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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alt-right

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Coverage is sufficient to meet our policies and guidelines. The fact that our sources have a disagreement about the nature of the topic is not an argument for deletion, they clearly give significant coverage to the term. However, the article in its current form does not even come close to being decent, so a rewrite is strongly suggested. The WordsmithTalk to me 02:35, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Alt-right

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Alt-right (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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I'm not sure this article is anything but a WP:SYNTH of random sources that just use the term "alternative right" with any real point here. The first red flag is when you basically cite 2-3 things for a dozen beliefs all together based on two sources from not even six months ago. The main usage here (I'd say massive WP:UNDUE weight to a single Buzzfeed article) connects it to the Trump campaign and white nationalists. The "historical" citations start with this 2008 speech which other than the title has zero in common with anything that Trump or white nationalists represent. From there, there's two or three blogs in 2009 [1][2][3] that connect to the 2008 Mencken speech but associate this with Buchanan and Ron Paul. There's not even a policy connection between them, Donald Trump or the white nationalists again unless you're just WP:SYNTHizing one. From there, the citations clearly point to Richard B. Spencer, a white nationalist basically trying to push a new identification. The ADL blog and this Daily Beast piece both state that the ADL considers this basically just a term "that white nationalists use" as a so-called movement (regardless of those sources, the ADL can be a reliable source that white nationalists use the term but the fact that white nationalists use the term doesn't mean it's a legitimate term unless you actually consider white nationalists NPOV and reliable sources about political movements). The sources here otherwise are basically Rosie Gray's Buzzfeed piece quoting bits from anonymous callers on Rush Limbaugh's show, random vbloggers and linking it all back to Spencer again who again claims credit for this term. Now, AFD isn't cleanup but when you bury down into the actual sourcing, the fact that the allegedly young age of this group is literally citing anonymous Rush Limbaugh callers leaves serious questions of WP:UNDUE weight being given to them. On the other hand, we have this Weekly Standard piece which defines the alt-right as a broad group which includes white nationalists (as opposed to a group of white nationalists with the other sources seem to imply). Basically, the only actual reliable source I see (buried in layers of Buzzfeed and DailyBeast and other blog-type cites) all state that this is essentially a white nationalist phrasing with other people just stating that it is an actual movement of Trump supporters full of white nationalists as Trump's campaign has been going. At best, I'd call the actual relevant material a neologism by Spencer that deserves a mention on his page rather than treating this as an actual movement. The Gray material could also go into part of the Trump political campaign but I have no idea why "white supremacists in the Trump campaign call themselves the alt-right" is really that important. Ricky81682 (talk) 00:33, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm not sure whether I support this. I think deletion is preferable to leaving the article in its current state. It's extremely biased, despite the fact that it has been honed down by many transient editors' protests. Because of this chiseling, the people working on this article long-term - people who seem committed to casting the alt-right as an explicitly bigoted white nationalist group - will defend at length each individual sentence, quote, and source in the article. However, the article as a whole is unacceptably biased and unencyclopedic, offering little information other than a list of nasty things that the alt-right's been called by political commentators and social justice journalists working with low-quality partisan sources. Also, many of these quotes, sources, etc. aren't particularly defensible, there's just some relatively weak argument that's made by four or five people in tandem until the challenging editor gets tired of reversions and leaves.
However, I think the article could be honed down to a few objective and notable sentences. The alt-right doesn't seem particularly organized or well-defined anyway, and it's very new, so I don't think this subject merits a long article. I don't know if we could wrest the BuzzFeed source and the massive block of vitriolic quotes from the hands of the incumbent editors, though. If we can't do that, I think we should delete. Exercisephys (talk) 01:24, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Getting this up to snuff is going to be difficult, but with the SPLC and the New Yorker running stories on it it's at least as notable as your average K-pop idol or the latest YouTube sensation. I gotta go with keep--sorry Ricky. Drmies (talk) 01:25, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Which New Yorker piece? This one with a throwaway line that's back to the Gray piece? Is that significant coverage? The SPLC piece literally only says Alt-Right in terms of the website name, not the actual usage of the term. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:37, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • This one Exercisephys (talk) 01:46, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
        • Isn't the piece questioning whether it exists at all? It says that "One way to understand the alt-right is not as a movement but as a collective experiment in identity, basically as an vague term that anyone can use for their own purposes on the internet? The piece also say that people are "imagining that they are a new group of people rather than the same old group during their off hours, trying out a different form of play." How does the fact that the New Yorker doesn't believe the fact that it is real support an article alleging the very thing the article attacks? At the very least, giving proper weight would include a complete dismissal of the idea of it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:14, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • What is the notable subject of this article? The New Yorker article discusses several separate phenomena under the umbrella of alt-right: the Zero Hedge financial blog-hoax (which our Wikipedia article does not discuss); Richard Spencer, the webmaster who invented the term "alt-right" to market himself; and Mencius Moldbug, whose blog and related ideologues already have a name as the Dark Enlightenment. Shrigley (talk) 04:22, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Considering this recent article from the New Yorker, among others from reliable outlets, the article in its current shape is largely dubious and would best be deleted or barring such, merged into Alternative Right. If it is to be kept, it needs to be rewritten as it is not encyclopedic and relies heavily on pop news and pundit blogs, all of which are unacceptable as reliable sources for our purposes here in building a credible encyclopedia. There are too many political and cultural articles written in this fashion, so we need to start taking a more active effort to clean this kind of thing up. Laval (talk) 01:33, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Having an article about "alt-right" as a concept is considerably more difficult than finding a bunch of webpages which mention the term "alt-right" in passing. You need to cite authorities, preferably academics but definitely not amateur bloggers for Buzzfeed, who can connect all of the concepts currently covered in this article as part of a single coherent idea. Yes, Mr. Spencer did at one time curate a website called Alternative Right, but we have a separate article for that. As it stands, this article is catnip to politically excited writers who want to label people (like Trump) "alt-right" against their will and cite themselves on Wikipedia. We don't have a separate article on "Cultural Marxism", a subject in the same politics-space, because of the trashy nature of the sources which purport to describe that topic. Let's not have an article on this nebulous "alt-right" until quality sources develop. Shrigley (talk) 01:38, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete What the article is describing seems to be the same as Neo-fascism, so redirect there. Borock (talk) 02:39, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • I definitely don't think so. Part of the problem is that it's erroneously casting alt-right as neo-fascist. Exercisephys (talk) 03:39, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • One of the few legitimate sources which tries to describe the alt-right (but ends up concluding that "alt-right" describes something ephemeral or nonexistent) is The New Yorker. There, like Bokhari and Yiannopoulos, Wallace-Wells actually rejects the idea that rebloggers of neo-fascist content hold those beliefs; he recognizes provocation for the sake of provocation and the questions and contradictions that certain online personalities try to expose about speech taboos. Shrigley (talk) 04:22, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Conservatism-related deletion discussions. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:59, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:59, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:00, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Europe-related deletion discussions. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:00, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not sure yet - Leaning keep with the suggestion that cuckservative be merged into this article, as the terms seem very closely linked (i.e. cuckservative is the creation of the alt-right, and shares the same space online). For the sake of limiting the domain of action to this article, maybe it should be merge to cuckservative, with the expectation of a RM being opened to move that to alt-right. This is a tough one, though. There are a lot of sources that use "alt-right", a lot of sources that give brief definitions/explanations, and some very decent sources which go into a bit more depth. A delete seems hard to justify unless the rationale is just WP:TNT (which may be applicable -- I'm trying to research before really diving into the article). Plenty of political topics/movements do cover a broader-than-ideal-from-an-encyclopedia's-standpoint range of people and beliefs, but are nonetheless included as encyclopedic topics because sources define them in sufficiently similar ways. In this case, the subject seems to be roughly a loud/bombastic/confrontational/trollish largely Internet-based extremist group with close ties to white nationalism and known in 2016 for their support of Donald Trump's presidential bid. There are plenty of other things, but that definition seems to fit with most of the reliable sources. That said, the tie with white nationalism is so strong that there may be an existing article on the subject that could sustain a merge. Alternatively, and this is certainly bound to be controversial, since the vast majority of sources also link it with the Trump campaign, we could merge to taht article, too. Ultimately, it's hard to ignore full-length articles in The New Yorker and BuzzFeedNews (which is not a terrible source anymore, btw), Vice, Daily Beast, Daily Beast again, Daily Wire, and Vox, as well as coverage in Vice again, Newsweek, Daily Beast again, SPLC, and Newsday. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:51, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep It has certainly had sufficient media coverage. The New Yorker article by Wallace-Wells that I read[4] says nothing about neo-fascist beliefs. It describes it as " the loosely assembled far-right movement that exists largely online," and is an attempt to understand it. I don't read it as saying it doesn't really exist. The National Review is a respectable conservative journal and has an article discussing it.[5] Other articles have also been mentioned. I wouldn't call it an extremist group because it isn't organised enough to be a group. I can see some of the problems but to an extent they are symptomatic of the new era of social media. Maybe next year we'll start to see more scholarly analysis, but at the moment we don't have that. But I think we have enough. Doug Weller talk 16:59, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

*Keep Although I do have periods of regularly editing at AFD, I got here today because someone I follow retweeted someone they follow who was retweeting someone who was retweeting this [6] 2015 article that made me google "alt-right" to try and figure out what it is. Wikipedia can sometimes be useful for answers to on stuff like this. A quick google established that this term has had more than sufficient coverage in serious media to fully justify an article. That said, it's a terrible atticle at present. After the 1st paragraph of the lede, it dissolves into a mere hotchpotch of confusing sources with a great deal of mudslinging that has the impact of smearing the "alt-right" while doing nothing to enlighten the innocent reader who has come to find o ut what the "alt-right" is. Ripe for drastic reduction and a thoroughgoing re-write, which needs to be undertaken by someone without a political ax to grind.E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:35, 10 May 2016 (UTC) Changed ivote, see below.E.M.Gregory (talk) 13:57, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • SYNTH and UNDUE are not valid deletion criteria - wrong. As you can see from the link you mentioned that list is not intended to be comprehensive, and it includes anything which is an inappropriate in the article namespace, as long as the material is so bad that improvement isn't practical. And as it does mention original research you could argue that SYNTH is included. Articles can be and are deleted for being fundamentally violations of our policies on neutrality and original research. Hut 8.5 22:06, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Which is why I mentioned NUKEANDPAVE. If the nominator is suggesting that, it's a bit ridiculous. An article plagued by SYNTH or UNDUE is not sufficient reason for deletion if the problems can feasibly be remedied. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 23:03, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It is if there does not exist an actual topic but instead we have people just pulling everything with the words "alternative right" or "alt-right" into one place and acting like it's a topic. Reliable sources that don't even believe the topic exists is not evidence that the article should remain. There is no concrete topic between the 2008/2009 nonsense and the current stuff. What we have boils down to Rosie Gray's single buzzfeed idea of a concept, based on anonymous radio callers and random white supremacists claiming that a "movement" exists while other reliable source question whether it exists and others tease it as just a white supremacist claim. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:23, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, but which far-right ideologies exactly and what are the sources behind such descriptions? One of the biggest problems behind the article is how nebulous the term is and the lack of reliable sources beyond a bunch of blogs using the term as a synonym for far-right and/or white supremacism, along with Buzzfeed using the term as a smear or pejorative against Donald Trump and his supporters. Simply keeping the article without offering any suggestions or solutions on how to improve it and solve the inherent problems isn't a very good resolution. Thus far, none of the editors here advocating for 'keep' have offered any such solutions. Laval (talk) 06:03, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It is, for sure, WP:NEO. But there seems to be plenty of secondary sources discussing it. It's just all poorly organized in this article. - Scarpy (talk) 18:09, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Scarpy.Dwscomet (talk) 13:57, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The accusations of bias I've seen here and at the article talk page are themselves, biased. Most of what is stated by the article is uncontroversial, and the controversial stuff is all well sourced. The complaints about one of the major sources being a buzzfeed article have all been addressed both at the article talk page and at RSN, multiple times. Several editors (including myself) have gone from the opinion that it's a bad source to the opinion that it's a good source, while I haven't seen anyone move the other way. The article has problems, of course. This is to be expected with any controversial article that doesn't have a clearly 'correct side', such as many fringe subjects do. The article has been subject to frequent 'drive-by' edits by people who take a quick look and cut out content they don't agree with, or add content consisting of their own OR. Despite this, the article continues to slowly improve. I honestly think the best thing would be permanent semi-protection or something similar, to reduce the 'drive-by' edits some. Also, as others have pointed out, this is a new movement. Right now, there seem to be enough sources to support the article. As time passes, the number of such sources will only increase. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 18:45, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep It has sufficient coverage. Alex Mattrick 23:16, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep It is significant. Here's a source: [7] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benjaminikuta (talk • contribs) 11:13, 15 May 2016 (UTC) — Benjaminikuta (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Keep If you look at google trends you can see interest in the term "alt right" has skyrocketed since Donald Trump entered the Republican primary nomination race. Obviously this is not a source to be used anywhere, but it does provide evidence that there will only be more articles about this rapidly rising phenomenon in the future. However, a big overhaul is needed because the article as it stands is too biased against alt right; the section "criticism" is basically as long as the rest of the article combined. This is obviously unacceptable.Ingebot (talk) 12:57, 15 May 2016 (UTC) — Ingebot (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Extremely Weak Keep conditional on a total rewrite. Otherwise, Delete per WP:TNT and WP:COMMONSENSE. The notability of the subject seems undeniable based on RS coverage. However this article is a wiki-train wreck. There does not appear to be any real consensus as to what the term actually means and this is not adequately reflected in the article. You have all sorts of groups and ideologies, often with wildly conflicting beliefs, being lumped together. Oh... and they are all supporting Donald Trump for President, (Monarchists Libertarians and the Ku Klux Klan all banding together for The Donald.) This reads like some kind of far left paranoid conspiracy theory. In other words the sources are being used to present patently ridiculous claims that should be dismissed with ridicule by anyone with more than two functional brain cells. -Ad Orientem (talk) 19:18, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect to White nationalism, section: United States where this topic already is discussed. (White nationalism in the United States itself could usefully be expanded into an article). I came back to revisit, not satisfied that I understood "alt-right" properly and, in searching for sources, became persuaded that not only is it not adequately sourced at this point, but it is vulnerable to neglect and hijacking by partisans. Then I searched for a proper target article for a redirect. This seems best because sources such as the SPLC [8], the ADL [9], and today's article in The Atlantic [10] (scroll to final paragraph) agree that this putative movement is some sort of amalgam drawing not merely on good old American keep-the-niggers-down racism, but on anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim tropes that make it hard to group under white supremacism. White nationalism seems to be the best home for what is, after all, merely a new label for an old phenomenon.E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:13, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep You must not allow another alternate viewpoint to be removed or suppressed-no matter how appropriate or inappropriate it may be, being offended is not the grounds for removal. Alt-Right provides a platform of a voice to those disenfranchised by their original party and those who are a part of the Alt Right are merely looking to have their suppressed voiced heard again. To those who compare it to Neo Fascism, please consult your history books and notice that all left-wing governments are guilty of growing a system of fascism. How is a political ideology of LESS government supposed to be a perpetrator of fascism which is a hallmark of an ALL POWERFUL government? Scratch your heads on that one. Keep the page, ban the hate groups trying to label them as racist and fascist, since they are the ones guilty of that themselves. DalSheron (talk) 17:57, 16 May 2016 (UTC)— DalSharon (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:10, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Horrendously biased, low-quality article not worthy of inclusion on any serious encyclopedia. BuzzFeed as a quotable article? It's beyond laughable.--Eustressmeister (talk) 18:00, 16 May 2016 (UTC) — Eustressmeister (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Comment I am 100% convinced that there is some sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry going on with respect to this. There are too many !votes here from editors with brand spanking new accounts and few or no edits in other areas. I have never opened an SPI and I don't have time to put together a good case, but I am nonetheless convinced. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 19:01, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • @MjolnirPants: I think you're just seeing the effects of off-wiki WP:CANVASSING. If you google alt-right and wikipedia (or search e.g. Twitter), you'll see some people talking about it. That's typically the impetus for the {{notavote}} up top. Doesn't mean there isn't sock/meat puppetry going on, but that there's a bigger issue. If you see a new account (or one with few edits), just tag it with {{spa}} like others have done here. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 21:32, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • Meatpuppetry is just another term for canvassing, but yeah; I failed to notice the {{spa}} tags until after I posted (it was Doug tagging one that clued me in). So my comment was redundant. I'm willing to wager good money there's also sockpuppetry going on, but I'm also willing to bet getting to the bottom of it will require more time and effort than I'm willing to put in. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 22:20, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
        • I agree that there are a number of suspicious votes being cast here. Sadly most of them seem to be coming down on the same side I have taken in this discussion. Sigh... -Ad Orientem (talk)
Yeah, but if I recall correctly (I'm too lazy to scroll up) you voted to take the nuclear option because the article is causing controversy as currently written. That's reasonable. They're all voting to get rid of it because they don't think the article is accurate. They all seem to think it's inaccurate because it's not whitewashing the movement, which is not at all reasonable. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 00:26, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't make presumptions. My lengthy nomination was that it's not accurate because there is no one thing being described here. Other than a few small pieces that don't even seem to identify it as a movement or agree on what it is, we have citations from 2008/2009 for different things, a random assortment of suggestions from a white supremacist group and twitter commentary as an analysis of a political group. In all, it's just "here's everything where I google 'alt right' together". It would insulting if I suggested this quality of sources for something like Progressivism. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:36, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It would insulting if I suggested this quality of sources for something like Progressivism. Wikipedia is not censored. If you find a group of sources insulting, then deal with it, or find better sources and add them. The fact is, if a source is reliable for a claim, it's reliable. It doesn't matter if that source is whatsupyourbutthurhurhur.com, looks like a mid '90's AOL user homepage and has a reputation for being run by a schizophrenic nazi child molester. If we have every reason to believe it would report on a particular claim accurately, it can be used for that claim. It's worth noting that many of the people complaining about the quality of sources used there continue to suggest breitbart.com as a reliable source. If we judged sources by your criteria, breitbart would be blacklisted on WP. If that weren't enough, the alt-right and progressivism aren't exactly flip sides of the same coin. Progressivism is a broad, philosophical framework which underpins a huge swath of modern thought and dates back hundreds of years. The alt-right is... Well, not. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 12:49, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've not edited this topic, but I am curious to learn about the alt right. I'm not a meat puppet. I just saw that this article was tagged for deletion. Benjamin (talk) 09:22, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Back to figuring out what to do. I don't see how we can delete it when it is in constant and increasing use. On the other hand, the meatpuppets and stridency in this debate demonstrate that a stand-alone article will be an ongoing POV problem. Which is why it is better to redirect this still relatively minor neologism to White nationalism, a page with many editors watching and working to keep it up to standards.E.M.Gregory (talk) 13:26, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This doesn't really accomplish anything, A better plan would be to simply send some editors over there to tear the article apart and rebuild it.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  21:20, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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