Y'know, I thought this was a case of simple POV vandalism that would be quickly reverted, but apparently not. I think this might be another one for the international media, in fact.

On Feb. 26, now over two weeks ago, someone going by the name "Fourtildas" made this edit to the Holocaust_denial article, which - until then, at least - was a relatively good article about an extremely emotional and highly touchy subject. For the most part, the Faithful had been able to restrain themselves from what they presumably would prefer to do, namely add the names of anyone they personally dislike to the list of "notable Holocaust deniers," instead of only people who actually are deniers. All rather commendable of them, I must say!

But maybe that's changing...?

For the last two weeks, the article has contained a section repeating what I'd consider a rather scurrilous, extreme, and possibly incendiary remark by Deborah Lipstadt:

The "former president" is Jimmy Carter, the book is Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, and the heading for this is "Jimmy Carter accused of 'Soft-core denial' of the Holocaust." (The original heading was "Jimmy Carter's Soft-core denial of the Holocaust," so it's not like they haven't given the issue some thought.)

So, never mind that Carter, well-known for his efforts to help try and solve the whole Israeli-Palestinian problem, has written a fairly even-handed book that takes a matter-of-fact approach to the recent history of the Middle East, as opposed to Europe, which is where the Holocaust actually took place. Could it be that Carter didn't want to introduce material into the book that he felt was of little relevance to the territorial issues, and might even have suggested heavy bias towards the Israeli position? Pshaw!

So now, President Carter, the man who practically started the ball rolling on US-led efforts towards Middle East peace (which admittedly haven't been particularly successful since George W. Bush took over), is included in the Wikipedia article as a "soft-core Holocaust denier."

And after two weeks, during which the article was edited by all the names you recognize - SlimVirgin, Jayjg, Jpgordon, Tom harrison, Gamaliel, Modemac, Wiccan Priest Justin Eiler, and butt-kissing admin trainee User:DennyColt - it's still there. Most of those people were just reverting obvious vandalism, but still, two weeks!

So, I guess as long as it's cited to a web-friendly source, these people figure they can just put in whatever they want, no matter how libelous, damaging, and well, just plain moronic and irrelevant it is. Hey, why don't I go and make a speech accusing Jimbo Wales of being a Holocaust denier too, and maybe an obscure (but oh-so-heavily biased) newspaper columnist could write up a nice news blurb about that, and then we can put that in the article too? And goshers - way to help solve the Middle East crisis, Wikipedia! Why don't you people find some nuclear bombs, and throw those onto the fire right along with everything else?

This is upsetting you Somey, I can tell.

Was I laying it on too thick? (I was, wasn't I?)

Still, given the number of edits that have taken place on that article since then, and who's been making them, and the fact that there's a "source" (albeit an obviously-biased one) attached to it, something like this could stay in the article for years - in effect, becoming an accepted part of the Wikipedia Version of "History." Even if some decent human being tries to take it out, they'll get reverted immediately with the "Do not remove sourced material" warning. Hell, they could even get blocked for it.

And it was probably put there by someone who just wanted to stir up trouble - most likely, an Arab terrorist sympathizer looking for a cheap way to piss off both sides of whatever argument he/she thinks it is. For all we know, that person could be reporting the incident to the media right now... and if not, I might just do it myself!

Carter isn't quite what I'd call a personal hero of mine, but he's a decent guy - more so than everyone who's succeeded him in the Presidency so far - and I'm tired of seeing decent people get trashed on Wikipedia for stuff they didn't even do. These WP idiots have absolutely no right to do that - none whatsoever.

Okay, there's more background about this on the talk page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Holocaus...Soft_Deniers.3F

Apparently a few people (actual human beings on Wikipedia? Yikes!) did disagree with the inclusion of this material. Someone named User:DJSemtex asked for it to be put in, and User:Fourtildas just followed the request:

Sheez Louise! It almost sounds like he was doing it as some sort of joke, or an "experiment" of some kind. Obviously he's anti-Israel, but maybe he just wanted to see how long it would take for it to get reverted? I wonder if they checked to see if DJSemtex and Fourtildas are the same person...? Presumably not, since they didn't question the material itself!

So if it was an experiment, did it work, or did it backfire? Even so, two weeks ought to be enough to give the WP'ers a black eye over it, if there's any justice in the world.

I was thinking of starting a thread called "New New Anti-Semitism," but I think I'll post here instead. First there was anti-Semitism, bigotry toward Jews. Then there was New Anti-Semitism, where criticism of the Israeli government is equated with bigotry toward Jews. Suddenly there are all sorts of spin-offs, including the allegation that Jimmy Carter is engaged in "'Soft-core denial' of the Holocaust." But wait! There's more! Attacking hedge funds is now anti-Semitic (Gomi will appreciate this one.) Also, Anti-Americanism and even opposition to Bush may now be anti-Semitic. I think that you may expect the Chipster and his sidekick, Dking to be in the forefront of this sort of stuff at Wikipedia.

And need I mention the Anti-Semiotics presently attacking the Charles Sanders Peirce article?

Hey! I just hijacked a topic with an utterly idiosyntactic association. By George, I think I've got it!

No, the other George ...

Jonny

Is the move of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to Berlin for the duration of the War, his messages to the Arabs while he was in Berlin and his subsequent return European and not Middle East history?

For a change, Wikipedia is not creating a libel.

Alan Dershowitz:

His (Carter) bias against Israel shows by his selection of the book's title: "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid."
Why then would Jimmy Carter invoke the concept of apartheid in his attack on Israel? Even he acknowledges--though he buries this toward the end of his book--that what is going on in Israel today "is unlike that in South Africa--not racism, but the acquisition of land." But Israel's motive for holding on to this land is the prevention of terrorism.

I don't know why Jimmy Carter, who is generally a careful man, allowed so many errors and omissions to blemish his book. Here are simply a few of the most egregious.

• Carter emphasizes that "Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued to live in this same land since Roman times," but he ignores the fact that Jews have lived in Hebron, Tzfat, Jerusalem, and other cities for even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948.

• Carter repeatedly claims that the Palestinians have long supported a two-state solution and the Israelis have always opposed it. Yet he makes no mention of the fact that in 1938 the Peel Commission proposed a two-state solution with Israel receiving a mere sliver of its ancient homeland and the Palestinians receiving the bulk of the land. The Jews accepted and the Palestinians rejected this proposal, because Arab leaders cared more about there being no Jewish state on Muslim holy land than about having a Palestinian state of their own.

• He barely mentions Israel's acceptance, and the Palestinian rejection, of the U.N.'s division of the mandate in 1948.

• He claims that in 1967 Israel launched a preemptive attack against Jordan. The fact is that Jordan attacked Israel first, Israel tried desperately to persuade Jordan to remain out of the war, and Israel counterattacked after the Jordanian army surrounded Jerusalem, firing missiles into the center of the city. Only then did Israel capture the West Bank, which it was willing to return in exchange for peace and recognition from Jordan.

• Carter repeatedly mentions Security Council Resolution 242, which called for return of captured territories in exchange for peace, recognition and secure boundaries, but he ignores the fact that Israel accepted and all the Arab nations and the Palestinians rejected this resolution. The Arabs met in Khartum and issued their three famous "no's": "No peace, no recognition, no negotiation" but you wouldn't know that from reading the history according to Carter.

• Carter faults Israel for its "air strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor" without mentioning that Iraq had threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons if they succeeded in building a bomb.

• Carter faults Israel for its administration of Christian and Muslim religious sites, when in fact Israel is scrupulous about ensuring every religion the right to worship as they please--consistant, of course, with security needs. He fails to mention that between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Hashemites destroyed and desecrated Jewish religious sites and prevented Jews from praying at the Western Wall. He also never mentions Egypt's brutal occupation of Gaza between 1949 and 1967.

• Carter blames Israel, and exonerates Arafat, for the Palestinian refusal to accept statehood on 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza pursuant to the Clinton-Barak offers of Camp David and Taba in 2000-2001. He accepts the Palestinian revisionist history, rejects the eye-witness accounts of President Clinton and Dennis Ross and ignores Saudi Prince Bandar's accusation that Arafat's rejection of the proposal was "a crime" and that Arafat's account "was not truthful"--except, apparently, to Carter. The fact that Carter chooses to believe Yasir Arafat over Bill Clinton speaks volumes.

• Carter's description of the recent Lebanon war is misleading. He begins by asserting that Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. "Captured" suggest a military apprehension subject to the usual prisoner of war status. The soldiers were kidnapped, and have not been heard from--not even a sign of life. The rocket attacks that preceded Israel's invasion are largely ignored, as is the fact that Hezbollah fired its rockets from civilian population centers.

• Carter gives virtually no credit to Israel's superb legal system, falsely asserting (without any citation) that "confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli courts," that prisoners are "executed" and that the "accusers" act "as judges." Even Israel's most severe critics acknowledge the fairness of the Israeli Supreme Court, but not Carter.

• Carter even blames Israel for the "exodus of Christians from the Holy Land," totally ignoring the Islamization of the area by Hamas and the comparable exodus of Christian Arabs from Lebanon as a result of the increasing influence of Hezbollah and the repeated assassination of Christian leaders by Syria.

• Carter also blames every American administration but his own for the Mideast stalemate with particular emphasis on "a submissive White House and U.S. Congress in recent years." He employs hyperbole and overstatement when he says that "dialogue on controversial issues is a privilege to be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and withheld from those who reject U.S. demands." He confuses terrorist states, such as Iran and Syria to which we do not extend dialogue, with states with whom we strongly disagree, such as France and China, with whom we have constant dialogue." - End Dershowitz Quote

Pretty clear, stated facts.
Fourteen members of a leadership group under former President Carter's think tank resigned over concerns that Carter's book on the Middle East did not represent "the Jimmy Carter we came to respect and support."

The members of the 200-member Board of Councilors, a leadership advisory group founded in 1987, joined a longtime Carter aide, Jewish groups and lawmakers who have publicly criticized the former president's best-selling book "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid" for inaccuracies and distorting history.

Fact, not fiction.......

Well, it's a fair question, but what you're objecting to is really just me doing a lousy job of making a point. Frankly, Carter's intended audience isn't likely to be all that interested in something like that anyway - even if it is highly germane to the way events played out in the Middle East. Throwing in the whole story of Mohammad Amin al-Husayni and his collaboration with the Nazis might have risked having the book lose its focus, or even worse, its balance. Carter's trying to help bridge the gap between the two sides, right? Maybe he felt that details about that stuff might make the book seem too anti-Arab, but then again, he may have miscalculated there - the book isn't making the Israeli right wing and their US-based supporters very happy, apparently.

I guess you could say that failing to properly analyze the events leading up to the creation of Israel shows a lack of historical perspective, but he wasn't writing a history book, he was writing a peace proposal. There are plenty of historians around, but only one Jimmy Carter... To call him "anti-semitic," as some people are doing, just because the book isn't pro-Israeli enough is just stupid - and calling him a "holocaust denier" borders on criminal. Unfortunately, somebody like Jimmy Carter would never sue Wikipedia, since he's a statesman, and has to show that he's above the kind of tabloid-level sniping and pettiness that pervades WP... But that doesn't make it any less libelous.


Joel, would you care to point out where, in that entire Alan Dershowitz quote, there is a suggestion that Carter is, in any way. a "holocaust denier"?

And do you even read the actual content of other people's posts before you click the "Add Reply" button? I'm just curious...

As always, Somey, I admire your efforts, and the patience with which you Speak Truth To Morons is something truly noble. I would say notable — hey, wasn't that an old keyword in SPSS? — but I would not wish that kind of e-notability on my worst enemy anymore.

But sometimes your e-lightened attitude, Dude, just ain't worth the Candle in Guernica. Sometimes you just have to call a moron a moron and movon. Once again, it's fruitless trying to get these bawling brawling infants to behave like adults. The answer lies in getting the rest of the world to recognize what morons they are. When folks write that kind of crapola in ChitChatRheums on Usenet, nobody cares in the least. The real problem here is that Wikipedia has so far gotten the benefit of the doubt about its dubious claim to be a source of information. But the tide has already turned. We have seen the last of the Puff The Magic Dragon pieces from established media like the New Yorker. There will of course be whole Platoons Of Sad Sacks that get caught with their pants down again, but each time they get their butts chewed out by the public in consequence they will think twice to think a third time the next time.

Jonny

Ahh, but in this case, I really was trying to bring about something positive. Only a few hours after this thread appeared, one of the "White Hat" admins, User:CJCurrie, showed up and removed the Carter-related material:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=113744840

...And that can't be a total coincidence, right? CJCurrie has had multiple run-ins with SlimVirgin and the New Cabal Singers, so he probably checks in here occasionally, if only for the amusement value. I'm guessing he must've been at least semi-inspired by my humble efforts, enough to look into the situation anyway.

So there you go! Problem solved! I'm still likely to use this as an example of how the "most vandalism is reverted within five minutes" line is a load of bollocks, but at least someone got in there and did the right thing before it got out into the mass media and embarrassed the hell out of everybody.

By the way, I'm still not sure if CJCurrie is a "he" or a "she." Does anyone know? He/she seems like a decent sort.

Hot Off The Presses !
Riddle A Body !
Jimmy Carter Cleared Once And For All Of Sins-Of-Inadequate-Mention Holocaust Denial !
Roll The Presses!
Print That Sucker On Bleached And Dried Tree Pulp With Indelible Black Ink !

Er, remind me to remind you sometime about the nature of a dynamically e-phemeral e-nemas list ...

Jonny

I don't know enough about the Jewish plight, etc, to really know in this issue. However, if someone is "accused" then I think that's okay, even if it is not proven. It is a bit like saying "Wikipedia Review is accused of stalking admins". That doesn't mean that we do it, it just means that some people think we do. That's okay and is not libel because it is an opinion. It can, however, become libel if it suggests that there has ever been a criminal charge when there wasn't, or something of that nature.

Once again, the ass-head test is this : What would you expect to see printed in a reputable encyclopedia?

You would not expect to see stoopid moronic crap printed in a reputable encyclopedia.

Ergo, they should cut the crap & roll the presses without it.

Jonny

And do you even read the actual content of other people's posts before you click the "Add Reply" button?

For sure I read the entire post.
It is within this perspective that I am pointing out that Carter is denying us all a balanced take on the creation of Israel - having left out mention of the Holocaust is just one small example. Did you ever read the actual content of what Dershowitz has said about Carter? just curious...

I dunno... Blissy has a point, as usual. Maybe the proper word would have been "defames" or even "attacks," but "libels" sounds so much more, I dunno, serious. Of course, it wasn't Blissy's ex-President who was defamed/attacked/libeled/whatever.

It would be helpful, though, if we could somehow establish the principle of "libel by inclusion." The more examples of it we can find the better, as far as I'm concerned. The idea would be that if someone is being unfairly singled out for this sort of thing, it shouldn't matter if the material is "properly sourced" or not - it could be the best-written article on the whole stupid website, and it shouldn't matter. If they've written the article for the express purpose of bashing something or someone specifically, and other people whose records in the exact same fields (or whatever) are actually worth bashing aren't mentioned at all, then that's simply wrong - and they should be held accountable for it.

I also don't care if they try to argue that it's "simple vandalism," either - their arguments are essentially meaningless at this point, given that they can't even understand the simple truth that public editability trumps all other moral considerations. Especially when it comes to information that could substantially damage perfectly decent people, places, or organizations, yada yada yada.

I'd better get off the ol' soapbox now, though... someone might need some soap!

The phrase Holocaust Denier has a specific meaning and a valid use. If you stretch it so thin as to cover people like Jimmy Carter, then you have all but evaporated its meaning and rendered it inutile. If people have criticisms of some opinion leader or ordinary person, then they should make those criticisms accurate, descriptive, and explicit. Criticism by remote connotation is simply not very effective, and tends to undermine the point.

I know 'cause I do it all the time ...

Jonny

Okay, fine. But "denying us a balanced take" and "leaving out mention of the Holocaust" is a far, far cry from denying the Holocaust actually happened, is it not?

Again, what concerns me is that all the overreacting, hyperbole, and sheer anger used in these arguments is just as likely to turn people against the good guys as it is to demoralize the bad guys. Like Jonny says above, it dilutes the power of the term to apply it to people who don't deserve it... Though I realize it's not easy to know when it's best to back off a little bit, especially when dealing with something like Wikipedia, for which no amount of overreacting, hyperbole, and anger can ever be too much...

Besides, I'm thinking Jimmy Carter owes me a favor now. Maybe I can get him to build me one of those cheap "Habitat for Humanity" houses... and I could ask for an extra-big garage, for my collection of Italian sports cars!

Somey, as known Wikipedia can just put in whatever they want, no matter how libelous, damaging. But, it is up to us to curb this problem. When you start messing with an ex-President in this kind of a libelous way labeling it as "Fact" now you have the Secret Service on your back. I Knew President Carter and his family, and I will make them and the White House aware of what Wikipedia is doing.

Isn’t one of the problems with calling everyone you don’t like a Nazi, such as Nixon’s a Nazi and Bush is definitely a Nazi, that it makes the real Nazis as nice as Nixon and Bush.

If Jimmy Carter is an anti-Semites and Holocaust denier, one might get the impression that anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers are smiling, friendly people who build houses for the poor.

In addition to a slander against Carter, it’s also somewhat self-defeating. But what can one expect online.