Talk:Right Sector/Archive 6

Latest comment: 1 year ago by Tristario in topic Has been described as "neo-nazi"
Archive 1 Archive 4 Archive 5 Archive 6

Competing views about Right Sector

Suppose we randomly sample the population of published reliable sources that directly relate to the subject (Right Sector). What proportion represent it as:

  • Right-wing?
Significant proportion. --Dervorguilla (talk) 03:09, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Far right?
Significant proportion. --Dervorguilla (talk) 03:09, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Nationalist?
Significant proportion. --Dervorguilla (talk) 03:09, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Radical nationalist?
Significant proportion. --Dervorguilla (talk) 03:09, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Ultranationalist?
Significant proportion. --Dervorguilla (talk) 03:09, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Neofascist?
Tiny minority, mostly Russian. --Dervorguilla (talk) 03:09, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Neo-Nazi?
Tiny minority, all Russian. --Dervorguilla (talk) 03:09, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
"Tiny minority, all Russian."
If none of you find that as an explicit logical fallacy, please have the courtesy of not posting in Wikipedia.
Also, please Wikipedia, go back to being actually neutral and informative. 213.194.144.91 (talk) 08:57, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Once we get some data, we can apply NPOV.

Articles should not give minority views as much of a description as more widely held views.
Undue weight can be given in several ways, including quantity of text and prominence of placement.
Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject.

As long as the sources are reliable, due and undue weight seems to be determined not by relative quality, but by relative quantity. --Dervorguilla (talk) 02:56, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

These are not mutually exclusive descriptions. However, "far right" is the most descriptive, since it refers to an ideological family, and no sources dispute it.
Also, radical nationalists, ultranationalists, neofascists and Neo-Nazis are all far right, radical nationalists and Ultranationalists are nationalists and the far right is right-wing. Not all nationalists or right-wingers of course are far right, only if they are extreme.
TFD (talk) 05:57, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
TFD, Dervorguilla, there are no competing narratives regarding Right Sector's neo-Fascist constituent groups in reliable sources, except here. Early on, Dervorguilla argued that press reports on Right Sector's far-right politics should be given little weight, because higher quality sources were required for these kinds of characterizations. Now, they are arguing that higher-quality sources should be downplayed in favor of passing references to Right Sector as "right wing."
There are no reliable sources disputing that some of Right Sector's constituent elements are neo-Nazi organizations. This characterization is given by every academic source that comments on the issue, and by newspapers when they do as well. That is because the Social-National Assembly and Patriots of Ukraine are recognized racist, neo-Nazi groups known for carrying out attacks on minorities in Ukraine. Right Sector is an assemblage that includes these groups.
These facts are documented in multiple academic journal articles / book chapters, and in newspaper articles from 'Haaretz, Die Welt and The New York Times. -Darouet (talk) 13:54, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Regarding "WP:UNDUE", Dervorguilla has insisted on placing the sentence "The Associated Press and other international news organizations have found no evidence of hate crimes" into the lead, based on a single article, but has not proposed to add the multiple reliable sources describing hate crimes by its constituents into the lead, and persists in removing well-sourced descriptions of their neo-Nazi or neo-fascist politics. -Darouet (talk) 14:04, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Apparent consensus that Right Sector can be most tersely described as "far right"; and that "right wing nationalist" is less specific but still accurate.
No consensus yet as to whether a significant proportion of Right Sector's members also belong to a recognized "neo-Nazi" or "neofacist" political group.
Apparent consensus that a meta-analysis of reports by three or more international news agencies found no evidence of hate crimes by Right Sector; and that no reports have yet been found that do describe it as committing such crimes. --Dervorguilla (talk) 17:38, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
Dervorguilla, a random assortment of your subjective impressions regarding media or scholarly views of Right Sector doesn't constitute a "meta-analysis," and a single post by TFD doesn't make "an apparent consensus." -Darouet (talk) 22:04, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
meta–analysis. Quantitative statistical analysis that is applied to separate but similar studies of independent researchers and that involves pooling the data and using the pooled data to test for statistical significance. MW3.
AP pooled the data gathered by three or four independent news agencies. The number of hate crimes found was 0, 0, and 0 (or 0, 0, 0, and 0). --Dervorguilla (talk) 00:12, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
I believe we all agree that a "single" post doesn't make a consensus, Darouet. --Dervorguilla (talk) 00:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Despite your best efforts Dervorguilla, I find your explanations here unrelated to many of your changes, and often incoherent. They're also at odds with reliable sources and especially scholarly sources, which is certainly related to the fact that you keep on removing or minimizing the use of scholarly sources in this article.

We've talked about this endlessly here and I don't think we'll come to an agreement. I think we should follow some kind of mediation process so that we can come to a resolution and move onto other editing projects. Let me know what you think. -Darouet (talk) 21:38, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

You've made it clear that you're feeling frustrated, Darouet, but you did submit this same dispute (something about removing scholarly sources) to mediation four months ago.
Here's the reason for the pending removal of material cited to a couple of non-scholarly sources...
Each source has been tagged as "[need quotation to verify]".
From the edit summary:
foreign-language source, statement about an existing group, may be inaccurate, direct quote needed to verify (VERIFIABILITY: Citing non-English sources)
Both of the sources are in foreign languages (Russian or Ukrainian). The statement is about an existing group (SNA) and it seems to be inaccurate (check "social-national state" at DuckDuckGo).
For policy, see Verifiability: Citing non-English sources or Template:Request quotation.
So, please provide a direct quote and other relevant details from either of the sources you cited. Many thanks, Dervorguilla (talk) 08:48, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
I am referring to this edit, in which you:
  • removed the sentence "Academic and media sources describe some of Right Sector's constituent groups as radical nationalist, neofascist, or neo-Nazi" from the lead, and removed the 4 supporting academic publications, and the article from The New York Times, and from Die Welt,
  • removed lengthier descriptions from these sources in the article body,
  • moved your completely incoherent "press description" section above the scholarly description section,
  • unnecessarily lengthened the lead's description of Right Sector's political characterization in the media, and
  • describe Russian media or government description of Right Sector as "government propaganda" in the voice of Wikipedia itself.
We have discussed this endlessly above, and Dervorguilla I don't mean to be offensive, but at this point I am not convinced that you have demonstrated good faith while editing here, though I am very happy that you have often been civil. Perhaps you have the best intentions, but in that case I am not certain that you have the competence to improve this article because your efforts have resulted in the systematic distortion of Right Sector's politics.
Last time we didn't pursue mediation, but rather dispute resolution, which is a different issue. I'm sorry that the process never completed, and that was largely my fault: it took so long that my very busy real-world schedule made it impossible for me to participate for a period.
I would strongly encourage you to consider the possibility of a return to dispute resolution, or to consider formal mediation, which would be binding for both of us. That would end what has effectively become a long term edit war over this article. It would also give us time to edit on other subjects. For my part, there are many other articles I'd like to write or edit on, and coming to an agreement here would certainly free time. -Darouet (talk) 09:43, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Here are some of the "scholarly sources" [1][1][1][1][1][2][3][3] that you're now drawing our attention to, Darouet.

  1. ^ a b c d e Shekhovstov, Anton (2013). "17: Para-Militarism to Radical Right-Wing Populism: The Rise of the Ukrainian Far-Right Party Svoboda.". In Wodak (ed.). Right-Wing Populism in Europe. Bloomsbury Academic. Svoboda also seems to benefit from the increasing popularity of extreme-right youth movements and organizations like the Social-National Assembly (SNA), 'Patriot of Ukraine' and Autonomous Resistance, whose aim is to create 'a uniracial and uninational society'. The activities of these groups are not limited to physical or symbolic violence against ethnic and social minorities, as they also take an active part in numerous social campaigns - generally along with representatives of Svoboda - ranging from mass protests against price rises to leafleting against alcohol and drug use. Needless to say, members of these extreme-right movements are often members of Tyahnybok's party. Interestingly, 'street combat youth movements' like the SNA no longer focus on ethnic issues: in contrast to the older Ukrainian far right, the new groups are, first and foremost, racist movements.
  2. ^ Shekhovtsov, Anton (2013). "17: From Para-Militarism to Radical Right-Wing Populism: The Rise of the Ukrainian Far-Right Party Svoboda". In Ruth Wodak (ed.). Right-Winf Populism in Europe. Blumsbury Academic. pp. 249–263. ISBN 1780932456. Retrieved 12 May 2014. At the same time, Nova Syla's Yuriy Zbitnyev is one of the leaders of the neo-Nazi group Social-National Assembly, an organization that is also close to the younger members of Svoboda, but Nova Syla itself, while remaining on the fringes of Ukrainian politics, is not much influenced by these relations.
  3. ^ a b Shekhovtsov, Anton (2013). "17: From Para-Militarism to Radical Right-Wing Populism: The Rise of the Ukrainian Far-Right Party Svoboda". In Ruth Wodak (ed.). Right-Winf Populism in Europe. Blumsbury Academic. pp. 249–263. ISBN 1780932456. Retrieved 12 May 2014. At the same time, Nova Syla's Yuriy Zbitnyev is one of the leaders of the neo-Nazi group Social-National Assembly, an organization that is also close to the younger members of Svoboda, but Nova Syla itself, while remaining on the fringes of Ukrainian politics, is not much influenced by these relations.

Triplicating a scholarly source could inadvertently impress some busy editors and readers more (three times more?) than adding it once. --Dervorguilla (talk) 06:21, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

None of the six references in the edit I referenced above is a duplicate of the other. Did you really just make that post without even looking at them? -Darouet (talk) 12:16, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Each of the triplicate citations appears to have been added by Darouet, on 21 July 2014 (the first two at 07:26, the third at 07:34). --Dervorguilla (talk) 23:10, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
This conversation is very general and should focus more on what the lead should say. I think it should begin something like, "The Right Sector is a far right Ukrainian party that is an umbrella grouping of extremist, extreme nationalist, neo-fascist and neo-nazi groups." TFD (talk) 17:39, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
TFD, that is exactly what I think the lead should say as well. What I was saying above was that, if Dervorguilla were unable to agree on this relatively simple (in my view) lead sentence, the appropriate action would be mediation of some kind, given the many months we've argued over this point. -Darouet (talk) 20:47, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Quadruplicate citations

A contributor has been drawing our attention to the "scholarly sources" — in particular, "multiple academic … book chapters" — that he believes characterize Right Sector's "constituent elements" in a particular way.
(Note: my actual text was, "multiple academic journal articles / book chapters," referring to the multiple journal articles that have been published on this issue, and are being ignored here by Dervorguilla. -Darouet (talk) 09:58, 25 August 2014 (UTC))

These facts are documented in multiple academic journal articles / book chapters....

Here are four of the "academic book chapters" [1][1][1][1][1][2][3][4][4] cited in the article:

  1. ^ a b c d e Shekhovstov, Anton (2013). "17: Para-Militarism to Radical Right-Wing Populism: The Rise of the Ukrainian Far-Right Party Svoboda.". In Wodak (ed.). Right-Wing Populism in Europe. Bloomsbury Academic. Svoboda also seems…
  2. ^ Shekhovtsov, Anton (2013). "17: From Para-Militarism to Radical Right-Wing Populism: The Rise of the Ukrainian Far-Right Party Svoboda". In Ruth Wodak (ed.). Right-Winf Populism in Europe. Blumsbury Academic. pp. 249–263. ISBN 1780932456. Retrieved 12 May 2014. At the same time, Nova Syla's Yuriy Zbitnyev is…
  3. ^ Shekhovtsov, Anton (2013). Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse. A&C Black. p. 256. Interestingly, 'street combat movements' like the SNA no longer focus…
  4. ^ a b Shekhovtsov, Anton (2013). "17: From Para-Militarism to Radical Right-Wing Populism: The Rise of the Ukrainian Far-Right Party Svoboda". In Ruth Wodak (ed.). Right-Winf Populism in Europe. Blumsbury Academic. pp. 249–263. ISBN 1780932456. Retrieved 12 May 2014. At the same time, Nova Syla's Yuriy Zbitnyev is…

Each of the quadruplicate citations appears to have been added by Darouet, on the same day. (The first three at 07:26, the fourth at 07:34.)

Citations 2 and 3 were added to support the same sentence. --Dervorguilla (talk) 23:10, 24 August 2014 (UTC) 00:50, 25 August 2014 (UTC) 04:14, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Citations 2 and 3 are written two different ways: 

publisher=
[2] Blumsbury Academic
[3] A&C Black
chapter=
[2] From Para-Militarism...
[3] chapter omitted
editor=
[2] Ruth Wodak
[3] editor omitted
title=
[2] Right-Winf Populism...
[3] Right-Wing Populism...: Politics and Discourse
url=
[2] http://www.amazon.com/...
[3] http://books.google.ca/...

The alterations could give a busy editor the impression that these are two different sources. --Dervorguilla (talk) 05:45, 25 August 2014 (UTC) [13:08, 15 September 2014 (UTC)]

  Bumping thread for 60 days.  Unician   19:23, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, this happened because some citations were coming from other articles, using text I'd written and researched myself there, but with references already filled out independently in those other articles. I'm working to fix this problem now, as it's not so difficult to do. -Darouet (talk) 09:54, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
By the way, in three cases, different portions of the article were being cited in the "quote" parameter of the citation. In the fourth case, the reference was simply a duplicate. Since Dervorguilla has been so insistent on challenging academic or journalistic references describing the far-right, racist or fascistic politics of Right Sector or its constituent groups, I have been providing quotes for every citation. In the case of the Wodak chapter, three of the quotes differed from one another and supported different information with those differing quotes. Nevertheless, on the basis of Dervorguilla's objection, I've removed all but two. Readers were, in all cases, still able to locate the sources for text in the article. -Darouet (talk) 10:07, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Oh yes, I agree that such descriptions are not mutually exclusive, and the organization was described as all of them. However, the relative weight of the different claims was summarized about right by Dervorguilla. Only the predominant/majority views belong to the infobox, while all well sourced views belong to the page, and I think they are currently included. My very best wishes (talk) 16:29, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
The organization is commonly referred to as both fascist[1] and neo-Nazi[2][3][4][5] by international reliable sources, so those categories must be maintained.
Notes: User:My very best wishes, I kindly ask you to stop following me.[1]--Mhorg (talk) 10:47, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

References

Has been described as "neo-nazi"

@Mhorg Thank you for finding another source for that description. The issue is, though, saying that a group espouses neo-nazi ideology isn't the same as saying a group is neo-nazi. The first is a lot more vague, and could just be interpreted as meaning that a subset of the group hold neo-nazi views, or that some of the views of the group align with neo-nazi views. If you can find a reliable source that straightforwardly describes it as neo-nazi that would be good - otherwise I don't think that belongs in the lede, especially since it's a passing mention in the source.

As an example to demonstrate what I mean - some might say Fox News talk shows espouse white supremacist views. But that isn't the same as saying those shows are white supremacist shows (Note: that is just an example and I'm making no claims about fox news etc.). Tristario (talk) 10:37, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Off-topic argument involving blocked user
No again that's Russian propaganda saying they espouse a neo-Nazi ideology, even if it hasn't tumbled with the odd reliable source. The Right Sector is conservative, right wing to far right, nobody denies it, but antisemitic and neo-Nazi it is not, and cannot be, becaause if it was, it would be pro- and not anti-Russia. Where outside hardline Palestinians and perhaps Iran is the only place you get neo-Nazi and antisemitic rhetoric? Answer: Russia & Putin. --Justice 4 all people (talk) 19:33, 2 November 2022 (UTC) check-user blocked account
The Nazis were anti-Russian and in fact invaded Russia in 1941. Stepan Bandera, whom the Right Sector idolizes, collaborated with the Nazis. TFD (talk) 20:41, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, according to Putin, and Kremlin-funded Russian state sponsored media, not reliable sources. --Justice 4 all people (talk) 21:07, 2 November 2022 (UTC) check-user blocked account
@Justice 4 all people So you are saying that Bandera, didn’t collaborate with the Germans? - GizzyCatBella🍁 21:12, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
No! I'm saying the link between the Right Sector and Stepan Bandera is Russian false propaganda. --Justice 4 all people (talk) 21:18, 2 November 2022 (UTC) check-user blocked account
I see. Feel free to propose adjustments. - GizzyCatBella🍁 21:20, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
I don't have to do anything there. Bandera having sided with Germany was an (understandable) choice to oppose Russia & the Soviets at the time. It doesn't mean even he was a nazi, nor the party today is neo-nazi. They're just pro-Ukrainian as oppose to Russia which claims there is no Ukrainian state. --Justice 4 all people (talk) 00:18, 3 November 2022 (UTC) check-user blocked account
@Justice 4 all people If you want to add anything to the article sourced to a reliable source or provide relevant sources on the talk page you're welcome to do so Tristario (talk) 10:53, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
  • I also noticed this. To define an organization or political movement as "neo-Nazi" or "fascist" in the lead, one must have a significant coverage in the body of the page describing the organization as fascist and explaining what exactly the members of organization committed as fascists. We do not have it in the body of the page beyond a few mentions in passing. Hence, I removed this from the lead. My very best wishes (talk) 02:54, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
    It's true the sourcing for labelling it as "neo-fascist" is pretty weak (passing mentions, weasel wording), and we also don't have significant coverage calling it neo-fascist in the body. We have some text saying it's been "demonized as fascist", which carries the implication that labelling it as fascist is wrong, and we have some description of some constituent groups as neo-fascist. So yeah, we probably need something stronger than that to be including neo-fascist in the lede & infobox Tristario (talk) 05:50, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
  • Having reviewed the sources we use, it is clear that none or few describe it as either "neo-fascist" or "neo-Nazi". Some note neo-fascist elements, which is a different thing, and F24 notes that its description is contested with some calling it neo-fascist. The only exception is the Washington Post (removed by MVBW as inaccessible and possibly out of context but which I checked and restored), which does say it "espouse[s] neo-Nazi ideology", but this is an outlier, and also a more passing mention than the other sources. So I support keeping these contentious labels out of the infobox and also out of the categories. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:29, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
Thank you! I also noticed that Right Sector as an organization was accused of murders of Oles Buzina and Sergei Dolgov on the page. This is a very serious accusation. Is it actually the case according to multiple RS? Not to my knowledge, but if it was, then welcome to re-include. My very best wishes (talk) 19:32, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
Yes, the source there didn't even link right sector specifically to those murders (it just makes a very general reference to "these groups"). We could include a brief mention of what that UN report does say about right sector (it only mentions right sector in passing so we should only give it a bit of weight) Tristario (talk) 23:22, 7 February 2023 (UTC)