Talk:Fusion Party

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According to the election maps, a Fusion Party also existed in 1812, and was the Democratic-Republicans' main opposition.

SteveSims (talk) 22:13, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

That is misleading. There was not a single entity known as the "Fusion Party". The candidate received votes based on electoral fusion -- the same candidate was nominated by multiple parties. The votes from the various parties were all counted for the individual. older ≠ wiser 03:36, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

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North Carolina

I came across this article as a reader of Wilmington insurrection of 1898. It makes many references to "Fusionists", a "Fusion Coalition", and a "Fusion party", which link to the North Carolina section of this article. Seeking more information, I was SURPRISEd to find nothing about North Carolina here. The content was removed last month by Indy beetle. I reverted this removal a couple of days ago, thinking my edit summary adequate, but Indy beetle reverted this. Per WP:BRD, the content should stand while we discuss.

We seem to be in agreement on the underlying facts: the group referred to in the Wilmington insurrection was not a formal political party called the Fusion Party. I hope we can also agree that the term "fusion" is used in the context of North Carolina politics of the day (see, for example, Marion Butler and North Carolina General Assembly of 1899–1900. Furthermore, I would suggest that the Wilmington use, if nothing else, could be referred to as 'a fusionist political party. I assume the capitalization of "Fusionist party" at the insurrection article is deliberate, and I agree with it.

What are our potential remedies? I admit that this article, as it stands, is about entities called Fusion Party. I suggest that with minimal effort, its scope could be expanded to include unofficial fusionist parties, and the North Carolina section in particular could be rewritten to make clear that it falls under such a case. The other articles I mentioned in the previous paragraph link to Electoral fusion, which I think is erroneous, since it's referring to a more specific balloting practice (and note the {{distinguish}} hatnote), but I could probably be persuaded to migrate the North Carolina content there. Finally, we could rewrite articles of North Carolina politics at the time to remove references to fusionism. I am also open to alternate suggestions. --BDD (talk) 15:45, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

• @BDD: I do agree with you about the underlying facts which you have presented, but there is another which when taken into consideration wholly disqualifies the North Carolina situation from being on this page. Yes, this article is about entities formally called "Fusionist Party". Even if we broadened it to the scope which you suggest, including parties that were the result of various groups uniting together as a single party regardless of their name, the NC movement would not fall under that criteria. This is because there was never a "Fusionist Party" or "fusionist party" in NC during the 1890s; there were two parties that coordinated with eachother, the Republican Party and the Populist Party. As the opening quote from the NCPedia article on the subject says: "Between 1894 and 1900 the North Carolina Republican and Populist Parties cooperated in state elections and in state government. That cooperation was labeled "Fusion" by its Democratic opponents, although Republicans and Populists maintained separate organizations". What this is referring to is electoral fusion. (So whatever you read at the Wilmington article is also factually wrong, and in fact perhaps ironically a holdover from the white supremacist redeemer historiography of the early 20th century which would paint the Democrats as chivralic heroes and the the black Republicans and poor white Populists as a single conspiracy organization.) In fact, this Wikipedia article has a disambig link at the top which says, "Not to be confused with electoral fusion, an arrangement in which multiple parties vote for a mutually agreeable candidate while remaining distinct parties".

I removed the section from this page because it is blatantly wrong in its basic assumption that there was one party, as revealed in its first for words "North Carolina’s Fusion Party". And secondly, the description of the coup (linked to Wilmington Insurrection) leading the overthrow of the state legislature is blatantly wrong, as the coup only took down the Wilmington city government while the fusionists lost the legislature in the brutal electoral campaigns of 1898 and 1900. The source listed for that sentence, the NCPedia article, actually doesn't mention Wilmington at all, which means that the source has been misrepresented here. In summary, the entire section's existence on this page rests on a false premise and it gets other basic facts wrong. It needs to be removed.

As for remedies, I think the most obvious one is to create a separate article on Fusionism in North Carolina, as this is how most academics refer to that political tide. The topic is quite clearly notable (a Google search will not disappoint you in returning results of books and academic articles on the subject) and I planned on eventually getting around to it myself. The NCPedia article is a handy source which could give us a broad outline for such a new Wiki article. -Indy beetle (talk) 00:09, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, Indy beetle, and I think it gives us a clear solution that I'm amenable to: split the content from the NC section to the new article Fusionism in North Carolina. Ideally link to it from here in the See also section, perhaps with a hidden comment pointing to the talk page in case anyone would be inclined to reverse. Also agreed on the irony of continuing to use this terminology in the NC context, but I think that just comes down to reflecting wording in sources, even if its provenance is dubious. --BDD (talk) 15:36, 13 July 2020 (UTC)