Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Left-wing fascism (4th nomination)

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 delete. Sandstein 05:53, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Left-wing fascism[edit]

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The whole article is basically OR. The first 6 sources all contradict the premise that fascism can be left-wing by contrasting fascism with left-wing ideologies, though they do appear to be used correctly for that purpose, for whatever that's worth (it's not a good sign when an article contradicts itself in the very first sentence). The seventh source fails verification; the term never even appears in the work, nor does the source ever suggest that fascism could be left wing. The 8th source fails verification as well; the author talks of similarities and differences between fascism, monarchism and communism, and classifies fascism as the extremism of the middle class. In fact, the ninth source is the only one to actually use the term (see WP:NEOLOGISM) and it uses it's own definition of it; the 10th and 11th source are both missing page numbers, chapter names or any other information about where in the source this can be found, but in any case, don't seem to be used to support the existence of left-wing fascism, but rather use the term "left fascism" to refer to... Something. The article doesn't make it clear, and the 11th source seems to be using it as a neologism of convenience to refer to leftists who use fascist tactics, without ever defining that further. So the tl;dr on sourcing is that all the sources either A) Contradict the notion of left-wing fascism; B) don't actually say what they're used to say in the article or D) make up their own definition for the term.

Previous AfD's ended as follows:

Bullshit close. There's a clear consensus to delete there.
No consensus, despite the delete !votes having a good argument which the keep !votes never address. Several keep !votes refer to it as a "common pejorative", but there are no sources supporting this.
WP:ILIKEIT !votes for the win. Note that even one of the keep !votes called it "complete bollocks." ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:46, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 15:30, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and here’s why

It’s rather a coincidence that this article has come up for deletion right at the time that I have recently questioned the balance of the “fascism“ article setting a ‘dispute’ tag following deletion of my edits without discussion on the talk page. Editors only need to check the very recent revision history of the fascism article to understand this. In my honest opinion what we need to do is, improve the article, not delete it, submitting further reliable sources from historians and scientists such as Coupland whose brilliant analysis of the Union of Fascists in the early 20th century clearly identifies that fascism is both of the left and right. Or how about Seton-Watson’s ‘Fascism Right & Left’ published in the Journal of Contemporary History? Moving on, don’t editors find it strange that rather than improving the article someone wants to delete it? In closing, it is my estimation that impartial onlookers might see this more as attempted censorship than a case of ‘tidying up Wikipedia’. Finally, I am more than happy to spend some time sourcing further citations if that helps but deletion? No, that would be a huge mistake.Inadvertent Consequences (talk) 20:02, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tentative delete. Normally I'd be very cautious of a 4th nomination of anything but the nomination addresses this and the last nomination was almost 10 years ago so I don't have a problem with it being nominated again. At a first glance the article does not look too bad but the more I look at it the more I see that there are serious, possibly fatal, problems. It is not clear that it is about a single coherent topic. It seems to claim that the meaning of the phrase "left-wing fascism" has changed over time with only the name really being (sort of) constant. I don't have access to most of the reference material but I confirmed that Ref 7 (Klemperer) does not seem to contain the phrase, or anything like it. The intro co-attributes the the phrase to Jürgen Habermas without any references and the article body doesn't mention him at all. It isn't referenced in the article about him either. If the rest of the referencing is half as bad as that then that would make it a clear delete. My delete !vote is tentative as I can't access all the references and it may be that there is scope for a valid article on this subject, possibly based on the Google Scholar hits, but even then I'm thinking that WP:TNT might be the best way to get there. --DanielRigal (talk) 21:07, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Waek delete I am concerned that there seem to be issues with OR and synthesis.Slatersteven (talk) 12:08, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete My suggestion would be to roll what exists of this article into the "Fascist" as a pejorative section of the Fascism article which already touches on various left-wing ideologies and tendencies being labelled as fascism. Due to the weak citations and how small this article is that seems the best action for now, though I am happy to help try to expand this into a functional well cited article if others can contribute the time. @Inadvertent Consequences: the timing of this deletion nomination is most likely in response to attention being brought to this article from the discussion you initiated on the talk page of the Fascism article. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 12:41, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- @Cdjp1: i’d be happy with rolling the page up into the fascism article on the understanding that the article makes it clear in the lead paragraph that fascism is both of the left and right and not ‘fascism is a far right-wing authoritarian ultranationalism’ which is a nonsense.Inadvertent Consequences (talk) 07:17, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  This is definitely not going to happen, per the strong consensus of historians and Wikipedia editors that fascism is a right-wing phenomenon. Generalrelative (talk) 12:32, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  
  @Inadvertent Consequences: that would be akin to changing the opening to the article on vaccines to mention that they may cause autism. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:16, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A slight other note that was made in the original AfD discussion for this article is moving the contents to where it is better suited to have, and using this article title as a disambiguation page. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 12:55, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. This article appears to be 90% WP:OR. The remaining well sourced bits can easily be folded into Fascism#"Fascist" as a pejorative as suggested by Cdjp1. Also worth noting I think: the continued existence of this page appears prima facie to contradict the strong consensus of WP editors that fascism is exclusively a right-wing phenomenon, as reflected in Talk:Fascism/FAQ. Generalrelative (talk) 17:30, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just to note: This isn't just a consensus of WP editors, but of historians and political scientists who write about fascism. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:16, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Generalrelative (talk) 12:29, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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.