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.

Why does this page exist?

The only non-propoganda reasons I can think of to have an article dedicated to mass killings under communist regimes are, 1) to offer a comparison against killings under other regimes... except those pages don't seem to exist. Or, 2) to discuss the unique ways or reasons communism might lead to mass killings. Except the ones listed are mostly just standard political purges or uprisings or suppressions of uprisings. Nothing unique to communism there.

There are the famines, and the section about questioning whether deaths (distinct from "killings") related to famines should be attributed to communism. Without engaging in that discussion myself: that one section at the bottom is all that this page has to offer.

2606:ED00:2:0:0:0:0:67 (talk) 00:39, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Metapedia has an article with the same name.TFD (talk) 01:34, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, what do you mean by that exactly? I would be curious to hear your thoughts because I believe the IP raised some interesting. This was already raised back in 2011 by Paul Siebert (if they are still active, I wish they would comment). I do not see anything that has changed. The main topic is unclear and it is mainly, or only, those belonging to the "anti-communist" or "orthodox" view of Communist and Soviet historiography that believe that mass killings under Communist regimes (by the way, you were right it should be capitalised; The Black Book of Communism, of all sources, capitalises it to distinguish it from the communism as an ideal that has existed for centuries, even millennia) are a new or special category of mass killings. Several scholars actually highlight the differences between each Communist regime (especially the connection between the radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge's murderous anti-urbanism as being under the same category). I believe another user, if not you, also highlighted how it is mainly the Soviet Union, China and the Khmer Rouge that committed mass killings while the majority of other Communist regimes did not reach the number to fit the mass killings category, even though any excess death is awful. It is mainly the Black Book of Communism which has popularised a Communist death toll or lumping all Communist regimes (from the most pro-urban ones to the most anti-urban ones) together to reach the 100 millions number. All of this would be best served in each Communist state's history or history of political repression rather than lumping them together as one view of historiography does.

The Communist and Soviet studies is not a field like climate change or the Holocaust where there is overwhelming consensus; it is a conflictual, politicised field and an article like this is very hard to avoid original research, synthesis and especially get NPOV right, "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." Yet, we only present one view of the events and act like it is a fact or, worse, that this view (Communism as a new category or class of mass killings) is held my most scholars. No one is saying or denying that killings or mass killings did not happen; what I and many scholars deny is that Communist mass killings are a special or new category. As you noted here, "Governments across the political spectrum have engaged in mass killings" but only Communist ones are discussed, even though most scholars actually deny or reject that it is a new or special category or mass killings, which makes it even worse. We do not list all anti-communist or capitalist mass killings into one article (we have Anti-communist mass killings and Mass killings under colonial regimes as a redirect to Genocide of indigenous peoples), even though Google Scholar gives a similar, equal or at times higher results than Communist mass killings; and books about mass killings under capitalism, colonialism and imperialism have been published or discussed in scholarly discourse. Davide King (talk) 11:01, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

As I mentioned (now in the archives), the topic doesn't exist in mainstream or even fringe sources (except Metapedia). While there is literature that compares mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia, there is no literature that compares mass killings across the Communist world. The article implies that mass killings are a core element of Communist ideology, which is inaccurate. TFD (talk) 11:45, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, I essentially agree and that is why the article should be deleted while its content may at best be used in each Communist state's history and even in such cases it should be reworded to make greater use of the other mainstream views that disagree (this is a problem for most Communist-related articles which rely mainly of the "orthodox school"; as an example, Stalinism lists as See also two academic books by Sheila Fitzpatrick, yet neither are used as source); or perhaps at The Black Book of Communism, for it is the book which is most responsable for popularising a Communist death toll or that mass killings are a core element of Communist ideology or even as a special or new category of mass killings, lamping together all Communist regimes under one dock, even though scholars hold a more nuanced position and have highlighted the difference between them. The topic also seems to be promoted by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation which recently announced "they will be adding the global victims of the COVID-19 pandemic to their death toll of communism, blaming the Chinese government for the outbreak and every death caused by it." So it is either anti-communists (which, as you correctly noted here, "All these writers are anti-Communists. Anti-Communism does not mean opposition to Communism, but opposition to an extreme degree. That doesn't mean that their books are unreliable but that they present one view of events.") or fringe sources, which often times it means is both. Davide King (talk) 12:57, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Many unsuccessful attempts have been made to delete the article. However, since anyone who dislikes Russia or China or universal health care can find something to like in the article, and a number of editors (inclusionists) vote to keep anything, it's probably here to stay. The only possiblity I could see would be to change the name to "Victims of Communism." At least it's an actual topic. TFD (talk) 13:09, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

2606:ED00:2:0:0:0:0:67, this is actually a question addressed in the header of this talk page, under "Frequently asked questions (FAQ)", "General Concerns and Questions", "Q1: Why does this article exist?: A1: This article exists because, according to a rough consensus of Wikipedia editors, the topic is found in high quality secondary sources and meets Wikipedia policy requirements. This consensus was established by the two most recent deletion discussions, which can be found on this talk page under "Deletion discussions"." I would recommend that you (and Davide King and anyone else who wonders about the rationale for having this article) read the first 2010 deletion discussion that resulted in the "Keep" consensus here in its entirety. None of these objections are novel. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:14, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I would like to add though that none of those sources have ever been presented. TFD (talk) 19:50, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

If you are referring to the "high quality secondary sources" mentioned in the FAQ, four of them were presented with large excerpts in the 2010 deletion discussion by me here, published by Cornell University Press, Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press, and Princeton University Press. All four are also currently cited in the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:25, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, I agree. Not only "none of those sources have ever been presented" but they are and have been even misrepresented, as argued by both you, Paul Siebert and others. Especially if the sources given, as here, are The Black Book of Communism and Red Holocaust. This would be like using American right-wing sources to define socialism or write an article about socialism. If all we have are sources like those, or Benjamin A. Valentino or R. J. Rummel as cited in the deletion discussion, that still does not justify the topic because scholars do not actually see Communist mass killings and only few sources say so; incidentally, they all belong to the so-called "anti-communist" or "orthodox" view of Communist historiography. We cannot base an article only on the view of some within the academia, even worse when they are few and "[t]here is insufficient academic research on this subject for any possibility of writing this article without bias or synthesis." While I agree with The Four Deuces' comment above, Wikipedia nor consensus are a vote; and stronger arguments, actually based on our own policy, have been presented for deletion/dissect/merge. Even AmateurEditor themselves have noted that "these issues become politicized and consensus can be very difficult."

Of course, they write that "an article like this one should not be deleted because it is difficult: there are reliable academic sources for the topic and notability is clear." But it is not actually so clear that "there are academic sources" (there are far more that do not see Communist mass killings as a category and most of those that do are "anti-communist" or from a specific point of view, which is not actually shared by most scholars, who take a more nuanced position) or that "notability is clear." If only a few legitimate academics and right-wing, anti-communist or other fringe people hold this position that Communist mass killings is a specific new category, then it not actually notable and we cannot base the article on such sources or act like it is a fact held by most scholars. Nor can we justify acting like those holding that Communist mass killings are a new category are the majority or mainstream view; the article is basically acting like the minority view is the mainstream view and that the consensus among scholars is that Communist mass killings is a new category. Having a bunch of sources does not justify having an article, especially if that is used as a way to establish that the article is legitimate; as if the article acts like this is a mainstream view held by most scholars when exactly the contrary is true.

This is probably also true for Crimes against humanity under communist regimes, which may be a fork. This one was actually nominated for deletion and in this case the result was no consensus, not keep. Both of those can be detailed elsewhere, without having to reduce an article falsifying the positions held by most scholars. Davide King (talk) 20:35, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

In case you didn't see my response above (your long comment was posted just minutes after mine), please see the four sources here. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:51, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, no one is denying that there are few authors and scholars who believe that Communist mass killings are a new category or subcategory of genocide or mass killings; there is also this confusion in that sources are used to refer to specific incidents where Communist regimes have committed genocide, not to an overarching concept of "Communist genocide" or "Communist mass killings", which is supposed to be the main topic and, again, is only held by a small minority of scholars you mentioned. Rummel, who is problematic for his absurd high death tolls, wrote that "about 110 million people, foreign and domestic, killed by communist democide from 1900 to 1987." Who were those Communist governments before 1917, which is the year The Black Book of Communism states was the beginning of Communism? Nor I see how can those four authors hold more weight than all those who disagree or do not even discuss it because they do not find it notable. A main topic, especially such a controversial one like this, which is still full of original research, synthesis and does not meet NPOV, can not be made out when it is held by a minority. It should be structured and made clear that it is a theory or concept and that it is held by a few scholars but then that would be better to "merge [it] into each country's historical information into the main article for that country, keeping in mind WP:UNDUE." Even Robert Conquest, of all people, "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." Or, if I may add, when only a few scholars, who do not seem to be particularly notable or especially authoritative, have done this and have been extensively criticised by most other scholars. Davide King (talk) 21:08, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

1) "no one is denying that there are few authors and scholars...". You just denied it yourself in your previous post when you said "I agree. Not only "none of those sources have ever been presented" but they are and have been even misrepresented...".

2) "sources are used to refer to specific incidents where Communist regimes have committed genocide, not to an overarching concept of "Communist genocide" or "Communist mass killings", which is supposed to be the main topic and, again, is only held by a small minority of scholars you mentioned.". From one of the four excerpts I linked you to: "All accounts of 20th-century mass murder include the Communist regimes. Some call their deeds genocide, though I shall not. I discuss the three that caused the most terrible human losses: Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia. These saw themselves as belonging to a single socialist family, and all referred to a Marxist tradition of development theory. They murderously cleansed in similar ways, though to different degrees. Later regimes consciously adapted their practices to the perceived successes and failures of earlier ones...." There are other examples as well, if you look in the article excerpts and references. Where are you getting your conclusion that this topic is only "held by a small minority of scholars"? Don't assume that a scholar who chooses to focus on one thing does so because they reject another thing, unless those two things are mutually exclusive. A scholar who chooses to focus on those killed by the USSR, for example, is not necessarily rejecting the larger topic of those killed by communist regimes generally by doing that.

3) "Who were those Communist governments before 1917...". Where does Rummel say there were communist governments before 1917? I think you're reading too much into that round number date.

4) "...how can those four authors hold more weight than all those who disagree or do not even discuss it...". Again, we can't assume to know what people believe outside what they have written. If a scholar chooses not to write on a particular topic, they don't get considered in the wikipedia article about the topic. If they disagree with the topic, then find statements in reliable sources to that effect if you want their views included.

5) "A main topic, especially such a controversial one like this, which is still full of original research, synthesis and does not meet NPOV, can not be made out when it is held by a minority." Please quote the sentence(s) from the article containing original research, synthesis, or violating NPOV and explain how that is happening so that we can discuss it. Vague assertions can't be productively discussed.

6) "It should be structured and made clear that it is a theory or concept and that it is held by a few scholars...". Again, you need to present reliable sources of your own to justify that. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:29, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, thanks for your response and let me tell you that I appreciate your work and I agree that you have improved the article and it is in big shape but I still think sources do not support the main topic. I am not asking for everything to be deleted, there is much useful information that may and should be used elsewhere, for example to each proponent's article.

(1) You misrepresented my position. I was only quoting The Four Deuces and there has been such a widespread misuse and misunderstanding of sources that I prefer to be conservative, especially as I wrote in here that Valentino may not actually be a proponent of it as argued here by Rick Norwood that "[t]he 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.'" So when even one of its alleged proponents (Valentino) says this, what does this say about the article's main topic? This speaks volume. A more accurate title may be Mass killings under Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot's 'Communist' regimes. But this still does not solve the issue that it is only a few scholars who lump those three together.

(2) "A scholar who chooses to focus on those killed by the USSR, for example, is not necessarily rejecting the larger topic of those killed by communist regimes generally by doing that." That seems to be your own assumation and I believe The Four Deuces already responded to this, so there is not much to say.

(3) Well, Rummel did give very specific years, so why 1900? If there was no democide attributed to Communist government, he would say from 1917, so who are those Communist governments guilty of democide before 1917

(4) The issue is most of the proponents are not mainstream, so that raises an issue. In addition, I see you cited many times Gray. But he is a philosopher, not a Soviet scholar; and "John Gray is one of today’s most...controversial political thinkers." I do not see how that is enough to justify the creation of such a controversial article. If it was such a widespread, notable and accepted topic, it should not be hard to prove it so, except it is really not widespread, notable or even accepted, hence why we go in circles in acting like it is and seeing a few sources as confirmation of that, when they just prove the contrary, if all we have are thsoe sources by figures like Rummel (who is ignored by most scholars) or Gray ("one of today’s most...controversial political thinkers")

(5) This was not a "vague assertion" but what many other users have repeatedly noted. The Four Deuces gave the most convincing argument for it; of course, you disagree and are free to do so. One issue is the lumping of all Communist regimes together, which completely ignore the views of most scholars who see few or no similarly between, say, Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge.

(6) That is nonsense. The onus is on those who believe this is a notable topic but all given sources either do not support that or are fringe, i.e. are not widely accepted in the scholarly field, so an article can not be created, unless this is made clear, which just proves it would be better to discuss at the proponents' article. You are asking us to prove or provide a negative when, as repeatedly shown by Siebert, most scholars have completely ignored the topic or wrote about it only to dismiss it and criticize it. Perhaps we need a few univolved editors to read the sources to see which reading of them is actually correct.

Nothing of value would be lost if most of the article's content is moved at each proponent's article, which may give more depth to their arguments and counterarguments. We already discuss in several articles the mass killings and death of Communist regimes; some content may also be moved at The Black Book of Communism because many scholars are responding to that and because it is the book, let me add controversial, which popularised the concept. Davide King (talk) 08:19, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

If you want some more specific examples, the lead does not accurately summarise the topc nor does it clearly establish the main topic, with not a single menion of criticism. The Poposed causes section is so biased and one-sides that I do not even know how to start; it mainly relies on the "orthodox" school and present it as fact when it is just one view. It even accusses Marx and Engels of being genocidical and advocating genocide; they may be dead, so BLP may not apply to this but sill, that it is not a mainstream view. Another thing I have noted is that it puts first the controversial claims as if they are mainstream and then puts a few, diluited criticism, or in some cases neither. The Marx and Engels "genociders" is an example in that it puts the genocidical association first and only then the criticism. The article follows this formula which is misleading. It acts as if Communist mass killings is the main topic but then the main topic are mass killings under Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, which are then lumped together with all excess deaths attributed to Communist regimes and even a Victims of Communism thing which is promoted by anti-communist organisations such as the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

The whole States where mass killings have occured simply repeats what other articles say and it lumps them together when scholars do not and differences have been highlight between each one. There is a Memorial or museums questions but not a Criticism of the concept, which again gives the misleading notion that the topic is widespread and notable rather than being held by a few scholars; and it is not even clear if they really hold this position (see Rick Norwood's comment I cited above). This is a concept the same way Totalitarianism is; both are concepts held by some scholars, they are not facts, but the difference is that there is a literature about totalitarianism; there is not a literature that establishes Communist muss killings, much less a scholarly analysis that lumps them together or that it warrants its own article as a new category of mass killings. Davide King (talk) 09:15, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

1) When Valentino says "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." he is not talking about mass killing of any kind, he is talking specifically about mass killing at the level of 50,000 killed within 5 years or less. Valentino's numerical standard for the term in explained in the "Terminology" section of the article, along with the fact that it is not the only numerical standard. That's one of the advantages of having the "Terminology" section. This also shows the trouble with reading old arguments out of context instead of looking at the state of the article and its references as they are now.

2) WP:OR requires us to follow what reliable sources say, not what they don't say.

3) Why are you asking me? I don't know.

4) You say "The issue is most of the proponents are not mainstream, so that raises an issue. In addition, I see you cited many times Gray." We follow WP:RS, and all the sources cited in the article meet its requirements, as far as I am aware. I don't know what you are talking about that I "cited many times Gray". Gray is cited in the article once, I don't recall bringing him up on the talk page at all, and I did not add the sentence he is being cited in to the article, someone named "BigK HeX" did (diff).

5) I called that a vague assertion because it had no specifics. "Lumping all the communist regimes together" is not an example of "original research, synthesis and ... NPOV" because it is based on the reliable source already quoted on here doing just that. At worst, if what you say is true about most scholars, it is a due weight issue. In order to prove that, you need to quote other reliable source criticizing the lumping. Asserting that most scholars ignore the lumping doesn't prove anything because the assertion may or may not be true.

6) No, requiring the assertion that "it is a theory or concept and that it is held by a few scholars" to be supported by reliable sourcing before being added to the article is from WP:OR, which says "To demonstrate that you are not adding OR, you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented." I have already shown where reliable sources discuss mass killings under communist regimes as a distinct topic in the four sources I quoted earlier.

You say that the article is so biased you "do not even know how to start". This is where you start: if you want to remove something from the article, find a policy-based reason for doing so and present evidence that including the material violates the policy. The more specific you can be, the better. If you want to balance material in the article with additional material, then find a reliable source justifying the material you want to add. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:44, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

First of all, thanks again for your response.

(1) I fail to see how that changes the fact "most regimes that have described themselves as communist or been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing" by his own definition. Even if you are right, this does not solve the undue weight issue. You seem to lump Communist mass killings (as proposed by Valentino) and excess deaths under Communist regimes as main topics. Several scholars have discussed the latter without coming to the former's conclusion, or separating the two things, which are currently lumped together.

(2) Except many of those in favour of 'Keep have engaged exactly in original research and one issue is whose reading is correct about whether sources actually support the topic and conclusions they are argued to have made or not. The topic of Communist mass killings and excess deaths are lumped together; this is but one example.

(3) I am asking because it is relevant what deaths are calculated; Rummel may well have added from 1900 to 1917 all deaths caused by state intervention and attribute them to 'Communism'; for else why would he start by 1900 and not 1917, the year given by The Black Book of Communism.

(4) That sources support that is simply assumed and taken for granted. This still does not refute the main issue of the article since I do not want to delete the content, so sources may meet the requirements to be cited but not the requirements to be a main topic and standalone article. I do not know if it was your or someone else but Gray was cited more than once in several AfDs. All those sources may be enough to support adding statements; they are not enough to support the main topic and I believe this is the argument those for Delete have actually made. If it was such a widespread and accepted topic, much more sources explicitly about one main topic (not all those I listed below) would be available and immediately end this discussion.

(5) I believe Paul Siebert repeatedly showed this in the Archives. "Asserting that most scholars ignore the lumping doesn't prove anything because the assertion may or may not be true." But citing a few authors or scholars, specifically from one side of historiography, is apparently enough? That most scholars have ignored this is a good indication that it lacks weight and is not notable on its own other than its proponents.

(6) Except most scholars, even Conquest, write about specific genocides, rather than a general concept of Communist genocide or mass-killing; those sources do not establish that scholars agree that there is a general concept of Communist mass killings, just that a few authors and scholars propose that, but this can be handled at each proponent or book's article, especially when do it independently of one another. "Communist genocide", "Communist mass killings" and "Mass killings under Communist regimes" are overwhelmingly discussed individually, not lumped together as a general concept of Communist genocide and mass killing. I did not say that "the article is so biased you 'do not even know how to start'"; I said that one specific section (Proposed causes) is and I believe that is what Siebert is referring to when they speak of the article being one-sided.

As I stated many times, my main issue is mainly with the topic, which does not actually exists or is only marginally supported by the few authors or scholars who proposed it, so merely stating that "if you want to remove something from the article, find a policy-based reason for doing so and present evidence that including the material violates the policy" misses the point. I do not want to delete content; I want to delete an article, whose main topic is unclear and only marginally supported.

Either way, while I really appreciate this discussion and it is nice discussing this with you, we are going around in circles and this is not going nowhere; although I wish Aquillion, The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert, Rick Norwood would also respond to your points because I believe they can better explain the issues and because I am not set on deleting the article, I am actually willing to change my mind, but I would like more users to weight in, especially about whose reading about Valentino and other proponents is correct, hence why the pings. Going back to this going nowhere, hence why I created a new section specifically about the main topic. Reaching a consensus about the main topic can help us moving forward; and if there is no agreement or consensus on the main topic, a merge/re-structuring proposal may be in the air. Davide King (talk) 05:24, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

1) Because Valentino is not using the term "mass killing" in the generic sense that it is used elsewhere, it is important to understand this so that you do not think there is a disagreement between him and other scholars or that he is arguing against "communist mass killing" being a distinct topic. When Valentino says in the next sentence that "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", he is specifically talking about violence at the level of 50,000 killed within 5 years, not that the other communist regimes did not also kill large numbers of non-combatants and that they should be excluded from the topic of communist mass killing. In fact, he cites other scholars who used different terms than his for total numbers killed, including Rummel (who not only did not use the same term as Valentino but who also used no lower limit on numbers killed in an event). In other words, communist "mass killings" and "excess deaths" are lumped together by the sources themselves, who do not treat sources using alternate terms as being different topics. Also, WP:UNDUE applies only within articles, not between articles, so it is not grounds for proposing deletion of the article.

2) See response number 1 above. There is no original research since the sources cross-reference each other while using different terms, including "excess deaths".

3) His book is available online (and linked to in the article references). I would advise you to never, ever, take another editor's word for anything on Wikipedia if you can look it up yourself.

4) I added very extensive excerpts and references for the citations to make it easier for skeptical editors to read the sources for themselves to see that no original research or synthesis was happening on the part of Wikipedia editors.

5) WP:UNDUE applies only within articles, not between articles. And it only applies to what has been published on a topic, not what has not been published.

6) the topic of a specific country/event and the topic of grouped countries/events are not mutually exclusive. Choosing to spend your time on one topic does not mean rejecting the existence/validity of the other topic. There is a vast difference between "does not actually exists or is only marginally supported by the few authors or scholars". A "marginally supported" topic exists. Again, WP:UNDUE applies only within articles, not between articles, and is not a reason to get rid of an article. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:58, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, as I wrote above, "the topic doesn't exist in mainstream or even fringe sources (except Metapedia). While there is literature that compares mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia, there is no literature that compares mass killings across the Communist world." You rebut this by providing four sources, the first two of which are titled "Communist Mass Killings: The Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia" and "Communist Cleansing: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot." The third source discusses only Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia, while the fourth one, according to your excerpt, is about mass killings "that occurred in Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia." TFD (talk) 21:44, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I mean you could try AFD #6 but given the last two were keep that might be a tough sell. It looks like the community supports the topic fairly strongly. PackMecEng (talk) 21:47, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, PackMecEng, this is all well-worn ground. TFD, it's wrong to say that because those four sources focus on the three biggest regimes that they don't include the others in the topic. Here are quotes that demonstrate that they do not restrict the topic to those three, even when they focus their scholarship on those three, and discuss communist regimes generally:

• "Communist regimes have been responsible for this century's most deadly episodes of mass killing." ... "Mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa." (from chapter "Communist Mass Killings: The Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia" in book "Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century", published by Cornell University Press);
• "All accounts of 20th-century mass murder include the Communist regimes." (from chapter "Communist Cleansing: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot" in book "The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing", published by Cambridge University Press);
• "Dynamics of destruction/subjugation were also developed systematically by twentieth-century communist regimes, but against a very different domestic political background." (from the third source: "Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide" published in English by Columbia University Press);
• "Dread of political and economic pollution by the survival of antagonistic classes has been for the most extreme communist leaders what fear of racial pollution was for Hitler." (from the fourth one: "Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder", published by Princeton University Press.). AmateurEditor (talk) 22:29, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

But all those in favour's arguments boil down to per sources. Except sources do not actually support that and several of those have been misrepresented. Thanks to Paul Siebert for saving me much time in explaining that. I have taken for granted or as fact that Valentino holds that Communist mass killings are a new category or something but I am not even sure because so many sources have been misrepresented and the only reason the article is still here is because "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." It is taken for granted that all those sources support the topic, when if one actually reads them and dugs deeper, one finds that it is not true. Here, Commodore Sloat went through sources, which if I am not mistaken are also the ones presented above; and they give a valid argument and analysis for why they do not actually support what those users cite them for. Here, here and here, Rick Norwood gave valid arguments and explanations for why sources do not actually support the topic; and there are just so many other comments while those for keep continue to misrepresent sources or act like a few scholars define scholarship. Davide King (talk) 07:34, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

"Except sources do not actually support that and several of those have been misrepresented." Davide King, please don't just assert things or repeat others' assertions, prove it by quoting from the source in a verifiable way. Simply asserting that something is misrepresented is empty because it may or may not be accurate. If you quote the sentence with page number from the source demonstrating the misrepresentation, then we can discuss it productively. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:01, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, this actually underlines the problem. It is not exactly that sources do not verify the statements the authors did. If authors say a number, if one goes to the page given, it likely shows that given number is true; or that things happened, things did happen. It is that neither authors or sources actually fit the main topic (which one is it in the first place? I gave a few below), that they do not lump all Communist regimes together (at best, only Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot's) and that even if there are a few scholars that discuss the topic (some scholars such as Valentino may be misinterpred, see "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"), that does not mean that it is supported by most scholars, that it is a mainstream view rather than one advocated by a few authors and scholars. If it is mainly or only scholars in the "orthodox" tradition, we can not given them undue weight or imply that there is agreement among scholars on the topic as the current title and article currently seems to make. The fact that a large majority of scholars have actually ignored the topic tells us more about its notability than cherry-picking a few authors and scholars, especially if a few such as Grey are not even Soviet historians or scholars but philosophers; we do not create an article based only on one view of historiography, especially if it has been ignored by many other scholars, hence not notable in itself. What this means is that we may discuss at John Gray that he proposed such things. It would be helpful if we could first actually agree on what the main topic is. Still, let me again show my appreciation for all the works you have done; that is why I do not want to make all that go to waste or simply delete it. My suggestion is to re-organise it by moving it to each proponent's page and discuss it at each Communist state's history rather than lump them together, which only a few authors or scholars may or may not do. Davide King (talk) 02:19, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

As I just posted above, which you might have missed: "When Valentino says "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." he is not talking about mass killing of any kind, he is talking specifically about mass killing at the level of 50,000 killed within 5 years or less. Valentino's numerical standard for the term in explained in the "Terminology" section of the article, along with the fact that it is not the only numerical standard." This information is critical to understanding that sentence of his, as well as his other sentence that "Mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa." AmateurEditor (talk) 03:10, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, this would support the notion that Valentino is a proponent of the concept, not that the topic is notable. It is mainly a few authors and scholars, usually from one side of historiography, that propose this and the undue issue is not solved. I do not see why this should not be discussed at Valentino's page the same way we do for Courtois; or even why this should not be merged at Mass killings if the main topic is Communist mass killings as one type or new category of mass killings. Davide King (talk) 03:27, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I think the topic is a little to large to be adequately covered in the Mass killings article. PackMecEng (talk) 03:30, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng, this still does not solve the undue weight issue for why we should give so much weight to the few scholars from one side of historiography who propose the concept just because you happen to agree or support that side. Again, it would be helpful if you could tell what you think the main topic should actually be. I gave a few examples below. Davide King (talk) 03:55, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure I agree with the undue weight argument. That would imply that we are not properly representing the counter point to this (not sure what that counter point would actually be honestly, besides perhaps saying there were no mass killings under communist regimes). The main topic is covering the overall of mass killings by communist regimes. Documenting the main instances as well as views about the topic as a whole. PackMecEng (talk) 04:00, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

No, the counterweight is not saying that there were no mass killings under Communist regimes, that would be nonsense; it is that Communist mass killings is not a new type or category of mass killings. You seem to believe that most scholars support this concept when the issue is exactly that only a few do and only from one side of historiography. AmateurEditor seems to say the main topic is Communist mass killings (i.e. Communist mass killings as a new type or category of mass killings) whereas you seem to support the topic of Excess deaths under Communist regimes. As I wrote below, "[t]his seems to be what many in favour of Keep are actually supporting, that of course killings, especially excess deaths or excess mortality, in mass numbers did happen under Communist regimes, so it should have an article; but this is not enough to have a List of capitalist mass killings, List of mass killings under capitalist regimes, List of fascist mass killings, or List of mass killings under fascist regimes. If there really must be an article detailing this, it should be only a list, without taking the POV that communism is to blame or that Communist mass killings are a widely accepted new category. We would simply list the related articles. [...] [T]his still does not solve the issue on why all the Communist regimes should be lumped together when only a few, if any at all, do so; and that excess deaths mainly happened under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, not all Communist regimes." Yet, the article should be about only one topic, hence the current article still has issues of original research and synthesis and lumping several topics together. Davide King (talk) 04:22, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I think more than a list article is needed. Sections explaining why they happen in most communist regimes and even explaining parts that might not be completely related to communism and why. PackMecEng (talk) 04:24, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Again, it is only a few authors and scholars who do this. Your proposal contains all the synthesis and other issues the current article already has. They are generally discussed individually; it would be synthesis and original research to lump them together and undue just because a few authors and scholars may do so. You seem to believe the "orthodox" view is the one and only mainstream view, just because the current articles rely on that, ignoring that the field is a politicised and conflictual field, not like climate change or the Holocaust, for which there is overwhelming consensus among scholars. The article acts like this view is the overwhelming consensus among scholars and the article's persistent existence only perpetuates this, contributing to misinformation and implicit bias among users and the general public. Double genocide theory would be much more neutral and accurate because it would describe it as a theory, not as fact. Davide King (talk) 05:43, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

It is not a theory though, it is history well documented fact. Also if sources explicitly group events, as demonstrated by the sources given here, it cannot be synth. Not liking the sources or thinking they present a incorrect POV does not actually matter. Basically there is nothing wrong with the article that I can tell. Now you are of course welcome to do a AFD, request move, or request merge and see how that goes for you but from what I can tell the only backing for your position is your own original research, whereas this article has strong RS backing where it is at. PackMecEng (talk) 16:00, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Again, you want the main topic to be the documented atrocities and deaths under Communist regimes, which no one is denying. What you are missing is not that List of mass killings under Communist regimes is a theory; that is not the theory. The theory is that Communist mass killings are a new category of mass killings. This is only supported by a few scholars such as Strauss and Valentino, something that can be well supported in their own individual and books articles.

"Not liking the sources or thinking they present a incorrect POV does not actually matter." That is not what I said and it does matter if we ascribe to them conclusions they never made such as blaming communism or speaking of Communist mass killings as a new category; only Strauss and Valentino did the latter, which is supposed to be the main topic but what you are actually arguing for is another one, i.e. Victims of Communism. That would be a clearer topic but it would still look markedly different from the current one.

"Also if sources explicitly group events, as demonstrated by the sources given here, it cannot be synth." Except they do not. This completely ignores all the arguments those who opposed Keep highlighted and this cannot be easily dismissed since more discussion concluded with no consensus until a Wikipedia editor made the ruling that it was for keep; this was for confirmed in the latest AfD, yet this same discussion noted that "further discussion on the article's future (including the name choice, synthesis identification, rewriting, and/or merging) is strongly encouraged on the article's talk page." However, none of this has been solved and all the issues remain.

"Basically there is nothing wrong with the article that I can tell." This certainly does not seem a good summary of the history of this article and all its discussions. Let me also remind you that I like it is not a good enough reason to keep an article and that wanting to keep an article at all cost is just as disrupting as wanting to delete one at all cost. Yet, all those who proposed anything other than Keep provided valid arguments that repeatedly showed the lack of consensus until the last two discussions, even though I do not see what exactly did change (the arguments were the same), other than a different Wikipedia editor made the ruling.

"[F]rom what I can tell the only backing for your position is your own original research, whereas this article has strong RS backing where it is at." Except the opposite is true and is the argument of those who highlight all the problems with this article. It is a given that sources support the topic, even though I believe I have demonstrated below how much more complicated it is, especially when there is no agreement on the main topic; and if there is no agreement on the main topic, which is supported by mainstream scholarship rather than just a few authors or scholars, then that means the article should not exist. An article is supposed to exist only after a clear main topic, backed by reliable sources, is individuated; this has never happened for the article, which lumps different topics together, even as if it repeatedly changed its name without solving anything because the main topic, and what the main topic really is, is actually the real issue. Davide King (talk) 16:37, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, this is responding to your earlier comment of "this would support the notion that Valentino is a proponent of the concept, not that the topic is notable. It is mainly a few authors and scholars, usually from one side of historiography, that propose this and the undue issue is not solved. I do not see why this should not be discussed at Valentino's page the same way we do for Courtois; or even why this should not be merged at Mass killings if the main topic is Communist mass killings as one type or new category of mass killings." The issue of notability for the topic is whether it meets the criteria at WP:GNG, which says "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." The four sources I linked you to at the beginning of all this are in themselves significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Undue Weight is only an issue within articles, not between articles, so it is irrelevant to notability or to whether or not to have an article. If you instead meant to say that the topic is too fringe for its own article, then you should explain how those four sources, published by Cornell University Press, Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press, and Princeton University Press, are fringe to a greater extent even than, say, Moon landing conspiracy theories, which has a stand-alone article. Don't think that because the sources use different terms they are talking about different topics. They cite each other without regard to the different terms and discuss the merits of different terms as part of their discussion of the topic itself, which is one of the reasons why I think the "Terminology" section is important. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:29, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I will reply you below but publisher is not a guarantee; the author must also be kept in mind. Both Rummel and The Black Book of Communism are controversial. They are not necessarily unreliable but they provide one view and we still make too much use of Rummel, who believe Obama was a threat to liberal democracy and that accademia is too much left-wing. Perhaps that "because the sources use different terms they are talking about different topics. They cite each other without regard to the different terms and discuss the merits of different terms as part of their discussion of the topic itself." This is the issue. Another is that they do not actually use the same terminology or methodology. Some list any excessive death caused by Communist regimes, including famines, war, etc., while others only list direct killings. You may see this as not a big deal but it is when it gives such big contrasting results and analyses. Davide King (talk) 10:27, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what we think is or is not a big deal. We must follow what the reliable sources for the topic do. The article does not shy away from presenting the "contrasting results and analyses", so I don't see any policy problem. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:05, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Indeed they mention 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. As I said, it comes closer to the article in Metapedia than it does to any of the four sources. TFD (talk) 22:45, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

If the article was a coatrack per WP:COAT, it would have lengthy text only tangentially-related to the article topic, like an article about George Washington that goes off on a lengthy tangent about some random town on the pretext that George Washington slept there once (to use an example from WP:COAT). In our case the article topic is about mass killings under communist regimes and the mass killings in these other communist countries are obviously directly related to that topic. Also, that source is not the only one to mention mass killings in communist countries other than the big three. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:47, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

My 2 cents". I already spent a lot of time in debates about this article, and I don't want to lose more time in fruitless debates. That does not mean I am not interested in this topic, so I'll try to outline, briefly, what I currently think on that account. Unfortunately, I had no time to read the above section as whole, so my comments may be somewhat fragmentary.

First of all, currently, I think about that article the following:

• Technically, 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 must exist, because there are reliable sources written on this topic, and these sources should be duly represented in WP, and their analysis in a context of other writings must be provided.
• The article can be fixed and should be fixed, but that may require significantly modifications.

The article is intrinsically biased because the very topic is beyond the scope of the scholarly community. The 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. Let me give just a couple of examples.

1. The article still cites Rummel, who provided totally unrealistic figures for USSR "democide deaths". Meanwhile, we all know that these data are blatantly wrong: everybody who bothered to look at Rummel's data will see that his estimates of GULAG's deaths (which is lion's share of his "democide death toll") are based on blatantly obsolete Cold war era data. They contradict to all modern high quality studies, for example with Erlichman's book on Sovied demography. Therefore, this figure may have just a historical interest. Why it is still being cited in the article. Because no fresh estimates of "Soviet democide death toll" as well as "Communist democide death toll" are available. Why? Because a scientific community ignores Rummel. Thus, Erlichman does not argue with Rummel, Ellman does not discuss his figures, Maksudov ignores Rummel. However, these brilliant scholars are writing about USSR only, and they ignore the "democide" concept. And that is why the preference is given to Rummel's figures, despite the fact that even genocide scholars themselves agree his figures are intrinsically inaccurate (the reference to the source can be found in the talk page's archives).

2. The second important component of "Communist death toll" is China, and the Great Chinese famine in particular. If you want to learn more about that famine, google scholar search gives you good articles like this. O'Grada is one of the most reputable experts in famines, but he never cites Rummel, he just ignores him. O'Grada describes the mechanism of the famine, outlines complex factors that lead to the famine, and put it in a historical context. His writings are detained and insightful, but the very structure of the article does not allow us to present them duly. Instead, superficial and obsolete Rummel's views are presented in all details.

3. The article cites Mann, and AmateurEditor quoted the statement from his book, which ostensibly supports the idea that Communist mass killings is a separate and well defined topic. However, if you read the book, or just a review on in, you will see that Mann's major point is the linkage between genocide and democracy. Communism is mentioned in that book only briefly. This is just one example (out of many) of selective usage of the authors who do not support the main article's idea, or who directly disagree with it. It is ironic that really good sources are used to support superficial whitings and to advocate the concept that is universally not accepted by historical community.

Good historians write that China's history was a history was a history of violence, mass murders and famine, and Mao's killings were just a last episode. However, their voice is not represented in this article, which creates an absolutely false impression that evil Communists came to idyllic China and organizes a mass slaughter, because the Marxist doctrine required to do so. These superficial point of view is not shared by a historical community, but it is popular among "genocide scholars", who are not specialists in history of any country, but who are self-appointed experts in history in general.

Ellman, a good specialist in history of Stalinism points out that it is intrinsically impossible to speak about the number of "victims of Stalinism": "Most of the excess deaths in the Stalin period were victims of the three Stalin-era famines or of World War II (these two categories overlap since the second Stalin-era famine was during World War II). Whether these last two categories should be considered to be as much 'victims of Stalinism' as repression victims is a matter of judgement and heavily coloured by political opinion. (Europe-Asia Studies, Nov., 2002, Vol. 54, No. 7 (Nov., 2002), pp. 1151-1172). Note, in his article, Ellman does not cite Rummel or Courtois, but his view directly contradict to what they say. Ellman is a good historian an a specialist in Soviet history, but Rummel and Courtois are not. Meanwhile, their opinion is presented in the article, whereas Ellman's opinion is not. IMO, that happens due to an intrinsically flawed article's structure.

I could give many more examples, but I am too busy now to spend more time to that. If you agree with that criticism, below are my ideas how to fix the article.

1. Instead of writing about "Communist mass killings" as a generally accepted concept (which is definitely not the case), we should discuss the views of several concrete authors (Valentino, Rummel, Courtois (but not Werth or Margolin, who didn't write about Communism in general).

2. We should describe their views and supplement them with critique of their views, because a reader must understand that the article presents not a universally accepted point of view, but a point of view of few scholars.

3. We should not pretend we are providing a real picture of the events in Communist states, because the authors like Valentino or Rummel are not experts in each concrete country's history. Instead, we should replace majority of the content with links to specialized articles, which describe these events in more details, more neutrally, and in a proper historical context.

4. The "terminology" section must be removed. It is ridiculous when so many terms exist for the same phenomenon. In reality the existence of so many terms is an indication that no commonly accepted terminology exists for this phenomenon (which is not a surprise, because the very existence of the topic in not recognized by scholarly community). In addition, opinia of many authors, such as Wheatcroft, were taken out of context, and a false impression is created that they support the idea that the MKuCR topic really exists, although in reality they do not. Moreover, an absolutely false impression is created that many authors are trying to propose some umbrella terms for the MCuCR category. Thus, the concept of democide is broader than MKuCR, it covers all killings of all civilians by a state. The concept of "repressions" is very narrow, it covers only some category of events during Stalinism, and, importantly, not only lethal actions of the Stalinist government are covered by this term, and so on. This section is a single big piece of original research and synthesis. It is misleding and should be removed the sooner, the better.

I am not going to participate in long and fruitless discussions, but I will gladly join you if you will come to consensus about the need to the article's improvement. This article is really discrediting Wikipedia, and, moreover it is a permanent cytogenic source, which must be fixed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:08, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

It's good to hear from you again, Paul Siebert. I find a lot to disagree with in what you just posted, but I am happy to have discussions toward the goal of improving the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:47, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I understand that you have done an enormous work, so you may accept this criticism personally (if I were you, I would feel uncomfortable too). However, being an honest person, you must accept that the article that emphasizes the views of non-specialists and ignore (or significantly distorts) the views of experts must be fixed. Thus, how van we seriously cite Rummel's figures if all modern sources on the USSR totally ignore Rummel provide totally different figures? Frankly speaking, I would oppose to any attempt to delete this article, and it is possible to write a really good article on that topic. However, that require a significant modification of the concept.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:26, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I try not to take things personally and I don't in this case, but I would remind you that the editors hostile to the concept of aggregating the deaths due to communist governments essentially boycotted the article and it should come as no surprise that the contributions they would have made are under-represented. The solution to the absence of any relevant view is to add them. The solution to distorted views in the article is to edit them. But the article should be comprehensive, not edited down to just the sources we individually prefer. Rummel is not ignored by reliable sources, by the way. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:41, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, while your sources mention that there were mass killings in other Communist states, that is not their topic. They also mention that there were mass killings in non-Communist states, but we cannot use that as a basis for "Mass killings under non-communist regimes." Furthermore, per Balancing aspects, you are not supposed to provide more information about what these sources mention in passing than they do. That's where COATRACK comes in. Washington's biographies say that he visited a town and so we pick up a book about the town and mention things about it that the biographers had not mentioned.

Note also that one of your sources at least draws a distinction between mass killings carried out by the three states motivated by the subset of the ideology they adhered to and mass killings that had no ideological motivation. For example, "counter-insurgency mass killings" are excluded from the chapter and discussed in another chapter along with similar mass killings by the United States and other Western nations.

I notice too that although all your sources write about mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia, they are not mentioned in the lead. If you were basing the topic on reliable sources, you would mention that. It would be informative to readers to know that this was a feature of a specific form of Communism. The article should not falsely imply that mass killings are a feature of Communist countries today. (I assume you don't take the Kung Flu conspiracy theory pushed by the Victims of Communism Foundation seriously.)

Paul Siebert, those are good points. In particular, the terminology section should be removed. The relevant guideline, Technical language, doesn't suggest that we provide glossaries for every article.

TFD (talk) 05:15, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

TFD, the topic of those sources in communist killing in general with the focus on the big three. The article should be similarly weighted, but cannot exclude other communist regimes. Determining the "weight" of treatment for each regime in the article is not something that can be determined in any kind of exact precision, so it is open for endless debate, but recall that Balancing aspects does not tell us to weight aspects of an article based on what is in a single source or even handful of sources about a topic, it refers to the entire "body of reliable, published material on the subject." In other words, weight is based on all publications that contain material on this topic. If something relevant is mentioned in any reliable source, it is eligible to be mentioned in the article. If we are doing it right, the article should be more comprehensive than any single source. Also, I think the lead needs work as well. If you want to add something to the lead, or elsewhere in the article consistent with the requirements, be my guest. I'm not sure Technical language is the best guideline for the terminology section. Embedded glossaries seems better. Ironically, WP:GLOSSARIES begins with a "Terminology" section. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:41, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

IOW reliable sources do not provide weight you would like to see and you want to fix that. But the sole criterion for weight is treatment in reliable sources on the topic of the article. While it may be that there are a lot of important things about the house Washington stayed in that his biographers ignored, we have to use the weight they assign, not what we do. I actually added a place where Washington stayed to his article.[19] Since then the article has been edited thousands of times and the name of the house he stayed in has been erased, but his trip and its significance is still in the article. My view is that if most biographers don't mention the name of the house, I cannot demand its inclusion. On the other hand, I have been there and recommend that people visit it. I have to accept that what I find interesting and what reliable sources find interesting may be different. A guy from Eastern Europe for example may find what Communists did in Eastern Europe more interesting than a guy from North Europe. TFD (talk) 02:55, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

TFD, the difference with your example is that the name of that house is an incidental detail in the biography of George Washington, the exclusion of which does not alter the overall story, but communist states other than the big three are not incidental and their exclusion would leave significant gaps in the topic that would disservice the reader. You acknowledge that those sources mention the other communist states, so can we at least agree that their representation in the article/weight in the article should be non-zero? Exact weight is not something that can be demanded by anyone. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:04, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, thank you so much for your comments, I am very glad to have you back. The only thing I may disagree with is that I still do not see why we ought to have this article, when we may simply discuss this at the article of each proponent, especially when their works are independent of one another; and especially when most of this information is, or should already be, discussed at each individual Communist state and its history, with the difference that we would have to explain that most scholars do not hold those positions. Still, your proposals would make the article much better. The lead is still acting like it is a fact and that it is a mainstream view. If I may make an example, this would be like presenting the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory by only discussing their proponents, with no scholarly analysis for why it is a conspiracy theory in the first place and has no basis in fact. Of course, this is not a conspiracy theory but the point remains; we should not act like those scholars are mainstream or that most scholars agree with them like the article currently makes it appear, including relying on "anti-communist" historians like Pipes et al., making it appear like most scholars hold the position that communism is to blame, etc., when that is just one historiography view. Since as you write, most scholars do not actually respond to this theory or concept because they do not believe in it and it is not a view held by most scholars, we should not have an article if that relies most, if not only, on those same proponents, hence my Cultural Marxism comparison, where scholars have actually responded to them and there is a clear scholarly analysis; we do not have the same thing here. They should be discussed individually, especially if, as from what I have seen, they do it independently of each other and only rely on each other's numbers for death tolls. The article is acting as though those proponents are the mainstream view and those disagreeing, of which we have precious few because they have ignored the topic because it is not notable or relevant, as the minority view, when the reverse is true. Davide King (talk) 07:46, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

A little history. This argument goes way back. In 2009 there were many thousands of posts to this page, and the same in 2010. They accomplished nothing. The people who want this article really want this article. Eventually I, and the others who pointed out the lack of scholarly sources and the use of sources that said the opposite of what this article said they said, were worn down to sheer persistence. A Wikipedia editor made a ruling, and the people who wanted the article won. It would be nice if history did not repeat itself. Rick Norwood (talk) 11:00, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Rick Norwood, yeah, I have seen this and I imagined it was just that users who were for deletion simply drown out, but I found much stronger arguments, which have been misrepresented as POV rather than sources not actually supporting the main topic; and I would wish this is not the end, although I agree that "[i]t would be nice if history did not repeat itself." Especially because the first closure which ended for Keep stated that "[t]his is a well sourced article, not OR, worthy of the encyclopedia. POV is not a valid reason for deletion unless it is entirely unsourceable." But the first part seems to be merely the opinion of the closure, not an accurate summary of arguments; and those who were for delete did not do so only because of POV issues; that is a clear misinterpretation. It completely misses the point that it is a refutation of those arguing per sources that sources do not actually support what those who argued for Keep believe they do; that there is no main topic, no Communist mass killings as a new category and that "most regimes that have described themselves as communist or been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing", which directly contradicts the main topic and article itself. Even the second and so far last closure which was for Keep clarified that "further discussion on the article's future (including the name choice, sythesis identification, rewriting, and/or merging) is strongly encouraged on the article's talk page." Ten years later and none of those issues have been addressed. It is simply assumed and taken for granted that sources and scholars overwhelmingly support the concept and that a main topic exists. Davide King (talk) 12:29, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

The article is important and should exist, as the subject is being one the greatest crimes of history, comparable with the Holocaust. No double measure.(KIENGIR (talk) 18:36, 26 October 2020 (UTC))

That it is comparable with the Holocaust is pushed by a few scholars such as Steven Rosefielde and is by no means an accepted opinion among scholars; the reason why The Black Book of Communism was so controversial is that it pushed the view it was equal to Nazi atrocities. As one reviewer noted, "'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." That "[t]he article is important and should exists, as the subject is being one the greatest crimes of history, comparable with the Holocaust" is not a good reason and amount to I like it. We are not here to moralise but to report consensus among scholars; there is no such consensus among scholars that Communist mass killings are a thing or new category, hence no main topic can be derived from it. Note that only a few, if any at all, scholars and anti-communist, right-wing, fringe and antisemites push the view that they are the same thing; so bothsideism is not a good argument and I find it curious this is always and only applied to Nazi and Communist crimes but never to capitalist, colonialist and imperialist ones, but I digress. Surely the "[n]o double measure" applies to that, too? Either way, the problem that this article is based on a minority of scholars but it is stated as fact or that it is a mainstream view has not and will likely not be solved unless a main topic is actually defined and supported by scholarly analysis, without the amount of original research, synthesis and POV-pushing currently employed. This is not helped by the fact that many users seem completely uniformed about the consensus among scholars, what sources actually say and act like the "anti-communist" or "orthodox" view is the be-all and end-all. Especially when one conflates anti-communism and anti-fascism. Davide King (talk) 19:04, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

This is actually one reason why the article should be deleted and the content reorganised; because the content is useful and can, or should, be used but not lumped together, not like this. This is not only unhelpful but it is even harmful because it gives such a misleading view of what is the consensus among scholars actually is, basically resulting in a confirmation bias process in which sources are taken for granted and it is simply assumed that sources and scholars overwhelmingly support the concept and that a main topic exists; the mere fact this article exists contributes to this misinformation. I, too, thought that there was overwheldming consensus among scholars, that Communist mass killings has a clear and extensive literature that defines the main topic; except, when I actually went to research and dug deeper, reading all comments from both sides, I came to the conclusion that Paul Siebert, The Four Deuces, Rick Norwood et al. were and still are in the right. Unless a clear topic is defined and supported by scholarship, the article should be deleted, for the onus is not on us or on those who are for delete but on those who are for keep, the content merged and re-organised into relevant articles, with the possibility of try again in the future when and if there are stronger sources that link the main topic, not just a few scholars. The status quo or status quo ante is the article not existing.

This is all the more damaging considering the controversial nature of how the article was created in the first place by a banned user. I am inclusive rather than a deletionist but this is really pushing the limit and that this may not fit the type of "article needing work" but more of an "article so misleading and problematic" that it would be more helpful to have it deleted and not recreated until all those issues have been resolved in the first place. No information would be lost since most of this is already covered in more relevant articles and most of it can be merged in the proponents' articles or mass killings article itself, where we say that a few scholars may or not have proposed or argued that Communist mass killings are a new type or category of mass killings.

Again, this is coming by a user who is inclusivist, not deletionist; one who thought it was obvious this is a thing and a main topic exists; I have no love or sympathy for Marxists–Leninists and I would have likely been put in Gulag myself. So this has nothing to do to I don't like it or any bias and everything to do with the fact that per sources arguments do not actually support that and that those who are for deletion, or otherwise have big problems with the article, are actually following our own guidelines regarding main topic, no original research or synthesis and 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." This is simply impossible when we act like the few scholars who propose the concept are the majority view, how most scholars disagree or do not even talk about it (this says much more about notability than cherry-picking a few sources here and there). Let me remind everyone that the accuses against those who are for delete are strawmanned into I do not like it, the same applies to those who uncritically are for keep and I like it, no matter what. The problem, again, is that those who are for delete have extensively and decisively argued and showed how this view is held only by a few scholars and hence no main topic exists while those in favour simply show us sources, without addressing all the issues raised for why none of the sources provided actually support the main topic, taking for granted that it exists. Davide King (talk) 19:56, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

The onus on keeping the article was met back in 2010, which is why I initially responded to you with those four sources from the AFD. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:58, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, I do not think the closure is a good summary of it (it is filled with a personal comment that "[t]his is a well sourced article, not OR, worthy of the encyclopedia. POV is not a valid reason for deletion unless it is entirely unsourceable." In addition, it misinteprets the arguments for Delete and completely ignore all the counterarguments given to those who argued for Keep, for why their arguments and sources do not actually support the topic; this could be easily solved by one or more admins if they could verify whose reading is correct) and consensus may have changed, although I doubt it because the article existing for so many years caused many users, including myself, to hold an implicit bias that a main topic exists and that it is widespread accepted by mainstream scholarship. Either way, it would be helpful if you comment below on what you think the main topic actually is. Agreeing on the main topic would be a start and would help both sides on which sources to provide and whether they support the topic. Davide King (talk) 03:21, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

That "personal comment" was directly addressing arguments brought up by pro-deletion editors and endorsing the responses to those arguments. Again, the four sources I presented were published by respected university publishing houses and there was no original research in the way they were used. This continues to be the case. I see you have repeated you misunderstanding of the Valentino sentence a third time in the next section. I hope you strike that out, now that you know better. I will comment in that thread tomorrow. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:33, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, again, I do not think that was an accurate summary of the discussion. That "there was no original research in the way they were used" is your opinion, for several users have raised exactly this same issue and I am not going to repeat their arguments. In addition, that "the four sources I presented were published by respected university publishing houses" does not mean we ought to have an article about it. Many topics such as the double genocide theory have sources to support it but that does not mean it is enough. Reliable sources is just one of the requirements; the article still fails undue weight and perhaps original research, synthesis and NPOV. For such a controversial article, we would need a consensus among all scholars and not just from one side of historiography, a consensus that is simply not there; and that merely discussing mass killings under Communist regimes does not mean much if the authors do not blame Communism, do not lump them together and do not think they are a new category of mass killing. As for Valentino, I would like more users to weight in because several have disagreed with it, hence why I have not taken a definitive stance, so I hope Aquillion, The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert and Rick Norwood can weight in for this issue about Valentino and I also hope and call on them not to be worn down; what sources actually say and whether they actually support the topic is only of the issue; the second, and only if they indeed support the topic, issue is that of weight. Either way, we are going around in circles, so it would be better to just discuss and hopefully agree on what the main topic is and move forward from there. Davide King (talk) 04:13, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I think I've responded to these points elsewhere above just now, so I would refer you to those. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:04, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

User:KIENGIR, saying that an article should exist because it supports a theory you happen to believe is not consistent with policy. I would of course be happy to have an article about the Double Genocide theory, but one that presents the different views according to their weight in reliable sources. TFD (talk) 22:35, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

As an aside, TFD, if you do actually want an article about "Double Genocide theory", there is no reason you can't have one. Searching for it takes you to a disambiguation page showing that there is already a section on it here, as part of the Holocaust article. Presumably the only reason there is not a separate article on it now is that there is not enough material for it to be stand-alone at this time and you could change that with some effort on your part. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:58, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, that would actually be a main topic and a more neutral one in that it would describe it as a theory and not as a fact accepted by mainstream scholarship. The fact this is deemed Holocaust revisionist may suggest that a section at the Holocaust revisionism article may be enough. This is one of the issues I highlighted below in that this is uncritically accepted as fact supported by mainstream scholarship when not only it is supported by a minority of scholars but it is actually and actively promoted by "right-wing, anti-communist, antisemite, and other fringe figures", including Holocaust revisionism. The fact this is not clarified when Communist genocides and mass killings are proposed or discussed, and taken at face value, is why there is this implicit bias which is not even supported by mainstream scholarship. However, AmateurEditor's suggestion that a Double genocide theory should be created ignores how it would likely be a content fork and that it is those who advocate for Communist mass killings as a topic that are actually endorsing, whether they notice it or not, the double genocide theory; because so far sources have failed to show that they support Communist mass killings as main topic. Davide King (talk) 03:01, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, the criteria for whether or not there should be a stand-alone article is found at WP:GNG and is very simple: "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." The four sources I showed you earlier are enough on their own to meet this standard for this article about the topic of the large-scale killing of non-combatants by communist governments, but there are many more sources than those four. "Double Genocide theory" is certainly related to this topic, and is mentioned once in this article now, but it is a distinct topic in its own right. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:21, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, that is all very well, except the topic itself is not very clear and there is no clear consensus around it. You have yet to make your call for what the main topic actually is. Here, it appears that the main topic is Communist mass killings but this does not solve the undue weight issue, or why we should give so much weight to the few scholars who support the topic. The four sources you showed are all from one side of historiography and they do not show that there is a consensus among scholars, just that the authors are proponents; they do not highlight that so that would support a merge to Mass killings. I also fail to see how it is a distinct topic; the reverse would be true in that Communist mass killings would be an example of double genocide theory. Davide King (talk) 03:39, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I see merging this article to be a mistake. This is a clear and proper spinoff article since the subject is to large and notable to be in the mass killings article without overwhelming it. PackMecEng (talk) 03:42, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng, "the subject is to large and notable to be in the mass killings article without overwhelming it", again this is simply assumed and no source provided, other than a few authors or scholars from one side of historiography and spread by anti-communist and right-wing organisations such as the Victim of Communism Memorial Foundation and as part of the double genocide theory, amounting to Holocaust revisionism. If it was so widespread, surely a source discussing the topic and explicitly say so would be found; except it is not found because it is only discussed and proposed by a few authors or scholars; and those few other scholars who wrote about it extensively criticised it. In other words, sources do not say things like "historians agree" or "there is consensus around historians that Communist mass killings are a new category of mass killings". The authors simply propose that it is a new category; it is their own view and opinion, which can and should be discussed at each proponent's article, not giving undue weight to them and act like this is mainstream scholarship. A different title could help but would not solve the issue. Davide King (talk) 03:51, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

That is how it works though isn't it. Sources are in the article that say it is a thing so then it is a thing. It is not for use to decide or debate if we want it to be a thing or if we think it should be a thing. The sources given above and in the article, to me, clearly show that it is a valid field. PackMecEng (talk) 03:53, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng, you are the living example of how this article existing for so many years simply fed this implicit bias. You fail to realise that the reason those argued for Delete was that given sources do not actually support the topic (again, it is not clear what main topic actually is) and the article continues to have issues of weight, original research, synthesis and NPOV. It is simply assumed and taken for granted. As concisely argued by Paul Siebert, "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." Davide King (talk) 03:59, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

What is the other side that you think has gone unrepresented? PackMecEng (talk) 04:02, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Literally the whole scholarship that does not support the view Communism, or Communism alone, is to blame and does not see Communist mass killings as a new category or type of mass killings? Davide King (talk) 04:15, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't want to be that lady but... source? PackMecEng (talk) 04:16, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Just look at "Communist genocide", "Communist mass killings" and "Mass killings under Communist regimes" and you will notice they are overwhelmingly discussed individually, not lumped together as a general concept of Communist genocide and mass killing. We already have individual articles detailing all this, hence it is fork and synthesis to lump them together into one article. Davide King (talk) 05:28, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

So no, you have no sources that rebut the sources used here? Presenting sources that do not mention something is not proof that something else does not exist. There are already sources that group them and no sources that say they should not be grouped. It cannot be synth if there are explicit sources that group them. PackMecEng (talk) 15:56, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

This is just one example of how non-keep views have been misunderstood and strawmanned. The position that there is no identifiable concept called Communist genocide worthy of analysis on its own is a synthesis of original research; because there are none that specifically speak to this topic in this way — that's the problem. Given sources do not actually support the topic, or at best do not meet weight for a main topic. What this article meets though is the definition of WP:SYNTHESIS.

Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. Similarly, do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source. If one reliable source says A, and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C that is not mentioned by either of the sources. This would be improper editorial synthesis of published material to imply a new conclusion, which is original research performed by an editor here.[i] "A and B, therefore C" is acceptable only if a reliable source has published the same argument in relation to the topic of the article. If a single source says "A" in one context, and "B" in another, without connecting them, and does not provide an argument of "therefore C", then "therefore C" cannot be used in any article.

This is exactly what is done to (1) blame communism for the mass killings, when that is just one view and one simplicist views that most scholars do not hold; and (2) to lump them together. That source A talks about mass killings in the Soviet Union and source B talks about mass killings in China, that does not mean they are to be lumped together when most sources discuss those topics separately and individually ("Soviet genocide" gets 861 results, compared to 290 for Communist genocide); and they do not make a general concept of Communist genocide or mass killings. You essentially want us to have a List of mass killings under Communist regimes articles but this is not what the current article is structured; it acts like Communist mass killings are one thing, conflating democide, genocide, mass killings and all that terminology in one and acts like most scholars support it. Only Strauss and Valentino seems to discuss of Communist mass killings as a new category, but I do not see how this is enough to have its own standalone article. Did you even check the research on Google Scholar I did below? Davide King (talk) 16:16, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Yup saw below already, not very convincing original research given there are already sources used that group them together. Again you have yet to provide any sources that show they should not be together whereas sources have been provided that they should. I do not know how to be more clear than that. PackMecEng (talk) 16:19, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Please, present those "already sources use that group them together" which actually do that. It is up to you to present sources that support the main topic (you seem to believe this should be a list of mass killings under Communist regimes whereas the main topic is Communist mass killings as a new category). The issue is that I and others users have shown that given sources do not actually support the topic; they only support that deaths and mass killings did happen, not that Communist mass killings is a new category of mass killings. Considering not only the controversial nature of the article and topic but of the article creation itself which was never supported by a main topic and was created by a banned sockpuppeter, so I do not see why the onus is only on us. Have you even read this comment by Paul Siebert? They explain very well all the problems with the article. I disagree insofar I believe and argue that all those issues can only be solved by a wide restructuring, move and merge of content; and that compromising in keeping the article did not lead to any real improvement as all the main issues remain, further exacerbating them.

I may add that many issues are caused by a misunderstanding on those who are for Keep that want the article to be a list about all mass killings under Communist regimes (which would require it to be a list article, not as it is currently structured) whereas the main topic is supposed to be Communist mass killings as described by Strauss and Valentino, but this is not actually supported or universally accepted. Davide King (talk) 16:58, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Already presented by AmateurEditor. We are going in circles now. Again you are welcome to run yet another AFD, request move, or request merge. Though I wouldn't get your hope up as the sources do support this article as is. PackMecEng (talk) 17:02, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

To which both The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert and others responded to, in my view giving better, stronger argument and refuting it, changing my position from Keep to Delete/Merge. This could be easily solved if one or more admins would analyse both arguments and especially reading given sources to see whose reading is correct and whether the main topic is actually supported by given sources or not; but to do this, we need first to identify and agree on a main topic.

One last thing I forgot to add in my latest comment, how is one supposed to establish if a main topic is notable? Is that not supposed to be done by analysing sources through Google Scholars and JSTOR? That is exactly what I did. Only a few sources supported Communist mass killings as a new category topic; all the others were simply broadly about what happened under Communist regimes. My understanding is that you want the main topic to be about the latter.

Either way, thank you for the respectful discussion and your comments. I agree it is going in circles, but I hope this can be motivate us to improve the article. Before making an AfD, request move or merge, I would like for us to see first if we can actually agree on a main topic and move forward from there. Davide King (talk) 17:15, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

"how is one supposed to establish if a main topic is notable?" See the General Notability Guideline. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:04, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I do not think it actually meets notability. For one, why do I get such magre results? And I did use different terminology since you wrote "sources use different terms [but] they are talking about different topics." Why did I get only Strauss and Valentino that spoke of a category of Communist mass killings? Why did I get results that analysed states individually without lumping together? Even "Communist death toll" redirects me only to Rummel and his concept of democide. None of other sources write of a general concept of Communist mass killings that lumps them together.

Another issue is that this article actually mixes all the topics I listed below into one and acts like it is a general concept supported by mainstream scholarship and ignores that even many scholars who report figures and death tolls, they do it for research purpose, they do not make a Communist death toll. Why would not all this be discussed at Communist state? Surely that would be more appropriate and would avoid most of this article's original research and synthesis.There would be no original research or synthesis that one source speaking about mass killings in the Soviet Union and one about mass killings in China must be lumped together into a mass killings under Communist regimes, even though they are not lumped or discussed together; that just because both were Communist regimes, it does not mean that scholars agree there is a general concept of Communist mass killings. Davide King (talk) 10:38, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, it is undeniable there are some who try to deminuate the Communist crimes, or marginalize them, either softer or harder methods, to invent any arguments. When I tell about double measure, it is not necessarily because of any possible comparison to the Holocaust, but undoubtedly both are the biggest crimes in history at such a level. Besides what you try to demonstrate, it is part of the past 30 thirty years political discourse as well, when the left-wingers accuses all the time for one the right-wingers, and vica versa, and you cannot deminuate the subject if at state level both crimes are comdemned by law, researched and discussed. Hence, @The Four Deuces:, it has nothing to do with my belief of any theory, Mass killings under communist regimes are an undeniable fact, which (post)-effects are even heavily determinative and haunts until today and will be an unerasable event from history. So we may improve the article inside the framework, guidelines and rules of WP, but deletion/removal will not be supported.(KIENGIR (talk) 12:29, 30 October 2020 (UTC))

I hope The Four Deuces can reply you but let me tell you this is not a good reason to keep an article, if it violates other guidelines such as NPOV, original research, synthesis and weight. The disagreement is caused because we are identifying different topics; we do not actually disagree that Communist mass killings indeed happen and it was a tragedy. You want this article's main topic to be the documentation on Communist mass killings but the problem is that sources usually do not discuss them together (at best, they only discuss the Soviet Union, China and Kampuchea) and they do not discuss of a general Communist genocide or mass killings, which is the main topic I am advocating.

This was supposed to be the main topic of this article, but then in 2009 it was moved to the current title and the topic was changed to be about any excess deaths under all Communist regimes. I suggest you to actually read all AfD to see the disagreement is about the topic and that there is no general concept, not that Communist mass killings did not happen or are not important, including how sources give by those in favour of Keep do not actually support the topic or what those for Keep believe them to do. The problem, which is what those arguing against Keep have repeatedly argued, is that the article includes several topics (Communist genocide/mass killings as new category, all excessive deaths under Communist regimes, etc.) and there is no unifying academic framework which ties together the article's various topics. Hence why if I put "Communist genocide/mass killings", "Communist excess deaths", etc., I do not get any source that actually discusses all them together, which this article has been doing since it was first created. I only get articles about mass killings being discussed in several Communist states but lump them together just because they were Communist states is exactly where original research and synthesis comes in. This would be like making Mass killings under capitalist regimes and Mass killings under fascist regimes but they are not articles because, apart of this implicit bias and double standard (there is no capitalist/liberal memorial to document capitalist, colonialist and imperialist crimes; there is only Communist and Nazi crimes when Capitalist/Colonialist/Imperialist ones should be added too) when in creating only such articles for Communism, both of those articles would still be original research and synthesis, yet this article, which is original research and synthesis, is kept.

Original research and synthesis is tying all those topics I mentioned below together when scholarly sources do not do that. Improving the article is impossible until it is clear what the topic is, hence why I believe a RfC about the topic of the article would be a start. That you think "deletion/removal will not be supported" is your view; I agree but not because it is the correct view. Also let me note that out of all the AfDs, most have been labelled No consensus and only the last two as Keep, even though the arguments remained the same; and Aquillion has a point that "the last AFD was ten years ago, and [...] 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." Still, that is not what I am proposing. I suggest that we actually have a RfC about the main topic and name; if there is no agreement about the main topic (again, the main topic is to be one; we are not supposed to mix other topics, hence original research and synthesis), then an AfD (or more accurately a merge since I do not propose to delete content, just to re-organise it and move it to avoid most of its issues, although an AfD may be more accurate in that I do not propose to merge it into a single article but in several ones) may well be in the air.

P.S. Let me conclude that we already have individual articles for all those tragedies (Great Purge, Holodomor, Great Leap Forward, Cambodian genocide, etc.); we have Communist state where it would be more appropriate to move them there, since that would avoid original research and synthesis; we have each Communist state's history article; and we have Criticism of communist party rule. That you and other users may want to lump them together, it is against reliable sources since most of them do not actually lump them together, so I do not see why we should either. Remember that Wikipedia is based on them. We should actually follow them since the article either does not do that or misrepresents them, hence original research and synthesis. Davide King (talk) 23:59, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Davide King:

1) "I do not think it actually meets notability. For one, why do I get such magre results? ... Why did I get only Strauss and Valentino that spoke of a category of Communist mass killings?". Your meagre search results are irrelevant. Wikipedia has plenty of articles about obscure topics found in reliable sources. WP:GNG doesn't say anything about a threshold number of google results, nor should it. It says that "multiple sources are generally expected" and, as I showed you at the very beginning of this long conversation, enough reliable secondary sources independent of the subject (to use the GNG phrasing) have already been identified and cited (and even excerpted for your convenience) in the article. The four sources I showed you were Valentino, Mann, Semelin, and Chirot & McCauley. Others are also cited in the article currently. In the face of that evidence, you continuing to argue about notability suggests you misunderstand it.

2) "Why did I get results that analysed states individually without lumping together?" Because you did keyword searches, and those sources either contain one or more of the keywords or google thinks the words they do contain are close enough to be relevant. Finding sources that focus on an individual state is irrelevant to the fact that other sources "lump" them together. These things are not mutually exclusive.

3) "None of other sources write of a general concept of Communist mass killings that lumps them together." Not true, as you can see from the excerpts in the article currently, there are more sources than just Strauss, Valentino, and Rummel. I count more than 10 different sources that "lump" communist killing together explicitly in the current excerpts section alone. Some examples: "Indeed, an arc of Communist politicide can be traced from the western portions of the Soviet Union to China and on to Cambodia." (Midlarsky 2005); "Though communism has killed huge numbers of people intentionally, even more of its victims have died from starvation as a result of its cruel projects of social engineering." (Kotkin 2017); "...the conditions for the Red Holocaust were rooted in Stalin's, Kim's, Mao's, Ho's and Pol Pot's siege-mobilized terror-command economic systems, not in Marx's utopian vision or other pragmatic communist transition mechanisms." (Rosefielde 2010); "All accounts of 20th-century mass murder include the Communist regimes. Some call their deeds genocide, though I shall not." (Mann 2005).

4) "Another issue is that this article actually mixes all the topics I listed below into one and acts like it is a general concept supported by mainstream scholarship and ignores that even many scholars who report figures and death tolls, they do it for research purpose, they do not make a Communist death toll. Why would not all this be discussed at Communist state? " I've already shown you four of the mainstream scholarly sources that "mix" the individual countries into a single topic. I don't quite follow what you mean by "they do it for research purposes". If you mean that they report figures and death tolls for communist states only as part of broader lists with non-communist states, then you're wrong. I don't believe any source cited in the article does that. Believe me, critics of this article would have caught that by now. And, if you think there are no "Communist death toll" sources (there are, see the excerpts), then the information would be no more appropriate at Communist state than it would be here. Since we do have those death tolls, there is not reason it could not be also mentioned in the Communist state article, but that would not mean removing this article, which goes into more detail than could be done there.

5) "Surely that would be more appropriate and would avoid most of this article's original research and synthesis." You have yet to show where there is any original research or synthesis in the article. You just keep repeating the assertion that it exists. I am not aware of any OR or SYNTH currently in the article.

6) "... not a good reason to keep an article, if it violates other guidelines such as NPOV, original research, synthesis and weight." Again, you have not shown where there is any OR or SYNTH and I have shown you where there are RS lumping communist states together on this topic. NPOV and weight are not justifications for deleting an article and apply within individual articles, not across articles.

7) "...sources usually do not discuss them together (at best, they only discuss the Soviet Union, China and Kampuchea) and they do not discuss of a general Communist genocide or mass killings..." Sources do not have to "usually" do something for it to be a topic eligible for a stand-alone article. The sources that focus on the Soviet Union, China, and Kampuchea do not limit the topic to those three and do discuss communist states generally. The focus on those three is because they are the most significant examples, but other states are specifically mentioned by the same sources and/or communism generally is discussed. I could find the quotes for you, but this is getting tedious and you should really look into it yourself.

8) "... in 2009 it was moved to the current title and the topic was changed to be about any excess deaths under all Communist regimes." The topic did not change. "Communist genocide" was not seen as neutral enough compared to the alternatives (which is an issue discussed by sources as well). "Mass killing" is specifically mentioned by two sources as a neutral term (Karlsson & Schoenhals 2008 and Wheatcroft 1996). Excess deaths is a way to try to establish an upper limit for the number killed. If reliable sources use it in this context, the article should as well.

9) "...I suggest you to actually read all AfD to see the disagreement is about the topic and that there is no general concept..." The two AfDs ended with "Keep" because reliable sources on the general topic were presented there to justify the existance of the article, which is why I linked you to them at the very start of this discussion.

10) "... the article includes several topics (Communist genocide/mass killings as new category, all excessive deaths under Communist regimes, etc.) and there is no unifying academic framework..." The article doesn't assert that the topic is a "new category" and that is not relevant to WP:GNG anyway, so it appears to be a strawman argument that we can ignore. Likewise with "unifying academic framework": that is not a WP:GNG requirement. The article by existing merely asserts that this is a topic sufficiently found in reliable sources to avoid original research, which has been shown to be the case repeatedly.

11) "...but lump them together just because they were Communist states is exactly where original research and synthesis comes in." This is only original research or synthesis if it is not done by reliable sources. It is done by reliable sources, so it is not original research or synthesis. See the four sources I showed you at the beginning and look at the other sources cited in the article to find more that do this lumping together.

12) "...of all the AfDs, most have been labelled No consensus and only the last two as Keep, even though the arguments remained the same..." No, the last two had "keep" results because of the reliable sources presented that lump.

13) "...At least a new AFD would give us a better sense of where things stand. Still, that is not what I am proposing." Thank you. That would be a waste of everyone's time at best, forum shopping at worst.

14) "...That you and other users may want to lump them together, it is against reliable sources since most of them do not actually lump them together, so I do not see why we should either." If any reliable sources exist for a topic with enough material for an article, it is presumed by WP:GNG that there can be an article. The topic of mass killing of noncombatants by communist regimes generally does not have to be mentioned by any sources about a single communist country or mass killing event to qualify for its own article, let alone by most. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:05, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I am not going to reply to each point because it is useless, for (a) we have a different understanding of the main topic which is causing some confusion and misunderstanding on both sides, especially on whose reading of sources is correct; (b) it is not going to change our minds, even though I did change my mind from Keep to Merge, so it would be better if more users could reply to us rather than going back and forth only you and I; and (c) we just have to agree to disagree.

Those results on Google Scholar et al. are very relevant (otherwise, what is the point of Find sources: Google (books · news · newspapers · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · NYT · TWL?). It proves that we are engaging in original research and synthesis by using sources that do not discuss the main topic and mixing sources that discuss one thing in one Communist regime (without the author making any analysis beyond that) with another thing in another Communist regime (ditto). When most sources in the article are mainly about individual Communist regimes, this proves my point. In other words, sources do not support the topic or discussing a different topic that you may personally see as they same thing but both the others and several users highlight they are distinct. To add one thing I forgot to say in your latest reply below is that you bolded references to Communist regimes, but that could just as easily supports a merge and that most content should be at Communist state and Criticism of communist party rule since both are explicitly about all Communist states and it makes more sense to 'lump' them there; and this would avoid many issues of original research and synthesis that many users highlighted.

But I did use exactly all types of terminology that are listed in the article (genocide, mass killing, etc.) and this did not change the result. Using 'keywords' is actually a good thing because many sources were about anti-communist mass killings. In addition, even if a few sources lump them together, they may not make a cross-cultural analysis. Even if they do, this again ignores that it is simply one view of historiography and ignores all scholars who do not do that. This is supposed to be a scholarly analysis, not to present one side of historiography as the correct and right view.

Ignoring problems is not a good solution and acting like the dozens of discussions in the Archives about the issues of original research, synthesis, etc. do not exist is not a good thing either. You are also ignoring that the main topic is not actually so clear as it may look like to you and that we are probably seeing different topics, hence the many disagreements and misunderstanding. Ownership is also a thing and your comment ("Thank you. That would be a waste of everyone's time at best, forum shopping at worst.") shows a lack of good faith and ignores how several users such as Aquillion and C.J. Griffin disagree with you on this. Davide King (talk) 10:50, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

KIENGIR, you wrote that the subject was one of the greatest crimes of history, comparable with the Holocaust. But the Holocaust was one crime directed by the Hitler dictatorship. We don't group it together with the 1848 Irish famine, the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre and Stalin's purges and call it Mass killings under white regimes. Some people may believe that white people are inherently genocidal and if that view is widely reported we could have an article about it. But we cannot have an article that exists merely to prove that white people are genocidal. TFD (talk) 02:14, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

I suppose if you found multiple high quality RS that made that grouping or comparison you could start an article on that. That is basically what happened here, RS made the grouping and now there is an article following what RS say. PackMecEng (talk) 02:20, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

See my comments above: "As I mentioned (now in the archives), the topic doesn't exist in mainstream or even fringe sources (except Metapedia). While there is literature that compares mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia, there is no literature that compares mass killings across the Communist world. The article implies that mass killings are a core element of Communist ideology, which is inaccurate." [11:45, 25 October 2020][20] TFD (talk) 02:28, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

As noted by The Four Deuces, there are not actually "multiple high quality RS that made that grouping", that is the point. Why if I search for sources using all possible and different terminology, I get nada? I get no source that makes the grouping, only individual source about individual Communist states; and grouping them together, when scholarship does not, just because both were Communist states, is the definition of original research and synthesis. The only sources are Strauss and Valentino, but they write about genocide and mass killings in the 20th century, not about mass killings under Communist regimes; those may at best be added at Genocide and Mass killing. The other sources are The Black Book of Communism and Red Holocaust. Several users have noted that even The Black Book of Communism does not actually support the grouping as "[it] 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." So this leaves us only with Red Holocaust, a little too little, which is more about the double genocide theory than Communist mass killings as a general concept.

We literally write "this term is not popular among scholars in Germany or internationally; 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"; and that it supports the "competitive martyrdom component of Double Genocide", a theory whose worst version is Holocaust obfuscation; with George Voicu stating 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." So the topic should perhaps be about this double genocide theory, which is Holocaust revisionism and trivalisation, not a general concept of Communist genocide/mass killings that is not broadly supported in scholarship.

In conclusion, you, KIENGIR and others actually want the article to be about all mass killings under Communist regimes, but this can be easily done in a list-style article; and the same could be done for capitalist, colonialist, conservative, fascist, imperialist and liberal crimes. On the other hand, this article was and is supposed to be about a general concept of Communist mass killings that is not actually supported by sources and that as repeatedly and correctly pointed out by Paul Siebert, "[t]he 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." A simply solution that may accomodate both sides is to delete this article and move most of its content at more relevant articles and creating a List of mass killings under Communist regimes, where we would simply list them and not engage in the current analysis which is biased, one-sided (that you and KIENGIR do not see this is besides the point as the fact is the article represents only one view of historiography that Communism only is to blame) and is full of NPOV, original research, synthesis and weight violations.

Another solution may be to change the topic of this article to be about mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot because "there is literature that compares mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia", but "there is no literature that compares mass killings across the Communist world." The current article not only implies that "mass killings are a core element of Communist ideology, which is inaccurate", but it gives the misleading notion that this is a universally accepted concept among scholars when it is not. Davide King (talk) 10:14, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

I responded to a lot of these repeated points in my recent response above, but a source can contain any number of distinct topics, the topic does not have to be the overall topic of Valentino's book, for example. Communist mass killing is a topic in Valentino because he literally made it a chapter called ""Communist Mass Killings: The Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia". Communist mass killings is the general topic and the colon shows the subtopic is a focus on those three states. Of course, the topic need not have been an entire chapter to appear in the book sufficiently to help justify the article. Also, how would it be ok to have a list article but not this one? The criteria for list articles in terms of OR and SYNTH is no different from normal articles. Likewise or including this topic in the Communist state article. Either it is a topic found in reliable sources or it isn't. Biased analysis is not reason to delete an article, it is reason to edit an article. Likewise for implications you don't like that could be made from reliably-sourced material. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:33, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but we are not supposed to mix them. You seem to ignore that Valentino is proposing the concept of Communist mass killing that it is a new category of mass killings, conflating it to those who only discuss mass killings under Communist regimes; in other words, two different topics that can be discussed elsewhere. Other users repeatedly explained this better than me; I agree with their reading on Valentino, you disagree, so there is not much more to discuss about it. Either way, when it is just a chapter and when the only scholarly sources that are specifically about the topic, rather than only part of a broader work about genocide and mass killings in the 20th century, are The Black Book of Communism and Red Holocaust, both of which are controversial and one-sided works, I would say that is too little for the current article. The reason to delete (actually merge) is that this article mixes several topics into one. A list-style article would be better because it would remove most of the issues caused by the one-sided Proposed causes section and in general the use of sources from one side only. An analysis, including the rising standard of living, modernisation and lives saved by Communist regimes (which scholars such as Ellman and others have highlighted, whereas scholars from the other side only discuss excess deaths), can be done at Analysis and criticism of communist party rule.

You have yet to respond to the issue that the concept is supported only by one side of historiography and that many scholars have ignore the concept as a result, meaning there is no general topic supported by scholarship. You believe the concept is supported by scholarship, when mainly the "anti-communist" or "orthodox" side and school of historiography does so. When scholars disagree about the topic itself, when they do not even agree on whether to count only direct mass killings or any excess death, we are not supposed to create an article basing it on one side only. In cases like this, it would be better to distribuite it across multiple articles and give warranted weight to both views, when scholarship would not support the topic as a standalone article. The Four Deuces and many others gave valid reasoning and explained that the literature you are thinking about does not actually exist. Davide King (talk) 17:22, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Those comments by BigK HeX and The Four Deuces remain very relevant. Note that BigK HeX wrote "I'm not saying the article is not valid, only that the use of the sources currently imply an authoritativeness to the basic claim which seems stronger than the handful of isolated sources justifies, resulting in a potentially broad SYN problem." Yet, I argue that this can not be solved if the article continues to exist (deleting the article does not mean it can not be re-created in the future when sources actually support the topic; the fact this article was quickly created by a troll caused many issues that could have been avoided if, say, we would have been more careful about it, especially to make sure sources support the topic and there was no synthesis or original research); and I argue the fact all those problems remain here after all those years supports my view/solution.

The Four Deuces' comment that Courtois' introduction to The Black Book of Communism (which is the closest one can get to a source about the general concept but it is still misleading as noted later) and Rummel's Death by Government "were published outside the academic mainstream and not subjected to peer-review." In addition, the bigger issue is that, even if somehow those are valid sources (they are not; they were published outside the academic mainstream and not subjected to peer review; note that The Four Deuces is referring only to the introdution to The Black Book of Communism; yet, as argued by other users, the book itself does not support the general topic, as The Four Deuces make clear in the next comment of their I am quoting), "[n]either of these sources are directly about mass killings under Communist regimes: the first one was about the evils of Communism in general, while the second was about mass killings by governments in general. There are numerous good sources for each of the events discussed in this article, but none that connect the killings in the various countries as having a common cause."

My view is that this whole discussion is based on misunderstanding in that those who are for Keep, they are arguing the main topic is the list of mass killings under Communist regimes, which no one is denying they did not happen (what we deny is that sources make a general concept of it or that there is a literature that compares mass killings across the Communist world and implies that mass killings are a core element of Communist ideology, which is inaccurate) whereas we are arguing that the main topic is a general concept of Communist mass killings that does not actually exist and is not supported by most scholars and sources. I would argue that not having a clear topic or mixing several of them, even ignoring all the issues which remains here, may warrant deletion/merge. Davide King (talk) 11:08, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

One last thing, really. The Four Deuces wrote that "[s]everal peer-reviewed articles have been written that are highly critical of the Black Book and the numbers in these sources have been widely dismissed. There are however numerous good sources for each of the events discussed in this article, but none that connect the killings in the various countries as having a common cause" and I may add Paul Siebert et al. argument that sources do not discuss Communist mass killings but mass killings in general. As noted here by Paul Siebert, "the article's name is 'Mass killings under Communist...'. Therefore, the 'Terminology' section is supposed to discuss terminology used for Communist mass killings, not mass killings in general. In actuality, only one source (classicide) deals with Communism specifically (although even this source tells about 'leftists', not Communists). All other sources does not tell about Communism solely and specifically." In other words, this should be discussed at genocide and its history or/and the general article about mass killings.

This is a shame because (1) it is well-sourced and there are numerous good sources for each othe events discussed in the article that can be used elsewhere; and (2) this is used as excuse to deny our arguments that those sources support all those things did indeed take place, which no one is denying, but they do not support the main topic which is supposed to be a general concept of Communist mass killings that those sources do not actually support, so merely stating support to keep per sources or that sources support the topic, when several users have made valid arguments for why they do not actually support it and that for three straight AfDs those arguments were taken seriously, resulting in no consensus.

There is no reason to not (a) make a summary of this article as a paragraph at Communist state (as a subsection of Analysis, criticism and response, moving there Legal status and prosecution, with Memorials and musem as subsection of the latter); (b) move most of the other content at Criticism of communist party rule (especially Estimates and Proposed causes but also Debate over famines); (c) move Terminology to Democide et al., Genocide, Genocide definitions, History of genocide, and/or Mass killing, among others, to discuss specifically about a Communist genocide/mass killings category alongside other categories such as ethnic genocide/mass killing (this should be attributed and eventual criticism or responses added; (d) move authors and scholars' personal views at their own individual article like is done for Stéphane Courtois, while Benjamin Valentino and Steven Rosefielde are so short, create Red Holocaust (2009 book) and structure it like The Black Book of Communism article; and (f) move most of States where mass killings have occured at each Communist state's history and individual event, if the wording and sources are not there already, with a summary of it at Communist state and Criticism of communist party rule. Is really no one going to support something like this? Other possibilities include a Legacy and scholarly analysis section at Communist state or at Postsocialism.
—Davide King (talk) 12:09, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Davide King on this. Sourced material itself doesn't have to be removed from Wikipedia, just moved to more relevant articles as he listed above. This article has been problematic for over a decade, and was locked down for years. Not only does this article present a fringe concept with scant coverage in academic sources, many of which are non-experts and politically biased (e.g., Rummel, Courtois) or simply not-notable (e.g., Valentino), with Rosefielde being perhaps the one exception, but as I pointed out in a discussion on the talk page of Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin recently, the majority of estimates on "mass killings under communism" presented in the MKuCR article include excess deaths/mortality in addition to direct killings, similar to the estimates in that article, which is why the suggestion to rename it "mass killings under Stalin regime" was rejected. If the name had been changed, I argued that those estimates which include "excess deaths" and those historical episodes which could be considered as such would have to be revised and removed respectively. The same thing could apply here I believe. Per the arguments made by Davide King, Aquillion and other here, perhaps it is best to consider another AfD attempt, given the last one was over a decade ago now and a lot has changed since then.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 16:03, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

C.J. Griffin, thank you. I always believed most, if not all, content should be kept but the article should be deleted exactly because, as you noted, "[it] present[s] a fringe concept with scant coverage in academic sources, many of which are non-experts and politically biased (e.g., Rummel, Courtois) or simply not-notable (e.g., Valentino)." This is especially notable because you did actually vote for Keep in all last three AfDs. Because what I actually advocate is a re-structuring and merge, I would consider an AfD as a last resort. In addition, I would like to have first a RfC about the main topic and name of the article; since many of those who have voted for Keep have advocated more than one topic at once and that the article is supposed to have one clear main topic, I believe a RfC is more neutral because if one advocates for Keep but with a different topic, it is actually a Keep but delete current article. I believe a RfC would avoid this.

For one, most of those for Keep are simply going to say that Communist mass killings did indeed happen and are fact which, for the hundredth time, no one here has denied. But this does not actually respond or refute all the issues many users have highlight based on guidelines and reading of sources, not on personal views. Sources do not lump them together, they discuss them individually, at best only comparing Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, not making a general concept that connect the killings in the various countries as having a common cause and do not discuss Communist mass killings but mass killings in general, which is supposed to be the main topic but it can not be because it is not actually backed by sources.

The other argument, which is going to be per sources, does not really address the issues either, because we deny those sources actually support the topic that ties all Communist regimes together; and even if they do support it, they are either non-expert, one-sided or simply non-notable, as you yourself noted. So I would really want to avoid that because there is not going to be consensus for Delete (actually Merge), even though stronger arguments, backed by guidelines and analysis or sources, have been provided by those who support a merge. It is simply assumed and taken for granted that sources support a general concept of Communist mass killings that ties all of them together (I was one of those); and the failure to understand the topic of those who argue since mass killings under Communist regimes did indeed happen, then we can synthesise sources that are not actually about Communist regimes as a bloc but individual mass killings under one individual Communist state (for example, "Communist genocide" on Google Scholar returns "The communist genocide in Romania", "Communist mass killings" returns "Collaboration in Mass Violence: The Case of the Indonesian Anti-Leftist Mass Killings in 1965–66 in East Java" and "Communist mass killing" returns 10 results). This is not the topic as those on the other side have understood. We have understood it to mean a general concept of Communist mass killings that ties them together and for which there are little to no scholarly sources. So my biggest concern right now is to clarify the main topic thing because that has been causes of several misunderstanding and strawmanning arguments those who highlight the issues with the article have given.

P.S. Crimes against humanity under communist regimes is another synthetised and original research article. Only Karlsson supports the concept/topic and it is actually the same thing as this article, but Karlsson prefers crimes against humanity rather than Communist genocide or Communist mass killings as name. In spite of being a coattrack article of this and Karlsson being the sole proponent of the concept, the article is a synthesis of sources that list events that Communist regimes did and that some sources may or may not have considered crimes against humanity, essentially mixing Karlsson's topic with the Prague Declaration stating that crimes committed in the name of communism should be assessed as crimes against humanity. Criticism of communist party rule may be another coattrack article but it is probably the only one that is warranted and where most content from both articles should be merged, perhaps renaming it Analysis and criticism of communist party rule. Davide King (talk) 17:50, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

C.J. Griffin and Davide King, lumping together communist regime killing generally is not at all a fringe concept, unless you think the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post traffic in those. Splitting up the content in this article to avoid the topic of communist mass killing generally is also hardly a reasonable compromise position, any more than splitting up a baby is. That the topic exists in reliable sources was proven to you with sources, but if that got lost in the wall of text on this page or you just forgot, then here they are again in full:

• "Communist regimes have been responsible for this century's most deadly episodes of mass killing. Estimates of the total number of people killed by communist regimes range as high as 110 million. In this chapter I focus primarily on mass killings in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia - history's most murderous communist states. Communist violence in these three states alone may account for between 21 million and 70 million deaths. Mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa." ..."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." ..."I argue that radical communist regimes have proven such prodigious killers primarily because the social change they sought to bring about have resulted in the sudden and nearly complete material and political dispossession of millions of people. These regimes practiced social engineering of the highest order. It is the revolutionary desire to bring about the rapid and radical transformation of society that distinguishes radical communist regimes from all other forms of government, including less violent communist regimes and noncommunist, authoritarian governments."

- Benjamin Valentino, Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, in a chapter called "Communist Mass Killings: The Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia" in his book "Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century", published by Cornell University Press.

• "All accounts of 20th-century mass murder include the Communist regimes. Some call their deeds genocide, though I shall not. I discuss the three that caused the most terrible human losses: Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia. These saw themselves as belonging to a single socialist family, and all referred to a Marxist tradition of development theory. They murderously cleansed in similar ways, though to different degrees. Later regimes consciously adapted their practices to the perceived successes and failures of earlier ones. The Khmer Rouge used China and the Soviet Union (and Vietnam and North Korea) as reference societies, while China used the Soviet Union. All addressed the same basic problem - how to apply a revolutionary vision of a future industrial society to a present agrarian one. These two dimensions, of time and agrarian backwardness, help account for many of the differences." ..."Ordinary party members were also ideologically driven, believing that in order to create a new socialist society, they must lead in socialist zeal. Killings were often popular, tha rank-and-file as keen to exceed killing quotas as production quotas. The pervasive role of the party inside the state also meant that authority structures were not fully institutionalized but factionalized, even chaotic, as revisionists studying the Societ Union have argued. Both centralized control and mass party factionalism were involved in the killings." ..."This also made for Plans nurtured by these regimes that differed from those envisioned in my sixth thesis. Much of the Communist organization of killing was more orderly than that of the ethnonationalists. Communists were more statist. But only the Plans that killed the fewest people were fully intended and occurred at early stages of the process. There is no equivalent of the final solution, and the last desperate attempt to achieve goals by mass murder after all other Plans have failed. The greatest Communist death rates were not intended but resulted from gigantic policy mistakes worsened by factionalism, and also somewhat by callous or revengeful views of the victims. But - with the Khmer Rouge as a borderline case - no Communist regime contemplated genocide. This is the biggest difference between Communist and ethnic killers: Communists caused mass deaths mainly through disastrous policy mistakes; ethnonationalists killed more deliberately."

- Michael Mann, UCLA sociologist, in a chapter called "Communist Cleansing: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot" from his book "The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing" published by Cambridge University Press.

• "Dynamics of destruction/subjugation were also developed systematically by twentieth-century communist regimes, but against a very different domestic political background. The destruction of the very foundations of the former society (and consequently the men and women who embodied it) reveals the determination of the ruling elites to build a new one at all costs. The ideological conviction of leaders promoting such a political scheme is thus decisive. Nevertheless, it would be far too simplistic an interpretation to assume that the sole purpose of inflicting these various forms of violence on civilians could only aim at instilling a climate of terror in this 'new society'. In fact, they are part of a broader whole, i.e. the spectrum of social engineering techniques implememted in order to transform a society completely. There can be no doubt that it is this utopia of a classless society which drives that kind of revolutionary project. The plan for political and social reshaping will thus logically claim victims in all strata of society. And through this process, communist systems emerging in the twentieth century ended up destroying their own populations, not because they planned to annihilate them as such, but because they aimed to restructure the 'social body' from top to bottom, even if that meant purging it and recarving it to suit their new Promethean political imaginaire." ..."'Classicide', in counterpoint to genocide, has a certain appeal, but it doesn't convey the fact that communist regimes, beyond their intention of destroying 'classes' - a difficult notion to grasp in itself (what exactly is a 'kulak'?) - end up making political suspicion a rule of government: even within the Party (and perhaps even mainly within the Party). The notion of 'fratricide' is probably more appropriate in this regard. That of 'politicide', which Ted Gurr and Barbara Harff suggest, remains the most intelligent, although it implies by contrast that 'genocide' is not 'political', which is debatable. These authors in effect explain that the aim of politicide is to impose total political domination over a group or a government. Its victims are defined by their position in the social hierarchy or their political opposition to the regime or this dominant group. Such an approach applies well to the political violence of communist powers and more particularly to Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea. The French historian Henri Locard in fact emphasises this, identifying with Gurr and Harff's approach in his work on Cambodia. However, the term 'politicide' has little currency among some researchers because it has no legal validity in international law. That is one reason why Jean-Louis Margolin tends to recognise what happened in Cambodia as 'genocide' because, as he points out, to speak of 'politicide' amounts to considering Pol Pot's crimes as less grave than those of Hitler. Again, the weight of justice interferes in the debate about concepts that, once again, argue strongly in favour of using the word genocide. But those so concerned about the issue of legal sanctions should also take into account another legal concept that is just as powerful, and better established: that of crime against humanity. In fact, legal scholars such as Antoine Garapon and David Boyle believe that the violence perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge is much more appropriately categorised under the heading of crime against humanity, even if genocidal tendencies can be identified, particularly against the Muslim minority. This accusation is just as serious as that of genocide (the latter moreover being sometimes considered as a subcategory of the former) and should thus be subject to equally severe sentences. I quite agree with these legal scholars, believing that the notion of 'crime against humanity' is generally better suited to the violence perpetrated by communist regimes, a viewpoint shared by Michael Mann."

- Jacques Semelin, professor of political science and research director at CERI-CNRS in Paris and founder of the Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, in his chapters "Destroying to Subjugate: Communist regimes: Reshaping the social body" and "Destroying to eradicate: Politicidal regimes?" in his translated book "Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide" published in English by Columbia University Press.

• "The modern search for a perfect, utopian society, whether racially or ideologically pure is very similar to the much older striving for a religiously pure society free of all polluting elements, and these are, in turn, similar to that other modern utopian notion - class purity. Dread of political and economic pollution by the survival of antagonistic classes has been for the most extreme communist leaders what fear of racial pollution was for Hitler. There, also, material explanations fail to address the extent of the killings, gruesome tortures, fantastic trails, and attempts to wipe out whole categories of people that occurred in Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia. The revolutionary thinkers who formed and led communist regimes were not just ordinary intellectuals. They had to be fanatics in the true sense of that word. They were so certain of their ideas that no evidence to the contrary could change their minds. Those who came to doubt the rightness of their ways were eliminated, or never achieved power. The element of religious certitude found in prophetic movements was as important as their Marxist science in sustaining the notion that their vision of socialism could be made to work. This justified the ruthless dehumanization of their enemies, who could be suppressed because they were 'objectively' and 'historically' wrong. Furthermore, if events did not work out as they were supposed to, then that was because class enemies, foreign spies and saboteurs, or worst of all, internal traitors were wrecking the plan. Under no circumstances could it be admitted that the vision itself might be unworkable, because that meant capitulation to the forces of reaction. The logic of the situation in times of crisis then demanded that these 'bad elements' (as they were called in Maoist China) be killed, deported, or relegated to a permanently inferior status. That is very close to saying that the community of God, or the racially pure volksgemeinschaft could only be guaranteed if the corrupting elements within it were eliminated (Courtois et al. 1999)."

- Daniel Chirot, Professor of International Studies and Sociology at the University of Washington, and Clark R. McCauley, Professor of Psychology at Bryn Mawr College and Director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania, in the chapter "Why Genocides? Are they different now than in the past?: The four main motives leading to mass political murder" in their book "Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder", published by Princeton University Press. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:09, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I am taking more time to better analyse sources you gave, but let me tell you I do not see how opinion pieces by journalist David Satter, libertarian James Bovard and Ilya Somin, a law professor (not a Communist studies scholar) and adjunt scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, prove anything, other than this is promoted by non-scholars and from one side of the political spectrum. Let me tell you that blaming Karl Marx, as does Bovard, is a fringe view not supported by scholarship. Again, the problem are not the sources themselves but the main topic, on which we disagree. At first glance, I would note though that Mann is discussing a category of mass killing, distinguishing Communist mass killing from ethnic mass killing; and several sources you listed are making more of a comparative analysis between Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, not all Communist regimes as the article currently does; and bolding when referring to Communist regimes does not mean they are saying what you think are saying. So this is still more than one topic. Is it about Communist mass killing as distinguished from ethnic mass killing as Mann does? Is it about a comparative analysis between Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot? Is it about all excessive deaths? You may see those as the same thing but they are not and those are topics mixed together to make up the current article. You also continue to ignore this is one side of historiography and still violates NPOV by ignoring scholars who disagree and do not discuss the topic because, like us, they do not think there is a topic, much less a universal concept and topic accepted by most scholars, making the article appear like it is a mainstream view rather than one view in historiography. I hope Aquillion, C.J. Griffin, The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert and others can also analyse those sources to see if we can agree on a main topic. Davide King (talk) 10:21, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Forgot to ping Rick Norwood. Whatever you think of the topic and I really appreciate your support and nice words, I hope you do not stop commenting (and the same goes for Paul Siebert), and that you make an analysis of those sources given. Because if even those pinged users show those sources support what you are saying (I am still unsure of it), then it may be the end of it; but if those sources still do not support what you think they are implying, then it will not be the end of it and a RfC to clarify what is the main topic would be useful. The reason why I am for a merge is I do not think that sources actually support the topic(s). I am going to change my mind if it can be conclusively showed that they do. This has not been achieved yet in the last two AfDs because there were just as valid argumentation and counter-arguments on the other side; and I find no valid reason to dismiss them. Davide King (talk) 11:01, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Davide King beat me to it. Those opinion pieces are all by libertarian ideologues, so there is nothing surprising or significant about those. It's to be expected from right-wing think tanks and their spokespeople. The other more scholarly sources you quote, in every instance, go to the "big three" as representative of the Communist experience, as if this Communist monolith did nothing but engage in terror and repression. It's as if Cuba and Cambodia are somehow on the same level, the only significant difference is in the scope and scale of repression. To quote one source from above:

• "And through this process, communist systems emerging in the twentieth century ended up destroying their own populations, not because they planned to annihilate them as such, but because they aimed to restructure the 'social body' from top to bottom, even if that meant purging it and recarving it to suit their new Promethean political imaginaire."

Wow. No mention in the rise in living standards under many of these governments as a result of modernization programs (Ther, Philipp (2016). Europe since 1989: A History. Princeton University Press. p. 132: "As a result of communist modernization, living standards in Eastern Europe rose."), or the successes of healthcare and education in Cuba, and how they send doctors all over the world in order to prevent outbreaks from becoming pandemics like Ebola back in 2014. And certainly nothing about the rapid decline in living standards and sharp increase in excess mortality once these regimes fell. None of that matters. Communists kill people and do little else by comparison; they are Hitler's mirror image in genocidal evil. This is basically what people need to know about these systems and little else, even though they were mostly quite distinct from one another (as others have pointed out, Stalin and Pol Pot were so radically different in their aims as to be almost total opposites, with one focusing on rapid industrialization and modernization, and the other emptying cities and reverting back to "year zero" as a completely agrarian society. But yeah, it's all attributable to Marx's ideas and little else... *eyeroll*).

There is actually very little serious analysis in any of these sources, because they are not specialists on these governments. This is why some editors here consider this scholarship, and especially the likes of Rummel and Courtois who are cited ubiquitously throughout this article, to be fringe. Compare these to an expert like Michael Ellman engaging in a thorough and thoughtful analysis of Soviet Repression statistics and what they mean, distinguishing between killings and excess deaths, and making comparisons to other governments behaviors, including the British empire in India and even the major economies of today. He also noted that "the decline in mortality rates during the Soviet period led to a large number of excess lives." Note the difference. The field of Soviet studies has produced a plethora of good scholarship.

Rick Norwood said below that basically this is propaganda, and I think he might have a point. Actually, some scholars are coming forward and saying that this "victims of communism" narrative is basically just that, such as anthropologist Kristen Ghodsee, an expert on socialist and post-socialist Eastern Europe, who focuses on Bulgaria in particular:

• "In addition to the desire for historical exculpation, however, I argue that the current push for commemorations of the victims of communism must be viewed in the context of regional fears of a re-emergent left. In the face of growing economic instability in the Eurozone, as well as massive antiausterity protests on the peripheries of Europe, the “victims of communism” narrative may be linked to a public relations effort to link all leftist political ideals to the horrors of Stalinism. Such a rhetorical move seems all the more potent when discursively combined with the idea that there is a moral equivalence between Jewish victims of the Holocaust and East European victims of Stalinism. This third coming of the German Historikerstreit is related to the precariousness of global capitalism, and perhaps the elite desire to discredit all political ideologies that threaten the primacy of private property and free markets."

In another piece, Ghodsee and philosopher Scott Sehon point out that the same arguments can be used against capitalism:

• "Similarly, in their argument, the anti-communists have not explicitly asserted any connection between countries doing horrible things and their ideology warranting rejection. This does not mean that the argument is hopeless, but it means that there is an implicit step missing. What is that step? Perhaps they would fill in the gap this way: Historical point: countries that were based on a communist ideology did many horrible things. General premise: if any country based on a particular ideology did many horrible things, then that ideology should be rejected. Political conclusion: communism should be rejected. Now the conclusion follows logically from the premises, and the premises look plausible."
• "But the problem for the anti-communists is that their general premise can be used as the basis for an equally good argument against capitalism, an argument that the so-called losers of economic transition in eastern Europe would be quick to affirm. The US, a country based on a free-market capitalist ideology, has done many horrible things: the enslavement of millions of Africans, the genocidal eradication of the Native Americans, the brutal military actions taken to support pro-Western dictatorships, just to name a few. The British Empire likewise had a great deal of blood on its hands: we might merely mention the internment camps during the second Boer War and the Bengal famine."
• "This is not mere ‘whataboutism’, because the same intermediate premise necessary to make their anti-communist argument now works against capitalism:"
• "Historical point: the US and the UK were based on a capitalist ideology, and did many horrible things. General premise: if any country based on a particular ideology did many horrible things, then that ideology should be rejected. Political conclusion: capitalism should be rejected. The obvious point: the anti-communism argument is no better (and no worse) than the anti-capitalism argument. Of course, the anti-communists are not going to agree that capitalism should be rejected. But unfortunately for them, the historical point is true: the US, the UK and other Western countries are based on a capitalist ideology, and have done many horrible things. The only way to deny the argument is by denying the general premise. But this is exactly the premise used in their own argument, so the anti-communism argument collapses."

It's interesting to note that the IP who got this discussion started mentioned that such an article should have a section comparing Communist mass killings to the killings committed by other governments and ideologies, which actually existed in the article. When the article finally opened back up a couple of years back, I added some material comparing the killings of communist regimes to killings by Western-backed dictatorships for balance, which eventually resulted in the deletion of the entire section. If communism is nothing more than pure murderous evil, it would be unthinkable to compare this monstrosity to governments backed by the liberal capitalist West, or so it would seem.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 16:04, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

C.J. Griffin, thanks for your comment, but I am sure all this is going to be dismissed as Communist propaganda, so I wished you would have gave an analysis those sources they gave, especially in explaining why they do not support the topic of a general Communist mass killing theory. I especially avoided pointing all this out because I am trying to be as neutral and unbiased as possible. My neutral 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, Strauss and Valentino, even though the second one is a book about genocide and the third one 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.

Nonetheless, your comment and sources highlight that this is by no means a mainstream or accepted view among scholars; it may be the mainstream view by Western governments, especially those in Eastern Europe (I remember one comment highlighted how many of those for Keep were from Eastern Europe and those for Delete from Western Europe; I would not be surprised if a political and geographic bias play into this on both sides; we can not ignore that Eastern Europe and former Eastern Block have been pushing for this concept and double genocide theory, in some cases as part of a Holocaust relativistion as in Poland, to avoid their guilt in participating to the Holocaust), but it is not a concept accepted by scholars and this article inherently violates NPOV by acting like it is. This can not be solved because, as repeatedly pointed out by Paul Siebert, many scholars simply ignore or avoid the concept because they do not believe in it and it is not supported by scholarship, only by one side. This is why, unlike Paul Siebert, I believe the only solution is to merge the well-sourced content, without creating such a POV fork content. As long as the article is supposed to be a scholarly analysis, it can not exist because it is a mix of several topics, sources do not support all those topics at once and the concept is only supported by one side of historiography. Communist and Soviet studies is a conflictual and politicised field, meaning this article inherently fails NPOV in presenting only one side.

Either way, their comment is relevant because they voted thrice in favour of Keep and even dismissed those who were for Delete as being a political move ("that this article has been selected for deletion [...] purely on political grounds"), so I do not see how they can be dismissed as 'Communist' because they changed their view. Nor I can see how they, Aquillion, The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert and Rick Norwood are 'left-leaning'. I can accept being called myself a 'left-leaning' editor, the same way KIENGIR (who was in favour of having category Communism listed as category at Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism, but this was overturned in a RfC) and PackMecEng I would argue are 'right-leaning' and perhaps AmateurEditor is 'centrist' or 'right-leaning' too. We all have biases but in such a controversial topic, it is better to aknowledge it. My view is that Aquillion, The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert, etc., whom I can not tell whose side are they on the political spectrum and certainly can not be accused of being 'Communists', gave far more neutral arguments whereas KIENGIR and PackMedEng resorted to moral arguments about how Communist mass killings happened (which no one is denying nor wanting to diminish it; I never once proposed or thought the content to be actually deleted) and therefore an article about them must exist, even though scolarship does not support it.

I believe those issues can only be solved by aknowledging whose reading of sources is correct; because my second argument is that, even if there are sources that support the topic (I am still unsure they are; The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert and many others gave many convincing arguments that they do not and that they are misread, with one citing an actual review from a work, not basing it on one's personal view), they are only from one side, thus inherently violating NPOV and is not a universal concept accepted by most scholars, hence the right and neutral thing to do would be a merge (as I proposed and C.J. Griffin endorsed), especially when the main topic remains unclear or, worse, one or more topics are mixed into one. Davide King (talk) 16:48, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

"I wished you would have gave an analysis those sources they gave, especially in explaining why they do not support the topic of a general Communist mass killing theory" I thought I had. Allow me to reiterate and expand: the sources in question, excluding the right-wing op-eds which are unreliable and therefore irrelevant, support the idea that some communist governments engaged in mass killing, primarily the "big three"; the sources do not support the idea that all or even most communist regimes engaged in mass killing, or that Marxist/communist ideology was the primary driver of this killing by a minority of communist states. They (at least in the quotes provided above) make no attempt to distinguish direct killings from excess deaths even though noted specialists have done this extensively (Ellman, Wheatcroft et al), which is also a big problem with the article as it currently exists. And aside from the "big three", they have very little to say about all the other communist states that existed and in some cases still exist. And even Valentino admits that a majority of communist states did not engage in mass killings based on his methodology. Based on the sourcing above and in the article, a more apt title would be Excess Mortality Under the Regimes of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 18:20, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

C.J. Griffin, this is the comment I wanted. :) This is what I have been saying the whole time and you did an amazing job at summarising that. I did propose something like Mass killings under Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, or essentially excess mortality as you proposed, in the main topics I listed below, but I came to the conclusion that, while much more clear than the current article, it would still be problematic because it is only one side doing that. I am unaware of Ellman, Getty, Wheatcrof et al. making a comparative, cross-cultural analysis between them. I still believe that the best solution remains that of a move of the content to more appropriate article, rather than create more articles such as Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin (when it should be discussed in the Stalin era and Stalinism articles) which follow many of the same problems; while well-sourced, whose content should definitely be preserved, their intent as standalone articles is to show how bad communism is and how socialism is inevitably going to result in that rather than reflect scholarly analysis. Those should be discussed as part of Communist state, History of the Soviet Union, Stalin era, etc. as scholarship does. Stalinist repression is discussed as part of the Great Purge, the Stalin era and the Stalinist paradigm, not as separate subjects; and we already have Political repression in the Soviet Union (by the way, we do not have a Political repression in Nazi Germany article) which actually makes sense since it supported by scholarship (there seems to be an actual literature and scholarship about it, with Ellman's "Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments" being particularly interesting). In other words, we have too many Communist-related articles that act as POV-forking and repeat things and events already discussed elsewhere. As an example, Excess mortality in the Soviet Union is already essentially merged in Political repression in the Soviet Union (see Loss of life and Counting the loss sections) and currently acts as fork of the latter (they mostly discuss the same Stalinist events, including collectivisation, the Great Purge and ethnic transfers), when we may simply move all the estimates in the latter and use the former as a redirect to the section about estimates. Davide King (talk) 19:05, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, Balancing aspects says, "An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. For example, discussion of isolated events, criticisms, or news reports about a subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic." Can you please explain why this article should contain details about mass killings not covered in the four sources you provided and have quoted several times - no need to repeat them again.

In the example you provided, we would not give more information about where Washington stayed than exists in reliable sources about Washington. (Incidentally I added brief information to Washington's article on his stay in Barbados. I could have added several paragraphs, but felt it would be undue based on the extent of coverage of his stay in biographies about him.) How is this any different?

TFD (talk) 19:29, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, I agree with @AmateurEditor:. I disagree having bias (or the article would have, only blame does not play here, the scope is clear) and I am leaning no other directions, but the reality. TFD, many events may have detailed own articles, but generally the Communit crimes and the Holocaust (Nazi crimes) are highlighted (undeniable), irrelevanty how many regimes perpetrated each side, it is not relevant after all.(KIENGIR (talk) 17:27, 2 November 2020 (UTC))

That is fair and I respect your comment; however, I think it is relevant because it is scholars themselves who highlight that they are not the same thing, only those who held the double genocide theory do so. While scholars discuss those events, they are not proposing a general concept as proposed by Valentino and few other scholars. You want the main topic to be about all excess deaths under Communist regimes but we are discussing another main topic and other users are discussing yet another main topic; they may be all related somehow but they are not the same thing and a standalone article is supposed to be about one notable main topic. The current article mixes several topics into one, which is original research and synthesis. I hope The Four Deuces can give you a better answer but that is the way I see it. It is not me who highlighted the politicised nature of the controversy; several scholars, who are expert in former Communist regimes, unlike several of authors the article currently cite or relies too much, have done so, as provided by C.J. Griffin. Davide King (talk) 19:19, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Main topic

I believe I have individuated at least three possible main topics, yet I still came to the conclusion that a merge and restructuring is the better solution.

1. Communist mass killing – The main topic is Communism as a new category or type of mass killings. It is still problematic to have an article and it is preferable to move content to the individual articles of proponents and to Mass killing itself, if at all. For one, it is not actually a notable topic as most scholars have either extensively criticised or completely ignored it, so cherry-picking from a few authors and scholars, as those in favour of Keep have repeatedly did, just shows that this should be discussed at each proponent's article, not that it is a notable topic, much less widely accepted by mainstream scholarship. Not only that, but it is not even clear whether some alleged proponents actually support the topic. I do not know if this was straight from the horse's mouth or from a reviewer, who holds much more weight than an user's original research, but Rick Norwood noted how Valentino stated that "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." This leads us to the second main topic, i.e. that only Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot did indeed engage in mass killings.
2. Mass killings under Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot – This is still problematic because only a few scholars actually lump those three together and it would be a violation of both due weight and NPOV to have an article about this when only a few, if any at all, scholars support the topic. Again, this would be better to be discussed individually, but it would still be synthesis because even Robert f#cking Conquest did not lump them together. As correctly noted by The Four Deuces, 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." The same goes for Mao and Pol Pot, for which we already have Cambodian genocide and Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia. This also ignores how several scholars do not agree that Pol Pot's was a Communist regime; there were actually two 'Communist' regimes in Cambodia, one of which was supported by both the Soviet Union and Vietnam, and which helped liberated Cambodia from Pol Pot, who was supported by the West and China. An article with this main topic would also lend undue weight to the similarities and ignore all the differences many scholars have noted or how several scholars do not consider Pol Pot's regime Communist, again avoiding to lump them all together.
3. Excess deaths under Communist regimes – This seems to be what many in favour of Keep are actually supporting, that of course killings, especially excess deaths or excess mortality, in mass numbers did happen under Communist regimes, so it should have an article; but this is not enough to have a List of capitalist mass killings, List of mass killings under capitalist regimes, List of fascist mass killings, or List of mass killings under fascist regimes. If there really must be an article detailing this, it should be only a list, without taking the POV that communism is to blame or that Communist mass killings are a widely accepted new category. We would simply list the related articles.
   
   Going back to the proposed article, this still does not solve the issue on why all the Communist regimes should be lumped together when only a few, if any at all, do so; and that excess deaths mainly happened under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, not all Communist regimes. We already have Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin and I do not see why those should not be discussed individually rather than lumped together, when mainstream scholarship does not do so. When I say this violates NPOV, I do not mean to say: "It unduly gives communism the blame." Even though this is supported by scholarship and only a few, the same who lump all Communist regimes together, believe that communism is to blame. No, I mean that it inherently and inevitably violates 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.") by giving undue weight to the few scholars or authors who may or may not have proposed the topic, ignoring the extensive criticism from mainstream scholarship and how the fact so many scholars have completely ignored the topic speaks volume. This is a better proof of how the topic is not really notable but only pushed by a few authors or scholars, rather than selectively presenting a few authors or scholars who speak about the topic and in many cases even making original research and synthesis by attributing them conclusions they never made.
4. Victims of Communism – This is proposed by The Four Deuces and I assume it is not going to receive much support because it would or should be structured similarly to Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory in that only a few authors or scholars support the topic, which is broadly supported by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and right-wing, anti-communist, antisemite, and other fringe figures. But I hope they can correct me or clarify how they would structure it, if I misunderstood them.
5. Double genocide theory – as proposed here by The Four Deuces. Here is my comment.
6. Mass killings under Communist regimes – the current article, which essentially and more or less lumps all the above topics together, taking the Communist genocide/mass killing concept from Strauss and Valentino, even though the first one is a book about genocide and the second 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, 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.

Both Benjamin Valentino and Steven Rosefield, two prominent proponents, have literally nothing and it is just one more reason for why this should be discussed at each proponent's article, rather than lump them together. We may have a section at Mass killings, we may even move content at The Black Book of Communism and create Red Holocaust (2009 book) since those books popularised the concept, adding a scholarly analysis or review section to include both views, in accordance to appropriate weight. Both those and other each proponent's articles should be structured like Stéphane Courtois. Any further input, comment and suggestion are welcome. Thank you.

Let me conclude to make a final comment about how those who were for Delete have been each time ridiculed and strawmanned, when they were mostly the only ones to actually follow policy and guidelines. This comment equating those who are for Delete to those who would want to delete The Holocaust article really says it all. The Holocaust has overwhelming consensus among scholars, the other does not. 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 Boof 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." When even anti-communists such as Conquest and The Black Book of Communism are misunderstood and do not actually advocate the topic, it really says it all. To be clear, the same arguments I am making here for deletion of this article can be made for Anti-communist mass killings. Both would be better served as list articles, although the latter actually seems to be a topic that does exist in anti-communist literature, even though there are valid reasons to have it deleted and merged into Anti-communism; and that just because one is deleted, it does not mean the other should be too, and the same apply for keeping. Both articles should be based on whether a literature and topic actually exists. The only books or literature covering this topic are The Black Book of Communism, Red Holocaust and one chapter in Valentino's Final Solution, yet Valentino says most Communist regimes did not engage in mass killings and The Black Book of Communism, which I thought lumped them together, does not actually support the topic. So we are left with Red Holocaust by Steven Rosefield, a little too little.

The consensus was that there was no consensus until, as noted by Rick Norwood, a Wikipedia editor made a ruling that "[t]his is a well sourced article, not OR, worthy of the encyclopedia. POV is not a valid reason for deletion unless it is entirely unsourceable." This seems to be more of their own opinion than a summary of what users stated. They also failed to understand the POV/NPOV arguments. It is not just that it is POV in pushing that communism is to blame and yadda, yadda, yadda; it is that sources do not actually blame communism and that given sources to support the topic do not actually support it, hence, per their own wording, "it is entirely unsourceable" as a main topic and standalone article; it can be sourced to each proponent by discussing it in their own article or in a scholarly analysis and review section about books and authors who promoted the concept, it can not be sourced as a standalone article. This also just proved Paul Siebert's point "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." Being well-sourced is not enough, especially when it fails due weight, synthesis, original research and NPOV. It is not that the sourced content used in this article ought to be deleted; it can, and should be, used in several articles; what I and others have been advocating for over a decade now is that no main topic actually exists and that this is proposed by only a few authors or scholars. Yet, the nature of being well-sourced gives the false impression that a topic exists, that this is supported by most scholars, that it is a mainstream view rather than one advocated by a few authors and scholars. All of this remains unresolved and hidden behind this veil.
—Davide King (talk) 12:52, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I wish you luck, and will help if I can. But you might ask, up front, if there is any Wikipedia editor standing by, maybe the same one who made the first ruling, who will not allow this article to be deleted under any circumstances. Rick Norwood (talk) 22:03, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Rick Norwood, I appreciate that. Still, it would be helpful if we could at least agree on what the main topic is. Even if you believe that it should not exist as I do, what do you think is the actual main topic? This can be helpful on which sources are to be provided or analysed to verify that they do support the topic. Even if they do, I believe undue weight, original research, synthesis and NPOV still apply because it is mainly, if not only, one view of historiography that proposes this. If we cannot even agree on what the main topic is, that underlines the Keep consensus. Another suggestion would be to have one or more admins to careful re-read the various AfDs, especially the last two; and verify that given sources actually support the main topic as those in favour of Delete argued. This seems to be the only solution because yet another AfD is going to result in those favouring of Keep to either argue the topic exists and is notable without providing sources, or provide sources that do not actually support the article or not the way it is currently structured, so first we would have to agree on the main topic. In addition, there was no consensus on the article creation itself since it was controversial on its own and the status quo ante is the article not existing, not keeping the article when there is no consensus to keep it.

Still, it would be a shame to outright delete the comment, hence why a merge proposal would be better as I propose to re-organise it by moving most content to each proponent's page and discuss it at each Communist state's history rather than lump them together, which only a few authors or scholars may or may not do. This is why, in spite of all their good arguments and willingness, Paul Siebert has failed in their attempts at improving the article and removing all those issues. I argue that the issues can only be solved with a re-organisation and merge; and that in the future, an article that is finally void of all those issues, can be re-created and I would be the first one to advocate such re-creation. But the fact this articles continues to exist remains a problem of implicit bias in that the article existing implies that it is a notable topic supported by mainstream scholarship, which is then uncritically accepted by most people outside actual scholarship, only exacerbating this bias; hence why the article is not only not helpful or unhelpful on its own (as the main topic is unclear and filled up with undue weight given to one historiography view, even with all the good work and intentions) but it is, whether intended or not, actively harmful. I am the living proof of this. Davide King (talk) 02:45, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Honestly, renaming to Victims of Communism seems like the simplest solution. It is a simpler, more neutral title that encompasses the topic the article touches on, and is a much more active and serious topic of scholarly study. More importantly, it seems like a proposal that might actually be able to reach a consensus. There 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. --Aquillion (talk) 03:13, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Aquillion, that makes more sense, I agree. I believe The Four Deuces's proposal of Double genocide theory is better because Communist mass killings is one prominent example, although that would still be better than the current one which acts like it is a fact or part of mainstream scholarship rather than pushed by a few authors or scholars. To clarify, I am not even necessarily for delete, if that means deleting content rather than the article; I am more for wide re-structuring and organising, merging most of it to each proponent's and Communist state's history articles. Davide King (talk) 03:42, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I could see the sections in the main articles having a further reading header that leads here. I am just not seeing a good reason to get rid of this article I suppose. PackMecEng (talk) 03:45, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng, it would be helpful if you could tell what the main topic is or should be. Davide King (talk) 04:00, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Replied up above. Basically the main topic is covering the overall of mass killings by communist regimes. Documenting the main instances as well as views about the topic as a whole.Also you do not need to ping me each time, I have this article on my watchlist. PackMecEng (talk) 04:02, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

This is not so clear. What is the main topic? Mass killings under Communist regimes as in the proposed Excess deaths under Communist regimes topic? Or List of mass killings under Communist regimes? Either way, sources about the topic overwhelmingly do this individually, not like the current article. Davide King (talk) 05:32, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, the topic of the article is the large-scale killing of non-combatants by communist regimes. There is no single consensus term for this in the sources (which themselves discuss the variety of terms used), so the title is a "non-judgmental descriptive title", per WP:NDESC. Many of the terms used include "mass killing" or words to that effect in their definitions, in the generic sense, and one source cited in the "Terminology" section explicitly states that "mass killing" is a neutral term, so I think it is a good choice. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:21, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

This does not solve the issue that the article in practice mixes all those topics together. Nor does it solve the issue that in my view it does not meet criteria for a standalone article; this is ignoring all the issues of original research, synthesis and NPOV that have been repeatedly raised. That you think those are non-issues or that they do define this article, that is your view against theirs; the last AfD noted that those issues were there. Either way, the current title is not accurate and Excess deaths under Communist regimes or Victims of Communism would be more accurate since the article makes no distinction between direct killings and deaths caused by famines, wars, etc. Only one side of historiography makes no distinction between them, hence undue weight; since the article acts like one side is right and correct, when scholars only agree that those events did indeed take place, not that there is a general category of Communist mass killings, that Communism alone is to blame, or even on a Communist death toll, including all excessive deaths. This article existing, especially as currently structured, inherently implies one side or view is correct; moving and merging the content would mostly solve this and avoid any issue of original research, synthesis, NPOV and undue weight. Merging "Estimates [of excessive deaths]" and "Proposed causes [of mass killings]" at Communist state and perhaps creating a List of mass killings under Communist regimes (the same could and should be done for capitalism/colonialism/fascism/imperialism, etc.), where we merely document and list what happened, would solve most of those issues in my view. None of the content would actually be lost. Davide King (talk) 10:56, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi, I was just reading this discussion and I don't really have an opinion either way, but I just wanted to let you know that crimes against humanity under communist regimes also exists. The word "victims" is broader than just "people killed". It can also include people who were persecuted but not killed (in other words, the topic of the "crimes against humanity under..." article). So if this article were to be renamed to something including the term "victims" rather than "killings", then it should probably be merged with crimes against humanity under communist regimes. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1007:B112:A9FB:B699:CD73:D059:30F7 (talk) 07:46, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Here, I noticed the same thing, but I saw your comment only now. Still, I am glad to hear I am not the only one to think so. It appears that only Karlsson actually proposes the concept of Crimes against humanity under communist regimes and he seems to use this wording because he actually disagrees with the concept of Communist genocide/mass killings and believes crimes against humanity is more accurate. Davide King (talk) 07:59, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

There seems to be no consensus on the main topic. Aquillion and The Four Deuces have proposed Double genocide theory and Victims of Communism. KIENGIR and PackMecEng seem to support Excess deaths under Communist regimes and List of mass killings under Communist regimes; and AmateurEditor the current article and topic of Mass killings under communist regimes, rejecting the view that it mixes all this topic together, that there is original research or synthesis, in general agreeing that Communist mass killings are discussed as a general topic, whereas KIENGIR and PackMecEng seem more concerned about those things happened and are relevant (no one is denying they did not happen). Feel free to correct me if I misrepresented your positions, but a proper RfC may help clarify all this. Davide King (talk) 12:20, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Regarding this, I believe a reason was actually given ("[...] The Black Book of Communism, which is a source that has been disproven many times and discredited by 2 of its main authors"); however, the reversal was right because it should have been discussed and gained consensus on the talk page first. Nonetheless, the problem is not just The Black Book of Communism but the fact the main topic does not exist and is not actually supported by sources; and even if it does exist, it is a minority position and the few sources reflect a minority—not mainstream—view. Hence, it is essentially impossible to keep this article and also respect 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", when most sources either ignore the topic (as extensively proved by Paul Siebert and others) or the few scholars who discussed it extensively criticised those few authors and scholars who proposed it, some of which, including The Black Book of Communism and Valentino, may have been misread or misinterpreted even by those who are for Keep when those sources do not support the topic either, at least as a general concept. Hence, it is a minority view, not the mainstream view this article tries to pass it off as. Since there has not been anything added in the last few days, I say that Paul Siebert can go ahead with their proposal. Their analysis and reading seem to be correct. Davide King (talk) 21:05, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, you are confusing a minority/majority distinction with the fringe/mainstream distinction. There is no problem with NPOV using the current sources as currently used, which is as "significant minority" views (in the sense that is used in WP:WEIGHT, where the distinction is made between "majority", "significant minority", and "extremely small minority" views). The distinction between "significant minority" and "extremely small minority" views is that "prominent adherents" can be identified for "significant minority" views but cannot for "extremely small minority views". Unless we have sources to support that something is a majority view, we must treat a view found in a reliable source as the "significant minority" view of the author. By including these "significant minority" views and naming the authors/"prominent adherents" in text, we are already following the neutral practice of including "all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic". Again, saying that other sources ignore the topic means those other sources are irrelevant to the topic. AmateurEditor (talk) 08:12, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Valentino wrote, "Mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa. Documentation of these cases in secondary sources, however, remains inadequate to render a reliable judgment regarding the numbers and identity of the victims or the true intentions of their killers." IOW the topic fails to meet the "significant coverage" criterion laid out in policy. Yet you are using this statement to claim the topic is notable and coatracking in details that none of your four major sources mention. Maybe we should add to WP:NOTABILITY that if multiple sources say a topic is not notable, that is evidence of notability. TFD (talk) 12:00, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

The "significant coverage" criterion in WP:GNG refers to coverage of the article topic, not subsections within the article. Because those regimes are mentioned in the source in the context of this topic, they should be included in the article about this topic. Less material about those regimes in the source just means there should necessarily be less material in the article about them to avoid WP:OR, not that there should be none. AmateurEditor (talk) 17:19, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Except this is not a significant minority but it is borderline fringe; that is my point, I am not confusing anything and I already knew about that. Honestly, the quote provided by The Four Deuces should end this; unfortunately, it will not but it should be the end of it. It just proves that it is not a significant topic and that only a few primary sources exist; no secondary or tertiary ones. And I am still unsure whether those primary sources actually support the topic; they certainly do not support it as currently structured.

What is the point of writing "[s]aid 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?'" when it is cited to a book about the Russian Revolution? Why even use Sheilia Fitzpatrick just to source this rather than her actual opinions on the topic, if she has written about it (she has criticised the totalitarian concept and I would assume that, if she has talked about this topic, since many scholars simply ignore it, she would be critical of it), yet Fitzpatrick is cited just to source Lenin said that. This just underlines the problems.

The article is filled with good sources about each individual country but in doing so it is doing original research and synthesis. If there are no sources that discuss all those together, we should not do it either; we should not mix up sources about the Russian Revolution with books about the genocide in Cambodia just because both were Communist regimes. It is up to scholarly analysis doing that but they have not been doing that. It also cites Getty's "Victims of the Soviet penal system in the pre-war years: a first approach on the basis of archival evidence" in bibliography, but Getty does not actually support the topic or concept and he does not link all Communist regimes like the current article does. This is original research and synthesis in using Getty just because he wrote about victims of the Soviet penal system in the pre-war years, when that is only for research purpose and there is no underline general topic of Communist victims or mass killings. Davide King (talk) 14:26, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE is things like Moon landing conspiracy theories. You have yet to provide a source that even objects to lumping these events together and have instead asserted that sources on other topics implicitly reject this one by not mentioning it (a conclusion that would be original research on your part). The four sources I quoted to you are also not primary sources. Per WP:PRIMARY, those 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." For this article, a primary source would be something like government documents generated by the USSR. About the quote from Fitzpatrick, I did not add it, I don't like pull-quotes like that, and if you want to delete it that is fine with me. I won't revert you. About the Getty source, it is used for an estimate for the event in that subtopic. Should it be ignored because it is specifically about the subsection topic and not about the article topic as a whole? Does every source in the George Washington article need to be a full biography of George Washington? I don't think so and I don't think Wikipedia policy and practice supports that idea. But thank you for starting to discuss specifics in the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 17:19, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I think the issue is that I see the main topic as being a concept of Communist mass killings, rather than any death under Communist regimes and the events which we already cover in their own articles. So a primary source would not be "something like government documents generated by the USSR" because the main topic is not that but a general concept as proposed by Valentino. In this case, Valentino is the primary source and secondary sources would establish its notability if they routinely mention the concept as outlined by Valentino and other scholars. "[A] scientific paper documenting a new experiment conducted by the author is a primary source on the outcome of that experiment" seems to be the primary source I am thinking, i.e. Valentino proposing this concept of Communist mass killings, which is supposed to be the main topic, but then the article mixes this up with any excess deaths under Communist regimes to create a victims of Communist narrative.

I am not using fringe in the sense of conspiracy theory but in the sense of "an idea that departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in its particular field. Because Wikipedia aims to summarize significant opinions with representation in proportion to their prominence, a Wikipedia article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable or more widely accepted than it is. Statements about the truth of a theory must be based upon independent reliable sources. If discussed in an article about a mainstream idea, a theory that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight,[1] and reliable sources must be cited that affirm the relationship of the marginal idea to the mainstream idea in a serious and substantial manner." So in my view Valentino et al. are primary sources on this main topic (a general concept of Communist mass killings) and we have no secondary or tertiary sources that establish this concept is widely accepted by scolarship. I wonder if Aquillion, C.J. Griffin, The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert and Rick Norwood agree with this reading of mine. Because I am open to being wrong and I understand where you are coming from but it seems we are discussing different topics or having a different reading of them, which is causing some confusion and this divergent views.

As for your George Washington comparison, all I am asking is that sources discuss the same main topic. In my view, not only they are not discussing the same main topic but they are discussing different topics and are being mixed up together. Strauss and Valentino may be talking about Communist genocide or Communist mass killings as a new category of genocide and mass killings; others may be talking about mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot; others may be talking about a Communist death toll or a victims of Communism, including all and any excess deaths, which many scholars do not or would not include. In your view, this is all fine because they are discussing the same thing, the events under Communist regimes which did indeed take place; however, that is not what the main topic was or is supposed to be. It is supposed to be about a general concept of Communist genocide/mass killings as outlined by Strauss and Valentino, for we already have all the articles covering all those events and only few authors and scholars may or may have not discussed them all together as this article currently does. Davide King (talk) 20:23, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Looking into the article history, the Fitzpatrick quote was added by C.J. Griffin with this edit. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:43, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Google Scholar's analysis and research

​​​​​If we actually use quote marks, which is a better way to figure out if something is really notable and to restrict the research to a more narrow yet accurate result, "communist genocide", "communist mass killings", "mass killings under Communist regimes" and "mass killings under communist regimes" get us the yuge numbers of 290, 59, 26 and 26 results, respectively. Not only this, but the results still get us only individual, not lumped together, sources; and no clear definition is provided.

Only Valentino discusses Communist mass killings in Final Solutions, which is a book about genocide and mass killing in the 20th century, so it is not specifically about Communism and Valentino seems to separates Communist mass killings from other categories from mass killings; again, this is just one scholar doing so, hence due weight means this goes to Valentino's article as his own proposal and perhaps a short mention at Genocide and Mass killings, certainly not for a standalone article; or you know, why not create an actual article, something like Final Solution (Valentino book), for the book where all his points are summarised? In other words, this article is supposed to be based on Valentino's concept but it is filled with original research, synthesis and undue weight to the "orthodox" historiography and scholars. I did find "Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide" by Strauss. Yet the main topic is genocide, so this is content that may go at Genocide or/and Mass killing, not as a standalone article; we do not have a Ethnic mass killing article, even though this is listed alongside Communist mass killing and a third one which I was not able to read. Those seemed to be the only sources I could find on the topic.

Ironically, "communist mass killings" also includes plenty of anti-communist mass killings. Those are not the results of an established and widespread Communist genocide/mass killings concept. "Victims of communism" yield us 2,060 results. This is better than all others combined, yet there is plenty of criticism and it is mainly used in reference to Victims of Communism memorials et al., not to any specific concept; and it would have a much different structure and analysis than the current one.

Addendum

I get no results for either "excess deaths under communist regimes" or "excess deaths under communism" (ditto if using excess mortality). If I remove quote marks, I do get results, but those are all analysised individually, see "excess deaths under communism" (mainly about Soviet industralisation in the 1930s, so a better topic would be excess deaths under industrialization which also includes capitalist countries) and "excess mortality under communist regimes"; and the latter actually talks more about, if not more, the excess deaths during the 1990s! Including "Mass privatisation and the post-communist mortality crisis: a cross-national analysis" which, ironically, is the kind of analysis this article desperately needs and would require to avoid synthesis and lumping. Even "Crimes against humanity under communist regimes" only yields the work by Karlsson, who states that "[t]he research review will then focus on the crimes against humanity committed by three communist regimes – the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia. Each country and each criminal history is discussed individually." Yet, Crimes against humanity under communist regimes similarly lumps them together and writes about North Korea, Romania and Yugoslavia, with no mention of the Soviet Union. Both of those articles are Communist-related articles (the implicit bias) and are mainly based on one or few sources, which are then lumped together to describe the crimes and mass killings that did take place. Karlsson, the one who can be said to actually discuss the topic, is cited only once. In addition, Karlsson rejects Communist mass killings and actually proposes crimes against humanity under communist regimes, hence a fork and why more reason why the topic does not hold up; there is no real agreement or consensus around the topic, not between scholars, much less between us. Davide King (talk) 07:54, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, I think you are an intelligent, hard-working Wikipedian, and know what should be done. I recommend that you do it. I predict that you will be reverted three times, and then it will be taken to a Wikipedia editor who will decide. I will be happy to vote, if it comes to a vote, but in cases like this, votes are never very useful. They usually amount to only a dozen or so people, at most, and both sides are able to summon a dozen people who agree with them and will always vote their way. I think it will come down to a decision by a Wikipedia editor, and I am ashamed to say I've never gotten involved in Wikipedia politics. You might think about running in the next Wikipedia election. Rick Norwood (talk) 11:05, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

One more thought. The purpose of this article is to warn people about the communist menace. It has no informational purpose. It is propaganda. When I was in college, in Louisiana, every public college and university in Louisiana was required by law to teach a course on "The Evils of Communism". Nobody took it seriously, but it was the law, so we took the course. I learned more about communism in my history courses.Rick Norwood (talk) 11:14, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

You will be accused of being a communist, as I have been many times, because the people who are part of the anti-communist movement are convinced that everybody is either on their side or is an active communist. The idea that communism is something most people never even think about, and many people today have never heard of, threatens their reason for existence.Rick Norwood (talk) 11:14, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Rick Norwood, please assume good faith and help us all to maintain a respectful and productive discussion environment here as much as possible. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:21, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion - I would say that Mass killings under Stalinist regimes could be a better title.PailSimon (talk) 16:18, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

PailSimon, thanks for your comment but the change from communist to Stalinist does not really solve any of the issues highlighted. It would also be misleading because (a) while Stalinism may be seen as euphemism for totalitarianism and that allo Communist states have more or less followed that same paradigm, Stalinism is clearly used to refer only to the Stalin era in the Soviet Union; (b) Marxist–Leninist would be more accurate since that was the Communist state's ideology, with Maoism, Titoism and all other -isms simply being national variants and described as Marxism–Leninism applied to their own national material conditions; (c) while Marxism–Leninism and Marxist–Leninist states are used, Communism and Communist states are more commonly used.

However, Communist should be capitalised, when referring to Communist states and mass killings, because (a) many scholarly sources do so, including The Black Book of Communism; (b) it is grammatically accurate because they are using Communist as a common noun in reference to the state's national communist ruling party, not to communism; (c) Communism is used by some authors in lowercase because they make no distinction between Communism (Communist-party rule states) and communism (a classless society based on common property) and see the former as the inevitable result of the latter, an unusual, determinist position considering their criticism of Marxism's alleged determinism. Most scholars distinguish between the two.

The name is really the last of the problems. The main topic, or better, the lack of a clear main topic supported by scholarly sources (not just from a few authors and scholars from one side of historiography who give the highest estimates and tends to blame it on Communism alone, or mostly) and the combination, i.e. synthesis, of several main topic into one, this is the issue. I argue that the main topic is actually fringe (per Wikipedia's definition of it "to describe an idea that departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in its particular field"). The main topic is not a list of mass killings under Communist regimes, it is supposed to be a general concept that ties all those together. There is no scholarly analysis that does this; and several users have noted that even sources like The Black Book of Communism and Valentino that may seems obvious do that; well, they actually do not that.

If scholars actually agreed and there was scholarly consensus, there would be no issue; the problem is that there is not one and having an article like this inherently implies that one side of a conflictual and politicised academic field is essentially right and correct; and violates 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") when most scholars have not even written on the topic (that is the problem, there is no general concept of the topic) and essentially represents just one view pushed by most anti-communist authors and only few scholars. C.J. Griffin just made a good summary of the issue and possible solution. Davide King (talk) 17:08, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

I forgot to add that the lowercase may also be misleading because communist regime implies a classless and stateless society based on common ownership (the common, no pun intended, definition of philosophical communism) and the current title is misleading in the sense that it implies to be about mass killings under a classless and staless society based on common ownership, i.e. the definition used by scholars, not the "ownership by the state" definition used in dictionaries and by the Anglo-American right-wing. When even The Black Book of Communism capitalises it, saying that Communism began in 1917, even as they state communism has existed for millennia, I do not see why we should not do what they and many other sources have done so. The only objection may be that it is grammatically correct, but then why it is commonly capitalised by authors and scholars? Because they use it as a proper noun for the Communist Party (of the Communist state's name), hence it is grammatically correct.
—Davide King (talk) 18:00, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

I recommended capitization. It's in archives 2 and 39. I think the unstated objection is that some people believe that mass killings are an inherent aspect of socialist ideology, buried in obscure 19th century texts and are activated whenever socialists achieve power. Hence Chris Matthews for example said that if Bernie Sanders were elected president, there would be mass killings. (Matthews also blamed the soviet Union for the Holocaust and all the other deaths of WW2.) It's very difficult to persuade people when something goes against a deeply held belief system, as opposed to opinions based on rational argument, because effectively you are challenging their overall conception of reality. TFD (talk) 11:14, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, I agree. That is why the only solution seems to be for us to show that sources do not actually support the topic. I would like for you to make a throughout analysis of them and hear your thoughts on the sources given by AmateurEditor. My analysis is that they are still speaking of different topics but are mixed together and the bolding of Communist regimes is used as proof that they are talking of all Communist regimes, lumping them together and making a general concept out of it, when I do not think it is what they are actually saying but I may need to read them more. When even The Black Book of Communism and Robert Conquest are misrepresented to support the general concept, it says it all. Of course, I am open to be wrong and change my mind (I already did change it from obvious Keep to just as obvious Merge) but so far I have found stronger arguments by those oppose to Keep; and I tend to value the strengthness of the arguments rather than the number of users who support one side. I also do not think any other solution can be found until the main topic is made clear; and if there is no consensus on what the main topic actually is, then a merge would be the obvious conclusion. Davide King (talk) 11:28, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

The discussion about the article's topic may lead to three general conclusions:

1. The topic does exist, and it is mainstream.

2. The topic does exist, but it is a minority view.

3. The topic does not exist, and the article should be deleted.

Independently on the discussion's result, the #3 will not lead to anything productive, because many people will !vote against deletion, and, independently on the level of their arguments, the very number of votes will prevent article's deletion. I also propose not to discuss #1, because it is easy to show that this topic is by no means mainstream. Those who argue against that are welcome to demonstrate that the MKuCR theory is being widely used by experts in each country's history. To the best of my knowledge, the best experts in Stalinist repressions (except Rosefielde) ignore this concept, and some of them (like Werth), publicly disagree with it. Therefore, the only reasonable option is #2. This article can and should be improved, but, instead of engaging in long general discussion, we should improve it step by step. The main direction of improvement is removal of all synthesis and balancing POV. All MKuCR theories discussed here should be presented as the views of concrete authors, and be supplemented with due criticism. As a starting point, I suggest you to start with the "terminology" section. This section is an obvious disaster. It starts with the words:

"Several different terms are used to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants[1][a][b][c][d] and according to Professor Anton Weiss-Wendt there is no consensus in the field of comparative genocide studies on a definition of "genocide"",

That means (i) the section is about mass killings in general, so it belongs to the mass killing article, which already has similar section, and (ii) there is actually no general terminology, and different terms coined by different authors are not used by others. Therefore, that section implies that the authors introduced some sophisticated terminology, although they just coined some terms that had never become popular. Meanwhile, our policy says Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not clearly stated by the sources themselves. Therefore, if this section implies that some terminology exists, it should be deleted as OR. If this text does not implies that, and, therefore, no general terminology exists (as the opening statement says) there is no need in that section either.

There are many other examples of synthesis, for example, opinia of Staub, Wheatcroft, Wayman&Tago, Karlsson, and some other authors are cited, but they originally write not about MKuCR, but about other topics (either more general or more narrow), so they are not writing within the concept proposed by Valenito and few other scholars.

In addition, usage of the word Holocaust is a Holocaust trivialization.

In connection to that, I am going to to the following.

1. Put the OR and NPOV template on the section, and initiate a discussion on the talk page.

2. If no convincing arguments will be provided during that discussion, I am going to delete this section completely. Per WP:ONUS and because the requirements of our NPOV policy are not negotiable, the user who will attempt to re-introduce this section without achieving an obvious consensus may be sanctioned per DS.

Does anybody have any objections to that?--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:21, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, it is good to have you back. I have no objections to that; if we are going to have this article, we better improve it and clarify its topic. It is very depressing, yet true, that "the #3 will not lead to anything productive, because many people will !vote against deletion, and, independently on the level of their arguments, the very number of votes will prevent article's deletion." Nonetheless, I am not going to let this drown me out and I hope neither of you will because you all gave very valid arguments and reasoning, backed by analysis of sources and guidelines and policies, which I believe and would hope, that if we are right as I think we are ("Those who argue against that are welcome to demonstrate that the MKuCR theory is being widely used by experts in each country's history. To the best of my knowledge, the best experts in Stalinist repressions (except Rosefielde) ignore this concept, and some of them (like Werth), publicly disagree with it." This is a good summary of our position), there is going to be consensus against Keep someday, especially if one weights each vote basing it on the strength of the argument presented rather than mere numbers of Keep or Delete.

My view is that "[t]he topic does exist, but it is a minority view" and "[t]he topic does not exist, and the article should be deleted" are both true and no article can be based on this, hence delete/merge. You have repeatedly shown this to be true, changing my mind; and of course those who are for Keep are free to disagree but so far they have not given as strong arguments, nor they have shown that "the MKuCR theory is being widely used by experts in each country's history." They have actually misrepresented sources in their attempts to do so, as you and other users repeatedly showed. I also agree that the Terminology section should be at the Mass killings article and that the article is confusing mass killings in general, which did indeed happen, with an alleged theory of Communist mass killings, which either does not exist as a topic or is a minority, not mainstream, view; hence, it can not be used for a standalone article, only to other articles. Davide King (talk) 22:09, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I noted you wrote that "[t]here are many other examples of synthesis, for example, opinia of Staub, Wheatcroft, Wayman&Tago, Karlsson, and some other authors are cited, but they originally write not about MKuCR, but about other topics (either more general or more narrow), so they are not writing within the concept proposed by [Valentino] and few other scholars." Could it be that those who are for Keep think that just because scholars are talking about Communist regimes, perhaps mentioning killings, they believe those scholars are discussing the same thing, when they are not? I think it would be helpful to clarify that because this is one issue those for Keep have either failed to understand or misunderstood it. I believe that is what you are referring to when talking about original research and synthesis; that just because they are talking about killings under Communist regimes, which did indeed take place, it does not mean they are discussing the same topic or that there is a theory and perhaps they do not even agree with it. There are many instances where scholars discuss one topic just to dismiss it and disagreeing with it. Did I get it right? Davide King (talk) 22:27, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to make a very brief response to the large amount of hard work you all are doing. But first, I want to respond to the statement above that I am "left leaning". In today's terms, I'm "extreme Left", because I am a registered Democrat, but that is not the old meaning of the word Left. I have no sympathy for communism. It is a failed system, in my view, that has been replaced by capitalist dictatorships in every communist country except North Korea. Now, back to the article. The discussions above seem to me to be carefully researched, far more carefully researched than the previous discussions suggesting that this article be deleted. The key point is that this article is synthesis, picking and choosing out-of-context snippets from books and articles on other subjects entirely. Don't overestimate the number of people who oppose deletion. I doubt it is more than a dozen, though more may be summoned if it comes to a vote. Second, Wikipedia articles for deletion are not decided by a vote. They are decided by a Wikipedia administrator. I do not know how the Wikipedia administrator who decides is chosen from among all the Wikipedia administrators. Sometimes I think I should spend more time on Wikipedia politics. But I work three full-time jobs, teacher, writer, and comic book publisher, and the teaching alone takes up three times as much time and effort as it did in the days when I could walk into a classroom instead of teaching on Zoom. I appreciate the hard work you all are doing, and think the research shown here should impress any Wikipedia administrator. Rick Norwood (talk) 11:12, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Rick Norwood, to be clear, my comment about calling any of those who oppose this article as 'left-leaning' is simply misleading was a response to one comment saying "what you try to demonstrate, it is part of the past 30 thirty years political discourse as well, when the left-wingers accuses all the time for one the right-wingers, and vica versa, and you cannot deminuate the subject if at state level both crimes are comdemned by law, researched and discussed." I do not think any of those who are opposed to this article are by any means 'left-leaning', for you all gave very neutral and valid arguments based on analysis of sources and guidelines and my point was that we can not simply be dismissed as such, when we are not obviously Communist and one of us voted thrice to Keep this article. On the other hand, I think most of those who are for Keep are 'right-leaning' and, apart from AmateurEditor with whom we disagree about their reading of sources and scholarship, gave mainly moralistic arguments coming from anti-Communism rather than scholarship, so the argument falls. In other words, many of those for Keep either hold true the double genocide theory or believe scholarship supports the concept and it is a mainstream view; I think the latter has been disproved by those opposed to the article.

As an example, they take for granted that the Holocaust and Communist crimes are the same thing because the European Union has linked them together (unsurprisingly, they did not link any capitalist, colonialist and imperialist crimes; and one does not have to be a leftist to believe that this is a double standard) and believe that those declarations are based on scholarship when they are political decisions, with which one may agree or disagree; no one is denying the tragedy of Communist regimes but acting like they are the same exact thing is an example of false equivalence and is not actually supported by scholarship. It is actually an example of Holocaust revisionism and trivalisation, which is part of the double genocide theory mentioned in this opening thread.

In addition, as noted by The Four Deuces, Communist crimes are used as slippery slopes for socialism and the broader left that any radical change is going to result in Communist mass killings (ironic coming from the liberal English Civil War and French Revolution, although some right-wing authors are now linking all the bad things of Communism to those bourgeois revolutions), even though the same argument is not applied to capitalism and the right; we do not see capitalist, colonialist, fascist and imperialist crimes being used, as they should, as an indictment for capitalism, conservatism, liberalism et al. This also ignores the contributes the left and other socialists gave to make actual existing capitalism more 'human'; the counter-argument would be that Communist regimes were all dictatorships but they all followed the Soviet model and this ignores the many contributes the broader left and socialists gave in the 20th century to make capitalism 'human', without which 19th-century capitalism, under 20th-century material conditions, would not be so far away from 20th-century Communist regimes.

In other words, if Western capitalism was better and superior to Communist regimes, it was ironically also thanks to those contributes the broader left and socialists gave, forcing capitalist governments to accomodate their demands. So it is easy to say that capitalism is superior to Communist regimes and ignoring how that was also in large part thanks to the broader left and socialists' demands; it is no wonder and surprising that with the rise of neoliberalism, whose ascension and radicalism was accelerated by the fall of Communist regimes in the 1990s, there has been an increase in inequality and rise of the far-right and (il)liberal-authoritarian regimes. Not only that but we have right-wing authors arguing that fascists and by extension Nazis were socialists and on the left, so both Nazi and Communist crimes are on the left and socialists' hands. This political situation, which has been highlighted by many scholars, including those gently listed by C.J. Griffin, can not be separated from it; they are interlinked and connected; and is one more reason why this article is inherently going to violate NPOV and synthesis. Davide King (talk) 12:45, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Added note. Davide King (talk) 13:32, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I prefer the interpretation of Michael Harrington and others that Communism was a method to bring about rapid industrialization in backward countries that lacked capital. In that sense it wasn't a step toward socialism but a step toward capitalism. Hence all successful Communist revolutions occurred in feudal or third world countries which by the way had no traditions of democracy, civil rights or private enterprise. TFD (talk) 16:33, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, incidentally that is also actually my personal view, too. Sine you mentioned others, do you know any other scholars that also agree with this interpretation or similar ones? Ironically, as you noted elsewhere, it is mainly anti-Communists and Marxists–Leninists agree Communist state were socialists, albeit for obviously different reasons. It is socialism whether the economy was in the control of the working class and whether the government (whether based on workers' council or liberal-democracy) represented them in a democratic way, not whether the state controlled the economy, which capitalist countries have allowed to some degree; and that a command or centrally-managed economy does not necessarily imply socialism, as planning and even five-year plans have been adopted by many capitalist, non-capitalist and pre-capitalist states. As you noted here and elsewhere, there is this double standard for socialism and socialist parties. Party ideologies are generally static, although policies change over time, giving the example of the Tories, who have changed their policies since the days of the English Civil War more than Labour has over its 120 year history, yet are still considered conservatives; socialist parties have changed less policies than some conservative parties who have changed more. Remember we are using the socialist definition as outlined by the Historical Dictionary of Socialism, pp. 1–3.

So socialism is used as a loaded, negative word. Essentially, "[t]he socialism of the Labour Party has been defined as whatever the Labour Party says it is. So whether Labour is building the post war welfare state or dismantling it, it's socialism because the Labour Party is socialist and whatever they say or do is by definition socialism." However, there is this double standard that if something good was done by socialists (the welfare state as in Britain, even though it was admittedly based on the social-liberal model, under the post-war Labour government which Robert M. Page describes as transformative democratic socialism, in contrast to revisionist democratic socialism proposed by Crosland and Wilson; or as in Sweden, where it was thought that if people were healthy, well-educated and had a decent standard of living, that they would seek to develop a socialist society and they did not consider the welfare state to be socialism but a necessary condition for its development), then it was still capitalism. Was something bad done by socialists, where they tried to reverse the neoliberal model and return to the post-war model, then it was socialism because it failed, not because an accurate and scientific analysis determined it was socialism.

All of this must be taken in account when talking about and discussing this article. It is taken in account by scholars, as shown by C.J. Griffin, but this article simply does not care and only present one-sided views and historiography, completely ignoring the conflictual and politicised Soviet and Communist studies field. Davide King (talk) 17:27, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Harrington discusses Communism in his 1989 book, Socialism ("Authoritarian Collectivisms".) It's worth reading as he points out the flawed reasoning of anti-Communists. TFD (talk) 22:57, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I think we should make a distinction between people who are anti-communist in the sense of thinking communist government is not a good form of government, which would, I think, include a majority of writers who do not identify themselves as communist, as contrasted with the anti-communists for whom attacking communism is their main focus, or one of their main focuses. I think the latter are fringe, in the same sense that someone whose main focus was on being anti-Catholic would be fringe.

We should also make a distinction between people who are prominent, in the sense of being famous, and people who are prominent in the sense of being respected authorities in a field.Rick Norwood (talk) 13:25, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Rick Norwood, I agree. The problem is it is mostly the latter that support this topic as a general concept and is indeed fringe. The article heavily relies on Valentino when he wrote that "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" and that "[m]ass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa. Documentation of these cases in secondary sources, however, remains inadequate to render a reliable judgment regarding the numbers and identity of the victims or the true intentions of their killers." In other words, it is not even a notable topic and only has primary sources, some of which I still dispute whether they actually support the topic. By the way, this problem you highlighted is a problem I have seen in most Communist-related articles. In articles about Communist China, Mao: The Unknown Story is heavily cited, even though it is controversial even among academics. Many Communist-related articles rely with Pipes as main source, even though, as noted by The Four Deuces, his Communist books are more popular books for a wider audience than scholarly ones. Stalinism only lists Sheilia Fitzpatrick's Everyday Stalinism and Stalin's Peasants as See also while using several non-Communist/Soviet studies scholars. Getty is cited only once and Ellman is not cited at all. It is, then, not surprising if this article mostly relies on authors and scholars from one side when this is done for most Communist-related articles, giving the false impression that this is a mainstream view or that there are no legitimate, mainstream scholars such as Getty, Ellman, Fitzpatrick et al. who disagree with some of their interpretations, with this article being a prominent example. Davide King (talk) 14:18, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Valentino dedicates an entire chapter of his book to "Communist Mass Killing", focusing on mass killing at the level of at least 50,000 killed within 5 years in the USSR, China, and Cambodia, and states that mass killing in the generic sense below that level may have occurred in the other regimes mentioned, and from that you conclude that communist mass killing isn't a notable topic? I simply disagree and I think most people will. You cite Getty and Ellman as mainstream scholars. The Wikipedia page for J. Arch Getty says he "challenged the traditional approach to Soviet history" and has been accused of being an apologist for Stalin. Upon Michael Ellman's retirement in 2012, he apparently had a retirement conference titled "Against the Mainstream". I think they should be treated as "significant minority" sources for their individual views, like all the other sources in this article, Valentino included. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:01, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

So which is which? Is the main topic Communist mass killing as a new category of mass killing (note that Valentino wrote Communist Mass Killing, not Communist Mass Killings), or any death under any Communist regime? I wrote you in my previous response why you may think they are discussing the same thing and topic, and why others and I disagree. If you want the main topic of this article to be Communist mass killing as a new category, that is fine; problem is this is not the main topic discussed and is mixed up with the main topics I mentioned above. My view is that Communist mass killing (or genocide) should be a redirect to a section of Mass killing (or Genocide), where we report Strauss and Valentino's opinions. The whole terminology section would be more useful there.

As for Ellman and Getty, I hope more users can weight in, but let me tell you that it is not really surprising. Yes, "orthodox" scholars have criticised "revisionists" as being Communists or Communist apologists; and "revisionists" have criticised "orthodox" scholars as anti-communists and anti-communist propagandists. Since you cited a Wikipedia article, let me do the same and cite you the relevant Soviet and Communist studies which reports how the field is a politicised and conflictual one. We simply can not get an article like this and respect NPOV.

Hence my proposal to save the contents for other articles, move and merge, not delete, all the content to other articles (Communist state, Criticism of communist party rule, Mass killing, etc.) and only retry this article when there is more consensus in scholarship and it can be created while respecting NPOV. NPOV is not the only issue (my view is still that there would be original research and synthesis in creating the main topic, which either does not actually exists, or it does exists but it is a minority, fringe, or non-notable view among scholars; it is indeed notable among anti-communists and the right) but it is probably the bigger one.

Of course, you and others are free to disagree but it is not just me thinking that or something close to that, so I believe this should be discussed, it can not be ignored or dismissed, and we should try to find a solution. However, finding a solution is hard when I and several users do not think that the main topic actually exists in scholarship, so it is hard to improve an article when we believe it is filled with original research, synthesis and NPOV violations. This could be solved if we resolve the issue of the main topic, which one it is and whether scholarship actually supports it or not. Davide King (talk) 20:45, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I think that the point is that while mass killings in the USSR, China, and Cambodia under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, may be notable, that mass killings under communist regimes is not. Hence Wikipedia and Metapedia are the only encyclopedias that have articles about it. TFD (talk) 21:57, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, I do not think this is going to convince anyone, so I believe it would be better what is your analysis according to sources of Ellman and Getty, who are dismissed as minorities. I would argue that in this specific case and topic the minority is Valentino et al. Their concept and reading is not widely accepted within scholarship. However, the lack of weight and mention in tertiary sources could be helpful in establishing weight and notability, especially if only Wikipedia and Metapedia ("an online wiki-based encyclopedia which contains authoritarian far-right, white nationalist, white supremacist, anti-feminist, homophobic, Islamophobic, antisemitic, Holocaust-denying, and neo-Nazi points of view") have an article about it. Davide King (talk) 22:22, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, per Aumann agreement theorem, people can "agree to disagree' only in two cases: (i) when they are discussing not purely rational subject ("I love this film, but you dislike it, let's agree to disagree"), or (ii) when they refuse to apply logic to a discussion of a rational subject, or do not fully disclose the facts their logical considerations are based upon. The subject of this paper is purely rational, so if we all agree to think logically and to share our knowledge with peers, we cannot agree to disagree.

I think, since the MKuCR topic appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature, we do need to have a separate article about that. But this article should be devoted to these theories, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses, because there are many proponents and opponents to these theories.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:24, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, in this case, referring to "the MKuCR topic appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature", a more accurate title would be Victims of Communism (Google Scholar) or Double genocide theory, although the latter may warrant either its own article or a redirect to a section at Holocaust revisionism, Holocaust trivialization, etc. However, what would you think of having one article Analysis of Communist regimes that includes background, context, the rising of living standards, modernisation, lives saved (as discussed by Ellman) and mass killings and famines with context and relevant, expert scholarly views highlighted rather than having so many Communist-related coattracked articles? Davide King (talk) 23:33, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

First of all thank you @Davide King: for your comprehensive analysis. I think that the nature of the article right now is a bit problematic, because from the onset it tries to establish a narrative that mass killings are intrinsic to communist states. It feels that a lot of things that are mentioned in the article are quite decontextualised - for instance, should we talk about the red terror in the context of the white terror? It feels that there is an attempt here to group all the mass killings together and just imply that it is because of "communism", while we are talking here about many different conflicts and historical events with wildly different historical backgrounds. Moreover a lot of the estimates vary quite a lot depending on who is doing the estimations. I am not sure what the best things to do here is without performing any dramatic changes, and without coming across as Stalinist apologetism, but currently this decontextualisation creates a slight WP:NPOV issue. BeŻet (talk) 22:31, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

BeŻet, thanks for your comment. I made several proposals and I would like to hear what you think. One is to (a) make a summary of this article as a paragraph at Communist state (as a subsection of Analysis, criticism and response, moving there Legal status and prosecution, with Memorials and museums as subsection of the latter); (b) move most of the other content at Criticism of communist party rule (especially Estimates and Proposed causes but also Debate over famines); (c) move Terminology to Democide et al., Genocide, Genocide definitions, History of genocide, and/or Mass killing, among others, to discuss specifically about a Communist genocide/mass killing category alongside other categories such as ethnic genocide/mass killings (this should be attributed and eventual criticism or responses added); (d) move authors and scholars' personal views at their own individual article like is done for Stéphane Courtois, while Benjamin Valentino and Steven Rosefielde are so short, create Red Holocaust (2009 book) and structure it like The Black Book of Communism article; and (f) move most of States where mass killings have occurred at each Communist state's history and individual event, if the wording and sources are not there already, with a summary of it at Communist state and Criticism of communist party rule. Is really no one going to support something like this? Other possibilities include a Legacy section at Communist state or at Postsocialism.

Another possibility, which is not necessarily mutually exclusive, would be to create Analysis of Communist regimes (or Scholarly analysis of Communist regimes) that includes background, context, the rising of living standards, modernisation, lives saved (as discussed by Ellman) and mass killings and famines with context and relevant, expert scholarly views highlighted rather than having so many Communist-related coattracked articles. This would largely supersede Criticism of communist party rule and this article; other coattrack articles include Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin which should be merged at Stalin era, as I discussed here, since it is also already discussed at Political repression in the Soviet Union. Davide King (talk) 22:55, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Main topic (continued)

@AmateurEditor: You write: "the topic of the article is the large-scale killing of non-combatants by communist regimes". If that were true, the article would be based on reliable secondary sources written by the expert in each country's history. In contrast, the main emphasis is made on Valentino et al, who are not experts in any particular country, who do not cite primary sources, and who are working only with secondary sources written by country experts. In that sense, they should be considered tertiary sources. Good primary sources are used mostly to support the conclusions made by such genocide scholars as Valentino or Rummel. These good secondary sources are used selectively, because the views of those authors are not duly represented in the article, and a false impression is made that these authors support the MKuCR theorising.

In reality, they do not. Some group of authors directly criticize the "generic Communism" theory (which is an implicit basis for Valentino, Courtois et al); the conclusions of other country experts directly contradict to what "genocide scholars" say. Thus, Valentino (a general genocide scholar, and not an expert in Stalinism) says that the scale of mass killings in the USSR was 20 millions or so, whereas Ellman (an expert in Soviet history) says that the number of victims is impossible to estimate, because the very category is poorly determined, and it is a matter of political judgement. Another example: Werth and Margolin (experts in Russia and China, respectively) publicly disagree with Courtois in many aspects, especially in his attempts to generalize the issue. That means the books authored by Valentino, Courtois (I mean not BB, but the infamous introduction) and Rummel are th etertiary sources that do not summarise the state of the field, so they fail our WP:PSTS criteria (of course, that is true that they used to define the general article's paradigm).

Therefore, if we assume the topic of the article is large-scale mass killings, the article must be totally re-written according to the following scheme:

• Introduction (mass killings did take place in some communist states)
• Mass killings in the USSR

- Historical background (what was a situation in Russia before Communists came to power; major sources of social tensions; economic reasons for social tensions; social structure of the society);

- What happened after Communists came to power (Civil war etc)

- Description of each major case of mass killings and mass mortality; degree of responsibility of Communist authorities for that; opinia of scholars and politicians on the genocidal nature of these event (separately for each event, for even Great famine was not homogeneous: some episodes had obvious genocidal nature, others were not);

- Estimated number of victims by category and population losses (which is not the same)

• Mass killings in China (according to essentially the same scheme)
• Mass killing in Cambodia (according to the same scheme + "How and why mass killings were stopped", because Cambodia was a special case, the genocide was stopped by the Soviet supported Communist Vietnam, whereas US tacitly supported KR)
• Mass killing in (put country's name here
• (...)
• Theoretical attempts to describe MKuCR as a single phenomenon (in that section, Valentino's views, as well as views of other theorists should be presented, and supplemented with criticiam, which is abundant for, e.g., the BB).

That is a neutral and balanced structure of the article if its topic is as described by you. It may require a lot of work to re-write it, but it is doable if noone will start edit warring (under "noone" I, obviously, mean no you, but some other users, who may intervene and block our joint efforts).

There is another way to fix the article. If we assume that the article is not about mass-killing events per se, but about the theoretical attempts to represent all these events as a manifestation of some general phenomenon, and to link them to the Communist doctrine. In that sense, Valentino, Rummel, Courtois et al will be the focal point of this article, but their views will be presented as views of a some group of authors, not as a generally accepted view, and each theory will be supplemented with needed criticism. What do you think about that?

• A second question. As I already announced, I am going to delete the "Terminology" section, because it partially contains OR, and the rest is relevant to the mass killing in general, not to MKuCR. Therefore, its removal will not lead to the removal of the text from Wikipedia (its major part, devoid of OR and the Holocaust trivialization will stay in the Mass killing article). However, before I will do that, I would like to know if you have any rational objections to that?

Regards, --Paul Siebert (talk) 22:19, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I believe those would be huge improvements. I wonder though, why not delete this article (again, I mean mostly the article, not the content itself) and rename Criticism of communist party rule, which may have some problems too but not as this one, Analysis of communist party-rule or Analysis of Communist regimes and whatnot? Or vice versa, delete/merge that article here and rename this article as the aforementioned examples. Because I think, for the same reason you so succinctly outlined, an article based only on mass killings under Communist regimes as a single phenomenon or as "theoretical attempts to represent all these events as a manifestation of some general phenomenon, and to link them to the Communist doctrine", should not exist because the topics in this sense either do not exist, or exist but are marginal (proposed by non-experts and not widely accepted); however, an article of Communist regimes based on scholarly analysis, that does not limit itself to mass killings (which are emphasised only by one side of historiography, I mean in the sense that it is only one side that link them to communist, socialist, left doctrines as some general phenomenon or manifestation) or to the aforementioned "theoretical attempts to represent all these events as a manifestation of some general phenomenon, and to link them to the Communist doctrine", would be much more appropriated. I believe such an article would be better suited to support the historical background and in general the structure you proposed and which I would support. Davide King (talk) 23:24, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, the only reason to have this article is because of the sources that address the topic for communist regimes generally, otherwise it would be original research/synthesis to simply combine sources on individual country mass killing events with a "communist" frame. We already have articles for each individual regime/country and I believe we do not at this point have articles on mass killing in those individual countries. Presumably, such standalone single-country mass killing articles could be written only if there were enough sourcing to support them, otherwise the topic would be addressed as a section in the country article. This is why this article focuses on the aggregator sources, such as Valentino et al. Having said that, I do not believe it is inappropriate to include the single-country sources in this article as supplemental sources for the sections related to those individual countries, they just are not the justification for the article's existence.

Whether a source is primary, secondary, tertiary is relative to the topic you are talking about: if the topic is Valentino's publications, his book would be a primary source, if the topic is general mass killing, it is a secondary source. For our purposes, following the guidance at WP:PSTS, I think both the general mass killing sources (or aggregator sources) and the single-country mass killing sources should both be considered secondary sources with differing scopes. Both can be used here, but only the aggregator sources justify this article's existence. I don't think we should call the aggregators tertiary sources per WP:PSTS, which says "Tertiary sources are publications such as encyclopedias and other compendia that summarize primary and secondary sources. Wikipedia is considered to be a tertiary source. Many introductory undergraduate-level textbooks are regarded as tertiary sources because they sum up multiple secondary sources."

I have no problem with adding material that is properly sourced criticizing the idea of "generic Communism", or other material that is "not duly represented" currently. This is just normal editing, as far as I am concerned, and would not be controversial enough to justify discussion on the talk page beforehand. Generally speaking, adding well-sourced material is not going to be controversial. Deleting well-sourced material would be. The Terminology section is both well-sourced and important to understanding the topic. The aggregator sources address the issue of terminology specifically. The lack of a consensus on terms to use in the sources themselves is, in my opinion, the primary good faith reason this article has been controversial among wikipedia editors (other than political bias/bad faith, which of course exists but should be ignored for discussion purposes whenever possible, per WP:AGF).

Most everything in your proposed re-write could be just added material and so it is difficult to object to. I certainly would not be deleting any well-sourced material you added about historical background, etc. Other than the lack of a terminology section, the structure of the article you propose is basically the current structure re-ordered so that the aggregator material (the material justifying the article's existence) is at the end of the body text. If the entire effect of re-ordering the sections would be to make me a little less happy and you a little more happy, I would be ok with it in the interest of consensus-building. However, making that critical aggregator material less prominent is likely to encourage charges of synthesis among ignorant/bad faith editors in the future, so I think it would be a net negative change long-term. In general, I consider the aggregator sources to be the sources from which we should be drawing the article structure. They begin with discussions of terms first. I do agree with comments here and earlier that some of the material in the terminology section is about mass killing in general, rather than communist mass killing in particular, such as the first sentence in the section: "Several different terms are used to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants[1][a][b][c][d] and according to Professor Anton Weiss-Wendt there is no consensus in the field of comparative genocide studies on a definition of 'genocide'.[e]" Is it really that big a problem to include that in order to help readers/editors not be confused?

The last section in your proposed reordering is "Theoretical attempts to describe MKuCR as a single phenomenon...". You could argue that this is a theory, but it is not treated that way in the aggregator sources as far as I know. They treat this as a topic like any other, which is not what "theory" would suggest. Is ethnic cleansing a theory? Only if you want to talk at a level of abstraction inappropriate for an encyclopedia, in my opinion. What are the sources that justify treating the aggregation of these events as a theory and why should we be using their framing instead of the sources already identified?

To be clear, I do object to just deleting the Terminology section. It is well sourced, important to understanding the article topic, and follows the aggregator sources' example. AmateurEditor (talk) 17:09, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

As I said above, the sources used to establish the topic's notablitiy do not address the topic for communist regimes generally. They say that mass killings took place in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia. They also say that mass killings on a smaller scale may have occurred in other Communist states, but provide no information. They theorize that a strain of Communism as practiced by Stalin and copied by Mao and Pol Pot (and other unspecified Communists), had a proclivity for mass killings.

OTOH, there is the fringe right-wing view as exemplified by George Watson in The Lost Literature of Socialism that mass murder is a key feature of socialism 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.

So essentially we have two separate topics. What this article does is argue the case for the second one while disingenuously claiming that there is consensus in reliable sources to support it.

TFD (talk) 17:52, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, that is a good summary of my views as well. I am not opposed to have a Victims of Communism article about the theory that mass killings are a key feature of communism, the left or socialism, but it would be structured as a fringe theory. On the other hand, the current article mixes the two things and basically argue the topic of victims of Communism but rather than treat it as the fringe theory it is, it is "claiming that there is consensus in reliable sources to support it", citing Valentino et al. even though they do not actually support the latter topic in mine and other users' view. I believe a scholarly analysis article about Communist regimes that includes modernisation, rising of living standards and excess lives saved due to the former (as highlighted by scholars) and mass killings, famines and excess deaths caused it by the latter events, among other issues and events, would make a much better topic. Is really no one going to support Scholarly analysis of Communist regimes (substituting this and Criticism of communist party rule) and Victims of Communism (structured as a fringe theory as defined by Wikipedia:Fringe that, however, appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature) articles? Davide King (talk) 18:11, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, we even had The Epoch Times in Bibliography. How this was not removed earlier is beyond me. It is really only right-wing and fringe sources that push the concept. Davide King (talk) 18:45, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, I also just noted that Watson's book you mentioned is actually cited to argue that Marx and Engels were responsible for coming up with the idea of genocide. Apparently, he also published material arguing that Hitler was a Marxist and that socialism promoted genocide. This is downright fringe, why he is cited at all? Davide King (talk) 20:07, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Because AmateurEditor and a few other editors think he should be cited. TFD (talk) 21:35, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

It does not look like there is a consensus for including it here, but we could always run an RFC if people think it's unclear. Definitely several of the sources cited at length in the "Ideology" section 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. I feel like it's the product of the sort of back-and-forth editing where editors try to argue a particular position by proxy by including every voice they can find who has articulated it; what we should be doing, rather than nose-counting mostly fairly low-profile academics and writers, is to provide a brief single-paragraph summary of the broad arguments, noting the most prominent arguments for and against it once, each, and making clear its relative acceptance on academia (or lack thereof.) Of course this applies to several other sections of the article as well, but the ideology section in particular has become bloated with people saying more-or-less the same thing, most of whom are not individually noteworthy enough to justify this. --Aquillion (talk) 22:07, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Aquillion, I am working on a RfC about the main topic. Until a clear, notable main topic is actually individuated and there is consensus for it, then this whole discussion, while interesting and helpful, would be for naught. I believe this RfC would be a more neutral way than a RfD since many who are for Keep may argue a different topic and not even agree among themselves what the main topic actually is (the lead still does not clarify that, as noted by The Four Deuces); and many who are for Delete may support a main topic that actually discusses it but not as a main topic or standalone article as this one is. I have not posted it already because I would appreciate any comment on how to improve it or reword it; and also to respect Paul Siebert's comment that "this discussion is becoming hard to follow. I prefer a stepwise approach, so I propose to resolve the 'Terminology' issue first." However, I think it is going to be useless because Siebert is obviously in the right in mine and other users' views but there are always going to be other users who disagree, even though Siebert's reading as outlined below is the correct one.

Until a clear, notable main topic is individuated, we are all just going to agree to disagree; on the other hand, if no clear, notable main topic can be individuated, i.e. there is no consensus among users about what the main topic actually is, then the article should be deleted/merged; because I believe guidelines are clear that (a) a topic must be clear and notable; and (b) we are not supposed to mix different topics as the current article does, i.e. no original research or synthesis. If an article can not exist without violating NPOV and despite a decade long attempt at fixing it has provided no solution, then the only neutral solution would be to merge/delete. I propose the main topic to be a scholarly analysis of Communist regimes not limited only to mass killings and famines, as by focusing on the latter we are going to inevitably violate NPOV by pushing the views of a minority or non-expert scholars as the mainstream view as the current article does. As you correctly highlighted the issue in that section, the whole article essentially follows that same pattern of presenting it "as an uncontroversial academic theory." I add that not only it is presented as such but that it is actually presented "as an uncontroversial academic [fact]" which Siebert has repeatedly debunked.

That is why I propose a second article, contra the scholarly analysis, to be Victims of Communism, to discuss this as a controversial theory that essentially amounts to the double genocide theory and Holocaust trivalisation, being pushed mainly by fringe sources and organisations but that it is 'mainstreamised' by various mass-media and popular literature. That is why many users, including myself, took it as given that this article was an "uncontroversial academic fact" when it reality it is a "controversial theory in academia" and even Robert Conquest did not lump Communist regimes together (he discussed the Great Purge, etc. as separate subjects) or made a general theory of Communist mass killings; and that essentially it is a popular literature theory, not an academic one, as very few scholars actually support the main topic as currently outlined in the article and none of them are experts in Communist regimes. Davide King (talk) 01:14, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Moving forward

So at this point by my count, with a quick dump into Word, we are at almost 50k words and over 300k bytes here. Do we have a path forward? Something like a "change X to Y", request move, request merge, AFD, or RFC? Not really looking for generalization, like the article should be more better, just specific sugguestions on what we should do here. PackMecEng (talk) 18:41, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

I believe a RfC about the main topic would help us see where we stand and clarify what the main topic is. I believe those are good suggestions to improve the article for a start. Davide King (talk) 20:28, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Sounds good, I saw above you also started work on a RFC for the subject. I appreciate that and will take a deeper look later today if that is okay. PackMecEng (talk) 21:25, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

POV article titles are only allowed if they are the common name "as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language sources". I see no evidence that this is the case. Perhaps it would be better to rename with a title including "theory" to indicate that this is only one view of history. (t · c) buidhe 15:40, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

PS double genocide theory (Europe) desperately needs an article. (t · c) buidhe 15:41, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Buidhe, thanks for your comments. Could you please clarify what you mean when you wrote "I see no evidence that this is the case"? Did you mean that the current name is not actually the common name? Or that Victims of Communism is not a common name, hence it would be POV and violating POV articles title guidelines? Either way, I absolutely agree that needs an article; perhaps it should actually be this? I find it absurd it is only mentioned as a disambiguation at Double genocide and that there was no mention at Holocaust-related articles until I added it here. Davide King (talk) 15:57, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• Actually, I don't see much evidence that either "victims of communism" or "Mass killings under communist regimes" is a common name for the theory that all victims of different communist regimes and repressions, famine, etc. all should be grouped under one umbrella. Searching "victims of communism" gets me the following sources on Google Scholar:[21]
  • Ghodsee, Kristen (2014). "A Tale of "Two Totalitarianisms": The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism". History of the Present. 4 (2): 115–142. doi:10.5406/historypresent.4.2.0115. ISSN 2159-9785. The signatories to this Declaration proclaimed that the "millions of victims of Communism and their families are entitled to enjoy justice, sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings in the same way as the victims of Nazism...
  • Dolgoy, Rebecca Clare; Elżanowski, Jerzy (2018). "Working through the limits of multidirectional memory: Ottawa's Memorial to the Victims of Communism and National Holocaust Monument". Citizenship Studies. 22 (4): 433–451. doi:10.1080/13621025.2018.1462507.
  • Neumayer, Laure (2017). "Advocating for the cause of the "victims of Communism" in the European political space: memory entrepreneurs in interstitial fields". Nationalities Papers. 45 (6): 992–1012. doi:10.1080/00905992.2017.1364230.
  • Đureinović, Jelena (2018). "Law as an Instrument and as a Mirror of Official Memory Politics: The Mechanism for Rehabilitating Victims of Communism in Serbia". Review of Central and East European Law. 43 (2): 232–251. doi:10.1163/15730352-04302005.
• (boldface added) However, we would not consider Prague Declaration or the name of a memorial to be a RS for history! So I conclude that even "victims of communism" is not a common name at least not looking at academic sources. Therefore, I suggest coming up with a NPOV, descriptive title indicating a theory shared by some but by no means all scholars. (t · c) buidhe 16:10, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

  Buidhe, that is what I and others have been saying this whole time. The current article, which essentially and more or less lumps many topics together, taking the Communist genocide/mass killing concept from Straus and Valentino, even though the first is a book about genocide and is merely discussing Valentino's work, while the second 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, 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 to the few scholars who propose the topic, in many cases even being misrepresented, original research, synthesis, more than one, clear main topic, NPOV, etc.) I have highlighted. This is why the only main topic that this article may support is a theory pushed by anti-communist organisations, in some popular media and literature, but otherwise being a fringe theory in academia. This would require at the very least big restructuring and perhaps a name change. Davide King (talk) 16:25, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Terminology section

It seems this discussion is becoming hard to follow. I prefer a stepwise approach, so I propose to resolve the "Terminology" issue first. AmateurEditor objects to removal of the "Terminology" section, because "it is well sourced, important to understanding the article topic, and follows the aggregator sources' example." Below, I demonstrate what is wrong with that rationale.

• The section "is well sourced" This argument cites WP:V, whereas the reasons for removal are violations of WP:NOR and WP:NPOV. In addition, the verifiability policy explicitly says that not all verifiable information deserves inclusion, and The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. Therefore, I expect you to prove the text you are advocating does meet NOR and NPOV criteria.
• The section important to understanding the article topic. I don't see how this section help a reader to understand the topic. I would say the opposite, the section is deeply misleading, because it creates an impression that some well developed terminology exists in this field. In reality, the section is the list of terms coined by a bunch of authors, who apply them to the same events, so the same mass killing is called "politicide" by one author and "classicide" by another. These new terms explain nothing, and that is why the overwhelming majority of experts in history of separate Communist states do not use these terms at all. If you want to prove I am wrong, try to propose an alternative explanation to these search results. I made a very neutral search, and it gives the following results:

• - democide (22400) +democide (833, mostly Rummel himself)
• -classicide (22700); + classicide (80)
• -politicide (22500); +politicide (1230)
• -"red Holocaust" (21800); +"Red Holocaust" (79)

I used "repressions", because it is a very specific term applied to Stalinist crimes, and it is really universally accepted'

All these search results are nearly the same, which means country experts, do not use this terminology. This terminology in totally useless, it has no explanatory power, it is ignored by experts in the field. If you believe something is wrong with my search or interpretation, please provide your own search and/or your own interpretation.

Therefore, "Terminology" by no means helps a reader to understand the topic, it mislead a reader, and it must be removed. With regard to "Red Holocaust", not only it is not the term, its usage is tantamount to the Holocaust trivialisation, and it must be removed, because it is a stain on Wikipedia.

"There are two exception. First, the term "genocide". It was introduced by Lemkin to describe Nazi crime and to prevent future crimes of that kind. It is a legal term, and its application to some events (by a court) may have some concrete legal consequences. It is quite necessary to explain what this term is, but this term was not proposed for Communist mass killings. It is much more general, and that is why I moved it to the Mass killing article. Interestingly. many experts in Soviet history argue that Soviet mass killings were, by and large, non-genocidal by their nature.

The second term is demo/politicide. This term is being used by so called "genocide scholars" in attempts to find some general dependencies between regime type and a probability of onset of mass killings. Again, this term does not explain "Communist mass killings", it is used to assemble a very crude and indiscriminate worldwide statistics of mass killings (Barbara Harff conceded that Rummel's statistics was very inaccurate, and it was never expected to be accurate, because the goal of his study was different). This terminology is relevant to the mass killing article, but it is absolutely not helpful for understanding this article's topic, and it is absolutely misleading.

Actually, what this section is doing is a pure cheating. It says: "the following terms were proposed to describe MKuCR", but that is a direct lie. These terms (with one exception, "classicide") were proposed for mass killings, not for MKuCR specifically.

Of course, it is possible to fix that by adding an explanation that majority of the terms in that section were proposed for mass killings in general, and they were applied, by some authors, to MKuCR. However, if we do that, and remove a total bullshit about Wheatcroft (who never proposed the term "repressions", that term was used by Khruschev after the XX congress of CPSU, and since those times was used in Soviet historiography), remove the Holocaust trivialization, etc., then the section will be converted to something reasonable. However, it would become nearly identical to the analogous text in the mass killing article. It would be ridiculous to have the text, which is only marginally relevant to the article's subject, and which can be easily accessible in one click (the link to mass killing is already provided in the article).

• The section "follows the aggregator sources" The aggregator source is adequate if it is in agreement with the opinia of major experts in the field. If Ellman writes that the very category "victims of Stalinism" is a matter of political judgement, his opinion is not in agreement with Valentino's attempt to lump all Soviet population losses into one category to advocate a very questionable idea (the idea, which is not universally accepted by "genocide scholars" themselves). My no means Valentino or similar authors are adequate and neutral "aggregator sources". They could be good aggregator sources if they provided a neutral summary of research in this field. In reality, each of them proposes some very concrete idea, and all these ideas are not universally accepted. Moreover, some of them sacrifice factual accuracy if it contradicts to their ideological constructs. Thus, Rummel refused to reconsider his estimates for the USSR despite the fact that numerous evidences became available in 1990s that the scale of GULAG mortality was by an order of magnitude lower that he predicted. I think it is a shame that we cite his outdated and, according to Harff, inaccurate estimates (but that is a different story).

Finally, I looked through the article, and I found virtually no mention of terms listed in this section, except "genocide" (which already has its own article, so a link would be sufficient). Other terms are either not used at all, or they are used just a couple of time. Do you really think that justifies an existence of such a misleading section?

In addition, this sentence in the lead "Terms used to define these killings include "mass killing", "democide", "politicide", "classicide" and a broad definition of "genocide"." is also is a disaster. Do we really think that is the most important thing that should be said about MKuCR? This sentence in the lead draws reader's attention to the worst and useless section in the article, which adds nothing to reader's understanding of communist crimes. It should be removed also.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:31, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, sorry about the delay in responding but it takes me a lot of time to thoughtfully respond to you and I think it is better to have a late and thoughtful response than a quick and faulty one. Thanks for starting a new section here on the talk page. I agree the previous discussions were getting hard to follow. If this discussion follows the pattern of our past discussions, it may branch so much that it could also become hard to follow, so I will number my responses to your points.

1) "The section "is well sourced"". By this I meant that it is not only verifiable, but appropriate for the article (that is, directly related to the article topic and not OR/SYNTH). Something can be "sourced" (that is, verifiable), but still not appropriate for an article. You cited WP:ONUS, which states "While information must be verifiable to be included in an article, not all verifiable information needs to be included in an article. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article, and that it should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." The consensus for the material in question was achieved 10 years ago, in my opinion, which is why it is in the article today. Of course, consensus can change, but since it is already in the stable version of the article, the onus now would be on those who want it changed. Per WP:NOCONSENSUS, "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." This is consistent with Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle, which favors the status quo before the proposed change, whether an addition or subtraction. Having said that, I am willing to discuss particular sentences and citations if you wish. I have tried to make it obvious with excerpts in the article itself that material in the terminology section is appropriate and not taken out of context. In order for me to "prove the text you are advocating does meet NOR and NPOV criteria", I would be basically pasting that here on the talk page for each citation in the section, which doesn't seem practical without some focus from you on what you object to in particular.

2)"important to understanding the article topic.". I agree with your sentence that the terminology section is a "list of terms coined by a bunch of authors, who apply them to the same events, so the same mass killing is called "politicide" by one author and "classicide" by another". I disagree that it is "deeply misleading, because it creates an impression that some well developed terminology exists in this field." The point of showing the variety of terms is to show that there is not "well-developed terminology" for this topic (and I would call this a "topic" only, not a separate "field" of study, but maybe I am being pedantic). The variety of terms is a sub-topic for this topic in the sources that justify this article. They are a significant part of this topic in reliable sources and that is why it is appropriate to include them. You say "These new terms explain nothing" and "are useless", but they do explain the perspectives of the authors that advocate for them. It is important to include the lack of consensus on terms among the sources. A term does not need to be a consensus term (or even a popular term) among the sources on a topic to be a part of the the body of reliable, published material on the topic, let alone be the consensus term among sources focused on a single country that do not address the wider cross-country topic in the first place. In the case of "Red Holocaust", it is a gross exaggeration to say that it is the same as ("tantamount to") Holocaust trivialization. Holocaust trivialization is when the term "holocaust" is applied to a relatively trivial thing, such as the defeat of a sports team. In this case, it is being used to describe the deaths of tens of millions of people. That is not trivialization. Having said that, it is true that the term is controversial, but the criticism is well represented for that term. In the case of "genocide", the article does not say that it was "proposed for Communist mass killings", it says that the term has been used for communist mass killings. Adding well-sourced sentences about the inappropriateness of the term for communist mass killing is fine with me. Likewise, in the case of demo/politicide, the helpfulness of this term here is that some sources use it for discussing communist mass killing. It does not have to "explain" communist mass killing to be be relevant to the topic as one of the terms used. You say "what this section is doing is a pure cheating. It says: "the following terms were proposed to describe MKuCR", but that is a direct lie." No, the section does not say "...the following terms were proposed to describe...", it instead says "The following terminology has been used...". The terms do not have to be specific to communist mass killing to be relevant to the topic, according to the reliable sources cited. You propose "adding an explanation that majority of the terms in that section were proposed for mass killings in general, and they were applied, by some authors, to MKuCR", but that is what the first two sentences of the section are already saying. If they need to be reworded to make them more clear, then let's do that. You say "remove a total bullshit about Wheatcroft (who never proposed the term "repressions"...", but again the section doesn't say that he proposed the term (I agree it would be incorrect to say he was the first to use the term).

3)"follows the aggregator sources". You say "The aggregator source is adequate if it is in agreement with the opinia of major experts in the field." I would say instead that aggregator sources are adequate for this purpose for the same reason that they are adequate for any use at all on wikipedia: if they meets the standard for reliable sources at WP:RS, then they can be used for wikipedia articles. The aggregator sources are the basis of the article/topic, so the article should be based on them primarily. If "major experts in the field" disagree with these sources, then that disagreement should, of course, be included. We can't, however, cite a source's silence on a topic as rejection of that topic because that would be original research on our part. Per WP:RS, articles should be "based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered". You seem to be saying instead that we should only be considering a (aggregator) source if it is in agreement with another (non-aggregator) source.

4)"virtually no mention of terms listed in this section". The article uses "mass killing" as the generic term. The terminology section is explaining the variety of terms used in the sources, rather than terms used throughout the article.

5)"Lede sentence". The sentence is "Terms used to define these killings include "mass killing", "democide", "politicide", "classicide" and a broad definition of "genocide". "I didn't write it, but calling it a "disaster" seems excessive. I think you are objecting more to the section of the article it is trying to concisely summarize, rather than the sentence itself as a sentence. I would not say that the sentence is, in your words, "the most important thing that should be said about MKuCR", but it is an important part of the topic and article. Per WP:LEAD, sentences in the lead are supposed to, among other things, "summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies". The variety of terms used is both an important point and controversial in some instances. According to the "This page in a nutshell" box at WP:LEAD, the lead is supposed to "identify the topic and summarize the body of the article with appropriate weight". The article has a section about terminology, so a sentence on terminology in the lead is not undue weight relative to the body of the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:32, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

No worry, take your time. I myself have an opportunity to respond just 1-2 times a week, so your "delayed" response is not delayed at all.

Right now there is a discussion at the policy page about WP:ONUS, and it seems that consensus is that there is no symmetry between removal and inclusion. There is not a big difference between re-addition and de novo addition of some material. I could delete the section, because I already explained why it should be deleted, but if I do that, that would be disrespectful to your work (which is technically very good). Therefore, I am trying to achieve consensus first, although that is not a strict requirement of our policy.

You are right, this text stays is here since 2010, but you forget that the article was frozen during several years, and after that it was under strict editing restrictions. Therefore, it would be incorrect to speak about any consensus in that situation. In addition, a significant part of the text was added later, and I never objected to that because I decided that would be a waste of time, but I never agreed with these additions. Therefore, it would be totally incorrect to say this version reflects consensus (neither past nor current).

In connection to that, I am expecting you to prove that each item in that list:

(i) is a term that was proposed specifically for MKuCR. Obviously, "Mass killing", "democide", "genocide", "politicide", and "crimes against humanity" were not proposed specifically for the MKuCR topic. Therefore, they belong to the mass killing article, not to this one. We do not explain the term DNA replication in the article about DNA polymerase gamma, and even in the DNA polymerase article: the link to the higher level article is quite sufficient. However, some of those terms were applied, by some authors to describe some mass killing events during communist rule. Let's take "mass killings" as one of the most extreme case: Valentino himself did not apply this term to Afghanistan (the Afghan case was not included into the Communist mass killing section of his book). Nevertheless, this article does include Afghanistan into the Communist mass killing category. Other terms, such as "genocide" were applied only to a very narrow category of cases. Therefore, it would be correct to move the discussion of applicability of those terms to the corresponding sections.

If some term was not proposed specifically for MKuCR, it may belong to the article (if it is mentioned in the article's body) but it must be excluded from the "Terminology" section. WP:NOR says that "analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources" is prohibited. By adding e.g. "genocide" to this section, we imply that that term was applied to MKuCR as whole (and the lead literally says that). That is misleading, and that is a piece of original research, which must be removed.

(ii) is a term. By that, I mean that we must discriminate terminology, which has some explanatory power and is helpful for understanding a subject, from just allegoric or emotional words, which do not explain anything. Thus, "Red Holocaust" is just another way to say that MKuCR were a very bad thing. Is it helpful for understanding the causes, mechanism or outcomes of MKuCR? Is it being used by anybody besides Rosenfielde and a couple of political journalists? No. It is not a term, and it is useless, misleading and not helpful

(iii) are used by country experts. So far, just "genocide" is used in the article. Other terms are just mentioned once, at best.

You write "The variety of terms is a sub-topic for this topic in the sources that justify this article." If that is the case, that justifies the article's deletion. In reality, your statement is not correct: the topic does exist, but 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). Believe we, if we throw away all those "theorists" (or move them to a small section at the end of the article), it still would be possible to keep this article, for Communist mass killings really had something in common. There were significant differences between all these events, but that does not mean there were no commonalities. The main flaw of this article is obsession with commonalities and ignoring differences, as well as factors other than Communism.

Regarding Holocaust trivialization, any metaphorical usage of the term "Holocaust" is trivialization. You cite Wheatcroft, read his comparative analysis of Stalinist and Nazi mass killing, because I am 100% he would be totally dissatisfied by the use of his name in this section. There was a long academic dispute between Wheatcroft and Rosenfielde, both authors put forward strong and convincing argiments; the POV of the latter is overrepresented in this section, and Wheatcroft's views are selectively cited in such a way that his ideas were either ignored or distorted. That is a violation of NPOV, and it is not acceptable.

"The terminology section is explaining the variety of terms used in the sources rather than terms used throughout the article." We cannot, and should explain the terms that are used in cited sources if these terms are not used in the article. Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not a textbook, and that is a policy.

Regarding "aggregator sources", you again refer to V when NPOV is violated. If an aggregator source advances some idea that contradicts to the idea or ideas of the sources that are being aggregated, it is not an aggregator source, but a separate source, which should be used in parallel to other sources. If an author X adequately summarized works written by authors A, B, and C, X is an aggregator source. However, if the authors A, B, and C propose one explanation/interpretation for the events described in their book, whereas the author X proposed some new theory that differs from what A, B, and C say, the article must present all these views fairly and proportionally. Currently, the article's structure follows the ideas expressed by a small group of political writers and genocide scholars, and the viewpoint of historians, especially, experts in history of some concrete country is provided mostly to support the ideas of "genocide scholars". That is a blatant violation of NPOV.

Regarding the lead, you write that "the variety of terms used is both an important point and controversial in some instances." That is not true. Majority of historians do not care about all that terminology. The only term that causes debates among historians is "genocide", and they organize separate conferences and devote whole journal issues to the question, e.g., whether Great Soviet famine was genocide. But that debates are local, they are devoted to some specific cases, and historians never discuss a possibility to apply some term to MKuCR as whole.

Meanwhile, a real controversy, which was a reason for serious debates is whether MKuCR should be presented as some single phenomenon, or that was a group of separate poorly connected events. The lead and the article essentially ignores this important question, and that is a serious NPOV problem. That is why the lead is a disaster.

Therefore, this section must be removed, because at least three policies are violated in it, and that is not fixable.

--Paul Siebert (talk) 08:44, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Regarding "Red Holocaust", a 30 second gscholar search gives a source that openly call "Red Holocaust" an example of the Holocaust trivialization. It says:

"Contrary to the hard-core version, soft-core denial is often not easily identifiable. Often it is tolerated, or even encouraged and reproduced in the mainstream, not only in Germany. Scholars have only recently begun to unravel this disturbing phenomenon. Manfred Gerstenfeld discusses Holocaust trivialization in an article published in 2008.7 In Germany in 2007 two scholars, Thorsten Eitz and Georg Stötzel, published a voluminous dictionary of German language and discourse regarding National Socialism and the Holocaust. It includes chapters on Holocaust trivialization and contrived comparisons, such as the infamous "atomic Holocaust", "Babycaust," "Holocaust of abortion", "red Holocaust" or "biological Holocaust.""

The reference is: Heni, Clemens.SECONDARY ANTI-SEMITISM: FROM HARD-CORE TO SOFT-CORE DENIAL OF THE SHOAH. Jewish Political Studies Review; Jerusalem Vol. 20, Iss. 3/4, (Fall 2008): 73-92, 218.

Note, Rosefielde did not propose "Red Holocaust" as a scholarly term, so the responsibility for addition of the Holocaust trivialization is on those who added this text to this article (I didn't check the history, and I don't know who added it).--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:02, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I apologize for posting a response later than I had promised on your talk page.

If the ongoing discussion at the WP:ONUS talk page results in a change to policy then we should follow the new policy, but until then we should follow it as currently written. When I say the material had achieved consensus years ago, I mean WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS. Although it is true that this article had editing restrictions in place for several years requiring talk page consensus to be established prior to edits to the article being made (apparently from March 5, 2011 to May 6, 2018), the section was in the article long before that. A "Terminology" section header was created (by me) on October 21, 2009 for material added earlier that mentioned "mass killing", "democide", "politicide", and "genocide". You were actively editing the section both before (example from 2010) and after (example from 2018) the editing restrictions were in effect, indicating implicit consensus on your part at those times (although I could be misremembering the state of things if we were having side discussions at the same time). Consensus can change, of course, but I don't think the onus is on me to justify this well-referenced and long-standing material. After the amount of time it has been there (outside of the editing restrictions), the onus is now on those who want to change it, per WP:BRD. Since you have already indicated that you want to make bold edits that would probably be reverted, we have skipped straight to the discuss stage, which is reasonable, but a lack of consensus in the discussion would result in the status quo, not deletion of the material. Otherwise, a disruptive editor could get any material in any article deleted simply by arguing about it. Having said that, I do still need to respond to your objections now. You are insisting on three criteria to be met for each term included in the section: that it is a term "proposed specifically for MKuCR", has "explanatory power", and is "used by country experts".

1) Where are these criteria coming from? They are not based on any policy that I am aware of. We need only follow the normal criteria for any material to be included in an article: Wikipedia:Core content policies. Restricting inclusion to terms with "explanatory power" or only those sources deemed by us to be "country experts" (which would mean ignoring, presumably, all the aggregator sources on which the article is based in the first place), is going way beyond those policies. If reliable sources include something in their discussion of the topic, it can be included in the article about that topic.

2) Your example of Valentino not using killing in Afghanistan in his chapter "Communist Mass Killings: The Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia", forgets that he did mention "Communist" as an "additional motive" for the killings in Afghanistan in his table on page 83.

3) You say that by including the term "genocide" in the section as it is "we imply that that term was applied to MKuCR as whole (and the lead literally says that). That is misleading, and that is a piece of original research". I object to the word "proposed", which your comments seem to be suggesting means "coined" or "invented" specifically for this article's topic. Both the lead and the second sentence in the section explicitly say the terms have been "used" ("The following terminology has been used by individual authors to describe mass killings of unarmed civilians by communist governments, individually or as a whole:"), which is accurate. I don't know why you think there is an implication that the terms were "proposed" specifically for Mkucr when there is an explicit statement clarifying what the list is. It could only be an implication if someone does not read the text, which means there is not such implication in the text. The "genocide" paragraph explains the UN definition and explains how the term has been applied to the events under specific communist regimes. Incidentally, a sourced sentence on the more general use of "communist genocide" ("According to Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, "historians and philosophers close to politically liberal groups" in Europe, especially in Romania, have made the term Communist Genocide part of today's vocabulary.") was removed by you on October 25, 2018, although I don't think that removal was justified. It is valuable to address each of these terms in the section so that readers understand how they relate to the article's topic. As you may recall, the article was originally titled "Communist genocide". No doubt there are readers out there looking for that information ("especially in Romania", apparently).

4) You say ""Red Holocaust" is just another way to say that MKuCR were a very bad thing." The word "holocaust" has been used about the topic and it is not our role to censor its use because of controversy. Instead, we should add sources that explain why there is controversy, as we have done. If you think that is insufficient, then add more.

5) You say "So far, just "genocide" is used in the article. Other terms are just mentioned once, at best." I have no problem with the terms being used throughout the article, as long as it doesn't make things confusing for the reader, but the terms are in the terminology section because they are in the sources, not because they are elsewhere in the article.

6) You say "the topic does exist, but 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 ". Wouldn't the "genocide scholars" be the "real experts" for this particular topic? The narrowly focused single-country authors would be "real experts" only in their individual fields of focus, not on this wider cross-country topic. I ignored your google searches because they are irrelevant to the topic existing and to the due weight considerations that apply only to the body of reliable sources who address the topic. Wikipedia has plenty of articles on very specialized topics with relatively small numbers of reliable sources. We need only to write the article to reflect what is in those reliable sources that address the topic. Per WP:PROPORTION, "An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject."

7) You say "if we throw away all those "theorists" [...] it still would be possible to keep this article". I doubt it. Without the aggregator sources, the charges of synthesis would have a point.

8) You say "The main flaw of this article is obsession with commonalities and ignoring differences, as well as factors other than Communism". There is all the time in the world to improve the article. Adding well-sourced sentences about the differences and factors other than Communism can start immediately.

9) You say "any metaphorical usage of the term "Holocaust" is trivialization". You are entitled to your opinion on that. I would say that most metaphorical usage could be seen as trivialization, simply because there is very little that compares to the horror and scale of the Holocaust, and even less that might exceed it. The scale of this topic is one of the few where such a metaphor is actually reasonable, but there are other reasons one might not want to use the term. Our role as editors is just to make sure that we are accurately reflecting what reliable sources say and not imposing our own points of view. I think the criticism of the term's use is adequately represented in the article currently (it says the term might be " Holocaust obfuscation", rather than trivialization), but reasonable people can disagree. If you feel strongly about "trivialization" and have a source for it, then you should add something to that effect in the article, but it is not clear from the quote you provided whether "red Holocaust" was seen as a trivialization or as a "contrived comparison", which is not the same thing. Regardless, we are supposed to "describe disputes, but not engage in them", per WP:YESPOV. Removal would be engaging in the dispute.

10) You say the current use of Wheatcroft is "a violation of NPOV" because his "views are selectively cited in such a way that his ideas were either ignored or distorted". The solution to this is to add relevant material that is ignored and/or edit material that is distorted.

11) You say "Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not a textbook, and that is a policy." You say this in reference to using terms in the terminology section that are not used in the rest of the article. Per WP:NOTTEXTBOOK, "Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not a textbook. The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to teach subject matter. Articles should not read like textbooks, with leading questions and systematic problem solutions as examples. These belong on our sister projects, such as Wikibooks, Wikisource, and Wikiversity. Some kinds of examples, specifically those intended to inform rather than to instruct, may be appropriate for inclusion in a Wikipedia article." The terminology section is clearly written to inform, not instruct as a textbook would.

12) You say "Currently, the article's structure follows the ideas expressed by a small group of political writers and genocide scholars, and the viewpoint of historians, especially, experts in history of some concrete country is provided mostly to support the ideas of "genocide scholars". That is a blatant violation of NPOV." The topic would be synthesis if not for the aggregator sources, so it is only reasonable that an article on a topic follow the sources that justify that article's existence (I call them "aggregator" sources because they aggregate multiple regimes in discussion of the communist mass killing topic, not because they aggregate multiple country-specific sources together as a tertiary source would. As I mentioned before, both the aggregator and single-country sources should be considered secondary sources of varying scopes). This is not a violation of NPOV policy. Per WP:YESPOV, "Achieving what the Wikipedia community understands as neutrality means carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without editorial bias. Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them. Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information, and not to promote one particular point of view over another. As such, the neutral point of view does not mean exclusion of certain points of view, but including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight." The article does not exclude single-country points of view, it just cannot be based on them, due to synthesis policy.

13) You say "Regarding the lead, you write that "the variety of terms used is both an important point and controversial in some instances." That is not true. Majority of historians do not care about all that terminology. The only term that causes debates among historians is "genocide", ...". As you say, "genocide" is controversial. As you indicated above, the use of "Holocaust" is also controversial. Other terms are not controversial, but have sometimes subtly distinct definitions that are important to note if we are trying to present the information found in the aggregator sources fairly. I understand that you think we should minimize the use of the aggregator sources and emphasize the single-country sources, but I have significant synthesis concerns with that approach. It is also based a reading of the weight policy that is inaccurate: weight is based on the proportions found in the body of reliable sources on the topic and should not be based on the proportion of reliable sources that do not mention the topic (i.e. single country sources that do not mention this article's topic should not be counted for weight among the sources that do). They can still be used, as long as their use is not OR or SYNTH.

14) You say "... whether MKuCR should be presented as some single phenomenon, or that was a group of separate poorly connected events. The lead and the article essentially ignores this important question, and that is a serious NPOV problem." This material needs to be sourced before it can be included, otherwise we have an OR/SYNTH problem. If there are such sources, then there is no problem including this in the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:48, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

It would read better if we integrated the terminology into the article. So for example when we explain the different views we should also explain why the writers used their terminology. TFD (talk) 03:07, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Totally agree. The same idea came to my mind few hours ago. Indeed, "Terminology" section is needed only if these terms are being massively and frequently used in the article. If the term "classicide" is used by Mann only, we should introduce it during the discussion of Mann's views. The term "genocide" was never applied to MKuCR as whole, it is universally applied to Kampuchea, to some cases during Great Soviet famine, to some deportations, and it should be used there. Majority of terms and ("terms") are not used at all, and I see no need to keep them.

--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:01, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree too. "You say', if we throw away all those 'theorists' [...] it still would be possible to keep this article'. I doubt it. Without the aggregator sources, the charges of synthesis would have a point." That is exactly my point and perhaps my only disagreement with Paul Siebert. Of course, AmateurEditor is free to disagree on this, but that was an accurate summary. Regarding the point "[w]ouldn't the 'genocide scholars' be the 'real experts' for this particular topic? The narrowly focused single-country authors would be 'real experts' only in their individual fields of focus, not on this wider cross-country topic." I would still argue we would need at least a majority of Soviet and Communist studies scholars to agree. The truth is that genocide scholars and Soviet and Communist studies scholars disagree and is my point and reason why the article as currently structured should not exist, but it can fit well an article that scholarly discuss Communist regimes without limiting to mass killings; is really no one going to support this? Finally, as noted by Siebert above "[the term 'genocide' was never applied to MKuCR as whole, it is universally applied to Kampuchea, to some cases during Great Soviet famine, to some deportations, and it should be used there. Majority of terms and ("terms") are not used at all, and I see no need to keep them." Hence, those few genocide scholars are not enough in my view to support the topic as currently structured; however, they can be used to add a Communist genocide or Communist mass killing section at articles about genocides and mass killings. I have already added content from this article to other articles, where it would be more appropriate such as at Criticism of communist party rule (which may be copy edited and title-changed to add Analysis or Scholarly analysis in the title), Communist mass killing at Benjamin Valentino and democide, among others. Davide King (talk) 07:26, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

As I said in my number 5 comment above: "I have no problem with the terms being used throughout the article". I just don't think having a terminology section depends on that being done. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor I disagree. We can speak about a longstanding consensus version only when a consensus building process is normal. If the article is fully protected or it is under severe editing restrictions, it is more correct to speak about a "frozen accident" (using physicists jargon). With regard to the rest, I would prefer to respond to #1 only, otherwise our exchange will be impossible to read and understand.

re 1. About criteria. The rule that was violated is as follows Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. Similarly, do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source. If one reliable source says A, and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C that is not mentioned by either of the sources. How it is applicable to the section? There are many examples. The name "Terminology" implies that terminology is used by scholars who works in that area. Although some reservations are made that explain that is not the case, a reader will be mislead.

Indeed, if some article has a "terminology" section, a reader interprets that as the section that introduces some terminology that is relevant to that article. That is what this section implies. And it is simply false.

Imagine some article with "Terminology" section that starts with the words: "no commonly accepted terminology exists". That immediately causes cognitive dissonance: if no commonly accepted terminology exists, what this section is about? Is it about some terms thatg are being occasionally used by some authors? If that is the case, why all of that is needed? In reality, even genocide scholars themselves devotes no space in their works to the discussion of terminology issue.

Secondly, this section implies that the "terms" are used by leading experts in the field. That is also false. No counytry experts use this terminology, the only real term is "genocide", which does not need a separate definition.

Third, the section makes unjustified generalizations. For example, "repressions": it is a specific term used mostly for Stalinism. And this example is a good demonstration that it is much better not to keep a single section, but discuss each term where it is being used (or not to discuss it at all, because these terms are self-evident).

I see only one way to preserve this section. To move it to the bottom, and to change the title to "Attempts of genocide scholars to develop common terminology for Communist mass killing". That would be something I supported, because it may be useful to demonstrate who and why tries to introduce a common terminology, and that would not be misleading, because a small fraction of authors do see a significant commonality between these events and try to find a common mechanism in each of them.--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:01, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, sorry if I interject, I suppose Attempts of genocide scholars to develop common terminology for Communist mass killing would be an accurate title but then why not simply add a section about Communism at Genocide, Mass killing, etc.? Why there must be an article about it when it is just "attempts of genocide scholars to develop common terminology for Communist mass killing" rather than a clear, main topic. I still would like to hear your thoughts about my proposal of creating a single article discussing scholarly analysis of Communist regimes that includes background, context, the rising of living standards, modernisation, lives saved (as discussed by Ellman and others) and repression, mass killings and famines with context and relevant, expert scholarly views highlighted rather than having so many Communist-related coatrack articles? Davide King (talk) 07:32, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

I can provide many reasons why any attempts to delete this article will be fruitless, but one reason is sufficient: that will never happen. a significant part of Wikipedia community will be against that, and they will present several sources, including Valentino, Rosefielde, Black Book to support their position. And that will be sufficient for any closing admin (or an ordinary user) to conclude: "No consensus to delete/rename".

Therefore, let's better focus on article's improvement. --Paul Siebert (talk) 18:35, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, this is interesting. Could you please clarify whether you think it should be deleted but you are for Keep only because a Delete "will never happen", or you are for Keep because you think a clear, main topic exists? I think a topic may exist, but it is no clear nor mainstream, so in my view it should not be a standalone article. Either way, I try not to be so pessimistic and I hope that if our reading of sources not supporting the main topic is indeed correct, then I would hope the admin will do the right thing and that those who are for Keep would not oppose deletion/merge, if our reading is indeed correct. I am working on a RfC about the main topic and I think it is more neutral than a RfD because many for Keep may be to keep the article, but they may disagree on the main topic, so it is a Keep for one topic and a Delete for another. If my reading of guidelines is correct, an article is supposed to have a clear, main topic; and that if there is no consensus for a clear, main topic, then delete/merge would be the obvious result. I would also argue that your reading of WP:ONUS is correct and that the status quo would be deletion/merge, considering the controversy of a sockpuppet creating the article in the first place. Finally, I believe my compromise of saving the actual content (I have already added most of it to more appropriate articles; it remains mainly the mass killings in the states that can be moved to each individual Communist country and event as part of an Estimates section) having a single Communist-related article about scholarly analysis not limited to mass killings and a Victims of Communism article structured as a popular fringe theory and something that "appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature" rather than an academic theory would be a fine compromise and may actually work. Is really no one going to support this? Aquillion, BeŻet, C.J. Griffin, The Four Deuces, Rick Norwood. Davide King (talk) 03:53, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

I would object to deletion, because the topic really exists. The Black Book is one of the most influential books of late XX century, and one of the most controversial. My objections to this article is primarily its unencyclopaedic structure, a blatant lack of neutrality, and original research. The topic of this article is a discussion of the idea of "generic Communism", because this idea has many supporters and many opponents, and the discussion of the role of Communist ideology in mass killing. That would be the third part of the article. The first part should neutrally summarize the views of experts in history of each Communist states about the mechanism of mass killing onset in each particular case. For example, for Cambodia, experts see three important factors, and only one of them is the Maoist ideology. The second part of the article should provide a comparative analysis of separate mass killings events in communist states and other states. Thus, there are good studies that find commonalities and differences between mass killings in Cambodia and Indonesia, in Cambodia and Rwanda, etc. Taken together, that will allow us to paint a complex picture of events in Communist states, and to avoid both whitewashing Communist crimes and creating an image of Communism as the greatest evil of XX century.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:48, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, it would not be an actual deletion because I would propose this to be renamed as Victims of Communism, or something like, following the structure you outlined while making clear this is a more a popular theory and something that "appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature" rather than a widely accepted academic theory. I would definitely support the restructuring you suggested and outlined here, removal of all synthesis and original research. But until that actually happens, I will continue to propose a scholarly analysis article that includes background, context, the rising of living standards, modernisation, lives saved (as discussed by Ellman) and repression, mass killings and famines with context and relevant, expert scholarly views highlighted; and a Victims of Communism article about the popular theory and a merge of coatrack Communist-related articles such as Crimes against humanity under communist regimes, among others, here. Finally, which main topic do you actually support among those I listed here? You are free to add the one you propose, if I have not listed it there already. Davide King (talk) 05:06, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, about your comment "We can speak about a longstanding consensus version only when a consensus building process is normal. If the article is fully protected or it is under severe editing restrictions, it is more correct to speak about a "frozen accident" (using physicists jargon)". I linked to diffs to show that there was substantial time (about 16 months) when the terminology section existed prior the period of the editing restrictions on the article. You're under no obligation to respond to each point in my last post, but I would rather you would respond to the numbered points where you have a significant disagreement, rather than bringing it up again later on. I thought the numbers would help keep things straight. About your comment "The name "Terminology" implies that terminology is used by scholars who works in that area. Although some reservations are made that explain that is not the case, a reader will be mislead.", scholars do use this terminology: the aggregator source scholars. Multiple excerpts are included in the article already showing the terminology discussion for several of the terms. See excerpts "a" through "d". Are more examples required? About your comment "if no commonly accepted terminology exists, what this section is about?", the section is about the variety of terms used and to explain the specifics of there being no commonly accepted terminology. We are supposed to be presenting the topic as we find it in the sources, warts and all. About your comment "this section implies that the "terms" are used by leading experts in the field. That is also false. No counytry experts use this terminology", I see you are ignoring my number 6 comment above, when I asked you "Wouldn't the "genocide scholars" be the "real experts" for this particular topic? The narrowly focused single-country authors would be "real experts" only in their individual fields of focus, not on this wider cross-country topic." About your comment "For example, "repressions": it is a specific term used mostly for Stalinism." As can be seen the in the excerpts section, "repression" has also been used generally, as in the title of "The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression" (and in excerpt "t") and by Krain 1997 (excerpt "ak"). If you insist on looking at just the single-country sources, you can find the term used by them for single countries as well. You seem to still be pushing the idea that the single-country sources are the sources we should be emphasizing, despite the obvious SYNTH problem that causes. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I skipped your #6. I looked through the excerpts "a - d", and my impression is that them, as well as the section as whole tells a story about a bunch of non-experts who are truing to propose various buzzwords to combine several tangentially related events into some single phenomenon.

Look, all of that seems to start from Rummel, who performed factor analysis of very crude (according to Harff) data for all state killings that he named "democide". He observed some significant correlation between totalitarianism and the number of victims. And, despite the fact that Correlation does not imply causation, that set a new paradigm, and some scholars continued to dig in that direction using either statistical approaches (such as Harff or Wayman&Tago), or speculations (like Valentino or Mann), or falsification (read the literature about a scandal around BB). Do they represent majority view of scholarly community? No.

In another, big world, there are experts in history of each separate country, and they use totally different approaches. They ignore writings of genocide scholars because they have little explanatory power. These country experts paint much more complex and accurate picture of the events that took place in Communist countries. And their views are dramatically underrepresented in this article, which provides a primitive and oversimplified picture of thoese very complex and conraversial events.

The only conclusion any attentive reader would draw from the "Terminology" section (including excerpts a-d) is "no terminology exists for MKuCR". However, if no "terminology" exists why this section is needed? That section is harmful, because, less attentive readers may get an impression that some well developed theory or theories exist for MKuCR, and that topic in a focus of modern scholarship. That is obviously not the case. Therefore, the section is harmful, misleading, and it wastes precious article's space, which could be used for much better purposes.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:16, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, regarding "[y]ou seem to still be pushing the idea that the single-country sources are the sources we should be emphasizing, despite the obvious SYNTH problem that causes", that is my point. We should only use the few sources that discuss all them together such as The Black Book of Communism and Red Holocaust. We should not use Conquest as a source for the Soviet Union because The Great Terror discussed the Soviet Union only; we may mention Conquest if The Black Book of Communism or Red Holocaust mentions or quotes him, but we should not directly use The Great Terror, or any other single-country book, as a source, so maybe we actually agree on this?

Of course, you believe The Black Book of Communism et al. are enough and support a standalone article. On the other hand, precisely because of the synthesis you highlighted, I believe the article as currently structured should not be a standalone article and it is not only unhelpful but it is actively harmful. I do no think the currently-structured article can be supported when scholars do not even agree on the terminology and there is no consensus among genocide scholars and Soviet and Communist studies scholars. The only Soviet and Communist studies scholar is Rosefielde, which is why I assume C.J. Griffin wrote "[n]ot only does this article present a fringe concept with scant coverage in academic sources, many of which are non-experts and politically biased (e.g., Rummel, Courtois) or simply not-notable (e.g., Valentino), with Rosefielde being perhaps the one exception."

The article, as currently structured, can never support NPOV when those are the main theorists and the only few scholarly sources supporting the topic. On the other hand, an article titled Victims of Communism, discussing both the popular theory that "appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature" and the theory supported by those scholars, with criticism and response, can be supported because it would not act like it is a mainstream, or widely accepted, concept in academia as the currently-structured article implies. In addition, if we are going to report the events, we can not do that without providing context, which brings me to the point those sources are problematic because they all represent one POV. Would it not be better to discuss repression, mass killings and famines as part of a Communist scholarly analysis article, rather than limiting to them only? This would avoid most NPOV and synthesis violations, including the issue of the main topic either not being clear or not being supported by scholarship as a standalone topic.
Davide King (talk) 07:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, if Conquest has information in his publications that are relevant to some part of this article, what is the problem with using him to include it? Wikipedia policy doesn't require, for example, every source that contributes to the George Washington article to be a full biography of George Washington. Supplemental sources can be used where helpful. The aggregator sources you have been citing are expert scholars in their fields of study, not "theorists". The topic of this article is not a theory, it is a set of events. The framing of those events is also not a theory, it is simply a topic. If you want to create another article about another topic ("a Communist scholarly analysis article"), then find sources to justify it and go do it. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:07, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, I do not think the George Washington example is a good one. They do not need to be a full biography of George Washington but they do need to be about George Washington. Conquest is about the Great Terror in the Soviet Union, not mass killings under Communist regimes. I believe that is also what The Four Deuces meant when making the example. Davide King (talk) 06:11, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

If you look at the "print sources" list at the George Washington article, three of the first four sources listed there are not about George Washington: "Benedict Arnold", "John Adams", and "Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766". The Benedict Arnold source is cited in the article for this sentence, among others: "During mid-1780, Arnold began supplying British spymaster John André with sensitive information intended to compromise Washington and capture West Point, a key American defensive position on the Hudson River." The sentence helps to provide useful information to the reader despite not being directly about George Washington. These three sources can be thought of a supplemental sources, and there is no problem with this article having such things also. In the case of Conquest being cited for info on the Great Terror, that actually seems more directly related to large-scale killing under a communist regime. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:41, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Are those sources actually used in the article? If they are, are they used to support controversial claims rather than non-controversial ones? One issue with citing Conquest, or really any other who does not discuss them together, is that it implies Conquest is a proponent of the concept. This goes back to our different views on what the main topic actually is. Mine and others' understanding is that the main topic is supposed to be a concept outlined by Valentino and others rather than a list or report of mass killings under Communist regimes. Your understanding has the problem outlined by The Four Deuces below, namely that "[w]as it a mass killing? Did it occur under a Communist regime? If the answer to both questions is yes, then add to article." But this is synthesis when sources discuss only one country, or do not follow the concept outlined by Valentino, Rummel and others. Davide King (talk) 08:49, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

"Are those sources actually used in the article?" I literally quoted the sentence used by the "Benedict Arnold" source in the George Washington article. Just having a non-aggregator source used in this article is not synthesis unless it is used "to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources", per WP:SYNTH. If the material a source is cited for in the article is accurate to the source being cited, it is not synthesis. If the only sources cited in this article were single-country sources, then the article as a whole would be synthesis, but I have repeatedly shown you the aggregator sources that justify the article, so that is not the case. Show me a sentence with synthesis in the article, citing Conquest or anyone else. If you find one, we'll delete it. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:29, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Paul Siebert for why they are synthesis. Another synthesis would be Valentino, who proposes Communist mass killing as a subtype of mass killing, not mass killings under Communist regimes. The ones who may propose mass killings under Communist regimes are Courtois, Rosefielde and Rummel. Yet, as noted by The Four Deuces, Courtois and Rummel are about "the evils of Communism in general" and "mass killings by governments in general", respectively. In addition, the introduction by Courtois, which is what caused most of the controversy, was not peer-reviewed and Rummel's work was published outside mainstream academic press. So we are left with Rosefield, the only one who is an actual Soviet and Communist studies scholar. We can not rely on a single source and this single source is problematic and controversial for trivalising the Holocaust and not being a mainstream view. The current article act like this is a mainstream view or, to quote Aquillion, the entire topic "is presented as an uncontroversial academic theory." Another synthesis issue, again as outlined by The Four Deuces, "[w]as it a mass killing? Did it occur under a Communist regime? If the answer to both questions is yes, then add to article", even though "the article is about a topic that does not exist in reliable sources, hence is synthesis." Finally, the current title and lead simply invites further synthesis in adding any mass killing under a Communist regime. Davide King (talk) 07:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Conquest is synthesis because the article is supposed to be about mass killing under Communist regimes as a general concept, not a list of any mass killing that happened under a Communist regime. Under the current article, single-country experts are actually synthesis for the aforementioned reason. You wrote it yourself that "[Paul Siebert] seem[s] to still be pushing the idea that the single-country sources are the sources we should be emphasizing, despite the obvious SYNTH problem that causes." This can be easily avoided by making the article about scholarly analysis of Communist regimes and not limitating it to mass killings. In this case, relying on single-country experts would not only be encouraged but it would avoid synthesis since the article would be about scholarly analysis. Please, think about my proposal. Davide King (talk) 07:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks to Rick Norwood's analysis, I believe Mann is synthesis too. We write that "Mann has proposed the term classicide to mean the 'intended mass killing of entire social classes'" and that he "believe[s] that 'crime against humanity' is more appropriate than 'genocide' or 'politicide' when speaking of violence by communist regimes." While this is true and verified, this is synthesis precisely because Mann does not actually support the concept of mass killings under Communist regimes and he explictily says "[n]o Communist regime contemplated genocide." It is synthesis to imply that his terminology support the current article, or that his use of classicide or genocide is the same as mass killings under all or any Communist regimes as the article implies. This is further supported by the fact the book's title, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, Communist mass killing is not the main topic. Indeed, it says "[t]his comprehensive study of international ethnic cleansing provides in-depth coverage of its occurrences in Armenia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, as well as cases of lesser violence in early modern Europe and in contemporary India and Indonesia. After presenting a general theory of why serious conflict emerges and how it escalates into mass murder, Michael Mann offers suggestions on how to avoid such escalation in the future." In other words, this is a useful source for Ethnic cleansing or/and Genocide, not for mass killings under Communist regimes. It is the very definition of synthesis to imply otherwise. Davide King (talk) 13:21, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

This talk page discussion is about some concrete section. I moved the posts that are not relevant to it to a separate section. Please, discuss only "Terminology" here.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:17, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

There is one more problem with that section, and that problem in not fixable. This section implies that MKuCR is some single phenomenon, so it needs, like Holocaust, some uniform terminology. That is an absolutely not true. Thus, "classicide" can be applied to dekulakizatioin, but can hardly be applied to the Great Purge (many workers and many Communists were killed as a result of it, so it was definitely not directed at some concrete class or social group). The same can be said about "genocide".

In contrast, the section implies scholars are trying to propose some single term for all deaths caused by Communist regime. Meanwhile, even Valentino didn't claim that. He applied "dispossessive mass killing" to some mass killings, whereas other cases were just ordinary mass killings, not related to Communism.

The only term that covers MKuCR as whole is "democide". However, when Rummel introduced his "democide", he defined it deliberately broadly, as any killing of people by its state. Therefore, "democide" is the umbrella term that has zero explanatory power, it by no means can help a reader to understand anything. The fact that it sounds very similar to "genocide" is also very misleading. "Democide" was introduced primarily for sake of facilitation of statistical analysis of deaths caused by government, and it is intrinsically unable to explain anything. Therefore, to claim that "Communist mass killings were a denmocide" is a pure tautology: yes, when some state kills its citizens, that is democide, so what? Killing of Chinese peasants by starvation in Great Leap Forward and killing of George Floyd in modern US are instances of democide. How calling something "democide" can explain anything?

My speciality is science, and I know that the more advanced and well developed some field of knowledge is, the less confusing terminology it uses. A misterious object with a singularity in the middle is called just a "black hole", the rate of a chemical reaction is called just "reaction rate". The principle that says that a coordinate of some object and its momentum cannot be know with absolute precision simultaneously is called just "uncertainty principle". All of that deals with a real science.

Do you really think by discussing the "terms" that explain nothing and mislead a reader we make the article more trustworthy and do not discredit Wikipedia? Do you really believe in that?--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:41, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Articles are supposed to be comprehensive of their topics and the different terms used about this topic simply are part of the topic that must be covered in some way. The current "Terminology" section does a decent job of that and I don't know what else to say about your "implies" points that I haven't already said. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:17, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Deletion/renaming

I favor deletion, with any sourced material here moved to a more appropriate article, such as the general history of communism or the biography of Mao Tse Tung. I expect most of the sourced material here is already there. I do not think changing the title to "Victims of Communism", as Davide King suggests, would be an improvement. As a general principle for any encyclopedia, articles should not have titles that take sides. For example, we would not have an article titled Victims of American Wars or Mass Killings by Napoleon. Rather, we have articles on America and Napoleon which cover history in context, rather than picking and choosing to make a point. This is the major difference between NPOV and propaganda. Propaganda only says bad things about the subject it is hostile to, not putting those events in context. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:55, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Non-neutral titles are allowed if they are commonly used, per Neutrality in article titles. Victims of Communism is the actual term used in anti-Communist literature. We have a precedent in Jewish Bolshevism, which is the theory that Communism is part of the international Jewish conspiracy. I don't see anyway that "Mass killings under communist regimes" is any less neutral. For one thing "communist regime" is an oxymoron: communism is a theoretical stage of development after the state has withered away. Communist should be capitalized. TFD (talk) 14:27, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Rick Norwood, I agree, but if this article must exist, it would be better the main topic is that and is re-structured to describe a popular but anti-communist and fringe theory in academia. As noted by The Four Deuces, non-neutral titles are allowed if they are commonly used and Victims of Communism is indeed "the actual term used in anti-Communist literature and I agree that the current title is any less neutral and Communist should be capitalised as is done in The Black Book of Communism, of all sources, to distinguish Communist party rule from small-c communism. Either way, would any of you support a scholarly analysis article of Communist regimes not limited to mass killing et al., rather than having so many coatrack and POV fork Communist-related articles? This article should be either merged or renamed Victims of Communism and restructured similar to Cultural Bolshevism or Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory to describe this popular but anti-communist and fringe theory amounting to double genocide theory rather than act like it is a mainstream or widely accepted view in academia as the current article implies. Davide King (talk) 15:08, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

I would be in favor of renaming it for the reasons Davide King elaborated on above. This restructuring could possibly allow for an expansion of the article into new territory (with much discussion on talk for sure), such as discussions in some academic circles on the "victims of communism" narrative and "double genocide thesis" being ideological constructs and a pushback against the rising tide of anti-capitalist sentiment around the world to the precarity of the contemporary global capitalist system. Some sources on this are already present in the article in fact, such as Kristen Ghodsee's 2014 journal article on this very subject.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 16:16, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

C.J. Griffin, thanks! Does this mean you would support a single scholarly analysis about Communist regimes, including background, context, the rising of living standards, modernisation, lives saved (as discussed by 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 coattracked articles, many of which would be merged there and only having their own article again if there are issues relating to size? And a Double genocide theory or Victims of Communism (the name is not so important as much as the outlining is, i.e. the theory itself; theory's acceptance, with support from various mass-media and popular literature as well as fringe media such as The Epoch Times and anti-communist organisations such as the Victims of Communist Memorial Foundation, and/but criticism from academia and most scholars in the field, with people like Courtois being the minority and revisionist; and its current status as a fringe yet popular especially in Eastern Europe view)? Davide King (talk) 01:24, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I would be open to the idea. On the one hand such an article would provide lay readers with a much broader and deeper analysis of a complex issue, but over time such an article could become a bloated mess, resulting in the restoration of the articles that were merged into it and deleted. Given that Double genocide theory is already its own article and the proposed title "Victims of Communism" is already hitting roadblocks, perhaps we could create the article you describe and move some material from this article to that one, and the rest could be moved over to Dgt. MKuCR could then be deleted.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:12, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Why "victims of Communism" is bad? Let me demonstrate that using two example. In this article, we can discuss Cambodian genocide pretty neutrally, and we can explain that the mass killings that happened in Cambodia were a result of at least three factors, and ultra-Maoism (which seems too Maoist even to Chinese) was just one of them. Therefore, we can explain that, contrary to common beliefs, Communism was not the only, and not the primary reason of that genocide. we can also explain that KR "Communism" had little in common with, e.g. Soviet Communism. We can also explain that KR genocide was stopped primarily due to Communist Vietnam intervention. Can we tell the same in the article "Victims of Communism"? I doubt.

Second example. Majority of sources describe the Great Purge not in a context of Communist ideology. It is seen as Stalin's attempt to get rid of those who were perceived dangerous to his personal rule. A significant part of them were Communists. Can we describe them as victims of Communism or victims of Stalin's authoritarian ambitions? Majority of sources prefer the second interpretation.

Finally, per Ellman, "repression victims" is a vague term that reflects political views of each particular author, "Victims of Communism" is even more vague. That would be a terrible title, please forget about it.

The current title allows us (at least theoretically) to separate real events (mass killings and mass mortality that really took place) from interpretations (to which extent Communist doctrine affected those events). That is why I propose you to stick with that title.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:28, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Victims of Communism isn't necessarily a vague term since it is used with a specific meaning by the anti-Communist community: "the historical truth of 100 million victims murdered at the hands of communist regimes over the past century." (Source: https://victimsofcommunism.org/) Wikipedia policy does allow articles about specific interpretations of history. For example the Great man theory is a theory that history can be explained by the actions of great men. The fact that other interpretations of history are possible or even preferred does not mean that we cannot explain this theory in its own article. TFD (talk) 20:05, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

TFD, you perfectly know the problem with that article: if Rummel says that 150+ millions were murdered by Communists (ca 100 million in USSR alone) we cannot say the overall figure is wrong using modern sources that present the numbers for USSR only. Per our policy, that would be synthesis, because no modern historian takes Rummel's estimates seriously, and they just ignore him. However since Rummel is the source that perfectly fits the topic, whereas Ellman, Maksudov, Zemskov or Erlichman are just country expects, the obsolete and incorrect Rummel's opinion is still here, and the opinia of modern experts play subordinated role.

The same problem will be with "Victims of communism": since most country experts prefer to use different terminology, and because they write about separate countries, their views will play a subordinated role. In addition, the article will become a collection of killings that were described as "victims of Communism" by at least one author. That will inevitably create a huge NPOV problem, because the views of anticommunists will be presented as mainstream, and views of their critics as revisionist.

In reality, such authors as Courtois are revisionists, because they challenge the old concept that Nazism was the greatest evil. Their views caused hot debates, and their POV has never been mainstream. Moreover, there is a direct connection between the attempts to present Communism as greater evil and Holocaust trivialisation (including resurrection of antisemitism), and whitewashing of former Nazi criminals. Therefore, is we decide to rename the article, the title should minimize a probability of further drifting of this article into that direction.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:56, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Re Great Man theory, the articles about some theory that is not universally accepted should always have at least three major components that allow a reader to get an impression on:

• The theory itself;
• Theory's acceptance (support and criticism);
• Its current status (is it a majority, minority, or fringe view).

I can see how it can be done under MKuCR title, but I absolutely do not see how the article named "Victims of Communism" do that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:35, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

It wouldn't be a collection of killings any more than the Great Man Theory is a collection of biographies of great men. In both cases we are interested in how the theory interprets the facts not the facts themselves. Note too in the Great Man Theory we don't pull out historians' writings on Cromwell, Edison, Churchill etc. and present their interpretations of their biographies in order to rebut the Great Man Theory. There are lots of articles about theories about history from mainstream to fringe. None of them assemble facts in order to prove the theory but explain the theories using reliable secondary sources. If people want to know about the lives of great men, they can read the articles about them. There's no need to cut and paste all of them into the Great Man Theory article.

Basically it would follow your outline. but it would use the name used by the proponents of the theory.

There's an article about the Captive Nations, which is how anti-Communists described non-Russian nations under Communism. Presumably Russia was the captor nation. Note that while it lists the captive nations, it doesn't try to prove they were captive nations by providing extensive details about their relationship to Russia or the USSR. And we don't call the article "Communists countries except Russia," which would be more neutral.

TFD (talk) 00:21, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, The Four Deuces is right, especially about the fact "it would follow your outline. but it would use the name used by the proponents of the theory." If we are going to report the events, which I do not think we should since they are or should be already widely discussed elsewhere, we can not follow your proposal of adding context and background, which I would support, because the only few sources on the topic all represent a POV; and it would be original research to add context and background from scholars who are either not responding to Courtois et al. or are not even discussing the topic because they do not believe in it.

I still believe the best solution would be to make a scholarly analysis article about Communist regimes not limited to mass killings but discussing the topic there and have an article here about the theory only, without devolving in the events which we would already describe at the scholarly analysis article. If you disagree with Victims of Communism, we may name it Double genocide theory and the topic as proposed by The Four Deuces and mine would essentially be the same, so think about it. It would also be more accurate since you note that Courtois is essentially proposing this. I also find it interesting it is the proponents of this theory that are revisionists, not the ones opposed to it; because I believe many who have argued for Keep probably believed the reverse was true. It is indeed true that they are revisionists in proposing the double genocide theory and that Communism and Nazism were equal. Davide King (talk) 01:11, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

If you believe it wouldn't be a collection, what exactly will prevent that scenario? Why the new name will prevent it to be a collection, and what is the problem with the current title that made the this article such a collection?--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:23, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Regarding this, I would say we will deal with that the same way we deal with vandalism, i.e. reverting. The new name would prevent the current scenario because it would be clearly described as a theory in popular literature and outside scholarship and it would be outlined exactly as you described, without reporting the events of all Communist countries as the article currently does and which under my proposal would be done in a single article about scholarly analysis of Communist regimes. In this article, we would limit to describe the theory, its acceptance and current status; and if you have any doubt about the proposed Victims of Communism title, we could rename it Double genocide theory, which is essentially the same thing. Finally, the current article inherently leads to collection because it says Communist regimes and still implies that mass killings are inherent to communism. I will let The Four Deuces responds above, which is why I did not indent my comment, but I hope this was helpful. Davide King (talk) 04:15, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I recall, last time the implementation of that plan lead to multiple blocks and full protection of the article for several years. The fact that the users who disagree with any change of status quo are inactive now does not mean that they will not activate if you attempt to do some changes. The number of people who trust the Black Book (in reality, its infamous introduction) and do not want to go into details is much bogger than you think.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:08, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

The current problem is that the article is about a topic that does not exist in reliable sources, hence is synthesis. "Was it a mass killing? Did it occur under a Communist regime? If the answer to both questions is yes, then add to article." If the article was about VOC, then sources would have to be reliable and discuss VOC. A source that provides a template for an article is the beginning of the introduction of The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War by Laure Neumeyer (Routledge 2018). TFD (talk) 05:41, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Being a "devil's advocate", I am arguing that Valentino, Rosefielde, Courtois and Rummel are sufficient to claim the topic does exist. And, we have Ellmann's opinion, who noted that "victims of Stalinism" is intrinsically vague topic, which is extremely politicized. Actually, about 30% of humankind may claim that they are, to some degree, victims of Communism. --Paul Siebert (talk) 15:30, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, arguing that "Valentino, Rosefielde, Courtois and Rummel are sufficient to claim the topic does exist" does not mean the article must exist. A topic existing does not mean it is notable or widely accepted in scholarship. They may be sufficient to discuss the topic, for example as a subsection, not as a standalone article. To exist, it would need to be notable or widely accepted, but this is not the case, as you yourself note that it is actually ignored, implying we should not have an article about it, when we can discuss their views at their own article, at Mass killing, or include their views as part of a scholarly analysis of Communist regimes article. Since for all your good efforts and intentions, the article is still the same, another attempt at deletion/merge may be worth trying. You wrote "there are experts in history of each separate country, and they use totally different approaches." I support this approach but I do not support it for this article because they are not actually discussing the main topic, i.e. mass killings under Communist regimes as a general concept, which either does not exist or is not notable for a standalone article as currently structured. I argue that your approach, which I support, can only be implemented in a broad article about scholarly analysis of Communist regimes which also discusses mass killings, otherwise it would be still be synthesis just like the current article is. This can not be done as the article maintains the current name, which is problematic as explained below by Buidhe and The Four Deuces, and this structure. Davide King (talk) 16:40, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, this is a very accurate and good summary, as always. This is exactly what I am talking about and referring too. That is why I believe Paul Siebert should reconsider this article existing because the main topic is synthesis and does not exist in reliable sources. Mass killings under Communist regimes is itself a synthesis topic and is not supported by reliable sources, for even The Black Book of Communism and Rummel's work do not support this, as they are about "the evils of Communism in general" and "mass killings by governments in general" rather than mass killings under Communist regimes, the supposed topic of this article, resulting in the synthesis highlighted by The Four Deuces. Davide King (talk) 05:54, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I agree but that is why I believe the implicit and systematic bias in favour of keeping the article, simply assuming sources support the main topic and having yet to rebuke or debunk all arguments against this, should be kept in mind by the closing admin and is also why I am preparing a RfC rather than a RfD. As for The Black Book of Communism, I believe a neutral discussion would result in the Introduction not being reliable or green but yellow at best. As noted by The Four Deuces, the introduction was not peer-reviewed. I also believe The Four Deuces gave a convincing argument that the book is about "the evils of Communism in general" rather than mass killings under Communist regimes; and even Rummel's work is about "mass killings by governments in general", not mass killings under Communist regimes. I assume you think this will not be enough to convince those "who disagree with any change of status quo" but I believe an attempt is worth making after all those years. Perhaps those obstructionists to any change or improvement to the article that you mentioned should be sanctioned for disrupting behavior. Davide King (talk) 05:48, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Rick Norwood, you say "As a general principle for any encyclopedia, articles should not have titles that take sides." How is "Mass killings under communist regimes" a title that is taking sides? How is it any different than these titles: History of slavery in Indiana, Piracy in Somalia, Ulysses S. Grant presidential administration scandals, Slavery in ancient Greece, War crimes committed by the United States, Nazi human experimentation, Forced settlements in the Soviet Union, Torture and the United States, Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, Christian terrorism? Just because a topic is unpleasant does not mean that it is taking a side. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:49, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• Both "Mass killings under communist regimes" and "anti-communist mass killings" do take a side by implying that the killings are related to the regime being Communist or anti-communist, which is not supported by the bulk of scholarship. In contrast, for example, Indiana laws permitted slavery and Nazi regime deliberately practiced human experimentation as a matter of policy. The article title "human experimentation under fascist regimes" would not be allowed because there is no demonstrated connection between human experimentation and fascism in general. [ed. and if you can't see the bias in such article titles, just imagine "slavery under capitalism"!] (t · c) buidhe 14:55, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, and, what makes a situation even worse, the bulk of scholarship do not criticise these views, but essentially ignores them. Therefore, majority of criticism cannot be added because that would be OR per our policy. Thus, the only scholar who criticised Rummel approach in general was Dulic, who discussed his estimates for Yugoslavia. That criticism is equally applicable to Rummel in general, but no author bothered to do that. As a result, we have a paradoxical situation: we know that Rummel's data are obsolete, and his statistical approach is flawed, but we have to keep his data because his conclusions and estimates has not been debunked: they are just ignored by country experts.

There is a lot of theorizing in the article that discusses a linkage between Communism and mass killings, and emphasise commonalities between mass killing in different Communist states. However, I am not sure we can add articles that do not criticize these views, but just provide an alternative view: for exampole, see commonalities not between Cambodian genocide and Stalinist repressions, but commonalities between Communist and non-Communist genocides in East Asia.

However, I still cannot see how renaming this article to VOC can resolve a situation: I anticipate such sources as Rummel, Courtois, Valentino and Rosefielde still to form a core of the article, even if we change the title. How do you propose to change a situation?--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:28, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Buidhe, ironically by searching "communist mass killings" at Google Scholar, I get more results discussing anti-communist mass killings than communist mass killings. This just goes to show this article is synthesis. Anti-communist mass killings may be simply renamed List of anti-communist mass killings. Only for Communism such blatant NPOV violation is allowed and that this article has been existing for this long and with this name, despite three out of five AfDs showing no consensus and the topic not being supported by the bulk of scholarship, is beyond me. Davide King (talk) 16:47, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Off topic but clicking through it appears most results are for the Indonesian anti-communist mass killings of 1965–66, regardless of quote marks[22] (t · c) buidhe 16:54, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Buidhe, if that is true, both should be deleted and merged, with useful content to be moved to relevant articles. The problem with this article is that most sources I find through Communist regime, Communist genocide, etc. on Google Scholar et al. discuss Communist genocide in Romania, Communist mass killings in Cambodia, Stalinist repression in the Soviet Union, etc.; they do not discuss it as a single thing, a general concept, or as mass killings under Communist regimes like the current article does in its synthetisation. The only few sources are Courtois, Rosefielde and Rummel, with only Rosefielde being a Soviet and Communist scholar but ending up promoting the double genocide theory or Holocaust trivalisation with Red Holocaust, and Courtois and Rummel being either non-experts, or too controversial or merely representing one POV rather than scholarship consensus. Valentino discusses a different topic, mass killing, with Communist mass killing as one subtype of mass killing; the other being ethnic mass killing and "mass killing as leaders acquire and repopulate land." Davide King (talk) 17:07, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

buidhe, you say "The article title "human experimentation under fascist regimes" would not be allowed..." but it absolutely would be allowed if there were reliable sources that discussed that topic sufficiently for a standalone article. That's what WP:GNG states, and that is the situation we have here. Whether we can have an article or not does not depend on our understanding of things, it depends on reliable sources and what they contain. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, in most of your examples there is a clear connection between the place and the problem. The Soviet Union had for example a policy of forced settlements for at least part of its history. The Soviet Union therefore was responsible for the policy. But "communist regimes" is not a place and therefore does not act like the government of ancient Greece, or the Roman Empire or Nazi Germany. China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea and Cuba are not an empire that follows a single government or version of an ideology.

Christian terrorist is of course a problematic term because it can imply that Christianity causes terrorism, which is why the Obama administration banned the use of the term Islamic terrorism. But we use these terms per "Non-neutral but common names" because "When the subject of an article is referred to mainly by a single common name, as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language sources, Wikipedia generally follows the sources and uses that name as its article title.... Sometimes that common name includes non-neutral words that Wikipedia normally avoids (e.g. the Boston Massacre or the Teapot Dome scandal). In such cases, the prevalence of the name, or the fact that a given description has effectively become a proper noun (and that proper noun has become the usual term for the event), generally overrides concern that Wikipedia might appear as endorsing one side of an issue." But that exception does not apply here because the only two sources that use the term are Wikipedia and Metapedia, which copied the term from this article. Of course the editors of Metapedia believe that mass killing is part of communist ideology and communism operates as a world-wide conspiracy.

TFD (talk) 15:54, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

TFD, wikipedia policy doesn't say anything about a topic needing to be "a place" and, as you say, not all of the examples are, so I don't know what point you are trying to make there. If your point was that "communist regimes" are not a thing, then you should be trying to get the Communist state article deleted. It's not up to us what reliable sources decide they will cover or what words they choose, and there are reliable sources that cover "communist regimes". The exception for non-neutral common names is irrelevant here because WP:NPOVTITLE has two subsections, "Non-neutral but common names" and "Non-judgmental descriptive titles". "Mass killings under communist regimes" falls under the second one, "Non-judgmental descriptive titles". "Mass killing" is neutral, according to multiple reliable sources already included in the article. "Victims" would be much less neutral and also much broader as a topic. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, please read the link I provided which would provide a template for the article. It doesn't mention Rummel, Valentino and Rosefielde. It does provide discussion about Courtois, because the Black Book of Communism is a central text of the Victims of Communism theory. The book "contributed directly to the rise of the totalitarian paradigm. The best-selling publication was the subject of violent controversy among among historians specialising in communism, to the point that some of its co-authors distanced themselves from the introduction written by the French historian Stephane Courtois. Its detractors criticied its lack of methodological rigour, its conception of historical work as 'work of justice and memory' and the ideological dimension of its approach. In any event, by making criminality the very essence of communism, by explicitly equating the 'race genocide' of nazism with the 'class genocide' of Communism in connection with the Ukrainian Great Famine of 1932-1933, the Black Book of Communism contributed to legitimizing the equivalence of Nazi and Communist crimes.... [This anti-Communist narrative] is based on a series of categories and figures used to denounce Communist state violence (qualified as 'Communist crimes', 'red genocide' or 'classicide') and to honour persecuted individuals (presented alternatively as 'victims of Communism' and 'heroes of anti totalitarian resistance')." It's not as if the source merely repeats Courtois. Note too the sources we should use come from political science not genocide studies. If readers are interested in what the actual numbers are, they can read articles that discuss them. The focus of this article should be describing the political narrative. TFD (talk) 16:28, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

TFD, thank you for summarising the ideas I myself have been advocating at that talk page for years. I perfectly know all of that. My question is different: what will prevent some users from adding more and more sources (newspaper publications, popular books etc) telling about various victims of Communism and moving the scholarly publications similar to what you cite to some separate section at the very bottom of the article?

Let me remind you that this article started as the article about Cambodian genocide (which was a pretty legitimate topic), but it quickly became a collection of all events that were characterised as mass killing by at least one author. What will prevent the same scenario in the new article?

If we follow the ideas expressed in the source you cite, this article can be converted to something what I already proposed at that page:

• What happened in Communist states, and how various scholars explain mass killings in each concrete Communist country;
• Which books are attempting to find a common cause? What is their political motivation (if any)?
• Support/criticism of these theories.

If we cannot do that in this article, how can renaming help us?--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:48, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

There will always be editors who want to add information that doesn't belong. But that can be better handled by defining the topic and using an appropriate name. If you call the article MKuCR, then expect editors to add various incidents of mass killings. But VOC has a specific connotation.

I would not detail what happened in Communist countries because the article is about how it was interpreted not what happened. In my example, the Great Man Theory, we don't provide detail about the history of the world, then how historians interpret history and finally how the great man theory interprets it. We begin with the theory, what it argues, who supports it, then why some historians reject it. We don't even get into detailed examination of the alternative theories.

Another problem with detailing opposing views is that it presupposes that the explanation of the mass killings is the subject of scholarly debate. The VOC school attributes it to Communist ideology and conspiracy, while others attribute it to different causes, such as the political history and traditions of violence in which it occured. But scholars of mass killings who see no connection between mass killings in various Communist states don't specifically try to rebut the VOC narrative, just as historians of world history don't set out to rebut the great man theory. When they write for example that a war was caused by economic rivalry, they don't then explain why the personalities of the leaders was not the cause. It's just assumed.

TFD (talk) 22:38, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

VOC's connotation strongly depends on political views of each concrete author. Some authors claim all victims of Russian Civil war (from both sides) are victims of Communism, some authors disagree. In my opinion, VOC is worse, because it creates more opportunities for adding totally unrelated materials.

You say "the article is about how it was interpreted not what happened". In reality, this article is about "how many were killed, and how do various authors call that". Can you show me the mechanism that can prevent similar scenario for VOC article?--Paul Siebert (talk)

The source I provided says that the term VOC is used by anti-Communists to honor individuals persecuted by Communism. Of course the same term may mean different things. Mars for example can mean either a Roman god or a planet. But per disambiguation, we decide which topic the article is about and define it in the lead. The way you keep an article on topic is to provide a recognizable title and a clearly defined and sourced definition. VOC "is the term used by anti-Communists to explain mass killings and other crimes against humanity carried out by Communist-ruled states as being a result of Communist ideology or conspiracy." That type of phrasing rules out other things that might be called VOC. If you title the article MKuCR and begin, "Many mass killings occurred under 20th-century communist regimes," then expect a list of these killings and an assumption that they are connected in some way. TFD (talk) 23:50, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with TFD that VoC would be a better way to frame the article as a theory and avoid a ton of synth, OR, and coatracking. (t · c) buidhe 23:58, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Sure, there is a connection, and this connection is Communism. I see no problem with that, as soon as this connection is the main topic. Some authors argue the connection was strong, and Communism explains the mechanism of those deaths, some authors believe the connection is mostly just nominal. In addition, there is some connection between political views of some concrete author and the theory they advocate: as a rule, the proponents of "double genocide" theory are anti-Communists, some of them are neo-nationalists, some supporters of "generic Communism" theories are engaged in Holocaust trivialising, some are suffering from Vichy syndrome. Some authors are just superficial, and they prefer simple explanation of complex phenomenae. All of that can be explained in the MKuCR artilce, and I see no reason why the current title can prevent that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:28, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

If two things are connected then there is little reason to pay much attention to the connection in an article. Onion#Varieties for example describes various types of onions with no explanation of what connects them. They're all onions after all. Essentially if you believe they are connected, then there is nothing to complain about. TFD (talk) 03:27, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I think this discussion is becoming fruitless. Can you please explain why VOC may help us to remove all POV garbage from the article? That is a question number 1. The question number 0 is why do you believe an attempt to rename this article will be successful?--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:49, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

As I explained above, establishing a topic for this article that has been documented in reliable sources as opposed to one based on editors' synthesis is the only possibility of having a neutral article. Then we can rely on WP:BALASPS and WP:TERTIARY to determine the weight to provide various aspects of this topic. Right now we have no criteria for determining weight, which is why it is biased. TFD (talk) 05:06, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

TFD, weight is based on the sources that discuss the topic, per WP:BALASP: "An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject." Tertiary sources are not required, per WP:PSTS. We already have what we need for a neutral article. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:08, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Sorry but I don't understand your comment "We already have what we need for a neutral article." WP:BALASP is not about having what we need, but ensuring that (as you quoted) we do not "give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject." And you missed the relevant sentence in WP:PSTS: "Policy: Reliable tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources, and may be helpful in evaluating due weight." Due weight does not mean putting in anything that can be sourced and that we find important but giving the same weight to information about a subject that one would find in reliable secondary and tertiary sources about the topic. What do you think these policies mean? TFD (talk) 14:35, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Amateur Editor caused me to stop and think for a few hours before responding. He asked (to summarize) why I object to "Mass Killing under communist regimes" and not to "War crimes committed by the United States". It is a hard question, and needed some serious thought. It seems to me that "Mass Killings under communist regimes" exists primarily to attack communism, is intellectually dishonest, and is written by people who want to destroy communism, while "War crimes committed by the United States" is written by people who are appalled that a country like the United States would commit War Crimes, and is trying to report this fact, rather than trying to destroy the United States. That, as I said, is how it seems to me. But Wikipedia requires evidence. And in the above, the only evidence is evidence of intellectual dishonesty, which I fight even if I agree with the cause. If I can't support my causes in an intellectually honest way, then I need new causes. Therefore, in the future, I'll try to focus on this question: is there any intellectually honest way to support this article? I have not seen it. But I'll try to be objective and honestly consider any connection between communism and mass killings, as contrasted with authoritarian dictatorships, whether on the Right or on the Left, and mass killings. If not, then the article should at the very least be broken up into several articles, "Mass killings under Stalin", "Mass killings under Mao Zedong", "Mass killings in Cambodia", and so on, along with "Mass killings in Chile", "Mass killings under Hitler" and so on.

I was interested to discover while researching my response that Mao Zedong is number one, with several times more than Stalin, who beats out Hitler by a hair. Rick Norwood (talk) 22:55, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Re Mao, the same approach would lead you to the conclusion Ford is a much more deadly car than Lamborgini, so the best way to prevent road accidents is to ban Ford and sell more Lamborgini instead. Mao was a ruler of a huge country with a population that was permanently living at the brink of famine. It is not a surprise that any political perturbations were leading to massive deaths. In relative numbers they were huge, but even the most deadly event, the Great Leap forward famine, was not the most deadly famine in Chinese history in relative numbers.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:19, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Rick Norwood, thank you for engaging in serious thought. The "intellectually honest way to support this article" is to look at the sourcing (see here for four of them) and compare that to the requirements of Wikipedia policy for an article, such as the general notability guideline. We do not have to individually believe that there is a "connection between communism and mass killings" to support the article's right to exist. We need only acknowledge that reliable sources sufficiently cover the topic of mass killings under communist regimes to support a standalone article. By the way, regarding ranking, sources usually say Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge was the worst because, per Paul Siebert's point, although the absolute number killed was smaller, the percentage killed was higher. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:23, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

The problem with this is that the article is not merely a report of events that did indeed happen. As noted by Buidhe, the title and topic imply they "take a side by implying that the killings are related to the regime being Communist or anti-communist, which is not supported by the bulk of scholarship." As argued by The Four Deuces, we should describe the theory or concept, "not detail[ing] what happened in Communist countries because the article is about how it was interpreted not what happened." The events are already discussed elsewhere and they should be discussed again only to provide a context and background for the scholarly analysis article, not limited to mass killings, that I propose. On this, I agree with Buidhe, The Four Deuces and Rick Norwood. Davide King (talk) 06:43, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

If this article is a kosher topic then we should also have slavery under capitalism and capitalist genocides, because there is a fringe position that such connections exist. But actually all of these are POV titles because they imply a connection that is not made by the majority of sources. (t · c) buidhe 06:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Buidhe, I agree. They should be discussed at Genocide and Slavery; similarly, this one should be discussed at Mass killing. That is why I propose a scholarly analysis of Communist regimes not limited to mass killings et al. In this article, we would actually report the bulk of scholarship of Communist regimes, without following this article's fringe theory. Davide King (talk) 06:53, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

buidhe, if you want other articles to exist, then identify reliable sources that justify them, per WP:GNG. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:01, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I think he meant that it would be tendentious to create articles about topics that don't exist in reliable sources, which we have done here. Creating these articles would be pointy: trying to prove that this article is tendentious by creating similar tendentious articles. TFD (talk) 14:51, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor seems to be the main person supporting the article, and he has, on his own Wikipedia page, provided four citations in support of keeping the article.

All four are equivocal at best. If there are unequivocal academic studies of "mass killings under communist regimes" it would be good to see them.

Here, briefly, are quotes from the books cited by AmateurEditor:

Valentino: "Communist regimes have been responsible for this century's most deadly episodes of mass killing." This is a strange quote. Almost everyone would include Hitler's anti-communist regime in a list of regimes responsible for this century's most deadly episodes of mass killing. We have already looked at Valentino's quote "most regimes that have described themselves as communist ... have not engaged in mass killings."

Mann: The title of his book, "The Dark Side of Democracy", suggests that communist killings are not the main topic. He says explicitly "No Communist regime contemplated genocide." (adding that the Khmer Rouge is a borderline case).

Sernetin: I do not have a copy of this book, but the sentence at the beginning of the quoted passage makes me curious about what the preceding sentence was. "also developed by communist regimes". It at least suggests that "mass killings under communist regimes" are not the books main focus.

Chirot: Here we have a more explicit statement that communism is not the book's main focus. He explicitly groups communist mass killings with killings by "the Community of God or the racially pure Volksgemeinshaft."

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. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:40, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Here is a link to Mann's chapter "Communist Cleansing: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot." His thesis is that Stalin carried out mass killings (mostly by famine) in order to industrialize the Soviet Union, and the method was copied by Mao, Pol Pot and some other Communist leaders.

The reason I think that an article about Soviet mass killings would be neutral while one about communist mass killings is not is that the first type assigns responsiblity to a person or state, while the second type assigns collective responsibility. In a similar situtation, it would be neutral to speak about war crimes by Israel but not neutral to call them war crimes committed by the Jews and bundle them in with war crimes committed by Jewish leaders in other countries. While the state of Israel is reponsible for what it does, Jews do not bear collective responsibility for what every other Jewish person does.

TFD (talk) 19:14, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

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)