Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 43

This is an archive of past discussions about Mass killings under communist regimes. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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Why does this page exist?

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

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

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

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

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

The Communist and Soviet studies is not a field like climate change or the Holocaust where there is overwhelming consensus; it is a conflictual, politicised field and an article like this is very hard to avoid original research, synthesis and especially get NPOV right, "which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." Yet, we only present one view of the events and act like it is a fact or, worse, that this view (Communism as a new category or class of mass killings) is held my most scholars. No one is saying or denying that killings or mass killings did not happen; what I and many scholars deny is that Communist mass killings are a special or new category. As you noted here, "Governments across the political spectrum have engaged in mass killings" but only Communist ones are discussed, even though most scholars actually deny or reject that it is a new or special category or mass killings, which makes it even worse. We do not list all anti-communist or capitalist mass killings into one article (we have Anti-communist mass killings and Mass killings under colonial regimes as a redirect to Genocide of indigenous peoples), even though Google Scholar gives a similar, equal or at times higher results than Communist mass killings; and books about mass killings under capitalism, colonialism and imperialism have been published or discussed in scholarly discourse. Davide King (talk) 11:01, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1) You misrepresented my position. I was only quoting The Four Deuces and there has been such a widespread misuse and misunderstanding of sources that I prefer to be conservative, especially as I wrote in here that Valentino may not actually be a proponent of it as argued here by Rick Norwood that "[t]he chapter does not assert that genocide is caused by any particular id[e]ology but rather says that it occurs when power is in the hands of one person or a small number of people. A quote shows that the author's views are the opposite of the views given in this article, 'Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing.'" So when even one of its alleged proponents (Valentino) says this, what does this say about the article's main topic? This speaks volume. A more accurate title may be Mass killings under Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot's 'Communist' regimes. But this still does not solve the issue that it is only a few scholars who lump those three together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First of all, thanks again for your response.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indeed they mention that other "[m]ass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out in other countries," but this article uses a passing mention as a coatrack to provide extensive text on these other countries. As a result, the article does not follow the topic in the sources, doesn't explain what their authors concluded, but instead becomes a list article. As I said, it comes closer to the article in Metapedia than it does to any of the four sources. TFD (talk) 22:45, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

Technically, the article is in good shape, mostly thanks to AmateurEditor. Unfortunately, that makes it especially harmful to Wikipedia's reputation, because it visually a good quality and well sourced article that provides a very one sided and biased picture.
The article must exist, because there are reliable sources written on this topic, and these sources should be duly represented in WP, and their analysis in a context of other writings must be provided.
The article can be fixed and should be fixed, but that may require significantly modifications.

The article is intrinsically biased because the very topic is beyond the scope of the scholarly community. The the very concept "Communist mass killing" is not a universally accepted concept, so the authors who are not writing in that paradigm (i.e. an overwhelming majority of historians who specialise in history of some particular country) are beyond the scope of this article, and their views are either ignored or distorted in this article. Let me give just a couple of examples.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IOW reliable sources do not provide weight you would like to see and you want to fix that. But the sole criterion for weight is treatment in reliable sources on the topic of the article. While it may be that there are a lot of important things about the house Washington stayed in that his biographers ignored, we have to use the weight they assign, not what we do. I actually added a place where Washington stayed to his article.[1] Since then the article has been edited thousands of times and the name of the house he stayed in has been erased, but his trip and its significance is still in the article. My view is that if most biographers don't mention the name of the house, I cannot demand its inclusion. On the other hand, I have been there and recommend that people visit it. I have to accept that what I find interesting and what reliable sources find interesting may be different. A guy from Eastern Europe for example may find what Communists did in Eastern Europe more interesting than a guy from North Europe. TFD (talk) 02:55, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PackMecEng, you are the living example of how this article existing for so many years simply fed this implicit bias. You fail to realise that the reason those argued for Delete was that given sources do not actually support the topic (again, it is not clear what main topic actually is) and the article continues to have issues of weight, original research, synthesis and NPOV. It is simply assumed and taken for granted. As concisely argued by Paul Siebert, "that makes it especially harmful to Wikipedia's reputation, because it visually a good quality and well sourced article that provides a very one sided and biased picture." Davide King (talk) 03:59, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Davide King:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See my comments above: "As I mentioned (now in the archives), the topic doesn't exist in mainstream or even fringe sources (except Metapedia). While there is literature that compares mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia, there is no literature that compares mass killings across the Communist world. The article implies that mass killings are a core element of Communist ideology, which is inaccurate." [11:45, 25 October 2020][2] TFD (talk) 02:28, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

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

We literally write "this term is not popular among scholars in Germany or internationally; that usage of this term "allows the reality it describes to immediately attain, in the Western mind, a status equal to that of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazi regime"; and that it supports the "competitive martyrdom component of Double Genocide", a theory whose worst version is Holocaust obfuscation; with George Voicu stating that Leon Volovici has "rightfully condemned the abusive use of this concept as an attempt to 'usurp' and undermine a symbol specific to the history of European Jews." So the topic should perhaps be about this double genocide theory, which is Holocaust revisionism and trivalisation, not a general concept of Communist genocide/mass killings that is not broadly supported in scholarship.

In conclusion, you, KIENGIR and others actually want the article to be about all mass killings under Communist regimes, but this can be easily done in a list-style article; and the same could be done for capitalist, colonialist, conservative, fascist, imperialist and liberal crimes. On the other hand, this article was and is supposed to be about a general concept of Communist mass killings that is not actually supported by sources and that as repeatedly and correctly pointed out by Paul Siebert, "[t]he the very concept 'Communist mass killing' is not a universally accepted concept, so the authors who are not writing in that paradigm (i.e. an overwhelming majority of historians who specialise in history of some particular country) are beyond the scope of this article, and their views are either ignored or distorted in this article." A simply solution that may accomodate both sides is to delete this article and move most of its content at more relevant articles and creating a List of mass killings under Communist regimes, where we would simply list them and not engage in the current analysis which is biased, one-sided (that you and KIENGIR do not see this is besides the point as the fact is the article represents only one view of historiography that Communism only is to blame) and is full of NPOV, original research, synthesis and weight violations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Communist regimes have been responsible for this century's most deadly episodes of mass killing. Estimates of the total number of people killed by communist regimes range as high as 110 million. In this chapter I focus primarily on mass killings in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia - history's most murderous communist states. Communist violence in these three states alone may account for between 21 million and 70 million deaths. Mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa." ..."Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or have been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing. In addition to shedding light on why some communist states have been among the most violent regimes in history, therefore, I also seek to explain why other communist countries have avoided this level of violence." ..."I argue that radical communist regimes have proven such prodigious killers primarily because the social change they sought to bring about have resulted in the sudden and nearly complete material and political dispossession of millions of people. These regimes practiced social engineering of the highest order. It is the revolutionary desire to bring about the rapid and radical transformation of society that distinguishes radical communist regimes from all other forms of government, including less violent communist regimes and noncommunist, authoritarian governments."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

C.J. Griffin, thanks for your comment, but I am sure all this is going to be dismissed as Communist propaganda, so I wished you would have gave an analysis those sources they gave, especially in explaining why they do not support the topic of a general Communist mass killing theory. I especially avoided pointing all this out because I am trying to be as neutral and unbiased as possible. My neutral argument is that this article is a mix of all those topics I listed below. The article takes the Communist genocide/mass killing concept from Mann, Strauss and Valentino, even though the second one is a book about genocide and the third one is a chapter about genocides and mass killings in the 20th century (with Communism simply being one type), then listing all mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pol, and adding all excess deaths under all Communist regimes, even as only few scholars and from one side list all non-combatant victims (famines, wars, etc.), to suggest all those are victims of Communism, its more accurate title that, however, does not really solve all those issues (undue weight, original research, synthesis, more than one topic, NPOV, etc.) I have highlighted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Main topic

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

Communist mass killing – The main topic is Communism as a new category or type of mass killings. It is still problematic to have an article and it is preferable to move content to the individual articles of proponents and to Mass killing itself, if at all. For one, it is not actually a notable topic as most scholars have either extensively criticised or completely ignored it, so cherry-picking from a few authors and scholars, as those in favour of Keep have repeatedly did, just shows that this should be discussed at each proponent's article, not that it is a notable topic, much less widely accepted by mainstream scholarship. Not only that, but it is not even clear whether some alleged proponents actually support the topic. I do not know if this was straight from the horse's mouth or from a reviewer, who holds much more weight than an user's original research, but Rick Norwood noted how Valentino stated that "Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing." This leads us to the second main topic, i.e. that only Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot did indeed engage in mass killings.
Mass killings under Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot – This is still problematic because only a few scholars actually lump those three together and it would be a violation of both due weight and NPOV to have an article about this when only a few, if any at all, scholars support the topic. Again, this would be better to be discussed individually, but it would still be synthesis because even Robert f#cking Conquest did not lump them together. As correctly noted by The Four Deuces, Conquest "did not write about mass killings under Communist regimes, he wrote about the Red terror, the Holodomor and the Great purge in the Soviet Union. He treated these as separate subjects and did not develop a theory of mass killings under Communist regimes. We should not put together a group of events and create an article when no one else has." The same goes for Mao and Pol Pot, for which we already have Cambodian genocide and Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia. This also ignores how several scholars do not agree that Pol Pot's was a Communist regime; there were actually two 'Communist' regimes in Cambodia, one of which was supported by both the Soviet Union and Vietnam, and which helped liberated Cambodia from Pol Pot, who was supported by the West and China. An article with this main topic would also lend undue weight to the similarities and ignore all the differences many scholars have noted or how several scholars do not consider Pol Pot's regime Communist, again avoiding to lump them all together.
Excess deaths under Communist regimes – This seems to be what many in favour of Keep are actually supporting, that of course killings, especially excess deaths or excess mortality, in mass numbers did happen under Communist regimes, so it should have an article; but this is not enough to have a List of capitalist mass killings, List of mass killings under capitalist regimes, List of fascist mass killings, or List of mass killings under fascist regimes. If there really must be an article detailing this, it should be only a list, without taking the POV that communism is to blame or that Communist mass killings are a widely accepted new category. We would simply list the related articles.

Going back to the proposed article, this still does not solve the issue on why all the Communist regimes should be lumped together when only a few, if any at all, do so; and that excess deaths mainly happened under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, not all Communist regimes. We already have Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin and I do not see why those should not be discussed individually rather than lumped together, when mainstream scholarship does not do so. When I say this violates NPOV, I do not mean to say: "It unduly gives communism the blame." Even though this is supported by scholarship and only a few, the same who lump all Communist regimes together, believe that communism is to blame. No, I mean that it inherently and inevitably violates NPOV ("which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.") by giving undue weight to the few scholars or authors who may or may not have proposed the topic, ignoring the extensive criticism from mainstream scholarship and how the fact so many scholars have completely ignored the topic speaks volume. This is a better proof of how the topic is not really notable but only pushed by a few authors or scholars, rather than selectively presenting a few authors or scholars who speak about the topic and in many cases even making original research and synthesis by attributing them conclusions they never made.
Victims of Communism – This is proposed by The Four Deuces and I assume it is not going to receive much support because it would or should be structured similarly to Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory in that only a few authors or scholars support the topic, which is broadly supported by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and right-wing, anti-communist, antisemite, and other fringe figures. But I hope they can correct me or clarify how they would structure it, if I misunderstood them.
Double genocide theory – as proposed here by The Four Deuces. Here is my comment.
Mass killings under Communist regimes – the current article, which essentially and more or less lumps all the above topics together, taking the Communist genocide/mass killing concept from Strauss and Valentino, even though the first one is a book about genocide and the second is a chapter about genocides and mass killings in the 20th century (with Communism simply being one type); then listing all mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pol, adding all excess deaths under all Communist regimes, even as only few scholars and from one side list all non-combatant victims (famines, wars, etc.), to suggest all those are victims of Communism, its more accurate title that, however, does not really solve all those issues (undue weight, original research, synthesis, more than one topic, NPOV, etc.) I have highlighted.

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

Let me conclude to make a final comment about how those who were for Delete have been each time ridiculed and strawmanned, when they were mostly the only ones to actually follow policy and guidelines. This comment equating those who are for Delete to those who would want to delete The Holocaust article really says it all. The Holocaust has overwhelming consensus among scholars, the other does not. As noted here by Fifelfoo, "the sources quoted are either FRINGE or don't actually theorise any cause, or explicitly claim the cause is greater than, or less than, communism." Even The Black Boof of Communism only "presents a number of chapters on single country studies, it presents no cross-cultural comparison, there is no discussion of "Mass killing[/Any other bad thing] in Communism." When even anti-communists such as Conquest and The Black Book of Communism are misunderstood and do not actually advocate the topic, it really says it all. To be clear, the same arguments I am making here for deletion of this article can be made for Anti-communist mass killings. Both would be better served as list articles, although the latter actually seems to be a topic that does exist in anti-communist literature, even though there are valid reasons to have it deleted and merged into Anti-communism; and that just because one is deleted, it does not mean the other should be too, and the same apply for keeping. Both articles should be based on whether a literature and topic actually exists. The only books or literature covering this topic are The Black Book of Communism, Red Holocaust and one chapter in Valentino's Final Solution, yet Valentino says most Communist regimes did not engage in mass killings and The Black Book of Communism, which I thought lumped them together, does not actually support the topic. So we are left with Red Holocaust by Steven Rosefield, a little too little.

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

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

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

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

Honestly, renaming to Victims of Communism seems like the simplest solution. It is a simpler, more neutral title that encompasses the topic the article touches on, and is a much more active and serious topic of scholarly study. More importantly, it seems like a proposal that might actually be able to reach a consensus. There would be no harm in putting this article up for AFD - the last AFD was ten years ago, and the article actually spent an absurd six of those years fully-protected (!), part of the reason its quality is still so low. I'm dubious a consensus could actually be found to delete it at this point, but it's somewhat silly to place too much stock in a ten-year-old RFC one way or the other; Wikipedia has changed substantially since then. At least a new AFD would give us a better sense of where things stand. --Aquillion (talk) 03:13, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regarding this, I believe a reason was actually given ("[...] The Black Book of Communism, which is a source that has been disproven many times and discredited by 2 of its main authors"); however, the reversal was right because it should have been discussed and gained consensus on the talk page first. Nonetheless, the problem is not just The Black Book of Communism but the fact the main topic does not exist and is not actually supported by sources; and even if it does exist, it is a minority position and the few sources reflect a minority—not mainstream—view. Hence, it is essentially impossible to keep this article and also respect NPOV, "which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic", when most sources either ignore the topic (as extensively proved by Paul Siebert and others) or the few scholars who discussed it extensively criticised those few authors and scholars who proposed it, some of which, including The Black Book of Communism and Valentino, may have been misread or misinterpreted even by those who are for Keep when those sources do not support the topic either, at least as a general concept. Hence, it is a minority view, not the mainstream view this article tries to pass it off as. Since there has not been anything added in the last few days, I say that Paul Siebert can go ahead with their proposal. Their analysis and reading seem to be correct. Davide King (talk) 21:05, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

What is the point of writing "[s]aid Lenin to his colleagues in the Bolshevik government: 'If we are not ready to shoot a saboteur and White Guardist, what sort of revolution is that?'" when it is cited to a book about the Russian Revolution? Why even use Sheilia Fitzpatrick just to source this rather than her actual opinions on the topic, if she has written about it (she has criticised the totalitarian concept and I would assume that, if she has talked about this topic, since many scholars simply ignore it, she would be critical of it), yet Fitzpatrick is cited just to source Lenin said that. This just underlines the problems.

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

WP:FRINGE is things like Moon landing conspiracy theories. You have yet to provide a source that even objects to lumping these events together and have instead asserted that sources on other topics implicitly reject this one by not mentioning it (a conclusion that would be original research on your part). The four sources I quoted to you are also not primary sources. Per WP:PRIMARY, those are "original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on. Primary sources may or may not be independent sources. An account of a traffic incident written by a witness is a primary source of information about the event; similarly, a scientific paper documenting a new experiment conducted by the author is a primary source on the outcome of that experiment. Historical documents such as diaries are primary sources." For this article, a primary source would be something like government documents generated by the USSR. About the quote from Fitzpatrick, I did not add it, I don't like pull-quotes like that, and if you want to delete it that is fine with me. I won't revert you. About the Getty source, it is used for an estimate for the event in that subtopic. Should it be ignored because it is specifically about the subsection topic and not about the article topic as a whole? Does every source in the George Washington article need to be a full biography of George Washington? I don't think so and I don't think Wikipedia policy and practice supports that idea. But thank you for starting to discuss specifics in the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 17:19, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

Google Scholar's analysis and research

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

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

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

Addendum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If scholars actually agreed and there was scholarly consensus, there would be no issue; the problem is that there is not one and having an article like this inherently implies that one side of a conflictual and politicised academic field is essentially right and correct; and violates NPOV ("which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic") when most scholars have not even written on the topic (that is the problem, there is no general concept of the topic) and essentially represents just one view pushed by most anti-communist authors and only few scholars. C.J. Griffin just made a good summary of the issue and possible solution. Davide King (talk) 17:08, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In addition, as noted by The Four Deuces, Communist crimes are used as slippery slopes for socialism and the broader left that any radical change is going to result in Communist mass killings (ironic coming from the liberal English Civil War and French Revolution, although some right-wing authors are now linking all the bad things of Communism to those bourgeois revolutions), even though the same argument is not applied to capitalism and the right; we do not see capitalist, colonialist, fascist and imperialist crimes being used, as they should, as an indictment for capitalism, conservatism, liberalism et al. This also ignores the contributes the left and other socialists gave to make actual existing capitalism more 'human'; the counter-argument would be that Communist regimes were all dictatorships but they all followed the Soviet model and this ignores the many contributes the broader left and socialists gave in the 20th century to make capitalism 'human', without which 19th-century capitalism, under 20th-century material conditions, would not be so far away from 20th-century Communist regimes.^{[nb 1]}

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

^ As noted by Christopher Pierson, "[i]f the contrast which 1989 highlights is not that between socialism in the East and liberal democracy in the West, the latter must be recognized to have been shaped, reformed and compromised by a century of social democratic pressure." In other words, "social democratic and socialist parties within the constitutional arena in the West have almost always been involved in a politics of compromise with existing capitalist institutions (to whatever far distant prize its eyes might from time to time have been lifted)." For Pierson, "if advocates of the death of socialism accept that social democrats belong within the socialist camp, as I think they must, then the contrast between socialism (in all its variants) and liberal democracy must collapse. For actually existing liberal democracy is, in substantial part, a product of socialist (social democratic) forces."

You can see this in how over the last few decades, this has been wilful and willingly ignored, including social democracy's socialist claims and tradition, which are mainly disputed by those to their left and mainly by those leftists opposed to the Third Way, with which it is conflated, so as to claim that all this progress made by socialists in the West was not really socialist just because they did not turn the economy into a centrally-managed, administrative-command system, ignoring that socialism is not just an economic system (certainly not, if by economically socialist, or socialist economic system, one refers only to the Soviet model, which many legitimate academics, economists and scholars have labelled centrally-managed, not planned, command economy, state capitalism, or otherwise a non-socialist mode of production) but a political philosophy and movement too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Main topic (continued)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OTOH, there is the fringe right-wing view as exemplified by George Watson in The Lost Literature of Socialism that mass murder is a key feature of socialism found in its earliest documents. Hence all socialists (which the Right defines very broadly to include such people as Joe Biden) have the potential to eliminate their populations and replace them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving forward

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

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

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

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

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

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

Actually, I don't see much evidence that either "victims of communism" or "Mass killings under communist regimes" is a common name for the theory that all victims of different communist regimes and repressions, famine, etc. all should be grouped under one umbrella. Searching "victims of communism" gets me the following sources on Google Scholar:[3]
- Ghodsee, Kristen (2014). "A Tale of "Two Totalitarianisms": The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism". History of the Present. 4 (2): 115–142. doi:10.5406/historypresent.4.2.0115. ISSN 2159-9785. The signatories to this Declaration proclaimed that the "millions of victims of Communism and their families are entitled to enjoy justice, sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings in the same way as the victims of Nazism...
- Dolgoy, Rebecca Clare; Elżanowski, Jerzy (2018). "Working through the limits of multidirectional memory: Ottawa's Memorial to the Victims of Communism and National Holocaust Monument". Citizenship Studies. 22 (4): 433–451. doi:10.1080/13621025.2018.1462507.
- Neumayer, Laure (2017). "Advocating for the cause of the "victims of Communism" in the European political space: memory entrepreneurs in interstitial fields". Nationalities Papers. 45 (6): 992–1012. doi:10.1080/00905992.2017.1364230.
- Đureinović, Jelena (2018). "Law as an Instrument and as a Mirror of Official Memory Politics: The Mechanism for Rehabilitating Victims of Communism in Serbia". Review of Central and East European Law. 43 (2): 232–251. doi:10.1163/15730352-04302005.
(boldface added) However, we would not consider Prague Declaration or the name of a memorial to be a RS for history! So I conclude that even "victims of communism" is not a common name at least not looking at academic sources. Therefore, I suggest coming up with a NPOV, descriptive title indicating a theory shared by some but by no means all scholars. (t · c) buidhe 16:10, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Buidhe, that is what I and others have been saying this whole time. The current article, which essentially and more or less lumps many topics together, taking the Communist genocide/mass killing concept from Straus and Valentino, even though the first is a book about genocide and is merely discussing Valentino's work, while the second is a chapter about genocides and mass killings in the 20th century (with Communism simply being one type); then listing all mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pol, adding all excess deaths under all Communist regimes, even as only few scholars and from one side list all non-combatant victims (famines, wars, etc.), to suggest all those are victims of Communism, its more accurate title that, however, does not really solve all those issues (undue weight to the few scholars who propose the topic, in many cases even being misrepresented, original research, synthesis, more than one, clear main topic, NPOV, etc.) I have highlighted. This is why the only main topic that this article may support is a theory pushed by anti-communist organisations, in some popular media and literature, but otherwise being a fringe theory in academia. This would require at the very least big restructuring and perhaps a name change. Davide King (talk) 16:25, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

[1] As noted by Christopher Pierson, "[i]f the contrast which 1989 highlights is not that between socialism in the East and liberal democracy in the West, the latter must be recognized to have been shaped, reformed and compromised by a century of social democratic pressure." In other words, "social democratic and socialist parties within the constitutional arena in the West have almost always been involved in a politics of compromise with existing capitalist institutions (to whatever far distant prize its eyes might from time to time have been lifted)." For Pierson, "if advocates of the death of socialism accept that social democrats belong within the socialist camp, as I think they must, then the contrast between socialism (in all its variants) and liberal democracy must collapse. For actually existing liberal democracy is, in substantial part, a product of socialist (social democratic) forces."

You can see this in how over the last few decades, this has been wilful and willingly ignored, including social democracy's socialist claims and tradition, which are mainly disputed by those to their left and mainly by those leftists opposed to the Third Way, with which it is conflated, so as to claim that all this progress made by socialists in the West was not really socialist just because they did not turn the economy into a centrally-managed, administrative-command system, ignoring that socialism is not just an economic system (certainly not, if by economically socialist, or socialist economic system, one refers only to the Soviet model, which many legitimate academics, economists and scholars have labelled centrally-managed, not planned, command economy, state capitalism, or otherwise a non-socialist mode of production) but a political philosophy and movement too.

[nb 1]