Talk:R. J. Rummel - Misplaced Pages

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Archive 1

Rummel the historian

I think the article should be a bit more clear that Rummel isn't just controversial, but is pretty much a libertarian crackpot. At least that's my impression of what historians think of his scholar ship, especially all the imaginative tinkering with casualty figures.

Peter 09:07, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Not true and note that reference must be provided for all statements as per WP policy. What you are saying is extremely POV and needs some very solid evidence to back it up. Needless to say your personal impression is irrelevant at best. Btw WP is not generally considered to be the place to vent one's frustrations.Xenovatis (talk) 22:08, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me, but Rummel's centrist bona fides are extremely suspect. You ask Peter to provide evidence, whichh I briefly considered doing myself. Then I realized that what I was attempting to do so was so self-evident as to be obvious. Simply spend an hour going through his various websites, blogs and "research". You will begin to see that virtually ALL his opinions line up with those of more well known center-right/far-right wing authors.

Further, he spends a great deal of time openly attacking the realist views that quite naturally dominate academia, as per the wing-nut right's attacks on anything-left-of-FOX media or any other source of information capable of contradicting them. How convenient. He proposes censorship of anti-war media, giving it his own spin of cousre, not the "unpatriotic" label that would give him away. He cheer-leads the Iraq War, (even Bush fer' chrisakkes!), makes no criticism of Israeli policies re: the Palestinians, etc. etc. etc. In a nutshell, the USA is right, anyone who doesn't agree is wrong..."and he can prove because he's a scholar and a peace-loving man himself!". C'mon.... It doesn;t take a genius to see what this guy is up to, and until WikiP ses it and dumps 3/4 of that bio, it will remain as a testament to the kinds of abuses that can happen when people get to direwct the writing of their own bios.

I mean...David Horowitz, when compared to this guy, looks like he might still be the left-winger he trumpets as "proof" he knows what he's talking about. Rummel is taking a page right of that very same "credibility book", posing as a centrist so his right-far-right views have more credibility among his designated target.

Further, I notice the article itself mentions, then qualifies, his Nobel nomination. A short tour of his websites will instantly reveal that he doesn't make the same qualifications anywhere himself, but still attaching his supposed nomination to virtually everything he does. Now I ask you....even if you still somehow thought his views align with the mainstream after matching them to their most vocal proponents in the political arena (which I submit is impossible)....what kind of a man plays fast and loose with the truth about something as hallowed as the Nobel Prize? A propagandist perchance?

You betcha! Clip 'em, and clip him deep!

--Mycos (talk) 22:34, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

This discussion is just personal opinions on Rummel's views. Which part of the article is being debated here? Is it just whether he counts as a "historian"? That seems very minor considered that he worked in a political science department rather than a history one. The fact that he's had a large number of articles in academic journals shows that he has some recognition in that field. Let's keep personal attacks out of this. Epa101 (talk) 22:05, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The "parts of the article I'm talking about" are made clear by simply looking at his views on politics. He claims to be against invading a country solely to throw out a dictator, but he's all for the Iraq War against Saddam Hussein. If you go through what he says he's for, each and every policy lines up not only to the right, but to the far right...with the neoconservative right. If one keeps that thought in mind then reviews what and where his policies stand, they are precisely the claims put forward by those clamoring for war by first arousing patriotic fervor while downplaying the facts of the matter. For instance, we may not like who the Palestinians elected, but they elected Hamas nonetheless. His form of democracy is the same one Pinochet had in mind when he named his Independant Democratic Union after tossing out Allende who was also elected, whether we like it or not. Apparently being a socialist automatically precludes a goverbnemnt from being a democracy, despite the numerous socialist parties in democratic Europe.

You will notice that he opposes the UN and wants a replacement body. Only the USA and Israel share such a deep antipathy toward the UN, and for reasons that are made clear when one looks at who they are censuring for using military means to overthrow and "spread democracy" by first ensuring no left-of-center governemnts unionise all the "free-market capitlisms' profits away. Haiti is another example of where an election has been trumped by US strongarm tactics. Look at the Guatemala piece here in Misplaced Pages (from '54 to '66) will show. Arbenz's overthrow is well known yet Rummel doesn't include that either.

You wil note on his websites that he also prefers to use CIA or US State Departemnt statistics than those of the WHO, the UN, Amnesty International, or any other group having international credibility, particularly when those numbers detract from te "just spreading democracy" mantra of stated US policy. If this happened just 'here and there' it wouldn't be an issue. People get things right, people get them wrong. But his mistakes are 100% aligned with State and Pentagon "hawk" claims, and never falling on the side of realist critiques of these policies.

Even there you see criticism of academia as being influenced by leftists. This too is perfectly in keeping with David horowitz's "Academic Freedom" crusade, an attempt to have creationism and his own far-right views taught alongside the widely accepted consensus views as if facts and religious faith are interchangeable because they are all just mere "opinions" in the end. His vehement denounciation of communism and/or socialism reveals another clue to his strong right-wing views despite his stated MOTR "nice guy" persona.

I don't know what his views specifically is on universal healthcare, but I'm willing to wager the moon that he strongly opposes it despite every other First World capitalist nation accepting it's value as a both a more fair and ultimately cheaper system in the long run. He is very clearly Pro-American biased in his views despite his claims to be merely pro-democracy. Therefore, his write up here should reflect my own and other's more commonly held view of deep scepticism (if not actually pointing it out) by removing declarations that he has stablished the facts on claims i.e. "he has shown" and replacing them with phrases like "He claims in his work...". That's not too much to ask is it, given the veracity of what I say? --Mycos (talk) 04:59, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure that there are many people who agree with you about his work, so let's quote them. This would be best placed in the "Criticism" section. If a source can be found that takes apart Rummel's work on these grounds, then it can be mentioned. What I'm concerned about is repeating your analysis within the article might violate the policy of Misplaced Pages:No original research.

I did remove the part that said he was "centrist", seeing as no citation had been provided and I've never seen his use of the term.

Just for the record, he is against universal healthcare. He is not a creationist though; he claims not to be religious. Epa101 (talk) 18:26, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:DP BACKSIDE V 16.JPG

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BetacommandBot (talk) 06:22, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:DP CHART V19.JPG

Image:DP CHART V19.JPG is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Misplaced Pages article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

BetacommandBot (talk) 06:22, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

reduction

This sentence "Rummel explains that his works are "about the sheer magnitude of democide, and the democratic peace that underlies Bush's foreign policy as the solution to democide and war" is a reduction of Rummels position. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.165.67.8 (talk) 06:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Exceptions to Democratic Peace

Some critics say there are exceptions to Rummel's claim that the number of wars between democratic countries is zero (see List of wars between democracies). Please help me to find a neutral, unbiased way of describing the views of these critics.

Do we make a section in Democratic peace theory, or an entirely separate article, or both? What would be a good title for such a section or article? --Uncle Ed (talk) 15:13, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Obsolete data

Why this article, on chapter 'criticism', mentions only Conquests pre-1990 estimates on number of Soviet victims? Conquest himself has revised down his estimates after archival information became available after fall of Soviet Union. It seems strange that not only Rummel has not covered that new information at all in his research, it is not covered in this article??--Mikoyan21 (talk) 22:14, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I understand that this is a late reply. However, to address the topic: We can't use original research by applying the Soviet archives to Conquest's work and then making judgments about Rummel. Moreover, Conquest did not revise his estimates downward; instead, he became convinced that 20 million Soviet citizens killed by Stalin was very nearly correct, as opposed to being a rock-bottom minimum. Moreover, the number of homicides documented in the Soviet archives represents only a fraction of the total number of excess deaths.

Note that the Soviet archives are sufficient to debunk deniers like Anderson and Silver, who claimed in 1985 that the death toll under Stalin in the thirties was between 0.5 and 4.8 million. In reality, the Soviet archives record 5.2 million homicides in the thirties, while their (formerly suppressed) census data yield a total of at least 9.7 million excess deaths attributable to the Stalinist regime in that period. This study by Steven Rosefielde shows, using demographic analysis, that the total number of Soviet citizens killed in the thirties could be two to three times greater than the officially recorded figure of 5 million. And there is more: Demographic analysis usually results in a conservative figure, and even the formerly suppressed population estimates were probably susceptible to double-counting (which Conquest alleges could have been as high as 3.5%). During the famine years of the early thirties, according to Andreev et al., as many as 5.5 million children were excluded from the official crude birth statistics, thus reducing by up to 5.5 million the expected population growth which is used to calculate excess deaths. With that in mind, Stalin may have killed over 15 million people in the thirties alone, and even more during WW2--plus a decent sum from 1945-53 and in the twenties. Add in democide in foreign countries, the civil war, Lenin, and all of Stalin's successors. Clearly, Rummel's figures are not impossible. It is safe to say that the communist death toll in the USSR can be counted in the tens of millions.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:34, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Louis Proyect criticism

There seemed to have been an obvious POV exclusion of the Proyect criticism with summaries like "Given Chomsky's status as a fringe communist apologist" and that it's not "An email or something from 'Marx Mail...'" The author is Louis Proyect and it's a valid source. CartoonDiablo (talk) 02:46, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Who is Louis Proyect? What is MarxMail.org? Can you establish this as a WP:RS?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 02:49, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Source reliability questions can be answered by the reliable sources notice board. We have a bunch of people who are pretty expert in wikipedia's sourcing standards regarding 20th century mass mortality incidents and the academic criticism thereof. The RS/N suggested question formatting allows editors to quickly investigate and respond. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:03, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

CartoonDiablo, can you please comment here and explain if this work was self-published or what makes it a WP:RS?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:11, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Contentious self-published materials can only be used in BLP if they are published by subject of the article (Rummel). Removed. My very best wishes (talk) 05:32, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

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