Talk:Negationism/Archive 1

This page is POV and arguably false: it is not the policy of the US or British governments to neglect slavery; after all, both took formal action to ban it.

I will be recommending it for deletion if the author takes no action to correct it, as this seems to be a nonexistent term in actual use, since "new world negationism" in Google generates three hits. Wikipedia is not for advertising your brand-new political propaganda term. --FOo 19:53 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Negationism is the english spelling of "negationnisme", as the article now identifies.

It is not an expression that is used on English-language Web pages as demonstrated by a Google search for the expression "new world negationism" (in quotes). I thus conclude that it is not in active use in the language; whether you translated or made it up yourself is another matter. If the idea exists solely in French-language political discourse it would be reasonable to at least introduce it as such.

Wikipedia is for encyclopedia material anyhow, not advocacy. Unless you want to define the term and describe its partisans' view in neutral terms rather than making bald-faced revisionist claims, this text simply does not fit Wikipedia standards. --FOo 21:06 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It is not "false". Sir Edward Coke, of the London Virginia Company was a prominent English jurist whose writings on the English common law were the definitive legal texts for some 300 years. He took great care to ensure legal backing by the state for slavery. One issue in the debate about the banning slavery is whether this was done simply because more efficient ways of making people work had been developed: see Eric Williams Slavery and Capitalism on this. (Williams even banned his own book at one stage.) Also the Britsih made reparations to slave owners but not the slaves when they introduced emancipation. Instead the slaves were obliged to work a further seven years as indentured servants.

That isn't really relevant. Your text makes the bald claim that this "negationism" is present-day American "policy". Edward Coke of 300 years ago is not very relevant to that; at least, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution is far more so.

The claim that U.S. policy "denies" the historical fact of slavery, in the sense of Holocaust denial, is simply not true whatsoever. I really don't know what else there is to say about it -- it's just not the case. Slavery and the horrors of slavery are in no wise "denied" by the U.S. government or polity -- and certainly not in the baseless and anti-historical way of Holocaust deniers.

You are making these claims presumably to support "slavery reparations payments" to people who have never been slaves, or some other such position. Presumably the strained Holocaust analogy has something to do with that. If you want to describe the arguments that scholars or advocates have made for such an analogy or such reparations, that would be appropriate to Wikipedia. However, you will do that position a disservice by making claims that the average educated reader can easily identify as false, in its purported support. --FOo 21:06 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

As for the U.S. check United States Declaration of Independence where it clearly states that "One of the passages which was removed made reference to slavery": is that not neglect? Amongst its statements is "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". The perpetuation of slavery in the United States, and the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 constitute at least neglect unless of course you deny that people of African descent are human as some apologists for slavery did. The fact is that faced with public neglect, prominent Americans such as John Brown and Joseph Hooker challenged that neglect.

I find your attitude very POV, and I do not see why you think that wikipedia should be a vehicle for advertising your ill-considered political views. Harry Potter

No further comment is needed. I will be recommending this page for deletion. --FOo 21:06 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It's already been listed for nearly a week. --Eloquence 21:10 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

---

A whole chunk of the article (reproduced below) was moved to Slavery. I think it is worth preserving a copy here, as it is also relevant to this article, and could be useful as the article is expanded. GrahamN 01:26 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

In June 1997, Tony Hall, a Democrat representative for Dayton, Ohio proposed a national apology by the U.S. government for slavery. This was at a time when the Catholic Church in France apologised for its silence and begged "forgiveness for Catholic inaction as regime sent Jews to their deaths in the 1940s".

At the World Conference Against Racism, Durban, the US representatives walked out on September 3 2001 on the instructions of Colin Powell. His statement only concerns the conference discussion of Israel who also walked out. However the South African Government spokesperson said "The general perception among all delegates is that the US does not want to confront the real issues of slavery and all its manifestations."

At the same time the British, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese delegations blocked an EU apology for slavery.

The issue of an apology is linked to reparations and is still being pursued across the world. E.g. The Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action Plan.

---

I moved from the specific to the general. I trust this will solve the problem? Martin

I think that was a good solution. User Eloquence unilaterally deleted all the text and changed it to a redirect, without mentioning her plans here. I'm not impressed. What's happening to this place? GrahamN 14:01 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The only non-idiosyncratic text here was: "Negationism is the denial of historic crimes. The word is derived from the French term négationnisme which means Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial is illegal in France and several other countries." This is already discussed in Historical revisionism and Holocaust denial. "New World Negationism" is idiosyncratic and produces virtually no hits other than on Wikipedia. What's happening to this place, you ask? It's becoming a mature encyclopedia instead of a playground for people who want to publish their own ideas. And FYI, I'm male. --Eloquence 14:16 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I don't care if you are an electric eel, I object to authoritarian unilateral changes of this kind. google comes up with 903 hits on the word "negationism", all of which seem to use it in exactly this sense, as far as I can make out. It certainly shouldn't be a redirect to "slavery", nor to "historical revisionism". The first excludes the crime of genocide against the indigenous population of America, the second is largely concerned with holocaust denial, which is nothing to do with this. The article needs much work, but it is not idiosyncratic, and the fact that people like you feel so strongly that it should not be officially recognised as a phenomenon indicates to me that it is a growing problem. GrahamN 14:41 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The article, as it was, contained both the text of "Negationism" and of "New World Negationism". I wrote above that the part about "New World Negationism" was idiosyncratic. Now you try to prove that the part about "negationism" was not, refuting an argument I have never made (see straw man). The relevant discussion that the non-article "negationism" could have become should take place in the existing article historical revisionism, and if any trace should be kept at all of the "New World Negationism" article, it should be a redirect to "Slavery", because that's where part of its original content was moved. --Eloquence 14:48 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hear, hear. Wikipedia is a reference, not a journal of opinion. The fact that a term is not used outside Wikipedia is sufficient on its own to indicate that the term is not a fitting subject of a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia does not innovate terminology; it reports on facts from the world outside of Wikipedia. That is reason number one the article should not be here. The POV and facial falsehood reasons are in addition to that one. --FOo

I do not understand what is POV here or what facial falsehood is. Unless of course it is the fact that such a critical attitude to the European invasion of the New World exists which --FOo wishes to obscure.Harry Potter 00:25 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The claim made was that the US and UK governments deny the historical fact of slavery; the analogy made was to Holocaust denial. This claim is false to fact; the US and UK governments make no such denial. The analogy in fact demonstrates the falsehood: for these governments to do something analogous to Holocaust-deniers, they would need to assert that slavery did not occur; that slaves were not tortured and mistreated; that mainstream historians who assert the horrors of slavery are wrong; etc.

Trouble is -- they make no such claims. Indeed, various educational institutions within the US government (such as national historical monuments at sites relevant to the struggle against slavery) as well as educational curricula in US schools, make a point of educating Americans about the fact that slavery occurred and about its horrors and tortures. There is no denial going on. To claim otherwise is falsehood.

A hint for the insufficiently literate: for a claim to be facially false means that it requires no deep inspection to demonstrate it false. This use of the term facial comes from legal scholarship, where it refers to the most plain and ordinary reading of the words rather than any deep and elitist one. If Joe says "I am a frog," and Bob says "Joe does not say that he is a frog," then Bob's claim is false on its face. One need not examine whether or not Joe is in fact a frog to determine Bob's claim's falsity. Hence, if the United States government said "Slavery occurred," and little Draco says "The United States government denies slavery," then little Draco's claim is facially false. --FOo

The trouble is that the Quintessence of the US and Uk denial is that they refuse to accept any responsibility with the specious claim that slavery was legal at the time. Now FOo may be familair with legal scholarship, but such scholarship is a puddle of misconception if it unable to grasp that the issue here is the negation of responsibility. So please keep you highly offensive highly POV attitudes at bay and stop your wild wikicidal marauding.Harry Potter 18:16 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You are changing the definition of the word "denial" to mean, rather than its actual meaning, something along the lines of "not doing what you want". That is not what "denial" means; it is not what it is used to mean in the case of Holocaust deniers -- your own example, as I recall. Holocaust-deniers are such because they say "The Holocaust did not happen" -- that is, they actually deny the historical event. A person who says "The Holocaust did happen; however, it is not the fault of present-day Germans and Austrians that it happened," is not a Holocaust-denier.

Moreover your new revised claim (that the US and UK "refuse responsibility" since "slavery was legal at the time") has not been established here -- rather, you and your ideological cohort have resorted to absurdities such as the citing of pre-US (and pre-abolitionism) legal authorities like Lord Coke. What you appear to actually be saying, in your accusation of "refusal of responsibility," is that the US and UK governments have not done what you want them to -- which has nothing whatsoever to do with what they do or do not deny. At best, you are dramatically overstating your case and resorting to pathetic rhetoric rather than stating facts. We have no place in Wikipedia for articles which prefer rhetoric over facts. --FOo

I apologise FOo, I am sorry i did noyt realise how deep your ignorance goes. By 'facial', you mean prima facie, which can be considered as being art first glance, and indeed at first glance your arguments may seem "reasonable",however they do not suffer closer scrutiny.

What I am talking about is that it did happen that certain English, then british and then american people were responsible for slavery. However rather than get side tracked into their moral worth, the issue is that they profited from the labour of those they enslaved, and that they welath they accumulated has been passed down to some contemporary people, be they Americans, English, British or whatever. Do you dispute these facts. Do you dispute the facts that the average income of the African American is less than the average income of White Americans? Tell me frankly do you attribute this to certain racial incapabilities of African Americans, or would you concede that this disaparity of income is one of the consequences of slavery and the racism it entails. What is YOUR point of view on this. And who is this "we" in "We have no place in Wikipedia for articles which prefer rhetoric over facts."? Are you saying what I am arguing is valid for the UK but not the US. When you use the word "here", what do you mean? In wikipedia? Well check out Edward Coke.

It seems to me that you are theperson who is using rhetoric to try and hide from the reality which is staring everyione inn the face : that much of the wealth which has come down to the modern USA and UK and other Europen countires comes from the investment of the profits from slavery. O.K. no proper audit has been done to locate precisely how the wealth has come down to current generations, and it is clear that with "human beings" like you have your way, this will never come about. You accuse me of falsehood and lying

...I am sorry I am too angry to write anymore. Although I have been brought up in the full knowledge that there are people in this world who regard me as less than human, as some form of animal life incapable of reason and without a soul, it is nevertheless painful for me when I am confronted by a bigot who treats me in such a fashion. I shall try and return to this posting when I have purged my heart of the hatred that is poisoning my soul, and when I feel better prepared to guide you to a more Neutral Point of View on this matter.Harry Potter 20:33 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

There is only one site on all of the Google other than Wikipedia that even mentions the term "New World Negationism", and I'm wondering if the person who wrote this article didn't maybe also write that article. It's at http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ga/straws.htm. Is this really a term that we should have in the Wikipedia, when it doesn't seem to be more than one person's personal terminology? RickK 22:27 29 Jun 2003 (UTC), who's worried about getting into a fight here.

To right you are? Why don't you produce Americapedia if you want some sort of Mcarthyite encyclopedia purged of all unamerican expressions and sentiments. You can have all the glorious articles you want coming out with all the wobnderful things that goes on in you lovely people's heads. However I would have hoped that even the meagrest thought processes would have shown that this page is called negationism not new world negationism. Clearly you haven't troubled yourself to look at the history of this discussion. Any attempt to reduce the concept of negationism to historical revisionism is precisely the sort of semantic imperialism which has come more and more to the surface in the last twelve months. What do you know of the debates about negationism? I myself have been involved with these for over twenty years. For you what? Twenty minutes if we are lucky, twenty seconds more likely. Tell me if I am wrong here, if I am responding unjustly. The reason for having a separate page for new world negationism, is that there are other forms of negationism such as ultra-left negationism. Tell us what you know about this? And in terms of unltra-left negationism, the argumment which ripped through France was not about the numbers game, was not about whether x people died or not, but about the social and politcial conditions by which this happened. And rather than join in the wikicidal lynch mob that FOo appears to be fostering please try and imagine a world where not everyone thinks exactly the way you do.Harry Potter 23:09 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Harry Potter, your repeated insertion of idiosyncratic terms into Wikipedia will not be tolerated. Wikipedia is not a place to develop new terminology, it is a place to publish existing scholarly opinions on a subject. Please read about NPOV again, where this is explained in detail. If you want to write about your own terms, set up your own wiki. Unless you can cite authorities who use the term "New World Negationism", it has no relevance to Wikipedia, and unless you can substantially distinguish "negationism" from "historical revisionism", these should be discussed in a single article to avoid redundancy. --Eloquence 23:18 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The article itself says that there is a difference in meaning between Negationism and New World Negationism. But New World Negationism is not a term used in the world, so I question that it should be in the Encyclopedia. As Eloquence said above, why are we adding made-up terms? I'm not really interested in getting into name-calling, so I won't even respond to your comments on McCarythism. I have read the discussion above, and I have to agree that this is not nor has it ever been US govrnmental policy, and you're creating a straw man by trying to claim that it is. RickK 23:28 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

So the slaves got there forty acres and a mule! Please don't be so patronising. The US government evicted former slaves who occupied their plantations. Then in the ructions which swept the South during reconstruction, the US government backslid, allowing the subjugation of African Americans under Jim Crow laws. I am surprised you don't know about this.Harry Potter 22:45 30 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is by definition and intent a summary of the agreed-upon body of knowledge. If you want to invent a new term like "New World Negationism", you need to go write a book or set up a website that makes the compelling case for why this deserves its own special term, and get some other interested persons to agree to use it, then come back here to document that it is in use and what it relates to - you may use your own book as the reference source. Wikipedia is not an easy shortcut way to avoid having your ideas scrutinized by a scholarly community. Stan 00:29 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I never claimed that there was never slavery in the United States. So far as I know, noone has ever claimed that there was never slavery in the United States. Can you site anyone who has ever made that claim? By the definition of what is said in this article, THAT is the definition of New World Negationism. Since noone has ever said that, by definition, the term does not exist. Because only one site in all of the WWW uses the term, the term does not exist. RickK 01:42 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Don't bother. This guy seems to use "denial" the way some folks used to use "false consciousness" -- that is, it doesn't matter if you actually deny anything; the fact that you don't agree with him (on whatever his agenda is) seems to indicate that you are "denying slavery", thus that you are racist and biased and evil and what-all else. If you don't agree that his irrelevant examples are relevant, that this Ted Pepsi guy is more relevant to claims about the American government's current policies than is the Thirteenth Amendment, then you are an ignorant buffoon. --FOo

I think there is something interresting in this article as I believe Vergès changed the way we perceive crimes commited during colonial wars in France. But there is the a strange shift as Vergès focused on crime commited by the French (and by the Europeans at large) and we end with a New World Negationism reffering to South America.... OK IMO there is US imperialism as there is a French imperialism. But I don't think this is fair.

Ericd 21:19, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

---

Why do you insist on keeping a page in Wikipedia of which we all know that it is an idiosyncratic invention by Harry Potter? Google yields 17 results for the phrase "New World Negationism", of which all but two are from Wikipedia. The remaining hit is a page written by one Fabian Tompsett, who is probably associated in some way with User:Harry Potter (Tompsett is listed as the founder of the London Psychogeographical Association, psychogeography is one of Harry Potter's pet subjects). Please don't assist others in inserting nonsense information into Wikipedia. It's bad enough that Negationism hasn't been touched by anyone for fear of getting involved in an edit war. If you want to make a valuable contribution, try to edit the negationism page and remove the parts which are idiosyncratic and not verifiable from mainstream sources.—Eloquence 21:11, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

The term "New World Negationism" may not be common currency in USA or UK, but the concept it describes is not an "idiosyncratic invention". It is a real phenomenon, and I understand that there is much debate about these matters in other parts of Europe. This is the English Language Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean we should only cover topics that are commonly discussed by English speakers. GrahamN 22:19, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well after some reflexion and searche on Google there is no concept of "New World Negationist" the term negationism is applied by some to the denial of crimes against humanity against the amerindians. I don't like the way it presented I think there is some US negationism about the amerindians as ther is a French negationism about Algeria. But there's somez kind of anti-americanism in emphasizing an Anglo-American "New World Negationism" what about the Spaniards for instance.... And isn't the official position of Japan about WWII and sino-japanese war negationism ?

Ericd 00:26, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I am not sure what the Spanish position is upon making an apology for slavery, but certainly in the discussions which have gone on, the focus has been in relation to the British and American governments, both which assert their institutional continuity with the states which organised slavery. Any additions on the Spanish situation would be very useful.Harry Potter 13:00, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I've just had a look through some of my old notes as regards the Spanish debate about slavery. During the sixteenth century there was a long debate about the enslavement of Indians, i.e. natives of the Americas, as to whther they were rational which was put in ter,ms of whether they were capable of becoming Christians. Part of the Laws of Burgos made it illegal to call an Indian a dog. In 1516 an experiment was conducted by three Jeronymite friars to see if the Indians were capable of living like the colonialists. Much of the debate went back into canonical law which throws up the proclamation of Saxon Bishops of 1108 whereby the Slavs were described as being an abominable people ,but having a lnad abundant in flesh, honey, grain and birds and which admonished Saxons, Franks Lotharingians, and men of Flanders to save their souls and acquire good land by partaking in genocide. The Spanish experiments continued into the 1530s being occasionally blocked by colonialists. But always the indians could only redeem themselves in the eyes of the Spanish by becoming like the Spanish. In respect to negationism, we would then have to look at the contemporary responses of the Vatican and the Spanish state around recognising these crimes as crimes. (It may be true that in the US and the UK the states do recognise that slavery existed as an institution in their history, but they do not except that it was wrong, that it was criminal, perhaps because they do not wish to pay compensation - ironically it was the slave owners who received compensation from the British Government in the British Empire when slavery was abolished. In the US, as mentioned before, the US reneged on any compensation i.e. the much vaunted 40 acres and a mule.Harry Potter 17:31, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

---

Delete this article, everything is biased. Vergès was the defender of Barbie, he didn't support him... He didn't deny the Holocaust... Ericd 19:23, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

??

I agree with you... this page seems to me biased and not pertinent with the title. I don't know much about Vergèr but it seems that his thesis what that holocaust was just a crime against humanity between many others and that it was hipocrite to put on trial nazis while there was no action against colonial crimes responsibles, not that holocaust has never occurred. But nagationism is not debate on the place of holocaust in history: it refers to some theories according to whom gas chambers didn't exist, 5 millions of jews weren't killed by the nazi etc etc... and to people who write pseudo-scientifical books to prove this. --Juliet.p 03:34, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

??

Having read this thru a couple of times I reckon it obvious from within the original text that the term New World Negationism is a harmless creation of the original article author, serving to distinguish the term and to aid clarity for the reader - so why is it such a big problem!

The above familiarity with legal-speak clearly indicates that previous contributors to this page fully understand that what is said in public and what is written in latinate legal documents is language with 'a forked-tongue', could this understanding be part of the problem! As has already been proven by previous contributors, the ingenious use of language is what propells English into a much larger universe of understanding.

Finally, If only one reference in Google exists then presumably the term is no threat to an imminent overhaul of society, grief - how much spare time do you people have? I trust every entry on Wikipedia has this attention spent on it, if so then Wikipedia will only get better as debate is a positive force.