Wikipedia continues to rewrite history: deleting page on Communism Mass Killings - OpIndia

Wikipedia continues to rewrite history, this time prepares to delete page on mass killings under communist regimes: Here are the reasons they gave

OpIndia Staff | 28 November, 2021

https://www.opindia.com/2021/11/wikipedia-to-delete-a-page-on-mass-killings-under-communist-regimes/amp/

 

 

The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, which was started with the noble intention of becoming the crowd-sourced resource of knowledge for all for free, had become a left-wing propaganda tool long ago. The selected leftist moderators now control information on the website, continuously pushing left-wing propaganda, blocking conservating voices, and in effect rewriting history. In the latest such instance, the website is all set to delete a Wiki page on mass murders under communist regimes in various countries in the world.

A deletion note has been added to the page titled “Mass killings under communist regimes”, which informs that the over 12,000-word page is under consideration for deletion. The Wikipedia moderators claim that the neutrality of this article is disputed, and verifiability of the claims made in this article is also disputed.

The article lists several instances of genocides by communists, including the Red Terror in Russia by the Bolsheviks at the start of the Russian Civil War, mass murders by Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot using various policies, and other similar well-known instances in communist regimes in East Germany, Yugoslavia, North Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Ethiopia etc.

The extensive article also lists various terminology used with mass killings, and discusses whether deaths caused by famines under communist rules can be labelled as mass murder, apart from listing various historical events and estimates of casualties.

However, the left-leaning editors and moderators are now not happy with such a specific article on mass murders by communist regimes, and have decided to delete it. They claim that ‘Mass killings under communist regimes’ is not a legitimate subject for an encyclopaedic article, and it is a synthesis. Many of them also claim that deaths due to famine in communist regimes can’t be called mass murders, even though the famines were caused by the policies of the communist rulers. They claim that the relation between mass murders and the communist regimes where they happened is synthesised.

They claim the article violates Wikipedia policy as it is a synthesis of published material, and it is not a neutral point of view.

Those who are advocating for its deletion further claim that the incidents of mass murders mentioned in the article are separate, not linked to each other, and hence they can’t be clubbed together, while agreeing that these murders did take place under communist rules. Some of them argue it is just a compilation of other articles, and hence it does not have encyclopedic value.

It is notable that none of those who are asking to delete the article deny the incidents narrated in it. They are just saying that it does not deserve a separate article, or that some of the incidents can’t be called mass murders and can’t be linked to communism.

However, a large number of Wikipedia users and editors are fighting to keep the article. A cursory glance at the deletediscussion shows that the majority of those who have participated in the discussion want to keep the article. They argue that all the incidents mentioned in the article happened in history, which can’t be denied. They have argued that facts cannot be erased because the current ideology of someone makes it inconvenient.

Some of the supporters of the article has suggested a middle ground, saying the article can be merged with the Crimes against humanity under communist regimes page, as both deal with similar historical events.

Even though the majority of the people want the article to be kept, that may not happen, as Wikipedia does not work on a majority voting basis. The website works on the basis of whims of a few editors and moderators with authority to remove articles, almost all of whom are leftists. The deletion discussion page helpfully informs that the discussion is not a majority vote, but instead a discussion among Wikipedia contributors. It says that the decision will be taken on the basis of the merits of the arguments, not by counting votes.

It is important to note that the article has been nominated for deletion for the fourth time, which makes it clear that it is under regular attack from communists online. Many contributors have commented that this shows that heavily indoctrinated people desperately want to get rid of this specific page, and there is ideological motivation behind it. But given the leftist bias of Wikipedia, it is very much possible that the article will be deleted, despite opposition by the majority of contributors.

The leftist bias of Wikipedia has been revealed by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who has said that Nobody should trust Wikipedia as the information in it is biased. He said that the site is no longer trustworthy as it does allow content that does not fit the agenda of leftists, and therefore people can’t get a complete view on the topics.

Larry Sanger had left Wikipedia over differences with co-founder Jimmy Wales over how to run the website, and has since become a staunch critic of it for its left-leaning bias. He had also said that Wikipedia has become a huge moral hazard, saying that it has turned into a ‘monocultural establishment organ of propaganda’. He had also talked in detail on the issue in an interview with OpIndia.

It is notable that Wikipedia has launched a crusade against OpIndia, after OpIndia started exposing the bias of the website. First, the wiki page of OpIndia was deleted, saying the portal is worthy enough to have a page on Wikipedia. After that, a Hinduphobic editor created a page on OpIndia with extremely negative language, claiming it to fake news peddler. All efforts to get the page corrected have gone in vein as the leftist-Islamist moderators revert such changes, and threaten people of block from the site for making such changes.

Nothing divides Russians quite like the past - Vladimir Kara-Murza (Democracy Post)

Nothing divides Russians quite like the past

By Vladimir Kara-Murza

DemocracyPost, November 16 at 1:50 PM

November is heavy on historical dates. As world leaders gathered in Paris last week to mark 100 years since the end of the First World War, Russians were remembering the 101st anniversary of the Bolshevik coup d’état that some still refer to as the “great October socialist revolution.”

Two rival commemorations were held in Moscow on Nov. 7. While the Communists rallied on Revolution Square, steps away from the Kremlin, brandishing red flags and the portraits of Lenin and Stalin, activists of the liberal Yabloko party brought flowers and a makeshift commemorative sign to the former Alexander Military Academy that served as the headquarters of the anti-Bolshevik resistance during the fighting in October and November 1917. “Our goal is to overcome the absence of memory and honor those who fought against dictatorship,” said Sergei Mitrokhin, one of Yabloko’s leaders. “A nation cannot forget its past and its heroes. If it does, it will cease to exist as a nation.”

Two thousand miles east, in Russia’s third-largest city of Novosibirsk, the past has also been playing out in political battles. Local Communists are pushing the municipal government to install a bust of Stalin on one of the city’s main streets. The mayor — a Communist himself — is sympathetic. “The very idea of a monument to Stalin is an insult to the memory of the victims of organized terror,” saidAlexander Rudnitsky, the head of the Novosibirsk branch of Memorial, an organization that works to commemorate the victims of Soviet repression. Thousands of Novosibirsk residents have signed a petitionopposing the initiative. The authorities retreated, for now: The city’s Arts Council last week decided against installing the Stalin bust, noting the likelihood of what it called “acts of vandalism.” Supporters of the dictator are vowing to press on.

It is impossible to imagine similar arguments over commemorations for Wladyslaw Gomulka in Poland or Walter Ulbricht in Germany. But unlike its neighbors, Russia only half-completed its de-Communization in the 1990s. While the Soviet Communist Party was banned by President Boris Yeltsin and found by Russia’s Constitutional Court to have been responsible for “repression directed at millions,” full state condemnation of the former regime never came. Most Soviet archives were never opened. And Communist apparatchiks or KGB operatives were never restricted from government positions. Under Vladimir Putin, the tacit public rehabilitation of the Soviet regime — and the open glorification of its security services — has accelerated. One of his first acts in office was reinstating the Stalin-era Soviet national anthem.

The memory of Soviet repression is an uncomfortable subject for a regime that prides itself on its KGB origins. The Russian government has officially branded Memorial a “foreign agent” — itself an insult to the memory of the victims of Communist terror, so many of whom were sent to their deaths on this very charge. Last month, the Moscow government attempted to ban the traditional vigil for the victims of Stalin’s Great Terror held every year near the memorial stone brought from the Solovki concentration camp and placed near the KGB headquarters. Realizing that people will come anyway, City Hall finally issued the permit. Thousands took part in the vigil, waiting in line for hours to read out names and light candles; the lines extended into the underpasses and nearby metro stations. Similar vigils were held in more than 30 cities across Russia.

This month’s historical dates are not yet over. Nov. 16 marks the 98th anniversary of the evacuation of General Pyotr Wrangel’s army from Crimea, the last major defeat of the White forces that all but secured Communist victory in the civil war. For most of 1920, a small White Russian state on the Crimean Peninsula held its ground against the Bolsheviks. The government of South Russia, headed by Prime Minister Alexander Krivoshein and with the prominent liberal statesman and philosopher Pyotr Struve as foreign minister, took steps to implement agrarian, administrative and labor reforms. In August, France officially recognized it as the legitimate government of Russia.

For a while it seemed that an alternative Russia might emerge — a small but determined foothold against the Soviets. (Many years later, this scenario was fictionalized in Vasily Aksyonov’s utopian novel “The Island of Crimea.”) It was not to be. That summer Britain withdrew its support from Wrangel, opening trade negotiations with the Bolsheviks and ordering its military mission and the Royal Navy out of Crimea. Having concluded a ceasefire with Poland, the Red Army moved south to eliminate the last opposition stronghold.

Between Nov. 13 and 16, Gen. Wrangel’s army conducted an ordered evacuation from Crimea; 126 ships sailed across the Black Sea to Constantinople carrying nearly 150,000 military personnel and civilians and leaving the Bolsheviks to claim the whole of Russia. “Three dozen countries in the world have fallen to Communism, and almost none of them managed to maintain a patch of independent territory where the broken national development could continue,” Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian author and dissident, said on his visit to Taiwan, a rare exception. “In Russia, Wrangel’s Crimea could have held on, but did not receive any outside support and, abandoned by its unfaithful European allies, was crushed by the Communists.”

Read more by Vladimir Kara-Murza:

Anyone but Putin: Russians are starting to look for an alternative

Russia is preparing to back out of its last human rights commitments in Europe

The Kremlin revives a Soviet-style law against dissent