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May 10

NEW NOMINATIONS

Category:Calw

Propose renaming Category:Calw to Category:Rural districts in Baden-Württemberg
Nominator's rationale: Rename. We have two categories for 1 article here. I admit I don't know the German settlement and government structure, but this appears to be a rural district of which there are many in Baden-Württemberg so a rename and populate could be better then a delete. Any Germans around to help? Vegaswikian (talk) 19:32, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Neo-Stalinism and Neo-Stalinist organisations

Category:Neo-Stalinism - Template:Lc1

Category:Neo-Stalinist organisations - Template:Lc1

Nominator's rationale: Strong delete for both - (WP:OR, WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:BLP).

Although we should keep the article Neo-Stalinism given the currency of the term, we should delete the categories.

In brief:

  • 1) No self-identification as "Neo-Stalinist."
  • 2) Pejorative usage.
  • 3) No single definition for "Neo-Stalinist."
  • 4) Controversially applied term.
  • 5) No objectively source giving a definition (as opposed to a label) for any of the characterizations given "Neo-Stalinist" in main article.
  • 6) Inclusion of living people.

The category Category:Neo-Stalinism is an evident attempt to illegitimately label people, many, in fact, with nothing in common, using a highly controversial term. Aside from the main (and poorly referenced "Neo-Stalinism" article), the category contains a collection of material on assorted so-called "Neo-Stalinists." As such, the category breaks down into a list of "Neo-Stalinists" and the subcategory "Neo-Stalinist organizations." Not one of these, regardless of their receptiveness (or lack thereof) towards Stalin's contributions to 20th-century history, actually self-identify (or have self-identified) as "Neo-Stalinists."

More problematically, the term does not now, nor ever has, even enjoyed a single, coherent meaning, as can be gleaned from the political and historical/historiographical usage I am outlining below, where parallel examples, precedents, and counterexamples are also given. While I do favor keeping the article Neo-Stalinism, seeing that the term enjoys considerably currency in Western sources, if everything else went, we would be stuck with one article in the category. As such, I strongly recommend that we follow WP:OR, WP:NPOV, WP:RS, and WP:BLP.

In-depth My criticisms, of course, are not separate from the term "Neo-Stalinism" itself. To proceed from the foregoing, the term "Neo-Stalinism" is seriously problematic because it has multiple uses, and the Neo-Stalinism article itself indicates that these may be used in an historical or in a political sense. The first of the definitons–surprise, surprise, unsourced–proclaims that "Neo-Stalinism is a term used to describe historical revisionism in favor of Stalinism." This is deeply problematic in itself: in the first place, the article never specifies where it has gotten this unsourced definition from. A simple Google search will indicate that the term is almost always used in a pejorative political sense–not in the sense applicable to historical revisionists, for whom a well-fitting category (Historical revisionism (political)) already exists. At the same time, all those included by the creators of the category are, in fact, political figures.

Quite aside from the legitimacy of this unsourced usage of "neo-Stalinism," the category's catch-all accusatory tone in this sense is particularly unneeded, as historical revisionism, as the historical revisionism article notes, may be "either the legitimate scholastic correction of existing knowledge about an historical event, or the illegitimate distortion of the historical record such that certain events appear in a more or less favourable light." What are we to make, then, of such well-respected historians as the American historian Professor J. Arch Getty, currently teaching history at UCLA, whose estimated figures have been significantly lower for the number of casualties of Joseph Stalin's rule than those of other historians of the 1930s?

Political usage: whose? Given the fact that we have yet to see any consensus among historical or popular mainstream sources as to what qualifies as "Neo-Stalinism" in the historical sense–confounded by the deafening silence of any actual historians labelling themselves with the term–it would be only natural to examine the possibility of applying the epithet in a political sense. Unfortunately, here we come back to square one: if anything, there is even more divergence among usage of the term in the political sense than in the historical–historiographical usage discussed above.

Here again, the main source of trouble is that nobody actually describes himself as a "Stalinist." As can be seen from the Anti-Revisionism entry, which already notes the negative tone of the epithet as an ideological slur,

"Anti-revisionism (known to its detractors as 'Stalinism') is seen by its followers as a healthy, solid, scientific ideological road, devoid of both the alleged corruption and elitism of Trotskyism, and the perceived idealism of Left Communism."

The Stalinism article propounds that

"The term 'Stalinism' is almost never used as a positive term. Those who subscribe to the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao almost never describe themselves as Stalinists; they see the term as not only disparaging but also indicative of an erroneous certainty among detractors of Stalin's legacy that his current supporters are 'Stalin-worshippers'. Even today, Stalin is seen as having been a positive figure by many in Russia. Typically, so-called Stalinists will either defend Stalin overall or will defend the most defensible aspects of his legacy, such as the victory over fascism in World War II, and will describe themselves as either revolutionary communists or, if they desire to be more specific, as anti-revisionists."

In the ideological sense, "Stalinism" is very often not used to indicate support for Stalin's crimes–his purges, show trials, or mass murders (although, as a catch-all term, it can also mean that–but to condemn the anti-Revisionist idea that the Soviet Union of the 1930s was largely progressing towards the state of communism, a term used to disparage not simply the small minority of those who go as far as whitewashing the bloody history of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, but against those who see the general development of the Soviet Union, such as its collectivization and industrialization in the 1930s as development according to a genuinely Marxist path. Perhaps more amazing to the uninitiated is the fact that in political discourse "Stalinist" and "neo-Stalinist" are most notably used as sectarian terms of abuse heaped upon the mainstream current of Marxists-Leninist ideology by the communist Trotskyists, who denounce "Stalinism" as a deviation from the true path of Marx and Lenin–in this sense, Stalinism actually denotes what is perceived as the "Stalinist" turn towards the restoration of capitalism.

Sectarian as it may seem, this understanding of Stalinism is significant enought to be listed as the second instantiation of "Neo-Stalinism" in the Neo-Stalinism article. I do not think that this sort of usage is appropriate for Misplaced Pages. For one thing, "Stalinism" and "neo-Stalinism" in this sense are routinely used by Trotskyists to describe very openly anti-Stalinist Marxist-Leninists, including Khrushchev and Gorbachev as "Stalinists" in the sense of heirs to the socialism-in-one-country ideological line of Stalin. In this sense, writers such as Chris Harman (as witnessed in his 1988 book From Stalin to Gorbachev) identify both Khrushchev and Gorbachev as essentially Stalinist in the aforementioned sense.

In the foregoing fashion, even Eurocommunist parties that have long followed Khrushchev's lead in denouncing Stalinism have been characterized as Stalinist movements. For example, the Communist Party of Great Britain observes that

"The CWI (the Trotskyist Committee for a Workers' International) denounced Tommy Sheridan as too ‘rightwing and as a neo-Stalinist capitalist’. At least Tommy was not misquoted in the capitalist press attacking socialists."
– See http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/368/cwicrisis.html

Alternatively, it can mean employing the repressive methods ascribed to the Stalin regime. For example, the anti-Stalin Marxist theorist Andy Blunden writes that

"The use of the political police for the settlement of internal disputes and the use of the bullet in the back of the head was in general greatly moderated, but in every respect Khrushchev remained a Stalinist. He defended the system ."
–See http://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/origins-future/ch2-2.htm.

A meaningless hodge-podge

We have–on more than a mere handful of occasions–deleted Category:Racists on essentially the same grounds. The trouble, to quote the moderator of the first instance of deleting the entry, was "POV magnet: content was just this: "This is a list of individuals who have admitted to, or are or were widely considered to be, racists." An analogy to, say, Neo-Nazism would fail miserably: whereas virtually no one self-identifies as a "Stalinist" or a "Neo-Stalinist," many far righters do, in fact, identify as "Nazis" and "neo-Nazis."

Moreover, the epithet "Neo-Nazism" is taken as the modern incarnation of Nazism, which is universally acknowledged as an independent ideology of its own creation; whereas Nazism is ideologically credited to Adolf Hitler, many historians, both Communist and anti-Communist, on the other hand, do not draw a distinction between the political course pursued by Stalin as separate form the philosophical contributions of Karl Marx.

If we go by the incredibly ambiguous idea of Stalinists as those who promote positive views of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill would also qualify as examples of Stalinists, having themselves contributed much to the wartime propaganda endorsement of Joseph Stalin as the West's avuncular ally "Uncle Joe." If it sounds strange to label anti-communist figures Stalinists, consider the example of Saparmurat Niyazov, the late anti-communist Turkmen dictator included in the Neo-Stalinism category, described as a "Stalinist" ruler despite having abandoned Communism with the Soviet collapse in the early '90s, then having forbidden membership in the Communist Party of Turkmenistan–an entity forced underground during his reign. So too is Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, known for some positive remarks on the subject of Stalin's rule, but included without any specific qualification as to in regard to what sort of standard his presence is in fact pertinent to the category. Here, again, the category only instantiates the identity crisis laid out at the beginning: if we are to consider the category meaningful, it seems that one would have to conflate together historical revisionists, anti-Communist dictators-of-the-iron-fist, nostalgic Russian communists...and perhaps more. What, then, are the defining objective criteria for meaningful inclusion?

To up the ante, the Neo-Stalinism article says that

"As of 2008, nearly half of Russians view Stalin positively, and many support restoration of his monuments dismantled in the past."

Are these people all neo-Stalinists?

Are we to take the term "Neo-Stalinism" as an epithet denoting a political position taken by modern-day "Stalinists" who are already covered under the category Category:Anti-Revisionists?

Are we to use it to include both Communist dictators and anti-Communist rulers of dictatorial states such as Saparmurat Niyazov and Kim Jong-Il (who has broken with Anti-Revisionism in favor of Juche)?

Are we to use it to include anti-Stalin Soviet leaders like Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev, as applied by the Trotskyist tendency–now fashionably influential in the 1990s-2000s?

Are we to use it to house articles about reputable, if not entirely mainstream, historians such as Professor J. Arch Getty?

Are we to use it to denote anybody who has ever publicly expressed any positive sentiment about Stalin's contribution to Soviet development, such as Michael Parenti or Gennady Zyuganov?

Even if all of the above, from Stalin's lukewarm to defenders to his zealous admirers universally reject the "Stalinist" / "Neo-Stalinist" label for themselves?

To what extent does an inherently pejorative category like "Neo-Stalinists"–which neither has self-described members nor a universal and indisputable definition–even respect any approach towards objective (uncontroversial) standards? And what is the point of the category?

The neo-Stalinist challenge! If we are going to label people "Neo-Stalinists," it would at least do some good to 1) find one concrete meaning of "Neo-Stalinism", and 2) establish a canonical example of some undisputably "neo-Stalinist" individuals. I do not see any viable and POV-free way of satisfying the first criterion. As far as satisfying the second criterion, the clearest case, of course, would be established by citing a notable example of a public figure who self-identifies as a Neo-Stalinist. (In fact, I'm going to go really bold here and give out my first barnstar to whoever manages to locate the web site of a self-described "neo-Stalinist" or "neo-Stalinist organization" worthy of being cited as a Misplaced Pages reference.)

Extending from the foregoing The facts are that the category is inherently biased, unobjective, and prone to the worst sort of POV pushing-and-pulling. Much like our formely existing Category:Racists, it is plainly obvious that the category will simply be used as an attack-dog against anyone deemed, in some sense or other, to be "too Stalinist" (since there is no objective criteria for inclusion); moreover, we already have the unpleasant history of Johan Bäckman, a living person, being shoved into the Neo-Stalinism category, only to be removed shortly afterward. The person doing the shoving, of course, was User:Digwuren, whose Template:Stalinism in the 21st century has now been deleted per the discussion here.</— Preceding unsigned comment added by PasswordUsername (talk • contribs) 10:59, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Category:Artists who started record labels

Category:Artists who started record labels - Template:Lc1
Nominator's rationale: Doesn't seem to be a defining characteristic. Basically a re-creation of Category:Artists who own record labels, G4 was declined. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • 18:26, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Category:Former students of Guildford Grammar School

Category:Former students of Guildford Grammar School - Template:Lc1
Category:Guildford Grammar School - Template:Lc1
Nominator's rationale: Delete - where one goes to high school is rarely if ever a defining characteristic. If kept for some unearthly reason then it needs to be renamed to comport to whatever the structure is for alumni in Australia. Otto4711 (talk) 14:16, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Category:2004 United States election voting controversies

Category:2004 United States election voting controversies - Template:Lc1
Nominator's rationale: Not used. Only one page exists that could reasonably fit the description. 2004 United States election voting controversies Bonewah (talk) 17:58, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Delete I misspoke earlier when i said it was not used. However, all the entries in this category, save one, are not really controversies. Participants in controversies, yes, critics of the election, yes, but actual controversies, no. Bonewah (talk) 15:11, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
  • NOTE the notice for this discussion was on the talk page rather then on the category page. This may be grounds for a relisting. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:07, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Good Ol’factory 10:35, 10 May 2009 (UTC) (The category was mistagged (see note above). Note also the nominator's clarified rationale for deletion.)
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ~~~~

  • Delete - absent the far-too-tangential inclusion of people like GWB, Barbara Boxer and Jesse Jackson, there are about three articles that would go here, making this a small category. I disagree that there is any scope for expansion. Otto4711 (talk) 19:53, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Category:Disney villains

Category:Disney villains - Template:Lc1
Nominator's rationale: This category was previously deleted in Oct 2007; as seen in the history/talk on Disney Villains, there is much controversy over what constitutes a "Disney Villain" ie is it an official franchise character, an opinion on a character's actions, any mean character, the primary antagonist (whether villainous or not), etc. Without clear guidelines, this category (as we saw previously on the current franchise-oriented page) will turn into an artbitrary list with no oversight as to what should or shouldn't belong. SpikeJones (talk) 05:38, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Keep: I think that it is pretty clear to determine what constitutes a Disney Villain; the franchise itself has determined this through shows and sketches. It is not an "arbitrary list" and I do not see any controversy at all. For instance, it is clear that Snow White, Simba or Sebastian the crab are not villains, while Hook or Maleficent are. --LoЯd ۞pεth 06:50, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
comment: Your examples are correct, as those are already named as part of the marketing franchise. What isn't clear are those characters that are on the bubble and are not listed as "official" villains. The former Disney Villains page contained henchmen, "angry villagers", and other characters that may have been mean but are not villains in the Disney universe. My concern is that this category will become as unwieldly as the former page turned into before every Villain instance required to be cited as such, instead of every character being placed there by someone who merely thought an act against the protagonist counted as "villainous". SpikeJones (talk) 14:37, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Well, we should therefore include in the category characters officially recognized by Disney as "Disney Villains" and remove those who are only henchmen, rivals, angry people, etc. --LoЯd ۞pεth 18:19, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I've done so. I have removed those who are not "official villains" according to the Disney archives and the Misplaced Pages article on Disney Villains. --LoЯd ۞pεth 18:59, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Tagged for speedy deletion - as a recreation of previously deleted content. If not speedied, then delete per the clear, consistent and overwhelming consensus against categorizing fictional characters as "villains". Otto4711 (talk) 19:04, 10 May 2009 (UTC)