Talk:Anti-Communist Action

Alt-Right in lede
So we have Alt-right in the lede but I'm not sure the sources attached point to them being alt-right. They appear to associate with alt-right events and organisations but would be good to back up the statement of its true or remove it. NZFC (talk) 05:24, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it would be more appropriate to call it "far-right" as per Google News searches: link. They were part of the White Lives Matter rally in late 2017, which was a neo-Nazi / white-supremacist / neo-confederate event. --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:05, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Was my thoughts as well that far-right was more appropriate than alt-right. NZFC  (talk) 00:08, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it would be a more factual and prudent idea to avoid attaching such a loosely-defined group to a specific political leaning when the stated objective of the group does not inherently imply political alignment, but rather opposition to political alignment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.11.251.162 (talk) 00:17, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * We don't use what organisations say about themselves but what reliable third party sources use. If the source says they are far-right, then it can be stated in the article. NZFC  (talk) 00:24, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There is no source cited regarding the alignment of the stated group. Not an argument. Find a reliable source to cite, or admit that this is political bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.11.251.162 (talk) 00:35, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Here are the sources:
 * Flags and Other Symbols Used By Far-Right Groups in Charlottesville - Southern Poverty Law Center-Aug 12, 2017
 * "Anti-Communist Action". A group whose name is an inversion of Anti-Racist Action (ARA), the first and historically largest (at one time) decentralized network of anti-racist and anti-fascist dedicated to confronting the far-right and disrupting their events and rallies through direct action, including violence.


 * The many groups making noise on the far-right - Axios-Aug 15, 2017
 * Anti-Communist Action. Also known as "Anticom". They are an anti-communist group that claims to physically fight for American liberties in the face of what they see as violent communists. They describe themselves as anti-AntiFa, the far-left movement dedicated to fighting fascism, per their Facebook page. The group ...

K.e.coffman (talk) 00:43, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * SPLC is a politically-motivated group and not a reliable source for this information. Please cite actual, reliable sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.11.251.162 (talk) 00:50, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * SPLC has been classed as a reliable source to be used on Wikipedia as per here
 * Regardless of the clear and obvious bias in citation, the statement is still false and misleading. It violates the Neutral point of view rule. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.11.251.162 (talk) 01:00, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It is neither clear or obvious bias as it is backed up by reliable sources, so doesn't violate the NPOV that we use for Wikipedia articles. Also please stop your disruptive editing on my own talk page or you risk getting banned. NZFC  (talk) 01:07, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

K.e.coffman now IP has been blocked, do you agree we should change it from Alt-right to Far-right on the article? NZFC (talk) 01:10, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, agree. "Alt-right" is kind of nebulous term; "far-right" is more concrete. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:13, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Libertarian? Seriously?
It seems intrinsically impossible for a group such as this to be Libertarian, even within the rather odd American usage of the term. Is there anything to justify this bizarre description or should it be removed?

Please note that there may appear to be two Citation Needed tags on this but I think that they are actually different. The older one in the body is asking for a citation that their yellow and black colour scheme is related to libertarianism. (The linked article does show a few but certainly not all of the images incorporating yellow and black. That does not seem sufficient. It does not demonstrate a link. After all the red of the US Republican party is not the red of international communism and I don't think that either side would be happy if anybody suggested that it was.) The second Citation Needed tag, in the infobox, is nothing to do with the specific colours. That is me questioning the link to libertarianism in a broader sense because, as I say, it seems intrinsically impossible to link them. --DanielRigal (talk) 17:12, 9 November 2018 (UTC)


 * You could say they have "links to" libertarianism, which seems to be more than enough for you to include it. OnceASpy (talk) 18:45, 9 November 2018 (UTC)


 * What "links to libertarianism" are you talking about? If there is anything in WP:RS to substantiate this alleged link then I am happy to at least consider that I might be wrong here. Who knows. Maybe we have truly discovered the world's first "libertarian Nazi" movement. (Yes, I am aware that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Thanks for asking.) If there is anything to discuss here then we can discuss it but, so far, there just isn't. --DanielRigal (talk) 19:38, 9 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Looks like I was wrong about there being no references for it. It is in the Newsweek reference. I still think it makes little sense to make that leap from colours to a claim of ideology but that doesn't matter. We go with the references. (Of course, this doesn't mean that they actually are libertarians. Whatever people may think of the libertarians, I'm pretty sure that they have never advocated throwing people out of helicopters.) --DanielRigal (talk) 23:31, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

"Links to"
This is nonsense hand-waving that seems to be thrown around a lot these days. Instead of the super-vague "links to blah blah" I'm adding what those "links" are. OnceASpy (talk) 19:55, 9 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The source documents that Atomwaffen members were active participants in Anticom's now-banned Discord. This activity includes sharing bomb-making instructions. I don't know what event you are talking about, as the cited source doesn't specifically mention this. Both attended the Unite the Right rally, so this would be another link between the two, so we have multiple links between these groups, in addition to obvious similarities in ideology. Grayfell (talk) 20:56, 9 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I accept that "links to" is vague and not perfect but today's changes have made it even more vague, not less. Also, the primary concern seems to be to remove descriptions such as "White nationalism" and "Neo-Nazism" from the infobox. That just needs to stop.
 * There have been several slightly different attempts to remove information today, but lets focus on the first: diff].
 * That looks a lot like whitewashing doesn't it? I mean, the very first reference I checked corroborated "White nationalism" and the link to Neo-Nazism is pretty explicit in the Daily Beast reference too. If that is not explicit enough then we could swap it for "Fascism" as that is 100% explicitly supported by the Propublica reference. So lets put that stuff back into infobox while we discuss the other issue.
 * That leaves us with the question of how to describe the link to the Atomic Waffle people. I agree that being specific is the key here. To suggest that they were "also present" is far too vague. Depending on how it is read it could suggest a greater or (more likely) a lesser link than is justified. I don't really feel qualified to make a really good suggestion myself as the finer details of neo-Nazi Discord servers is not my specialist area, but I'll try to put something together in a bit if nobody else does. --DanielRigal (talk) 21:00, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Then describe the "links". Just putting "links to" is weasely and you know it. OnceASpy (talk) 21:03, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Suggest a neutrality disclaimer, or a re-write of the entire article
Suggest a neutrality disclaimer, or a complete re-write of the entire article. After searching through anti-communist action social media pages at length I see... well pretty much the exact opposite of what this article professes. (No racism, white-supremacy, neo-nazis, etc). This article also uses sources that either provide guilt by the association of being anti-communist (a very large net), cherry-picking of individuals to fit the narrative of the article, and use of publications on the opposite end of the political spectrum as sources. In my opinion, this article ignorant at best, and propaganda at worst.

I highly suggest a "Neutrality Disputed" disclaimer be put on the article until more neutral sources can be found. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weekendjail (talk • contribs) 20:01, 10 November 2018 (UTC) — Weekendjail (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

I agree, obviously. But I don't think you're going to get very far. A brief glimpse of the main editors of this aritcle's user pages shows that they are communists, and have been warring on this page for a while. OnceASpy (talk) 16:41, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Accusation that editors of this article are Communists
User:OnceASpy writes above that " A brief glimpse of the main editors of this aritcle's user pages shows that they are communists, and have been warring on this page for a while." this seems a pretty serious accusation, what do you think? Pinging the last few editors, would you like to comment? I've looked at your user pages and don't see evidence for that. Docktuh's obviously left-wing but clearly not a communist nor has she been edit-warring. Doug Weller talk 19:21, 12 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Hello. First of all, not a "she", men can be feminists. Second, I haven't been "warring" anything. The only edit I made to the page was to add ACA to the category of "American fascists", which given the presence of Neo-Nazis in their ranks and active opposition to anti-fascism, checks out. Docktuh (talk) 19:24, 12 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm being accused of being a Communist, am I now? I should be angry about that. Hold on while I get myself good and incensed. Here it comes... No. That didn't work. Deep breath. Try again... Hnnn! Oops. I nearly had it there. One more try... Ugh! No. I just can't be bothered.
 * Well, if my attempts to turn into the Incredible Marxist-Lenninist Hulk ("Don't make him angry! He espouses Dialectic Materialism when he is angry!") have failed, I guess my last resort is to make a serious point instead:
 * Everybody has political opinions. Even claiming not to have a political opinion is a political stance of sorts. What makes Wikipedia work is that good editors are aware of their own opinions and that neutral point of view does not mean having no opinions, it means recognising where the facts end, and where your opinions begin, and then respecting Wikipedia enough to put the facts in Wikipedia and to save the opinions for your Blog or Twitter or whatever. This is how people with dramatically different viewpoints can all edit Wikipedia collaboratively and constructively. So, I'm quite relaxed about the idea that their might be communists editing. If anybody tried to do a Stalin on any articles then that would be a big problem but if they are editing constructively, and keeping to NPOV, then that's absolutely fine. Similarly, we don't have any problem with religious people editing articles about their own, or other, religions so long as they can stick to NPOV. Nobody has any right to go around making irrelevant accusations like this. --DanielRigal (talk) 20:46, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * OnceASpy warned for personal attacks. Having been accused of being a communist and a fascist, sometimes in the same week, by various agenda-driven editors, all it does is discredit the source of the accusations.  Acroterion   (talk)   00:59, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Pointing out a potential conflict of interest of editors isn't a personal attack, my guy. Nice try though. OnceASpy (talk) 15:40, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Group as a whole espouses neo-Nazism
There seems to be an effort to paint this group as a whole as neo-nazis. But the only source provided that mentions that they espouse neo-Nazism states it without any evidence. Can anyone find a source that shows evidence that the group as a whole promotes and endorses neo-Nazism? I've fixed it for now, or at least until we can find a decent source. OnceASpy (talk) 15:38, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * "In September, a group that expresses white supremacist and neo-Nazi sentiments announced it would hold a torchlight rally in uptown Charlotte. The group calls itself Anticom." From the cited WFAE article. It's not up to you to decide there is "no evidence" - the reliable source says it, and that suffices for us. You would need to explain why the source is not sufficient and gain consensus that the source is inappropriate before removing the statement supported by it. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 16:51, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

The sourced article is a single opinion from a radio station, presented without evidence. Presenting that article's statement as fact in the lead seems to hit multiple points presented in WP:RSUW. Obviously there are multiple issues with this page that need to be addressed, and I'd like to see the WP:NPOV problem addressed. But this is a proverbial uphill battle that is going to take some work, due to the heavy POV-pushing going on. OnceASpy (talk) 18:42, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It's not an opinion just because you disagree with it. Reliable sources are not required to present evidence. Daily Beast source (second source, 12th paragraph): But Anticom was more than anti-communist; the group was intimately tied to neo-Nazis, as leaked chat logs published by the media nonprofit Unicorn Riot revealed. Is there a reason why you'd think WFAE and Daily Beast are unreliable, or do you just dislike what they're saying? PeterTheFourth (talk) 22:29, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

The problem I have is how vague the statement is. The sources either flat-out make a claim, without evidence, or reference the unicorn riot piece that shows that some members of the group were posting hateful stuff in a private chat. The group leadership has routinely denounced neo-Nazism as stated in multiple sources currently in the wiki aritcle. It's not about whether or not I like what they're saying, it's what what they're saying is being given WP:UNDUE weight. It isn't in question that members of the group agree with or even may be neo-nazis. What's in question is whether the entire group should be called neo-nazis in an encyclopedia when it's clear that they disavow those ideas. A small group of members does not represent the group as a whole. That is the standard for all the other political groups on Wikipedia. OnceASpy (talk) 00:28, 15 December 2018 (UTC)


 * The sources seem sufficient to me and there is nothing in what they say that is obviously ridiculous or unfair. Of course, we should report the groups disavowals briefly as well, just as we do in any controversy where one side denies accusations made against it. We already cover their response to some extent and, while we don't want undue detail in such a short article, an extra clause or sentence making the full scope of their disavowal more clear might be OK. That would be more than sufficient to answer any semi-legitimate concerns about balance here (which I have to say that I still struggle to see). All we need to do is provide the facts and readers can decide for themselves how much the public disavowals are worth in light of what is known of the group's internal communications, if they even care to form an opinion at all. --DanielRigal (talk) 01:19, 15 December 2018 (UTC)


 * It seems fair to at least start by changing "Anticom espouses neo-Nazi..." To "Members of Anticom have espoused neo-Nazi..." That seems reasonable. OnceASpy (talk) 01:38, 15 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Not unless that was in line with the sources, and it isn't. --DanielRigal (talk) 01:44, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It is, though. OnceASpy (talk) 01:47, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm getting the feeling that DanielRigal is either unwilling to address this very simple argument I'm making about "members" vs "the group as a whole", or they are not getting what the problem is. I'm hoping that it's just basic misunderstanding and not actively trying to not be WP:HERE. I can see no relaible source that shows that the group as a whole endorses neo-Nazism. Literally only members from a private chat. This needs to be addressed. OnceASpy (talk) 16:43, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It's time to drop the stick. Your argument has been addressed repeatedly — we simply disagree with your assertions. You have a couple choices: you can open a request for comment and ask a broader cross-section of the community to weigh in, or you can accept that your proposed changes are not going to gain consensus. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 17:09, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Defunct?
The Daily Beast reference describes the group as "largely defunct". Is that something we should be reflecting in the article? --DanielRigal (talk) 01:47, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
 * That seems like a good idea. I can't see any more recent sources about the group - that would support it being defunct. PeterTheFourth (talk) 10:28, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

No.There are still members. That is just another thing that smear article got wrong. OnceASpy (talk) 08:17, 15 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Do you have a source for that? If not, how do you know? --DanielRigal (talk) 11:59, 15 December 2018 (UTC)


 * There are plenty of sources in the article. OnceASpy (talk) 16:37, 15 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Dates are key here. The Daily Beast described them as "largely defunct" in a piece dated 24 October 2018. The earlier sources describing them as active do not contradict this claim as the situation could have changed in the meantime. The sources can have been correct at their respective times of writing. The Daily Beast article is the most recent of the references we have, so it could reflect the current situation correctly. Google shows no recent News for them but they were still Tweeting (mostly reTweeting) up until just a few weeks ago, which suggests that they are still at least minimally active. It is hard to say whether they really are "largely defunct" or whether the media has just lost interest in them for now. --DanielRigal (talk) 19:07, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

NPOV is dead on Wikipedia
Compare this article with Antifa and you see what I mean. Anti Communist Action has no leaders, it's a splintered idea that communism is bad. You could say it's the same as Antifa but less violent. Does NPOV still mean anything on Wikipedia or does it only mean anything when it's about fringe left movements, then all of a sudden we should be neutral, but anything right from Stalin gets articles like these that are so biased, that you'd forget that Wikipedia isn't a commie rag. Just delete the entire anti communist action page if you can't be neutral Gregnator (talk) 20:32, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Far-right
Most sources provided describe as right-wing. Why the far-right descriptor? Regards, thorpewilliam (talk) 10:01, 2 January 2021 (UTC)


 * From the article: "Anticom has espoused neo-Nazi ideology and members have attended neo-Nazi events[5][4][6]". I think that covers it quite well enough. Just because not all the sources explicitly say "far-right" doesn't mean it isn't. We have sufficient sources that do say "far-right" and none of the other sources contradict that. --DanielRigal (talk) 18:00, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Surely the prevailing descriptor in RS ought to be used. Isn't that what Wikipedia does, particularly in the first sentence of the lead? Do any of the sources contradict right-wing or alt-right? Regards, thorpewilliam (talk) 04:19, 4 January 2021 (UTC)


 * We use the most specific valid sources. "Far-right" is more specific than "right-wing". There is no legitimate reason to abstract or generalise the description just because the more specific truth is embarrassing to them. We are not here do reputation management for neo-Nazis and their associates.
 * We also have a responsibly to treat normal right wing people fairly. We should not be lumping normal right-wing people in with neo-Nazis, or neo-Nazis in with normal right-wing people, when that is not justified. --DanielRigal (talk) 14:15, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the late response. Understood. thorpewilliam (talk) 05:11, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 October 2023
In this Page Antocom is represented as neo-fasict and neo-nazist party. This very false since not all Anti-com are fascist or nazist 78.99.209.43 (talk) 12:18, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Liu1126 (talk) 13:37, 29 October 2023 (UTC)