Talk:Robert Faurisson

message: After I corrected a quotation and added what I perceived to be omitted context in the "Faurisson affair" sub-section, an editor (@Vitamortisachla) reverted said change under the premise of undue weight, which, after deliberation, I figured to be cogent as the amount of information I added was unjustified. Yet, I did note that the undoing resulted in my correction of the misleading quotation also being reverted. The editor then made no effort to correct that quotation after having reverted my revision.
Later on, I decided to adjust the paragraph and remove any extra information that wasn't necessary to the conclusion of the paragraph. I then noted in the summary of the edit what I had modified, along with noting that my correction of the misleading quotation was also undone and that the editor hadn't corrected the quotation nor corrected the source of the information.
The quotation being referred to in the preceding paragraph is as follows (underlined): Chomsky stated that "I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust...I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work,"
As it currently stands, the quotation's footnote references "Chomsky and the Neo-Nazis", which I presume is the paper published under the "Quadrant" Journal and is behind a paywall, hence, inaccessible to me; a couple of issues here: there's no hyperlink to the paper; the journal has been criticized as lacking rigorous standards (see below); the quotation itself is factually incorrect (per the transcripts provided by the Chomsky archive).
I'll be quoting from other contributors from Quadrant's Wikipedia page, as to highlight its implausibility as a credible source:
“As of 2017, commentators describe the magazine as presently having a strong right-wing bias and even engaging in extremism.”
“In January 2009, Quadrant published a hoax article. Its author, writer, editor and activist Katherine Wilson, stated that she aimed to show that the magazine and editor Keith Windschuttle had right-wing bias. Wilson claimed Windschuttle and Quadrant would publish an inaccurate article and not check its footnotes or authenticity if it met his preconceptions. Using the pseudonym "biotechnologist Dr Sharon Gould", Wilson submitted an article claiming that CSIRO had planned to produce food crops engineered with human genes.”
“Regular contributors often support conspiracy theories viz that covid-19 has mild impact and that global warming is a hoax, and the 2020 US election was fraudulent.”
I then noted that, if the source of information under scrutiny (i.e. Chomsky's online archive) is problematic then the rest of the sub-section here and on the "Faurisson affair" Wiki page needs to be edited (since they use the same sources as citations) if such sources are to be classified as problematic and/or inadequate; noteworthy here that though the Chomsky.Info website is recognized as his official website, Chomsky has nothing to do with its administration, per the server administrator's claims in the "about" page.
The same editor undid my updated revision again under the premise that there hadn't been an improvement, mentioning to discuss it first, hence the reason for my posting this; I summarize the issues pertaining to the sub-section in the following paragraph, with the most critical errors (i.e. in need of immediate correction) in the italicized form:
There is no mention of the letter (among which Chomsky was one out of 500 signatories) that gave rise to the opportunity to include Chomsky's later remarks as a preface, without his consent. it makes no mention nor does it hint at exchanges between Chomsky and Serge Thion, Chomsky and Jean-Pierre Faye, etc. The quotation I've added in bold at the beginning of this post is factually incorrect; even if we were to consider re-ordering utterances as acceptable in the criterion of what is a legitimate quotation and what isn't, the re-ordering of Chomsky's explicit remarks wouldn't yield this form of a quotation; to presume otherwise is to agree that tampering with quotations is legitimate, which is not standard practice.
While the italicized part serves as a mark of necessary change, the rest of the paragraph isn't to be taken lightly, as it is the case that balancing the sub-section's length leads to a dilemma: Is the premise of an informed reader considered when we are presenting information in author A's article? If it is, then, at what point is one justified in drawing a line of balance between how much coverage Author A's background ought to get, as opposed to Author B? As is presently the case, what is the path to be taken when author A's background is intermingled with author B's background, requiring one narrative with two sub-contextual narratives to be set?
To take the approach the editor has taken, resolving the dilemma requires one to assume that the context isn't of large importance, hence accept that "Chomsky sees no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work" is an accurate description, omitting the fact that Chomsky hasn't read most of Faurisson's work, and further gives no regard to the fact that what was being referred to was a letter written by Faurisson during the Algerian war "which some interpret as having anti-Semitic implications"; the full quote (after the semicolon following this sentence, in bold) is just as handy in drawing an image of how distorted the quote actually is: “In support of the charge of anti-Semitism, I have been informed that Faurisson is remembered by some schoolmates as having expressed anti-Semitic sentiments in the 1940s, and as having written a letter that some interpret as having anti-Semitic implications at the time of the Algerian war.” — Noam Chomsky, “Some Elementary Comments on The Rights of Freedom of Expression” (which was thereafter adopted by Faurisson to function as the preface to his book).
I'm in favor of firstly, correcting the record, and secondarily, strongly considering adding further context without convoluting the general flow of the page (which I think my latest revision sufficed in doing).
Open to any thoughts.
Rrubinski (talk) 13:56, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: correcting quotation, adding context & the issue of citations as it relates to the “Faurisson affair” sub-field 

message: Why is there no mention about his death? He was murdered, that should be something relevant to add to the article.
 life. 109.78.51.185 (talk) 09:07, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Death