Talk:Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation

Kristen Ghodsee reverts

Doug Weller (talk · contribs) Why did you revert my edits?

Original (2 paragraphs):

According to anthropologist Kristen Ghodsee and professor Scott Sehon, the 100 million estimate favored by the organization is dubious, as their source for this is the controversial introduction to the The Black Book of Communism by Stéphane Courtois. Ghodsee and Sehon also write that "quibbling about numbers is unseemly. What matters is that many, many people were killed by communist regimes."

According to Ghodsee and Sehon, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is a conservative anti-communist organization which seeks to equate communism with murder, such as by erecting billboards in Times Square which declare "100 years, 100 million killed" and "Communism kills". Ghodsee posits that the foundation, along with counterpart conservative organizations in Eastern Europe, seeks to institutionalize the "Victims of Communism" narrative as a double genocide theory, or the moral equivalence between the Nazi Holocaust (race murder) and those killed by Communist regimes (class murder). In her view these are suspect efforts to distract from the global financial crisis and the failures of neoliberalism.}}

Edited (1 paragraph):

Kristen Ghodsee and Scott Sehon doubt this 100 million estimate, which comes from the The Black Book of Communism, but write that "quibbling about numbers is unseemly. What matters is that many, many people were killed by communist regimes." According to Ghodsee and Sehon, the Foundation seeks to equate communism with murder. Ghodsee posits that the foundation seeks to institutionalize the "Victims of Communism" narrative as a double genocide theory.

Keep in mind WP:WEIGHT and WP:COATRACK. This article is about the Foundation, not Kristen Ghodsee's opinions about "neoliberalism" and anti-communism. For the latter, readers can go to the appropriate page. 2001:569:7D8E:5300:4D0D:6AB3:D37:22B4 (talk) 15:25, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

References

Consensus is to keep the long standing version not need to whitewash.Starkid1979 (talk) 02:35, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

User Starkid1979 is a sockpuppet and has been blocked indefinitely for it. 2001:569:5179:F000:C95C:B77A:7F8C:29A0 (talk) 22:30, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

The long-standing does have WP:EDITCONSNSUS and should be maintained until a new consensus is reached. Newimpartial (talk) 23:45, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Read WP:ONUS: The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. Consensus for inclusion of this long, off-topic tract was never established. In fact, there were many objections to it, as the above discussions on this talk page show. 2601:547:500:E930:F0F1:7593:1E58:D3C (talk) 01:05, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Ghodsee's input is noted but there is no need for the next long discussion about Ghodsee's hypotheses about what the European Commission and Obama had in mind in 2008. This article is about the Foundation and not about Ghodsee's speculations which are WP:UNDUE and need be removed.XavierItzm (talk) 04:43, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Ghodsee posits that the foundation, along with counterpart conservative and anti-communist organizations in Eastern Europe, seeks to institutionalize the "Victims of Communism" narrative as a double genocide theory, or the moral equivalence between the Nazi Holocaust (race murder) and those killed by Communist regimes (class murder). In their view, the promotion of an anticommunist paradigm, "100 million dead", was embraced by Western and Eastern leaders to distract from the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and rising scepticism of neoliberal capitalism that followed.

How is this text, which I restored, that refers directly to the foundation supposed to be WP:Undue ~ cygnis insignis 14:34, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

References

You are WP:COATRACKring a speculation about what Barack Obama, the European Community, and some "Eastern leaders" were thinking in 2008. The Foundation's origins are in the 1990's. The quote you are inserting literally reads: "the promotion of an anticommunist paradigm, "100 million dead", was embraced by Western and Eastern leaders to distract from the financial crisis of 2007–2008". This article is about the Foundation, not about Ghodsee's wild speculations. This is incredibly WP:UNDUE, not to mention the paraphrasis does not follow from the quote, so you might be misquoting, which is a very serious offense on Wikipedia.XavierItzm (talk) 05:15, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

User:XavierItzm I strongly concur with your assessment. I've added the appropriate templates to that subsection. 2601:547:500:E930:F0F1:7593:1E58:D3C (talk) 01:13, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

I restored an edit that seems fine, I didn't add it, the claims of "incredibly Undue" and "wild speculations" and "serious offense on wikipedia" is unpersuasive. Demonstrate that the source is unreliable and not about the article topic. ~ cygnis insignis 07:38, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Cygnis insignis Over a third (!) of the article's entire History section is dedicated to expounding, without critique or reservation, Kristen Ghodsee's communism apologia and off-topic speculations. Claiming that's not WP:UNDUE is extremely disingenuous of you. 2601:547:500:E930:F0F1:7593:1E58:D3C (talk) 00:59, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

The templates are warranted and the text needs to be edited in the light of the templates. But I maintain that Ghodsee's detailed wild speculations belong in a Ghodsee article, with, at most, a brief mention on this article that she objects to the Foundation's priors. XavierItzm (talk) 05:07, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

@XavierItzm: Agreed. User:Oolger also appears to be disruptively removing the maintenance templates, against WP:WTRMT policy. 2601:547:500:E930:1464:A8D6:CC28:10E6 (talk) 23:25, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@XavierItzm: I have issued a warning to the offending user. 2601:547:500:E930:1464:A8D6:CC28:10E6 (talk) 23:40, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation counts all COVID-19 deaths in their "100 million" communist death toll

To quote VOC's executive director Marion Smith, While the pandemics final human toll is still unknown, those who have perished from the outbreak must be included in the global count of 100 million deaths at the hands of Communism[1], which comes from one of their reports stating roughly the same thing (those who have perished and will perish from the novel coronavirus must be included in that count): [2]

This is something VOC seems to talk about a lot[3][4] and there are some secondary sources discussing this, though they appear to mostly be of a lower quality. Here are some examples: [5][6][7][8] To be frank, this claim seems patently absurd and about as WP:FRINGE as one can get, though I'm somewhat ambivalent about adding mention of it due to the quality of the secondary sources. Thoughts? Endwise (talk) 16:44, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

@Endwise: If we get discussion in more reliable sources, then maybe. As you say, it's fringe of fringe. Doug Weller talk 16:06, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

The Townhall.com article seems to be the least-worst secondary source on the matter, which is certainly not very inspiring. Endwise (talk) 17:03, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

"US-funded" at top

LemonPie00, I reverted your addition of "US-funded" because it lacked a clear source and was not explained later in the article. If a reliable source (WP:RS) says this clearly, can you add the information later in the article first instead, with a citation to the source? Llll5032 (talk) 18:50, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

According to their 2021 Annual Report (page 36), they received $5,024,062 in revenue in FY 2020, 73.6% of which was from individual donations, 16.8% from government funding, and 9.6% from "foundation" (I'm not sure what foundation means). Endwise (talk) 19:00, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

That is good information and I would support adding it later in the article. I don't know if getting 16.8% government funding qualifies as "US-funded" for the top. We may need to see if third-party sources say it. Llll5032 (talk) 19:08, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't think 16.8% would really qualify either, particularly when I'm pretty sure that part of that is governments other than the United States making donations too. Note as well that the original act of congress did not include funding, and they had to raise funds themselves to finance building the actual original memorial.[9] I'm trying to find what secondary sources/third parties say about their funding, but I'm not coming up with much. Endwise (talk) 19:20, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Washington Post article

Here's a good article from the Washington Post which will provide a [[WP:RS]] for many of the viewpoints stated in this comment page. It also came up with some appropriate contrary views as selected by a professional journalist. It explains things like the purpose of the Foundation better than the current article, I think. And it says that the Foundation "relies on donations, not tax dollars.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/20/victims-of-communism-museum-opens/

A new anti-communism museum in D.C. tallies 100 million victims of Marx’s ideology

By Justin Wm. Moyer

Washington Post

September 20, 2022

Now, especially given the rise of left-wing regimes in Latin America, he argues that the threat is returning. “This is a huge challenge that has come back,” Bremberg told me. “The entire country needs to be more aware of the danger and evils of communism....”

"In the United States, however, unpacking the history of communism — an ideology associated with John Reed, Woody Guthrie, Isadora Duncan, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Paul Robeson, Lucille Ball, the Hollywood 10 and Rage Against the Machine — gets complicated quickly. This philosophy that killed tens of millions also inspired generations of activists. Roberta Wood, 73, joined the U.S. Communist Party in 1969. At the time, the nation was in the throes of the Vietnam War, mired in persistent segregation, and awash in revolutionary rhetoric among youth...."

"Wood says communists are “against the victimization of anyone under any system.” “I can’t defend everything that’s been done in the past century-and-a-half in the name of communism.... this museum could be the basis of a whole other museum called ‘Lies About Communism.’ ”

--Nbauman (talk) 20:45, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Different Victims of Communism memorial

Recently @111.88.133.31 made an edit but he didn't know how to properly cite sources so he put this URL in the edit summary here.

However the URL he shared sent people to an article about the Canadian Victims of Communism memorial.

Have any other editors encountered people who have mistaken the American memorial for the Canadian memorial? Is this perhaps something we should address and clarify? The History Wizard of Cambridge (talk) 23:28, 7 June 2023 (UTC)