Talk:Cambodian genocide denial

Added heading: POV / Essay

This article seems somewhat POV, and reads a bit like an essay. The fact that the article, it seems, has been composed by mostly one editor would seem to tie in with this. - 124.191.144.183 (talk) 12:46, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree, and am perturbed that its central argument rests on an undergraduate thesis. This is definitely not a reliable source for history, either the history of Cambodia or the history of views about the genocide. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:51, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

A bit unfair that. Here is the bio of Sophal Ear the scholar, apparently the "undergraduate thesis" you're talking about. "TED Fellow Sophal Ear is an Assistant Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the US Naval Postgraduate School. He has taught on the hospital ship USNS Mercy in support of the Pacific Partnership 2008. He completed his postdoc at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, where he taught Policy and Administration in Developing Countries.

Before entering academia, he consulted for the World Bank and worked for the United Nations Development Programme. Early in his career he traveled to the West Bank and Gaza, and to Algeria, on social protection projects, where he gained a firsthand understanding of the realities of foreign aid on a national scale. Having grown up on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, he personally knew there were pitfalls to welfare system.

He came to the US at the age of 10 as a Cambodian refugee via France after his mother escaped with him and his four siblings from the Khmer Rouge by posing as a Vietnamese woman. She recounted her journey to him in an article in The New York Times."

The evidence is clear and irrefutable. Chomsky, Porter, and a number of other professors downplayed -- or denied -- the character of the Khmer Rouge. They are damned by their own words. Some of them, of course, are excusing themselves by saying they didn't have full information of KR atrocities. That's latter day revisionism. There was abundant evidence out there: several books, journalist's observations, and refugee stores -- as this article outlines. The genocide deniers chose to ignore or disbelieve it.

If you would like too add another section titled "Genocide doubters and KR defenders explain themselves", please feel free to do so. Smallchief (talk 14:29, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree. They did doubt the genocide, at least I know Chomsky did. Nevertheless, our articles must be based on reliable sources and this one isn't. I have had a quick look in Google Scholar through Ear's later work and unfortunately he doesn't seem to have published on this topic. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:16, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

I see that Ear also wrote a similar piece while a doctoral candidate at Berkeley. "Romanticizing he Khmer Revolution" http://csua.berkeley.edu/~sophal/romanticize.pdf I think Ear's work is well-documented and authoritative. If we were to demand a doctorate for every source on Wikipedia, 90 percent of the material would disappear -- and the quality of the remainder wouldn't be much -- if any -- better. Ear has a point of view. Most people do. If there are any credible refutations of his work, I would be pleased to include them in the article. I'm not aware of any. Smallchief (talk 11:39, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Just to strengthen my argument I hunted up material from two additional sources: well-known author William Shawcross and David Hawk, later to be the UN Commissioner for Human Rights. Both are experts in the Cambodian genocide and what they say is perfectly in agreement with Ear's comments. See the restructured STAV section of the article.

Barring any evidence being presented to the contrary, I would like to delete that the neutrality of the article has been challenged -- because I don't think that accusation holds up. Smallchief (talk 12:37, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

The neutrality has been challenged though. I'm afraid that this still gets nowhere near the standard of referencing required for articles on history, especially very controversial recent history involving some living individuals. We simply don't have enough material for an article on Cambodian genocide denial. I wish we did. For now, this article needs to be merged with Cambodian genocide. Wikipedia is not the place to right great wrongs, and here we are talking about some very great wrongs indeed. We must let the historians do their research and we will reflect it. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:51, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I disagree completely. The literature on the Cambodian genocide is vast. The historians have already done their work -- and the references in this article are excellent. We're not "righting any wrongs" here. we're reflecting a debate that was hot in the late 70s and has ramifications down to the present day. To suggest that this article should be combined with an article about KR rule of Cambodia is the equivalent of suggesting that the Holocaust should be covered under the World War II article. Smallchief (talk 13:31, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I think you must misunderstand me. I know there is a good academic literature on the Cambodian genocide. I wouldn't say vast, but good. (Our article on it could do with many more references to that literature.) What we lack references on is not the genocide itself but the far more specific topic of denial of the genocide. It is a historical question in its own right, and so far all you have found is one undergraduate dissertation, which is not enough to base an article on. I have searched in academic journals and there is nothing, but I have found the topic covered in Kiernan's Genocide and Resistance in Southeast Asia. Kiernan's recent work should be regarded as reliable. Do you have access to that book? Itsmejudith (talk) 13:54, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I havent read Kiernan recently -- but if you think it's a good source, you're welcome to include his opinions. However, on the subject of bias, recall that we are talking about an intellectual movement of the 1970s and that Kiernan and others have done a 180 of their views of the Khmer Rouge since 1979 -- and probably are not fond of recalling what they said back then about the Khmer Rouge. Their reversal of opinion may be honest -- or it may be due to careerism, there being a sudden lack of academic opportunity for Khmer Rouge supporters beginning about 1979. Here's some Kiernan from the 1970s. Note the surety of his opinions:

"There is ample evidence in Cambodian and other sources that the Khmer Rouge movement is not the monster that the press have recently made it out to be. Ben Kiernan - "Cambodia in the News; 1975-76. Melbourne Journal of Politics. 1976.

"the killing reported by refugees from the northwest since April 1975 was instigated by untrained and vengeful local Khmer Rouge soldiers, despite orders to the contrary from Phnom Penh. Ben Kiernan "Social Cohesion in Revolutionary Cambodia." Australian outlook. December 1976.

"As a result of the Khmer Rouge irrigation program, Cambodian agriculture will be modernised and peasant living standards increased. Ben Kiernan - "Social Cohesion in Revolutionary Cambodia." Australian Outlook. December 1976.

US Bombing of Cambodia

I'm skeptical about the article too. No mention of the illegal bombing by USA estimated to have killed up to 150,000. I asked Ben Kiernan how they distinguished mass graves from the bombing to mass graves from Pol Pot and he never gave me a solid answer. US bombing was all the way to the Mekong River (east half of Cambodia), almost exactly where all the alleged mass graves from Pol Pot were. I don't think we'll ever get a solid answer. See Operation Menu, Operation Freedom Deal and Kiernan's answer to my question "The Demography of Genocide: Cambodia and East Timor" (Critical Asian Studies, 35:4, 2003) , esp. pp. 587-8. Raquel Baranow (talk) 15:03, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Looking at the Operation Menu and Operation Freedom Deal articles you are correct that they do not cover in any detail the impact of the bombing on Cambodia. I think the solution to that problem would be to add a section to each of those articles detailing casualty estimates and the political impact of the bombing on Cambodia. You've given me the idea of doing those new sections myself. Smallchief (talk 15:26, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Other sources Kiernan gave me: “Roots of U.S. Troubles in Afghanistan: Civilian Bombing Casualties and the Cambodian Precedent,” by Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 26-4-10,June 28, 2010. N.B. note 38 on revised tonnage figures. "The US Bombardment of Cambodia, 1969-1973," by Ben Kiernan, Vietnam Generation, 1: 1, Winter 1989, pp. 4-41. I [Kiernan] believe the toll was likely closer to 150,000 than 50,000. Raquel Baranow (talk) 15:33, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I've seen estimates of the toll of US bombing of from 50,000 to 600,000. Shawcross will probably also be a good source as he is no friend of either the U.S. or the Khmer Rouge.

One source Kiernan uses says, “The twenty thousand mass graves mapped so far are virtually all located at, or near, Khmer Rouge security centers." (page 587, "demography of genocide") Were these really "security centers" or refugee centers? Kiernan gives various estimates of how many Cambodian refugees at: 520,000 registered displaced persons and 200,000 unregistered and, a consultant for a US Senate Subcommittee said up to 3-million Cambodians were refugees at one time or another.(Page 12, "American Bombardment"). I also saw somewhere (Wikipedia article?) an estimate by the Khmer Ruouge of how many were killed in the bombing . . . when/if I find that, I may update all the articles mentioned here with their estimate. One would think that DK would document all the mass graves as propaganda against the US, the "American Bombardment" article mentions DK propaganda about the bombing but no real details. However, the bombing happened during the Lon Nol years so that explains why there would be no documentation (Lon Nol was US puppet.) Raquel Baranow (talk) 17:47, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

No, that's a ridiculous question. Democratic Kampuchea ran at least 150 execution centers, such as Tuol Sleng. That is where almost all of the mass graves are located. Let's quote Etcheson in full: "Documentation Center mapping teams have located a number of sites over the years where the local informants say that the mass graves were in fact not from Khmer Rouge executions, but rather from the bombing, the 1970-1975 war, from victims of mass starvation and even one or two associated with the Vietnamese invasion of 1979." The overwhelming majority of the graves, however, were unquestionably from the Khmer Rouge period. "On two occasions only, if memory serves, have Documentation Center mapping teams discovered mass graves, which were attributed to the victims of bombing during the 1970-1975 war." Moreover, Etcheson notes, "It bears repeating that the virtually all of these mass graves sites are located at, or quite near -- usually within a kilometer or so -- of the Khmer Rouge security centers. It turns out that local informants, in most cases, recall the names of the cadre who were in charge of these Khmer Rouge prisons or killing centers. As often as not, it is subsequently possible to locate this former Khmer Rouge security cadre for follow-up interviews." If anything, the Documentation Center of Cambodia's methodology is excessively conservative. Finally, while KR propaganda claimed 200,000 were killed by the US bombing (Cambodia Year Zero, pg. 170), demographic evidence suggests the real number is probably much less than that (Marek Sliwinski gives a figure of 40,000).TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:35, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Map showing 115,273 targets of secret bombing in Cambodia between 1965 and 1973 vs Map showing mass graves in Cambodia (see also this map vs 150 "execution centers." Raquel Baranow (talk) 20:25, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Victims were buried around Tuol Sleng and nearby Choeung Ek. There were over 150 security centers, at least one per district. Forensic analysis of mass grave samples has been consistent with violent execution as the cause of death. War victims were not generally buried in mass graves. I'm not sure what point you think you're making, but you appear to be woefully ill-informed. In any case, the argument that torture chambers like Tuol Sleng were actually refugee centers for victims of American imperialism appears to be complete original research on your part, and thus can safely be dismissed.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:37, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

It's worth noting that even the aforementioned KR propaganda only attributed a fourth of the death toll of the Cambodian civil war to the US bombing. (Compare that with Sliwinki's 240,000 total dead, 40,000 caused by US bombing.) Sihanouk's widely repeated yet baseless "600,000" casualties of war has been thoroughly discredited by modern scholarship, and the attempt to pin the whole civil war on US bombing (in truth only a minor factor) is simply ludicrous. It seems highly likely, especially when considering anecdotal evidence, that the KR were responsible for several times more civilian casualties during the civil war than the entire US bombing campaign. Available evidence suggests that the death toll under the KR regime was between 7 and 17 times the death toll caused by the entire civil war, which should give us a pretty good idea of who was doing the killing.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:40, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The current Prime Minister of Cambodia, Hun Sen says, "According to documents and research, the figures for people who died during that time (1969-75), would be around 700,000 to 800,000." Raquel Baranow (talk) 05:58, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, if the current ex-communist psuedo-dictator says so, it must be true...TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:06, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

• In a footnote of Henry Kissinger's memoir of the Vietnam War, he wrote, "The casualty estimates by revisionist writers are often set at 300,000." He consulted a State Department historian who gave him an estimate of "50,000 based on the tonnage of bombs delivered." Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger, Simon ans Schuster, Feb 11, 2003, page 70.
• In an article in the Phnom Penh Post, Noam Chomsky says up to a million people were killed in Operation Menu. Noam Chomsky maintains the rage, Phnom Pen Post, 5 October 2010.
• In the fall of 2000, Bill Clinton released more data on the bombing showing a fivefold increase in the tonnage of bombs released. Based on the new data Tayler Owen and Ben Kiernan revised their previous extimate that between 50,000 and 150,000 Cambodian civilians were killed by the bombing saying, "the number of casualties is surely higher." Bombs Over Cambodia: New information reveals that Cambodia was bombed far more heavily than previously believed, Tayler Owen and Ben Kiernan, The Walrus, October 2006.
• Pulitzer prize winning journalist Neil Sheehan, estimates that "hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died" in the bombing.US Bombing of Cambodia -- Still Counting the Dead, The Irrawaddy, Dominic Faulder, October 2001, Vol.9 No.8
• Craig Etcheson says "Many of those killed in the bombing were just vaporized." US Bombing of Cambodia -- Still Counting the Dead, The Irrawaddy, Dominic Faulder, October 2001, Vol.9 No.8

Raquel Baranow (talk) 22:31, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

• Christopher Hitchens wrote that 600,000 lost their lives in Cambodia due to the bombing and that "these are not the highest estimates." The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens, Hachette Digital, Inc., April 10, 2012

Raquel Baranow (talk) 22:46, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

• Historian Jeremy Kuzmarov says 100,000 to 500,000 were killed in the bombing. Samantha Power: Liberal War Hawk and Second Rate Scholar, History News Network, 09/03/2013 Raquel Baranow (talk) 16:45, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

The Irrawaddy appears to be talking about the entire Cambodian civil war, quoting politicians like the current dictator and self-described "guesses" from journalists. While bombs may have vaporized people, it's hard to see how that supports your bizarre personal theory of Tuol Sleng the refugee center or mass graves filled with bombing victims. To be clear, none of this has anything to do with the article, and therefore I probably should not discuss it further. I will note, however, that politically active linguists are not reliable sources for this kind of information.

In their 1993 study ("After the Nightmare: The Population of Cambodia"), modeling "the highest mortality [they] can justify," Judith Banister and Paige Johnson estimated 275,000 deaths during the 1970-1975 period. Marek Sliwinski carried out a demographic study (Le Génocide Khmer Rouge: Une Analyse Démographique) where he arrives at a comparable estimate of 240,000 war deaths out of which there were 40,000 deaths as a result of American bombings. Patrick Heuveline ("The Demographic Analysis of Mortality in Cambodia"), Kiernan, and Etcheson all give roughly identical estimates (ranging from 150,000 to 300,000 for the entire civil war). Those are good sources. By contrast, citing a polemicist like Hitchens is scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel.

Chomsky is not a good source, and his claim in the Phnom Penh Post is demonstrably impossible to reconcile with other data. In fact, I think it's easy to establish that it's an intentional lie on Chomsky's part, which just may bring us full circle. Here is Chomsky in 1977 condemning the 200,000 dead in the "Nixon-Kissinger terror bombings", a number he falsely ascribes to Ponchaud (Cambodia Year Zero pg. 170 makes clear that this is "according to the revolutionaries' calculations"). In the letter, Chomsky advances an argument that is more extreme in its denialism and revisionism than anything else I have read, except possibly Ed Herman's claim that the Tutsis perpetrated the Rwandan genocide: "U.S. officials predicted at the war's end that a million people would starve in a year. It appears that the new regime was at least partially able to avoid this consequence of the war." As reported in newspapers at the time (see The Washington Post, June 4 and June 23, 1975, for example), the American prediction referred not to the effects of war, but to mass deaths expected from the KR takeover (especially the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh). While such extravagant "bloodbath" claims were not uncommon from American officials (I remember one speculating that 3 million South Vietnamese would be "butchered", which obviously never happened), given that the savagery of the KR actually surpassed everyone's wildest expectations, it's impossible to defend Chomsky's blatantly dishonest attempt to credit the KR with saving the lives of those they had murdered. But this is only the tip of the iceberg for Chomsky's chutzpah, because in "Distortions at Fourth Hand" he attempts to smear Ponchaud as an "unreliable" source playing "fast and loose" with statistics: "Ponchaud cites 'Cambodian authorities' who give the figures 800,000 killed and 240,000 wounded before liberation. The figures are implausible." By misattributing these wildly "implausible" claims to Ponchaud ("Ponchaud gives the figure of 800,000 killed, but...seems to have exaggerated the toll of the US bombing," Manufacturing Consent, pg. 383), Chomsky implies that he habitually exaggerates and so cannot be trusted as a source on KR mass murder. Yet Chomsky--so much more scrupulous with facts and figures than Ponchaud--mixed up the 240,000 disabled with the 600,000 wounded!

(The most ingenious distortion at fourth hand, though, has to be citing a reader's letter to the editor as The Economist and implying that the magazine endorsed his position. Although in reality The Economist forcefully endorsed the Barron/Ponchaud thesis, Chomsky doubtless succeeded in tricking a few readers into believing that sophisticated Economist types knew all that stuff about democide was just propaganda for the trailer trash masses.)

You can cite whatever baseless numbers you want, but the demographic and anecdotal data just isn't there, and it's time our understanding evolves in response to the evidence. The memoirs of genocide survivors Chanrithy Him, Haing Ngor, Sam and Sokhary You, Someth May and Thida Mam, Vann Nath, Loung Ung, Sophal Leng Stagg, Paul Thai and Molyda Szymusiak all fail to mention a single civil war death in their families, much less a death caused by the US bombing. Consider this: "Anthropologist May Ebihara, who conducted fieldwork in a village in Kandal province in 1959-1960, returned to the village in 1990. Of the 159 people she had known in 1960, she found that by 1975, 16 persons had died from old age or illness, and 4 had died during the war. Of the 139 remaining people, half of them -- 69 people -- died during the Khmer Rouge regime...Ebihara's data highlights the disparity in the death ratios between the civil war and the Pol Pot regime. The number of deaths in 1975-1979 was roughly seventeen times the number of deaths during the war."

Because this discussion is not clearly related to improving the main article, I think it's best if I stop replying.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:36, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Any figures from before 2000 are useless (unless from the Cambodian government) because of new Pentagon maps and data showing details of the bombing cites. May Ebihara's village was 30km SW of Phnom Penh, the villagers went to the Capital. I'm going to move these figures and estimates over to the appropriate articles mentioned in my OP. Raquel Baranow (talk) 04:18, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Involved parties such as governments are not good for factual claims. Demographic studies are not in any way affected by declassified tonnage reports. Prepare to be reverted the instant you add your polemicists.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:12, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

how does this make any sense: "Ponchaud cites 'Cambodian authorities' who give the figures 800,000 killed and 240,000 wounded before liberation. The figures are implausible." By misattributing these wildly "implausible" claims to Ponchaud ("Ponchaud gives the figure of 800,000 killed, but...seems to have exaggerated the toll of the US bombing," Manufacturing Consent, pg. 383), Chomsky implies that he habitually exaggerates and so cannot be trusted as a source on KR mass murder. Yet Chomsky--so much more scrupulous with facts and figures than Ponchaud--mixed up the 240,000 disabled with the 600,000 wounded!" It's properly attributed and fully qualified in the first quote. It's attributed properly in the second quote, since Ponchaud does not provide any source that could be verified independently. 600,000 wounded - WTF? Guccisamsclub (talk) 18:10, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

600,000 wounded and 240,000 disabled are the figures Ponchaud actually cited. Whether Chomsky's bungling of the numbers was deliberate or he is careless as well as mendacious is really beside the point. In "Distortions at Fourth Hand", Chomsky seeks to convince us that Ponchaud plays "fast and loose" with quotes and figures; in context, the digression on the "implausible" casualty figures is clearly part of the effort to manipulate readers into doubting Ponchaud's credibility. Manufacturing Consent contradicts Chomsky's earlier propaganda by depicting the KR estimate of 800,000 for the entire civil war as Ponchaud's admittedly "exaggerated" estimate of the death toll caused by the US bombing alone. You can play dumb, but Chomsky is explicit in Language and Politics (search "Ponchaud" here and select the fourth result): "According to the [Ponchaud] book, which might or might not have been right, 800,000 people were killed during the American war. The US was responsible for killing 800,000 people." Chomsky's propaganda does not adhere to any standards of integrity, logic, or internal consistency.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:50, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Unlike yours, which completely mangles sourced numbers and attributes the term "auto-genocide" to communist propaganda ... If you're going to carry with this (I hope you will lay off it for a change), at least get want to get your story in sync with the other anti-Chomsky tirades on the net, as well as the sources. At the moment your own propaganda demonstrably fails to "adhere to standards of integrity, logic, or internal consistency"Guccisamsclub (talk) 01:15, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

The likes of Ponchaud and Lacoutre were Leftists and former KR supporters respectively, while there are few right-wing academics to single-handedly support the academic consensus on "the Cambodian genocide". The few right-wing academics that exist generally seem to support my characterization of events. For example, here is Stephen Rosefielde (Red Holocaust, page 119): "There is no evidence that Pol Pot sought to exterminate the Khmer people, or even the Cham and religious minorities. If every Kampuchean had been butchered, it would have been the unintended consequence of Khmer Rouge dystopicide—the no-prisoners-taken pursuit of badly implemented, poorly conceived communist utopia building." There is no need to establish moral equivalence between the KR and the Nazis when the KR were far worse. As with your earlier ("wtf?") comment, you need to be more explicit about where Sharp contradicts me. What I'm reading sounds like support for my position: "The grounds for the claim that Ponchaud "plays fast and loose with numbers" are absurdly trivial ...The number of 240,000 is not given as the number of wounded. It is cited as the Khmer Rouge's own estimate of the number of those disabled as a result of the war ("invalides de guerre")."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:08, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

There is nothing "pro-communist" about "Murder in a Gentle Land" or Lacouture's sloppy review of it, whatever the supposed past sympathies of the authors toward the KR, or about the reception of their writing in the mass media. That's all that counts. Presumably when Barron and Paul wrote, with the active cooperation US diplomatic sources, "Murder of a gentle land: the untold story of a Communist genocide' in Cambodia", which repeats the word "genocide" like a broken telephone, they were also trying to clear the good name of communism. I can't even believe you still pushing such a bizarre line of argument. Later, there emerged "acts of genocide" vs "no acts of genocide" debate, among "specialists". In that debate, it was Kiernan et. al. vs a few scholars from across the political spectrum who disputed the existence of genocidal policies. The evidence is overwhelmingly on Kiernan's side since he did far more original research on the KR's ethnocentric policies than his critics. I also don't know how anyone could see the wiping out of virtually all remaining Vietnamese and their families as anything other than genocide, or simply dismiss the overwhelmingly disproportionate persecution of the Chams as having nothing to do with ethnocentrism. But as Kiernan notes that was a good-faith dispute, as distinct from efforts to derail discussion of KR crimes for political ends and attack the scholars trying to documents them (you can read Kiernan's side of it in Genocide and Resistance in Southeast Asia, Chapters 6-7). I can't see the particular importance of Rosenfelde, who is one of thousands of less-than-notable writers on the topic. The the moral equivalence" between Nazism and the KR - or rather between Nazism and Communism more broadly - may be obvious to you but not to the rest of the world and it therefore requires "effort."

As far as mixing up the 600,000 wounded with the 240,000 disabled, Chomsky did no such thing. The two numbers come from completely different sources. Chomsky's error was in mistaking 240,000 disabled as 240,000 "wounded". If one were to combine the two estimates 600,000 wounded with 800,000 killed, as you seem to propose, the resulting ratio would still be outlandish and would fully support Chomsky's objection in "Distortions". Also, Chomsky's correction of Ponchaud's 200,000 deaths from US bombing figure is fully justified. So are his objections to "playing loose with quotes and numbers" regarding Ponchaud's sloppy paraphrasing of quotes to produce massive estimates of the death toll. It is up to the author, here Ponchaud, to properly attribute and weigh any controversial claims he receives from his sources. That's is something Ponchaud failed to do, even in the English language edition which still gave no footnotes. But Chomsky does not dismiss the entire work based on its flaws, and repeatedly insists that it is "serious and worth reading". But Chomsky's main target was not "Year Zero" it the sloppy coverage the book had received, starting with Lacouture's god-awful but widely quoted review. Or should Lacouture have been allowed to write any nonsense he chose without criticism, as long as it made the KR look bad? Chomsky lays out his critique in far more detail in the chapter on Cambodia "After the Cataclysm", which was certainly a serious study for the time. Naturally Chomsky's work on Cambodia was also flawed in places, but a bigger problem has been Chomsky's continued refusal to recognize any flaws whatsoever. It would be interesting to have seen him respond properly and directly to Bruce Sharp's critique, which is one of the more substative criques I've seen. The moral of the story is that when a critic finds holes in an argument, the fault lies with the author and not with the critic. Guccisamsclub (talk) 20:33, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Only 50,000-100,000 Vietnamese remained in Cambodia by April 1975, and almost all were repatriated, but that hardly constitutes "genocide" under international law. After all, the repatriations began in 1973 at North Vietnam's request. The KR did kill a few hundred Vietnamese (and a far larger number of ethnic Khmers) they suspected of being spies for Vietnam, but you could make a stronger case of genocide against Lon Nol. Most of the leaders of the KR were of Chinese or Vietnamese ancestry, which makes it unlikely they harbored any intentions of wiping out their own ethnic groups. Nevertheless, my opinion on this matter is irrelevant to the broader fact that former academic supporters of the KR suddenly began accusing the KR of genocide after 1979, with many of the scholars accusing the KR of fascism despite the fact that the KR outlawed money and banned all displays of religion. You may believe these scholars to be honestly changing their assessments in response to new evidence, just as you may believe the media's lies about the KR happened to match the truth by pure coincidence, but I think otherwise.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:53, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

This is getting very far from the original dispute so I am not going to argue this at length. But the anti-Vietnamese campaign went well beyond the extermination (mostly, deliberate as far as I can tell) of the remaining ~20,000 Vietnamese. It extended to families and contacts, to purging the cadres in the east as Vietnamese spies, to purging the Eastern population more generally as part of the campaign to rid the country of "Khmer bodies" with "Vietnamese minds". Also since you bring up "ancestry", the count of 20,000 remaining Vietnamese far from exhausts the extent of anti-Vietnamese purges. Yes, quite a few cadres had Vietnamese ancestry (I doubt you can document "most" were non-Khmer, can you?) and this fact only strengthened the resolve of the non-Eastern bosses to undertake a massive purge. However I can see how some might attach varying levels of importance to this aspect of KR policy. As for the "communist" political subtext behind the "genocide" terminology, can we please stop this silliness already? Who were these scholars who went from denial to genocide-mongering? Maybe it's Chandler? No. Vickery? No. Stephen Heder? No. The "Cambodian Genocide" is a popular term and usage spans the spectrum. If your problem is that these people began documenting the facts only after the Vietnamese invasion (which I'd argue made extensive documentation possible and body counts possible for the first time), what do you make of people on the other end of the spectrum who rapidly moderated their outrage after the KR were ousted? These includes the US govt, British govt, Douglas Pike, Stephen Morris, Shawcross, or Nate Thayer who lamented the demonization of the KR in the early 90's and harped on about their extensive "popular support". With respect to Thayer, maybe he was just sucking up to them out of careerism, in an attempt to ingratiate himself to Washington and to Pol Pot so that he could land that "exclusive" interview which he now hawks for 4000 bucks a tape. But yeah this thread has obviously gotten mired in futile political football, so I better go.Guccisamsclub (talk) 18:03, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

The "Genocide Denial" claim

[moving to new section]

I see a problem with the general thrust of the article, starting with the title. "Genocide denial" cannot precede the documentation of genocide. Ironically enough, it was the evil denier Kiernan who was among the first to document the KR's genocidal policies (as distinct from KR mass murder). Whatever these scholars were denying back then, it was not claims of genocide. Indeed I cannot find a body of scholarship that indicts the "STAV" people as "genocide deniers", which is a precise and serious charge, not a vague epithet to smear living people with. Smallchief, your list of scholars "denying" the genocide is huge, and it can probably be expanded two-fold. It includes people who are to this day authorities on the Khmer Rouge. You yourself state that this denial was particlarly popular among Asia specialists at the time, i.e. people who were in the best position to examine the evidence. Isn't this a problem? The issue is that at the time the facts were extremely unclear and the incoming evidence was not enough for any honest scholar to charge the Khmer Rouge with genocide. The evidence that was invoked in support of the bloodbath view (at the time it was NOT widely considered to be genocide proper) was grossly inadequate to any such charge. Indeed some of the "denials" you mention were written in the first two years of the KR rule, when the KR had a very long ways to go in completing the genocide we talk about today.The title is in this regard both POV and grossly misleading. The debate at the time was about the true extent of KR brutality and incompetence, not about "genocide." Where is the documentation for the charge of "genocide denial"? It's one thing to criticize the old scholarship. It's quite another to retroactively indict this scholarship and its authors on the charge of genocide denial. And it is completely inappropriate to make such a specious charge THE topic of the article. I mean even today, the claim that most of the 1.5-2.0 people who perished were victims of genocide is not widely supported. Some people (Chandler, Short, Vickery etc.) even denied/continue to deny that the term "genocide" is appropriate (it is not a narrative I would defend, but it does exist as is notable). The title of the article invites parallels with Holocaust denial and Armenian genocide denial, most of which would be ludicrously inappropriate. Something so inflammatory needs to be adequately sourced, but it can't be because it is a bogus claim. Guccisamsclub (talk) 13:26, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

This today in The Guardian regarding the term "deniers" of climate change. As for the term "genocide," I always wondered why they called it that, it was a civil war. Raquel Baranow (talk) 15:21, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

To expand a little.... The KR regime targeted minorities disproportionately, and the "killing fields" included actions that arguably fit the criteria of genocide. (We know a great deal about these genocides thanks in large part to the "denier" Ben Kiernan). You're not far off, this is very different from the claim that it was "all one genocide", which is not well-documented. But no the Killing Fields are not' considered to have constituted a "civil war", even though there was extensive semi-organized and armed resistance in the east, in response to the brutal policies of the center. As for the "denier" label, it presupposes the existence of an overwhelming consensus backed by massive evidence. There was no such consensus about the KR at the time and no such evidence; the very fact that there were so many "STAV" scholars at the time only proves the lack of consensus. To use the climate change analogy: let's imagine some noted climate scientist who has contributed a great deal to climate research was a "skeptic" 40 years ago. Is he a former "climate change denier" whose name should figure prominently in the Climate change denial article? No, that would be silly and no RS in the hard sciences would make such an absurd claim. And the label "climate change denier" is far less inflammatory than "genocide denier".Guccisamsclub (talk) 17:15, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

The KR did not single out the Chinese for persecution (like the Vietnamese and PRK did). If the Chinese suffered disproportionately under the KR, it was only because the Chinese community was disproportionately wealthy. The KR were not racist or genocidal in intent, except possibly with regard to the Vietnamese. Perhaps the KR committed acts of genocide against all religious groups out of fanatical atheism, but the charge of "auto-genocide" against the whole Khmer people is certainly a ludicrous fabrication concocted by communists and ex-communists to associate the regime with fascists and Nazis rather than the comparable if less lethal brutality of other communist regimes. That said, these communists and ex-communists are our reliable academic sources on the matter, so we have no choice but to speak of the "Cambodian genocide" on all articles related to the mass killings.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:02, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad you are skeptical about the title. But you've got a tendency to come in with all POV guns blazing and have trouble staying on topic. You immediately shift the discussion to the evil Vietnamese bogeyman, then veer back into a denial of imagined left-wing genocide propaganda, concluding with an unmasking of a supposed clique of ex/communist scholars, all in proper Stephen J Morris form. Somehow all this is very important to your weltanschauung, but it is completely irrelevant here. The racism and genocidal intent of the KR are, as you admit, not left-wing fabrications but well-documented claims. Kiernan happens to be the authority on this because he's done most of the research on this particular topic. He's therefore on stronger ground than Chandler, Vickery, Short etc. So I have no problem with this getting the coverage it deserves on Wikipedia. As for "auto-genocide", that is Francois Ponchaud's term. The narrative that the KR is guilty of "genocide" against all of its victims - even those would would have starved anyway due to the appalling post-war state of the country (no, not saying war was the main culprit) - is largely associated with the political right (who want to draw a moral equivalence between Nazism and Communism) not with the left. Guccisamsclub (talk) 01:37, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

But anyhow, to get back on topic: the issue is that there is no body of serious scholarship that charges the "STAV" with "genocide denial." This is no accident, because "denial" presupposes an overwhelming consensus backed by copious documentation. Again, no such consensus, not even serious claims of genocide, existed at the time. See Holocaust Denial, Armenian Genocide Denial, Climate Change Denial. The closest you get to this article is Denial of the Holodomor, which mentions the early denials by Louis Fischer, Duranty, Shaw etc. However there are a few crucial differences: a) there was a well-organized and extensive campaign of disinformation coming directly from Moscow in which these people were complicit b) the claim that famine was due to Soviet policy was on far stronger ground in the 1930's than the claim about a proportionally far greater death toll due to KR policy was in the 1970's. The USSR was not a post-war country in the early 1930's and the existence of the famine was far better documented than claims about KR killing up to 2 million people by 1976, which can't be supported to this day c) None of the "Holodomor deniers" became the key authorities on Soviet policy, nor were they ever (well maybe Duranty, kinda) d) while there was no contemporary consensus about a massive famine at the time, there was a well-documented claim that there was a famine in the USSR which could be denied. Note that the article is not called "Holodomor genocide denial" because no such charge can be leveled at most of the people mentioned in that article. Similarly there were no well-documented claims about KR "genocide" at all in 1970's, save for rhetorical sleights of hand. The serious and specific charges of genocide came later, when the evidence became available. Guccisamsclub (talk) 01:37, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

So the problem is that living scholars, many of whom have made major contributions in documenting KR crimes, are being labelled as "genocide deniers" without documentation, evidence or logic. This seems to be some kind of throwback to 1980's right-wing polemics, spearhead by people like Stephen J Morris who have contributed precisely nothing to Cambodia studies. KR apologia coming from right-wing sources after the Vietnamese invasion is conveniently forgotten.Guccisamsclub (talk) 01:50, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Neutrality discussion

According to Wikipedia, the non-neutrality label on this article is meant to indicate that a discussion is going on "and that the article's content is disputed and volatile. If you add this template to an article in which there is no relevant discussion underway, you need at least to leave a note on the article's talk page describing what you consider unacceptable about the article. The note should address the troubling passages, elements, or phrases specifically enough to encourage constructive discussion that leads to resolution. If you believe that material or a particular viewpoint is missing, then you should try to give examples of published, independent, reliable sources that contain this missing material or point of view. In the absence of an ongoing discussion on the article's talk page, any editor may remove this tag at any time."

I invite people to enter a discussion as to what is not neutral in this article. Thus far the only thing cited that is wrong about the article is a question about the suitability of one of the many sources of the article. Smallchief (talk 13:31, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

The article is based on one unreliable source. It is only Ear who uses the phrase "Standard Total Academic View" on Cambodia. This is a phrase coined by someone who at the time was an undergraduate, and it is not a concept that has been discussed in the academic literature. The dissertation is very interesting but its main concept is debatable. A handful of Western academics defended or apologised for the Khmer Rouge regime up to 1978. This does not constitute an "academic view". I am going to take this to the Reliable Sources noticeboard for more uninvolved opinions. (It could be NPOVN, don't mind if the discussion is moved there, but there is more activity on RSN.) Itsmejudith (talk) 13:57, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

This article has 18 footnotes compiled from 11 sources -- not one source. That the acronym STAV has not been discussed in the academic literature is perhaps not too surprising as Ear's work excoriates scholars of Cambodia for their denial or doubt about the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. But he excoriates them with quotes from their works and their statements.

The wiki article as now worded says "many" academics doubted or disputed the genocide; it doesn't say most or all. It seems far more inaccurate (and biased) for you to suggest that only a "handful" of academics were involved than for me to say that "many" were involved. To suggest that only a "handful" of academics were genocide deniers or doubters in the face of a large body of evidence to the contrary, minimizes the importance of the subject -- like saying in the present day that the Tea Party is only a "handful" of people in the Republican Party. If you want to explain away something, a "handful of people" is an artful phrase --but misleading.Smallchief (talk 14:32, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I object to this article in whole. As documented the country was closed off to the West and it was difficult to get real reports. The title of the article is "Cambodian Genocide Denial" yet the first sentence indicates the article is about a time period when proof of such genocide was not possible. Chomsky and Herman wrote in 1977 "the record of atrocities in Cambodia is substantial and often gruesome" and "When the facts are in, it may turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct." These are serious scholars who do demand facts be facts and not speculation. Especially in light of the fact that their propaganda model is pretty well established, I don't think full article need exist to explain scholars demanded facts about something there is still much debate about. Furthermore in their book Manufacturing Consent Chomsky and Herman did a study of the paired examples of the genocide in East Timor and Cambodia. If they compared how the media in the U.S. covered two separate genocides obviously they aren't denying it was genocide. This entire article is based on intellectual dishonesty and should be removed. Hensah 11:09, 24 March 2014 (EST)

See my talk page for a response to your specific concerns. To address your concern about Chomsky's characterization of Ponchaud's book, I have changed the article to provide an exact quote from Chomsky -- and a quote of the response from Ponchaud. That response would seem to indicate clearly that Chomsky was more interested in enforcing ideological conformity than he was in finding the truth about Khmer Rouge atrocities. Smallchief (talk 13:25, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Murder of Malcolm Caldwell

As far as I can see, this section is entirely off-topic - and accordingly, I removed it. Since User:Smallchief has restored it (with no edit summary whatsoever), I would like to see an explanation for how exactly this relates to 'Cambodian genocide denial', the supposed topic of this article. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:23, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Malcolm Caldwell was probably the most prominent Britsh supporter of the Khmer Rouge. Amost certainly his murder in Cambodia had a political motive relating to his support for the Khmer Rouge and his denial that massive human rights violations were taking place in Cambodia. He undoubtedly deserves a place in this article along with Chomsky and others.

Caldwell's visit to Cambodia (the first visit to Cambodia by a prominent Western supporter of the Khmer Rouge) was an important event in the history of the debate about the character of the Khmer Rouge. Had Caldwell lived to report his findings, that would certainly merit a place in this article. Therefore, the fact that Caldwell, a prominent denier of the Cambodian genocide, was murdered in Cambodia probably by Cambodians and for Cambodian political reasons would also seem to merit a place in an article about Cambodian genocide denial. To exclude Caldwell's murder from this article, in my opinion, would be akin to writing an article about Kennedy's term as President without mentioning how it ended.

You might, in the future, wish to consult before deleting a large section of an article. Smallchief (talk 13:15, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

If Caldwell's death was "an important event in the history of the debate about the character of the Khmer Rouge" then the article needs to explain why, citing sources. At the moment, the section on the death entirely fails to do so. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:41, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll fix it up with detail on Caldwell's prominence. Smallchief (talk 12:29, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it's significant, balances the article, makes the article more interesting, is well-written and referenced. Raquel Baranow (talk) 16:33, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Smallchief (talk 15:02, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Caldwell was one of a tiny handful of academics who openly supported the Khmer Rouge. His murder is relevant. I took out the bit about him being a major figure in UK protest politics, which he certainly was not. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:59, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

That statement was sourced, as was the "cheerleader" quote you also removed. Do you have a source saying otherwise?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 09:27, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

OK, I see that it was sourced to the Andrew Anthony piece, which is reliable for the article. Anthony is stretching it with "major figure". Chair of CND but at a time when CND was very marginal. And we don't need to pick up every quote from Andrew Anthony, who was commissioned to write an essay, when we are doing something quite different. " well in the mainstream of what I would call generally progressive liberal thinking" is another possibility, which gives quite a different impression. Safest to leave it anodyne. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:49, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

You are again attempting to minimize this topic by saying that it is only a "tiny handful" of academics who were pro-Khmer Rouge. To the contrary, in the small world of academics interested and knowledgable about Cambodia, many were deniers or doubters of the Khmer Rouge Genocide. Here's a list, by no means complete. (And note that most of the people on this list are deemed important enough to have a wikipedia article.) George McTurnan Kahin, Gareth Porter, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, George Hildebrand, Michael Vickery, Gavan McCormack, Laura Summers, Malcolm Caldwell, Ben Kiernan, Wilfred Burchett, David Boggett, and David Chandler. (Chandler, perhaps the most distinguished Cambodian scholar on this list, would dispute his inclusion, but, if I recall correctly, he mostly agreed with Porter in the 1977 Solarz hearing so he ranks among the doubters)Smallchief (talk 12:44, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I am emphatically NOT trying to minimise this topic. It is incredibly important.

Important enough to get right. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:36, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Malcom Caldwell: Pol Pot's Apologist from Democratiya could also be used as a source. Note that Richard Dudman, who accompanied Caldwell to Cambodia, was still explicitly denying the genocide in 1990. Here Dudman assures us that only "the remains of a few hundred victims" have been found (the mass grave count since then has uncovered at least 1,386,734 victims of execution), and that the Cambodians he saw on his guided tour were "generally healthy" and "a normal demographic mix" (Khmer Rouge rule had massive dysgenic effect on Cambodia, visible to casual observation even to this day, and attested to by demographers such as Heuveline). (See the comparison between Thailand and Cambodia here.) Dudman states that "The evidence for these fixed beliefs consists mainly of poignant though statistically inconclusive anecdotes from accounts of mass executions in a few villages. It comes mostly from those with an interest in blackening the name of the Khmer Rouge: From Cambodian refugees, largely the middle- and upper-class victims of the Pol Pot revolution, and from the Vietnamese". So the deniers didn't all disappear after 1979. Can't find any good sources, but I recall that Jan Myrdal was the keynote speaker at a 1979 "Stockholm Conference" calling for the restoration of Khmer Rouge rule.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:26, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I hadn't known that about Dudman. I'll read the Democratiya article and see if it can be used for this article and the Malcolm Caldwell article. Smallchief (talk 12:08, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I see a problem with the general thrust of the article, starting from the title. "Genocide denial" cannot precede the documentation of genocide. Ironically enough, it was the evil denier Kiernan who was among the first to document the KR's genocidal policies (as distinct from KR mass murder). Whatever these scholars were denying back then, it was not claims of genocide. Indeed I cannot find a body of scholarship that indicts the "STAV" people as "genocide deniers", which is a precise and serious charge, not a vague epithet to smear living people with. Smallchief, your list of scholars "denying" the genocide is huge, and it can probably be expanded two-fold. It includes people who are to this day authorities on the Khmer Rouge. You yourself state that this denial was particlarly popular among Asia specialists at the time, i.e. people who were in the best position to examine the evidence. Isn't this a problem? The issue is that at the time the facts were extremely unclear and the incoming evidence was not enough for any honest scholar to charge the Khmer Rouge with genocide. The evidence that was invoked in support of the bloodbath view (at the time it was NOT widely considered to be genocide proper) was grossly inadequate to any such charge. Indeed some of the "denials" you mention were written in the first two years of the KR rule, when the KR had a very long ways to go in completing the genocide we talk about today.The title is in this regard both POV and grossly misleading. The debate at the time was about the true extent of KR brutality and incompetence, not about "genocide." Where is the documentation for the charge of "genocide denial"? It's one thing to criticize the old scholarship. It's quite another to retroactively indict this scholarship and its authors on the charge of genocide denial. And it is completely inappropriate to make such a specious charge THE topic of the article. I mean even today, the claim that most of the 1.5-2.0 people who perished were victims of genocide is not widely supported. Some people (Chandler, Short, Vickery etc.) even denied/continue to deny that the term "genocide" is appropriate (it is not a narrative I would defend, but it does exist as is notable). The title of the article invites parallels with Holocaust denial and Armenian genocide denial, most of which would be ludicrously inappropriate. Something so inflammatory needs to be adequately sourced, but it can't be because it is a bogus claim. Guccisamsclub (talk) 13:26, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Chomsky

The section on Chomsky is extremely biased and reads like an attempt to smear rather than attempt to shed light on the 1977 exchange and Chomskys ideas about the cambodian genocide (which he clearly does not deny). It is intellectually and morally unjustifiable to represent a person as denying an atrocity that they have clearly acknowledged. Chomsky is of course also a living person, making a balanced and factual coverage even more necessary. Most sources I have been able to find that are not obviously partisan for or against CHomsky are clear that he was not exactly denying the cambodian genocide only doubting the factuality of specific representations of it. There is a difference. Though he turned out to be wrong, and the people he was criticizing basically right, that does not justify labeling him as denying the genocide itself. There are statements in which he clearly belittles it and calls for attention to US foreign policy and its atrocities instead. These could be added, but it should also be added that he is fully aware of the existence of the cambodian genocide and recognize it as one of the worst in history. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:44, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not seeing the secondary RS that demonstrates the pertinence of the Chomsky quote you wish to add.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:55, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• The person labeled a denier of the Cambodian genocide because of his statements in 1977 (when information about what was going on in Cambodia was in short supply) made this statement in 1993:

"I mean the great act of genocide in the modern period is Pol Pot, 1975 through 1978 - that atrocity - I think it would be hard to find any example of a comparable outrage and outpouring of fury and so on and so forth." -- Noam Chomsky, in the documentary "Manufacturing Consent," 1993.

. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:24, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• More recent online sources about Chomsky's views on Cambodia: [1][2][3][4][5]. None of these sources can be considered to support the version of Chomskys views currently reported by the article. In fact only the most biased anti-Chomsky websites give a similarly unnuanced depiction. I will now begin to look for print sources.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:29, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• I just finished reading Chomsky's entire 1977 article about [reports about] Cambodia, which makes it clear that the wiki section on Chomsky here is pretty misguided. I first came to this wiki seeking more information about Chomsky's “REAL comments” on Cambodia, and what do I find? “Quotes” from other figures speaking critically of Chomsky, with no pivotal quotes from Chomsky himself. (Well, there's the "tales of atrocities" quote, which is misrepresented as a reference to Cambodia, when at that time he was speaking about Vietnam, not Cambodia.) In several cases it’s a person presenting, second-hand, phrases from letters(?) that Noam Chomsky wrote to them. The letters are not available for us to see. Is this the standard of evidence for including a person on a “Genocide Denial” page??? Noam Chomsky has thousands of pages of his statements in print. And guess what? Here’s some food for thought, everyone: Chomsky’s original 1977 article that spawned all of this discussion is not really about Cambodia. It is literally, explicitly about distortions of the truth that happen when a report becomes circulated second-hand, and then third-hand, and then fourth-hand. The title was “Distortions at Fourth Hand”. It was a review and analysis of books and reporting, not of a genocide. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.37.254.51 (talk) 22:33, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the section on Chomsky is not neutral. For me, the whole article seems biased. There is a difference between denying something after the graves have been documented and doubting something while it is happening but hard to verify because of enemy regime control. Look at how the developing Jewish Holocaust was treated in the West. The knowledge was partly suppressed. This is culpable, but not as loony-bins as post WWII Holocaust deniers.

Basically the article reads like it's written by conservatives with an axe to grind.

Much of the information in the article sounds to me like it's interesting and factual (who said what when), but the interpretations should be toned down -- or better yet, taken from a consensus in the literature. As it is, they appear to be cobbled together by Wikipedia editor(s). 178.38.127.141 (talk) 01:17, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Is the section on Chomsky neutral?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Result:Not neutral.

There is a clear consensus that the extract quoted at the top of this RfC is not neutral. However, there was no consensus to exclude mention of Chomsky from the article, and it also seems to be the case that content has been added since the outset of this RfC, meaning that at least some of the neutrality problems mentioned by editors have either been dealt with or are less apparent. This has not been done to an extent that deals entirely with the objections raised in this RfC, and so the matter cannot be considered resolved, particularly given the context that WP:BLP applies in this case (Chomsky and Edward S. Herman both being alive).

In particular, it was objected during the course of the RfC that the characterisation of Chomsky or Herman as genocide deniers was mainly based on quoting their own words from primary sources, rather than from analysis of their words in secondary sources. This appears to still be the case. None of the secondary sources used characterises either of them as denialists of as having engaged in denial. Indeed, I am personally not able to work out from the sourcing whether such a claim would have any basis or not.

Further discussion is recommended. Pending that discussion, per WP:BLPREMOVE, the content in question should be removed from the article and relevant content should not be re-added except following clear talkpage consensus.

• This RfC asks the question whether the section on Chomsky's "denial" of the Cambodian Genocide is neutral and complies with BLP, POV and WEIGHT policies. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:14, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

The text under question is collapsed here for convenience since it was removed from the article pending the results of this RFC

Linguist Noam Chomsky was among the academics who attempted to refute Barron, Paul, Ponchaud, and Lacouture. On June 6, 1977, Chomsky and his co-author Edward S. Herman published a review of the books by Barron and Paul, Ponchaud, and Porter in The Nation. They called Barron and Paul's book, Murder of a Gentle Land, "third rate propaganda" and part of a "vast and unprecedented propaganda campaign" against the Khmer Rouge. According to Chomsky and Herman, Ponchaud's book Year Zero was "serious and worth reading" but "the serious reader will find much to make him somewhat wary." The two authors wrote that the refugee stories of Khmer Rouge atrocities should be treated with great "care and caution" as no independent verification was available. In the American edition of his book, Ponchaud responded to Chomsky. "He [Chomsky] wrote me a letter on October 19, 1977 in which he drew my attention to the way it [Year Zero] was being misused by antirevolutionary propagandists. He has made it my duty to 'stem the flood of lies' about Cambodia -- particularly, according to him, those propagated by Anthony Paul and John Barron in Murder of a Gentle Land." By contrast, Chomsky was highly favorable towards Porter and Hildebrand's book, which, according to journalist Andrew Anthony in the London Observer, "cravenly rehashed the Khmer Rouge's most outlandish lies to produce a picture of a kind of radical bucolic idyll." Chomsky also opined that the documentation of Porter's book was superior to that of Ponchaud's -- although almost all the references cited by Porter came from Khmer Rouge documents while Ponchaud's came from interviews with Cambodian refugees. References

• Not Neutral It cannot be neutral to depict a living person who has clearly an unequivocally, and verifiably, recognized a genocide as among the worst in history as a denier of that genocide.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:14, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
• The text says Chomsky "attempted to refute Barron, Paul, Ponchaud, and Lacouture". That is true, and Joel Brinkley's book suggests it is relevant to this article.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:30, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

The fact that he did that does not mean that it is neutral or balanced to depict him as a genocide denier. Doing so in the face of evidence to the contrary is the eaxct kind of cherry picking that you accused me of.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:36, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Per WP:BLP, extraordinary claims require significant multiple reliable sources, do those exist?--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 21:34, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

For which of the views? The source for him not denying the genocide is his own word. There are reliably published sources that discuss his comments regarding Cammbodia and argue that he was in effect denying the ongoing genocide. There are many partisan antichomsky sources that state as fact that he did. So it has to be a question about how to weight and represent the different sources to achieve balance.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:43, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• Not neutral There are no non-partisan sources in this case; Chomsky's views should be discussed, certainly, but we can't present either position in Wikipedia's voice. There are nuances here which that first sentence glosses over entirely. Vanamonde93 (talk) 21:53, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• The neutrality needs attention. Not easy, partly because Chomsky has made quite different statements over the decades. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:37, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• not neutral Chomsky's words are certainly chomsky's words, but characterizing that as denial requires secondary sources discussing chomsky's words. What we have now is clear WP:OR He certainly puts in criticism of the authors and their research, but that is not the same thing as saying "the genocide did not happen" Gaijin42 (talk) 22:45, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• Not neutral. Chomsky's words must by analyzed by others rather than taken out of context, devoid of proper balance. Chomsky has never been a denier of the Cambodian genocide, just a critic of the research. Binksternet (talk) 23:04, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• Not neutral. As possibly the only Wikipedia editor to have discussed this personally with Chomsky, I can confirm that he recognises the reality of the genocide and the horror of the Khmer Rouge regime. What he questions is the way in which this has been used in the west, and indeed the right of western governments, themselves guilty of genocides, to point a finger. RolandR (talk) 23:38, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• comment per WP:BLPREMOVE WP:NOCONSENSUSWP:BLPREQUESTRESTORE and an apparent WP:SNOW I am going to delete the section in question, without prejudice for if a consensus later develops for its inclusion. To be clear, I am not saying this RFC is closed, merely that the information should not be in the article until there is a consensus for inclusion. Gaijin42 (talk) 00:05, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• Neutral Deletion of this section was an error. From Chomsky and and Herman's book "After the Cataclysm" (1979), here is a quote about what they said:

"On Cambodia, Chomsky and Herman produce some extraordinary apologetics for the Khmer Rouge, offering a figure of only 25,000 killed and claiming that the bloodbath has been exaggerated by a “factor of 100” (p. 139). They rely on accounts of stage-managed official visits undertaken by credulous Western fellow-travellers, while dismissing the evidence of the victims, on the basis that refugee reports are compromised by “extreme bias” in their selection by the media (pp. 147-8). They reject any parallel between the killing fields and Nazi Germany, asking whether “a more appropriate comparison is, say, to France after liberation,” where tens of thousands of collaborators were massacred “with far less motive for revenge” (p. 149). They complain that “allegations of genocide” are being used “to whitewash Western imperialism,” to distract attention from the “the expanding system of subfascism” and to lay the ideological basis for further Western intervention (pp. 149-50)."

I call that genocide denial. Please note that Chomsky's book was published in 1979, at least 2 years after the evidence of a huge genocide in Cambodia had become readily available to the general public -- and to scholars. Chomsky is responsible for what he said in the 70s and those views are fair material to be included in a Wikipedia article. To delete them is to distort history.

If you search the web for "Cambodian genocide denial Chomsky" you will find a large number of studies and articles addressing Chomsky's denial of the Cambodian genocide. You will find that numerous prominent magazines and newspapers as well as several books by Cambodian experts had been published about the genocidal conditions in Cambodia. Chomsky ignored or refuted all the evidence to claim that allegations of mass murders and deaths in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge had been exaggerated by a factor of 100 or more.

Ask yourself: If a scholar claimed that the Jewish Holocaust in Europe had been exaggerated by a factor of 100 or more, e.g. saying that Jewish deaths totaled only 60,000 instead of 6 million, would it be credible for him to be called a genocide denier? If the scholar saying such a thing were the world's most famous intellectual (as Chomsky has been called) would that fact be worthy of inclusion in a Wikipedia article? Smallchief (talk 01:36, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

A few points. First, the deletion is potentially only temporary. If a consensus for inclusion develops it will be returned. Second, as others have pointed out, picking these quotes out is an OR problem. We need secondary sources commenting about Chomsky's comments, and preferably designating him a denier in clear terms. Finally, if someone today said only 60k Jews died, yes they are a denier. If they said it it 1947 and have since contradicted those comments? Thats an entirely different ballgame. Gaijin42 (talk) 02:26, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Exactly, if it is to be included the full story needs to be included, not just the part that makes him look like a raving lunatic. And it should be based on secondary sources.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 04:08, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Here's part of the real story. The following paragraph was among those deleted: "He [Chomsky] wrote me a letter on October 19, 1977 in which he drew my attention to the way it [Year Zero] was being misused by antirevolutionary propagandists. He has made it my duty to 'stem the flood of lies' about Cambodia -- particularly, according to him, those propagated by Anthony Paul and John Barron in 'Murder of a Gentle Land.'" The source is Francois Ponchaud, a leftist, Cambodian-speaking French priest, who published the first (I believe) book length study (Year Zero) of the genocide in Cambodia in early 1977.

There you have it. A reliable report by a Cambodian expert stating clearly that Chomsky wants to "stem the flood of lies" in Paul/Barron's book. Paul and Barron interviewed hundreds of Cambodian refugees and estimated about 1 million deaths in Cambodia between 1975 and 1977. Chomsky's priority was not to discover or even consider the truth. It was to refute "antirevolutionary propagandists."

The two sources quoted below (Peregrin Otero and Belcher), reliable secondary sources, seem to prove my point. Chomsky was denying the Cambodian holocaust. Whatever his motives, the fact remains: he declined to believe in 1979, despite vast evidence to the contrary, that one to three million (out of a population of 8 million) people had died in Cambodia during less than 4 years of Khmer Rouge rule. Plus, he attempted to persuade others to also deny the genocide. Are "apologies" for the Khmer Rouge, and "ideology based critiques," and attempts to persuade others to deny the character of the Khmer Rouge -- denial? I believe so. If someone were to say, all this propaganda about the Nazis being beastly to the Jews is just propaganda, is that denial? I believe so. Chomsky minimized the genocide in Cambodia. Try Chomsky's tactic of minimizing the genocide in Cambodia by minimizing the WW II holocaust and see where that gets you. Try calling evidence of the holocaust a "flood of lies" -- as Chomsky did the Cambodian genocide -- and people will call you, with reason, a holocaust denier.

Timing is also important. In 1977, it might have been possible for a naive academic to claim that the Khmer Rouge were not as bad as portrayed by The New York Times, the Economist, Time, Ponchaud's book, Barron and Paul's book, and other sources. But, by the time Chomsky's book appeared in 1979, most of the former genocide deniers had either recanted their former beliefs or abruptly quit talking about Cambodia. Chomsky was nearly the last of a dying breed: Cambodian genocide deniers.

Somebody up above quoted Chomsky recanting his former views. I agree that, in fairness to Chomsky, his subsequent statements recanting his former views should be put into the article. But Chomsky is still responsible for what he said in the 1970s denying the Cambodian genocide.Smallchief (talk 10:35, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

The source below makes it clear that Chomskys statement "flood of lies" was specifically about a number of factual errors in Ponchauds account. I believe these errors have been shown to be in fact errors. Just like Chomskys belief about the scale of the Genocide was. The Nazi comparison I think is interesting but ultimately not fruitful because the situations were quire different. It took several years after the war before the world realized the scale of the atrocities. The same is the case here, Chomsky first wrote of this in 1977 while there was little reliable public information about the Cambodian situation, and his 1979 account pretty much was a reshashing of that same debate rather than a new one - and his focus was on the portrayal in western media and the consequence for social liberal struggles - not on defending the Khmer or saying that there was no violence. The context really is important here: There was a worldwide media storm of anticommunist propaganda, US had just left Vietnam which they had invaded based on similar propaganda, and then surges reports of a million people killed by Khmer Rouge and calls to invade the country. I think there was a reason to be skeptical based on that alone, and to ask for very good evidence. That Chomsky persists a bit longer than most (which he tends to do in all cases) in doubting reports is hardly a reason to single him out as a denier. It is very easy to recognize a genocide when you see the skulls. But not so easy if you have to rely on FOX news to tell you the stories. One thing is being responsible for erroneous statements, the other is our wikipedian obligation to give informative and balanced portrayals of complex topics. Chomsky by the way also signed a petition in favor of the academic freedom of a Holocaust denier. He has also been labeled a holocaust denier for that.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:26, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

If Chomsky were merely being cautious in accepting the evidence of genocide in Cambodia, why did he call Barron and Paul's book about Cambodian genocide "third rate propaganda." and "part of a vast and unprecedented propaganda campaign." That sounds like he had made up his mind on the subject and was not going to be swayed by evidence to the contrary. (Barron and Paul were spot on, by the way; Chomsky was totally wrong on the facts.)

Why did Chomsky attempt to persuade Ponchaud "to make it his duty to stem the flood of lies" about Cambodia after Ponchaud had published a book saying the the KR were killing hundreds of thousands of people? (And of course Ponchaud was spot on and Chomsky was totally wrong on the facts.)

Chomsky deserves to be called to rights for what he has said. Read the Lindbergh article. Should Lindbergh's views on the Nazis be excluded from the article about him? They're not. They're described in thousands of bytes. If Lindberg doesn't get a pass for what he said and wrote about the Nazis, why should Chomsky get a pass on what he wrote and said about Cambodia.?

Congressman Stephen Solarz, a student of the Holocaust, said of the Cambodian genocide deniers in 1977, "Some of the justifications and explanations [about the KR rule of Cambodia]] are, as I see it, very much the same kind of justifications that were offered to justify the murder of the Jews in the 1940s." Solarz was talking at the time in a Congressional hearing to Gareth Porter who wrote a book denying that any sizable number of deaths had been caused by the Khmer Rouge. Chomsky reviewed the book very favorably.

If we whitewash Chomsky's (and other's) ideological views, we are being complicit in distorting history. There is no doubt whatsoever that in the late 1970s a sizable number of prominent academics with interest and expertise in Cambodia looked favorably on the Khmer Rouge and attempted to marginalize a large and growing body of evidence to the contrary. We should not cover up the facts of what they said any more than we should cover up what the pro-Nazi and pro-Stalin academics of the 1930s said.Smallchief (talk 19:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

You are arguing against an argument that noone is making. Noone is arguing that Chomsky gets a pass or that we cant say anything negative about Chomsky. We are arguing that what we say about Chomsky should reflect the literature on the topic AND his actually stated views. It is simply a case of common decency that if someone says something stupid and then later realizes it, you at least respect the fact that the new opinion supersedes the former. Ben Kiernan, one of the most respected experts on the genocide only accepted its existence in 1978. A year before Chomsky and Hermans book (which we dont know when went into press). That suggests that there were valid reasons to doubt it for a while. Yes it is true that there were many leftwing academics who were very reluctant to accept the accounts of fellow ideologues committing atrocities. The same is true for those on the other side of the aisle. And yes it should be in the article. But there is no justification for labeling someone a genocide denier who is in actual fact not. I would suggest writing a general section about Left-wing lack of acceptance of the early reports of the genocide, which should mention Chomsky prominently AND note that he has since clearly been convinced by the evidence. Do you really believe it is possible to call a section neutral that does not descirbe the context in which Chomsky was arguing and does not describe his subsequent statements about the issue, and which is entirely based on authors from the anti-Chomskian pov? I would really like you to explain how this can ever be neutral.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:00, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Very, well, I see a solution here. We will restore the deleted Chomsky section of the article with the inclusion of Chomsky's later remarks recanting or revising his earlier views. In doing so, we shall also take into account recent sources such as the well-know journalist Nate Thayer's 2011 article titled, "Khmer Rouge Apologist Noam Chomsky: Unrepentant." Do we have a deal? I'll get to work on it immediately. Smallchief (talk 20:22, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree in principle that the solution is to give a better representation of all views, but I dont think a quid pro quo arrangement like that is the solution here. Neutrality is not achieved by simply juxtaposing the two most extreme views. What we need to do is to follow the normal editorial process and find out what the most significant views are (by reading how they are represented in secondary sources) and then write up a section that gives the full context and explains the positions that the different views are coming from, in order to help the reader an actual understanding of the issues (which is not simply "some people think Chomsky is a genocide denier but he and his friends say he is not" that would be a very primitive and shallow understanding of the issue).User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:37, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Please strike your second !vote as you already !voted once. Gaijin42 (talk) 14:38, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• Not neutral (and properly removed). I noticed several distortions of reality when I stumbled upon this article after making a few edits to the Gareth Porter BLP, and I made a mental note to revisit this article when time permits. The mischaracterizations of Chomsky are just a small portion of the many problems with this article. Xenophrenic (talk) 18:45, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• Not neutral especially the quote from Andrew Anthony -- glad this article is getting the attention it needs. Raquel Baranow (talk) 01:22, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

• Mixed I think the first paragraph is neutral enough. The problem is that it is based on a single source that is not a secondary source (info on Chomsky's views taken directly from Chomsky's writings). While this immediately raises a red flag for original research, given what has been presented in the rest of the discussion, it seems to be a reasonably accurate description of Chomsky’s position. The first paragraph could be restored to the article while awaiting improved sourcing (unless forbidden by BLP policy?). Ponchaud’s quote should probably be omitted, and Chomsky’s attempts to suppress information critical of the Khmer rouge regime should probably be described in Wikipedia voice and cited to Beachler.

The final paragraph is not neutral. Anthony’s quote was, in fact, referring to Chomsky’s support of Porter and Hildebrand’s book: “He [Chomsky] compared Ponchaud's work unfavourably with another book, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, written by George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, which cravenly rehashed the Khmer Rouge's most outlandish lies to produce a picture of a kind of radical bucolic idyll.” However it would be more neutral to state that Chomsky believed works that derived from Khmer Rouge sources and discounted works that relied on refugee witness testimony (mentioned in the second sentence) without resorting to the words “cravenly” and “outlandish lies”. Instead use Anthony’s criticism of Hildebrand and Porter in a paragraph on Hildebrand and Porter.

The word “although” in the second sentence improperly imposes a point of view. It could be more neutrally written “Chomsky also opined that the documentation of Porter's book, whose references came almost exlusively from Khmer Rouge documents, was superior to that of Ponchaud's, which came from interviews with Cambodian refugees.”

There seems to be some confusion on the talk page about timeline that is not present in the article. In the article, it is clear that it is covering Chomsky’s opinions from 1975 to 1979 past rather than present opinions. The fact that Chomsky has since changed his position is not grounds for excluding Chomsky’s earlier opinions from the article. The article could use some expansion on how the opinions of Chomsky and other academics evolved over time.

Sorry for the wall of text.--Wikimedes (talk) 23:10, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Smallchief Since there is apparently a consensus that the current version was not neutral and did not conform with BLP, I would suggest proposing/workshopping a new version here on talk rather than going directly to insertion into the article, to make sure that all of the concerns are addressed. Additionally, just adding content to the prior version will likely not work as there were more than just "balance" issues raised. There are issues with the sources (primary) and selection of quotes, and how they are summarized as well. Certainly I think we can all agree that something should be included. If it should focus entirely on Chomsky, or be an overview of the leftists opinions in general, and how those should be presented still needs to be worked outGaijin42 (talk) 01:04, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I rewatched today the 1992 documentary "Manufacturing Consent" to refresh my memory. I recommend it. Chomsky does, in fact, make a statement (1:09 in the film) that the Cambodian genocide was a genocide. I agree that statement should be included in the article. Chomsky did not say, however, that he was wrong back in the 1970s -- nor to my knowledge has he ever acknowledged being wrong as have, for example, Ben Kiernan and Gareth Porter who were his ideological colleagues back in those days.

As a side issue of interest, Chomsky's later comment (1:18) in the documentary about the East Timor genocide was relevant to the present argument in a gruesome way. Chomsky criticized the media for "never including coverage from a Timorese refugee" That is the precise opposite of what he said about the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s: "the media relied on the unreliable tales of Cambodian refugees." (approximate quote)

So, I'll redo this section of the article and give Chomsky his due for acknowledging that a genocide in Cambodia took place and crafting -- to the extent the facts merit -- a more detailed and nuanced version of his views.Smallchief (talk 14:36, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

No, you are wrong in saying that he is saying the opposite regarding the Timorese genocide. He is saying the same: namely that atrocities committed by regimes that are politically opposed to the US are exaggerated by the media whereas atrocities committed by the us and their allies are ignored or downplayed. That is the exact same argument that made him want to subject the reports of the Cambodian atrocities to a higher degree of scrutiny. You really need to get that aspect into the way that the issue is covered: Chomsky was primarily interested in making an argument about the way that the media creates a biased reality (which is then used for motivating political decisions), by selectively emphasising or ignoring sources. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:57, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

To that point, I believe Chomsky's critics make the point that atrocities committed by regimes that are politically opposed to the US are ignored or downplayed by Chomsky whereas atrocities committed by the us and their allies are exaggerated by Chomsky. WeldNeck (talk) 15:10, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that is the opposition of viewpoints that it boils down to. Both are probably true.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:40, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

To Maunas. No, that's not what I said. Chomsky said that the evidence of the Cambodian genocide was largely based on the unreliable and exaggerated tales told by Cambodia refugees to the media. Then, regarding the genocide in East Timor, he criticizes the media for not talking to refugees. In other words, Chomsky trusted stories told by refugees saying what he wanted to hear and didn't trust stories told by refugees saying things he didn't want to hear. Smallchief (talk 18:47, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Yep, I agree with that. That is a common element in human psychology called confirmation bias.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:40, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. To be clear in where I'm coming from, I mostly agree with Chomsky about implicit collaboration among the elite of the U.S. to influence what news reaches those of us not among the elite. Where Chomsky failed in Cambodia was to assume that the government/media/corporation establishment of the U.S. was attempting to besmirch the reputation of the Khmer Rouge without taking into account the evidence that the Khmer Rouge were just as bad -- or even worse -- than the establishment said they were. The elite doesn't always lie.Smallchief (talk 20:08, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

• Comment I am not going to remark on the neutrality of this but certainly Chomsky's apologetics (as reported by second hand sources) for the KR are notable and deserve some mention? We can say the language is not neutral, but can anyone credibly argue that Chomsky's apologetics for the KR hasn't been used as a criticism against him? WeldNeck (talk) 14:50, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I would agree that his apologetics are notable and should be included. It does seem that an overview of the sources would point to Chomskys statements as being among the most notable examples of a stance questioning the existence of the Cambodian genocide in the late 1970s. So yes it should be here.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:41, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

• Definitely Not Neutral Those quotes in the proposed text aren't even accurate. The "third rate propaganda" does come from the Nation article, but the "vast and unprecedented propaganda campaign" is a quote from a William Shawcross article where he uses part of a quote from Chomsky (the only actual words of Chomsky's there are "vast and unprecedented", which comes from The Washington Connection and 3rd World Fascism). So no, this isn't neutral at all. ThwartedTwelfth (talk) 02:51, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

• Neutral AND Noteworthy I am reading quite a great deal of excusing of Chomsky's remarks and a fair amount of tu coque in the above comments, rather than attention to the neutrality of the removed section. This article is on Cambodian genocide denial, and Chomsky's remarks fall well within the bounds of the subject. To whitewash them out of a desire to rationalize away criticism of someone's ideological idol would be an egregious error. JamesBay (talk) 04:57, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Would you care to comment on whether it is problematic to describe someone as a genocide denier when they, after initial incredultity, now explicitly recognize the specific genocide in question? How can that be neutral?User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:14, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Nowhere in the deleted text is Chomsky labelled a "genocide denier". His views are neutrally explained by reference to reliable sources. Recent sources such as Brinkley attest to the relevance of Chomsky's stated beliefs to this topic. Chomsky has never explicitly acknowledged the genocide or disavowed his former words, instead making numerous radically contradictory statements over many decades while maintaining that he was right all along. East Timor is a straw man irrelevant to "Distortions at Fourth Hand", and an invalid comparison given that FRETELIN was responsible for 30% (49% during one peak) of the violent killings in East Timor, which were spread out pretty evenly over the entire 24-year war according to the UN's report.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:25, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

He has explicitly stated that the cambodian genocide is one of the worst in history, as attested by sources given amove. The text implicitly labels him as a genocide denier through its framing and its one sided selection of sources. Please answer the question: How can it neutral to represent someone as denying a genocide that they have explicitly recognized? User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:28, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Um, you do realize that the article is about previous, rather than current, denial of Khmer Rouge atrocities, don't you?--Wikimedes (talk) 09:28, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Please answer what I am asking: Is it neutral to describe someone's past erroneous views without mentioning that they have since corrected those views?User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:48, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, there is the last sentence of the lede indicating that most denials have disappeared, and the tense of the first sentence of the lede indicates that the denials are a thing of the past. However I agree that the article needs more coverage about when and why doubters changed their minds. TheTimesAreAChanging, what do you think?--Wikimedes (talk) 20:00, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

We are limited by the sources available. Porter clearly and unambiguously retracted his denial. There are no sources that say the same about Chomsky, who has continued to insist "no error or even misleading statement or omission has been found" in "Distortions at Fourth Hand". If users directly cherrypick more recent Chomsky quotes, as Maunus wants to do, we could use them to support any number of interpretations. For example: "In recent years Chomsky has implied that the exaggeration of the death toll was even greater, perhaps by a factor of 1000. In an article in the Z Magazine forum Chomsky claims that "Ed Herman and I responded to his challenge to me by saying that we thought that a factor of 1000 did matter."(61) Lest we assume that he simply misspoke, it is worth noting that he made the same claim in a 1999 discussion on Cambodia: "in short, a factor of 1000 matters in estimating deaths, and we should try to keep to the truth, whether considering our own crimes or those of official enemies."(62) Since Lacouture had cited a figure of two million deaths, it would appear that Chomsky is implying that the real toll at that point was on the order of two thousand."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:05, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

May I ask you again. Do you really feel that it is possible to maintain a picture of Chomsky as a denier of the Cambodian Genocide in spite of his having verifiably stated that "I mean the great act of genocide in the modern period is Pol Pot, 1975 through 1978 - that atrocity - I think it would be hard to find any example of a comparable outrage and outpouring of fury and so on and so forth." (In reality it doesnt matter since you are clearly against consensus if you believe that is possible, it would however throw serious doubt on your ability to understand our BLP and neutrality policies)User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 04:17, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

• Neutral It's an important fact about Chomsky's beliefs.--TMD Talk Page. 00:37, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

• Comment, reading some of the comments above, some appear to advocate entirely removing any content regarding Chomsky and this subject. Perhaps this might be better to be included directly in the biography article of Chomsky. From reading the discussion/debate above, it appears that Chomsky had denied, had changed their position, and at the same time have defended his previous position. Given that Chomsky is a prominent notable individual known for their political opinions, there should be some content about the individuals views either here or in the biography article, but keeping with WP:NEU, the content should be well cited, neutrally worded, and brief (two paragraphs at most).--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 12:32, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Sources

• In "Noam Chomsky: Critical Assessments", Volumes 2-3 Carlos Peregrín Otero, Taylor & Francis, Jan 1, 1994. Chomsky's 1979 coauthor argues that Chomsky did not deny the genocide, that the claims that he did were largely ideological based critiques, and that Chomskys issue was with the specific facts regarding the representation of the events in Cambodia in Western media. He also describes that it was generally established in the Mainstream media that Chomsky was an apologist for the cambodian genocide, without the need for evidence.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:05, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
• Donald W. Beachler, The Genocide Debate: Politicians, Academics, and Victims, seems probably as close to a non-partisan source as we can get. It states that Chomsky and Herman consistently treated the issue as a question of uneven coverage of atrocities in Western media, systematically exaggerating atrocities by communist states and understating or ignoring atrocities by Western powers, such as the US. Bechler also states that in 1979 Chomsky and Herman argued that reports of the genocide were largely unreliable "rooted too heavily in refugee testimony". He also states that Chosky wrote letters to news papers urging them at length to discount testimonies of atrocities in Cambodia. He states that Chomskys main concern was that by demonizing the cambodian regime, the western media would make it easier to discount other liberation movements in the world. He does not state that Chomsky denied the Cambodian genocide. His depiction is that Chomskys passionate anti-US media establishment agenda made him blind to the facts and overly critical of negative reports about Cambodia and overly receptively disposed to positive ones.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:17, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

* I think you have misinterpreted Beachler's thoughts on this subject. Google books has the excerpt for those who are interested. [6]. The letter writing campaign is particularly noteworthy:

Noam Chomsky’s efforts to counter reporting on atrocities in Democratic Kampuchea apparently went beyond publication of his own essays. Examining materials in the Documentation Center of Cambodia archives, American commentator Peter Maguire found that Chomsky wrote to publishers such as Robert Silver of te New York Review of Books to urge discounting atrocity stories. Maguire reports that some of these letters were as long as twenty pages, and that they were even sharper in tone than Chomsky’s published words.

WeldNeck (talk) 18:31, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I read that as well, why do you think that passage motivates a different interpretation?User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:34, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

* (ec) I haven't read Beachler, but Maunus' 2nd paragraph consists primarily of a list of Chomsky's reasons for denying the genocide, and as such is evidence that he did deny the genocide. (Chomsky's reasons for denial should be included in the article, as well as his denial.)--Wikimedes (talk) 18:48, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I think we must have different ideas of what "denial" means. In any case Bechler does not write that Chomsky denied the genocide. He writes what he actually said and did,a nd why. And that is what the article should do as well. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:32, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, we do seem to have a different idea of what constitutes “genocide denial”. To me, denying the validity of reports of atrocities, calling such reports lies, actively working to suppress dissemination of these reports to the public, and praising reports denying the atrocities (when was the word “genocide” first used to describe the Khmer Rouge’s actions?) constitutes denial. The words “I deny that a genocide is occurring” are not necessary. On the other hand, as long as you agree that these actions merit inclusion in an article on Cambodian genocide denial, describing what he said and did and why (and when), without saying directly “Chomsky denied that a genocide is occurring”, is a good way of covering Chomsky in the article.--Wikimedes (talk) 20:21, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I think there is a fairly significant difference between denying the validity of specific reports of a phenomenon and denying the phenomenon itself. In ´my context of expertise which is the history of the Americas many for example would deny that specific reports of atrocities against the Natives are correct or call them wildly exaggerated while at the same time acknowledging the existence of extremely harmful consequences of colonization on native populations. Incidentally and ironically the people who would argue this are the same type of people who would argue that Chomsky is a genocide denier such as David Horowitz. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:34, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

That is an important difference.--Wikimedes (talk) 03:34, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

The rest of what I originally wrote immediately above is probably be getting too far afield, both for the discussion topic and my degree of knowledge of the specifics. The important thing is that we agree that the article should describe the what, why, and when of Chomsky's actions.--Wikimedes (talk) 04:04, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

It does seem that he initially believed the low estimates to be more accurate. But by 1993 at least he seems to have understood that they were a huge underestimation of the scope of the atrocities.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:51, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Untitled 2016 comment

this article doesnt meet the wiki standards of neutrality — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.177.11.143 (talk) 17:53, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Chomsky and Herman

The inclusion of Chomsky and Herman, is completely unjustified, and is not valid. The quote included does not in anyway amount to denial of genocide, the topic at hand. The only conclusion, is that the inclusion is idologically driven, with the purpose of undermining the individuals credibility. This element should be completely removed, particularly as they have given further information that specifically aknowledges widespread atrocities commuted by the Pol Pot regime. If Wikipedia was to include all individuals, who defered an opinion until more evidence is available, it would be unnavigatable. Therefore just because those with radical viewpoints defer opinions it should not be included just to undermine there creditability, otherwise Wikipedia will never be anything other than another propaganda tool of the established power establishments. 2A00:23C7:ACC9:FC01:DC5C:68DC:A81:387B (talk) 10:01, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Whatever your personal beliefs may be, it is generally accepted that the dispute of whether or not he really is a Genocide denier has entered the academic sphere to the point where there is a scholarly debate about this subject. Not including him and his co-worker, Herman, would result in shutting down discussion about a serious and academic topic.

He still believes that the US is the person to blamed for what happened in Cambodia, and I can give evidence from his very own website.12 3 4 Dunutubble (talk) 18:41, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

In manufacturing consent Chomsky puts responsibility for genocide half on the U.S. and half on Khmer Rouge. He splits the active part of the genocide into two parts: 1969-1975 in which a U.S. client state ruled Cambodia and there was a massive bombing campaign across the country and 1975-1979 in which the Khmer Rouge took power and enacted the better recognized part of the genocide. Stressing that even in 1975-1979 many of the deaths can’t be cleanly separated from the disintegration of society caused by 1969-1975. In other words, Chomsky and Herman do not deny that the Khmer Rouge conducted a genocide, only that the US also played a role 2001:8A0:6A02:BB00:929:F3C9:A8BD:5CC4 (talk) 12:19, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

"In his 1979 book After the Cataclysm: The Political Economy of Human Rights, Volume II, Chomsky claimed the slaughter in Cambodia had been exaggerated 'by a factor of 100'." By 1979 when Chomsky's book was published, there was abundant evidence that the Khmer Rouge had been responsible for the deaths of more than one million people -- probably closer to 2 million.

To make an analogy, if a person were to say that the Nazi slaughter of Jews was exaggerated "by a factor of 100", would you call that Holocaust denial? Most people would. Smallchief (talk) 14:34, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I searched through the book (PEHR II, 1979) for the quote "by a factor of 100". I turned up this:

"If 2-2.5 million people, about 1/3 of the population, have been systematically slaughtered by a band of murderous thugs who have taken over the government, then McGovern is willing to consider international military intervention. We presume that he would not have made this proposal if the figure of those killed were, say, less by a factor of 100-that is 25,000 people-though this would be bad enough (15)"

Here Chomsky & Herman aren't declaring that it was or wasn't 2 million people, he's making a point about high numbers being an important aspect of propaganda. This is further reinforced by looking at footnote 15:

"15. We choose a factor of a hundred for illustration because of Jean Lacouture's observation, to which we return, that it is a question of secondary importance whether the number of people killed was in the thousands or hundreds of thousands."

Here Chomsky & Herman say they chose a factor of 100 to further demonstrate the ridiculousness of Jean Lacouture's observation, cited later in the same chapter:

"Faced with an enterprise as monstrous as the new Cambodian government, should we see the main problem as one of deciding exactly which person uttered an inhuman phrase, and whether the regime has murdered thousands or hundreds of thousands of wretched people? Is it of crucial historical importance to know whether the victims of Dachau numbered 100,000 or 500,000. Or if Stalin had 1,000 or 10,000 Poles shot at Katyn?"

The upshot here is that Chomsky & Herman are not citing an alternative estimate but making a point about the importance of high numbers in propaganda. McGovern's call to action against the Khmer Rouge would lose its teeth among most people if it were lower by a factor of 100, contrary to Lacouture's assertion.

You're also wrong about widely available information at the time of writing. First of all, the book is referencing a press conference by McGovern in 1978 when the Khmer Rouge were still in power in Cambodia. Most of the information we have now are based on information published by the Vietnamese after they invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge out. This information was not available to the authors which is why they only start referencing it in Manufacturing Consent.

In this context, McGovern didn't provide any source for his claim of 2.5 million dead in 1978, and when pressed an associate of his allegedly hinted it may have been provided by Lon Nol. Obviously Lon Nol could not be considered a reliable source. Now, does the fact that in retrospect McGoverns estimate was roughly accurate absolve him? No, of course not, especially not from the perspective of media criticism. What kind of example would it set if it were permissible to make wild claims without evidence in the hope that somewhere down the line exonerating evidence comes to light?

Ultimately these writings on Cambodia in PEHR II can been seen simply as an analysis of what sources the media chose to favor and discard in an environment where there was little reliable information on the state of Cambodia, and not an attempt to state definitively what was or wasn't the state of human rights in Cambodia at the time. You belief that their writing seeks to achieve the latter seems to be the root of most of your confusion on this issue. AjaxPdx (talk) 11:05, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

To add to this article: the number of Cambodians Chomsky and Herman believe were killed during the Cambodian genocide. Their belief that the commonly accepted death toll (between 1.25 and 3 million) is wildly exaggerated is stated across their books and articles on this subject, so why don't we include how many Cambodians they believe were killed during the Cambodian genocide in this article? It's basic information that should be included, and which any reader of this article would expect to find here. 98.123.38.211 (talk) 20:54, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

To my knowledge, C and H never give an estimate of how many Cambodians they believe were killed in the genocide. Smallchief (talk) 21:22, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Delete section on Chomsky and Herman

Given that nobody has been able to give a concrete example of Chomsky and Herman actually denying the genocide. And given that examples of them "downplaying" the genocide are actually criticisms of coverage on 1975-1976 which were in fact exaggerated by Barron and Paul (the majority of killing took place in 1977-1978). I see no reason to keep their section. It seems to only continue to exist in an attempt to smear the authors in question. AjaxPdx (talk) 07:05, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

There’s a ton of sources in that section. To remove it you would need to obtain WP:CONSENSUS. Volunteer Marek 07:07, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Please direct me to which source cited demonstrates that Chomsky or Herman have denied the Cambodian genocide. Or which criticisms they made of Barron and Paul which later have proven to be false. Obviously we won't be able to reach consensus of there is a sizable contingent who are acting in bad faith and are only looking to slander Chomsky and Herman as I believe is the case AjaxPdx (talk) 07:10, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

If you wish to have the section removed please start an WP:RfC rather than trying to unilaterally doing it yourself without obtaining WP:CONSENSUS. Any arguments such as the one you attempt above can be made in the RfC. Volunteer Marek 07:14, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

RfC Should Mention of Chomsky and Herman be Deleted?

Should mention of Chomsky and Herman be removed from the article? AjaxPdx (talk) 07:25, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

In the meantime, please restore the long standing 12k+ section you removed from the article. Volunteer Marek 07:33, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

That was already done before your comment AjaxPdx (talk) 07:37, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. Volunteer Marek 07:41, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

It appears that none of the sources provided or quoted can actually demonstrate Chomsky or Herman denying the genocide. In fact there are quotations that demonstrate the opposite. It's true that Chomsky and Herman questioned the use of refugee stories as noted in the article, but that's perfectly reasonable, and much of the atrocities described by refugees from specific areas and circumstances were generalized across Cambodia without consideration that different circumstances could prevail in different parts of Cambodia. In the end, the mass killings and other abuses emblematic of the Cambodian genocide we know today we disproportionately carried out in the latter part of 1977 to 1978. That means the front heavy predictions of Barron and Paul, who put date the killing fields to 1975-1976 were in fact wrong. As Vickery, a prominent historian of Cambodian genocide, puts it:

The accumulated evidence about DK indicates that even if true-believer enthusiasm for the Cambodian revolution was misplaced, the serious criticism of the STV [i.e. the view given by Barron and Paul] in 1975-76 was reasonable and largely correct. It is also true that throughout 1977-78 evidence supporting a picture like that presented by Barron and Paul and Ponchaud increased and was apparently confirmed at last by the evidence from Vietnam, a once fraternal Communist regime, which in publicizing the conflicts erupting with Cambodia recounted horrors the equal of any found in the Western press during the previous two to three years. There could hardly any longer be serious doubt that the DK regime, however it started out, had become something very much like that depicted in the STV. We know now, however, that it was not just an increase in evidence about an already existing situation, but that things really changed in 1977. In 1975-76 the STV was simply not a true picture of the country, and conditions could reasonably be explained as inevitable results of wartime destruction and disorganization. From 1977, on the other hand, DK chose to engage in policies which caused increasing and unnecessary hardship. Thus the evidence for 1977-78 does not retrospectively justify the STY in 1975-76, and the Vietnamese adoption of some of the worst Western propaganda stories as support for their case in 1979 does not prove that those stories were valid.

In other words Chomsky and Herman were correct. And this is why they still stand behind their work in After the Cataclysm. Barron and Paul's assessment was sloppy, their use of refugee testimony was selective, and their conclusions were ultimately false. How this can be portrayed as "genocide denial" when there are ample quotes from Chomsky where he explicitly and in no uncertain terms calls what happened in Cambodia a genocide is beyond me. AjaxPdx (talk) 07:53, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

It's not Wikipedia's job to decide whether "Chomsky and Herman were correct". It is certainly not the job of individual editors to do so: WP:NOR. Chomsky and Herman's views are definitely controversial and their statements regarding this topic have received widespread attention, including in reliable sources, so yes, of course this belong in the article. Volunteer Marek 00:47, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Given that no evidence that exists that Chomsky and Herman explicitly denied atrocities were being committed in Cambodia, and given that Chomsky has demonstrably referred to what happened in Cambodia as a genocide, the overwhelming majority of criticism directed at them is related to their “denial” of witness testimony or denial or downplaying of “credible evidence” from the time. In this context obviously it does matter that the evidence was not credible and the witness testimony what selectively solicited from refugees most likely to give the desired story.

You say that Chomsky and Herman’s views were “controversial”, but whether they were controversial is entirely beside the point. The question is whether Chomsky and Hermans writings can be accurately described as “genocide denial”. This requires a demonstration of something at least resembling genocide denial which this article has failed to provide. AjaxPdx (talk) 08:29, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

No, the question is whether reliable sources discuss Chomsky and Herman in the context of Cambodian genocide denial or similar. And they do. The fact that a Wikipedia editor happens to think that they didn’t engage in Cambodian genocide denial is beside the point. Volunteer Marek 14:51, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

For clarity, please point out specifically which reliable sources in this article accuse Chomsky and Herman of "genocide denial" in order to demonstrate that this specific language is actually the product of said "reliable sources" and not editorializing by wikipedia editors. Furthermore, please demonstrate that the definition of "Cambodian Genocide Denial" as defined by this article is also the product of reliable sources. AjaxPdx (talk) 15:07, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

If we're going to insist on preserving the existing text, then we're going to need to change the title of this article to something more defensible than "Cambodian genocide denial" or move the text related to Chomsky/Herman to a separate article with a more neutral title. AjaxPdx (talk) 12:40, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

I do however agree that the section should rely more on WP:SECONDARY sources rather than WP:PRIMARY source (Chomsky and Herman themselves). Volunteer Marek 00:50, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Agree with who? I never suggested this and I think that a move from primary to secondary sources would just further remove this article from the actual views of Chomsky and Herman, only allowing the reader to see their arguments made from the perspectives of their opponents (the secondary sources in question). The section, rather than moving from primary to secondary sources, should be deleted entirely as it has not provided the requisite evidence necessary to label these men "genocide deniers", a very serious charge which has not been justified AjaxPdx (talk) 09:37, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses secondary sources and primary sources should generally be avoided since often that ends up with WP:OR. Volunteer Marek 14:52, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

This shows a misunderstanding of how primary and secondary sources are traditionally defined and how they work. Secondary sources are meant to be analysis "generally at least one step removed from an event" to use the definition from the article you linked. In this case many of the secondary sources are in fact direct responses and criticisms to Chomsky and Herman. From this perspective, removing all primary sources would simply remove the actual position of Chomsky and Herman and leave only the responses of their critics, which would obviously make the article even less neutral than it already is. AjaxPdx (talk) 15:11, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, no. It would also leave in secondary sources, if any, that praise Chomsky and Herman. If such don't exist... well, that's how it is and kind of illustrates the issue. Volunteer Marek 07:59, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Again, you're operating on a poor understanding of primary and secondary sources. It is deeply problematic to consider a direct response to an argument to be a secondary source.

You're also embedding certain assumptions here based on your own biases. You're assuming a certain definition of "genocide denial" and a priori assigning that label to Chomsky and Herman's work. Therefore making Chomsky and Herman's writings a "primary source" representing genocide denial, and considering the responses to their argument "secondary sources" which are "one step removed from the event". In this way you are inserting your own point of view into the editing of this article.

In reality, the subject is controversy surrounding reports of early atrocities under the government of Democratic Kampuchea. Barron and Paul as well as Ponchaud made initial claims. Responses then came from Chomsky and Herman and other academics who in turn faced their own responses. The actual primary sources here would be the testimony of refugees, with Ponchaud or Barron and Paul serving as the first secondary sources evaluating that testimony. Chomsky and Hermans response and the responses to their response also qualify as secondary sources.

Thus the real problem with this article is not that it has too many primary sources, as all the sources cited are secondary, but rather a slanted framing. AjaxPdx (talk) 09:51, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

No, the source I added for example (McGuire) is NOT a response to Chomsky and Herman (which would arguably be a primary source) but a *description* of the polemics that occured, *after the fact*, making it clearly a secondary source. More sources such as that one should be used. Volunteer Marek 15:23, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

The one which calls Chomsky 'a "hit man" against media outlets which criticized the Khmer Rouge regime'? Not exactly convincing. And besides, as I've demonstrated above, these are all secondary sources. Even if they were primary sources, which they are not, Wikipedia does not forbid using primary sources, and in this context it makes no sense to remove quotes from Chomsky and Herman. It does however make sense, to rename the title of this article from "Cambodian Genocide Denial" a term which doesn't have any academic definition and which seems to have been defined entirely by wikipedia editors AjaxPdx (talk) 18:39, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

It doesn’t matter if you’re “convinced” or not, what matters is that it’s a reliable secondary source. Wikipedia uses secondary sources. Volunteer Marek 19:22, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but it's not a secondary source. That's the point. You're confused as to what a primary and secondary source is. Everything cited in the Chomsky/Herman article is a secondary source. AjaxPdx (talk) 19:24, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

McGuire is most certainly a secondary source. Also, adding more primary sources to the article as you just did to create a “he said, she said” style narrative does not actually improve it. Volunteer Marek 19:27, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

saying "McGuire is most certainly a secondary source" (Maguire actually) does not amount to an argument. Please re-read the wiki articles on primary and secondary sources and my responses above AjaxPdx (talk) 19:38, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Per WP:SECONDARY:A secondary source provides thought and reflection based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources.

That is *exactly* what Maguire does. Volunteer Marek 19:53, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

In which case Chomsky/Herman are also a secondary source AjaxPdx (talk) 20:02, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

No. They would be a secondary source for “cambodian genocide”, if they were RS. But they are a primary source for “Cambodian genocide denial”, which is the subject of *this* article. Volunteer Marek 21:10, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with User:Volunteer Marek. The article as now written is a fair-minded (maybe overly "fair-minded") explanation of Chomsky/Herman's opinions about Cambodia in the late 1970s and the reaction to those opinions by many scholars, journalists, politicians, and Cambodian experts. Smallchief (talk)

Page move

Please don’t unilaterally try to change the name or the focus of this article. If you really think the page should be under a different name, please start a WP:RM. Volunteer Marek 19:20, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I am still very interested for you to provide "expert sources" you claimed to be able to cite above AjaxPdx (talk) 19:26, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I already provided one and can provide more. Maguire discusses denial in several places in his book.

Here is ABC-CLIO with an entry on Cambodian Genocide Denial [7]

This book has an entire chapter on denial.

Kiernan's book also discusses denial [8]. As does his other book [9]

Another book by Brinkley discusses denial and Chomsky's role in it.

And so on and so forth. Volunteer Marek 19:52, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 27 June 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved (non-admin closure) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:13, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

---

Cambodian genocide denial → Controversy Surrounding Early Reports of Khmer Rouge Atrocities – Should the page name be changed to be more neutral? AjaxPdx (talk) 19:30, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that "Genocide Denial" as it regards this page is defined in a very impartial way. Generally genocide denial is considered to be denial of a well documented historical fact, for example holocaust denial decades after the revelations following World War II. What's portrayed in this article isn't that, but skepticism of early reports of atrocities. None of the people in this article continue to deny the reality of the Cambodian Genocide to this day.

In some cases, such as Chomsky and Herman, there was never a denial that atrocities were occurring, just an attack on specific reports by Barron and Paul or Ponchaud, these attacks were largely vindicated by later history, as atrocities that were claimed to occur in 1975-76 didn't occur until 1977-78. So in this case Chomsky and Herman were correct. But simultaneously they never denied atrocities were occurring and emphatically call what occurred in Cambodia a genocide.

Given that, calling the article "Cambodian Genocide Denial" doesn't make sense, as nobody is denying the genocide now. Using this name is therefore not a neutral way of describing events, and is especially offensive in the case of Chomsky and Herman, given they were right in what criticisms they did make and never denied atrocities to boot. AjaxPdx (talk) 19:37, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Smallchief could you please format your responses normally? AjaxPdx (talk) 20:21, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

One thing this article now lacks is a discussion of what Chomsky/Herman said in their 1979 book, After the Cataclysm (text available on-line). In 1977, when Chomsky/Herman wrote their Nation article, you can make a case (a weak one in my opinion) that information out of Cambodia was not yet definitive enough to 100 % characterize the KR as genocidal. However, by 1979 when After the Cataclysm was published, there was no doubt that the Khmer Rouge (KR) had been responsible for a million or more deaths in Cambodia. Some former deniers, such as Ben Kiernan, had recanted and others, such as Gareth Porter, were silent.

However, in 1979 Chomsky/Herman admitted no error in their previous analysis and continued to attack the many, many sources that called the KR genocidal. For example, on page 137 of the book Chomsky/Herman say the "alleged genocide in Cambodia" (If a person were to say the "alleged Holocaust" or the "alleged Armenian genocide', as Chomsky/Herman said of the Cambodian genocide, would he or she be considered a holocaust or genocide denier? You bet.)

On page 244, Chomsky/Herman say: "The methodology for estimating post war [Cambodian] deaths...is hardly more than a joke; one does not have to be a 'dedicated skeptic' to question their basis for concluding that 'at least 1m people have died since the fall of Cambodia as a direct result of the excesses" of the KR.

On page 266, Chomsky/Herman say that authors Francois Ponchaud and Jean Lacouture "built their case [for KR genocide] on sand."

It is worth reminding the reader that the people Chomsky/Herman were disagreeing with for 160 pages in the book were correct: the KR were responsible for the deaths of vast numbers of people in Cambodia. Every fair-minded source knew that in 1979 -- except for Chomsky/Herman and a few fringe scholars.

There is no excuse in 1979 for not acknowledging the genocide in Cambodia -- or at least remaining silent. To do so is to be a denier of established facts. I don't know of any correction or retraction of their views by Chomsky and Herman until years later -- and then their retractions were cursory and reluctant.

Do you want more recent evidence that might be included in the article? Here's a comment in Yale University "Globalist," 2017. "At the time [the 1970s], American scholars Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman argued that media claims of the Cambodian genocide were propaganda, designed to make the US look favorable in the ongoing Vietnam War." {https://globalist.yale.edu/in-the-magazine/glimpses/ghosts-of-cambodias-past/)Smallchief (talk) 20:21, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. For people who were just skeptical of the early reports and changed their tunes later, sure, they're not really on topic. But there were people who persisted long after it was obvious, or dragged their feet with weird both-sidesism where they acknowledge the genocide happened but the people who told them it was real were wrong too (Chomsky most famously). If there are people who are being incorrectly swept up as denialists merely due to some early skepticism, feel free to edit the article, but the general topic of denialists is still valid for those who remain. SnowFire (talk) 02:39, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. According to this article, some are still in denial. Parham wiki (talk) 14:57, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.