Talk:The Holocaust Industry

Changing the title

This article has an extremely misleading and potentially malicious name, and the comment above made by User:Starbwoy is a clear example. The article was originally created with the title The Holocaust Industry (book), but for some reason the "book" was later deleted. Yesterday I changed it again to its former name, but User:PRODUCER reverted me and somehow even completely deleted the previous page's history. His argument is not policy based whatsoever. There are thousands of other Wikipedia articles on books that don't have other disambiguation pages with the same name, but still have the the word "book" in parentheses in their title, and rightly so. Therefore, I propose changing the article's name to The Holocaust Industry (book). Shalom11111 (talk) 12:28, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Personally deeming it "extremely misleading and potentially malicious name" is not "policy based whatsoever". The whole purpose of the parenthesis is to disambiguate it from something else that has the exact same name. You have simply renamed the article on personal grounds and without it having anything to do with disambiguation. If an article were to be made on the actual industry, the one that Starbwoy sought, then the title "Holocaust Industry" (with "the" omitted as it's unecessary) and a "Not to be confused with Norman Finkelstein's book, The Holocaust Industry." tag would suffice for that. --◅ PRODUCER (TALK) 13:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There is not confusion with any other page or title. So there is no need to add a disambiguation term like "(book)". See: WP:DISAMBIGUATION. What you want to explain is actually done in the lead. -DePiep (talk) 13:06, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Please quit edit warring over this. I don't have a strong opinion either way, but stop renaming the article until some consensus is reached. --John Nagle (talk) 19:39, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Don't worry, there is no edit warring (or move warring). Shalom11111 moved the page in good faith, then PRODUCER reverted with good reason. Then Shalom11111 opened this talk topic, which is the correct way to go. For now, it looks like Shalom11111 accepts the explanation given here. So it'd just one reverted edit. -DePiep (talk) 08:58, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Categories of criticism

Possible categorisations of this book include:

• Category:Books critical of Israel
• Category:Books critical of Zionism

either or both depending on content.
I personally interpret the categories as follows:

• the first category as relating to criticisms of actions of the state of Israel
• the second category as relating to criticisms of support for the existence of a Jewish homeland.
  

The book has been placed in "Category:Books critical of Zionism" and there are "see also" links between the two category pages.
How would the book best be categorised? Gregkaye (talk) 00:18, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

POV-section

I've added a POV tag to section The_Holocaust_Industry#Reviews_and_critiques. Without any introduction or explanation, the section has selected negative critiques only. That is OR, and POV (rotten cherry picking). It also appears strange that the critiques appear before the cotnent description. -DePiep (talk) 11:37, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

We could just remove Bartov's review I guess. It's a very negative review with little to no facts supporting the claims/opinions that Bartov has. It might help balance this out a bit and I don't think the review is very useful anyway because it's merely an opinion and it offers no facts. His review can however still be mentioned as having brought down sales in my opinion.

That's my thoughts about it. Peace BeefDaeRoastLXG ^praat 11:58, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Done. Agree, relevance or substance did not show. -DePiep (talk) 01:24, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Nice. BeefDaeRoastLXG ^praat 09:51, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, it's stupidly undue. It should also probably be noted where criticism came from the right-wing, since that is exactly who he is accusing of abusing the event. We should take their criticisms as a logical response. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 10:31, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

I've condensed the section and removed some of the less pertinent quotes and one long quote, I have also removed the long standing POV-section template (which can be re-added if editors feel there is still an issue with the section) - since the last comment here was in 2016 I have boldly removed the template for now. Seraphim System ^(talk) 05:48, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Well I tried but the low quality content I removed is being edit warred back into the article. Editors refuse to justify the inclusions on the talk page like they should properly do under WP:ONUS. I've already explained that I removed it as UNDUE and I'm being told to "discuss" it on the talk page, when it is really those who want inclusion who should justify it. Does my writing I don't think it is DUE for inclusion give any new information from what I said in the edit summary for the removal? ... It seems the POV section template will have to stay for now.Seraphim System ^(talk) 06:01, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

If you really want to remove low quality material then remove chomsky and cockburn--Shrike (talk) 06:43, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

I might be willing to do that, but I explained the main problem below.Seraphim System ^(talk) 06:44, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Reparations

Anyone who reads this quote from 2000 will think that Holocaust claims still have not been paid out due to a delay in the courts, even though the decision came down a few weeks after this review was published... Regarding this quote The chief reason why survivors have so far seen nothing of the $1.25 billion Swiss settlement, reached in 1998, is that U.S. courts have yet to rule on a method of distribution. - using a book review as a source for this should be enough reason to remove this. In Re Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation wasn't about a "method of distribution" and there's no discussion of Finkelstein's argument in the article, only this non-expert response ... Here is what happened in that case:

• "The Polish American Defense Committee (“PADC”) and six named individuals appeal from a December 7, 1999 order of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York that denied their motion to intervene in a consolidated class action lawsuit seeking redress for wrongs arising out of defendants' “knowing participation and complicity in crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes” committed against plaintiffs by the Nazi regime. The proposed intervenors object to the certification of a narrower settlement class than the one described in the original complaints. They wish to intervene in the lawsuit in order to redefine the settlement class to include persons, other than those who were or were believed to be “Jewish, Romani, Jehovah's Witness, homosexual, or physically or mentally disabled or handicapped,” who were targeted for persecution by the Nazis on the basis of Polish nationality (in the words of appellants' brief, “ethnic Poles”) and their heirs. We affirm the order of the District Court."

Seraphim System ^(talk) 06:43, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

As I said in the edit summary, add the updated information, but don't revert the "state of play" as of the time the criticism was written. We don't re-write history. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:13, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

According to both the publisher's webpage for the book [1] and Amazon [2], the book is in its second edition (2003, latest printing 2015), but the cover just says "Second Edition". Usually if the book has been revised or updated, the publisher would put that on the cover, as it's a selling point: "Second Edition - Revised and Updated". Without that, "Second Edition" could simply mean that the errata from the First Edition was corrected.

If this is the case, that the Second Edition is not an updated one, then the criticism of the book quoted in our article is still relevant. If the facts on the ground have changed, then those new facts should be noted (and sourced) in a note to the quote, or in some other way -- but we don't remove valid sourced material simply because it may "confuse" the reader. Instead, we try to alleviate any confusion. Beyond My Ken (talk) 15:54, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

If it was an easy fix, I would have fixed it, but no editor has to do hours of work to keep content that you want in the article, especially when it is an UNDUE opinion about a law case from a non-expert source.Seraphim System ^(talk) 01:43, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I will probably work on this in the main article - which is in abominable condition — it has external links in the body and it is not at the case name title (the name of the case is In re Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation). I can check Hein Online but even if I do that, I don't expect there will be much expert commentary about Norman Finkelstein's opinion on this. If I find something while working on the main article, I will definitely add it but a quote from a book review that says payments were not made because courts have yet to rule on a method of distribution, when the case was held up because ethnic Poles objected to being excluded from the settlement is suspect. And it is not a law source so it should not be considered a reliable source for a statement of why the courts were tied up or what the case was about—especially as no source is given for it (According to Chemerinsky, or something). Improving the content in the article is fine if there are sources for it, but this quote should be removed either way.Seraphim System ^(talk) 02:14, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

The only thing I'm beginning to find a little "suspect" is the myriad number of reasons you're finding for removing a piece of valid criticism of a book about the "misuse" of the Holocaust by Jewish organizations. It seems similar to the myriad numbers of reasons you put forward for not using a citae from Yad Vashem in the discussion on Talk:Holocaust denial. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:04, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

What does this have to do with Yad Vashem? I stopped editing that article, and now it seems you have resumed that dispute on this article. I hope this doesn't continue because now I am going to stop working on this article as well ... The survivors (not Yad Vashem or whatever) - are the ones who filed the case objecting to the the Claims Conference — well there are multiple cases, I don't even know which case the quote is discussing, because it isn't a high quality, secondary, academic source, it doesn't cite any sources, etc. It's just another UNDUE opinion. Not every opinion quote needs to be added to Wikipedia. Loading up articles with quotes because you like the POV of the quotes and edit warring and make personal attacks until productive editors give up does not improve articles. Personal attacks are not ok — ("suspect"? oh please, that is some way to protect your version of an article) — and I'm not going to respond to them further.Seraphim System ^(talk) 03:29, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Where did you ever get the idea that all sources on Wikipedia must be "high-quality academic sources"? Where's the language in WP:RS that says that? Where's the policy that says a book review cannot contain information usable in a Wikipedia article, as long as the source is reliable? What's UNDUE about a single paragraph of criticism? Why do you think that the person chosen to write the preface to the book's French edition is not a usable source, whether or not they happen to be a physician? Are academics you approve of the only ones allowed to be quoted in the Wikipedia articles you edit?

Why are you so anxious to remove criticism of this book, which the publisher itself calls "controversial", which means that some people -- maybe a lot of people -- disagree with it? What is your purpose in editing this article? Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:01, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

What is my purpose? If you check my talk page Suggestbot recommended this article for improvement classing it as "unencyclopedic". I was trying to fix that by removing a longstanding POV section template by removing some of the undue opinions. I have no purpose beyond that, but I can further divulge that my purpose in not editing this article is definitely to cut this rather absurd discussion short.Seraphim System ^(talk) 04:04, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

980

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=pl&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Holocaust+industry&btnG= The book has been quoted 980 times.Xx236 (talk) 07:43, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

German language discussion

de:Norman Finkelstein#„Die Holocaust-Industrie“ Here generally ignored, partially copied from a French paper. Xx236 (talk) 07:47, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Lies and Mitigation in this article.

Large sections of this article (mainly overviews) are sentences ripped straight from the book with a change of grammer, and according to multiple sources-including the ADL (and actually Wikipedia's own definition of Holocaust Denial), the main claim of Finklesteins book (that only 1 million Jews died in the Holocaust), is Holocaust denial. I am thus editing to remove ripped sections with a change of first to third person and updating as their was no major public debate as the article claimed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:a1c0:6d40:95e6:7dbe:b904:964a talk‎ (talk • contribs) 07:32, September 6, 2021 (UTC)

Huh? On what page in the book does Finklestein claim that only 1 million Jews died in the Holocaust? Huldra (talk) 22:48, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Look back in previous edit of this, he claims the numbers were inflated.

Page number, please (or it didn't happen), Huldra (talk) 23:17, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Again, look at edit, including page 125 if you have the book (my brother does, sadly)

Finkelstein does not claim that only 1 million Jews died in the Holocaust, not in this book or anywhere else. This is in fact a deliberate misreading of what he actually wrote. Finkelstein alleges that the number of survivors (not victims) is inflated, which is the opposite. Zero^talk 04:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn

Did they say anything about this book, and if so, what? Unreferenced claim removed. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:19, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Removed undue section

In this diff I removed a section that appears undue. It places undue weight on parts of the book that represent small details compared to coverage in the article, so they seem undue as summary. RS support is not provided lending them external significance. Freelance-frank (talk) 13:29, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Donald Denton

Is his opinion noteworthy? Here he is: https://www.vipcare.org/news/2022/7/11/vipcares-global-reach-via-remote-education BobFromBrockley (talk) 19:07, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Zero0000 any thoughts on this one? BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:47, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Denton? Unusually eclectic background. Has publications that are surprising in coming from the same person, such as this versus this, which indicates an ability to think for himself. I haven't looked at what he wrote on this book. Zero^talk 12:27, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Removed reception

Two comments by German historians removed from the reception section as irrelevant/useless quips:

• According to Israeli journalist Yair Sheleg, in August 2000, German historian Hans Mommsen called it "a most trivial book, which appeals to easily aroused anti-Semitic prejudices."
• Wolfgang Wippermann criticized Finkelstein as "‘a useful idiot’ for all kinds of anti-semites." [citing Enzo Traverso]

Do other editors agree these are irrelevant/useless quips, given they are the views of major historians of the topic at hand, and have secondary sources who considered them noteworthy? BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:18, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

While it is normal and proper for articles on books to include criticism and praise, sometimes editors start adding all the negative comments they can find (or all the positive comments they can find, depending on their preference), then NPOV is out the window and the article looks like a piece of crap. A good article will have a selection of just the more useful comments chosen with an eye to balance. I removed two comments that essentially say nothing about the book except that someone doesn't like it. The selection could be different. Zero^talk 02:00, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

References