Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neo-fascism and religion

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was No consensus. Cbrown1023 19:28, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neo-fascism and religion

Neo-fascism and religion (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Strange article, mixing completly disparate concepts with no NPOV common denominator. 'Fascism', is in modern political context almost exclusively used as a pejorative, and the common denominator of all tendencies mentioned in the article is that they have opponents that have branded them as such. --Soman 16:02, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletions. -- Pastordavid 18:47, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep I'm not expert on the subject matter, but it seems like a subject that's inherently notable and worthy of inclusion. It has 18 sources cited, which is way more than most articles. Maybe it can be improved over time? Tarinth 16:08, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete - When people call something fascist they always mean Nazi. Bakaman 17:32, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. It doesn't matter what people mean by the term. It matters whether or not the term is used. That, and not whether or not we agree, should be our compass here. I do not take issue with a rewrite, but absolutely do not delete it.Greyscale 04:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep per Tarinth. --- RockMFR 17:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Nominator does not cite any good reasons for deletion. (If it's a NPOV-related complaint, tag the article as such.) —EdGl 18:32, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - Potential for POV forking. I agree that, as it stands, it is a list of political grandstandings made by a bunch of partisan hacks. Rumpelstiltskin223 19:50, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete As the quotation from Orwell in the article says: "...the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless". Not entirely true, but any encyclopaedia article on "neo-fascism" has got to define its terms more thoroughly than this one does. The only section that deals with actual neo-fascist groups and religion is the section on paganism - and that has no references. Parties that might reasonably be described as "neo-fascist", such as Alessandra Mussolini's outfit in Italy or Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National are conspicuous by their absence. Instead, we get a lot of stuff about extremely conservative religious groups with possible theocratic tendencies being called "fascists" by their opponents. Did Mussolini or Hitler aim at theocracy? No. So it's just "fascism" being used as a generalised insult for anything perceived as politically undesirable. Not encyclopaedic enough in its present state. --Folantin 10:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Re "conspicuous by their absence": Of course they're not mentioned in this particular article -- why would they be? They have nothing to do with the subject of the article. Ms Mussolini is mentioned in Neo-fascism, as one would expect. Cgingold 15:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Reply Maybe because they are among the most notable "neo-fascist" organisations currently around and the first term in this article's title is "neo-fascism". As far as I can see, this article doesn't even try to define that term. It mostly merely reports vague allegations that certain religious groups have some things in common with old-style fascism. --Folantin 16:57, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Of course there might be material in the text that might be relevant in other articles. Church-state relations in Italy, Germany and Spain during Fascism would certainly deserve independent articles. Particularily the relations between German Nazis and religion is very interesting and complex. However, there is no common denominator of all movements inspired by Fascism regarding religion. In some cases, Fascists (or people widely accused of being Fascists) have had a strong religious profile, whilst in other cases promoted secularism. There is no common denominator on which to build this article, the is no universal phenomenon to describe. --Soman 11:14, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep I agree the article needs work. There is also a general wikipedia caution against articles about "and" topics. But the article draws together important material that should be here. BobFromBrockley 15:07, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Keep - I've had a day to reflect on this (rather than just jumping in and reflexively arguing against deletion). Judging from the comments I've read here, there seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what the article is actually about. People seem to have misconstrued the title. (Possibly it could be modified slightly, if that's the case.) If the title were, say, "Neo-fascist religious movements", then I could easily understand the objections -- in fact, I would almost certainly agree with them. But the actual title -- "Neo-fascism and religion" -- indicates that the purpose of the article is to discuss whatever connections there may be between those entities. It doesn't presume that all of the religions that are discussed in the article do, in fact, have neo-fascist elements. The whole point, as I see it, is to help readers sort out which, if any, of them really do have such elements.

My impression is that some of the people who are supporting deletion really just want the subject to go away, because they find it offensive. But whether anybody likes it or not, it's a fact that countless such assertions are made about one or another religion, sect, etc. To simply delete this article -- rather than improving it -- would be to pretend otherwise, and would be a real disservice to Wikipedia readers, depriving them of an opportunity to learn about such issues from a neutral source. This article has a number of serious editors who in my judgement are committed to the need for an evenhanded and impartial article. Whatever flaws there may be should be eliminated through the usual WP editorial process. Deletion is far too extreme a "remedy" -- in fact, it would just be a copout, taking the easy way out, instead of doing the work to improve the article. Cgingold 15:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Reply "My impression is that some of the people who are supporting deletion really just want the subject to go away, because they find it offensive". Would you please avoid using ad hominem speculation like this and stick to the arguments people have made here. My objection is much the same as Soman's: this article is impossibly vague and disparate and has too much material where "neo-fascist" is used as a loose synonym for "totalitarian", "authoritarian" or even "theocratic". The bit that could be saved (the section which notes connections between genuine neo-fascists and neo-paganism) is unsourced. Get some references and save that and use it as a core to rebuild the article. --Folantin 17:38, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete - unacceptably POV. It's high time Wikipedia got rid of all of these concept articles, as most of them are little more than highly POV/OR/OR synthesis essays, like this one. OR synthesis is the big problem. Even if you base your essay upon reliable sources, it's still an essay and OR applies. Moreschi ^Deletion! 20:50, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - This page has a history. Its creation allowed for a serious discussion of the issue (see the cites) in a context that defused heated and lengthy edit wars over several pages that looked only at one religion, especially Islam. (See the battle over Islamofascism for example). There are serious scholars who look at this question. See, for example, the Journal of Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, especially Vol. 5, No. 3, (Winter), special issue on Fascism as a Totalitarian Movement: [1]. See especially Roger Griffin's Introduction: "God's counterfeiters? investigating the triad of fascism, totalitarianism and (political) religion." Sure this page can be improved, but it does not confuse "totalitarian", "authoritarian" or even "theocratic" concepts, it attempts to tease out how they relate or do not relate using a framework developed in a peer review scholarly journal.--Cberlet 14:25, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. OR of low quality, war zone. Pavel Vozenilek 23:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete a lot of it is OR and pure POV, on topics such as these, sources are also inherently biased and tend to not present facts as they should be presented. Nobleeagle ^[TALK] [C] 04:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.5.210.218 (talk) 08:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC).
• Delete - the information here can easily be dispersed as mere footnotes on the pages dealing with each religion. 'religion and politics,' yes, seems a topic of conversation, but to me, this article seems irrelevant as 'religion and emoticons.' The undertow 08:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Lots of delete voters are saying this because it contains OR and POV material. However, surely the response to this would be to edit out the OR and POV material, rather than delete the page. The delete voters need to establish that there is no case for such an article, not that the article as it stands is not up to standard. BobFromBrockley 17:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. The bibliography alone indicates this is a topic of scholarly inquiry; synthesizing the research in this field as pertaining to the individual religions is an encyclopedic endeavour. Sandstein 11:48, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
• Weak keep - this article appears to have been started as a NPOV way of addressing this subject in a well sourced and scholarly way, and to replace the previous articles (Christofascism, Christian Fascism, Islamofascism etc) that had serious POV issues. Islamofascism has remained a separate article but the others now redirect to this one. A good case could be made either way but I'm not sure if the alternative to keeping this would be worse - the proliferation once again of articles with far worse POV issues than this one. Probably worth keeping provided it can be kept well sourced, neutral, and free of unsourced personal essays Dragomiloff 22:08, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep This article could be useful.--CJ King 22:11, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• Further comments - I think it's worth noting that, even while this Afd discussion has been taking place, three editors (Rumpelstiltskin223, Bobfrombrockley, and Dragomiloff) have engaged in serious editing and the addition of numerous references. The section re Hinduism is already much improved over where it was previously -- which is notable, because this Afd nomination seems to have been a direct outgrowth of the dispute that was going on with regard to that particular section. This ongoing progress bears out one of the central points I made above:

"This article has a number of serious editors who in my judgement are committed to the need for an evenhanded and impartial article. Whatever flaws there may be should be eliminated through the usual WP editorial process. Deletion is far too extreme a "remedy" -- in fact, it would just be a copout, taking the easy way out, instead of doing the work to improve the article."

Returning to another point I raised above, regarding the title of the article: I believe that the current title inadvertently raises certain expectations, on the part of some readers, in terms of the primary focus of the article, which is not so much on Neo-fascism itself, as it is on religions -- more correctly, religious movements -- which may have fascistic elements.

While it's certainly true that changing the title wouldn't eliminate all of the hard work that will still be needed to improve the article, I do think that we should give serious consideration to modifying the title to better reflect the subject/issues that the article is intended to address. Perhaps something along the lines of Fascistic currents in modern religious movements (or more completely, Claims of Fascistic currents in modern religious movements). No doubt that can be improved upon, but I think it does more accurately denote the intended focus of the article.

Cgingold 12:25, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

comment - while i find each subject fascinating, and agree that much hard work has been put into this article, i simply find the link between the 2 to be arbitrary.The undertow 12:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Hardly an arbitrary link if there are multiple peer review scholarly journals and chapters in academic books (and even entire books) on the subject.--Cberlet 17:22, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

re:commentary - provide links, as i am willing to learn. The undertow 11:06, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.