Talk:Charles Russell (Australian politician)

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Political views

Russell's views are on the record, as noted in the article and the reference to his political autobiography, "Country Crisis". The description of him and the others mentioned as extreme right wing is demonstrably inaccurate, particularly when regard is had to Wikipedia's article of one of them, Colin Clark, which is authoritative. Rufus marcus (talk) 09:00, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not really a fan of the left-right analysis, but I'm not really a fan of these changes either. To say that he was on the "right" of the political spectrum is meaningless; we know that, since he was a Country Party MP. The reference (ADB) explicitly says that he was of the "extreme right". I don't mean this in a pejorative sense; it's just that if we're going to be using the spectrum we should be as specific as possible for our readers. I'm more inclined to agree with the change re: Clark, since I don't know much about him, but Cilento was indisputably far right; I don't like the new wording, though, because "people who disagreed with the major parties" as a category also includes communists and anarchists and everyone in between. That wording needs to be more specific. Frickeg (talk) 22:14, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(a) the term "people who disagreed with the major parties" was the term actually used in the source, the Australian Dictionary of Biography; and

(b) "extreme right" may have been a term appropriate to Sir Raphael Cilento - it was certainly not for Colin Clark as his Wikipedia entry demonstrates.Rufus marcus (talk) 08:33, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The term used in the source is actually "disaffected", which I think is pretty different. I don't know much about Clark, so I'll defer to you on that. But I think describing Russell as "far right" is fair. Not only did he co-found a political party with Cilento, he also had major contacts in the League of Rights. Frickeg (talk) 09:44, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please provide your reference for your assertion about his "major contacts" with the League of Rights, which I have no reason to believe.Rufus marcus (talk) 02:25, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Major" may be overstating the case, but here: " He kept in contact with various fronts of Eric Butler's Australian League of Rights, but did not join the league because he disagreed with its Social Credit theories." ADB I just want to reiterate that I'm not interested in smearing Russell or anything like that (I actually find him one of the more fascinating political fringe figures of the last century), but I do want to make it easy for readers to understand where he stood on the spectrum, and I think "right wing" is a bit vague. As I said before I don't really like the whole left-right dichotomy anyway, so if you have an alternative suggestion I'd be really glad to hear it. Frickeg (talk) 12:21, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]