Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes

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Crimes against humanity under communist regimes was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 28 August 2024 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Mass killings under communist regimes. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

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General Concerns and Questions Q1: Why does this article exist? A1: This article exists because so far there has been no consensus to delete it. The latest AfD (2021) said that the Misplaced Pages editing community has been unable to come to a consensus as to whether "mass killings under communist regimes" is a suitable encyclopaedic topic. Six discussions to delete this article have been held, none of them resulting in a deletion:

No consensus, December 2021, see discussion
Keep, July 2010, see discussion.
Keep, April 2010, see discussion
No consensus, November 2009, see discussion
No consensus, September 2009, see discussion
No consensus, August 2009, see discussion
Declined by creator 17:04, 3 August 2009
PROD 17:02, 3 August 2009
Created 17:00 3 August 2009
Related Talk discussions:

Q2: Why isn't there also an article for "Mass killings under _________ regimes"? Isn't this title biased? A2: Each article must stand on its own merits, as justified by its sources. The existence (or not) of some other similar article does not determine the existence of this one, and vice versa. Having said that, there are other articles such as Anti-communist mass killings and Genocide of indigenous peoples which also exist. This article has a descriptive title arrived at by consensus in November 2009.

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Cambodia To-do:

Let us work in the best reference and presentation of archaeological sites of Cambodia beyond Angkor like Sambor Prei Kuk, Angkor Borei (Takeo), etc.

Should disambiguate Republican Party for Democracy and Renewal and generally try to link up social conscience with right-wing values.

I'm looking for the best picture or any informations about the KAF's U-6 (Beaver). It seem that the KAF had 3 aircrafts. But in 1971, during the viet cong's sapper attack at the Pochentong Air Base,at least 1 Beaver was destroyed.In 1972 at leat 1 Beaver was refurbished with a new engine. http://www.khmerairforce.com/AAK-KAF/AVNK-AAK-KAF/Cambodia-Beaver-KAF.JPG

Thankfull for this info.

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This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

This article was nominated for deletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination:

no consensus, 14:22, 22 November 2021 (UTC), see discussion.
keep, 22:20, 19 July 2010 (UTC), see discussion.
keep, 17:32, 22 April 2010 (UTC), see discussion.
no consensus, 11:06, 15 November 2009 (UTC), see discussion.
no consensus, 03:48, 2 October 2009 (UTC), see discussion.
no consensus, 15:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC), see discussion.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
September 1, 2009	Peer review	Reviewed
April 1, 2018	Peer review	Reviewed
June 1, 2018	Peer review	Reviewed

This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Lott, Maxim (February 18, 2021). "Inside Misplaced Pages's leftist bias: socialism pages whitewashed, communist atrocities buried". Fox News.
Abbott, Joel (November 24, 2021). "The Misplaced Pages page titled "Mass Killings Under Communist Regimes" is being considered for deletion 😬". Not the Bee.
Kangadis, Nick (November 24, 2021). "'Mass Killings Under Communist Regimes' Misplaced Pages Page 'Being Considered for Deletion'". MRC TV.
Johnson, Autumn (November 25, 2021). "Misplaced Pages Contemplates Deleting Article On Communist Mass Killings". MRC News Buster.
Simpson, Craig (November 27, 2021). "Misplaced Pages may delete entry on 'mass killings' under Communism due to claims of bias". The Daily Telegraph.
Nolan, Lucas (November 29, 2021). "Misplaced Pages Community Considers Deleting Entry on Mass Killings Under Communism over Claims of 'Bias'". Breitbart News.
User:JPxG (November 29, 2021). "Deletion Report: What we lost, what we gained". The Signpost.
Chasmar, Jessica (November 29, 2021). "Misplaced Pages page on 'Mass killings under communist regimes' considered for deletion, prompting bias accusations". Fox News.
Blair, Douglas (December 12, 2021). "Misplaced Pages Threatens to Purge 'Communist Mass Killings' Page, Cites Anti-Communist Bias". The Daily Signal.
Blair, Douglas (December 14, 2021). "Misplaced Pages threatens to purge 'communist mass killings' page, cites anti-communist bias". The Christian Post.
Edwards, Lee and Hafera, Brenda (December 14, 2021). "Why We Should Never Forget the Crimes of Communism". The Heritage Foundation.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination.

Discussions:

No consensus, 13 September 2009, from Communist genocide to Communist politicide, see discussion.
Moved, 16 September 2009, from Communist genocide to Mass killings under Communist regimes, see discussion.
Not moved, 16 April 2010, see discussion.
No consensus to move, 13 August 2018, to Communist states and mass killing, see discussion.
Not moved, 31 July 2019, see discussion.
Not moved, 14 August 2019, to Mass killings under Communist regimes, see discussion.
Procedural close, 31 January 2022, to Mass killings by communist regimes, see discussion.

Historiography info missing?

I think a section dedicated to historiography of this subject is needed. After all, the latest AFD nomination was closed as "no consensus". Attempts to change the title has failed numerous times. Furthermore, the topic has been under arbitration remedies and barely studied by academics. George Ho (talk) 04:53, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it would be possible. Can you cite any review articles that outline the literature? That btw is the reason many editors have found the article unencyclopedic. TFD (talk) 02:42, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

I found one chapter from The Historiography of Genocide, "Mao's China". The title has "Historiography" within. Another book, The Historiography of Communism, might or might not cover this subject, but I still am looking. George Ho (talk) 22:28, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

See my comments in the section about. This article is about mass killings under communist regimes, not mass killings in Mao's China specifically. TFD (talk) 00:35, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

There are quite a few sources on the historiography of communism in the 20th century, and they usually do cover mass killings and other crimes. Maybe we could use some of them? - Small colossal (talk) 00:04, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Merger

There was a decision last week to merge the article on Crimes against humanity under communist regimes into this article. I noticed that this has not yet been done, so I would like to give it a try. After reading both articles, it seems to me that the best way to do it is to just copy the content from the Crimes against humanity article into a new section here. I will go ahead and do that, with an introduction that links the new section to this article without repeating what this article already says, and the rest of the content just copied and pasted. But I intend to leave out the Bulgaria section, since it does not cite any sources. I have not done a merger before, so I apologize in advance if copying and pasting is not what is supposed to be done. Feel free to change things after me in that case! - Small colossal (talk) 23:58, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Done! I also re-ordered the sections a little, to put the USSR section first, for chronological reasons. But the content was simply copied and pasted from Crimes against humanity under communist regimes (minus the Bulgaria section, as I said above, since it lacked sources). Important: I did not check any of the sources used in this content. If there are concerns about any of them, they still need to be checked. - Small colossal (talk) 01:12, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I have issues with this merge. Even aside from the question of whether it makes sense under this title, the structure and content seem to go against the 2022 RFC - most of the sources don't connect the individual aspects into a central concept; it's just a laundry list of atrocities. The structure by country is also inappropriate - it needs to be rearranged to focus on the broad themes identified by secondary sources discussing the overarching concept of war crimes under Communism, and anything that can't be cited to that (in particular, anything cited solely to sources that just focus on one country / regime and which don't touch on the concept of "war crimes under Communism" as a thing) is going to need to be deleted if sourcing connecting it to the broad topic can't be found. --Aquillion (talk) 17:32, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
To make matters worse, the legal concept of crimes against humanity postdates many of the atrocities described in that article, and "crimes against humanity" never became a sociological category (like genocide), so it is extremely anachronistic and doesn't reflect how these policies and events are discussed in RS. (t · c) buidhe 03:54, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Removal of Ghodsee and Neumayer

Regarding this removal, we cite three sources for that paragraph, not just one; while the first one is just an essay from Aeon, we also cite a paper published in the journal History of the Present by Ghodsee and The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War by Neumayer; both of these are academically published and have been extensively cited themselves (, ) so they're reasonable to cover in a brief paragraph here. We could add some of those as secondary sources if necessary and replace the Aeon cite, but I don't see how total removal makes sense; and of course the rest of that edit summary seems to mostly just be expressing disagreement with them, which doesn't have anything to do with whether we cover their opinions or not. --Aquillion (talk) 19:19, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

IMO it's non-useful information at best. Somebody claiming that mere counting of mass killing reflects an anti-communism bias. North8000 (talk) 23:24, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

There's no question that part of the anti-Communist argument is how many people they killed. The Victims of Communism website for example says on its first page, "COMMUNISM KILLED OVER 100 MILLION." Why would they lead with this if it did not further their anti-Communist narrative?

It could be that is a very good argument against Communism. But it's still an argument, which by definition reflects a bias. TFD (talk) 23:43, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Hrm. It is possible that some important context about the objection was removed here, or that we should go over the sources (and look for others) and elaborate on it a bit more. I think that it's an important and WP:DUE objection, but it is true that in its current form there's something important missing - it probably needs to be expanded at least a little bit to explain it further, not removed. --Aquillion (talk) 00:11, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

It needs further explanation, but it seems to be the most widely accepted explanation for counting bodies, particularly for the 100 million figure. TFD (talk) 15:49, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Seems well sourced but not very important. So I would be fine with it's removal. PackMecEng (talk) 00:14, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Mere selection of which aspect to cover usually reflects a type of bias. This is a universal reality, and repeating a universal reality is not information. Trying to pretend that it is noteworthy information is itself bias. For example, if a researcher counts up the number of deaths from high-school sports, we don't put in a section that a critic says that merely counting those deaths reflects an anti-sports bias. North8000 (talk) 12:47, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

PBS had a feature, "7 deaths linked to football raise concerns about sport’s risks for young players" The article came out after several publications noted the increasing number of high school sports deaths.

The number of deaths persuade people that there is a problem with high school sports and something should be done. That's because most people disapprove of unnecessary deaths. TFD (talk) 15:47, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

To put it another way, if you were told that the Communists killed 100 million people, would that tend to make you feel (a) positive about Communism, (b) more negative or (c) about the same? TFD (talk) 17:30, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

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