Talk:Salvatore Babones

Trump and Babbitt

User:Piotrus reverted an edit linking to Babones' description of Ashli Babbitt as "An American hero" on grounds of:

• editorializing - but the information was presented without any comment
• WP:UNDUE - it was one sentence
• possibly a WP:BLP issue - sourced directly to an article by the subject. Where is the issue

I agree that many Wikipedia readers would find this information discreditable, but many others would agree with Babones. Presumably, Babones himself doesn't regard it as discreditable or he wouldn't have put it forward prominently.JQ (talk) 04:07, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

@John Quiggin: Whether some people would like such labels doesn't make them due or neutral. Consider the claim you added: "He has written numerous articles in support of Donald Trump". What's the source? Which reliable resource described his work as such? As for "described Ashli Babbitt killed in the Capitol riot as "an American hero", while this is factually true, why stress this fact in the lead? It's hardly a defining piece of his career, seeing as it received no secondary coverage. And, keep in mind that the lead is a summary of the article. The article may use some expansion. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:23, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Agree that it doesn't belong in the lead, and could do with expansionJQ (talk) 08:59, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

The Albrechtsen link, already in the article, was mainly about his support for Trump. I've made this clear, and shifted the Babbitt point to the body.JQ (talk) 09:09, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Recent edits

• Reliable sources cannot be excluded simply because editors feel them to be "hit-pieces".
• What he wrote in The Quadrant is undue unless multiple other reliable sources have taken notice of it. It might be prudent to note that the magazine leans far-right and per RSP, is unreliable.
• To summarize the affair:

• Babones found allegations of democratic backsliding under Modi's regime to be not corroborated by evidence and an outcome of the "anti-national" Indian intellegentia.
• Shortly, he became an internet sensation among the Hindu Right.

• Both are duly covered. It's late night here but I am firmly opposed to including ridiculous quotes like "anti-India, as a class, [though] not as individuals". You need to do a RfC to install such content. TrangaBellam (talk) 02:06, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't realize that you had added this. It seemed to me rather like that of a POV-pusher. So, let us look at the content:

In 2022, Babones gained fandom in the Indian right after denouncing the Indian intellegentia as politically motivated and anti-national; he claimed that the widespead claims of democratic backsliding under Narendra Modi's premiership were not corroborated by material evidence.

• Babones gained fandom in the Indian right - Nowhere to be found in the sources.
• politically motivated and anti-national - Again that combination hasn't been used. "Politically motivated" I could live with. But "anti-national"?
• the widespead claims of democratic backsliding under Narendra Modi's premiership - He made absolutely no comment about this.
• not corroborated by material evidence - He did a lot more than that. He labelled India a "democratic success story" based on reasonable statistical grounds, and argued that the ratings were way out of line.

More importantly, his "douncement" of the Indian intellectuals came by way of explaining why Inddia's rankings are low. Omitting this amounts to distortion and source misrepresentation. I am afraid your version counts as WP:POV and WP:OR. As for Quadrant, the fact it is not considered WP:RS does not mean that it cannot be mentioned. Why else we do we have a page on it? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:53, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

• Babones gained fandom in the Indian right is indeed unsourced.

• I had a source; let me check my browser history.

• You wish to nitpick between "anti-India" and "anti-national"?

• Please do launch a RfC and we can see the result.

• He made no comments about the widespead claims of democratic backsliding under Narendra Modi's premiership - huh?

• Babones' comments came in the backdrop of India's recent fall in V-Dem rank etc. under Modi's premiership. He explicitly accuses the Indian intellegentia of being "anti-Modi" and enquires if UPAIII is going to reverse policies like CAA, UAPA ammendments etc. which are being criticized in the new rankings. What more do you want? The video that you had linked to at WT:INB has him quoting each of the charges (legislations/riot control etc.) against the Modi regime by these indices and defending them as hallmarks of a good democracy. Please do not be disingenous.

• When asked if he [Babones] means the intellectual class is anti-India or anti-Mr Modi, Babones had said, “There is a bit of both”.

  He had added: “They are certainly anti-BJP and anti-Modi as a class and not as individuals. But imagine that in a couple years you get a UPA government. Will they tear down the Ram Mandir? Will they reverse the very policies that are being criticised in these rankings? Will they get rid of the UAPA (The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act)? [..]"
  — Bhardwaj, Ananya (2022-11-07). "Sociologist who called Indian intellectuals 'anti-India' listed as 'foreign agent' in US, Australia". ThePrint. Retrieved 2022-11-19.

• Sure, I am open to reframings like "ran contrary to material evidence".
• On the overall, I am content with something like:

  In 2022, Babones criticized a spectrum of democracy indices for depending upon "Indian intellectuals" in their assessment of the health of Indian democracy; he found their decision to downgrade India — under Narendra Modi's premiership — to contradict the material reality. Denouncing the intellectuals as politically motivated and anti-national, he went on to receive immense popularity in the country.

  TrangaBellam (talk) 15:45, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

• Where are we on this? This needs some copy-editing. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:36, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

He is not necessarily criticising the democracy indices, barring a few cases where he said they should have employed more editorial oversight. But he is mainly criticising intellectuals, who are disproportionately downgrading their own democratic system, compared to other countries where they are not. He is saying that Indian intellectuals are doing so, compared to say Hong Kong and South Africa. He also said that the Bangladeshi intellectuals are doing it compared to Pakistan. The second bit about Narendra Modi's premiership is still WP:OR. I don't accept changing to "anti-India" to "anti-national". Receivng "immense popularity" is also WP:OR. This verion is not materially different from what you wrote originally. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:02, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Picking up you earlier query about UPA III, he is asking, if UPA came to power again and retained the old policies, would the intellectuals continue to maintain that the democracy is in same bad shape or will they say it has improved? I guess we all know the answer. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:10, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

The five-thousand-word long article (Quadrant; republished in The Print) that started this episode had each of the three democracy indices' assesment of India meticulously screened for flaws to conclude:

[T]he stridently negative appraisals of Indian democracy published by the three major democracy rating organisations seem wildly disproportionate to the actual evidence marshalled to support them. In several instances, they smack of intentional deception [..] The narrative justifications that accompany the international rankings of Indian democracy show little evidence of such humble reflexivity. Instead, they are suffused with wanton speculation, misleading statistics, and uncritical reproductions of activist accusations [..] The lack of any compelling case against Indian democracy reflects very poorly on the three major international democracy rating organisations.

And, you are arguing that he is "not necessarily criticizing" the democracy indices! Indeed, he is, accusing them of providing flawed evidence in their characterization of India's democratic health in the Modi years (and relying on intellectuals, who are biased as a class).

Not a single time in the article or the India Today Conclave speech — which have been covered by secondary sources unlike the UK event — does he broach anything about disproportionate self-degradation of a country's democracy by its own intellectuals which would be a fair point to make but hardly a pioneering critique. His singular accusation on intellectuals is that they reflect their own liberal bias — which is not representative of a conservative electorate — in their assesments. Considering from such a vantage, my writeup is an accurate representation of the affairs. We need to go by the sources; not what we feel to be the crux of Babones' arguments by extrapolating from multiple sources or by reading between the lines or any other editorial strategem. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:00, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

My last compromise version is

In 2022, Babones criticized the democracy indices by Freedom House, V-Dem Institute, and Economist Intelligence Unit for depending upon intellectuals in their assessments; he found their decision to downgrade India — while under Narendra Modi's premiership — to be based on flawed evidence. Denouncing the intellectual class for being partisan and "anti-Indian" in their evaluations, Babones went on to receive popularity in the country.

If you have objections, please do launch a RfC on whatever wording bothers you. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Why do I have to tell you the basics? Wikipedia is written by summarising what the reliable sources say, not by making your own critiques of published material. You are also prohibited from WP:SYNTHESIS, combining material from multiple sources and drawing conclusions that are not drawn in the sources themselves. But that is what you are doing here.

After shooting down Quadrant as a right-wing forum and maintaining that it cannot even be mentioned by name on this page, now you bring it in as evidence for your proposed content! You are out of your mind! In any case, in the Quadrant article, he criticised the democracy indices because they reproduced the intellectuals' biases and evidential materials. He did not criticise them for doing so. Nowhere did he say they should not have used surveys and should have used alternative methodologies. In the India Today Conclave (ITC), which was a Q&A session, mind you, he clarified that he doesn't attribute bias to the rating organisations, but the intellectuals whom they survey. So, it doesn't make sense to go back to the Quadrant article and repeat that point which may have been unclear there.

You are right that he didn't use the word "disproportionate" in the ITC, but it was a Q&A session, where he is answering questions. But it is there in the Quadrant article, and he did make the comparison with Hong Kong for the press freedom index even at the ITC.

As a comparative sociologist, I see him doing his job. The ball is in intellectuals' court. If they didn't know it earlier, they know it now. I don't think there is anything we need to do about it here and claim that he is a right-winger who supposedly "denounced" them. Just drop it. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:55, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I did not shoot down Quadrant. In light of its inherent unreliability, I saw it fit to exclude unless "other reliable sources have taken notice of it". That is indeed the case. As early as mid-September, we have coverage from News18. To quote from it:

The associate professor at the University of Sydney has come into focus with his article – ‘Indian Democracy at 75: Who are the Barbarians at the Gate?’ – in which he has said negative appraisals of Indian democracy published by three major rating organisations seem wildly disproportionate to the actual evidence marshalled to support them [..] The reports reflect the politics of those contributing to these reports, he said.

Talking about his article, he said "Western analysts who are seeking to tear down one of the world’s most successful democracies in the interest of a petty partisan political game." [..] He also maintained that the publishers should apologise for the errors in their reports about India.

If you feel that I have been engaging in prohibited synthesis, you need to be more specific. TrangaBellam (talk) 05:41, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

The present version has gotten considerably better. So I suppose we can leave the old disputes behind.

I know that he has also attacked the Western analysts in his previousu writings, but it wasn't part of the recent ITC and London talks. He hasn't actually clarified what he means by "partisan" in this context, but the best I can gather is that he means the western analysts taking sides between the elected government and the anti-Modi/anti-BJP intellectuals. But this allegation of "partisanship" doesn't make sense when applied to Indian intellectuals, which is what your current text is doing.

The Indian intellectuals are not being "partisan". They are just anti-BJP, which is their right to be. But that has been used to tar everything about BJP as "undemocratic" or "anti-democratic". Let us take CAA for example. Nobody likes the CAA. That is not the problem. The problem in turning it into a violation of "democracy" in some way. What exactly is this "democracy"? Is the elected government required to take our permission to do what it wants to do? Otherwise it becomes "undemocratic"? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:19, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

[Discussion shifted to K3's t/p; largely irrelevant to our subject.] TrangaBellam (talk) 20:44, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

References

Of delusions

K3's favorite intellectual (sic) claims that "Western anti-Hindu sentiment" had broken out in New Jersey out of an alliance between global Islamists and western elites.

So, what happened in New Jersey? NYT reports that a bulldozer — featuring an image of Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath — was paraded across the town; the iconography was an obvious hat tip to Adityanath's far-right Hindu nationalist politics where he uses bulldozers to destroy homes of political dissenters (mostly Muslims) without even going through judicial trials. Obviously, local Muslims were at fault for protesting against such hate-speech; conspiracy by communists, elite, intellectuals, Islamists, blah blah ... TrangaBellam (talk) 17:56, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Babones also believes that Dismantling Global Hindutva conference was "anti-Hindu jamboree", and rejects that critiques of Hindutva can be distinguished from critique of Hinduism. The Association for Asian Studies summarily noted Hindutva to be a "majoritarian ideological doctrine" different from Hinduism, whose rise to prominence had accompanied "increasing attacks on numerous scholars, artists and journalists"; so did, American Historical Association etc. However, Babones is nonplussed; these elite organizations resent the rise of India. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:09, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

You are welcome to go and write a column in the Firstpost yourself. It has no place on Wikipedia. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 06:38, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

What has no place on Wikipedia? The talk-page exists to aid in improving our articles and taking note of the subject's view aids in such a process! You can see that two sections above, other longstanding editors have discussed Babobes' hailing of Ashli Babbitt as a hero from one of his op-eds. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:45, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I would readily admit that his knowledge of India is abysmal. He said so himself more than once in the talks I posted on WT:INDIA. That Firstpost column is trash, and is hardly worth discussing. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 07:05, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

He conceded that "his knowledge about India was abysmal" and yet, went on to speak for an hour on every Indian issue of political relevance? TrangaBellam (talk) 10:34, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

He is a statistician, whose evaluating the evidence presented by the ratings agencies and cross-checking it. It looks like your aversion to right-wingers is seriously affecting your comprehension skills. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:46, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

recent revert

@TrangaBellam has removed some of my recent edits. I am listing down the reason for those edits.

• "However, the book was favorably received in conservative media" - I cannot find any mention of "conservative media" in the cited sources. If it was meant to be descriptive (I am not very familiar with the political leanings of the Western press), then you will have to add labels to all sources, and who decides which source is conservative/progressive/leftist/rightist? It seems to be WP:OR. WP:V states "Readers must be able to check that any of the information within Wikipedia articles is not just made up. This means all material must be attributable to reliable, published sources", If someone is not familiar with American politics and political positions how will they be able to verify it?
• Babones has since held the January 6 United States Capitol attack to be a "mostly peaceful protest" - The cited source is about an interview with the former Australian PM. The interview is not mentioned on the wiki page, but 1 line description in that article is mentioned here. Isn't that strange? Are we supposed to pick up every tiny bit of information from web pages whose primary topic is not even close to that? ( I did something similar earlier and was told that often detailed articles are required to add information on Wikipedia pages).

Mixmon (talk) 19:07, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Re 1: SKYISBLUE. That said, I will get a source.

Re 2: I can cite the NL Interview too. DUE is obviously met with. TrangaBellam (talk) 08:41, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

• WP:NOTBLUE : Just because something appears obvious to you, doesn't mean it's obvious to everyone. Build articles from reliable, expert sources, and cite those sources. You can't expect everyone to understand American politics. Is American politics a universal scientific truth?
• You are shifting the discussion to what you can cite from what is already cited. Mixmon (talk) 08:52, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

• The current citation is sufficient. That the article — in what is a newspaper of record for Australia — chooses to qualify Babones' "expertise" by only invoking his defense of the Capitol is telling. Don't like it; do a RfC. TrangaBellam (talk) 09:06, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

  That was not a general article about Babones but about an interview with Tony Abott (it has a context).

  What about the "conservative media" objection? Mixmon (talk) 09:14, 6 May 2023 (UTC)