Talk:Nick Cohen

message: For a supposed biography, this article is in terrible condition. It seems to have descended into little more than an extended argument over what Nick Cohen's views are, what he said and how he should be characterised. Much of the criticism of him here - e.g. the 'neoconservative' description - is poorly sourced, which is unacceptable per WP:BLP. The extensive discussion of his political views and positions is, frankly, unnecessary: we do not need to add something to this article every time he publishes a new opinion column, but this seems to be what some people have been doing. All this article should be is simply a description of Cohen, a brief summary of his views, and the most notable things about him. I am seriously considering reducing it to a stub of about four sentences or so; at the moment, that would be a great improvement on the present state of the article. Robofish (talk) 22:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree entirely. I didn't know who Nick Cohen was until about 20 minutes ago, but this article is a real hatchet job, and I'm sure is in violation of much of WP:BLP. I'd be appalled if I cared enough! HarunAlRashid (talk) 08:21, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

text: Agree entirely, too. WaldiR (talk) 18:56, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is a mess. 

message: This article seems to be a cherry-picked mess of citations and such, so that Nick Cohen would look like a very stupid person. Perhaps he is stupid, I do not know him, but the article does not really seem to present his own arguments well and fairly. --Arrala (talk) 16:56, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, yeh I can see why you say that. It also seems excessively long for a person who is simply a minor British journalist... something of a nobody on the world stage.(Midnightblueowl (talk) 20:52, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

text: Ha, you know, I've only just seen this comment of Tony's. I would cite Wikipedia:No personal attacks but admittedly his description of me made me laugh. I guess that's the impression that you make on people when you edit pages on both Fidel Castro and Wicca; if it helps, I'm not a communist, I've never played a game of D&D in my life, and I don't believe in fairies (except of the Radical kind). However, I must acknowledge that my comments regarding Cohen which I made all those years ago were hardly very civil or particularly accurate. Maybe I'd had a particularly bad day ? Maybe it was someone else using my account ? Whatever the reason, I must retract my previous comment, silly nonsense that it is. If Mr Cohen is reading this, I apologise. Midnightblueowl (talk) 23:19, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: POV

message: The article appears to have severe BLP issues and anti-Cohen bias. (See also the couple of threads above this one.) I am very tempted to simply stub the lot and start over, the content seems like a melange of random facts pieced together to give a rather inaccurate description of Mr. Cohen. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:25, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: POV/BLP issues

message: I noticed last year that this article was a complete mess (see above) and said how much it needed fixing. I'm sorry it took me so long to come back to it. In light of the recent WP:COI issues raised over this article, in addition to the existing BLP problems, I think the thing to do is 'nuke it and start again'. I've cut it down to the most basic, uncontroversial data, and removed all the criticism and discussion of Cohen's political views. Please don't just revert my edit; there are serious issues here. Any expansions of the article should be discussed on this talk page first. Robofish (talk) 23:37, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent idea. --Dweller (talk) 09:30, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stubbed 

message: Copied from Wikipedia:Press coverage 2011: July
In the Spectator article Cohen writes:
Edit to this article:
*23:34, 9 July 2011 Robofish (talk | contribs | block) (3,683 bytes) (stubbed. Drastic BLP problems demand drastic solutions.)
Well done Robofish -- PBS (talk) 22:34, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: FYI, Hari has now owned up to editing Wikipedia under a pseudonym including, by implication, Cohen's article. Philip Cross (talk) 09:26, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Press coverage 2011 

message: User Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry recently reverted the article to its 'stubby' version (about 4,000 bytes instead of a 43,000-byte monstrosity). IMO the article was full of POV, BLP violations, etc, so I thank him for that. Cheers, CWC 15:11, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it needs re-writing from scratch, using good independent secondary sources that discuss Cohen and his work. Fences&Windows 23:41, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

text: What's Left? (2007), which he describes as the story of ...
Thanks in advance -- CWC 15:11, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. January (talk) 17:32, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stubbed again 

message: Of course, the resulting version has to have at least one problem, Otherwise It Would Be Too Easy.
 Change the first occurence of the word "where" to "which", so that the description of Cohen's third book in the lede starts out
:What's Left? (2007), which he describes as the story of ...
Thanks in advance -- CWC 15:11, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. January (talk) 17:32, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit requests

message: This article does not give Cohen's date of birth.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.254.146.150 (talk) 14:18, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: He might have been born in the 1960's or 1970's.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.254.146.34 (talk) 11:41, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: He might have been born in Manchester and then he might not.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.254.146.34 (talk) 11:44, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date of birth 

message: The article says: "He details how scholars like Noam Chomsky, along with the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), denied the existence of concentration camps and the Srebrenica massacre." I don't know about the RCP, but Chomsky does not deny the massacre; when the Guardian claimed he did, they had to issue a correction: "Ms Brockes's misrepresentation of Prof Chomsky's views on Srebrenica stemmed from her misunderstanding of his support for Ms Johnstone. Neither Prof Chomsky nor Ms Johnstone have ever denied the fact of the massacre."
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/nov/17/pressandpublishing.corrections  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.171.56.13 (talk) 18:28, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not the Guardian article, it's an earlier interview/talk type piece where Chomsky gets chummy with the undisputed deniers and implies that the news coverage of Bosnia was all so much "mannufactured consent."  If you're on about the Guardian article I think you'er referring to, Cohen calls it "admittedly poorly subbed".  (I'm working from memory as my copy of What's Left is at home and I'm in the workplace) 62.190.148.115 (talk) 12:39, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I've had a look and this is what's actually in the book - Chomsky went on Serb TV in 2005 and made mention of Ed Vulliamy's photo of Fikret Alić "one famous photo - the thin man behind the barbed wire".  The interviewer replied "A photo later proved to have been faked."  Chomsky, pleased, reacted thus "You remember!  Well that was Auschwitz and we can't have that all over again!"  Cohen's point was that Chomsky didn't actually make the denial but he was happy to go along with rather than angrily challenge the denial of the TV interviewer.  This, Cohen claimed, fit with a general pattern of Chomsky's  praise for Holocaust denier Faurisson and Pol Pot deniers by not indulging in direct denial but "merely offering tasty morsels to whet the appetite of those who would move onto stronger meat."  Cohen compared Chomsky to a boy on the edge of a gang of school bullies, able to step back and smile sweetly when the teacher storms into the playground - indeed he named the chapter on Chomsky "The Boy On The Edge Of The Gang." 62.190.148.115 (talk) 13:54, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

text: Diana Johnstone certainly denied the scale of the genocide - see claimed that only about 199 Bosnians were killed and that the rest of the 8K approx dead were "presumed" to have made it into Bosnian territory.  She also repeated the claim that the Fikret Alić photo was a fake taken inside the camp looking out (based on the evidence that the camp fence is supposedly the wrong way round.) 2.24.71.94 (talk) 07:36, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chomsky 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Nick Cohen. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060906235202/http://www.nickcohen.net/?page_id=5 to http://www.nickcohen.net/?page_id=5
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 16:24, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified (February 2018) 

message: An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect :Nick Cohen/Archive 2 and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at  until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.  Regards, SONIC678 06:26, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Nick Cohen/Archive 2" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: I have deleted two instances of the above phrase from the foreign policy section as they seem to have been only input in order to be kneejerk-judgemental about support for (or more to the point, criticism of opposition to) the 2003 Iraq war.  These descriptors appear to have nothing to do with Cohen personally and everything to do with an editor on their soapbox wishing to classify certain views as being ipso facto right wing.  The Euston Manifesto itself and two 2003 Cohen pieces are cited as the (primary) sources for these sections and in none of these sources do the authors describe themselves as hawkish or (neo)conservative - indeed all three sources present themselves as dissident left wing voices.  It is a breach of WP:NPOV for articles to make unsupported judgemental remarks on what qualifies as right wing or left wing.Romomusicfan (talk) 10:20, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been looking through the edit history and it seems this material was added about a year ago by an IP editor who initially used even stronger language - "aggressively hawkish neconservative".  I reckon this should probably have been nipped in the bud entirely by the editors who reverted the IP editor's edits.Romomusicfan (talk) 10:39, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  The IP editor in question's edit history, incidentally, is quite the eye-opener].Romomusicfan (talk) 10:45, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "hawkish, neoconservative"