what the heck... couldn't you start this debate at another time than four
days before my master's exam? ;-)
Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia(a)math.ucr.edu> writes:
But the gist was that anti-Semitism is
a nationalist philosophy originiating in the 19th century
that goes beyond merely accepting a society's dominant prejudices.
Toby gets the problem: Anti-Semitism is a concept of the 19th century. And
its full consequences showed up in the 20th century (holocaust). Today,
under the background of the holocaust, the term is one of the most evil
reproaches you can think of. At least here in Germany, if you accuse
someone successfully of anti-semitism, he can forget any career forever.
So, if Wagner called himself an Anti-semite, he did this under totally
different circumstances and in the meanwhile the term changed its
connotations - from stupid mainstream ressentiments against Jews to a
very likely support of Hitler's murder of Jews. Would he also have
called himself Anti-Semite if he knew of the Holocaust?
To put this problem on a meta-level: can we apply a concept or a term of
the 20th century to something prior to it?
Can we call Plato's conception of state totalitarian? Is it appropriate to
call the Prophet Muhammad, living in the 7th century an anti-semite?
Is it okay to call Aristoteles a sexist and criticize him for denying women
the right to vote?
There is no right or final answer to these questions, but we have to think
about it.
Just a small glance in the future: _if_ the Israelis adopted suddenly a
policy of exterminating systematically _all_ Palestinians (some say they
do already) - is then everybody who says today "I don't like these
quarreling people, the Israelis are right to fight them" (like some
American journalists and politicians do) a supporter of genocide?
Will Wikipedia in 50 years write "Dick Armey was
Anti-Palestinian" and this will carry the same meaning as if you would
say today someone is anti-semite? [1]
Concerning Ed's alleged abuse of sysop power: it should be noted that no
other sysop on Wikipedia is so engaged in "hot" topics and trying to
settle edit wars. I don't consider protecting pages a good way to achieve
this but opinions may differ here. I support that Ed keeps his sysop
status.
Rather I'd suggest a temporary ban of RK because of repeated NPOV abuses,
if that didn't entail accusations of Anti-Semitism on Wikipedia.
For people who like to write good articles about anti-semitism, I want
to point out that there is some work to do at
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AThe_dark_side_of_Wikipedia
As I have already said to Ed, I won't touch these articles.
greetings,
elian
[1]
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article569.shtml
BTW, _if_ this interview transcript is correct - I don't trust the source
entirely -, replace Israel with Germany and Palestinians with Jews and
these sentences could pass for a Nazi's statement of the 1920ties. For the
people not familiar with German history: longtime there was no mention of
actually killing Jews, mostly the Nazis called for a "transfer of the
Jews" and held that "Germany belonged to the Germans", where Germany was
meant to comprise also the "vast spaces in the East", settled by the
Polish etc. - these people should also be "transfered"...