Talk:Red Terror (Spain)

message: Please provide the information about the origins and the usage of the term "Rer Terror" in reference to the described events, or the article will be renamed. `'mikka 20:16, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of the term 

message: This page differs significantly from the depiction of events on the Spanish Civil War page.  It appears biased in it's reporting of the events.  Especially considering what was posted in the previous note. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tsunami7 (talk • contribs) 
: I added an  tag, it would be good if this page is reviewed by someone who knows the topic, currently there is only a single contributor to this article so I fear the POV-concerns here are genuine. --Merzul 10:06, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I`m not quite sure this page violates NPOV, it does in the least make a good attempt at verifying, if one believes that this article makes any unwarranted statements he/she should come forward. It would be helpful if there would be some kind of 'white terror' article as well. --Isolani 16:51, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The citations from the Payne book were certainly selective.  I've now fixed this.  Payne makes it clear that the "White" terror was much more deadly.  I can't at this point check if the other sources have been cited in a similarly selective (and rather misleading) fashion, but I wouldn't be surprised.  --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 08:03, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

text: The fact that Orwell was a combantant makes him a biased and less reliable source. Mamalujo (talk) 21:04, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: So we should discount any evidence provided by the participants of a conflict? I suppose I should go to the Holocaust page and start redacting accounts of US soldiers that liberated concentration camps, as they're combatants and thus biased.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.114.71.38 (talk) 14:56, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well I think what your talking about can constitue prohibited original research. If a reliable secondary source says soldiers said such and such that's better. Mamalujo (talk) 20:30, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Violation of NPOV 

message: In the spirit of verification, I thought I'd go through the citations.  I found quite a bit of (mostly inadvertent) plagiarism and a few mistakes on those I could check online, so put a "citation needed" tag on the Beevor references and suggest that these and the Mitchell citations be double-checked.  NB even if a few words are changed from the original, it is still plagiarism to claim such lightly-changed sentences as your own.  --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 07:54, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citations 

message: The Spanish Civil war is always shown as a war between communists/socialists/anarchists and catholics/conservatives. To some extent, it was that. However, in the Basque Country, for instance, the nationalists (nearly all of them catholics and conservatives) were in the side of the Republic, side by side with the socialists and communists, and there was no catholic prosecution. It was also the same in some other parts of Spain.
I think the article should reflect that not all the republicans were burning curches, as it might be understood when reading it now.
:Well, I think it would be obvious that not all republicans were killing priests and grandmothers who happened to have rosaries.  But the authorities I've read, and at least one of which is cited for this point in the article, state that virtually all republican groups, with the exception of the Basque, were involved in the Red Terror.  That is factually acurate.  I believe the article does make the point that  the Basques were not involved. But in every other Republican controlled region of Spain the atrocities occured on a vast scale and with Republican governmental complicity. With regard to the idea that the war was the left vs. conservatives/Catholics, that explanation is indeed a bit facile.  The Catholics were not originally so universally (w/ the exception of the Basque) aligned. It was after the religious persecution in Asturias in 1934 and then again at the beginning of the war that they were given absolutely no choice - the Republicans had taken an eliminationist strategy toward Catholicism. Mamalujo 17:07, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought the article mentioned that the Basques did not participate (perhaps an earlier version did), but it did not.  I've added a sentance to indicate their nonparticipation. Mamalujo 17:12, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Similar atrocities occurred almost everywhere in Republican Spain?? 

message: I think the name change to "Atrocities committed during the Spanish Civil War", conflating the Red and White Terrors is not an improvement, and I am reverting it.  For one thing the two are separate subjects and are best dealt with in separate articles linking to each other and with sufficient references to the other incidents for context.  Conflating the two sets of atrocities tends to create a number of false dichotomies, for example, that one set of killings was bad and that the other was therefore good, or that one side killed more and they are therefore more morally culpable.  The latter confusion is particularly misleading because a vast number of those killed in the Red Terror were not combatants or even active opponents to the Republicans (this fact is recognized by scholars and cited in the article).  Also the title is innacurate, because some of the Red Terror (a substantial number of the killings) occurred before the war in 1934.  As to the name change serving to eliminate the "bias" in the article, User:Jbmurray already did an admirable job of editing, reorganizing and adding context to the article to eliminate claimed bias.  Rather than the facile "fix" of renaming, someone needs to get down to the hard work of creating the White Terror article. Mamalujo 18:02, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name change 

message: :The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 
Red Terror - Spain → Atrocities in the Spanish Civil War —  Or some other alternative such as "Red and White Terror- Spain". Following this , description of Nationalist atrocities in the war should be substantially expandedc. The White Terror in the Spanish Civil War was far worse than the Red Terror, yet this, the only article,  on the atrocities on the war, only details the far less significant Republican atrocities, iwht only a brief mention of the White Terror. This is outrageously POV,  out of proportion, and extremely misleading and historically inaccurate —Nwe 14:31, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The name change is a particularly bad idea. For one, neither the Spanish Red Terror nor the White Terror occurred entirely "in the Spanish Civil War".  So the name would be inaccurate as to both events.  Much of the Red Terror occurred before the war (particularly in 1934) and, if I understand correctly, much of the White Terror occurred in the many years after the war.  Plus, they are sort of apples and oranges.  Which explains the great misapprehension of those who see the Red Terror article, factual as it is, as POV.  The fact that Franco's state may have killed more people (over a longer period of time) does not make the killings in the Red Terror any less egregious, and visa versa.  Guess what?  It is possible that both events were offensive to human life and dignity, for perhaps somewhat different reasons.  Conflating the two does not shed light but only obfuscates and creates false dichotomies.  As I have said before, if you think too little is said of the White Terror, write the article on it rather than complain about the dearth of information on it in an article about a different (but somewhat related) subject. Mamalujo 07:15, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *Support or *Oppose, then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.
*Support Good luck in cleaning this up. Arthur Koestler's Spanish Testament should be useful, but we really should use secondary literature. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

text: The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal.  Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 08:47, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 2007 

message: :Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *Support or *Oppose, then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.
*Support Good luck in cleaning this up. Arthur Koestler's Spanish Testament should be useful, but we really should use secondary literature. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal.  Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.</div>
It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 08:47, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: If you wish the tag removed, reduce the overdependence of the article on a single source. Hornplease 15:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article is not overdependent on a single source.  The article cites to Thomas, Mitchell, Beevor, Payne, Ruiz and de la Cueva among a number of other sources others.  Hardly overdependent on one source.  Even if it were true, overreliance on a single source is not the same as POV.Mamalujo 17:01, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Right, but the lead overquotes de la Cueva, and is thus unbalanced. Hornplease 17:43, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV 

message: *Googling "red terror" spain -ethiopia -soviet -robespierre gives 767 gooogle hits, 75 scholar hits.
*Googling republican atrocities spain "civil war" gives 800,000 google hits, 6,700 scholar hits. Any questions? Hornplease 15:32, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  polling is not substitute for discussion and - frankly - we had this discussion, it's closed and there's no consensus. Too bad, perhaps, but true. --Isolani 15:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The discussion is visible. It was not about this move, which eliminates the objections to the earlier prospective title. I do not understand the rest of your statement. Hornplease 16:26, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Agree with Hornplease's point. The term "Red Terror" in the context of the Spanish civil war is not widely used at all as a generic name as purported. Apart from google hits (which are quite revealing), I have never seen it in any Spanish history books or documentaries, and being a Spaniard and a history student, it's not that I'm not exposed to terminology on the subject. I really think the article title should be re-thought, or the article merged somewhere else. Cheers! :) Dr Benway 10:23, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

text: This has been discussed before, but there are a number of reasons why the merger of the two into one article is a bad idea, and why two months after the posting of the proposed mergers there is no consensus for it. One, they are apples and oranges, combining them does not make sense.  Victims of the Red Terror were not necesarilly those doing the attacks in the White Terror and visa versa.  They were each done for different often unrelated reasons.  Two, the name "Atrocities of the Spanish Civil War" is not appropriate because neither occured entirely during the war.  The Red Terror preceded it by years and the White Terror continued for years, if not decades, after.  Three, combining the two creates false dichotomies which are already enough of a problem, i.e. the idea that if the White Terror was bad the Red Terror must somehow be justified (and visa versa), the idea that one "side" must be the "right" side.  Mamalujo 19:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title. 

message: "The Franco government now gives the names of 61,000 victims of the Red terror, but this is not subject to objective verification."
I'm not sure what Beevor means by this, firstly because the "Franco government now" does not exist as of today, and secondly because if his figure is "not subject to objective verification" I really fail to see what it's doing in an encyclopaedic article, despite it being a reputed source. I'll check the new edition. Cheers ;) Dr Benway 07:39, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Euh... ? 

message: I was looking through "In El Pardo, near Madrid, a group of militiamen became drunk on communion wine while trying the parish priest. One militiaman used the chalice as a washing bowl as he shaved himself. [31]"
Firstly, I'm trying to figure out what is meant by "became drunk on communion wine while trying the parish priest". All help would be appreciated. 
Secondly, in the context of mass executions, raping of nuns and other savagery, mentioning a "militiaman [that] used the chalice as a washing bowl as he shaved himself" is hardly reasonable if we're talking about atrocities, no? Cheers Dr Benway 08:04, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Roll your eyes if you want, but the fact of the matter is that all of the authorities on the subject include accounts of desacration in their reports.  Despite your flawed analogy, desecrations are not the same as cursing or failing to cross oneself.  Burning churches, destroying defiling sacred religious objects and the like are attempts by the persecutors to destroy the victims' religion.  They are extreme violations of religious and civil liberties and fall within the  definition of terror ("violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands" -Merriam Webster).  Catholics believe that the consecration turns the host and the wine into the real presence of Christ's body and blood.  Using the chalice as a washing bowl is not an inoccuous act.  It is akin  to (aruably much worse than) wiping your ass with to Torah while invading a synogogue.  An actual example is the destruction of the Patriarch Joseph's tomb by Arab terrorists.  Such acts are, and are intended to be, religious persecution. Your cavalier attitude toward them makes me wonder whether you really have an understanding of the subject matter. Mamalujo (talk) 19:25, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Atrocities? 

message: I see this issue has already been raised by the above poster, and Mamalujo failed to respond. I suspect that Mamalujo's trying to use the talk page simply to resist fairly indesputable edits. Since without my edits this article violates NPOV, however, they should remain regardless of ancillary discussion. As already stated in the edit summary, improper use of proper isn't usually part of "terrors", that's an objective view, and undoubtedly while representatives of the Catholic Church were persecuted, it was for reasons not directly related to Catholicism and the Terror was not in itself anti-Catholic.Nwe (talk) 00:05, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In the most part, it was anti-fascist and anti-fundamentalist.  Most of the clergy who were killed were the sort who excommunicate trade unionists, and many weren't even killed because of their actions from the pulpit but because of crap like betraying people to the fascist secret police.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.23.135.169 (talk) 21:53, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: hahaha "Leftist Newspeak" - You do realize Orwell was a devout Socialist right? It's amazing how many silly Americans like you are ignorant to this fact when they use his work to criticize beliefs he'd have agreed with. He actually fought in the Spanish Civil War himself! During which, he became very sympathetic to the Spanish Left-Wing Anarchists
198.84.162.153 (talk) 05:20, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Desecration" etc 

message: Regarding current disputes;
*The two images suggested are completely inappropriate, neither depict events that were either part of or representative of the Red Terror; one being an image of a symbolic attack on a statue and the other the requisitioning of a building, therefore completely unconnected from the attacks on human lives of which the terror consisted.
*Inclusion of words such as "desecration" and "faithful" anywhere in the article is unjustifiable since they are completely POV.
*The discussion of Stanley Payne's opinions, which have undue weight in the article anyway, at the very least must be understood to be the very debatable opinions of one historian, and cannot involved the presentation of opinion as fact.
*The suggestion that the Red Terror was more violent or random than the White Terror is simply historical fiction.
*The lead section of an article should not include unnecessary elaboration of simple single facts or go into excessive detail on exact (and disputed!) numbers.
*The events described under the "atrocities" section are only reported atrocities from a few pages of one source. At the very least they should be titled "reported atrocities", though in fact that entire section is very dodgy in general; the inclusion of long, graphic and emotive description of isolated events using one source is extremely unencyclopaedic and I may get back to that.
*Wikipedia expressly prefers paragraph format to list format in its articles. 
Nwe (talk) 14:17, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current Disputes 

message: Tagged this again, since the issues presented have not been addressed. I'd like to kindly request any editors who wish to remove them to please engage in a bit of dialogue before just erasing. 
Reasons: 
- POV and Disputed Facts: Intro section: "a program of systematic persecution of the Church was planned to the last detail". Most disputable, but aside from that, quoted from Antonio Montero's "Historia de la persecución religiosa en España 1936-1939" from the Catholic Press, 1961. I'd really have trouble using a pro-catholic source like this, especially written byu the Archbishop of Mérida, especially published in times of Franco, as a factually accurate referent to defend a disputed issue such as defining the aggressions against the Church as a "systematic prosecution ... planned to the last detail." ---> Still the same 
- Disputed Fact: Background Section: "the Popular Front, whose leadership was clearly moving towards the left (abandoning constitutional Republicanism for leftist revolution.[5])"... I would have thought Azaña was more the former than the latter. As well as most of the Republican cabinet. The nationalist (as in regionalist nationalists) elements of the Republican government were not great revolutionaries, either. The Communist takeover of the Republican government would occur much later, well into the war. There was a struggle between these "factions", sure. But this clear trend is extremely disputable .---> I don't see where the footnoted reference supports the statement. On the contrary, I think Payne is even saying that the Republican leadership lost centralised control to a number of leftist factions.
- Disputed Fact: Death Toll section: "Figures for the Red Terror range from 38,000 to 110,000, with most estimates closer to the former.[13]" I think that if you give an approximate range where the maximum exceeds the minimum in almost 300%, and say that most estimates are closer to the former, well... bit of a weasel, no? ---> Numerically, statistically and informatively speaking, this reference is plain silly. 
- POV and Disputed Facts: Ditto: "The Franco government now gives the names of 61,000 victims of the Red Terror, but this is not subject to objective verification." If there is a figure given that is not subject to objective verification, I really fail to see what it is doing in an encyclopaedic article. So I'd dispute it. Heavily.---> Ditto. Using Franco government figures is not really very neutral, is it?
- Disputed Fact: Ditto: César Vidal's figures are amply disputed. In fact, all of his works on the Spanish Civil War are heavily contested by most modern Spanish historiographers. I'd like to see a more concrete reference as to where he got the numbers from.---> And again
- POV: Attitudes: National Side: "The tone of the letter was balanced, describing the realities of 1937. [34]" I suppose the editor who put this meant the letter that calls Franco's rebellion a "civic-military movement"... and a great number of other things. SOrry, but this fact is again, contested.---> Ditto 
- POV: Ditto: "The attitudes towards the Church had changed from hostility to admiration. [35]" Well... again... need I go into detail? ---> Ditto 
- POV and Disputed Facts: Conclusion and Aftermath: "although individual terror attacks seem to have continued sporadically, carried out by remnant Communists [46] and Socialists, hiding in French border regions, but without great results. " Factually disputed. A reference would be needed.---> Ditto 
- POV: The part on the Communist Triangle of Terror would need a bit of balancing, in my opinion.---> Ditto 
Cheers! Dr Benway (talk) 14:50, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV and Factual accuracy 

message: The attitudes of these folks towards religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular would be helpful in the context, as to why so many members of clergy and laity were killed. Was it hate? conviction? Or, a part of the Marxist-Leninist ideology? Or was it only an oversight, as claimed in the article? Hard to believe! I can see Benways frustration with the absence of this information, which makes these events look almost like a natural event (anti-Catholic bias). But for this, the article does not need to be tagged. Abelincoln  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.65.167.166 (talk) 12:02, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems that some of these folks do not want to face the music. Well, so be it for the time being! I will prepare  a much larger background section to meet the concerns of an anti-Catholic bias in this article. If in the meanwhile others keep playing around with tags and reverts, is historically insignificant.Abelincoln --91.65.167.166 (talk) 12:31, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lack of Socialist and Communist views 

message: The image :Image:House of the people.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here.  In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page.  Please check
:* That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
:* That this article is linked to from the image description page.
The following images also have this problem:
*:File:Cardenal-pla.jpg
*:      Image:SpanishLeftistsShootStatueOfChrist.jpg
This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --16:14, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Image copyright problem with Image:House of the people.jpg

message: Under Conclusion and aftermath we find the following "Franco's victory was followed by thousands of summary executions (from 15,000 to 25,000 people [55])"
The note 55. tells us the following "# ^ Recent searches conducted with parallel excavations of mass graves in Spain (in particular by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, ARMH) estimate that the total of people executed after the war may arrive at a number between 15,000 to 35,000. See for example Fosas Comunes - Los desaparecidos de Franco. La Guerra Civil no ha terminado, El Mundo, 7 July 2002 (Spanish)"
Those two statements are incorrect. The example provided talks just of people still in mass graves and gives the number as 35,000. Jorge P (talk) 13:49, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just one example of unsubstantiated arguments 

message: It's indefensible that atrocities in the spanish civil war redirected to this page alone. Is the murder of trade unionists and journalists any better than the murder of priests and nuns? BillMasen (talk) 17:17, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "atrocities in spanish civil war" 

message: I've commented out the photo which appeared in the lede section which purported to show Reblican militiamen shooting at a statue of Christ because its source, subject and purpose are unknown.  Fopr more information, please see this discussion on the talk page of the editor who uploaded the image. Ed Fitzgerald t / c 23:09, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem with provenance of image 

message: I read in some sites, about the support from American press, to this massive persecution of catholics.Some sites writes that only after protests from catholics, this support became over.Agre22 (talk) 12:09, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: American press

message: I have seen that this point has already been raised above, but I still do not understand why there is an article titled 'red terror (Spain)' in/on wikipedia. As far as I can see the arguments raised by like-minded fellows above have not been logically or intelligently refuted. For example, I saw several pointless and anachronistic 'Ad Hitlerum' associations of the red terror with the holocaust. The obvious point I would like to raise, and I haven't checked to see if it has been raised before, is that by titling an article with a contentious and POV term (one which is more likely to be used by amateurs on the right than by right/left academics... or even for that matter the vast majority of people as the google hits show) you are already giving an undue amount of weight to a point of view. This is even more the case for an article relating to the republicans in the civil war. By ascribing the political adjective 'red' to the republican side and its atrocities the article has already surrendered itself to a commonplace Francoist propaganda stance and fallacy... namely that the republic was guided chiefly by communists (and through the connotation of the Russian 'red terror'... the Soviet Union). There are in fact several pieces of evidence that show the republic worked hard in the later stages of the civil war to reverse the effects of persecution (this was under the socialist government of Juan Negrin, remember), which unlike the Russian red terror was largely unsystematic and directed mainly at the clergy. Whilst the term might carry some legitimacy (although I myself regard it as little more than an epithet), the fact remains that this legitimacy is highly contentiosu and by titling an article with the term wikipedia is taking sides. In addition, whilst I wholeheartedly agree that it is not wikipedia's palce to justify atrocities... they still must give background information and explain the cause for them otherwise this leads to systematic bias. Without explanations a reader might be led to assume that communist 'bad guys' randomly came out of the woods and killed 7 thousand priests for no reason... which we all know was not the case. 
My suggestion is to either rename the article 'republican artocities during the Spanish civil war' (although even this feels a little wrong, considering that there was often little centralised control exerted by the republic) and keep the 'red terro' as a sub-heading, or simply to put all the atrocities commited in the war together in oen article. My feeling from reading above comments is that a few possible apologists do not wish this to happen because the republican side would look comparatively better... tough... in the interests of historical coherence and continuity, and in offering an exact explanatory narrative, this is probably the best solution.86.139.131.125 (talk) 13:13, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: With regard to Ruiz, he is the author of a work in the Journal of Contemporary History, you can see it listed at the bottom of the article in the References section - it would appear to be an academic journal and a reliable source.  Regarding the name change, it was proposed before and did not have much support. You'll see there is also an article on the White Terror in Spain, i.e. atrocities commited by the Nationalists.  I, for one would be opposed to the change for a number of reasons.  One is that the Red Terror was not just during the war but began before the war, so the new name not be fitting.  Also, this is the name which is generally used to describe these events. Mamalujo (talk) 17:07, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Change of title, please

message: The "Background" section as it stands right now is heavily biased, being essentially a justification of the repression. It doesn´t discuss previous incidents of anti-Catholic activities (for instance the events during the "Tragic Week in 1917, the assassination of Cardinal Soldevilla in 1923 or the burning of churches and monasteries during the Second Republic). It does not mention the explicitely antireligious stance of many of the Republic´s supporters (communists and anarchists, for instance). Essentially it claims that the "red terror" was a consequence of the support that the Catolic Church gave to Franco's uprising, while it could be argued that it was the other way around: that the Curch supported Franco because it felt that the Republic was trying to destroy it.213.4.112.58 (talk) 13:51, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I think some of the criticisms of the section are well founded.  If you'd like, please make suitable edits.  Mamalujo (talk) 23:12, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Background" section is very bad 

message: There seems to be an unintentional bias in the second paragraph of the Nationalist Side section, due to lack of clarity as to what is quotation from the Episcopal letter and what is being stated as encyclopedic fact. I imagine it is quotation, in which case simple quotation marks would resolve the issue, or a paraphrase, in which case this should be more clearly denoted. I have removed the last sentence of the paragraph as this was clearly not a a reference to content but, as it stood, a POV judgement upon the letter; happy to see it go back if the view is attributed (as opposed to just referencing it, whether the author's own view or otherwise). Mutt Lunker (talk) 11:40, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nationalist Side section unintentional POV 

message: The whole background is heavily biased. Just take a look at the affirmations around the "Dilectissima Nobis" encyclical (which, by the way, is cited as "On Oppression Of The Church Of Spain" when the spanish version reads as "Sobre la injusta situación creada a la Iglesia Católica en España", a totally different subtitle with a milder meaning)text according to the Vatican. Not a single time are Masons or any other group mentioned on it, in spite of the affirmations on the article. --Richy (talk) 12:15, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure what you're complaining about.  It is a well established historical fact that the second Spanish Republic was an anticlerical government.  You complain about the english title of the encyclical, but "ON OPPRESSION OF THE CHURCH OF SPAIN" is the title which the Vatican itself, which you link to, gives it.  As to the reference to Masonic influences, I don't think the paragraph gave the impression that the encyclical made this claim.  Nonetheless, I edited to make clear the historian who made the claim so there was no confusion. Mamalujo (talk) 00:28, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Background section again 

message: searching The Terror in the French Revolution on amazon ,you get many results. searching red terror (spain), you get 4 results . 3 are by Books Llc which i think is wikipedia, this is just stanley payne and mamlujo his prophet, pet poodle article. it does not justify a separate article - i think mainstream opinion is that leftist violence was typically spontaneous violence against a Church seen as on the side of the rich , the russians were anti-revolutionary,, the fascists won because they had the germans, the italians,modern arms and the others didn't.92.3.18.183 (talk) 18:27, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: So what is your specific claim of POV? That the subject isn't notable enough for a separate article? Antony Beevor, who has been even criticized for having an anti-Catholic bias, has a chapter in the Battle for Spain called the Red Terror. Today, most authors discussing the subject use the term.  As to whether the killings were official acts of the Republican state, not only Payne, but also Hugh Thomas, Warren H. Carroll and many others say that the killings were often organized acts by the Republicans. In Spain betrayed: the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War, the authors Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck, Grigoriĭ Nikolaevich Sevostʹianov (of whom Radosh’s own ungle fought with the Republicans) say that official killing is the accurate view and that indeed “under the Republican government tens of thousands of civilians were killed as part of the official war”. Unless there are specific meritorious objections on the basis of POV put forth, I'm going to remove the tag. BTW, I didn't know that historians needed prophets, nor that I was one. Mamalujo (talk) 21:38, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  With a view to adding to the background, I wonderd if you would create an article on english wikipedia for Aniceto de Castro Albarrán 1934, he wrote a theological defence for armed fascist rebellion -- it is on the spanish wikipedia - very short. I suspect you are fluent in spanish  - I think the involvement of Catholics in right wing politics is not sufficiently explained, this man, like enrique pla y deniel,another pro-fascist bishop, is part of that story. The Church in the 1930s it seems to me did get involved in the polarised poltical world of those years , well before the outbreak of civil war, mobilising for the right, and this needs fuller exposition if the article isn't to be suspected of being biased. the Church was overwhelmingly involved in the education of the rich, it sought to direct what people watched at the cinema, how they voted,  etc..Sayerslle (talk) 19:05, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

text: Still too much Stanley payne and his neo-con fantasy too. Why does payne pay so much heed to what the stalinists were saying anyhow. doesnt he realise what they were like. Lying and stuff. They signed a pact with the Nazis in 1939, supplied the materials 39/40 that helped Hitler defeat France - they were Stalinists - unprincipled dontcha know - does Payne think he gave a flying f about the republic? planned to do much with Spain? Its WP:FRINGE Sayerslle (talk) 00:58, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: POV Tag

message: I believe that much of the material recently added in the section now "Squeezing Out the Centre: Catholic Party Politics" is WP:SYN.  I've read quite a bit on this subject and I haven't seen all of this connected to the Red Terror.  Also, because this material is of tenuous connection to the subject, I believe it is given undue weight.  Moreover, the title is odd and perhaps POV. Also, I think there has been some sourced material deleted recently with no more real justification than the whim of the editor. Mamalujo (talk) 23:02, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's part of the background story, the way politics got polarised, and the catholic Church , the part they played in that , its part of the story of trying to understand the phenomenon.  You said orwell and Simone Weil were  Stalin's idiots by the way a while back, when they were notable critics of stalin, and stalins useful idiots were those  who spoke for him weren't they? . Orwell, Stalin probably reckoned he was  not a useful idiot, but a useless idiot, mamalujo. The fact that you have concerns about undue weight when the only line you  push is far right apologetics..well,Sayerslle (talk) 23:26, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Unless a reliable source says it is background to the Red Terror it is synthesis. This is not a general article on Catholicism in early 20th century Spain. And please, spare me the ad hominems I don't push far right apologetics. My politics are beside the point, but they are not by any measure far right. What I care about is that the background material be what reliable sources say is the background, not what editors decide it is. And that also works to the end of the article not being overloaded with peripheral matters of dubious relation to the subject. Otherwise, the article becomes cloudy, overlong and unreadable. Mamalujo (talk) 23:46, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

text:  Mary Vincent: "The tragedy of the Second Republic was that it abetted its own destruction; the tragedy of the Church was that it became so closely allied with its self-styled defenders that its own sphere of action was severely compromised. " That is background , not tenuous at all really.  I'll spare you ad hominems, , but you wrote 'my friend..blah blah blah' on the Catholic church page and  , I thought then, this person is not my friend,  so spare me your insincere inane vacuities, I had to read that garbage. Sayerslle (talk) 00:15, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

text:  Is de la cueva, you quote him a lot, a priest perchance? Who is he. opus dei maybe. the quote in the lead from montero, can't there be a cite in english, what if you dont speak Spanish.  I dont know why you think  your politics are beside the point. They are to the fore, and hence not beside the point.   Anyway, an english cite for the hierarchy, and who is de la cueva, out of interest? Looking quickly at this talk page there is a history of concerns about NPOV - is there an admin who could look at this. what is the procedure for biased articles?Sayerslle (talk) 07:27, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

text: In the Asturias section it says agents of the government attacked the priests - but the government was a right wing coalition at this point. All the refs are to  an article that looks like a ladybird childrens book - can't we delete this crap92.0.100.237 (talk) 18:14, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The government that did the killing at that time was the local rebel governments which had recently been established (see link in the section to Asturias Rebellion which explains this: the rebels "set up town assemblies or 'revolutionary committees', to govern towns they controlled." ). I've made the appropriate edits. Maybe we can find some better sources, but the section is factual and accurate, so it should not be deleted. Mamalujo (talk) 19:36, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP:SYN and Undue Weight in section "Squeezing Out the Centre: Catholic Party Politics" 

message: I have cobbled together an article on this topic titled Catholic Church and the Spanish Civil War Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic  using text copied from other Wikipedia articles.  
It would be reasonable to ask how this is not a fork from this article or from Spanish Civil War.  My answer would be that the new article focuses specifically on the role of the Catholic Church in the Spanish Civil War whereas the Spanish Civil War article covers the entire Spanish Civil War from a political and military perspective and not just on the role of the Catholic Church.  Thus, the new article has more ability to delve into the details of the Catholic Church's role in the war whereas it would be a bit of a distraction in this article.
Similarly, this article focuses on the actual anticlerical violence whereas the new article covers the background of the Church's involvement in Spanish politics in the period leading up to the 1936 elections.
Please take a look at the new article and help improve it.  Thanks. 
--Richard S (talk) 21:13, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  New article: [[Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic]] 

message: I like the picture in the article because it draws together two far right conspiracy theories - that the Jews killed Jesus and that Communism was Jewish-controlled (see Jewish Bolshevism).  Franco of course frequently spoke of the "Jewish-Masonic conspiracy" and his patron, Adolph Hitler, was also known for anti-Semitism.  But I do not see the relevance to this article, unless it is to tie the republicans to the alleged Jewish conspiracy.  TFD (talk) 01:48, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: What is the Jewish connection to the image? It seems that any connection would be rather tenuous (unless one is engaging in conspiratorial thinking.  ; ).  Mamalujo (talk) 01:55, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well of course fascists engage in conspiratorial thinking.   Franco believed in a International-Communist-Judaeo-Masonic Conspiracy and thought that the Popular Front was part of it.  TFD (talk) 04:38, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Franco did subscribe to conspiracy theories, but, a point of correction, most scholars do not consider him or the Spanish State under him to be fascist, which you should know as and editor of that article, entails a radicalism, whereas Franco, while certainly a dictator, was a conservative authoritarian (not radical or revolutionary).  Hence the term sometime applied to him and his state - "para-fascism". They bore many of the trappings of fascism but differed at root from true fascists in their conservatism and lack of the radical aim to transform man, which you find in National Socialism, Italian Fascism and in the early Falange. Mamalujo (talk) 18:52, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The terminology is not used consistently.  Conspiracy theories are common however in groups that are considered to be extreme right, from ultraroyalists to the John Birch Society.  Of course the Communists hated religion and were allied with Moscow, but Franco saw a much wider conspiracy than actually existed.  The picture gives the impression that the terror was essentially an attack on religion, when it was really an attack on the Right, which included the Catholic church.  TFD (talk) 10:48, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: So NKVD murdering Roman-Catholics, Jews, Poles or Esperantists was extremely right? Any of those was supported by a conspiracy description. Xx236 (talk) 09:06, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The seven or eight shooters in the article have their backs towards the camera. There is no reference to any race in the photograph.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.180.30.37 (talk) 12:51, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Execution of the Sacred Heart

message: the term that titles this article is already biased!
--Ne0bi0 (talk) 22:37, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Please read the sources. It is a term used by Civil War sources of all political stripes and POVs. See also White Terror (Spain) Mamalujo (talk) 22:49, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: was the term not born in the mouths of the francoists - who of course abjured terror - Sayerslle (talk) 00:10, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There is nothing wrong with an article title being biased especially if the article is describing a biased view.  Consider that we have articles on Yellow Peril, Nigger and Armenian genocide.  The challenge is to provide an NPOV article that covers the topic in an encyclopedic way.  If you can provide reliable sources who challenge the name "Red Terror" then we can document that in the article.  Otherwise, your personal feeling that the title is biased does not change the fact that this is a widely used term in the academic literature. --Richard S (talk) 00:27, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

text: You'll look long and hard for anything in the 'academic literature' that looks anything like a Mamalujo article.Sayerslle (talk) 01:01, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

text: P.S. I agree that the challenge is to provide an NPOV article that covers the topic in an encyclopedic way -  . I am  thinking a paragraph on how the term terror rojo was used as part of the propaganda war would be interesting - (by  those haters of terror - mussolini and his fascists fresh from torching ethiopian villagers in Abyssinia using mustard gas sprinklers to strip them of their skin,, Phalangists, and Hitlers airmen of course over guernica, - and still the Church said it was  necessary to defend civilization mmalujo!,) - . I dont deny the place for an article with this title, the  terror rojo is discussed in the literature, but the way the subject is presented in this article - it looks propagandist , but I'm repeating myself. I'd like to know who first used the term and when, was terror rojo a term coined t earlier in the 20th century ,or was it born in 1934, or in the Civil war?. Sayerslle (talk) 01:37, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact, "Red Terror" is a common term used to describe the violent actions of socialists/communists in the early 20th century.  See Red Terror (disambiguation).  Your question about the use of the term "Red Terror" is valid but this article is not the appropriate place for a full treatment of the POV propagandizing use of the term. (although a brief mention of the issue could be included here).  I think an NPOV treatment has to include mention of White Terror.  What's needed is more objective, scholarly discussions who place the Red Terror in context of the overall conflict of the Spanish Civil War. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 10:01, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

text: Here's a good source for you to consider: Antony Beevor --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 10:06, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

text: Beevor for a chapter title - still seems to me an overwhelmingly  francoist term - when the lead says 'historians  call it this' - the list should be longer imo - who calls it this , outside of FRancoist historiography - which academic, mainline historians, in what books ,  what time frame is it said to cover - the early months of the civil war - the entire civil war / etc .. - this article was started by mamalujo as a POV piece and ambrosius took it on - now it is a right mess really -. Sayerslle (talk) 11:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Red terror???? 

message: The background section is too long, meandering, confusing and filled with matter which is outside the scope of the article or too detailed and not helpful to understanding the Red Terror. (It also probably contains a lot of wp:original research and wp:synthesis, because I suspect much of what is there is not taken from the source's discussion of the Red Terror, but of other matters.) A background section should give a succinct summary of the relevant history prior to the subject of the article. Here the section is nearly as long as the rest of the article itself. It could use some judicious editing in the form of deleting extraneous matter and summation of pertinent matter. If someone else doesn't get to it soon, I probably will.  Mamalujo (talk) 19:06, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It is too much probably - the article is unreadable in a way, it  has a few scars of ideological war itself in a way - it is interiorly inconsisten as an article - you began it as a POv piece, and ambrosius 007 continued your work , - it says at the end , things got better in russia after Germany invaded, but then it was bad again after the Nazi defeat kindof thing - aprt from being off-subject of the article - Spain - its sourced to a german work by FRanzen this insight - the title still bothers me , aside from beevor for a chapter title, it still seems a francoist historin trerm - look in the index of splintering of spain for eg for  red terror , or terror rojo, you won't find it - a better nonPOV title would be something like 'revolutionary violencein Spain 1936-39' - the lead doesn't give detail for time frame or anything ,hilar raguers book gunpowder and incense says it fell away very quickly after the early months , the anticlerical violence,  - the section on 'early outbreak of violence' has a lot of stanley payne stuff where he contradicts beevor, - i think there has to be something like 'different historians  have assessed the violence differently payne/beevor for eg - v. different emphases -  - it also has a paragraph that deals with Stalinist violence against other leftists , is that meant to be here, is that a part of 'red terror' as defined by the FRancoist historians - who is Montero? , who said the left planned all the violence down to the last detail even before the scw? - the article is in state of incomprehensibility really - it needs really knowledgeable, non-POV pushing eyes to look at it and sort it out if possible -  you mamalujo are not qualified imo,  but for the sake of the general rader something has to change. i am deleting the non-relevant nazi-ish coda to the article. what is the policy on citing books in german and spanish in the references anyhow - you could say anything is in those - look at tagepost and faulhaber - you said he was a member of amici israel , but was he ..? Sayerslle (talk) 11:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Background section too long, meandering and confusing 

message: The article was assessed C-class for lack of sufficient in-line citations. Boneyard90 (talk) 23:54, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP:Death Assessment Commentary 

message: in the early outbreak section the bit on the NKVD and soviet role - is that  part of what is called the Red Terror - like the May days in barcelona - I've never come across Orwells predicament in Catalonia being described as 'part of the Red Terror' for eg. Some of the problem i have with this is that its not easy far as I can see to find neutral historians who discuss 'The Red Terror' - what it refers to exactly - i still think its pretty much a Francoist, and Francoist historians phrase - otherwise historians speak of the early outbreak of terror  in response to the rightist  actions - sporadic episodes later - does Beevor discuss the NKVD role in his chapter - I dont have his book to hand. Sayerslle (talk) 13:57, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: i looked for the corresponding artice on encyclopedia britannica to get clear in my head what is meant to be covered by this article - but there is no corresponding article.why not?  does the nkvd  material belong here or not - i thought the term 'red  terror' was a term to cover the anticlerical violence mainly, against 'the Church and the bosses' - Sayerslle (talk) 18:13, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Early outbreak

message: The term is the moniker which is and has been used to describe this subject, by writers of all sorts of political stripes. It is used by Beevor, Thomas, and Payne just to name a few. It is used by prominent publishers (Ruiz,  Julius, Franco's Justice: Repression In Madrid After The Spanish Civil War(Oxford University Press 2005)  pp. 10, 23, 33,40, 233, 234).  It was used by noted news periodicals and dailies at the time (Crumbling RepublicTime Magazine, Monday, Oct. 05, 1936), as it is today (Tonkin, Boyd A Week in Books The (London)Independent July 26, 2006).  It is also used by scholarly journals (Chodakiewicz, Marek Jan Review of Las relaciones de Franco con Europa Centro-Oriental, 1939-1955 by By Matilde Eiroa The Sarmatian Review (January 2003 Issue, Rice University)). Mamalujo (talk) 22:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Payne is francoist - what are the exact refs please for thomas's use of the term - the tonkin link led nowhere when i clicked on it. 'to name a few..' - you said myriads - the Ruiz link put the term like this 'Red Terror' - the apostrophe indicates to me it's a kind of contested or pejorative or propagandist term ,    - myriads of historians don't use the term - i don't come across it in indexes - like in the splintering of spain bbok -  the article title should be put in  apostrophes like so 'Red Terror' - 'reds' meaning roughly 'racaille' / scum - is a loaded term - and this article  was started by someone who thinks of 'reds' as 'scum' -  Sayerslle (talk) 00:36, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Term "Red Terror", again 

message: Just sayin'. 70.29.99.120 (talk) 00:52, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Over a decade now, and the article is still biased shit. 

message: This article clearly has POV problem and it along with theWhite Terror (Spain) should be merged into one page as suggested by a previous user. Attempting to seperate them gives a distorted view of the event and make both pages susceptible to POV bias.Zubin12 (talk) 10:24, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Both topics are large enough to warrant own articles. Splitting into sub-articles is a good idea when there's enough coverage. Also your edit is misguided. The Reds committed violence against most of their political enemies, not just the Church, so please don't distort the lead section. Also it's not apparent to me why this article is "biased in favour of the Church". Thousands of clergymen were murdered without fault of their own: are we supposed to write they deserved it or what's the POV problem? --Pudeo (talk) 08:23, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed Merger 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
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Participate in the deletion discussion at the . —Community Tech bot (talk) 05:38, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: The Background section reads like a series of arguments, cited though they may be, for why the Republic was quite literally doomed from the start due to its "hostile", "anticlerical" constitutional elements. Are there really no opposing views on this theory of the dynamics of the Republican movement? Is it unanimous among historians that the conflict between the Catholic Church and the Republican government was intractable by nature? I can't claim to be very knowledgeable on this era, so I'm not in a position to edit and provide balancing perspectives, but I'm suspicious of content that reads as persuasion rather than information, and seems closer to literary foreshadowing rather than sober historical and political analysis. This is, after all, part of a conflict that still informs modern politics, a topic that can be considered controversial, personal, and even incendiary in Spain. 
This comment is in no way meant to deny the bloodiness of the ensuing persecution and violence, only that the apparent POV narrative expressed in this section may rely on oversimplification and a teleological fallacy. In short, the thesis that these atrocities were baked into the Second Republic-era tension between the right-aligned church and the leftist government doesn't seem appropriate here. From other sources and articles I've read on the period (including this article's lead section), the internal political struggle among the leftist factions and international actors such as the NKVD seems to be more nuanced and have evolved significantly over the course of the war. SamClayton (talk) 07:30, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV In Background Section 

message: But what does the Spanish language wikipedia [1 ] say about the Red Terror, 'Terror Rojo'? Largely in line with the English version. It also is more detailed, check it out (Right Click (Chrome) to translate.)
In [2] I read an interview with Pio Moa (see his wiki), one time radical of the Communist Party, imprisoned in 1983 and freed after a year. After a period of soul searching he began studying among others archives of the Socialist Party resulting in his book 'The Myths of the Spanish Civil War', [3].
I haven't read the book (yet) but I read the interview [2]; his study confirms the brutality of the Red Terror.
[1] https://www.wikiwand.com/es/Terror_Rojo_(España) 
[2] Isabelle Schmitz et Philippe Maxence, ‘Guerre d'Espagne, la mécanique du 
chaos’,  interview with Spanish author Pio Moa, in Le Figaro Histoire 
augustus/september 2022 – issue 63, pp. 16-23.
[3] Pio Moa, ‘Les Mythes de la guerre d’Espagne’, 2022  ('Los Mitos de la Guerra civil (Historia Del Siglo Xx)', edition 36, 2003) 
Gerard1453 (talk) 20:49, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some other sources