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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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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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Articles for deletionThis 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
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September 1, 2009Peer reviewReviewed
April 1, 2018Peer reviewReviewed
June 1, 2018Peer reviewReviewed
Media mentionThis article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:
This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination.

Discussions:

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)
    BTW I also agree with the other aspects of Aquillion's criticism, see User:Buidhe/Genocide in Muslim countries for an example of how sources are abused in anti-communist articles. (t · c) buidhe 03:58, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
As the person who carried out the merger, I'd like to say that I have no particular attachment to the method I used (direct copying of the content of the other article into a section on this article). I did that because it seemed like the most simple and neutral way to carry out the merger. You are probably right that there is a better way to do it. I just couldn't think of one, at the time. But now that the content from the Crimes against humanity article is here, it can of course be edited and re-organized as necessary. As I said at the time of the merger, I did not check any of the sources used in the merged content, so that could be a place to start. - Small colossal (talk) 08:47, 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)

I noticed that the paragraph in question only ended up in its current state just four days ago. An essentially unexplained edit (one of several such edits) removed all the information that was previously there, except for the part that said that counting victims reflects an anti-communist bias. I agree that the paragraph as it stood when this discussion began was strange and not much of a criticism (of course critics of communism have an "anti-communist bias"!), but the information that used to be there until four days ago was much more substantial. I have restored it, as well as other information removed by the same editor at the same time, with a similar lack of explanation. I do not see any difference between the removed information and the rest of the article. It was well sourced, and directly addressed the topic of communist mass killings. I do agree with one removal (the last removal, where the source was a newspaper), so I have not restored that one. - Small colossal (talk) 08:36, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Recent removals

I am starting this thread to discuss recent content removals by DaltonCastle. I disagree with them, because the removed content was well sourced and in line with the rest of the article. Much of the article consists of reporting the views of different academics on issues such as the proper names to be used for the mass killings (terminology), the numbers of people killed and how those numbers should be estimated (estimates), causes of the killings, comparisons to other mass killings, and so on. In many cases, there is no overall consensus on these topics, there are only different sources with different perspectives. So the article reports the conclusions of author A, then those of author B, then those of author C, etc. In cases where two authors directly disagree with each other, this is also noted. I think this is a good format, and actually I cannot think of any other way to organize this information. DaltonCastle has removed certain sentences and paragraphs on the grounds that they represent the views of only one author, or only two authors, or that they are "hardly a consensus". That is true, but the same could be said about every other sentence and paragraph immediately before and after the removed ones. Of course each paragraph (or part of a paragraph, or sentence) focuses on a single author, because that is the structure being used. We describe the various sources one by one, when there is no way to combine them without doing original research (for example, when they disagree with each other). The names of the authors are given every time, and the content makes it clear that it is reporting their separate conclusions. This is what I mean when I say that I do not see any difference between the removed information and the rest of the article. - Small colossal (talk) 12:08, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

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