Talk:Dinesh D'Souza/Archive 9

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Far-right claim is disputed and biased - should be removed from the lead

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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As a leftist, I got quite shocked when I saw we add the label Far-Right To the lead of articles like Dinesh Dsouza article, but we don't have the same approach to the article of an actual far-left, such as Noam Chomsky. Being an anarchist (anarcho-syndicalism), Chomsky is self-evidently a far-left. He approved his ideology, but Dsouza didn't. He rejected the idea of being far-right, argued against it. Also all sources which claim he is far-right, actually are biased as hell toward right-wing activists and lean to far-left (including the Atlantic). These sources aren't by any means valid in this particular situation, as they have political self-interest against Dinesh Dsouza and right-wing politics. According to that logic I will remove, far-right claim from the lead, and will add it to another lower section as claim from his critiques (who are mostly leftist, far-left and anti-right-wing). If this instruction is not allowed, it will be problematic in terms of edit wars, because we have no choice to add such thing like far-right/far-left to the lead of other articles including Noam Chomsky (as being Far-Left is self-evident for him). So far-right claim is biased, defamatory, disputed and consequently should be removed from the lead. Thank you very much. The Stray Dog Talk Page 15:34, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

@TheStrayDog: If you would like to discuss changes to Noam Chomsky, please do so at Talk:Noam Chomsky. Please see WP:OTHERCONTENT.

If you have reliable sources that refute the descriptor of D'Souza as far-right, please provide them. But the sources that currently describe him as far-right are adequate. I'm not sure why you're pointing to The Atlantic, as that source does not describe him as far right.

As for If this instruction is not allowed, it will be problematic in terms of edit wars, because we have no choice to add such thing like far-right/far-left to the lead of other articles including Noam Chomsky (as being Far-Left is self-evident for him), I would recommend reviewing WP:POINT. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:25, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree with @TheStrayDog: there is an inconsistency in presentation of Wikipedia topics. I don't like slapping contentious labels onto article topics, especially in the lead, and especially when the label concerns ideology. All over Wikipedia whenever a label is used in Wikipedia's narrative voice, it stirs up debates on talk pages. The only policy I know of where it's permissible to apply a contentious label in Wikipedia's voice is WP:FRINGE topics (pseudoscience, alternative cures, paranormal stuff). Otherwise, we should use words that attribute the label to sources. We have no policy, not even WP:DUE that requires an article to put a contentious ideological label on a subject just because reliable sources choose to do so. We should be better than that. ~Anachronist (talk) 17:32, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

As a political commenter and occasional candidate, I think we have to provide some brief sense of his political leanings in the first sentence, and I don't think we should avoid the widely-used term for him in favor of a less accurate one simply because people complain on the talk page about it more. If the sourcing generally describe him as "conservative" or "right-wing" then that's a reasonable argument for using that term instead, but if the sourcing tends to describe him as far-right then I think we should too. So far TheStrayDog has not shown that, though (and I am not super familiar with the bulk of sourcing on D'Souza; this page is on my watchlist for some reason but I haven't actually contributed to it all that much). GorillaWarfare (talk) 00:03, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

"Also all sources which claim he is far-right, actually are biased as hell toward right-wing activists" So what? We don't disqualify opinionated sources. Per Biased_or_opinionated_sources:

• "Wikipedia articles are required to present a neutral point of view. However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject."
• "Common sources of bias include political, financial, religious, philosophical, or other beliefs. Although a source may be biased, it may be reliable in the specific context. When dealing with a potentially biased source, editors should consider whether the source meets the normal requirements for reliable sources, such as editorial control, a reputation for fact-checking, and the level of independence from the topic the source is covering." Dimadick (talk) 22:20, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Calling him 'far right' seems to be an opinion and suggests a political bias on the part of Wikipedia. Would it be appropriate for Wikipedia to use the term 'far left' in its articles? To suggest something is far to one side or the other would suggest that Wikipedia takes a political position from which to base other viewpoints from. Wikipedia should be neutral and avoid using such terms. With respect to sourcing it seems that using arbitrarily selected media outlets as sources to justify such a subjective label seems arbitrary and subjective.

It should also be noted that the term as defined by its own Wikipedia article states that it is defined as 'various ethnic supremacism'. What sources do you have that Dinesh D'Souza believes any such thing? He is Indian and he married someone that's partly from Venezuela so who exactly does he believe he is ethnically superior to and how? Sources? Throwing around these terms arbitrarily seems to diminish their original meaning and it seems that Wikipedia should be internally consistent with respect to terms that it uses to define someone and how it defines those terms. Perhaps the term itself needs to be redefined based on a more modern usage of the term but it would seem like the intended modern usage would be to associate people that don't meet the originally intended definition with those that do. Mainstream media is often about creating hyperbole and exaggerations because that's what gets more views and so it's not very unexpected when mainstream media sources misuse the term for viewers but Wikipedia should be more neutral and factual even if that is more boring and doesn't generate clicks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.113.121.45 (talk) 04:05, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles reflect what is published in reliable sources. Would it be appropriate for Wikipedia to use the term 'far left' in its articles? Sure, if reliable sources support it. You'll see that we do use this term in various articles. The sources supporting that D'Souza is far-right are cited inline. GorillaWarfare (talk) 16:03, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, only 2 of the 6 cited sources for the initial statement actually say "far right" -- NBC News and Buzzfeed. (The Guardian headline no longer counts because WP:HEADLINES.) If they're biased then the WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV policy isn't being followed. But read above, this has been discussed more than once before. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:42, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

I suspect the lead sentence would benefit from a bundled citation that makes it clearer which source is supporting which statement... let me see about doing that. GorillaWarfare (talk) 16:44, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

 Done GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:19, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

He is widely described as far-right by reliable sources, and there is absolutely no valid reason to remove that well-sourced descriptor from this article. --Tataral (talk) 01:02, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

@Tataral: Could you specify which? I did look around for additional sourcing describing him as far right and didn't find a whole lot beyond the two sources in this article—mediocre-quality sources or sources referring to D'Souza being popular among the far right, mostly. It didn't seem like a widely-used descriptor to me, particularly when compared to the number of sources describing him as a conservative. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:27, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting on the user to provide you more sources. She seems to have a fixation on labeling people/organizations as "far-right" based on flimsy sources: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], etc. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 02:50, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

That's more of an issue for a behavioral noticeboard than here, but they've already provided their sourcing. GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:00, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

The Guardian described him as a "far-right provocateur and key figure in US culture wars"[7]; Business Insider called him a "far-right author and pundit"[8]; Mother Jones noted that "D'Souza has a long record of promoting far-right, racist conspiracy theories"[9], to name some examples other than the sources already included here. --Tataral (talk) 07:24, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

@Tataral: Thanks! Regarding The Guardian, there is a (fairly new) point in the RS policy, WP:HEADLINE, which specifies that News headlines are not a reliable source if the information in the headline is not explicitly supported in the body of the source. That is the case with this piece, which describes D'Souza as "far-right" in the headline only, but as "conservative" in the body. As for Business Insider and Mother Jones, they are not the strongest sources. There is no consensus for the reliability of BI (WP:RSP#Business Insider) and while Mother Jones is generally reliable, it is also one of the most left-leaning sources we use. In this case, it is also describing the conspiracy theories he promotes as far-right, rather than D'Souza himself, and while one could make the leap that people who promote far-right conspiracy theories are probably themselves far-right, that is a jump we shouldn't be making for contentious claims. In this case I would be inclined to go with the bulk of the strong RS, which describe him as conservative, and then add the Mother Jones source about his conspiracy theories (probably with attribution) to the article body. GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:00, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

"Far-right" is questionable, but he is a very biased conservative and ideologue who seems unlikely to step down from his viewpoints. Btw, I consider myself to be rather leftist in most respects Jasper Heart Baron (talk) 06:44, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Semi-protected edit request on 3 June 2021

Dinesh D'Souza should have "conspiracy theorist" removed. That is all. 208.81.157.158 (talk) 21:10, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

 Not done The term is reliably sourced. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:11, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Why are you defending that he isn't a conspiracy theorist? If he makes stupid statements, that are clearly a falsehood, and they are well-documented, i think it's a fact that he is a conspiracy theorist, not a subjective topic. Don't defend the indefensible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.32.56.152 (talk) 22:16, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The term "Conspiracy Theorist" should be removed from the lead in this article. This is a loaded pejorative term that clearly does not apply to D'Souza's work. There are six sources cited to justify the use of this term. All six sources are opinion pieces that criticized the pardon of D'Souza. Two of the sources did not contain the word conspiracy. Two others used the term as a pejorative adjective but did not offer any explanation or example. Two others offered examples, but the examples do not conform to the commonly understood meaning of the term. Prominent examples of conspiracy theories include The Illuminati, Area 51, Q-Anon. These are elaborate stories in which the facts are made up or distorted to support incredulous claims about a secret plot without any credible evidence. By contrast, the given examples of D'Souza's "conspiracies" are books in which D'Souza examines the early ideological influences of prominent politicians and posits a theory about the impact that those early influences had on those politicians. This is a fairly common practice in political writing. D'Souza does not allege any secret conspiracy in these books. -The Nation: this is an opinion piece from a left-wing opinion journal in which the author criticizes ABC News for allowing D'Souza to appear on their broadcast. She refers to books by D'Souza in which he examines the ideology of early intellectual influences on Clinton and Obama (Saul Alinsky, Obama's father). The main point of the opinion piece is that news organizations like ABC should not give a platform to right wing authors like D'Souza. - The New Republic: another opinion piece from a mainstream liberal opinion journal that appears to justify the "conspiracy" claim with reference to the same book describing the anti-colonial views of Obama's father. The author states "The conservative intelligentsia is filled with scam artists like D’Souza, who are dressed up as serious thinkers when their real purpose is to attack the left, to defend a reactionary ideology and, increasingly, to simply troll." Does this sound like an authoritative source that should be used in a Wikipedia article? - CNN: an opinion piece (CNN is a news organization, but this piece is categorized under CCN Opinion) in which the author criticizes the pardon and refers to D'Souza as a conspiracy theorist but does not offer any explanation of why. - Radio National podcast: contains conspiracy theorist in title but offers no explanation - Buzzfeed news: does not mention conspiracy theorist - Daily Beast: a political blog post describing a monologue on the Daily Show (a TV comedy program) in which Trevor Noah criticizes the pardon, but makes no mention of conspiracy theories.Dsgillette (talk) 01:30, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Reliable sources aren't required to provide an "explanation" to satisfy your personal demand. You're also wrong about the Buzzfeed News piece: President Donald Trump said Thursday he would grant a "full pardon" to far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza, the second time he's rewarded a vocal supporter with clemency. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 01:36, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Please address the main point in the request. All six sources are opinion pieces written by partisan political writers with the intent to discredit the subject (actually 5 opinion pieces and one riff by a comedian). Partisan name-calling is common in opinion pieces. It has no place in a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia deals in facts, these are rhetorical opinions, and they are clearly presented as opinions. Noone would mistake any of these articles as objective news reporting. This is supposed to be a biographical profile of a well-known political writer. One of the sources refers to D'Souza as a "scam artist". Should that be in the lead to the article as well? Try googling "Al Sharpton Con" or "Jesse Jackson Shakedown" and see how many opinion pieces you can find that use those terms. Yet the lead to Sharpton's Wikipedia article describes him as "an American civil rights activist, Baptist minister, talk show host and politician." (as it should). There is a section within the article under the heading "Reputation" that briefly mentions both positive and negative opinions about him (attributed to others), but it is not in the lead sentence of the article. Wikipedia is a valuable resource precisely because the rules do not allow it to be used as a platform for partisan name calling in biographical articles. Please keep it that way. Dsgillette (talk) 04:46, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I can provide more references.

Quote: "The US conspiracy theorist and pro-Trump commentator Dinesh D'Souza accused Soros of being 'a sponsor of domestic terrorism'"

Langer, Armin (2021) "The Eternal George Soros: Rise of an Antisemitic and Islamophobic Conspiracy Theory" in Andreas Önnerfors and André Krouwel (eds) "Europe: Continent of Conspiracies: Conspiracy Theories in and about Europe" published by Routledge.

and

Quote: "Most recently the conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souzaaccused Soros of supporting antifa, that is, of backing domestic terrorism."

Whitfield, Stephen J. "The Persistence of the Protocols", Society 55 (5): 417-421. DOI:10.1007/s12115-018-0282-6

Given that these are academic sources, I hope your fears about partisanship are assuaged. I would appreciate if someone could add these sources, as I don't understand the formatting that allows several references under one footnote. OsFish (talk) 08:08, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:02, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

This will be my last post on this topic, I promise. I am very disappointed by the response to this suggested edit. Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral. Using a loaded pejorative description in the opening sentence of an article about a well-known political pundit is not neutral. This should be a no-brainer. The fact that it isn't does not bode well for the future reputation of Wikipedia. You could find multiple published references to support using pejorative adjectives to describe any controversial political pundit. I searched through the Wikipedia articles for several well-known controversial liberal and conservative pundits, and haven't seen a single example where such a term is used in the opening sentence. Usually, controversies and criticism are contained in a section dedicated to that topic. Using this term in the opening sentence puts D'Souza into the same category as Alex Jones. That is exactly the intent of partisans who apply that term - to discredit an opponent. Wikipedia is not supposed to be partisan. I have always had faith in Wikipedia precisely because I know there is a rigorous process to ensure neutrality. That process has failed in this instance.Dsgillette (talk) 20:39, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 20:44, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

@Dsgillette: Right now, we have multiple reliable sources (both media and academic) that prominently describe D'Souza as a conspiracy theorist, and I have not yet seen someone provide a source that contradicts it. Your suggestion that such terms ought to be relegated to a "criticism" or "controversies" section is actually contra to our best practices (see WP:CSECTION). That you haven't been able to find another article that uses the term "conspiracy theorist" in the lead sentence sounds like an issue with your searching more than anything, because they're easily found: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Shiva Ayyadurai, and Lauren Witzke (politician) are a few examples you may be familiar with. You're quite right that there are rigorous processes to ensure neutrality, and they are being followed here. If you think that is not the case you're more than welcome to seek broader input at a venue like WP:NPOVN or WP:RfC, but I would recommend familiarizing yourself a bit more with our policies first. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 20:59, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare You can add Mark Dice, Andrew Anglin, Baked Alaska, Glenn Beck and about 1/4 of the entries at Category:American conspiracy theorists, and those are just the American ones. It would be surprising to see a claim like this made by someone who clearly wants to edit an encyclopedia (a task which requires a strong ability to do research) if it weren't so distressingly common on any article that touches on the subject.

Dsgillette Your complaints about partisanship are, quite frankly, not our problem. Our articles follow what the best sources have to say about the subjects, and calling someone a conspiracy theorist is a rather drastic step that's very rarely done without extensive discussion, and never done without extensive discussion on pages of figures as public as this. In all of those cases, there are a significant number of high-quality sources calling them that, and no high-quality sources disputing it. Furthermore, to get a consensus to apply the label, we must show that the spreading or inventing of conspiracy theories is one of the features that makes the subject notable enough to warrant a Wikipedia article. In other words, the problem is not us, the problem is that these people absolutely are conspiracy theorists, and any denial of that is a denial of reality. If you take issue with this, you'd be better served by reading the article and the sources, and coming to an understanding as to why we call D'Souza a conspiracy theorist than you would be by advocating for the removal of the term here. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:37, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

I would like to add: here's an explanation of what conspiracy theories D'Souza has spread and here is an RfC which concluded that we should call him a conspiracy theorist. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:32, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Just wanted to mention David Brooks talked about this guy tonight on PBS and that he was disgusted that the guy was making fun of the Capitol police testimony, so obviously many share these negatives views, and David Brooks is a conservative commentator. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.181.193.59 (talk) 02:39, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

We’ve been this over and over again. It’s well sourced and not getting removed. Volunteer Marek 06:46, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Tweet re 6 January 2021 event

Isi96 added on 26 September 2021 a paragraph about "In January 2021, after the United States Capitol attack, D'Souza claimed without evidence that leftist agitators were responsible for the attack ..." (slightly modified since). The source is Mother Jones but Mother Jones's cite is to a tweet by Mr D'Souza. In what seems to be a response to another tweet about breaking windows (which Twitter has deleted), he tweeted on January 7: "This seems consistent with several of the Trumpsters who insist the people who broke the windows were not #MAGA at all". So: not about the whole affair just about window-breaking, and not saying it was leftist agitators just saying other tweets might be consistent. This is yet another example why it's better to follow WP:RS/QUOTE rather than rely on a biased source which pretends to be telling us what a person said, and why WP:BLP requires good sourcing that directly supports a contentious statement. I think the addition should be reverted but will wait in case there's consensus for it. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:05, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

That was my bad. Thanks, I'll undo that particular change. Isi96 (talk) 14:52, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Twitter section growing to UNDUE proportions

The Twitter section continues to gradually expand. IMHO, pretty much all of it is WP:UNDUE. Twitter is riddled with "controversial" tweets, by millions of people, notable and unnotable. Someone, somewhere, ALWAYS gets their asshole in a pucker over what someone else said. This is a BLP. No question, no waffling - he's said some stupid and outrageous things. Outrage doesn't confer notability to the event, particularly when the outrage lasts barely one news cycle - not even that, when we get into the semi-reliable rags that are being used as references that pretty much exist to amplify outrage. I would say that degree of outrage - wide numbers of people, 'bipartisanly' condemn the comments, and it lasts for more than a day. That however, is my own synthetic metric. Particularly the last two recently added bits - okay, he made a comparison of Greta Thunberg to Goebbels propaganda - and the best references that could be found are the Jerusalem Post and the Indian Express. Really? Reuters, AP, NYT had little/nothing to say about it, but it merits inclusion? And the last one is too stupid to even mention, this is not notable by any metric. Okay, that's my screed of the morning. I think the section bears condensing down to about one fifth its current size if it's to be kept within notability guidelines.Anastrophe (talk) 18:54, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. I've noticed there has been a steady stream of edits to the page for some weeks now. I know Wikipedia is always a work in progress, but if he's not been in the news recently, the article doesn't need to be constantly changing.Xenologer48 (talk) 21:53, 3 October 2021 (UTC)