all top tier (mainstream) academic publishers: Cornell University Press, Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press, and Princeton University Press. When asked to present sources saying this in not mainstream, you have tended to resort to what other sources do not say, which is very weak evidence. 2) Valentino is considered an aggregator source for this topic because he discusses mass killing under communist regimes as a group. Another source that does not discuss mass killing by communist regimes as a group (but happens to include a communist regime in some other group of regimes/mass killings) is not an aggregator source for this topic but would be an aggregator source for whatever topic they are discussing. That second source could still contribute to this article as a supplemental source if it has something relevant to say (so that the points it makes are not being unfairly excluded), but it cannot serve as the basis for the article's existence or structure because it does not contain the article topic of mass killings under communist regimes as a group. 3) Valentino uses "mass killing" in two different senses, which can be confusing. One is the generic sense that other sources use when defining the various -cide terms (and as is used in this article title to cover all the various terms that mean killing on a large scale) but he also assigns a very specific definition to "mass killing" in his book (with a definition of "at least fifty thousand intentional deaths over the course of five or fewer years" that other sources do not seem to use except when citing him). In his book, when he says most communist regimes have avoided this level of mass killing ("Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or have been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing. In addition to shedding light on why some communist states have been among the most violent regimes in history, therefore, I also seek to explain why other communist countries have avoided this level of violence.") the "level" must be read as the "50,000 killed within 5 years or less" level of mass killing, not generic mass killing. It is only this very high level that he is saying most communist regimes have avoided. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:26, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, your logic is deeply flawed. You implicitly assume that mass killing by communist regimes as a group is a mainstream topic, and, based on that poorly substantiated assumption, you select only those sources that define this topic as such. That is cherry-picking in a chemically pure form, and typical circular reasoning.

You failed to demonstrate that that approach (a description of mass killing by communist regimes as a group) is universally accepted by historians, you just declare it is. You totally ignore alternative explanations and alternative theories. And you totally ignore the fact that most sources you base the article upon are either outdated (Rummel), incorrect (Rummel), severely criticized (Courtois and Rosefielde), or are just tangentially relevant (Valentino).--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:01, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I am not just assuming that mass killing by communist regimes as a group is a mainstream topic, because I have shown several high-quality reliable sources for that topic that are published by top-tier (mainstream) academic publishers (Cornell University Press, Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press, and Princeton University Press). It is demonstrably a mainstream topic based on those four sources alone (Valentino, Mann, Semelin, and Chirot & McCauley). I have also shown mainstream sources at the other end of the reliable sources spectrum, newspapers, discussing the topic ([https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-million-dead-1510011810 The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Washington Post). That is the opposite of a "poorly substantiated assumption". It is not cherry-picking to select sources for an article by looking for those that discuss the topic of the article, it is what we are required to do to justify the article's existence. Per WP:GNG, "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list." I have repeatedly agreed that contradictory sources can be included in the article when they are found. Some of them are in the article already. Criticism of the sources by other reliable sources is appropriate for inclusion, but is not grounds for removing those sources. We are supposed to describe disputes between sources and not take sides, so adding the criticism of Rummel is legitimate, but removing him or others because they have been criticized is not. And I have not ignored the dates (or "outdated"ness) of sources such as Rummel; just the opposite: all the estimates are presented in a chronological timeline with their years of publication so the reader can see how these estimates have evolved over time as new sources have been published. You, on the other hand, have advocated for us "fixing" what reliable sources say and have insisted that single-country/event sources that do not mention communist regimes as a whole are not doing so because they reject the idea of grouping communist regimes in this way, which is itself a very "poorly substantiated assumption". AmateurEditor (talk) 06:19, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

KIENGIR, the point is the fact only 'encyclopedias' such as Conservapedia and Metapedia discuss the topic shows that it is not a notable topic and not as widespread and accepted as you guys imply but the fact is "mainstream scholarship do not describe these events as such"; again, if it was, it should be very easy to demonstrate that. So yes, Paul Siebert, "the argument was not that the same topic is found in [Conservpedia or] Metapedia, but that it is found nowhere else but [Conservapedia and] Metapedia." I believe this is also what The Four Deuces meant when they made the example. Anyway, as you yourself suggested, the topic should be about mass or excess mortality, not mass killings, although I still agree with The Four Deuces that "[the] approach I think is that the article should [not] address the question, 'How many people did the Communists kill and why did they do it?'" That is synthesis.

As noted and succinctly explained by The Four Deuces, "the only way to do that is through synthesis because only VOC advocates actually answer the questions. No serious scholarship exists that studies all the killings and compares them." I believe the article should simply describe the theory and narrative of the 100 millions "victims of Communism", with a popular and scholarly section, since these who propose the narrative rely on the literature of Courtois, Rummel et al., so we should present both, as I wrote here:

[These opposed to any change] essentially want this article to be about the events [and mass killings, even though there is not an universally-accepted terminology or scholarly literature that link them together like we do, as explained again and again by Paul Siebert et al.], but we already have articles for all of them, so this article should only be about the scholarly theory and [popular] narrative that Communism killed 100 millions and was worse than Nazism (Courtois), that it was a "Red Holocaust" (Rosefielde) and the biggest killer of the 20th century (Rummel); and the popular narrative described by The Four Deuces that essentially amounts to either double genocide theory or Holocaust trivialisation and obfuscation, namely that the Allies and the West made the wrong choice by allying with the Soviet Union and how it is used to discredit the left in Europe and rehabilitate Nazi collaborators, who chose the lesser of two evils; and against any allegedly left-leaning policy such as universal health care, or any government control of something [or even that Communist, Nazi and Burmese mass killings are grouped together, with their connection being socialism, pushing the fringe view the Nazis were socialists, while sometimes they see Nazi mass killings as self-protection against Communism. Hence they can put the blame on Communism], that will inevitably result in the Soviet Union et al. Because the introduction to The Black Book of Communism and other scholarly work[s] such as Rosefielde and Rummel [are] used and justified by authors, politicians and others to push the aforementioned described popular narrative, hence why we need to describe both; the scholarly analysis, which is more nuanced, albeit still a minority view; and the non-scholarly, popular but fringe view present in popular literature and promoted by some right-wing politicians and anti-communist organisations.

— Davide King (talk) 17:50, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, notability has a specific meaning in wikipedia based on reliable sources. As I said, most wikipedia articles have no counterparts in any other encyclopedia and this is not a problem as far as wikipedia's notability policy is concerned. I don't see what other points you were trying to make other than repeating/paraphrasing other editors. If you have reliable sources that you think the article should be based on, then present them. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:26, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, Notability actually says "[i]nformation on Wikipedia must be verifiable; if no reliable, independent sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article." Courtois, Rosefielde, Rummel and Valentino are primary sources, i.e. they are the proponents of the link between Communism and mass killings, hence primary sources for the topic; that you think primary sources would be Communist governments rather than the proponents of the topic is part of the problem. All we have are sources from the proponents of the concept or theory; that is what the article should be about, which is actually supported by independent secondary sources, if it is rewritten; the events topic is not, because these are all minority views that make the link. Why do you ignore the fact scholars argue that a connection between the events in Pol Pot's Cambodia and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union are far from evident and that Pol Pot's study of Marxism in Paris is insufficient for connecting radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge's murderous anti-urbanism under the same category, or that questioned "[w]hether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together—just because they are labeled Marxist or communist—is a question the authors scarcely discuss" and which is also what we do here? And honestly, I am tired of you asking me to do the job for you; you are the one who want to keep this article as it is, so why do you not try to add criticism of the concept or that these are all "significant minorities" rather than mainstream, majority or widespread? I would not know how to do that because I think the article needs to be rewritten but perhaps you do. Davide King (talk) 13:37, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, Courtois, Rosefielde, Rummel and Valentino are not primary sources of the topic of mass killings under communist regimes; they're secondary sources. See WP:PSTS, which says "Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on. Primary sources may or may not be independent sources. An account of a traffic incident written by a witness is a primary source of information about the event; similarly, a scientific paper documenting a new experiment conducted by the author is a primary source on the outcome of that experiment. Historical documents such as diaries are primary sources. [...] A secondary source provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources. Secondary sources are not necessarily independent sources. They rely on primary sources for their material, making analytic or evaluative claims about them.[e] For example, a review article that analyzes research papers in a field is a secondary source for the research.[f] Whether a source is primary or secondary depends on context. A book by a military historian about the Second World War might be a secondary source about the war, but where it includes details of the author's own war experiences, it would be a primary source about those experiences. A book review too can be an opinion, summary or scholarly review."

The article currently includes critical sources (see the "Debate over famines" section and other sentences throughout the article), so that is not being ignored. You say it is a fact that "scholars argue that a connection between the events in Pol Pot's Cambodia and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union are far from evident [...] or that questioned "[w]hether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together", but you haven't presented these sources. No one here should just take your word for it. Especially since you are essentially either saying that calling all these various regimes "Communist" is not generally accepted in the scholarly community or that there were lots of non-combatants killed by these regimes is not generally accepted in the scholarly community (only the famine deaths are controversial; if we ignore the famine deaths, there are still lots of uncontroversial deaths remaining). If you have reliable sources for that, that view can be included in the article (but not until such a source is identified). If you are not willing to demonstrate your assertions with sources, then those assertions should be ignored. Also, the term "significant minority view", per WP:WEIGHT, does not mean outside-the-mainstream. It means "not the majority view", because we do not have a source yet that explicitly described what is the majority view. It may be that there is no majority view at the moment. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:30, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Again, as I wrote above, that is part of the problem because the topic of the article should not be about the events but about the theory that links communism and mass killings; in this, they are primary sources. If this is not enough, I will make an analysis and explain why they are problematic but they can be used for what we propose. That is limited to the debates on the famine; there is no criticism of the concept of linking communism and mass killing, or that communism alone was the cause. The sources are Dallin 2000, David-Fox 2004 and Mecklenburg & Wippermann 1998. I am also going to further analyse Courtois et al. and explain why they are problematic but they can be used for the topic we propose.

"Especially since you are essentially either saying that calling all these various regimes 'Communist' is not generally accepted in the scholarly community [...]." That is not what I wrote or meant, so I suggest you to back down. I was paraphrasing the quote "[w]hether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together—just because they are labeled Marxist or communist—is a question the authors scarcely discuss." What is not accepted is lumping all them together and claim there was a link between communism and mass killing, or that they were all a single event or phenomena. Courtois discuss Afghanistan while Valentino does not and discusses it as part of counter-guerrilla mass killing. Rosefielde limits himself to Stalin, Kim, Mao, Ho and Pol Pot, saying the cause was not found "in Marx's utopian vision or other pragmatic communist transition mechanisms."

"[...] there were lots of non-combatants killed by these regimes is not generally accepted in the scholarly community." No one is denying this. The problem is you want the events to be topic whereas we want the concept that ties all these together to be the topic. What is not accepted is that communism alone was the main culprit (see generic communism theory, mentioned by Paul Siebert, or that there is a link between communism and mass killing is widespread accepted among scholars; it is certainly not accepted among historians of Communism.

Still, if it is not the mainstream majority view, we cannot present this as fact and the topic should be about the concept, theory, or narrative that there is a link between communism and mass killing, and/or that communism or ideology alone was the main culprit and cause. I suggest Buidhe, The Four Deuces and Paul Siebert work on a draft (this is not going nowhere and we are dismissed, villified and our views misunderstood) because you may actually support it but currently you have a misleading view of what we propose, but if you see a draft, that may change your, and others', mind. Davide King (talk) 05:55, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

VOC, Communist genocide, etc

If you don't mind, I'll collapse the part of the previous section that is totally unrelated to the topic. Regarding etymological fallacies, Wikipedia is being edited mostly by amateurs, so if something can be misinterpreted, it will be misinterpreted. If you want, you may waste your time explaining to each newcomers what etymological fallacies are, but I am not sure you will be able to persuade everybody, and, sooner or later some RfC will legalise a totally distorted, fallacious interpretation of that term.

Regarding "Communist genocide", yes, that article had that name originally. However, there were two huge problems there: (i) It pretended that "Communist genocide" was some single event, or a single phenomenon (similar to the Holocaust), which obviously contradicts to what an overwhelming number of scholar think on that account. (ii) An overwhelming majority of mass deaths under Communists were not genocidal deaths, and many authors stress that Communism is an intrinsically non-genocidal doctrine. Read just one source Mao’s China: The WorstNon-Genocidal Regime? by Jean-Louis Margolin, who is incidentally one of two major contributors of the Black Book, and whose opinion, in contrast to the opinion of the author of the worst part of the book, is significantly underrepresented in this article. Incidentally, since Chinese mass killing constitute more than a half of all VOC, that means China was supposed to be excluded from the "Communist genocide" article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:40, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

That is why precisely I oppose using Communist genocide or Communism and mass killings, or using any other terminology on which there is no agreement among scholars themselves. They are not supported by the literature. Another possibility could be Communist death toll but I believe Victims of Communism is more accurate because that is the narrative used in popular literature and by some scholarly sources, albeit minority views, that it was "Communism" to blame, hence those are "victims of Communism." Outlining the "victims of Communism" is exactly what Courtois and Malia tried to do in their infamous introduction. The topic should not be about the events themselves, which we already discuss in detail at the relevant articles, but about a linkage between all excess deaths under Communist states and communism, i.e. as a theory or concept that is very popular in mass media and popular literature ("since the MKuCR topic appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature") but it is a minority views in academia, hence why my proposal to divide it into Popular and Scholarly literature, with criticism of both. Davide King (talk) 20:03, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

No. "Communism and mass killings" is perfectly supported. Some authors (Courtois, Malia, Rosenfielde et al) claim Communism is a primary driver of mass killings, and some of them pile together all premature deaths under Communist regimes to come to a conclusion that Communism was the worst killer in XX century, AND that Communism was much worse than Nazism. Other authors directly criticize these theories, or, importantly provide different explanations. Thus, Valentino totally reject a linkage between mass killings and ideology, and his main idea is that leader's personality played much more important role. I can continue further, but I prefer to do that later, after we resolved the main question.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:12, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether the title accurately reflects the topic, but what the topic is called in mainstream sources. For example, the Boston Massacre, which is mentioned in Non-neutral but common names, was not a massacre, but was inaccurately described as one by partisans for propaganda purposes. The word massacre is even used in the title of articles about events where no one was killed, such as the Saturday Night Massacre, where three high ranking U.S. officials were either dismissed or resigned, but faced no other consequences. MKuCR OTOH is a descriptive title: "if the article topic has no name, it may be a description of the topic." Using that title then allows anything that is a mass killing that occurred in a Communist country to be included. It doesn't matter that the consensus in reliable sources is that the Khmer Rouge murders of ethnic minorities were carried out for nationalist rather than Communist motivations, they were still mass killings under Communist regimes. Therefore all that is required for inclusion is that the source describes a mass killing that occurred under any regime that happened to be Communist. There's no need to explain how these murders are connected. Onion#Varieties by comparison lists various types of onions, but does not explain why scientists consider all of them to be onions. That's because there is scientific consensus that they are all onions. TFD (talk) 20:28, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

No.

Your arguments work only for the well defined topics for which some universally agreed terminology exists. In our case, a situation is totally different. One category of sources (category "A") says some specific Communist mass killings took place, AND they share some significant common traits, AND they include famine deaths into the total death toll, which is huge. Another category of sources ("B") explicitly criticize say the sources "A". The third category ("C") does not apply the term "Communist mass killing/Red Holocaust, VoC etc" to those events, they either group these events totally differently (for example, all genocides, Communist/non-communist, in Asia, or all mass killings in Eastern Europe, both by Hitler and Stalin, Chinese famine vs Bengal famine etc), or they discuss single countries. The category "C" sources use totally different terminology (thus, most famine experts do not use the words "mass killing/genocide/democide etc.", and prefer some neutral terminology, such as "entitlement famine"; experts in Stalinism speak about collectivisation/repression, but they do not use words like "Communist mass killing" at all; some authors openly say that "victims of Stalinism is a politically loaded and vague term, and so on, and so forth). However, it is the category "C" which is the most numerous and highest quality sources that describe mass killing events in Communist states. However, the category "C" plays a subordinated role in MKuCR/CG/VoC articles, because the topic is defined based on the terminology picked from minority sourses (sources "A").

Some topic is well defined if the google search results are not significantly dependent on subtle key word variations. Meanwhile, if you compare this, this, this, this, this. and that, you get totally different sources and totally different authors writing about essentially same set of events. In other words, by using VoC out of many "parallel Universes" only one is selected, and it is represented as a majority view.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:55, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

But there are universally accepted definitions for VOC and CG. They are narratives that ascribe the murder of 100 million people to the Communist movement and ideology. Whether or not their narrative is correct does not mean it is not a narrative. Consider for example the article, "Advocating for the cause of the "victims of Communism" in the European political space: memory entrepreneurs in interstitial fields" It seems like a well-defined topic for the author.

Your approach I think is that the article should address the question, "How many people did the Communists kill and why did they do it?" But the only way to do that is through synthesis because only VOC advocates actually answer the questions. No serious scholarship exists that studies all the killings and compares them. The closest we get is the introduction to the Black Book. Instead, we have numerous articles in reliable sources written by political scientists, not genocide experts, that write about the VOC/CG narrative. They provide a description of what the theory is, who advocates it, why they advocate it, what influence it has, etc. While they may question some of the numbers used, that is not central to their writing.

This reminds me of the long discussion we had on Jewish Bolshevism a long time ago. You thought that article should explain in depth the number of Jews who were Communists. I said that was irrelevant. In the end, my view won out and another editor created an article "Jews and Communism." I complained at articles for deletion that although there were books about Jewish involvement in Communism in various countries that there was no global study. The article was deleted when it was found that the article was based on a study published in an anti-Semitic journal.

TFD (talk) 22:25, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

I believe The Four Deuces hit the nail in the coffin when they wrote "the only way to do that is through synthesis because only VOC advocates actually answer the questions. No serious scholarship exists that studies all the killings and compares them." Hence why no actual topic as you describe exist and this article should be deleted. On the other hand, there is a clear topic about the "victims of Communism" narrative correctly summarised by The Four Deuces, which should be the topic of this article. Again, it seems that while we agree the currently-structured article is problematic, we have different views on the solution. To solve this, it would be good to have a draft or sandbox where we can compare both versions.

My view is that Victims of Communism should be presented as a narrative, structured similarly to Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory and Jewish Bolshevism, where we explain the narrative that "ascribe the murder of 100 million people to the Communist movement and ideology", perhaps adding a section about the "authors (Courtois, Malia, Rosenfielde et al) [who] claim Communism is a primary driver of mass killings, and some of them pile together all premature deaths under Communist regimes to come to a conclusion that Communism was the worst killer in XX century, AND that Communism was much worse than Nazism." Those authors are essentially proposing the same thing, exactly as you quoted them, although they may disagree on some of the estimates and details which we may explain. The narrative is essentially the same and it would not be presented as a majority view.

Then we add a Scholarly analysis section where we mention the criticism, that this is a popular view among the public and anti-communists but fringe or minority view in academia and that most scholars not only disagree with the estimates used by the narrative but they also disagree that communism was the main culprit or that communism, socialism and by extension the left must inevitably end in genocide and mass killings. How would this be any different from your proposal, especially in explaining the theory and narrative rather than the events as in topic A? The Black Book of Communism is the book that popularised the narrative. It would not be presented as a majority view; on the other hand, I think giving a main article to your proposed topic would imply it is a majority view and is widely accepted.

This seems to be the only clear topic that would be encyclopedic and not devolve into original research or synthesis. The problem of your proposed topic is that it is essentially a minority view and cannot be separated from its narrative of Communist victims. If scholars disagree about terminology, that means the topic as you propose does not exist and can only be incorporated as part of the narrative. Do you really disagree with the structure I proposed or just with the name? You seem to be proposing a comparative analysis of mass killings under Communist regimes but I think the main topic should be the narrative, or perhaps these should be separate articles like Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism, or Comparison of Communist regimes in these case, or Comparison of mass killings under Communist regimes, if you want to focus on mass killings. Then again, why not start a section about it at Mass killing and if it grows big, then it can be a main article? Davide King (talk) 23:14, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

It has been 10 years since the fifth attempt to delete the article, time for another AfD? --Nug (talk) 23:48, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, that would make sense. As written by Aquillion, "[t]here would be no harm in putting this article up for AFD - the last AFD was ten years ago, and the article actually spent an absurd six of those years fully-protected (!), part of the reason its quality is still so low. I'm dubious a consensus could actually be found to delete it at this point, but it's somewhat silly to place too much stock in a ten-year-old RFC one way or the other; Wikipedia has changed substantially since then. At least a new AFD would give us a better sense of where things stand."

I just doubt anything good is going to come out from it because we actually disagree on the main topic and users are going to be for Keep that since the events indeed happened, which no ones denies, how dare you proposing it to delete it? This completely misses the point and does not address any arguments we extensively gave for why there is no serious scholar literature for the topic as currently-structured and that an analysis of sources show they do not actually support it (see my analysis here).

Most sources, and the topic itself, are taken for granted because it appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature; indeed, that Communism and Nazism were equal is taken for granted as a mainstream view, in light of the Prague Declaration (a political decision rather than a reflection of scholarly consensus), when it is actually a revisionist and minority view among scholars. As I argued here, this results in confirmation, implicit and systematic bias.

Admittedly, "[a]ll the sources used in the article are correctly treated as 'significant minority' views or weight purposes." If they are all minority views, what is the point? And how are they significant? If they are all minority views, why should it be a standalone article? Especially when it is presented as an uncontroversial academic theory and there is no consensus on the terminology.

So I believe we should at least try to reach a consensus on the main topic before an AfD because many may be for Keep but actually advocate different topics (see how many are mixed up here) and that should be actually taken as Delete since the article is supposed to have only one clear main topic. Davide King (talk) 00:29, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

The problem with this terminology argument Paul presents is that "mass killing" is a core characteristic of "democide", "politicide", "classicide" and "genocide", not just another term. Democide, politicide, classicide and genocide are all mass killings with differing characteristics, but a particular mass killing isn't necessarily one or any of the 'cides, it could be famine too, exacerbated on by Communist regime criminality/incompetence. Just as poodles, greyhounds and bulldogs are all dogs with differing characteristics, yet are all dogs never the less, but a particular dog isn't necessarily a poodle. --Nug (talk) 23:10, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

That puddles and greyhounds are dogs is an objective and independently verifiable fact, which is universally recognized. In contrast, various "-cides" are (with one exception) just occasional intellectual exercises of a small group of authors. It is not a surprise that the attempts to develop such a "terminology" were a complete failure.

Your analogy with dogs works if we speak about something what is really objective, e.g. human deaths. We know that more than one hundred million non-combatant were killed in XX century, and a significant part of them in Communist states. How do different sources discuss them? Some sources discuss Great Leap famine in a context of Bengal and Irish famine, and they provide a very detailed and professional analysis without resorting to usage of various "-cides" and other buzzwords. These articles are authored by real experts, they cover a half of all deaths ascribed to Communism by other authors, and the viewpoint of these scholars is dramatically underrepresented in this article. Another group of sources discusses mass killings in underdeveloped countries with rudimentary political culture and low respect to human life. As a coincidence, significant part of those countries were under Communist rule during a part of its XX century history. They also do not link mass killings exclusively to Communism. And so on, and so forth.

I am expecting some more deep arguments from you.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Putting aside for one moment the connection with mass killing or genocide with communist regimes, we can objectively agree that a genocide is a mass killing, but a mass killing isn't necessarily a genocide? --Nug (talk) 23:48, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Not exactly. Forced assimilation of children was recognized, is some cases, as an act of genocide. Some deportations too. Therefore, some non-lethal events can be an act of genocide.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:52, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, you write "[s]ome sources discuss Great Leap famine in a context of Bengal and Irish famine, and they provide a very detailed and professional analysis without resorting to usage of various "-cides" and other buzzwords." Perhaps this should be discussed at the Great Chinese Famine and Great Leap Forward? There is simply no serious scholarship that "address the question, How many people did the Communists kill and why did they do it?' But the only way to do that is through synthesis because only VOC advocates actually answer the questions." The only one that does a comparative analysis is Crimes Against Humanity under Communist Regimes by Klas-Göran Karlsson, whose notability you disputed. It is a little too little.

I think for what you propose, we need two articles. One about the scholarly analysis of Communist regimes, which includes the events, with both more nuanced and more critical analyses, i.e. it does include mass killings but that its not its sole focus and also includes the proper context and the rising from backward agrarian countries to more advanced industrial ones, without blaming it on "Communism" or saying communism, socialism and by extension the left are prone to mass killings and genocide, hence any proposed radical change is going to result in new "victims of Communism." The other article would be this and be exclusively about the narrative, including both the popular literature (the topic "appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature") and the analysis of authors such as Courtois, Malia, Rosefielde et al. Davide King (talk) 00:08, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Re " Perhaps this should be discussed at the Great Chinese Famine and Great Leap Forward?", all facts and significant points of view on a given subject should be treated in one article except in the case of a spinoff sub-article. That is our policy, and it is not negotiable.

Re "There is simply no serious scholarship that address the question, How many people did the Communists kill and why did they do it?'" What do you mean? There is a lot of scholarship about various deaths in Cambodia, China, USSR, as well as other countries. Yes, there is almost no serious scholarship that combine all deaths in Communist states into one category. The reason is obvious: serious authors do not consider them a single event. Indeed, the causes of Great Purge and Cambodian genocide are totally different, and there were probably more common features between Cambodia and Indonesia than between Cambodia and USSR (remember, Cambodian genocide was provoked by American bombing, Khmer Rouge were supported by the US, and the genocide stopped due to the Soviet supported Vietnamese intervention).--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:24, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

The problem is that there should be no spinoff sub-article, as explained by The Four Deuces below. "[T]here is almost no serious scholarship that combine all deaths in Communist states into one category." That is exactly what I was referring to, when I wrote that, so perhaps we have a different understanding and we are referring to different things? You are proposing a comparative analysis, The Four Deuces and I are proposing the narrative that combine "all deaths in Communist states into one category." If they do not consider a single event, then we should not have a single article either. At best we may have an article comparing, what it was?, with the Indonesian mass killings. The only sources that make a comparative analysis of Communist regimes is Crimes against Humanity under Communist Regimes by Karllson. If all the other sources make a comparative analysis of only two Communist regimes, then either are not notable for a main article or they should not be mixed up and synthesis, i.e. if a source makes a comparative analysis of the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia, the article will be Comparative analysis of the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia, we do not mix up all Communist regimes together or use titles implying that, such as Communism and mass killings or Mass killings under Communist regimes. Davide King (talk) 00:42, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, while your examples (cultural Marxism, Jewish Bolshevism) are fringe theories, the same applies for mainstream majority and minority views. Unless a theory represents consensus mainstream thought (e.g., evolution or climate change), we don't present it as a given. In social sciences of course, there are far fewer theories that enjoy consensus support than in natural sciences.

Paul Siebert, if the Great Leap Forward famine was similar in cause to the Irish famine, why would we include it in this article? We don't have an article "Accidental automobile deaths under Communist regimes" because there is no obvious connection between automobile deaths in various Communist countries. We could of course find sources for automobile deaths in each Communist country and create n article similar to this one.

Nug, I agree that under most definitions, genocide is form of mass killing. Forced assimilation is sometimes called genocide because it had the same objective - the destruction of a race - and was often used in tandem with mass killings.

TFD (talk) 00:20, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

We include it because some authors (Courtois, Rosefielde, Rummel) describe that famine as mass killing and add all victims to the total "Communism death toll", which perfectly supports their theory about Communism as the worst murderer.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:27, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, I do not disagree with anything you wrote. I think you are referring to the fact many users feel we should say why a theory is correct or wrong, when only "a theory represent[ing] consensus mainstream thought (e.g., evolution or climate change)" can be "present[ed] as given." As I wrote, I agree that we would simply describe the narrative. Or were you referring to my Scholarly analysis (response or whatever one wants to call it; we may have no section of it and simply incorporate in the body, which would be better) section proposal, which you would oppose for the reasons you just enounced?

Paul Siebert, the problem is that "add[ing] all victims to the total 'Communism death toll', which perfectly supports their theory about Communism as the worst murderer", is exactly what the narrative is about, so I still fail to see on what we actually disagree, other than you feeling Victims of Communism is a POV title or that it implies it is a majority view; it does not, as explained by The Four Deuces. The authors you listed are espousing the same "victims of Communism" narrative The Four Deuces and I propose to be the main topic. As I wrote above, this does not preclude us from presenting those authors' views and their interpretation. Davide King (talk) 00:52, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

@TFD's "Your approach I think is that the article should address the question, "How many people did the Communists kill and why did they do it?"" No. I thought I already explained that, but let me do that again. There are some objective and universally recognized facts about mass deaths under Communist regimes. We know that nearly 50 million died as a result of famine, diseases and war. Some other events were war crimes, repressions, deportations etc. All of that are facts. These facts have already been carefully analyzed in specialized scholarly publications, and some common causes were identified for some of those cases, whereas others are explained separately from other events. All of that is perfectly known, and we even have separate WP articles for almost every event, starting from Katyn massacre to Great Chinese Famine. We don't need, and we cannot discuss all of that again, because our policy does not allow us to do so. What we can and should do is the following. Some, relatively small, group of authors argue that all those deaths were mass killings (democide, genocide, Red Hololcaust etc), and all of them were a direct consequence of Communism, and they claim that that makes Communism the worst XX century killer. Some authors add explicitly that it was far worse than Nazism. These theories have a significant support among some journalists and general public, especially in Central Europe. This article should discuss these theories, their strengths and weaknesses, their support and criticism. That would be a quite legitimate topic.. This time, have I been clear enough?--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:49, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I do not see how that is any different from what The Four Deuces and I are actually proposing, that is the narrative of "victims of Communism" proposed by those authors which has "significant support among some journalists and general public, especially in Central Europe." Nor I see how "[s]ome, relatively small, group of authors argue that all those deaths were mass killings (democide, genocide, Red Hololcaust etc), and all of them were a direct consequence of Communism, and they claim that that makes Communism the worst XX century killer" is precluted from what The Four Deuces and I are proposing or an article called Victims of Communism. Those victims, according to the narrative, include all those events, but we should not describe them; we should simply report their interpretation of them they use to support the narrative. It seems we only disagree on the name. But I will let them speak themselves if they disagree. Please, The Four Deuces and Paul Siebert work together to make a draft or sandbox, so we can compare them. I believe they would be discussing the same topic, structured very similar and prove the main issue to be about the name. Davide King (talk) 01:07, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I agree with your topic proposal. However the current title does not address it. Instead, it implies that the events were connected and therefore there is no reason to explain the connection and we can just get on with enumerating the death toll. We have no more than a few sentences in any reliable sources saying that all these deaths were connected and nothing saying they weren't. All we have in reputable is analyses of individual countries or comparisons of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. TFD (talk) 01:29, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't think the title is a really big problem. The time and efforts that will be needed to change it do not commensurate with possible benefits from renaming. In addition, the title is not that bad: everybody agree that some mass killings did occur under Communist regimes, therefore, the discussion of the views of some authors who connect them together and do some very strong generalizations can perfectly fit the current title. The title is by no means the worst article's problem.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:53, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't see the same arguments about lack contentedness of all the deaths to Colonisation regarding the article Mass killings under colonial regimes. I don't think Greek colonisation caused any mass killings. --Nug (talk) 01:50, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

...and that is why I will enthusiastically support a careful examination of that article for possible synthesis. And if the analysis will show the article violates NOR, I will gladly support its deletion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:55, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Well let's identify what that synthesis is here, given the article has recently been tagged. With over 40 pages of archived talk pages any synthesis has long been eradicated a long time ago in my view. --Nug (talk) 02:04, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, the article is Genocide of indigenous peoples, with Mass killings under colonial regimes being a redirect. I would not oppose a retargeting to Mass killing#Colonialism where we actually discuss it in a paragraph, since Valentino includes in the second category of mass killings (coercive mass killing) the colonial expansion. Yet, this article actually implies that communism caused mass killings; this is stated as fact, when all we have are the opinions of those supporting this view, rather than stated as part of the theory and narrative. I see no similar thing for the linked article, whose name is actually Genocide of indigenous peoples, with no mention of ideology or system. Regarding synthesis, the problem is precisely that is not been eradicated at all. Anti-communist mass killings should similarly be deleted for synthesis because the topic in literature does not exist. Both of those articles are synthesis and problematic, so I believe to be pretty consistent.

The Four Deuces and Paul Siebert, since we actually agree on the main topic, I believe we should seriously start working on it and only discuss the name when the dust settles and the rewriting is complete. I still support Victims of Communism because that is the common name for the narrative and because they make no distinction between direct killings and civil war, famines, wars and any other excess death; there is no agreement among sources on the terminology but there is agreement that, according to this narrative, all of these were "victims of Communism." But I agree we should really focus on how to fix the article and we can worry about the name later. Davide King (talk) 02:25, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

You appear to be jumping straight into the solution (a total rewrite) without actually identifying what the synthesis is beyond claiming that it exists. What's the evidence? I don't think the article implies that communism caused mass killings, just that mass killings occurfed under Communist regimes. Opinions as to the connection to the ideology of a particular regime is reliably sourced. And in any case, in the view of Communist regimes, most Victims of Communism were fascists, reactionaries, counter-revolutionaries, etc, etc, right? --Nug (talk) 02:31, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

That you write "[I] appear to be jumping straight into the solution (a total rewrite) without actually identifying what the synthesis is beyond claiming that it exists" can only be explained by you not having read or closely followed the whole discussion ("The article is intrinsically biased because the very topic is beyond the scope of the scholarly community. The very concept 'Communist mass killing' is not a universally accepted concept, so the authors who are not writing in that paradigm (i.e. an overwhelming majority of historians who specialise in history of some particular country) are beyond the scope of this article, and their views are either ignored or distorted in this article.").

Paul Siebert and others repeatedly explained and showed the issues, in particular the section about terminology. The problem is that this article's main topic should not be about all mass killings that occurred under Communist regimes, and which no one is denying they did not happen, because "[w]e don't need, and we cannot discuss all of that again, because our policy does not allow us to do so." The main topic is supposed to be about the popular and scholarly minority interpretation of the events as "all those deaths [include deaths from famines and wars] [being] mass killings (democide, genocide, Red Hololcaust etc), and all of them [being] a direct consequence of Communism, and they claim that that makes Communism the worst XX century killer", with the claim that "Communism is a primary driver of mass killings, and some of them pile together all premature deaths under Communist regimes to come to a conclusion that Communism was the worst killer in XX century, AND that Communism was much worse than Nazism." This is supposed to be the main topic, not the actual events which we already describe in detail at the relevant articles. It is supposed to be presented as a controversial but popular theory and narrative but reading the article gives a misleading impression this is a mainstream, uncontroversial theory, rather than minority opinions.

As written by Siebert, "[t]echnically, the article is in good shape, mostly thanks to AmateurEditor. Unfortunately, that makes it especially harmful to Wikipedia's reputation, because it visually a good quality and well sourced article that provides a very one sided and biased picture." The article meets the definition, as given at Wikipedia:Citation overkill, of "[a] well-meaning editor [who] may attempt to make a subject which does not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines appear to be notable [or supported by scholarly literature, as in this case] through quantity of sources." Most of sources used and listed are not even about comparative analysis, or where Communist regimes are discussed together as a single thing, which is what we currently do. We cite Conquest about the Soviet Union, even though he "did not write about mass killings under Communist regimes, he wrote about the Red terror, the Holodomor and the Great purge in the Soviet Union. He treated these as separate subjects and did not develop a theory of mass killings under Communist regimes. We should not put together a group of events and create an article when no one else has."

Thanks again to The Four Deuces for expression this more concisely here and here; I wrote all of these before their response. I may also add the scholars noted how Cambodia reflected more fascism than communism and one critique of lumping all Communist regimes together is that "a connection between the events in Pol Pot's Cambodia and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union are far from evident and that Pol Pot's study of Marxism in Paris is insufficient for connecting radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge's murderous anti-urbanism under the same category" and that "[w]hether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together—just because they are labeled Marxist or communist—is a question the authors scarcely discuss." Davide King (talk) 03:37, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

It is implicit synthesis. It implies there is a connection without explicitly saying there is. It's like saying, "Jim has red hair and he's a criminal, Sam also has red hair and he's a criminal. Then there's Sally, who has red hair and is a criminal. I think I'll create an article about red-headed criminals. No I don't think that red hair has anything to do with them being criminals. No of course I don't like people with red hair, that has nothing to do with it and if you try to delete this article you must have red hair yourself because who else would defend red-headed people."

Also, the statement that in the view of Communist regimes most VOC were fascist etc. is incorrect. The mass killings by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were all condemned by the Communist leaders who replaced them. TFD (talk) 03:31, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Seeing "implicit synthesis" may be more a function of ones personal POV? Norman Naimark devotes a whole chapter called Communist genocides in his book Genocide A World History, published by Oxford University Press. Benjamin Valentino also has a chapter called Communist mass killings in his book Final Solutions Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century, published by Cornell University Press. Both discuss the communist systems of Cambodia, Soviet Union and China, both Naimark and Valentino are scholars, their works published by reputable university presses. So there is no synthesis here in grouping the communist regimes of Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes#Cambodia, Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes#Soviet_Union and Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes#China together in this article. At least two independent scholarly sources have already made that connection. --Nug (talk) 06:16, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, all of that have already been addressed very recently. Just read the talk page. By the way, can you tell me how exactly does Valentino explain linkage between Communism and mass killings?--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:42, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, I said there was implicit synthesis in the article because it implies there is a connection between mass killings and Communist regimes without explicitly saying there is. You say I am wrong because the connection is explained in reliable sources. So what is that connection? TFD (talk) 07:12, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

All has been addressed before in the talk page, that is why I am perplexed all these old arguments for a wholesale rewrite are being recycled again. User:Davide King writes above "scholars noted how Cambodia reflected more fascism than communism", but actually only one author, Helen Fein, wrote that back in 1993, decades before Valentino's and Naimark's more up to date research. You can read for yourself Valentino's linkage as written in the Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes#Ideology section of the article:

Benjamin Valentino writes that mass killings strategies are chosen by communists to economically dispossess large numbers of people, arguing as such: "Social transformations of this speed and magnitude have been associated with mass killing for two primary reasons. First, the massive social dislocations produced by such changes have often led to economic collapse, epidemics, and, most important, widespread famines. [...] The second reason that communist regimes bent on the radical transformation of society have been linked to mass killing is that the revolutionary changes they have pursued have clashed inexorably with the fundamental interests of large segments of their populations. Few people have proved willing to accept such far-reaching sacrifices without intense levels of coercion".

—Nug (talk)

References

It's not clear what the reason for the economic dispossession is. Certainly killing people dispossesses them of their property, but why do they do this? TFD (talk) 11:03, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Actually, the opinion of Valentino is quite clear: "I content mass killing occurs when powerful groups come to believe it is the best available means to accomplish certain radical goals, counter specific types of threats, or solve difficult military problem" (p. 66). Per Straus (World Politics, Apr., 2007, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Apr., 2007), pp. 476-501), Valentino claims ideology alone is an insufficient explanation, and the leader's short time goals and leader's personality explain mass killings better.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:27, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, this is another problem I noted, namely that the article even misrepresents the views of its proponents. Is "mass killings strategies are chosen by communists to economically dispossess large numbers" even an accurate summary of what he wrote? Valentino does not seem to say Communists 'chose' those strategies but that they were the results of their policies of radical transformation, which is very different. Nug, the first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. If these seems to be a repetition of what has been said in the past, perhaps that is because none of the issues have been actually solved, rather than "synthesis [being] eradicated a long time ago in my view" as you claimed. Davide King (talk) 15:47, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug didn't tell us what the connection was but provided quotes for us to figure out. I hope that he can explain it concisely in his own words. Then we can find who actually articulated that view, so that we can define the topic. At that point we can determine what the topic is normally called, whether it is notable, who its supporters are and what degree of acceptance it has. TFD (talk) 22:03, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

?? If you are unable to comprehend Valentino's own words, why would it be any more likely you would comprehend my words? Davide King, I think the real problem here is that some people haven't taken the time to read the underlying sources. Rather than read the Valentino book directly for the wider context of the cites given, we have Paul Siebert citing Straus' interpretation of Valentino, while The Four Deuces asks for my interpretation. If we can't rely on a direct reading of Valentino, why would a direct reading of Straus' interpretation of Valentino be any more reliable? Just seems all a bit odd. --Nug (talk) 05:53, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, surely our own reading of Valentino does not hold the same weight of an academic such as Strauss? Is not that exactly why we should use secondary sources for analysis rather than primary ones which are going to reflect the editor's POV? Davide King (talk) 06:03, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

I certainly am able to understand Valentino's own words and two other editors have been helpful in explaining them. None of us can see what the connection is and that's why I asked you to explain it. Anyway I am sure you are capable of explaining the concept in your own words, which we need to establish the topic. if you can't explain it, then perhaps you can find another source. TFD (talk) 07:20, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

I propose to look at that from a little bit different perspective. When you look at this article, its main focus is

• How should we call MKuCR?

• How many victims?

• What are common causes of those killings?

• Some concrete details about separate countries/events.

The total death toll plays an important role in this article. Actually, it is implicitly assumed that only the sources that provide some figure (total number of victims) can be considered real aggregator sources. In connection to that, Great Chinese Famine plays an essential role in this article: if we exclude this and other famines, the "Communist death toll" becomes much less impressive.

In connection to that, it would be logical to consider the current article a summary artcile, and the Great Chinese Famine, Holodomor etc articles are child articles. Per our policy, we are not allowed to have more than one article about the same event, and the "summary article - daughter article" is the only option that may allow us to preserve both articles. However, a comparison of those article with the current article shows they are written from a totally different perspectives. That is a violation of our core content policy, which is not negotiable. I am expecting those users who oppose to significant modification of this article to explain how that violation (which is obvious) can be fixed. --Paul Siebert (talk) 23:12, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

In this section I would say I mainly agreed with Paul, especially about "Communism and mass killings" is perfectly supported, etc. About the above section where he pinged me in, will react later, due to the enormous amount of material hard to read through so quickly (the latter I won't allude anymore, take it permanent in such conditions).(KIENGIR (talk) 10:13, 5 December 2020 (UTC))

KIENGIR, to save your time, just read the section below, because it describes the most important problem.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:56, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

This article has a fundamental problem

Upon reflection, I came to a conclusion that this article cannot be a summary style article for a large group of events in Communist states. The reason is simple: this article and its "daughter articles" discuss the events from totally different perspectives, and it is not fixable. The problem is that it describes all human life losses under Communists as "mass killing" or something like that. That means it is intrinsically incapable of serving as a platform for providing a neutral and comprehensive review af all points of view.

Thus, this article claims Soviet famine was a mass killing, and the main problem is if it was a "mass killing", "democide", "politicide", "classicide", of a broadly defined "genocide" (that is what the lead says). In contrast, the Soviet Famine article says it was "a major famine that killed millions of people", and "major contributing factors to the famine include the forced collectivization of agriculture as a part of the Soviet first five-year plan, forced grain procurement, combined with rapid industrialisation, a decreasing agricultural workforce, and several bad droughts. " Moreover, the fact that we have a separate Holodomor genocide question article demonstrates the question whether that famine was a mass killing is still open. The same problem is with Chinese famine.

In contrast, this article includes all famine deaths into the combined "Communist death toll" and characterise that as mass killing. That means it is a POV-fork, and it cannot be a summary style article for all those events. The problem is that we cannot exclude these events from the article, because the "Communist death toll" immediately drops more than two fold, and because the "aggregator sources" used in this article do not allow us to do that.

Therefore, we have just two options:

• convert this article to the article about some theory that links Communism and mass killing;
• delete this article as a POV-fork.

Everything else would be a violation of our policy. I think RfCs or similar procedures will not help. Taking into account that the conflict around that article is more than 10 years old, it may be a good time to resort to arbitration (if the participants of that discussion will not propose some compromise solution that is consistent with our policy). --Paul Siebert (talk) 02:10, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Actually, the situation is even worse: this article is a two-layer fork. It is based on several works by few authors (Courtois, Rummel, Rosefielde, Valentino). Other authors do not cover that topic in full (even Valentino doesn't, because he claims that majority of Communist regimes were not engaged in mass killings, contrary to what this article implies). Anyway, these are the authors whose works create a framework of this article. However, we already have separate articles about the views expressed by these authors: Rummel's Democide, Benjamin Valentino, The Black Book of Communism, and Red Holocaust do exist in Wikipedia. We also have a Mass killing article, where all general theorisings about the nature of mass killing and the terminology is presented. In other words, that is also a violation of our policy, because we have several articles about the same subject. In addition, that means if this article will be deleted, no essential information will be lost from Wikipedia, because it is already present in other articles.

The only way to save this article is to convert in to the article about the group of theories that link Communism and mass killings.--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:05, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Your reasoning doesn't really follow. Calling some event a genocide can certainly be controversial, as the article Holodomor genocide question shows, however as you point out, millions of people were killed in that Soviet famine, hence masses of people were killed, i.e. it was a mass killing. The term "mass killing" is absolutely neutral, it makes no inference as to whether it was a genocide, democide, politicide or classicide. Hence it cannot be construed as a POV fork because it expresses a factual concept, not some POV. --Nug (talk) 06:12, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, that is what I noted too and why I opened the thread about the main topic in the first place. Here and elsewhere, I analysed these authors and they are not actually discussing the same topic; as you correctly noted, even Valentino does not. I also proposed to move these at the relevant articles, which is something I have already done for Democide, Mass killing, Rudolph Rummel and Benjamin Valentino, so it is indeed true "no essential information will be lost from Wikipedia, because it is already present in other articles." Davide King (talk) 06:23, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, it seems you don't understand it: the discussion has moved to another level: we are not discussing what genocide is, and if Stalinism perpetrated mass killings (surely, it did). The problem is much more severe and much more simple: "we have several articles about the same subject that describe it from different perspectives: different core sources, different wording, different authors". That will be obvious to any uninvolved admin/arbitrator. If I bring that to an attention of ArbCom or AE, the violation will become apparent to any user with no previous knowledge of the subject, because it is a formal violation of NPOV. That violation must must be fixed,and I propose a way to do that. Let me say that again: we are not having a content dispute anymore, we are talking about a formal violation of our core content policy.--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:18, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul, NPOV is one of Wikipedia's three core content policies, as you say yourself. You and I have been around long enough to know that ArbCom or AE rule on conduct, not content issues, but if you think differently, then be my guest and raise it with ArbCom or AE. --Nug (talk) 02:55, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, systematic introduction of the content that violates NPOV is a conduct issue, so it is perfectly in the ArbCom's/AE scope. See Guidance_for_editors for more details.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:35, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

• I think the article is fine as is. PackMecEng (talk) 06:09, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

That is not the question of what you think: I pointed at multiple violations of our policy. If you can prove there is no violation, feel free to present your arguments. However, please, keep in mind that we are talking about violations of our core content policy, which is non-negotiable and cannot be overruled by a local consensus. Therefore, this discussion is not just a content dispute. Violation of NPOV are potentiall sanctionable per DS, and the sanctions may be severe.--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:13, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't see your arguments holding much weight, which is why the article is fine as is. No policy violations that I can see. PackMecEng (talk) 16:53, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

It would be more constructive if you could explain why you don't think those arguments hold weight. TFD (talk) 17:05, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng, if one editor says "This text violates some policy because the article A says X and cites the source Y, whereas the article B says Z and cites the course ZZ", that is a verifiable claim that can be easily checked by any uninvolved user/admin. If another user says "No, there is no policy violation here" and provides no arguments, that situation is not a content dispute. It is a conduct issue, and that type problems should be resolved using different tools. --Paul Siebert (talk) 17:14, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug explained it well here and in the above section. Basically you are claiming things that are not supported by sources, but they actually are. It is going into original research territory. This is a long running issue on this talk page. Honestly look at the wall after wall of text. At this point it is looking like a forum rather than an article talk page. As I and others have said repeatedly at this point, start an RFC, AFD, request merge, or something. PackMecEng (talk) 17:41, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng, please, re-read this section only, and show me where did I write that something is not supported by sources. As I already explained, the discussion has elevated to the next level: from that moment on, I am NOT going to focus on what various sources say. Instead, I am focusing on the fact that different WP articles say different things about the same subject, and they use different core sources written by different authors. That is directly prohibited by NPOV.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:10, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

It seems some my colleagues do not understand one important thing. My original post on the top of this section describes a serious policy violation. This description is not just my opinion, it is verifiable (and falsifiable), and that can be done by any uninvolved admin who has no preliminary knowledge. Therefore, the editors who reject this arguments without pointing at logical inconsistencies in what I wrote are endorsing the policy violation described by me. That is a conduct issue, not a content dispute. Let me remind you that this topic is under ARBEE. I can post a DS warning template at talk pages of every participant of this discussion, which means both I and you would be duly warned, so we all may be subjected to AE sanctions for policy violations (including NPOV violation). However, I would like not to do that, because that by no means is helpful for creating collaborative atmosphere. Therefore, I am asking:

• If you see formal logical flaws in my description of the major NPOV issue, please, do me a favor, point at them. Otherwise, let's think how can this problem be fixed. I already proposed two solutions, both of them comply with our policies.

Cheers. --Paul Siebert (talk) 17:33, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree with your summary of the problem. Note also that Valentino says that not all of the deaths could be attributed to Communist ideology. He saw Soviet mass killings in Afghanistan as having the same motivation as mass killings by American clients in Guatemala and called these "Counterguerilla mass killings." Some writers see the mass killings of ethnic minorities in Cambodia as motivated by xenophobic nationalism, rather than Communist ideology. Unfortunately, no one has compared and contrasted all the different theories. Hence no topic exists in reliable sources and the article is synthesis.

The only narrative that makes the claim that all these deaths are related and provides a tally is that of the Victims of Communism/Communist Genocide, originally expressed in the Introduction to the Black Book. It is covered extensively in reliable secondary sources independent of the proponents. Therefore it is possible to write a neutral article without synthesis.

TFD (talk) 22:12, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

TFD, you have been involved in this article for over ten years now, and during that time have advocated unsuccessfully for deletion in five AfD discussions, and you even initiated one as well. One AfD attempted a POV fork argument too, but that resulted in a "KEEP". Now after ten years maybe you believe Paul may have finally hit upon a winning permutation of the POV fork/synthesis argument, so please, raise another AfD. --Nug (talk) 02:41, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

As you say, AfD may be difficult. OTOH, ten years is a long time. People who formed their opinions during the Cold War who remember duck and cover die out and new generations were no longer formed by the Cold War mentality of the 1950s. We can write honest articles about water fluoridation, that might have been more difficult during the Cold War. Most Baltic people, Poles and Ukrainians are more concerned about building their nations than re-fighting WW2. OTOH, irrational hatred of Russia remains a problem. In a perfect world, editors would view these subjects objectively. But as you point out, that doesn't always happen with controversial topics.

Anyway, I have never been a supporter of Stalinism. My interest in this article has been that it represents a right-wing perspective, which I am interested in. Interacting with editors who support this article has given me an insight I would not have found just by reading books and articles. Even if I disagree with you, I am very interested in what you have to say, what you believe and how you defend those views. TFD (talk) 03:01, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't see it as an anti-Russian thing at all, they were after all the first victims of a Communist regime. Nor do I see it as left/right thing either, since there were many similarities between the extreme left and right, but see it more as a human-rights issue. I fully support government funded public education and universal health care, fwiw. --Nug (talk) 03:49, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Nmm, I checked archives, and I found that

• I hadn't participated in the first AfD
• I hadn't participated in the second AfD
• I found no my posts in the 3rd AfD
• I found no my posts in the 4th AfD
• During the last AfD, I wrote the following

"The article can be kept, provided, but only provided, that all SYNTH and OR are removed from there. However, based on previous AfD discussion I conclude that most opponents of the article's deletion simultaneously oppose to removal of synthesis and OR from there.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:34, 13 July 2010 (UTC)", and later I proposed several improvements to prevent possible future AfD nominations.

In connection to that, first since I never voted for deletion, you Nug owe me an apology. I request for explicit and formal apology.

Second, more that 10 years have passed since the last AfD, so the references to them seem irrelevant.

Third, I am not going to initiate a new AfD. The fact that this article is being viewed very frequently, that it contains blatant violations of NPOV, and the very size of its talk page archives seem to be sufficient to aderess directly to ArbCom. This article has been a focus of arguably the longest sluggish edit war in the history of Wikipedia, and I am sure arbitrators will take this case.

Fourth, I expect you Nug to provide some logical counterarguments to my fresh arguments presented above. If you will continue arguing in the current style, that will be tantamount to resisting to removal of NPOV policy violations from the article, which is a sanctionable misbehaviour.

We either fix the article and resolve NPOV issues, or I address to ArbCom directly.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:33, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

this is insufficient.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:36, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I also checked and amended my comment above appropriately. Go for it Paul, make your address to ArbCom if you feel the need. --Nug (talk) 03:49, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

So far, I don't feel such a need. I believe you realize that if I go to ArbCom, I will request the article to be deleted and salted. I am still preferring to keep this article, I have always believed the article should be kept, I was just advocating removal of NPOV violations. However, if I'll see that the number of users who refuse to respect our policy is too big, I will have no choice but to go to ArbCom. You alone are not a significant factor, the problem with your refusal to respect our policy can be solved individually. Do you have a fresh DS warning on your talk page, or I have to refresh it?--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:00, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

I doubt ArbCom will delete and salt this article. DS applies equally to you too Paul, and anyone else editing this page, read the talk page banner above. Since AfD seems out of the question for the moment, the other alternative you suggested was converting this article to an article about some theory that links Communism and mass killing. Given the potential opposition that this change could entail, and the fact that this article is under DS, I would suggest you draft this change in Talk:Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes/sandbox, so that we all can better understand what you are proposing. --Nug (talk) 04:17, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I know DS warning works in both side. With regard to ArbCom, I am going to present the following arguments:

• The article described facts and events that have been already described in other WP articles (a long list will follow);
• The article describes them from a totally different perspective, using different core sources authored by different scholars. Both these facts are easily verifiable, and I will provide a brief and formal analysis, which will make that blatant NPOV violation apparent to all ArbCom members;
• The article is a focus of a 12 years long incessant conflict, and it probably has one of the longest talk page in Wikipedia. that will be an evidence that all possible means to resolve the conflict have been exhausted;
• I will present a list of users who resists to NPOV problem fixing. The goal is not to inflict sanctions of them, but to demonstrate that standard means for achieving consensus will not work.
• I will also explain that I myself is a proponent of keeping that article, but the supporters of NPOV violation leave me no choice but to request for deletion.
• Finally, I will persuasively demonstrate that no important information will be removed from Wikipedia after deletion of that article, because all facts and opinia presented here are already presented in other articles (I will provide a long comperensive list).

If you want the events to develop according to that scenario, please continue in the same vein. If you want to fix NPOV problems, let's discuss. I believe the problem cannot be resolved without your active participation (under "resolved" I don't mean deletion, because that is an outcome I myself want to avoid).--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:32, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Sure Paul, and I will show that significant improvement occurred in the last three years without conflict. And you yourself was the third highest contributor to this alleged POV fork in that period. --Nug (talk) 05:01, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

...and I will easily demonstrate that there was a constant drift from neutrality, and majority of my edits were reverted. Please, be serious. So far, you provided ZERO counter-arguments.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:51, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, as I wrote below, we are no longer proposing deletion but a rewriting and restructuring. However, I agree that a sandbox would be helpful and is what I suggested too. Davide King (talk) 04:21, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

David, sandbox would be a waste of time if some user assume a self-appointed position of reviewers/approvers. --Paul Siebert (talk) 05:51, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I agree, but I am positive the article will get rewritten according to your proposal, so we might start somewhere. Davide King (talk) 06:55, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, the reason why I supported deletion (which would not be a deletion in the truest since "no essential information will be lost from Wikipedia, because it is already present in other articles"), even though I did not partecipate at any AfD and entered the discussion only recently, was because I did not think the issues you so nicely described could be solved; they have not been solved despite all the years passed and these in favour of keep have shown a zealous amount to ownership in not only rejecting any solution to the NPOV et al. issues but even denying they are real in the first place. However, an article about the narrative, and the theory as described and structured by you, Buidhe and The Four Deuces, would solve the issues and avoid deletion; the only disagreement between us seem to be about the name because, more or less, we agree on the main topic to discuss and its structure. Since keepers have rejected any compromise and cooperation in improving the article by removing these issues, perhaps ArbCom must really be addressed. I believe Buidhe, The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert and I found a clear main topic that is supported by reliable sources and has a clear literature while others are uncritically supporting the unclear, mixing-up topic that violates NPOV et al. Perhaps the ArbCom could determinate which side is 'correct' and whether guidelines are indeed violated as Paul Siebert et al. argue. That seems to be the only solution since your comment "[t]he article can be kept, provided, but only provided, that all SYNTH and OR are removed from there. However, based on previous AfD discussion I conclude that most opponents of the article's deletion simultaneously oppose to removal of synthesis and OR from there" is still very accurate. Long discussions have not resulted in any improvement, so I see no other solution. Davide King (talk) 04:19, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

As a newcomer you probably don't know that since the last AfD in 2010 where article kept, "provided, but only provided, that all SYNTH and OR are removed from there", significant effort has been made to improve the article in last last three years. Ironically Paul himself was the third highest contributor to this alleged POV fork. --Nug (talk) 04:43, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

{Comment removed.) TFD (talk) 04:34, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Your allegation "Of course you hate anyone who has ever led Russia and it blurs Russophobia and anti-Communism." is just plain BS. You ought to delete your comment as it could well be construed as a personal attack by some patrolling admin. --Nug (talk) 04:54, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

TFD, I am not sure commenting on what Nug thinks and what he loves/hates is a good idea. Let's be more formal: there is a clear NPOV violation in this article (since Nug proposed no counter-arguments, that means he implicitly agrees with that). We all want to keep this article, because several authors have argued Communism (as some single phenomenon) was the worst killer in XX century. This view is influential among some journalists and it is advocated by several scholars. It is not a majority view (otherwise other WP articles about USSR of Chinese history were saying the same, but they don't). However, it is a significant minority view. Therefore, by fixing the NPOV problem we can keep this article. We all are interested in that, that mean we all (including Nug) can collaborate.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:44, 5 December 2020 (UT

No, I don't implicitly agree with your contention, I suggested you draft something in the sandbox so that everyone has a clear view what you are proposing. --Nug (talk) 04:46, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Before I do that, I need to know what exactly is wrong with my arguments. If you think they are logically or factually incorrect, please tell that now. If you just disagree that there is a NPOV violation in the article, but provide no arguments, that means you support policy violation. That is a serious misbehaviour.

To make your life easier, I can briefly explain how the article can be fixed.

• In the lead, all statements of fact must be replaced with attributed opinia (several authors believe that mass mortality and killings in Communist states are linked primarily with Communism etc...)
• Terminology section is removed (majority of those terms were proposed not for MKuCR, but for mass killings in general, and all essential information is in the parent article)
• The death toll is discussed in a proper context: who made an estimate, how it was made, which numbers were included, how these numbers were interpreted, and what conclusions were drawn, who supports this interpretation and who criticize, and why)
• Who links the mass killings with Communism and why (that will include a double genocide theory, Courtois, "generic communism" etc). How this theorising is accepted by scholarly community.
• The country-specific sections should discuss not how many were killed, but focus on historical context (in accordance with what specialised articles say).

If a significant number of users, including Nug and AmateurEditor, agree, in general, with that plan, we can start writing some draft, otherwise I see no reason to waste my time. If somebody propose another plan, let's discuss it.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:03, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Okay, regarding the argument that this article is a POV fork, note that Staub defines "mass killing" as "killing members of a group without the intention to eliminate the whole group". The article's reliably sourced claim that the Soviet famine was a mass killing is not inconsistent with Soviet Famine article, because due to the contributions of government policy of forced collectivization of agriculture, forced grain procurement and a decreasing agricultural workforce due to rapid industrialisation, millions of people were, at the very minimum, unintentionally killed by government policy. Holodomor genocide question is about whether that mass killing was in fact intentionally targeting specific groups and therefore a genocide. So on that basis, this article isn't a POV fork. Ofcourse, if this article was called Genocide under communist rule I would agree with you. --Nug (talk) 09:31, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly how I myself saw that until recently. However, if you take a look at what policy say, you will see that "All facts and significant points of view on a given subject should be treated in one article except in the case of a spinoff sub-article". Taking your example, either this article is supposed to be a spinoff article of or the Soviet famine article, or vise versa. The policy gives an example of how that should be organized, and the current situation with that article does not fit these criteria. A good example is Holodomor - Holodomor genocide question. The parent article says the event was "famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians", which leaves a space for describing all important views on that event. The spinoff article discusses if it was mass killing/genocide. That is perfectly ok. In contrast, this article says that all described events were mass killings/democide/genocide/etc, and it implies they all were linked to Communism. In contrast "spinoff articles" discuss them in a totally different way, and they provide a large number of country-specific factors and sources, which are totally ignored in this article. Just compare the lead section in each of those "spinoff articles" with what this article says about the same event.

Therefore, in the article's hierarchy, this article, which provide a very specific view that is different from a majority viewpoint, can be only a spinoff article of country-specific articles (Great Chinese Famine etc). However, I don't see how can that be organized. I would say, a natural hierarchy, theoretically, is as follows

• Top level: Mass killing (discusses what mass killing is, and what are main instances thereof)
• Second level: this article (discusses Communist states specifically)
• Third level A: Great Purge, Great Chinese Famine etc (discuss each event specifically)
• Third level B: The Black Book of Communism, Red Holocaust (discusses specific theories separately)

However, that organization required that all important views on the events in each concrete country are presented here. That can be done only if we re-write the article completely and rename it into something like "Population losses and mass mortality events in Communist states". After that, we should write that several events lead to mass mortality in Communist states, including civil war, repressions, deportations, war, famine and disease. Then we provide a neutral description of historical background, describe why and how all of that happened, and later we add that some authors characterise all of that as mass killing/democide/ genocide etc. That would be a good summary of how the scholarly community sees it, because such authors as Valentino or Rummel may be popular, but their views are not shared by majority of country experts.

Another, way to fix the article is the way I already proposed: to describe only the views of Courtois (which are different from his co-authors say), Rosefielde and few other authors, and explain that that is just one group of theories explaining the events in Communist states. In that case, a hierarchy is simple: this article has just the "Third level B" spinoff articles.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:52, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Upon reflection, I realised that the above hierarchy is not completely correct. If the current article is made a spinoff of Mass killing, that narrows the space for presenting all existing views on, for example, Chinese famine, which was clearly man made, but it was a combination of natural factors, poor management and the lack of adequate statistical information about the harvest. Majority of authors do not describe it as mass killing at all, so the article telling about that event cannot be a spinoff article of any "Mass killing ...." article.

The adequate hierarchy should be:

• Level one: A This article (Mass mortality/population losses in Communist states); B Mass killing
• Level two, I: Great Purge, Great Chinese Famine, Cambodian genocide, etc. They are spinoff articles of either A (that include Chinese famine and some others) or both A and B (Cambodian genocide)
• Level two, II: Some article that links Communism and mass killing (not written yet, let's call it "Generic Communism theory"; that is just a working title), it will be a spinoff of both A and B;
• Level three: The Black Book of Communism, Red Holocaust (spinoff articles of the "Generic Communism") --Paul Siebert (talk) 18:35, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

  Paul Siebert, one question. What would be the difference between Mass mortality/population losses in Communist states and the currently structured article? And what would be the difference between Mass mortality/population losses in Communist states and Generic Communism theory? Davide King (talk) 00:42, 6 December 2020 (UTC) The Four Deuces preceded me, as I asked this question before reading their comment below and essentially I asked it because I wondered the same thing and I agree with their explanation below, so it should be clarified. Davide King (talk) 00:46, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

As I explained below, if we define the topic as mass mortality, that will be an objective definition, which will allow us to include all major views and opinia. Currently, majority of authors are not included because they either do not write about Communist mass killing as whole or do not call these events mass millings. You must admit that is ridiculous.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:49, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

The article mass killing defines it to exclude genocide, which it defines as killings targeting ethnic groups. It's a different definition from the one used in this article, because some of the events in this article were genocide (Cambodia) or have been described as such (Ukraine). I don't see why this should be a spinoff of any similar article because that implies that it is a type of mass murder when only the Courtois and the VOC Foundation say that.

As I said before, if we want to put all the Communist killings in one article, then we need to focus on the literature that does that. We can't use scholars who provide different explanations for different countries unless they address the category as a whole. Except for Werth, the only scholars who write about the VOC narrative are experts on right wing politics, not genocide scholars, and they base their criticisms of the VOC numbers by relying on the writings of genocide scholars, rather than their own expertise. And their main focus is not whether the numbers are right or wrong or whether Communism was the cause of all these deaths, but the implications of the narrative for modern politics. They argue for example that it is misleading to compare the numbers of people killed by Nazi Germany over 12 years with the number of people killed over 100 years in multiple countries covering as much as a third of the world's population. They also mention how the narrative is used to discredit the left in Europe and rehabilitate Nazi collaborators who chose the lesser of two evils. It is not that important to them to determine whether the Communists killed 85 million people or 100 million. What matters is that the VOC narrative choses that number, which is in the range of possibility, because it is exactly double the number of people killed by the Nazis. Similarly, they chose the number 10 million for the number of Holodomor deaths because it greatly exceeds the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis. But they don't actually try to determine the actual number of victims, they just rely on what genocide scholars say because that is not the focus of their enquiry. If you are looking for a genocide scholar who challenges the numbers, you won't find one, except for Werth. TFD (talk) 00:41, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

The current article includes Cambodia, China and the Soviet Union, but perhaps we could rename the article Mass killings under totalitarian regimes, then we could add Nazi Germany to the article. Would that work for you? --Nug (talk) 11:34, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

The person who linked totalitarianism and state killing was Rummel, and per our policy such an article should be a section if the Democide article. However, you must keep in mind that "second generation genocide scholars" do not share Rummel's views, so I see some problems with your proposal. It does not mean it doesn't deserve a discussion, but I am afraid it there may be some problems with its implementation.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:40, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

No. Barbara Harff, a renown genocide scholar, says Rummel's data are inaccurate, but she sees no problem with that, because Rummel's main conclusions are not affected by data inaccuracy. However, that is not the main argument.

If some claim is not challenged, that may mean that it is universally recognized or it is universally ignored. You can hardly find any serious astronomy paper that challenges the claim that the Moon is made of cheese.

We can take some unchallenged claim seriously if this claim is reproduced by majority sources. How frequently Valentino's theoretical conclusions are cited by experts in Soviet history? His article was cited 81 times, but there are just 7 references, mostly master thesis that cite him in a context of the Great Purge. That means Great Purge experts ignore Valentino.

With regard to Courtois, I saw several reviews (I presented them in talk page archives) that say numbers are unreliable, and, importantly meaningless. I see no reason to ignore them under a pretext that these reviews come not from genocide scholars. By the way, Werth is not a genocide scholar either, he is a historian. "Genocide studies" is some self-proclaimed discipline that is trying to find some general laws that would allow us to predict future genocides. So far, there is no evidences that it is not a pseudoscience. Therefore, I have no reason to claim the opinion of genocide scholars weighs more that the opinion of some expert in one country's history. I would say the opposite: so far, country experts seem to be more knowledgeable about that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:08, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

The problem is that if we want to fully and neutrally cover the topic, we need a complete set of the literature that presents all important facts and opinia on the subject. That works if the object is objectively defined. The problem with that topic is that different sources define the object differently. The only non-subjective descriptor is the number of human losses. However, different sources describe those deaths using different terminology, group them according to different traits, or do not group them at all. Therefore, if we select only those sources that write about "Communist mass killing" then our narrative will be inevitably skewed to the views of such authors as Valentino, whereas such experts as Wheatcroft, O'Grada or Ellman will be in a subordinated position, which is unacceptable.

Therefore, if we want this article to be a parent article for a number of specialized articles (as described above), it must be the article about excess mortality (mass killings is just a minor subset thereof, according to majority of sources).

However, that would be a tremendous work, so it would be easier just to convert this article into the article about the "generic Communism" concept (obviously, that is just a working title).--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:49, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

When you say that different sources define the topic differently, you mean that different sources describe different topics. If you want to compare and contrast them, then you should write an article for an academic journal. We cannot do that in this article. Each article can only describe one topic. TFD (talk) 04:16, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

No. When Erlichman says about population losses in USSR, he is discussing the same deaths as Valentino. However, since Erlichman does not operate with the "Communist mass killing" concept, some users conclude his works have no relation to the topic. When Rummel provide his "estimates" for "Communist democide" which include dramatically inflated and outdated figures for USSR, he is writing about the alleged deaths that never occurred according to Erlichmah (who gives more modest figures). However, since Rummel includes his "estimates" into the "Communist democide death toll" we assume his works are relevant to this topic. However, Erlichman's data (which are a subset of Rummel's data, except they do not include figures for other countries and they exclude the alleged deaths that never occurred, according to moderns study) are excluded, because they do not relate to the total communist death toll, and are not called "Communist mass killings" by the author (Erlichman).

If two sources write about the same event (e.g. GULAG deaths, collectivisation deaths, repression deaths), but call them differently, they do describe the same topic. If we claim one of those sources do not describe that topic, that means the topic was poorly defined. I already proposed how to fix that, I don't understand why you cannot understand it.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:44, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul, Barbara Harff in The Comparative Analysis of Mass Atrocities and Genocide defines the conceptual relationship between "mass killings", "genocide", "democide" and "politicide" when she writes: "In short, conceptually democide includes all the mass killings associated with genocide and politicide". In other words, mass killing is associated with genocide, mass killing is also associated with politicide, while democide includes all the mass killings of both genocide and politicide. So mass killing is the super set of democide, genocide and politicide. Democide, genocide or politicide is essentially a classification of a mass killing. Is that not the case? --Nug (talk) 11:00, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

A more general answer

:Not exactly. This terminology is used mostly by "genocide scholars", i.e. a group of non-experts in each country's history, who are trying to identify some general rules that explain mechanisms of mass killings in general. The goal is to predict future genocides (which may allow their prevention). To the best of my knowledge, the pioneer was Rummel, whose main approach is "combine all available data on all non-natural deaths caused, directly or indirectly, by governments, make the most plausible estimates of deaths in each state, and, using the factor analysis, find corellation between these numbers and each regime's type". He made some estimate (the approach was criticized by Dulic) and found some correlation, the primary correlation was with totalitarianism. However, first, correlation does not mean causation, second, his figures are dramatically unreliable for the USSR, and, third, he is working with numbers only, and ignores historical context (if you want, I can elaborate on that later). That is why Rummel's explanations (which are not explanations in reality) are not satisfactory, and second generation genocide scholars (Valentino, Mann, Wayman&Tago etc) continue digging. However, their study an emerging scholarly topic, and these theories still have little predictive and explanatory power. It is not a surprise that true historians essentially ignore the theories of those authors. They exist in "parallel universes", and country experts do not cite, as a rule, the books or articles authored by "genocide scholars". Therefore, if we want to write the article about the events (actual deaths that occurred in Communist states), we must write in from the perspective of true historians (actually, that has already been done in such articles as the Great Purge or Great Chinese famine), and than add a chapter that described the views of genocide scholars. The way this information is presented in the current version of the article would be quite acceptable if the theory of "genocide scholars" (Valentino) and anti-Communists (Courtois) were universally accepted by historians. However, that is by no means the case, so this article dramatically violated NPOV.

Regarding "mass killing is the super set of democide, genocide and politicide", no, that is not true. "Democide" was actually a technical term that was proposed by Rummel to include all deaths caused by some state. For example, George Floyd's death should be considered an act of democide. Therefore, a correct answer to your question is: "democide" is a superset of mass killings, and all -cides. Thus,

• "Mass killing" = "democide" - all events where less than 50,000 were killed (per Valentino, although he was not the first person who defined this term);
• "Genocide" = "democide" - any killings that were not aimed to destroy some group (fully or partially) - killing of the members of some political group;
• "politicide" = "democide" - killing of anybody but members of some political group;

etc. In reality, even "genocide scholars" do not use all that "terminology". Some authors use "geno-politicide", some use "genocide", some call it "democide", and they apply these terms to essentially the same event. The fact that most of those terms are used interchangeably means all of them are worthless, and that no such a discipline and "genocide study" exists yet (it would be more correct to call it an emerging discipline, but it has not be universally recognised as such yet).

However, although "democide" sounds similarly to "genocide", it is a totally different category. It is neither a crime nor a some concrete type of events. It is just a statistical category used by Rummel to collect statistical data. Therefore, it has no explanatory power per se. If we say "this event was an act of democide" that sounds scary, but that means just one thing: some state killed some person or persons, and we even do not need to know if it was in accordance with some legal procedure (capital punishment) or it was a criminal act.

"Democide" includes all death caused, directly or indirectly, by some state. If it will be recognized that COVID-19 deaths were caused by strategic blunders of trump's administration, they should be considered as democide deaths. "Democide" is a super-category, and that makes it essentially useless. And, taking into account that it sounds similar to "genocide", this term is deeply misleading.

Had I answered your question?--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:09, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I accept that different writers may use different terms to refer to the same thing, or the same terms to refer to different things.

If Ehrlichman does not write about Communist mass killings, then his writing is off topic.

In an article for example about Pol Pot's mass killings, it would be entirely acceptable to use sources that describe only killings in one part of the country or one segment of time. That's because the connection between Pol Pot and his mass killings is a fact.

In this article there is no agreed connection between communist ideology and mass killings carried out under countries governed by communists. In Vietnam for example since both sides carried out mass killings, it's not clear whether the mass killings carried out by the North were a result of their ideology or instead the nature of the war in which they were involved. Few writers attribute all mass killings by Communist states to their ideology.

Synthesis of published material says, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." If Erlichmann doesn't mention communist ideology as a factor in the deaths, then it is synthesis to say that he accepts or rejects it. He might for example attribute mass killings to government objectives. We would then have to determine whether those objectives were driven by communist ideology or were an exception.

I think your view is that this article should address to what extent the mass killings were attributable to Communism. The problem is that no reliable sources discuss that in any depth. All we have is the VOC/CG narrative that has been reported on extensively in reliable sources. But those sources do not seek to prove or disprove their conclusions but to explain their significance to current political debates. In France for example the non-Gaullist Right who had collaborated with the Nazis used the Black Book to defend their record and to villainize the Left, who had worked with the Soviet Union. Americans use the theory as an argument against universal health care.

TFD (talk) 12:27, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

TFD, don't you see a dramatic logical contradiction between your first and second sentence?

Pol Pot is not the best example, because it was a single event, for which the number of victims was reliably determined, and there is no significant disagreement about the mechanism of that mass killing, with one exception: true historians, such as Kiernan, put this event into a proper historical context, and explain it by a number of factors (ultra-Maoism is just one of them, and not the most important), whereas some genocide scholars provide a superficial explanation that links it mostly to some generic Communism. I emphasized "some", because other genocide scholars group that genocide into a different categories, and do not link it directly to Communism. Therefore, event such a relatively simple case as Cambodian genocide is described in this article in a totally biased way, which emphasizes the view of just a fraction of genocide schilars, whereas the views of other genocide scholars and of historians are essentially ignored.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:09, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

In fact it wasn't a single event but many events which are considered to be connected to such a degree that we see it as a single event. Anti-Communists see CG as exactly the same thing: a deliberate effort by the Communist movement to kill people. Both cases require synthesis to connect the events. The difference is that in the first case the synthesis is carried out by scholars and in the second case by Wikipedia editors. TFD (talk) 16:47, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

It was more a single event than any other "Communist mass killings". I do not mean it was really a single event, but it is one of the simplest cases.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:01, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

You mean the connection in the first case is obvious and I agree. Nonetheless, we have to have sources that treat it as a single event before we can do that. TFD (talk) 17:10, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Regarding Nug's proposal (Mass killings under totalitarian regimes), it obviously should be either a subsection of Democide or it spinoff article. It should say the following:

• Rummel assembled Cold war era data on all deaths caused, directly or indirectly, by each state (a.k.a. democide) and, using a factor analysis, found a statistically significant correlation between totalitarianism and the scale of democide. Bases on that, he concluded that totalitarian regimes, mostly USSR, China, Nazi Germany, and Kampuchea (in that order) were the worst XX century murderers.
• The methodology of Rummel's statistical data was criticized (ref Dulic), and his conclusions were challenged by second generation genocide scholars.
• More detailed description of the events in each country can be found in specialized articles (links)

I think that is all what we can say, if we don't want to violate NPOV policy. Actually, the links to specialized articles and the summary is all what a reader needs, because the rest is already present in other Wikipedia articles, and we are not allowed to duplicate that content without a serious reason. So far, no such reason have been provided.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:04, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Your argument boils down to WP:I don't like it. Well, I do, and I think the article gets the reader into the subject well and true. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 20:10, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

My arguments point at clear and unequivocal policy violations: we have more than one article that say different things about the same events. In contrast, your post "boils down to "I don't like your arguments". Actually, it seems you even haven't bothered to read my arguments before commenting: I never advocated this article's deletion, and I am discussing various ways to save it. Therefore, posting a link to the essay about a deletion discussion is a kind of disrespect. And nobody cares if you like this article or not: if it violates our policy, it should be either deleted or fixed (the later is preferable, and that is what I am trying to do).--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:20, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Your argument boils down to "I like it" and amounts to ownership, where it is simply assumed to be impossible the article is currently violating our policies and guidelines, some of which are non-negotiable. Davide King (talk) 04:54, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, I don't think that totalitarian mass killings has adequate notability. It's just on Rummel's website. Note he defines totalitarianism as government with absolute power which he believes is the cause of mass killings. While anti-Communists sometimes group Communist, Nazi and Burmese mass killings together, they see the connection as socialism. But sometimes they see Nazi mass killings as self-protection against Communism. Hence they can put the blame on Communism. TFD (talk) 21:00, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

So essentially you are arguing that some kind of right-wing anti-Communist conspiracy is at play to besmirch the good reputation of Communism, and this article is a manifestation of that insidious slander, is that correct? --Nug (talk) 22:03, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, your explanation is muddled and confused. Your assertion that "democide" is a superset of mass killings is demonstrably false. There is general consensus that mass killing is the act of intentionally killing a number of non-combatants (see p55 in Handbook on the Economics of Conflict by Keith Hartley). Democide is defined as the intentional killing of non-combatants by the state. However, mass killings can also be perpetrated by non-state actors, between 1945 and 2000 out of the 42 episodes of mass killings, only 30 were perpetrated by the state (see p52 of the Hartley source). Therefore since mass killing contain both state and non-state killings, it follows that it is a super set of democide, which only includes state sponsored killings. So, to summarise in simple terms:

• Mass killing - intentionally killing of a number of non-combatants
• Democide - intentionally killing of a number of non-combatants by the state
• Genocide - intentionally killing of a number of non-combatants on the basis of ethnicity, race, nationality or religion - by either state or non-state actors
• Politicide - intentionally killing of a number of non-combatants on the basis of political affiliation - by either state or non-state actors

--Nug (talk) 22:03, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

• Nug, not everyone who doesn't agree with you is a Communist. In any case, it's an ad hominem argument. TFD (talk 22:28, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Nug, my explanation is crystal clear, if it is not taken out of context. We are speaking about Mass killings under Communist regimes, right? Obviously, this article described killings by Communist regimes, not the killings that just happened under Communist rule. At least, that conclusion will be made by most readers. Therefore, as soon as we discuss the deaths inflicted (intentionally or non-intentionally) by Communist regimes the differences between "democide" and "mass killing" (as defined by Valentino) is as follows:

(i) democide has no low threshold, whereas "mass killing" is killing of at least 50,000 intentional deaths over the course of five years or less; and

(ii) democide does not imply intentionality (intent is discovered through looking at outcomes), whereas "mass killing" does imply intentionality. Therefore, "democide" is definitely broader. (Or course, in a context of Communism inflicted deaths).--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:41, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

You are right, mass killing does imply a threshold, for which there is no current consensus as it ranges anywhere from 4 to 50,000 depending upon the author. However Staub also defines "mass killing" as "killing members of a group without the intention to eliminate the whole group", so taken together with Hartley, mass killing includes both intentional and unintentional killings of non-combatants by state and non-state actors. --Nug (talk) 23:20, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, the problem is that all those terms, except "genocide" are being used by a relatively small group of scholars, they are not used by true historians (country experts) and are unknown to public. "Mass killing" is especially misleading, because a layman may easily associated with "mass murder". Anyway, take a look at my example below (the Holodomor round table articles).--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:22, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug&TFD, let's forget for a while that "anti-Communist" vs "pro-Communist" argumentation. We have a crystal clear and totally formal violation of the policy: the article discusses the same events that have already been discussed in other articles, and essential views are either ignored or underrepresented in that article. That is an NPOV violation, which, obviously, must be fixed. Anybody who argue against that is neither anti-Communist nor pro-Communist, but a violator of WP policy. How do you propose to fix the problem?--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:05, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree, let's keep the "anti-Communist" vs "pro-Communist" argumentation out, it doesn't add any value to the already complex discussion on the degree of any policy violation that may (or may not) exist. I do think there is some merit in a hierarchical structure of articles, but the question is which one is the right one. --Nug (talk) 23:20, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

The right hierarchy is the one where the higher level articles are in accordance with lower level articles, and the events are described in spinoff articles in the same way, and all essential facts and opinia described in spinoff articles are in agreement with their summary (in the higher level articles). The hierarchy proposed by me comply with the principles that were described in our policy and further elaborated in guidelines. So far, just that hierarchy has been proposed, so you should either agree with it, or propose your own hierarchy, and demonstrate that it complies with the policy. Or at least point at logical problem with already proposed hierarchy. That will help me to understand you better.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:35, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

When a hierarchy is correct, a higher level article always operates with the most general terms and categories, and a spinoff article is more specific. Your example with Holodomor->Holodomor genocide question is very good: the main article briefly outline the subject of the dispute, and the spinoff article analyses it in details. The main article does not claim "Holodomor was a mass killing", it uses more balanced terminology However, all of that does not work here. Let's take the most extreme example, Great Chinese famine. I call it the most extreme, because, first, if we exclude it, the "Communism death toll" immediately falls almost twofold, and, second, because the "spinoff" article tells a totally different story than this article tells. Therefore, to include GCF, this article must operate with such terms as "excess mortality" (which is consistent with what all sources used in the GCF article say, and does not contradict to what Valentino or Rummel say, for "mass killing" or "democide" are a subset of excess mortality, but nor vise versa). I see no possibility to make this article a spinoff article of GLF, so the only possible hierarcy is "this article" -> "GLF article". However, that hierarchy requires a complete rewrite of this article (with possible renaming). --Paul Siebert (talk) 00:17, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

I'll have a think about the structure over night. However I don't think this article is inconsistant with the Holodomor, because we have established that a mass killing doesn't necessarily have to be intentional per Staub, the only threshold being the number. Furthermore, the Holodomor genocide question is about whether there was an intention to target ethnic Ukrsinians, but it seems there is no dispute that there was an element of politicide involved and certainly democide, since we have also established that democide doesn't necessarily need to be intentional either, neglect and bad government policy is a sufficient condition. --Nug (talk) 01:15, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

It seems you don't fully understand me. Regarding Holodomor, I was discussing it as a parent article for its spinoff article, and I found that pair complies with our policy. With regard to this article as a parent article for Holodomor, the situation is less obvious. For these two articles to be a true pair of parent-daughter article, the latter is supposed to start with something like that: "Holodomor was a mass killing in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, when millions of Ukrainians were killed by hunger." Instead, the actual wording is different (check it by yourself). Your reference to Staub is not working, because the special terminology that is being used by genocide scholars is not accepted by general historians and country experts, and sounds somewhat misleading to a general reader (thus, Valentino's "mass killing" is not exactly the same as a commonsensual mass killing, and if we do not explain the difference, we mislead a reader). In that respect, the optimal wording would be the one that satisfied simultaneously Kutchitsky, Maksudov, Ellman, Wheatcroft, Conquest, Rosefielde, Erlichman, and other experts (and that is achieved in Holodomor). Staub's opinion is much less important: he is not an expert neither in Soviet/Ukrainian history (like the above mentioned scholars), nor in famine (Wheatcroft, for example, is an expert in grain harvest statistics). Staub is just a general theorist, and he provides some general explanations that might be right or wrong, but they have not been universally accepted so far.

By the way, as regards to " there was an element of politicide involved and certainly democide", if you check the sources you will find that most sources in the Holodomor genocide question article do not use the term "democide" (and derivatives thereof) at all. At least, I found no such terms in the article, as well as in the articles authored by Kulchitsky, Ellman and Wheatcroft. (It is used by Rosefielde, but, keeping in mind his unresolved dispute with Wheatcroft, it is by no means a demonstration of universal acceptance of that terminology). Which is a demonstration that the "genocide scholarly terminology" is not used by mainstream authors.

I wish you have a fruitful night :)--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:57, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, to demonstrate how marginal all those "-cide" are, take a look at the materials of Ukrainian famine round table.

The following authors, Getty, Etkind, Cameron, Graziosi, Penter, Suny, Naimark, Pianciola, and Wheatcroft discuss various aspects of Holodomor, but I found not a single word "democide" or "politicide" in their articles. They do not use that terminology at all!--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:13, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

That you point out that they do not use that terminology at all is an Argument from silence. --Nug (talk) 12:34, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

But if "-cide" is a majority view (as you are arguing), you would expect it to be used by the majority of sources. If it's not, you have to show it's the majority view in some other way, such as finding a reliable source saying, "Most scholars consider the Holodomor a form of mass killing". (t · c) buidhe 13:02, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Argument_from_silence#Author's_interest could apply, what may be relevant to a genocide scholar may not be relevant to a country scholar. --Nug (talk) 13:19, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Again, since you're the one making this argument, the burden of proof/WP:ONUS is clearly on you to show that this is the majority view. (t · c) buidhe 13:42, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Argument from silence do not apply here. I clearly demonstrated that the terminology used by country experts is totally different, so we need to use universally accepted terminilogy unless we agree the MCuCR is describes just a minority POV (that is acceptable, but we can clearly explain it in the article).--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:56, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I would argue Mass killings under totalitarian regimes implies that totalitarianism is an established and widespread fact, rather than a useful concept. As noted by The Four Deuces, Communists, Nazis and others are grouped together because they see them all as socialists. Indeed, Rummel is an American libertarian, so one can see why he proposed the democide concept, and I would not be surprised if Rummel thought the Nazis were 'socialists' rather than 'fascists', or that there is no real difference between 'socialism' or 'fascism'. Rummel also thought Obama and the Democrats were allegedly destroying liberal democracy and set to establish a one-party state; he also did not hold mainstream views on climate change. All of this must be kept in mind because Rummel cannot be seen as mainstream and Courtois, Rosefielde and Rummel's views that either Communism and Nazism were equal, or Communism was even worse than Nazism, are not mainstream but revisionist, going back to Nolte, who saw the Holocaust as a reaction to Communism, and the Historikerstreit. Courtois, Rosefielde, Rummel and Valentino are either revisionists, non-mainstream, or non-notable, in that they are not really relied on by actual country experts, as demonstrated by Paul Siebert. Davide King (talk) 04:51, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Did Rummel also beat his wife? Certainly his alleged non-mainstream view on climate change is compellingly relevant to this article. Thank you. --Nug (talk) 12:45, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

The main issue is that many of Rummel's figures for deaths just don't line up with those used by the scholars who study the various events in depth. If the underlying assumptions are wrong, it's quite likely that the conclusion is also wrong. And Davide King is correct that "totalitarianism" is also a disputed concept. (t · c) buidhe 13:02, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

As Paul Siebert above notes: "Barbara Harff, a renown genocide scholar, says Rummel's data are inaccurate, but she sees no problem with that, because Rummel's main conclusions are not affected by data inaccuracy." --Nug (talk) 13:11, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

But you forgot to explain what main Rummel's conclusions were. His main conclusion was "democratic peace", and at that level his "estimates" work quite well. However, they by no means should be trusted as an source of accurate figures.

Frankly, I am somewhat disappointed. I expected to see Nug's thoughts about possible hierarchy of articles, and I prepatred for a serious discussion. Instead, I see some totally frivolous and superficial argumenst. I am really disappointed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:56, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, none of this addresses my main point, namely that the concept is not the majority view and its main proponents are either revisionists or not mainstream in the field of Soviet and Communist studies and are not even the majority view among genocide studies. A rewriting and restructuring as suggested by Buidhe, The Four Deuces and Paul Siebert should be followed to account for this and not act like the link between communist ideology and mass killings (i.e. a deliberate effort by the Communist movement to kill people, that Communism was worse than Nazism) is the mainstream, even widely accepted in academia, view among scholars the current article implies, whether directly or indirectly. Attribution does not mean much when these are minority opinions and comes only from one side, and do not even treat this as a single event or phenomena. You essentially want this article to be about the events, but we already have articles for all of them, so this article should only be about the scholarly theory and narrative that Communism killed 100 millions and was worse than Nazism (Courtois), that it was a "Red Holocaust" (Rosefielde) and the biggest killer of the 20th century (Rummel); and the popular narrative described by The Four Deuces that essentially amounts to either double genocide theory or Holocaust trivialisation and obfuscation, namely that the Allies and the West made the wrong choice by allying with the Soviet Union and how it is used to discredit the left in Europe and rehabilitate Nazi collaborators, who chose the lesser of two evils; and against any allegedly left-leaning policy such as universal health care, or any government control of something, that will inevitably result in the Soviet Union et al. Because the introduction to The Black Book of Communism and other scholarly work such as Rosefielde and Rummel is used and justified by authors, politicians and others to push the aforementioned described popular narrative, hence why we need to describe both; the scholarly analysis, which is more nuanced, albeit still a minority view; and the non-scholarly, popular but fringe view present in popular literature and promoted by some right-wing politicians and anti-communist organisations. Davide King (talk) 14:10, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't see it as a a spin-off article of genocide, but as a spin-off of anti-Communism. If there is a spinoff, it would be Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. In the same sense, intelligent design (ID) is not a spin-off of evolution, although it provides an alternative explanation of it. Like ID, this topic is more about the poltics of the theory, than its underlying science. TFD (talk) 13:58, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, I agree. The problem is that these who do not see any problem with the current article seem to see it as merely describing the events, or they have a misguided view of scholarly literature thinking this is a mainstream and widely accepted thing; this is in part legitimised by things like the Prague Declaration or the Victims of Communism Memorial, which are considered as 'centrist', rather than as Holocaust trivialisation, double genocide theory, and other unsupported, non-mainstream views by academia, i.e. fringe or at best minority views, as the majority view; both of these were more of political decision rather than reflecting scholarly consensus or literature. And they ask us to prove they are not; the onus is on them to show they are. If this is so self-evident and widespread as they claim or think it is, it should be very easy for them to prove. As I wrote above, this article should not be a list of mass killings under Communist regimes but rather a scholarly analysis that links them as a single event or phenomena, or at least that links communism and mass killings, with the latter being caused by the former, both of which are not widely supported, if at all. The article is justified by the fact the events happened (but this ignores we already discuss them and it is a content fork, which is used to push a POV and hence violates NPOV) and that it is claimed to be supported by scholarly literature as an established fact and widely accepted thing, rather than a popular but minority theory and narrative. Davide King (talk) 14:20, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Both the Prague Declaration and the VOC were initiated by the right half and received challenges from the left half of the poltical spectrum. Note that the VOC monument in Ottawa, Canada attracted a lot of controversy over the years and very little public support,[20][21] while the Washington, D.C. memorial seems to have attracted opposition from mostly Russia and China. I haven't read about any attempts to build similar monuments in Western Europe, which unlike the U.S. has social democratic parties. But the degree of support for such monuments seems to vary according to position along the left-right spectrum, unlike Holocaust memorials, where only neo-nazis such as James von Brunn would have objections. TFD (talk) 15:05, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Beating this to death with acres of text is getting nowhere. And to say that Lenin and the Communists (inclduing followers in other countries) killed off lots of suspected 'enemies of the resolution' is not anticommunist. It is simple historical fact. Anne Applebaum asserts that "without exception, the Leninist belief in the one-party state was and is characteristic of every communist regime" and "the Bolshevik use of violence was repeated in every communist revolution". Phrases said by Vladimir Lenin and Cheka founder Felix Dzerzhinsky were deployed all over the world. She notes that as late as 1976 Mengistu Haile Mariam unleashed a Red Terror in Ethiopia. Said Lenin to his colleagues in the Bolshevik government: "If we are not ready to shoot a saboteur and White Guardist, what sort of revolution is that?" 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:01, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

References

(Not to quibble, but Ethiopia was not a one party state.) The issue is not whether Communist states killed people, but its connection to Communist ideology. Incidentally, most revolutions are violent, even the American Revolution. But you would probably find it biased to have an article that grouped the U.S. Revolution, the bombing of Hiroshima and the My Lai massacre together, without some explanation as to what the connection was other than that they were carried out by the U.S. government or its agents. TFD (talk) 16:30, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Points well taken. If there are WP:RS maybe we should draw them together. You forgot Abu Ghraib, Nicauraugua, Rendition, and Guantanamo, to name a few more, which are not a pretty picture. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:36, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

No. That would be a bad idea. That may work only if that will be presented as some minority view, because I have no evidences that mainstream scholarship link there events togenter.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:28, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

7&6=thirteen, there are some universally accepted views and minority views. It is quite ok to write about mass killings in Cambodia as an act of genocide, and about killing of "enemies of the people" by Stalinism as a mass killing. That would be a non-controversial and universally accepted description of these events (and we already have artilces in Wikipedia about that). Howeveer, to write that Cambodiam genoscide+Katyn massacre+Great Chinese Famine+Dekulakization+The Greeat Purge etc were a manifectation of a single phenomenon and all those events were Communist mass killings when 100+ million were killed - that is a minority POV, which is presented in this article as a universally accepted view. That is a violation of our policy. Actually, the very fact that more than one article writes about the same event is inconsistent with our policy (each time when the content is split among more than one article, it should be done in accordance with strict rules, which are described in the policy and further explained in guidelines), and I persualively demonstrated that these rules are violated in this article. That is not a question of someone alleged anti-Communist, pro-Communist, leftist, or rightist agenda etc. That is just a claim that our policy is violatred/ I expect you to demonstrate why, in your oponion, this my claim is wrong. If you can prove my claim is wrong, plese, do that, otherwise, it would be fair if you stopped arguing and joined our discussion, which is aimed to fix these violations.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:56, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

User:Paul Siebert That's my opinion, based on what I have read in the article and above. Demand what you want. Pound sand and see how that goes. Done feeding you. Have a happy holiday and be careful out there. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 22:43, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

7&6=thirteen, do you realize you called me a troll? Although I am not going to pay too much attention to that, I cannot understand your logic. I described, totally neutrally, a number of serious NPOV violations and proposed two ways to fix it. You claimed (without providing ANY arguments) that and I was a troll. Do you sincerely believe that behaviour is acceptable?--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:57, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Actually, if you present some arguments (not your opinion, but your agruments, with references to some policy) that may demonstrate some logical flaws or factual errors in my arguments, I will consider the incident resolved.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:59, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

This discussion is so extended and bloviated that it has become irresolvable. If you are not persuaded already, nothing I can say will change that. WP:Duck. I have already said what I thought was constructive. We will have to agree to disagree. I WP:AGF, but I observe imperviousness to persuasion. Carry on. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 13:12, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Per Aumann agreement theorem, two logically thinking persons cannot agree to disagree about the subject that belongs to their common knowledge domain. That is not an assertion, that is a mathematically proven fact. In the walls of text above, I made good faith efforts to put all facts I am operating with into the common knowledge domain, so I left virtually no space for disagreement. So far, I saw no logical arguments from your side, which means you have nothing to add to our common knowledge. That means, the only way you can prove I am not right is to show some inconsistencies in my logic. Instead, what you say more resemble a !vote, but Wikipedia is not a democracy. Therefore, your apologies (if you wanted to apologise for calling me a troll) are not accepted. You should either stop disrupting a consensus building process, or leave a discussion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:36, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

So you are unable to accept that you are wrong on this? PackMecEng (talk) 15:50, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng, so far, one user called me a troll, and provided no other argumemts. Another user (you) told me I am wrong, but provided no arguments. I am still waiting for a response from three other users (Nug, KIENGIR, and AmateurEditor, who expressed a desire to discuss that matter, but whose arguemts I haven't got yet). And there are several users who generally agree with me. Do you think your question is legitimate? Maybe it is you who must accepoyt you ae wrong? If you are not ready to accept this, please, explain me why my arguments about policy violation are wrong. So far, I got no logical counter-arguments.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:48, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, you wrote, "to write that Cambodiam genoscide+Katyn massacre+Great Chinese Famine+Dekulakization+The Great Purge etc were a manifectation of a single phenomenon and all those events were Communist mass killings when 100+ million were killed - that is a minority POV, which is presented in this article as a universally accepted view." But there is nothing wrong with having articles about minority points of view. Why not just accept that as the topic of the article and ensure that it does not claim it is a universally accepted view? TFD (talk) 18:20, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

TFD, that is one of possible solutions, and I myself proposed it many years ago. However, I anticipate some edit war may start if we attempt to do that, so I would like to det a preliminary agreement on the talk page.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:27, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, thank you for a good faith effort to advance the conversation here. I apologize that it has taken me so long to respond to this section, but I have other time commitments (and there has been so much activity on this page recently that it can be hard to keep up with everything).

1) "The problem is that it describes all human life losses under Communists as "mass killing" or something like that." Not true. The sources (and the topic) exclude the human life losses from war, for example. Some exclude certain famines (for example, Rummel's 110 million figure excluded the Great Chinese Famine due to the deaths being unintentional until he changed his mind in the light of new evidence of Mao's knowledge of what was happening). I believe every source cited restricts their death tolls specifically to intentionally killed non-combatants (although the famines are a gray area, since the deaths were indirect and sources speak to regime culpability for the deaths). If a source is in there that includes war deaths, it is by mistake and should be removed. There are disputes between sources on the totals and also on the intentionality for certain events (particularly the famines). The topic is about mass killing, so we would expect that all the loses of human life described in it were mass killing or something like that.

2) "That means it is intrinsically incapable of serving as a platform for providing a neutral and comprehensive review af all points of view." No, it means that it is limited to just the specific topic of "mass killings under communist regimes". It is not about the wider topic of "all human life losses under Communists". Keep in mind that WP:NPOV is about wikipedia being neutral between various reliable sources, not about the reliable sources being neutral or un-opinionated about a topic ("All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.").

3) "Thus, this article claims Soviet famine was a mass killing, [...] the fact that we have a separate Holodomor genocide question article demonstrates the question whether that famine was a mass killing is still open. The same problem is with Chinese famine." Yes, and this article acknowledges that open debate as well, in the "Debate over famines" section. The very next sentence after your excerpts from the Soviet famine article lead, states that it is a possible genocide, so I am not seeing the problem with inconsistency here ("Major contributing factors to the famine include the forced collectivization of agriculture as a part of the Soviet first five-year plan, forced grain procurement, combined with rapid industrialisation, a decreasing agricultural workforce, and several bad droughts. Some scholars have classified the famine in Ukraine and famine in Kazakhstan as genocide committed by Joseph Stalin's government, ..."). If you are saying that in the problem is that this article treats the famine as definitely a mass killing and the famine article treats it as maybe a mass killing, then I would refer you to the "Debate over famines" section to refute that this article does that.

4) "...this article includes all famine deaths into the combined "Communist death toll" and characterise that as mass killing." It is incorrect to refer to "the combined 'Communist death toll'" as if the article presents a synthesized single communist death toll. There are various communist death tolls reflecting the various published estimates by various authors and they are presented here in chronological order to be neutral between the various sources. I believe it is true that famine deaths are included in at least most of those estimates (Kotkin's is unclear on that from what I recall).

5) "That means it is a POV-fork, and it cannot be a summary style article for all those events. The problem is that we cannot exclude these events from the article, because the "Communist death toll" immediately drops more than two fold, and because the "aggregator sources" used in this article do not allow us to do that." This article is not simply a summary of other articles, it is a topic in its own right as demonstrated by the aggregator sources. I agree that we cannot exclude famine events from the article, as you seem to acknowledge when you say "the aggregator sources used in the article do not allow us to do that" (not because of the effect it would have on the death toll). We have to follow what the reliable sources do. If I am reading you correctly, you are saying that including the famines in the article at all is what makes the article a POV-fork (the POV being that the famines should be counted as killing by the regime) because the event-specific articles do not highlight that POV. However, that POV was highlighted in the Soviet famine article lede, as I quoted in point 3. It is not highlighted in the Great Chinese Famine article, but that may be a problem with that article not being updated. As I mentioned in point 1, Rummel did not consider the Great Chinese Famine an example of democide until reading fairly recent publications (in late 2005). According to WP:CONTENTFORKING, "A point of view (POV) fork is a content fork deliberately created to avoid a neutral point of view (including undue weight), often to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts." First of all, this refers to a non-neutral article about a neutral topic; it does not apply to a neutral article about a negative topic or a neutral article about a POV topic (as some have said this is). Second, this article was not forked from some other article to begin with. Presumably, you are saying that this article is a POV fork of some as-yet-uncreated article like "Excess deaths under communist regimes". Whether that is even a topic will depend on what sources can be found for it. It would not be enough to find a source on excess deaths under one communist regime (although that source could be used to contribute to this article in a supplementary capacity). I don't think I have ever seen a source that looks at "excess deaths" under communist regimes as a group, so there would be a synthesis concern with that topic/article (unless it could be established that it was an even more neutral alternate term for "mass killing" and the other various terms used to describe this article's topic).

6) "Therefore, we have just two options: convert this article to the article about some theory that links Communism and mass killing; delete this article as a POV-fork." It's not a POV fork unless you are saying that whether deliberate killing of noncombatants under communist regimes happened is a POV (putting aside the famines debate and the exact numbers disagreements, no source I have ever seen disputes that communist regimes have killed large numbers of non-combatants). It's not even a POV fork for just the famines issue, since we directly highlight that dispute in this article with a dedicated section. Converting the article to be "about some theory that links Communism and mass killing" would require sources about "some theory that links Communism and mass killing", not sources about communism and mass killing that each propose their own theories as to why. That is, we would need sources about the topic of the theory, not the topic of the killing as we have now. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:39, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I have no time to respond to all of that, and I find some argument frivolous. Thus, #1 does not look a good faith argument, for everybody knoes that WWII victims are not included in the "Communist death toll". However, Courtois DID include Vientamese civil war death (from both sides) into Communist death toll.

However, this discussion convinsed me we are dealing with minority view narrative, not with mainstream view, and the reason is Rummel. As I already pointed elsewhere, Rummel's astronomic figures come from his lousy dataset (mostly, crude Cold War era estimates, including GULAG death estimates). I don't know if you bothered to check Rummel's sources, but I did that, and I found his data include very crude pre 1980 data for GULAG polulation and death statictics. Even the data collected by me in the GULAG article are more detailed and comprehensive. And he comcluded that several tens millions were killed in GULAG. These estimates are not recognised incorrect or obsolete. They are just ignored by an overwhelming majority of authors who write about USSR. They have much more reliable and modern data, they established the real figures, and even Conquest conceded the number of GULAG prisoners (who passed through GULAG) was 18 million. The number of deaths is less than 2 million. Why nobody bothered to write an article and criticize Rummel's estimates? To the best of my knowledge, only Dulic did that, and only for Yugoslavia. The answer is simple: no serious historian takes Rummel seriously. Real historians and Rummel are in "parallel universes".

I have one concrete question. We know Rummel's data for USSR are dramatically incorrect, but these blatanly wrong data are presented in the article as true facts (I mean the overall death toll, USSR figures are a part of). Have you ever thought that this fact alone means your definition of the topic, and your choice of "aggregate sources" is deeply flawed? Similarly, you present Courtois figures as if they were valid. However, it is well known that those figures were severely criticised. Why do you present them as facts, if you perfectly know they are wrong? Why you are misleading a reader?--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:02, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

TFD lead proposal

If we go that route, I suggest the following as a draft for the lede paragraph. I think it is a neutral and comprehensive summary of the topic.

Communist genocide, or Victims of Communism, is the narrative that famine and mass killings in Communist states can be attributed to a single cause and that Communism represents the greatest threat to humanity. The narrative has its origins in Western European scholarship, in particular the Black Book of Communism (1997), and has become accepted scholarship in Eastern Europe and among anti-Communists in general. Typically, the number of victims, who are referred to as victims of Communism, is estimated to be over 100 million, which is considered to be in the high range by most genocide experts. The narrative has been criticized by some scholars as an oversimplification and politically motivated, and for equating the events with the Holocaust. Various museums and monuments have been constructed in remembrance of the victims of communism, with support of the European Union and various governments in Eastern Europe, the United States and Canada.

TFD (talk) 20:33, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I like it, but I would like to know what Nug, KIENGIR, and AmateurEditor think about that. --Paul Siebert (talk) 20:47, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, that seems to be a very good summary. Just one thing, why "some scholars"? If this is a minority view, it could be better reflected such as changing it to "most scholars" or stating "it represents a minority view within scholarship that has been criticized by (other) scholars". Other than that, it is fine by me and it greatly clarifies what the topic actually is. As I proposed several times, we may include both popular literature (Lost Literature of Socialism) and scholarly literature (Courtois et al.) and then include scholarly analysis and criticism of both the theory (i.e. the criticism of "famine and mass killings in Communist states can be attributed to a single cause and that Communism represents the greatest threat to humanity") and the "victims of Communism" narrative, among other responses. Davide King (talk) 20:53, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure I can get behind that rewrite. It paints to much as a conspiracy theory or something not backed by most RS. I have seen plenty of sources presented throughout this mess of a talk page that support the concept while noting basically none that refute it. PackMecEng (talk) 21:01, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

How would you change it to correct that impression? TFD (talk) 21:12, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I think some of my issues stem from the framing used. Words like "narrative" are over used and hyperbolic parts like "and that communism represents the greatest threat to humanity." Add to that the labeling that it is mostly supported by "anti-communists". I could also see a little to much weight given to the rebuttals. PackMecEng (talk) 23:19, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng Marxist, perhaps you could find an alternative to the word narrative and list the words like it you object to. While you say that it is hyperbolic to use the expression "communism represents the greatest threat to humanity," I don't see it as that different from what the VOC Memorial Foundation says: "Marxist socialism is the deadliest ideology in history." I would be perfectly willing to use their phrasing. TFD (talk) 04:11, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

No, it does not look like a conspiracy theory. For example, it emphasized popularity of these views among EE public. Indeed, The Black Book of Communism is considered one of the most influential books (and one of the most controversial). It should be rescribed as a major controversy, when a significant part of public opinion, many political journalists and writers, and several scholars support that idea, but majority (but not an overwhelming majority) of schilars do not.

When I wrote "I like it", I meant "I like it in general", but that does not mean it could not be improved further.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:27, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng, in other words, you just don't like it; and you have just shown a failure to understand the topic and the analysis and arguments made by Paul Siebert. You are essentially supporting the topic of the article to be a list of mass killings under Communist regimes but that ignores the original research and synthesis in doing so; the same thing could be done for capitalist regimes or any other regimes for which there are reliable sources but do not actually support the topic. So just stating there are sources for it misses the point they do not actually support the topic, neither a list of mass killings under Communist regimes, nor the currently-structured article. Here, I gave a summary of arguments and made an analysis of sources for why they do not support the currently-structured article but they can be used to support the topic outlined by Buidhe, The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert and I. The whole point is this article is synthesis and original research, so just saying there are sources does not actually answer any of the issues we raised for why they are used for synthesis and make original research. Even if there are sources, it does not mean much when they are used for original research and violates our policies and guidelines. That is why we are not advocating deletion. Davide King (talk) 21:27, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Did you also miss the part where it was admitted "All the sources used in the article are correctly treated as 'significant minority' views or weight purposes"? Yet this is not reflected in the lead or elsewhere and the article acts like these are universal mainstream or widely accepted views among scholars, essentially ignoring all academics and scholars who either criticised the concept or ignored it because it is not notable. The proposed lead would fix that. Davide King (talk) 22:03, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

It's often difficult to get the tone right on the first attempt. What may seem neutral to me may seem biased to someone else. So let's see if there are other ways to phrase it. TFD (talk) 21:54, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support This is a great improvement over what we have now, and it supported by sources. It presents the connection as a theory or viewpoint with considerable support (especially in Eastern Europe), but far from universal acceptance—which is exactly what it is. (t · c) buidhe 21:34, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

This discussion needs a new talk, however I completely disagree with Davide King, his issue with this article seems to one of POV. We are not here to defend communism, nor are we here to try to whitewash attrocities. Davide King usually takes a position for leftist positions, such as Antifa (United states) an ideology I support. Wikipedia should only be a mirror for other sources, that's it as an example List of genocides by death toll is not a place for Wikipedians to agree on what is and isn't a genocide, it's a place for Wikipedia to put what is a genocide, you need to understand this. Opinions as to what is and isn't a genocide is irrelevant and it doesn't matter if the sources are anti communist the point is that they are considered reliable. We are not here to defend communism or leftism, as a leftist myself. Vallee01 (talk) 23:30, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I notice that no one has grouped together the genocides that were carried out by Christian nations and said "Christians are responsible for most victims of the genocides in history including the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and the massacre of indigenous peoples. For balance, we could have an article about Muslim genocide. If you did, you would need a source that explained how genocide is a part of the Christian religion. It would meet your standard that no one could disagree over what was a genocide. TFD (talk) 23:56, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Vallee01, this completely misses mine and others' point. The problem is exactly that it is not supported universally or widely supported by sources as the currently-structured article implies. Read here my actual reasoning and analysis of sources. You really need to look at original research and synthesis; sources do not mean much if they are used for original research or synthesised to prove a point. There is not a single book whose main topic is mass killings under Communist regimes. The only ones close to that are The Black Book of Communism (but only the introduction, as the book itself only "presents a number of chapters on single country studies, it presents no cross-cultural comparison", there is no discussion of mass killing under Communism) and Red Holocaust. The problem is the current article use sources whose main topic is not this, but discuss only the Soviet Union or another country, or a few countries, not all ones; they do not treat this as a single event or phenomenon like the current article does. Some do not even compare Communist mass killings but Cambodian mass killing to non-Communist mass killings. Hence, they should be discussed at Genocide and/or Mass killing, they should not be discussed as this article does. Paul Siebert et al. provided a good compromise solution. I see no other solution than to take this at ArbCom since you have not reached out to us to fix any of the problems and you are essentially supporting violating policies and guidelines, which is also a conduct issue. Davide King (talk) 00:07, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

You keep saying that it is not widely supported by sources, please present those sources that don't support it. --Nug (talk) 00:19, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, the onus is on you to say they do. You are asking us to prove a negative. Again, if it is widely supported by sources, it should be very easy to prove. Davide King (talk) 00:25, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The article already cites sources that that group a number of communist regimes that have perpetrated mass killings and discuss why the ideology has a propensity to mass killings. One source has over 897 cites. You are the one making the claim it is a minority view point, prove it. --Nug (talk) 00:33, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The onus is on them to keep the long standing consensus? I think you have that the wrong way around. Statements keep getting thrown around on this talk page that the subject of this article is not a thing and we should disregard the RS that support it. All that while not really giving any RS that refute it besides personal opinions. PackMecEng (talk) 00:36, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, PackMecEng, I have already addressed here why the sources do not actually support the topic. Or perhaps it could be we are referring to different topics, or have different understanding of it, that causes issues on misunderstanding from both sides.

AmateurEditor themselves wrote "All the sources used in the article are correctly treated as 'significant minority' views or weight purposes", yet this is not actually stated and there is no criticism of the concept of linking all Communist regimes together. We cannot overemphasise their similarities when scholars do not see a connection between, say, the events in Pol Pot's Cambodia and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, which are far from evident, and that Pol Pot's study of Marxism in Paris is insufficient for connecting radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge's murderous anti-urbanism under the same category. As also noted by several other scholars, "[w]hether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together—just because they are labeled Marxist or communist—is a question the authors [of The Black Book of Communism] scarcely discuss." There is no long-standing consensus as this page was locked for like seven years and had three No consensus and two Keep in all the AfDs, so it is not so simple. Paul Siebert gave convincing arguments backed down by actual literature and guidelines and policies; you are free to disagree but so far they have not actually rebuked. Davide King (talk) 01:07, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

• Utterly reject, this text introduces POV into an otherwise neutral lead that discusses mass killings to the more contentious lead that discusses genocide. I've been around Wikipedia for a long time, back in the day some article opponents used introduce text that made the task of deleting an article easier, I'm not suggesting this is what is being attempted here, I'm sure all participants are working in good faith. --Nug (talk) 23:44, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

  What is the POV that it injects? TFD (talk) 00:04, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

  That the fact of mass killings occurring under Communist regimes is just a narrative created by anti-Communists, that's POV. And since nobody has presented a RS that supports that POV, it is therefore fringe POV. --Nug (talk) 00:17, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, the lead is not supposed to tell that the fact of mass killing is some "narrative". Clearly, mass killings did occur. What should be presented as a "narrative" is the idea that (i) these events have a very clear and significant linkage to some generic Communism, (ii) these mass killings included tens of millions excess deaths that were a result of famine, civil wars etc., and (iii) all of that makes Communism a worst murdered of XX century. That is a narrative that is not shared by majority of scholars.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:19, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

• The text says, "Typically, the number of victims, who are referred to as victims of Communism, is estimated to be over 100 million, which is considered to be in the high range by most genocide experts." Why do you read that as meaning mass killings occurring under Communist regimes is just a narrative created by anti-Communists?" TFD (talk) 00:21, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

  Nug, that is not the narrative. The narrative is that communism was the main culprit and that it was equal or worse than Nazism, or that there is a link between communism/the left/socialism and mass killing, when genocide scholars do not actually say that; Valentino does not see ideology as the main cause of it. Again, you seem to want this article to be a list of mass killings under Communist regimes but that is not what it is supposed to be. Davide King (talk) 00:23, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I've sourced that narrative of "that communism was the main culprit and that it was equal or worse than Nazism" to Shafir, and he has only 2 cites, and you want to make it the lead? --Nug (talk) 00:43, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, it is not Shafir saying that, it is the proponents of the concept, linking all Communist regimes together or communism and mass killing, saying that. This article is not supposed to be a list of Communist mass killings, for which we already have individual articles. Since we are lumping them together, we have to explain why, hence why it comes the theory and concept with it, of which The Four Deuces gave a nice summary of it. Davide King (talk) 01:11, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Wrong. We CAN have a list of Communist mass killings (such lists are allowed per our policy). However, only those items can be included there which are universally recognises as mass killing. Thus, Great Chinese famine cannot be included (just read the article about it).--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:23, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

To me it reads like absolute propaganda

"Communist genocide, or Victims of Communism, is the narrative (Oh my absolute god) that famine and mass killings in Communist states can be attributed to a single cause and that Communism represents the greatest threat to humanity." "Narrative" it implies multiple things. It implies that there is some crackpot conspiracy that people stating communist massacres are pushing some sort of agenda, which is a complete fringe theory and shouldn't and isn't allowed on Wikipedia. Is Doctor Tobagan going to be used a source later? It also states that the very term "communist genocide" is someone some sort of agenda when it isn't. This is a list about massacres committed by communists that's absolutely it. What on absolute earth, if this is published Wikipedia's POV standards which is already getting lower and lower, would be seen as non-existent. This is POV text at it's finest. The mental gymnastics someone has to do to try to explain how this could be explained as unbiased is telling, it's clear as day. Vallee01 (talk) 00:38, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The proposed lead begins, "Communist genocide, or Victims of Communism, is the narrative that famine and mass killings in Communist states can be attributed to a single cause." The "narrative" refers to the explanation for the famine and mass killing, it does not say that the famine and mass killings were merely narratives. In fact the paragraphs also says that genocide experts confirm these events occurred. In any case, if the thing the phrasing implies that the mass killings were a mere narrative, can you express the phrasing better? TFD (talk) 00:48, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose What is the subject of the article? As of now, it's a not a "narrative that famine and mass killings in Communist states can be attributed to a single cause..." It's literally and simply mass killings under communist regimes. Changing the lede without reworking the article would create a tremendous disconnect. The term "narrative" is not neutral, as it casts the connection between communist regimes and mass killings as some sort of conspiracy theory. The lede, as it stands, is neutral and a good summary of the article, albeit a short one. The lede currently stands at four sentences, none of which are factually inaccurate or violate our NPOV guidelines, and is a closer fit with MOS:LEAD than the proposal. I've been watching this talk page from afar for some time and, while it has made for a mirthful read, I will not be drawn into a drawn out WP:TLDR debate. schetm (talk) 00:55, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

  Schetm, that is why I proposed a RfC about the main topic in the first place. What is the main topic? And why does not the current article mixes up different topics into one? Davide King (talk) 01:01, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Good question, schetm. We are trying to come to agreement about the article's subject during last 12 years. Briefly, if the subject is the events (actual human deaths), this article is supposed to be a summary style article for a number of already existing articles. That require that the rules of content forking are observed. Currently, they are blatantly violated, just compare this article with Great Chinese Famine, so the article must be deleted as a huge POV fork. (By the way, without any loss of information from Wikipedia, because all these sources and facts can be found in other articles).

If the subject is a narrative, then the article requires relatively minor changes. It seems newcomers do not understand that under "narrative" we do not mean that no human losses occurred, but we just want to emphasize that only a small group of authors claim all of them occurred due to some "generic Communism", and all of them were "mass killing/democide etc".

regarding TL/DR, this is a complicated subject, and to make an adequate judgement, one expect to familiarise themselves with the sources. Therefore, you are expected to show more respect to the users who invested their time end efforts into that matter.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:09, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

OK, but I was responding to the proposed lede. I oppose the proposed lede without a change to the article's subject. What say you to my oppose? Let's stay on point here. schetm (talk) 01:13, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

schetm, the problem is that the article's subject is not clear. It says about 100+ million killed by Communists, and majority of those "victims" were Chinese of Soviet peasants who died as a result of famines, which are not considered as mass killing by majority of authors. In that situation, what is the subject of the article? The narrative of real events?

Another example. The article emphasises Rummel's estimate of Communist democide. I don't know if anybody bothered to read Rummel, but I did. A significant part of Rummel's "Communist death toll" is GULAG deaths: several tens of millions. I checked his sources - these are totally obsolete Cold war era estimates. Since then, historian science made a huge step forward, a lot of new documents have been discovered, and even Conquest had to concede that the number of people passes through GULAG was 18 million. And we know the number of deaths was less than two million. Dis Rummel adjust his "estimates"? No. Do historians pay attention to Rummel's estimate? No, they ignore him totally. There are two parallel universes: in one universe, historians are studying Soviet history, in another universe, superficial "theorists" produce some "theories" that are based on oversimplified speculations and obsolete data. The article is leaning towards the latter group. Now, please, answer: what this article is about: a narrative or facts?.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:45, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Just saw where you spoke to the term "narrative." Good. We have something to work with here. We must assume that any Wikipedia reader is a "newcomer." If "newcomers" can't understand the terminology, of if such terminology is so easily misconstrued, perhaps said terminology shouldn't be employed? Remember, we're not writing for readers of this talk page, but for the general public. schetm (talk) 01:22, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Policy requires that articles be about topics that exist in reliable sources. We could not create an article for example about alcoholic beverages in Communist countries unless there was some literature that connected them and then we would have to base the article on those sources. Normally we would not group the rum in Cuba with the vodka in the former USSR, we would categorize them under rums and vodkas respectively. Having that article without any explanantion would imply that there was some similarity between Cuban rum and Russian vodka.

While the connection between mass killings and Communism may be obvious to you, we cannot assume that it is to all readers. In any case, we need to explain it. Most experts agree that at least some of these killings had no connection to Communist ideology but rather to the specific circumstances under which they occurred. For example, Helen Fein ascribed killings of ethnic minorities and foreigners in Kampuchea to xenophobic nationalism, rather than Communist ideology.

If you don't like the way I phrased the lede, perhaps you could provide an example of how you think it should be phrased. If you don't like the word narrative, then suggest another.

TFD (talk) 02:06, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Sure. Swapping out narrative for theory would be a good start. But, as it stands right now, the lede is totally neutral and based in objective fact, and appropriate, albeit too brief, for the article as it currently stands. From what I read above, the aim is to turn the article into some treatise on the theory, or "narrative" of the purported relationship between mass killings and communist regimes. Cool. That ain't happening. There isn't consensus for that. I think that would be fine for a new article, but not this one. So, go, start a new article! I might even !vote keep if it comes up at AfD. But this current article is not a POV fork. It's well sourced, meets the GNG, and is based in object fact. It ain't perfect (I think Davide King's proposal #4 would be ideal), but, if I'm reading the preceding wall of text, "that route" which you refer to will end up in talk page development hell just like this article.

Part of the problem might be that it's tough to envision an article with just the lede. In fact, it's generally a bad idea to write a lede before you write the rest of the article, especially with a subject such as this. Do you remember Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/sandbox? It hasn't been substantially edited since 2013. Why not just write the article you want to write, throw it up in the air, and see if anyone hits it? schetm (talk) 08:08, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

If you read Nug's comments that I posted below, which are typical of comments made by the keep side at AfDs, the only reason the article survived AfD is that editors argued that scholars make a causal connection between Communist ideology and mass killings. Making a list of mass killings under Communist regimes implies a connection, which must be explained in order to have a neutral article. Arranging a series of facts does not mean the result is neutral. We must observe due weight and avoid implicit synthesis.

As WP:LEAD says, "It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies." So the causal connection must be in the lead in order to ensure neutrality. Why do you think we should omit that information?

TFD (talk) 11:46, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't oppose that in principal, I just oppose the lede you propose for the reasons outlined above, which have to do with NPOV, the actual wording of the proposed lede, and the proposed lede being for a different article that you want to write on some "victims of communism narrative." Again, feel free to write that article. But what you propose isn't for the article we have right now. schetm (talk) 13:40, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Schetm, "[f]rom what I read above, the aim is to turn the article into some treatise on the theory, or "narrative" of the purported relationship between mass killings and communist regimes. Cool. That ain't happening. There isn't consensus for that." I say the contrary is true and there is no consensus for the current-structured article, or at least there is some weak consensus the article has problems as shown below. It is 6–8 (both you and Valee01 just entered the conversation, otherwise it would be 4–8, which has been the result throughout this long discussion that does back to Archive 43), if I include you, but I am not sure where I should include you because I would note my proposal 4 would actually still require a rewriting and restructuring since the article, to be turned from mass killing to excess deaths or mortality, is based on an universally-accepted terminology about mass killing that either does not exist or it is not actually universally-accepted. Davide King (talk) 13:44, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I know. It's pesky to get wider input from the community. Prop 4 has my top choice, but I'd rather the status quo be maintained than the article go in the direction y'all want to take it. At any rate, per WP:NOCON, "In discussions of proposals to add, modify or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit." Again, we have the sandbox. Write the article you want to write and throw it at the community. schetm (talk) 13:52, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Schetm, if you don't oppose the proposed lead in principle but find the wording to be POV, could you please provide a version that you think would remove the POV. What I wrote was a first draft using what I considered to be neutral wording. But I accept that different people may interpret the wording differently and welcome your kind assistance in achieving the best wording. TFD (talk) 14:02, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

No. I oppose your proposed lead in principal because it's a lead for a different article. I don't oppose the fact that any lead should conform to MOS:LEAD. But I will go sentence by sentence:

1: What is the title of this hypothetical article? You'd need sources saying that this is the WP:COMMONNAME for your "narrative." I object to the word "narrative" and have proposed an alternative above You'll also need sourcing on the greatest threat to humanity bit.

2: Accepted scholarship by just them? Sources!

3: Include that range of estimates!

4: Again, that word narrative. Also, partisans support the "narrative" and scholars oppose it?

5: No objection to this sentence.

However, what you propose is for a different article, and it cannot be sanctioned for this article. Again, write the other article! We have the sandbox! schetm (talk) 14:13, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

schetm, actually, the proposed lead implied that the article must be re-written accordingly. That will convert is from a POV-frok to some normal text. Of course, what we discussing here is not the lead itself, but a new article's concept.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:20, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

As I said above, policy prevents us from having an article that lists what some editors consider to be related events without a source that explains how they are related. We can't for example have an article "Liquors distilled under communist regimes," because there is no obvious connection between Communist party rule and the type of liquors that they produced. Liquor preferences in Cuba for example have more in common with those in the rest of the Caribbean that they do with other Communist states. That is, they are attributable to the history, culture and geography of the region, rather than the type of government. Don't assume that readers know what the connection between Communist ideology and mass killings is and that the article does not need to explain it. TFD (talk) 14:41, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

TFD, c'mon man! You asked for a critique to your proposed lead, I provided a line by line critique, and then you don't once respond to any of the issues I raised? As you haven't countered any of my points, my oppose stands. schetm (talk) 20:09, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

schetm, if you don't mind, I'll respond on behalf of TFD.

re 1. The title is not that important. Even the current title is ok, at least, for a while.

re 2. That is the lead. We don't need to provide these details in the lead.. The name of authors is supposed to presented in the article.

re 3. Including the range creates a false impression of high importance of that subject. In reality, majority of serious scholars do not play these games, which is more pertinent to Guinness book. High estimates are usually belong to those authors who want to demonstrate that Communism (as a single phenomenon) was the worst thing in XX century. As a rule, this approach is seen as flawed by others, so they do not provide low estimates, they just reject or ignore that approach as whole. Anyway, this objection doesn't look serious.

re 4. The text doesn't say "partisans". The second sentence says that narrative originates from Western scholarship, so I don't see "partisans vs scholars" contraposition.

re 5. Good.

In summary, your criticism doesn't look too serious.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:33, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Schetm, as noted by here by The Four Deuces, problem is these are the same topic, except our would be neutral, not replicate things already written or addressed by other articles as argued here by Paul Siebert, and in general it would not violate our policies and guidelines of NPOV (the current article only represents the views of a minority and acts like these views are universally supported or are a majority view; it is essentially based on the works of a few authors such as Courtois, Rosefielde, Rummel and Vallentino, who are not representative of all scholars and are both a minority and revisionists in positing Communism as equal to Nazism, dating back to the revisionist Nolte), no original research and synthesis. Nug clearly believes sources support the link between communism and mass killing (i.e. that mass killings were caused by communist ideology or were the result of it; this is not the majority view; AmateurEditor wrote all these are minority views, albeit in their view these are "significant minority" ones, hence why they are all attributed, although I argue they are only attributed to its proponents, not that they represent a minority view among scholarly sources), hence it is synthesis to make this article about the events while pushing the view they were the result of ideology. Either we make an article about the events, simply listing and tell the events without pushing any narrative or why (I still think this would be synths and violates NPOV because scholars themselves disagree on lumping them together just because they called themselves Communist or Marxist and because they are already discussed in other articles and no information would be lost; if no new information is provided, it should not be a standalone article), or we make it only about the narrative as proposed and outlined by Buidhe, The Four Deuces and Paul Siebert. Davide King (talk) 17:08, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The proposes rewrite may have the same title, but it's an entirely different topic. The bulk of the article, as it stands right now, enumerates mass killings and mass mortality events under communist regimes. What is proposed is an article discussing the theory or "narrative" of mass killings under communist regimes. Two very different articles. That's why I think the most productive way forward would be to draft a new article and then publish it. Unless, of course, you want to spend another decade on this talk page. schetm (talk) 20:09, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Schetm, the last AfD did not rule out "the name choice, sy[n]thesis identification, rewriting, and/or merging"), so what are you even talking about? You are simply assuming we agree on the main topic, when we do not. Even among these who are for keep, you do not support the same topic and this article discusses more than one topic at once. Finally, we do not want to delete this article but rewriting it about a topic that is actually supported by sources and scholarly literature. Davide King (talk) 21:20, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Schetm, this article was created by a banned user and since the first three discussions were No consensus, it should have actually been deleted the first time per G5 and only be re-created when there was clear consensus for it. The onus should have been on these who were for Keep, something which they failed to do in the first three discussions, hence the article should have been deleted/merged back then. Essentially, the AfDs have been falsified since it should have been deleted after the first three discussions, if not the first one itself; "[a]fter analyzing the agruments [sic] of both sides, I think there is no consensus to keep or delete this article", but the onus is on these who are for Keep to prove that case; and if there is No consensus but we are essentially Keep[ing] the article, that does not reflect the actual result; it should have been deleted and recreated when clear consensus for Keep was established. Paul Siebert, I would be curious to hear what you think too. This is yet another violation and conduct issue. Davide King (talk) 14:51, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Coulda, woulda, shoulda. It wasn't speedied. Maybe it should've been, but it wasn't. Later consensus said to keep, so the point is moot. You could always nominate it again... schetm (talk) 20:09, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Schetm, the fact this article was created by a blocked user is relevant and that it was not deleted because of it shows this article bears ownership. In addition, later consensus was falsified by the fact, despite ruling No consensus for three times in a row, the article was kept, which legitimised it. So per sources arguments were taken at face value and ignored any counter-arguments that disputed not the sources themselves but whether they support the topic as currently outlined and structured. Even these who agree for keep actually disagree on the main topic. Nug supports the link between communism and mass killing/genocide whereas you support excess mortality; these are not the same thing, yet these are used to keep this mess of an article because both of you are for keep, even though you support different topics, or disagree on what the main topic actually is, or should be. That is why an AfD is useless unless we can actually agree on what the main topic actually is; and if we cannot disagree on such a simple thing as this, I do not see how this article can be kept. Davide King (talk) 21:15, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Support as this is backed by sources already cited in the article (Ghodsee, Getty et al) and emphasizes this narrative, while popular in some circles, is not one that is universally accepted by historians of communism. If this supplants the current lede, I would suggest updating the body to better reflect these sources, which are now largely concentrated in the "Debates over famines" section. Perhaps that section should be renamed and greatly expanded? I also think that maybe "genocide experts" should be replaced with something like "historians and scholars of communism", given this is a better description of those aforementioned scholars cited in the article. I might also suggest leaving out the part "and that Communism represents the greatest threat to humanity" as it seems rather excessive.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:11, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

It is still a mystery who are these "historians of communism" who don't accept the connection to mass killings. Apparently this is the majority viewpoint according to Davide King, I've asking him for cites but he hasn't delivered, perhaps you could assist supplying those cites? --Nug (talk) 00:32, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, you are essentially asking us to prove a negative because, as demonstrated by Paul Siebert et al., the majority of historians of communism do not actually accept the connection to mass killings, or simply ignore or do not write about the topic, demonstrating it is not a widely-accepted concept. The criticism to The Black Book of Communism demonstrate this. Most of the praise came from publications and non-experts on the subject while the reviews among Soviet and Communist and historians of communism were much more mixed or critical. Indeed, the main criticism was that it lumped together Communist regimes without much merits or research; what made the radical Soviet industrialism similar to the anti-urbanism of Cambodia? What accomunated Afghanistan and Hungary? It is not clear, they write. Lumping together Communist regimes just because they called themselves communist or Marixts, as if they had a single essense, is not really addressed by the authors. Perhaps that is because only Courtois and Malia make this point in the introduction, the main issue of controversy. Davide King (talk) 05:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

C.J. Griffin, I agree in "updating the body to better reflect these sources" and with what you wrote. However, while it could be reworded, "Communism represents the greatest threat to humanity" is essentially what its advocate say, except this would be presented as their opinions rather than an established fact like the current article implies in that it was a fact communism caused the events. The VOC Memorial Foundation says: "Marxist socialism is the deadliest ideology in history." I find it absurd this is considered to violate neutrality, even though it would be clearly attributed to its proponents of the narrative, but the current article, which implies it was a fact there is a link between communism and mass killing, or they were the inevitable result of communism (according to Nug, "linking the genocides committed by various communist governments and attributing the phenomenon as a feature of Communist policy", as "[q]uite a number of authors such as Stéphane Courtois, Benjamin Valentino, John Gray, Eric Weitz, Ronit Lenṭin and Rebecca Knuth have made the connection between mass killing in a number of communist regimes, the connection being that communist ideology was used as the justification for the killing", which is either not what scholarly sources say, not what these same authors say, or these authors such as Gray et al. are non-expert on the subject) does not violate NPOV by pushing this minority view (according to AmateurEditor, all sources in the article are "significant minority" and attributed as such) as established fact and mainstream view among all scholars, especially genocide and Soviet and Communist studies scholars. Davide King (talk) 19:56, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I think the opinion on Communism is essential to understanding the topic. the foreward to the Black Book says that it provides "a moral rather than a social, approach to Communism." That is key to the approach taken. TFD (talk) 22:41, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Oppose - this hyperbolic text doesn't look even remotely neutral and isn't really related to the article as it stands at all. I wouldn't necessarily rule out changes or even maybe even major restructuring (and then updating lead accordingly), but as such proposals have certain appearance of "we know we cant get it deleted in afd so lets try to nuke the content", I so far remain somewhat sceptical. --Staberinde (talk) 20:53, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Staberinde, but the current article apparently is? So far, these who support the article as it is have shown no willingness to any change or even that there are issues, something that the latest AfDs either emphasised or did not rule out. The main issue remains that the main topic is unclear and that many of these who are for keep actually support different topics. Nug supports the link between communism and mass killing/genocide whereas Schetm supports excess mortality; these are not the same thing. "We know we cannot avoid the obvious issues so let us try to nuke any change." Not much different from yours. Davide King (talk) 21:10, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

This also misses the point we are not even arguing for deletion but for a rewriting, which was not ruled out by the latest AfD, alongside a merge, about a topic that is actually supported by sources and scholarly literature. The current topic, it is not even clear what it is and even these who are for keep disagree among themselves. Davide King (talk) 21:23, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Staberinde, can you suggest how you would write the lead? TFD (talk) 22:41, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Where we stand on the main topic

I count, as either supporting the current article or supporting the main topic to be about the events, the following users:

1. AmateurEditor
2. KIENGIR
3. Nug
4. PackMecEng
5. Vallee01

I count, as either opposing the current article or supporting the main topic to be about the concept, narrative, or theory (proposed by Paul Siebert et al.), the following users:

1. Aquillion
2. BeŻet
3. Buidhe
4. C.J. Griffin
5. Davide King (myself)
6. The Four Deuces
7. Paul Siebert
8. Rick Norwood

Wikipedia is not a democracy or a vote, but I suggest these supporting the current article to not act like there is no issue or there is consensus for the current article; and stop from not assuming good faith or not showing some decency to all the users who invested their time and efforts into this matter. Davide King (talk) 01:35, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

This doesn't seem right Schetm and other editors have stated they don't support the addition. Davide King also there are currently only one person who stated they support your change. The actual list looks something like this:

Davide King are you trying to get around consensus? Only one other editor stated they support changing the lead. Vallee01 (talk) 01:45, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Have you even read the part where it is clearly stated the list of users who either support the current article or the main topic to be about the events, and the list of users who either oppose the current article and support another main topic? Since you have not even participated to this discussion, which goes back to the archives, you should actually read it or inform yourself before making such false accusations. This is not about the proposed lead but about the main topic, on which there is disagreement. Davide King (talk) 01:48, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I thing counting votes is a very bad idea. Wikipedia is not a democracy, and the strength of arguments plays much more important role.

i think we need to finish the process of placement of this article into the general hierarchy of Communism related article. When we determine which articles are its parent article, and which article are its spinoff articles, the question about the topic will be naturally resolved. --Paul Siebert (talk) 03:11, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Schetm only opposed "the proposed lede without a change to the article's subject" and I added you, even though you only got recently involved while all the others either were here from the start or have contributed to the discussion; and it would still be 6–8. Davide King (talk) 01:42, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I mean, since y'all asked, I'd support #4 in your RFC, but not strongly. I'd be OK with that or the status quo. But the lede should not be changed if the status quo is maintained. Honestly, it's been a decade, and someone should have the cojones to throw this thing at AfD to see what the community says. schetm (talk) 02:06, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Schetm, I agree that "the lede should not be changed if the status quo is maintained", that is why I have not voted. As for the AfD, the reason why I have not done that yet is that these who are for Keep may actually support a different topic (one may support 2, another may support 4, another may support 5 and so on; these are not all the same thing; Valentino proposes Communist mass killing as a subcategory of dispossessive mass killing, which is different from Mass killings under Communist regimes), making it worthless because the article is supposed to have only one, clear main topic; or even if there is consensus for Keep, it does not mean there is consensus for the main topic; and if there is no consensus for the main topic, it should be either rewritten (as we propose) or merged, and only recreated when consensus on a clear, main topic can be established. Davide King (talk) 02:18, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Schetm, if all editors at AfD relied on policy-based decision-making, then this article would have been deleted long ago. However if you add together editors who think the article is biased but could be reformed, editors who will vote to keep the article for ideological reasons and a large group of editors who will vote to keep any article regardless of what it is about, that may be difficult. Unfortunately, the lead I proposed could be used as evidence to keep and rewrite the article. Then it would be kept but not re-written. Nug for example wrote at the first AfD,Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Communist genocide:

• "communist genocide" is a specific concept, for example Rebecca Knuth treats it as such in the chapter Understanding Genocide: Beyond Remembrance or Denial.
• Quite a number of authors such as Stéphane Courtois, Benjamin Valentino, John Gray, Eric Weitz, Ronit Lenṭin and Rebecca Knuth have made the connection between mass killing in a number of communist regimes, the connection being that communist ideology was used as the justification for the killing.
• See the works by Stéphane Courtois, Benjamin Valentino, John Gray, Eric Weitz, Ronit Lenṭin and Rebecca Knuth.
• Not abductive synth, noted British political philosopher John N. Gray actually discusses the concept of "Communist genocide" here.
• Actually the concept is not synth, noted British political philosopher John N. Gray published the concept of "Communist genocide" here.
• The concept of "Communist genocide", linking the genocides committed by various communist governments and attributing the phenomenon as a feature of Communist policy is published here.
• Many books do make a link between communist ideology and genocide, see Eric D. Weitz's book A century of genocide for example.
• Either way, ideology is a factor, the question is to what degree. Communist ideology promotes the destruction of national groups, no question about that, and destruction of national groups is genocide according to Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
• It is well known that Karl Marx was a racist.
• Ellen Frankel Paul in the book Totalitarianism at the crossroads discusses the general concept of "communist genocide."
• How can you say it is synth, noted British political philosopher John N. Gray discusses the concept of "Communist genocide" here, linking the genocides committed by communist governments and attributing the phenomenon to Communist policy.
• Never the less, the notion of "Communist genocide" being a specific feature of Communist policy common across many Communist regimes has be published.
• Genocides have particular characteristics, Nazi genocide was derived from an explicit and pronounced contempt for Jewish people, while Communist genocide was derived from an explicit and pronounced contempt for any small, "backward" and reactionary peoples.
• The line "Communist genocide was derived from an explicit and pronounced contempt for any small, "backward" and reactionary peoples" is from a published source.
• this article does the opposite and aggregates a number of genocides into one article, an aggregation that is supported in the literature because of its particular features related to Communist ideology that makes it stand apart from regular genocide.
• Plenty of published sources associate mass killings with Communism
• Some seem to hold the view that there is no causal link between communist ideology and mass killings. The view seems to be that the mass killings in the former USSR, the Democratic Kampuchea, in the People's Republic of China and Ethiopia were all independent events where the ideology of government was just co-incidental, not a root cause.
• There is no escaping the fact that there is a significant body of literature that does discus and make the link between mass killing and the implementation of communist ideology.
• care to post these sources that claim that Communist ideology was not a factor in mass killing in these regimes?
• “Communism” is a reasonably well defined term, referring to a collectivist, egalitarian economic order, and these mass killings were effected as an avowed part of an avowed attempt to bring about or to maintain such an order.

All I am asking is that if we keep this article we should put in the lead the points that Nug raised as well as expert commentary on their degree of acceptance in reliable sources. Note that there was no discussion about whether these killings actually occurred, but how they should be interpreted.

TFD (talk) 02:51, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I think I have made it clear that I think this article should be merged into individual articles on the mass killings in question, since the evidence for grouping them under this general heading has been doubtful at best and has, in several cases, misrepresented what the sources actually said.Rick Norwood (talk) 12:57, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Rick Norwood, I agree; problem is that is not going to happen. These for Keep are just going to argue per sources, even though I believe we have demonstrated they do not actually support what they think they do or are misrepresented; perhaps we may have to ask actual scholars what they think. Even making individual articles about mass killings by country would be problematic and still be a fork or synthesis because they are not really discussed together or as having a common cause or link; that is the problem and that is what we do here. The only solution would be to turn this article from the events, which we already describe in individual articles, to the concept, narrative, or theory, where it would be described and presented as a minority view among scholars but very popular, especially among Canada, Eastern Europe, the European Union and the United States. Davide King (talk) 13:15, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

This source cited 897 times, makes the connection between the mass killings clear. What evidence do you present that it is a minority viewpoint? --Nug (talk) 00:19, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, that argument is a step in a right direction. However, one has to keep in mind that Valentino's work is devoted not to Communist mass killings specifically. To check the context Valentino is being cited in, I did that refined search: it shows how Valentino is used to describe an obvious case of "Communist mass killing", namely, Great Purge. I picked two first publications from this list that were available online, namely, The Full Weight of the State’: The Logic ofRandom State-Sanctioned Violence and Explanatory Account of Stalin’s “Great Terror” and the Rwandan Genocide. In both cases, Valentino's alleged concept of "Communist mass killing" as a specific category is not mentioned at all. Instead, the second article uses Valentino's theory to demonstrate that his approach is equally applicable to Rwanda and Stalinism. Never in that article the author makes a reference to the Great Purge as a manifestation of "Communist mass killings". Instead, the author says that:

"In both instances, interpreting the utility of these mass killings affords extensive explanatory insight. The presumption that leaders are motivated to instigate massacres as means of ascertaining political objectives holds true in both instances. Stalin’s purging of the Soviet Red army functioned to secure his absolute power. Likewise, the Hutu hardliners decision to instigate genocide stemmed from their motivation to retain power. Respectively, strategic proponents, such as Valentino, are right to assert that recognising the perceived functions of massacres identifies what motivates their implementation."

and concludes,

"Both of the two empirical studies demonstrate that the strategic factors of opportunity, utility and capability provide consistent explanatory insight. "

I haven't done a comprehensive analysis of all sources, but I am pretty sure Valentino is being cited not as a creator of some "Communist mass killing" concept. His concept by and large ignores Communism as some specific cause or common trait. His concept essentially ignores ideology and regime type as a primary factor, and it consists in something else. Maybe, you should read Valentino before writing about him?

I think your argument would be stronger if you demonstrate that Valentino "Communist mass killing concept" is used by historians, for example, experts in Soviet history, to explain causes of mass killings. At least, to demonstrate that those historians cite Valentino.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:41, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

As argued by Paul Siebert above, the number of cites does not mean much if it is not really used for the topic we are discussing, the link between communism and mass killing, and is not really used by experts of Communism. If this was not enough, Valentino does not make any link; for him, ideology is not the cause of mass killing. It is a minority viewpoint because most historians of communism ignores him and do not really discuss the topic; even Conquest "did not write about mass killings under Communist regimes, he wrote about the Red terror, the Holodomor and the Great purge in the Soviet Union. He treated these as separate subjects and did not develop a theory of mass killings under Communist regimes. We should not put together a group of events and create an article when no one else has." If historians of Communism and genocide scholars disagree, we cannot act like there is consensus on this link or that it represents the majority view. If this is not enough, I will make an analysis of sources you presented and explain why they are problematic for what you propose but they can be used as opinions for what we propose. Davide King (talk) 05:24, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I thought we could add to my proposed lead that there is an academic consensus that at least some if not most of the deaths, particularly under Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia and in some other Communist states were connected in that Stalin was copied by Mao and some other Communist leaders, while Pol Pot copied Mao's cultural revolution. However some of the deaths had causes unrelated to Marxist-Leninist ideology and mass killings was not a necessary element of Marxism-Leninism or a feature of most Communist states. TFD (talk) 05:24, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I would also add what the foreward to the Black Book says, that the main research could only be conducted after the end of Communism in Eastern Europe, and that the conclusions had political implications for France's Socialist Party. TFD (talk) 05:52, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

According to Malia, the French right has been tainted by its associated with the Nazi Vichy regime whereas "'knowing the truth about the U.S.S.R.' has never been an academic matter" until recently (the latter point is false, as shown by reviewers questioning the claim made in the book that "a lot of what they describe 'crimes, terror, and repression' has somehow been kept from the general public"). Malia then cites the example of the Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin, who was in need of Communist votes to gain a parliamentary majority. While the non-Gaullist right cited The Black Book of Communism to attack the Jospin government "for harboring allies with an unrepented 'criminal past'", the Gaullists "remained awkwardly in place."

Malia cites the liberal [not communist or socialist] Le Monde as arguing that "it is illegitimate to speak of a single Communist movement from Phnom Penh to Paris. Rather, the rampage of the Khmer Rouge is like the ethnic massacres of third-world Rwanda, or the 'rural' Communism of Asia is radically different from the 'urban' Communism of Europe; or Asian Communism is really only anticolonial nationalism", further stating that "conflating sociologically diverse movements" is "merely a stratagem to obtain a higher body count against Communism, and thus against all the left." Malia criticizes this as "Eurocentric condescension." Malia also cites the conservative Le Figaro, summarizing its argument as "spurning reductionist sociology as a device to exculpate Communism" by replying that "Marxist-Leninist regimes are cast in the same ideological and organizational mold throughout the world" and that "this pertinent point also had its admonitory subtext: that socialists of whatever stripe cannot be trusted to resist their ever-present demons on the far left."

This shows their conclusions were already problematic from the beginning and not widely accepted. This is revisionist history. Incidentally, Malia proves The Four Deuces right this is used against socialists or anything to the left of them ("this pertinent point also had its admonitory subtext: that socialists of whatever stripe cannot be trusted to resist their ever-present demons on the far left.")

According to historian Jon Wiener, "[The Black Book of Communism] was especially controversial in France because it was published during the 1997 trial of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon for crimes against humanity for his role in the deportation of Jews from Bourdeaux to Hitler's death camps. Papon's lawyers introduced the book as evidence for the defense." The Black Book of Communism has been especially influential in Eastern Europe, where it was uncritically embraced by prominent politicians and intellectuals—many of these intellectuals popularized it using terminology and concepts popular with the radical right.

According to political scientist Stanley Hoffmann, "[t]his gigantic volume, the sum of works of 11 historians, social scientists, and journalists, is less important for the content, but for the social storm it has provoked in France. [...] What Werth and some of his colleagues object to is 'the manipulation of the figures of the numbers of people killed' (Courtois talks of almost 100 million, including 65 million in China); 'the use of shock formulas, the juxtaposition of histories aimed at asserting the comparability and, next, the identities of fascism, and Nazism, and communism.' Indeed, Courtois would have been far more effective if he had shown more restraint." Davide King (talk) 06:05, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Different article

I agree with schetm that the proposed lead is the lead of a different article. I supported the TFD's lead because I saw it as a tentative lead of that new article. However, I think it makes no sense to start working on a new draft if we still have a disagreement about the article's scope. In connection to that, I want all of you to answer the following question:

• What NEW information the current version of the article conveys?

Under "new" I mean the information that cannot be found in other Wikipedia articles. Currently, we have three groups of articles related to this topic.

(i) General articles about Mass killings, including Democide, Politicide, Classicide, etc. They provide an overview of theories of genocide scholars, needed definitions etc.

(ii) The articles about each mass mortality events in Communist states, starting from Cambodian genocide (a pure mass murder), and edning with Great Chinese Famine, which is not considered a mass killing by overwhelming majority of authors. These articles provide a detailed description of those events, including historical background, causes, and the number of victims;

(iii) The articles about some specific books, such as The Black Book of Communism, Red Holocaust and several others, where their authors make some general claims that link Communism with mass killing.

Therefore, it is not clear for me what new information is presented in this article. In a hypothetical case if this article will be deleted, no information, facts or sources will disappear from Wikipedia, because all information about the deaths that are linked to Communism by at least one author will stay in other Wikipedia articles.

Please, give me you answer to this question.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:37, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

It's not a different topic, it's the same topic written in neutral tone. At present, the article presents the POV of the CG/VOC interpretation that MKuCR occurred as a direct result of communist ideology. We could have an article called mass killings under fascist regimes and include the Holocaust, Ethiopia, Spain and Argentina. The reason I would not create one is not that I am pro-fascist, but I would need a source that linked them to fascist ideology. Arguments such as we have to tell people how horrible fascists aren't part of policy and all the events in such article already are described in other articles. TFD (talk) 16:34, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Do you have a source that supports the POV of the CG/VOC interpretation that MKuCR occurred as a direct result of communist ideology? The only one I could find is Shafir who only has 2 cites. Valentino, on the other hand, has 897 cites. So which author represents the minority viewpoint? --Nug (talk) 00:15, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, I would be grateful if you answered my question: what additional information this article conveys? Evading that question may demonstrate that you yourself are not sure what this article is about.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:47, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Nug, you asked two contradictory questions:

• care to post these sources that claim that Communist ideology was not a factor in mass killing in these regimes?
• Do you have a source that supports the POV of the CG/VOC interpretation that MKuCR occurred as a direct result of communist ideology?

You yourself answered your second question multiple times, for example: Many books do make a link between communist ideology and genocide, see Eric D. Weitz's book A century of genocide for example.

Can you please explain why you have changed your mind and forgotten what you wrote. I posted some of your comments at the first AfD above, in case your cannot remember.

TFD (talk) 05:24, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

My understanding is that this is how Wikipedia works. One of us deletes the article, or modifies the article (though I don't think the latter is going to go anywhere). The supporters of the article restore it. After three deletes and three reverts, the Wikipedia gods step in. How they will decide is anybody's guess. Rick Norwood (talk) 23:00, 9 December 2020 (UTC)