Swastika
- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
Swastika symbols remain
associated with Neo-Nazi groups. Wikipedia bills itself as an
encyclopedia that everyone can edit, and "everyone" on
Wikipedia includes Neo-Nazis who write, post, edit and alter
Wikipedia to keep you from learning the secrets exposed here about
Neo-Nazis on Wikipedia and their dogma. Swastika secrets of Nazism
and ties to the USA are exposed here by the historian Dr. Rex Curry.
A fan of the work of symbologist Dr. Rex Curry wrote the
following:
Excerpt: I followed an article on the swastika on wikipedia. I chose the swastika because my
people who work on it a lot tell me that one of Wikipedia's biggest ones
was the swastika. It has one thousand edits on it, and I use the point of
this one time, when somebody put in a link between the swastika and
socialism: That is to say the Nazis kinda linked themselves, they were
involved with the socialists, so they kinda redid as a branding the
swastika as two Ss, kinda forming. Not to say that they followed all the
rules of socialism or that socialists ran the Nazis or anything else, but
this was a branding thing. Guy put it in, he cited a source.
Guy comes along, deletes it. Nonsense, writes nonsense. Guy, original
one, does what everyone else does -- fuck you -- goes back, and puts it
back. Third guy comes in and says "don't undo the work of others". Now
the battle of July begins. About a hundred edits, going back and forth,
trying to keep socialism in, and finally no, it's gone, it's wrecked.
Now, the socialism thing -- the guy who wrote that was [Dr. Rex Curry].
The guy who was undoing him? Guy in Seattle. The third guy, the guy
who said you can't fight like this -- guy in Sweden. All of them
computer guys, none of them history experts, just a bunch of guys
arguing over it, with no direct knowledge.
This happens constantly. There is not only a dislike of experts, there is
a hatred of experts. Experts are derided on Wikipedia because they don't
tend to follow the rules. They tend to put down cited sources and then
say "I don't really care about your view of notability, I just proved it,
done." And when you say "well, screw you" and then undo it and they
realise that they can't follow the rules, they leave.
So you end up with a certain level of quality that's maintained,
especially in certain kinds of articles, where undisputed facts --
basically any case where you can prove something without a shadow of a
doubt, in a way that it actually happened -- gets through on Wikipedia but
a lot of other filtering does not.
As we look at Wikipedia from the inside, towards these mechanisms that
exist, that to me is the most fascinating aspect. Because again, because
of Jimbo's not wanting to directly control rules, except for, like I said,
where he sets foot in, you end up with a mess like Seigenthaler.
Seigenthaler is the third one, the publisher. He's the one that everyone
knows.
Seigenthaler was a man who was a newspaper reporter, a newspaper
publisher, worked with Robert Kennedy, had a long and distinguished
career. Somebody put in an entry saying that he was suspected of shooting
John F. Kennedy. Seigenthaler found out about it. Seigenthaler for some
reason was pissed.
Seigenthaler did not do what Wikipedians had done from time immemorial.
He did not go onto Wikipedia and start editing, and join the big ball of
fun. He went and published an article in USA Today, he took it out of
town, and talked about this.
This broke Wikipedia. This broke Wikipedia deep, hard and fast, because
while you may look at Wikipedia from the outside as being this way, it is
inside an organisation. This broke Wikipedia. Friends of mine have
gained access to Wikipedia's internal help queue. They have an entire
ticketing declaration for John Seigenthaler to handle any John
Seigenthaler related issues.
See, because one of the things Jimbo didn't really expect was the oncoming
massive tidal wave of legality, legal threats and attacks. There is now
an entry in Wikipedia ... Wikipedia has a number of a declarations like I
said, WP:NOT, which means Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is
not this, it's considered to be this kind of an event.
If you start going through the Swastika
edits, one by one, and only a maniac would at this point, you see
points raised, links created, statements made, and then slowly, over
time, they're removed.
A link
between the Nazi Symbol and Socialism is put up, and later,
someone called "Nlight" calls it "presumed nonsense"
and removes it. Why? Who the heck is Nlight? Well, someone
who couldn't take it anymore, apparently. But if you go look
back at his older
entries about himself, you see he's a computer geek from the
northwest. Why did he remove the link between socialism and nazism?
Because he felt like it. Because he "presumed" it was
"nonsense", according to the edit. So now [Dr. Rex Curry]
has to become a content defender, putting
back his socialism link with a citation of it. But now here
comes Rasmus_Faber,
about 20 minutes later, to undo [Dr. Rex Curry's] work and return it
to the non-socialist link. What is called a "revert war"
then occurs, with [Dr. Rex Curry] trying desperately to keep his
entirely valid Socialist Party link about the Swastika
alive while Rasmus Faber (who is, as his page
says, a software engineer) repeatedly stops his changes from
staying.
Throughout "The Battle of January 31", the changes go
back and forth between [Dr. Rex Curry], Rasmus Faber, Nlight, and
Mrdice, who,
as far as it can be surmised, simply jumps into the Melee to "help"
Nlight's valiant attempt to not link Socialism with the use of it by
the Nazi Party. (Mrdice, by the way, gives up on editing Wikipedia
in early
2004, leaving behind a legacy of zip-and-run edits where he
accuses, demands, dictates and runs away, with none of that boring,
time-wasting need to show any authority or reputation with his
subject.)
And lo and behold, that little nugget of information is lost, the
work of four people working at odds with each other over a battle,
all of them located all over the world, fighting over what actually
might be a real fact.
The story of the swastika's entry
continues after this, for over 1,200 edits. Dozens of people are
involved, lots of facts are lost, many are gained... and you would
be hard, hard-pressed to show why many of these folks should be
editing the Swastika entry in the first
place. Calling this "open source" and comparing it to
programming projects is borderline insane: open-source programming
projects have a core team with goals in mind that they state
clearly, who then decide what gets in and what does not get in.
Sometimes this works, and sometimes it does not, but people with
anonymous IPs can't just come in and fundamentally redo the graphics
code on the program and then disappear, never to be seen again.
This is what I mean; you have a brick house that, from a
distance, looks decently enough like a house that people say "see,
community building works". But what isn't obvious on the
surface is how many times those bricks have been pulled apart,
reassembled, replaced, shifted, modified, and otherwise fiddled with
for no good reason other than battling an endless army of righteous
untrained bricklayers who decided to put a window there... no,
there... wait, no window at all. If you declare the final brick
house a "victory" while ignoring the astounding toll of
human labor required to get it so, then you are not understanding
why I consider Wikipedia a failure.
And all of this wouldn't be important at all, if we didn't start
to see the Wikipedia definitions propogating throughout the
internet, being something you
get automatically on a lookup from Trillian or Yahoo
using it as a way to get facts. That goes beyond scary.. it
borders on negligent.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a documentary
website to take care of. It's waiting for me, and nothng gets
done unless I work on it... which is just fine with me.
Posted by Jason
Scott at May 4, 2005 02:08 AM | TrackBack
Comments
Whoops; I apparently had a poorly configured upgrade of my weblog
software, and it was eating comments. If you commented, please
repost.
Thank you for honestly sharing your thoughts -- and for educating
the public as to the sad facts about Wikipedia.
Sincerely, SummerFR
PS I also think this point you made, below, is extremely
important. I hope EVERYONE will pay close attention:
"And all of this wouldn't be important at all, if we didn't
start to see the Wikipedia definitions propogating throughout the
internet, being something you get automatically on a lookup from
Trillian or Yahoo using it as a way to get facts. That goes beyond
scary.. it borders on negligent."
Posted by: SummerFR at May 4, 2005 11:11 PM
Wikipedia is just one corner of an increasingly amazingly
gigantic web of information. The statistics are astounding;
Wikipedia alone has far more information than did the entire
Internet not so many years ago.
Clearly Wikipedia succeeds
at some things & fails at others. I don't see why there should
be any controversy about it, except that various people have various
stakes in it being somehow more or less than it actually is.
I
personally enjoy the aesthetic of Wikipedia articles. They have a
distinct voice to them. It's not the voice of an Authoritative And
Comprehensive Encyclopedia, to be sure, but it's not just arbitrary
rambling & opinion, either. Wikipedia articles have a pervasive
tone of *compromise*, especially on contentious pages. Things are
written in a way that gives hints at all of the various wacky views
on the subject, while staying noncommittal.
You're surely
correct that there's been lots of pointless bickering & revert
wars & all sorts of other nonsense surrounding the Swastika
article-- but in my glancing at the edit history I can't help but
feel like the overall *course* of the thing is that it's been
gradually becoming an increasingly useful & interesting article.
Is it the best possible article about the history of
Swastikas? No. Should it be deified,
tattooed on the insides of our eyelids, required reading for all
schoolchildren? No. But-- is the world better for having it than if
it didn't exist at all? Yes, I think it is.
Wikipedia's only
a failure when compared to some unreasonable goal-- answering
everyone's questions about everything, eliminating human ignorance
forever, resolving the Ultimate Truth of Things once and for all.
It's perfectly successful at being a nice fun little informative
website.
Mungo, you speak with the blissful hum of the consumer, delighted
his product comes to him with such apparent ease, aware there might
be controversy in the distance and fretting ever-so-slightly before
returning to your happy place. That is fine.
My issues with Wikipedia were always procedural, and have turned
a little bit concerned because people are starting to use Wikipedia
as an academic source and point of information without being aware
how arbitrary and problematic its setup is. The response of "well,
they shouldn't do THAT" is not sufficient, since work with
Trillian and Yahoo are ensuring this problematic architecture is
being obfuscated.
Again, as I said in my posting, I do not dispute that the final
product seems fine and is very likely fine for people to use, but it
comes at an enormous toll of time and effort to achieve what it does
achieve. Assuming people take any time to type, the Swastika
article alone represents days and possibly weeks of lost
productivity (depending how you measure them) which are not
reflected in the final work, and as my extremely cursory overview
shows, facts and additional information are obliterated simply by
erosion by people with no personal stake in the subject or in-depth
knowledge of it, eventually driving out people bringing in views or
researched information. Sometimes the resultant work is deep and
informative... often it is not.
I am reminded of a review of a certain video camera, which was
reknown for being pretty inexpensive and making good output, where
the reviewer said "this camera does not help you learn to be a
cameraman... it teaches you how to run this camera alone".
Wikipedia's procedural faults, complete anarchy as regards
contributions, and sometimes-bizzare social rules do not teach
people to become good researchers or writers... it teaches them how
to be good Wikipedians, or to get the hell out.
Saying "Well, you ask for the impossible and we should be
happy with what we have" is not an answer; it is a platitude.
It is also very, very in line with the Wikipedia approach and
outcome. I personally do not live by it. So there you go.
- I think that it weakens your argument to use such a
culturally/politically/racially/religiously charged symbol. Of the
half-million entries in the wikipedia, I would assume the 'Swastika'
one would be very high on the controversial side. If I were doing
research on the Swastika, I would
certainly recognize this and draw from many sources, as any
schoolchild is taught at the library. (This is absolutely true of
the "Disputed" ("NPOV") topics in the Wikipedia,
but of course many other types as well. Would you draw research on
the Swastika using only Britannica? Do
you think that the editors of the Britannica didn't have lots of
discussions and changes and arguments over what the Swastika
entry should say?)
Your argument seems to really only be of relevance to these types
of "hot topics" - thankfully, the open system allows me to
see these arguments which are taking place.
- I think it is unfair to refer to Wikipedia usage as "negligent"
Who said that it is providing what you call 'facts'? Does your BBS
Documentary have disclaimers all over it that say "THIS FILM IS
NOT TO BE TAKEN AS FACT - IT IS MERELY THE VOICES OF SEVERAL PEOPLE
STATING THEIR HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, EDITED TOGETHER BY ME" I
doubt it. People watching it should know better, just as people
gathering information from any source should.
- I wonder if you hate our form of government too - that whole
'checks and balances' thing is so obnoxious. The entire system looks
like a nicely built house from afar, but when you get close and see
all of the changes and revisions and mistakes... How do you like my
strawman argument?
Posted by: Frank at May 6, 2005 01:49 PM
Frank, I'll start with you, since it's the easiest to
explain/work with.
I entirely agree that the Swastika
entry is a pretty weird one, and contains some additional echoes of
political and taboo-oriented noise that make it more contentious
than the usual entry. But part of how to tell the effectiveness of a
system is how it functions under load, and the Swastika
entry is under heavy load. When you have an entry with one or two
people working with it, then you have what I call the "Advantage
of Least Worth", which is where a subject or object that has
meaning to very few people ends up being rather consistent in its
operation. Just like a piece of code where one person is the entire
development team has a very straightforward, monolithic feel to the
code because it is, after all, one or two people.
The problem with me going further into this Wikipedia thing is
that it's a time sink unlike no other; the point of this entry was
to give an example of what I am talking about and why I said what I
said. You have looked at it and gone "nah, not valid" and
that's fine. I suppose I could run a site that delves deep into the
politics and flaws of Wikipedia, but then I think that wouldn't be
very helpful AND would in fact, ultimately be stupid since I could
be doing positive things with my own sites and works.
Kudos for linking my BBS Documentary in with this entry, although
tangentally. At the end of the day, the documentary ends up standing
on its own, the work of one person, and then I will be involved in
criticism and activity with it from them on. Since I'm releasing it
and all its raw footage as Creative Commons, the opportunity for
people to take it and refashion it is quite there and quite
encouraged.
Yeah, you got a little sarcastic there at the end, but let me at
least address where I mean "Negligent". When you start
doing things like linking Wikipedia in from chat clients and search
sites, you head down the road of starting to obfuscate the source.
And it's all well and good to go "don't believe anything you
see or hear from the Internet or from your client" but the fact
is people are using the Internet to purchase items, shop, research
and grab facts, and that trend is not going to diverge; it is likely
going to increase. With barely any barrier to entry and with the
lack of assigned editors or at least people keeping some sort of Den
Mother relationship to areas, there is a lot of wasted energy I do
not wish to put into the project.
Just to point out that posting on Wikipedia as an IP can be a way
to avoid being watched, tracked or retaliated against by others who
wish to escalate edit wars by going after other work. Believe it or
not, some people are crazy enough to threaten this.
The
WikiInfo page criticizing Wikipedia also claims that admins
regularly put users on watchlists to track "problem users",
ie. anyone who goes against the groupthink grain. I'd feel better
keeping a single pseudonym permanently if the admins were more
responsible and protected users from harrassment.
Posted by: anonymous at June 8, 2005 05:12 PM
Although not mentioned above, I was part of the general wiki war
over Nazism and Socialism -- a large
group of Wikipedians were adamantly denying that Nazis
ever even CLAIMED to be socialists.
Editing the Wikipedia is too much of a hassle, its a goddamn
waste of time. I wrote a criticism of the Wikipedia at:
http://www.kapitalism.net/thoughts/wikipedia.htm if
you want to know more about my opinion of the site.
"Isn't the basic premise of Wikipedia that users write it
for the owners for free and the owners get fat from the profits? One
of the initial attractions of the Wikipedia idea must have been the
free labour, and all I can say is - YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR."
The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, is a non-profit
organisation registered in the United States. Before the foundation
was established, the operating costs of the service were borne by
the founder, Jimbo Wales.
Also, the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, under
which all Wikipedia article text is released, pretty much prevent
people from making money out of the content. So no one is getting
fat from profits arising out of Wikipedia.
It is hard to believe that anyone would deny that the Nazis
claimed to be socialists, since the name of their party was
"national socialist workers ..." It certainly also true
that Hitler never believed in socialism, and that the people within
the original Nazi hierarchy who
believed in socialism ended up very dead very quickly.
To deny the original _claim_ of socialism by the Nazis
is certainly very very disturbing.
Posted by: Seth Kurtzberg at September 19, 2005 03:25 PM
I empathize with your comments, Jason. Following some experiences
I had there a few months ago, I decided to never again waste my time
contributing anything to Wikipedia.
The problem as I see it is not that there's a low barrier to
entry. I personally like the low barrier to entry. If the barrier
were higher, a lot of people who actually have something to
contribute wouldn't bother. There have been many times that I was
led to a Wikipedia article from a search engine, and while I was
there, decided to correct spelling and grammar mistakes, or smooth
out ackward sentences and paragraphs, simply because it was easy to
do and I could see the results immediately. I would not have
bothered otherwise.
The problem is that, unlike what Frank previously suggested in
his comment, there really is no system of "checks and balances"
to speak of.
SummerFR appears to be a crackpot in many regards, but she does
make a valid point when she states that there is a marked
left-wing/liberal bias at Wikipedia. It's perfectly acceptable to
kick someone off of Wikipedia for allegedly being a racist, a
neo-Nazi, or just a "right-wing
crank"; it's practically unheard of to kick someone off for
being an avowed Marxist or Zionist attempting to inject bias of that
persuasion into the articles.
Wikipedia claims to be "democratic" in its approach,
but in reality, there is a huge double standard at work there. The
contributions of someone who is not part of the Wikipedia herd,
ideologically speaking, is judged by a whole different set of
standards than that of "the majority" (and "the
majority," of course, is merely a clique which has succeeded in
driving off any dissenting views, either through sheer tenacity or
by flat-out harassment.) To put it succinctly: when you're
politically incorrect, the normal rules don't apply to you, even if
your scholarship and your manners have been impeccable.
Let's take the controversial subject of white supremacy as an
example. It speaks volumes about the much-vaunted "neutrality"
of Wikipedia to note that such organizations as the ADL
(Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith) and the SPLC (Southern
Poverty Law Center), who could hardly be described as disinterested
parties, publish biographies of white supremacist leaders which are
a thousand times more balanced and accurate than their counterparts
on Wikipedia.
There is no diversity of political opinion on Wikipedia, Steve.
The consensus is left-of-center masquerading as center, with lots of
tolerance for the far-left. The far-right has been completely shut
out, and those who are right-of-center had better watch their step.
Many Wikipedans use the word "bias" as a way of attacking
others who don't happen to share *their* bias. In other words, they
are hypocrites. This type of hypocrisy, this selective
implementation of rules in order to impose the ideology of "the
consensus," runs rampant at Wikipedia.
"I understand the misgivings people have about the
Wikipedia, but I also believe that there's no perfect resource on
the planet, and as far as imperfect resources go, Wikipedia is
amongst the best--for _beginning_ your research into a particular
topic. Nobody in their right mind would view an encyclopedia of any
type as a final resource."
Frankly Steve, this comes off as more excuses for why Wikipedia
isn't better than it is. Your attitude is perfectly in line with the
liberal/leftist "consensus" on Wikipedia (i.e.
egalitarianism at all costs, mob rules, competition is bad, quantity
over quality, go along to get along, "one standard for me,
another for you," etc). How about raising the bar a little bit?
I subscribe to Jason's pessimism. Wikipedia is doomed to failure,
and the herd mentality of its core participants will be its
unravelling. Groupthink leads to mediocre product, which Wikipedia
already is. There is no place for a mediocre encyclopedia like
Wikipedia when there are several well-produced commercial ones and a
growing number of specialized "Wikipedias" to choose from.
Wikipedia could have carved out a unique niche for itself as "the
alternative encyclopedia" or "the people's encyclopedia,"
but instead blew it by refusing to acknowledge its own strengths and
weaknesses.
Anyone who wishes to discuss this topic further, or just let off
steam, is invited to my new message board, The Wikipedia Review, at:
http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/
Maybe it might seem a trivial example (though no more trivial
than "Swastika"), but I'm
from Glasgow, Scotland, and the fact that the articles on Celtic
and Rangers, (who's fans almost hate each other) remain 99% factual,
despite constant discussion and/or vandalism, testifies to the
dynamic of arrived-at group consensus.
And Summer - as for your idea that future generations, suffering
under the heal of Hitler-Wales, will look back and say "Remember
that woman teacher who tried to tell us all about this way back
when?", well - don't flatter yourself, I don't really think
you'll make such a huge blip on the radar.
Update: Had a look at the Jeb Bush Wiki, and lo-and-behold, a lot
of Summer's stuff is STILL THERE....strange...
WikiPedia is bullying by the crowd. WikiPedia is a popularity
contest. WikiPedia is disorganized, oversocialized garbage. Whatever
it is, it's not an encyclopedia.
Posted by: S.R. Prozak at
December 9, 2005 08:50 PM
It seems to me that the claim about the connection between
socialism and the swastika was not well
sourced. Merely because someone puts something up on a website does
not mean that it merits inclusion in an encyclopedia. I think that
if a better source was found, with supporting evidence, then that
bit would have been included, and the edit war avoided.
As for your main criticism - my response is, so what? Yes, the
swastika article required a tremendous
collaborative effort. It took a lot of time from a lot of people. So
what of it?
My policy on this thread has not been to reply to stuff in it, as
it became quite a mess. But I'll respond to yours.
The connection between socialism and the swastika
(or more accurately, the use of the swastika
in a way that referenced the socialist party of Germany) was plenty
well sourced on that website. You can't just say "this isn't
valid, it's just on a website" when there are a million other
edits that go "this is valid, I got it from a website".
That very lack of standards is what I am referring to.
In the Swastika article, the guy who
deleted it called it "nonsense". But he's just a guy. Any
guy, in this case just someone who came along, decided all by
himself it was garbage, and then deleted it. He was worse than
"something up on a website". He was just a random person
undoing someone else's work.
Your response of "so what" is a very effective method
to dispel anyone's opinion without having to, you know, regard it.
So to you, I say "You don't see what I see. So what?"
Posted by: Jason Scott at
December 30, 2005 02:58 AM
I've just read this through (and had email from Jason on another
topic in the middle).I am "User 12.144.5.2" of Wikipedia
and am preparing to announce my permanent departure from it as a New
Year's Resolution.I'd like to point out that SummerFR was wrong
about Jeb Bush having Florida's first website (www.state.fl.us was
there before he was elected,under Governor Chiles).Also,I NEARLY
left years ago (I was mollified by a misapprehension that my
concerns were taken into account) over edits of mine drawing
attention to a certain anti-Zionist bias in the diplomatic community
were reverted by those who considered an absolutely unique
diplomatic slap should not be remarked on as in any way unusual...so
I don't see that the community bias supports Zionists.(Anyone who
tries to be less than positive about the increase in acceptance of
homosexual relationships,however,is in for a rough ride).
My camel-breaking straw was the treatment of two articles I
created from nothing about areas I have a specific expertise and
international reputation in.Enough people insisted on adding
duplicative or unsubstantiated material and formatting conceits that
I was considered to be "vandalizing" the article for
repairing the damage done by the "consensus".Coupled with
a lot of other gripes...I've had it!!
Posted by: Louis Epstein at January 1, 2006 06:07 PM
Thanks for your response.
To answer the points in order:
I. If it was the sources on that webpage - rather than the
webpage itself - that documented the socialism-swastika
connection, that editor should have cited those sources (reading
them first, of course) - and not the website - in his justification.
Yes, there are millions of edits which cite a website and do not
get reverted. What separates them from this edit is that this edit
is: a) controversial b) not widely known. It is quite natural that
if you want to insert such a piece of information into the article,
you need to have a stronger case than if you inserted an
inoffensive/widely known piece of information.
II. I'm not dispelling your opinion. And I see exactly what you
see: wikipedia articles are A LOT of work, and a large part of this
work is NOT content generation.
What I don't understand is why you think this is a major
criticism. Yes, producing wikipedia articles is a lot of work. Do
you have a model for a wiki to follow which would generate content
of comparable quality with smaller amounts of work?
These and many other answers will be given at my Notacon speech
in April.
Posted by: Jason Scott
at January 3, 2006 08:11 PM
Hey,
Thanks for the thoughts. I'm new to wikipedia, and am dealing
with controversial content. It's been a bizarre experience. Hope you
keep it up. I totally agree with:
"And all of this wouldn't be important at all, if we didn't
start to see the Wikipedia definitions propogating throughout the
internet, being something you get automatically on a lookup from
Trillian or Yahoo using it as a way to get facts. That goes beyond
scary.. it borders on negligent."
Posted by: James at January 14, 2006 07:07 PM
I found your website only now, because I was looking for material
to support my thesis that Wikipedia is actually quite problematic,
because it supports hegemony, or a "tyranny of the majority",
if you wish. Therefore I am quite benevolent towards your argument,
BUT your example is a very poor one. Why? Because in this particular
case the majority was actually correct:
The idea that the Swastika was
chosen, because it contains two "s" for "socialism"
is not only "presumed nonsense", but actual hogwash. While
it is indeed true that National Socialist ideology contained strong
socialist elements, all credible sources trace the choice of the
swastika back to the idea that the
German "race" stems from India, an idea that was purveyed
by 19th century historians long before Nazism
existed. In fact, the Thule Society, a right-wing authoritarian
group of intellectuals, who were contemptous of socialism, used it
before the Nazi party was founded as a
symbol for their voelkish ideas.
I think your theoretical points are entirely valid, but you shoot
yourself in the foot by not checking your sources properly.
Posted by: Thomas
Koenig at February 2, 2006 08:15 PM
Always good to know people are finding the website, Thomas.
The example I chose was perfectly fine. First of all, it gets
attention, as it obviously did for you and for the thousands of
others who read it.
But in the case of the Nazi-Socialist/SS
link, the point of the paragraph the guy had in was backed up with
posters and a linked webpage. Whether it was true, ultimately or
not, there was at least, at the germ of it, a conspiracy or other
type theory regarding that link.
With no doubt, any amount of research could encapsulate and then
dispel the strength of the paragraph. But you see, that's not what
happened. An entirely random person, from a random background,
deleted (not refuted it) with a tiny note. And when the original
person returned it, he was attacked for doing an "edit war".
Regardless of the ultimate accuracy of the "fact", the
methodology for removing it was inherently flawed. That is my
problem in that specific context.
If someone shoots into a crowd randomly, the fact he hit a known
criminal instead of a baby does not obviate the issue with his
punishment/crowd control method.
It wasn't about checking sources, it was about how arbitrary and
energy-inefficent the process was as of the writing of the essay.
My feet are entirely fine.
Posted by: Jason Scott at
February 4, 2006 03:42 PM
German national socialists
did not call their symbol a swastika. They called it a Hakenkreuz,
or hooked cross and they used it to represent crossed S-letters for
their socialism (see the work of the symbologist Dr. Rex Curry).
http://rexcurry.net/swastika3swastika.jpg
Journalists and others (who
claim that the nazis defamed the "swastika" symbol) are
actually the ones who continue to defame the "swastika" by
never explaining what the nazis called their symbol nor what it
represented for the German national socialists. The old media
pretend that they want to alleviate the problem, but they perpetuate
the confusion, and in a sense they ARE the problem, because they
will not explain the points above. They are vulgus profanum.
