Talk:Ernst Nolte

Move/merge with Historikerstreit
Suggestion: to move/merge large parts of this article with the (far shorter) article on the "Historikerstreit", as sections of this article deal exclusively with that topic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.31.244.75 (talk) 18:14, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Historikerstreit has since expanded and the Historikerstreit material on the Ernst Nolte page is relevant to and focussed on his work. Klbrain (talk) 21:03, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

"Extremely controversial"
The article says Ernst Nolte is an extremely controversial German historian''. Indeed, there are controverses, but do we say (in the Wikipedia, for example) that George W. Bush is an extremely controversial American president? We can speek about all the controverses, but I don't think we may qualify a person as controversial, extreme, dangerous, difficult, criminal, etc., without mentioning the authority who came to that conclusion. Karel Anthonissen 18:39, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Lipstadt says he is a dangerous revisionist - actually he says that the last scientific word on the Holocaust has not been said. He believes/ed in the Holocaust but he recognizes that the evidence is weak or nonexistant - ie he couldn't find any. I guess he is dangerous, he welcomes the search for truth - he's a mad man. —Preceding unsigned comment added by User:159.105.80.92 (talk • contribs) 17:58, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Nolte has never doubted the holocaust and he has never explained, that "the evidence is weak or nonexistant".  He has doubted aspects of the holocaust (Wannsee conference, the more prominent role of gas chambers in comparison to mass executions) , but not the genocide. I do not say that he is misunderstood by (most) of his critics,- but his provocative approach is more based on frivolity, than on denial of the holocaust or sympathy for the NS. (Although he has some sympathy for early italian fascism) Calling an historian with somtimes highly challenging and interesting, sometimes bizarre views  a "dangerous"  "mad man"  does not help  finding the truth. His basic idea, that there is a radicalising Link between the Nazis and the Bolsheviks is interesting and it is not immoral to find answers to this question. He deserves some praise to have asked it. Unfortunately, he  used a tasteless language of frivolity and provocation, ignored all  his reputable critics - and did find the the wrong answer ( or at least an insufficent one).He believes an mostly unjustified antisemitism has completed an justified antibolshevism. More likely it was antibolshevism that has completed antisemitism--89.52.167.131 16:48, 21 July 2007 (UTC)


 * By the way: The Frankurter Allgemeine Zeitung  has stopped publishing his articles long years ago due to his radicalising views. This Notice should be added to the article. I would do it myself, but my English is to poor, I´m afraid.--89.52.167.131 16:48, 21 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Lipstadt is an extremist involved in belittling and denying communist crimes. What the opinion of Lipstadt of a respected historian like Nolte might be is irrelevant. Ulrichaho (talk) 07:39, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be lacking in decency by not backing up your personal insulting statement with evidence, Ulrichaho. 141.84.69.20 (talk) 10:29, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

"neo-liberal"
Why is the article saying Nolte is "neo-liberal"? How is this justified? Why is "neo-liberal" used to label a historian? The term "neoliberalism" refers to economics and has nothing to do with Nolte's views.


 * Agreed. I've removed the term "neo-liberal" and also "philosopher". It's quite sufficient to describe him as a "German nationalist historian". Norvo 03:05, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Some minor disagreement with removing the philosopher label. Nolte was trained as a philosopher, not a historian; through he works primarily as a historian, has also written philosophical works (e.g Nietzsche und der Nietzscheanismus, which I believe translates as Nietzche and Nietzchism); and whose historical work has been heavily influenced by philosophy to the extend that his work as often been described as philosophical history (see the comments of Charles Maier in the book edited by Baldwin, Re-Working the Past cited as in the reference section). While I am here, on a completely different subject, fascism when it is being referred in the generic sense is always written with a small f. Fascism with a capital F refers only to the movement that existed in Italy between 1919-1945; fascism with a small f is used as a generic descriptive term for an number of extreme right-wing movements that existed in Europe between 1919-1945. Since Nolte is clearly using the term fascism in the generic sense, it should be written without capitalization. --A.S. Brown 23:32, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Frivolity in the "Historikerstreit"
One of the key features of Nolte's writing on the Third Reich is frivolity. There's the astounding comment, for example, (and I'm relying entirely on memory) that Hitler might as well have been 'made for' Charlie Chaplin.

The notion that "the Jews throughout the world" (sic) declared war on Germany in 1939 is a bizarre, non-literal use of the expression "declare war". There was no Jewish state in 1939; there was no Jewish army; and the claim lacks seriousness. (After all, by September 1939 the Jews still living in Germany were in effect forced to live in certain streets and appartment blocks). Nolte seems to mingle the would-be figurative and the literal, while writing as if Germany had done nothing to offend Jews. Moreover, if he'd consulted something like Keesing's Archive he'd have discovered that at least one Arab leader in Palestine had also pledged support to Britain. At the very least there may have been local issues at work here, arising from the situation in the British Mandate.

When Nolte claims that Germany in some ill-defined way acted in self-defence he again plays fast and loose with the figurative and the supposedly literal. Norvo 03:23, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Habermas?
I'm very surprised there's no mention of Jürgen Habermas in this discussion....surely Nolte's chief German opposition in the Historikerstreit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by User:Skylucy1, 24 May 2007 (UTC) (talk • contribs)


 * That´s true that far left Habermas should be mentioned as example of Nolte´s opponents. --Dezidor 16:27, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 11:31, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
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Bot report : Found duplicate references !
In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :) DumZiBoT (talk) 20:09, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * "nolte278" :
 * Nolte, Ernst “Between Myth and Revisionism” pages 17-38 from Aspects of the Third Reich, edited by H.W. Koch, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985 pages 27-28.
 * In addition, Nolte mentioned an appeal sent out in August 1941 by a group of Soviet Jews to the world asking for support for their country in the struggle with Germany as proof of what Nolte sees as the Jewish determination to support the enemies of the Reich. Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship London: Arnold, 1989 page 176.

bias
This article is extremely biased. This is coming from someone who rejects Nolte's conclusions. This entire article is simply a smear-piece. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.160.187.115 (talk) 11:26, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Article size
This article is currently 178KB long. According to WP:Article size, any article over 100KB should probably be split into smaller articles to make it easier to read and edit (unless it covers a very wide-ranging topic). In this case, perhaps Fascism in its Epoch should be split into a separate article? Or perhaps the 'Historikerstreit' section could be cut down slightly, as it seems to duplicate some of the material in the Historikerstreit article? Robofish (talk) 11:52, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Not noticing your comment, I effectively said the very same thing (now removed). This article should be synchronized with the historikerstreit article, and if it is still too large, we can create a spintout article for Fascism in its epoch. -Verdatum (talk) 19:38, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree, the article is definitely way too long. Fascism In Its Epoch deserves a separate article in any event, which I have now created. The section on the book in this article should be somewhat reduced (I'm not quite sure what to remove yet, I have to look more closely into it). And of course the extremely long section on the Historikerstreit should mostly be moved to a separate article. Nosamesha (talk) 20:50, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Btw., the article is currently 208,373 bytes long. Nosamesha (talk) 20:52, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I think that a compression of the references is the best place to start in shortening the article. I found much of that blanked text to be quite helpful.  DBaba (talk) 04:10, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

The problem with the last section was that it was not a balanced or encyclopedic account of his activities the last 20 years, but consisted mostly of criticism that was anecdotal in nature (similar to an attack page), criticism from political opponents from the left, statements by Nolte taken out of context and so and so forth. It read more like an essay than an encyclopedic account of his work (the article is tagged because it's "written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup"). Not everything he does is that controversial, he has published works that are rather mainstream, cooperated with other highly regarded scholars etc. more recently as well. I looked into how it could be made more balanced, but eventually concluded it needed to be written from the beginning and much shorter and less anecdotal. Nosamesha (talk) 15:00, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

This problem has not been solved yet, on the contrary a user has added grossly BLP infringing material to the article, and the article size had reached 221,164 bytes. The article still needs a significant reduction. Nosamesha (talk) 12:17, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

References compression
I'd like to reduce the length of the reference/footnotes list. Specifically, I'd like to merge any footnotes that cite the same work, but different page numbers. I would just list all pages used in the single reference. Listing page numbers is really more a matter of convenience, or to aid with particularly controversial or dubious claims. Further, because this article apears to have proper inline citations, I'd like to remove any entries from the "References" section that are already listed as at least one "footnote" entry. I'll wait a bit for comments so I don't risk wasting efforts. -Verdatum (talk) 15:28, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Definitely good idea. DBaba (talk) 23:08, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect translation
There is a sentence in the (overly long) Historikerstreit section that reads:

In particular, controversy centered on an argument of Nolte's 1985 essay “Between Myth and Revisionism” from the book Aspects of the Third Reich, first published in German as "Die negative Lebendigkeit des Dritten Reiches" ("The Negative Legend of the Third Reich") as an opinion piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 24 July 1980, but which did not attract widespread attention until 1986 when Jürgen Habermas criticized the essay in a feuilleton piece.

The translation of the original German title is incorrect. Lebendigkeit does not mean legend, but is the German term for vitality. In this case the meaning is not literal, but rather refers to the persistence of memories of the Third Reich or concepts associated with it in the German psyche, being negative because it instills a complex of guilt in the German people or serves to paint Nazi Germany as the historical pinnacle of evil, creating an unbalanced picture (according to Nolte, that is).

Thus the title could be rendered as something like "The negative vitality of the Third Reich" or rather "The negative persistence of the Third Reich". I believe "legacy" would be the most fitting term in English, even if the translation is not literal then.

I didn't change the sentence in the article itself, however, because I'm not really sure whether any of the terms I gave fits - perhaps a native English speaker can do that? FungusFromYuggoth (talk) 17:31, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

My Lai image
Is there any point in having it in the article? Does Nolte even mention the massacre specifically in any of his writings? Even if he does, it does seem like the inclusion of the image is made to "support" Nolte's (fringe) claims in regard to Vietnam and Auschwitz, which would be a NPOV violation.  Volunteer Marek  23:44, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Issues that need to be addressed
Article length (see previous discussion), it's so long that it's basically useless as an encyclopedia article. It should be reduced to at least 50% of its current size. I suggest most of the material in the ridiculously long Historikerstreit section is moved to the separate article. Also, some of the material on Fascism In Its Epoch could be moved to the separate article.

In the past, the article contained some unacceptable BLP violations, mostly because it was more of a personal essay than an encyclopedia article. Nolte is a well-known conservative academic. He's controversial to some extent, but not any more than Daniel Goldhagen, Alan Dershowitz, Norman Finkelstein, Stéphane Courtois (who wrote a recent preface to one of his books) or others. These articles could serve as examples for this article. (Nolte's views on totalitarianism that sparked debate in Germany in the 80s have since become rather mainstream, both politically in Europe and in research on totalitarianism, to the extent that Nolte's critics have been "discredited" according to Norman Davies. They are hardly controversial today, although communists naturally don't agree with them) Nosamesha (talk) 12:32, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Most of this article was removed
About 160KB of this formerly 190KB article was removed by. It was far too long in its previous state, and the content had neutrality and style issues. The previous, longer versions are available in the [ page history].

Much of what remains are references that are now no longer relevant to the content of the page, but would likely assist in a rewrite; they should also be cleaned up at some point. Gurch (talk) 17:43, 23 June 2011 (UTC)


 * As of today, the article was 231,628 bytes (now reduced to 197,474 bytes). I cannot see that it has been reduced since last time this issue was raised, when it was 222,299 bytes. Per Article size, as a rule of thumb, articles should mostly not exceed 60,000 bytes and almost never exceed 100,000 bytes (the justification for exceeding 60,000 in a biography is very weak). A.S. Brown is consistently introducing BLP violations that are possibly libelous, his own opinions, and unencyclopedic essay-style material into the article. It's so long that it's unreadable prose, and what I have seen/read was not neutral or encyclopedic, but looked, as has been noted by others, as a smear-piece. A.S. Brown is also consistently revert-warring when other users are reducing the size of the article and/or removing his unencyclopedic material and BLP violations, and he is the only reason the article currently is in an unencyclopedic state. A.S. Brown has shown himself to be unable to contribute to the article in a productive manner that adheres to Wikipedia policies including the policy on biographies of living persons, and to cooperate with other users, and should be reverted on sight if he reintroduces the same old BLP violations and excessive/unencyclopedic material again. These concerns were first raised in 2009 and have been raised by several users, with no adequate response from A.S. Brown, who simply continues to revert back to his own excessive and POV essay-style article when other users are fixing (some of) the problems. Nosamesha (talk) 03:39, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The War of Words in the German Press
I've trimmed this substantially by taking out a lot of well-researched and quite interesting material. The problem is that it totally distorts the article, making the result unencyclopedaic. It might make an article in its own right but would really be more appropriate in a research paper.

The end-result is that the article is still 2-3 times as long as it should be. It's 10 times the length of its German counterpart!

ST2002 (talk) 12:49, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Article size
I've got it down to about 120K i.e. twice what it should be. There are some good suggestion above about consolidating refs etc. Anyone like to take a stab? ST2002 (talk) 13:21, 28 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Now down to under 90K


 * I've removed the cleanup tag regarding the article size. It read:
 * The article is excessively long (some 90,000 bytes, articles should generally not exceed 60,000 bytes per Article size), material (especially excessive section on the 1980s historian's debate) needs to be moved to separate articles, and parts of the article lack neutrality. Note that the policy on biographies of living persons applies to this article and that libelous material must be removed instantly.
 * However, for the purposes of WP:LENGTH, it is the readable prose (i.e. "the main body of the text, excluding material such as: footnotes and reference sections ("see also", "external links", bibliography, etc.); diagrams and images; tables and lists; Wikilinks and external URLs; and formatting and mark-up") that actually counts as article size. By that definition, using prosesize.js, the article size is 39,075 bytes, which makes it fall into the "length alone does not justify division" category per WP:SIZERULE. Discounting that, the only cleanup challenge left from the banner is neutrality, so I've changed the template from cleanup to NPOV. GregorB (talk) 21:48, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

BA (sic) in 1945?
The last paragraph of the Early Life section states: 'After 1945 when Nolte received his BA in philosophy at Freiburg ...' However, at that time German universities did not award BAs (or indeed any kind of Bachelor's degree) and, given the context, this sounds like an inept translation of what the Germans usually call the Staatsexamen. It's best to leave country-specific and region-specific qualifications untranslated. Norvo (talk) 21:13, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * If you have a source giving the correct name, please make the change with a citation. Zerotalk 23:14, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

This page reeks of anti-Semitism
I don't like to attack other editors, but Nosamesha has some issues with Jews which might render him unsuitable for editing. Just look at some of his edits from February 2010:

"The deliberate starvation of a child of a Ukrainian kulak as a result of the famine caused by Stalin's regime "is equal to" the starvation of a Jewish child in the Warsaw ghetto as a result of the famine caused by the Nazi regime." First thing, this has nothing to do with Nolte. Second, it is POV-pushing as it distorts the Historikerstreit completely. Nobody has ever denied that the suffering of Stalin's victims was less than that of Hitler's victims. Nosamesha is all so sensitive about alleged BLP violations against Nolte, but he has no hesitation when comes to Nolte's critics. The implication of the passage is that Nolte's critics in the Historikerstreit were all moral toads who were trying to deny the suffering of Stalin's victims, a point that they did not hold. Rather, the argument was not the victims, but rather the perpetuators. The argument against Nolte was that Germany was an European country deeply influenced by the Enlightenment and that to engage in genocide was indeed an exceptional act. Nolte's thesis really no sense. There is a barely veiled anti-Asian racism to Nolte's writings as he constantly writes about how Asian people are naturally vicious and cruel whereas Germans are "civilized Central Europeans". If one accepts that the Red Army were indeed the "Asiatic hordes" and to commit genocide was an "Asiatic deed", then the crimes of Communism in Russia are only what can expect from an "Asian" people. Nolte's thesis was that Hitler and the rest of Nazis were "civilized Central Europeans" who were forced to commit genocide against the Jews out of horror at Communist crimes. In other words, it was something exceptional as Nolte implicitly cedes, that Germans don't normally act like this. But then, he insists that there is no difference between victims so it is right to lump Nazi and Communist crimes together. He can't have it both ways. Third and finally, Nolte's position is that Hitler showed a great deal of "mercy" by gassing the Jews who didn't suffer (which is a complete lie by the way) whereas Stalin's victims did suffer. In other words, Nolte's view is that what Stalin did was far worse than Hitler. This article did say that, but Nosamesha and Tadeusz Nowak keep on deleting those passages under the grounds that is a BLP violation to give Nolte's views that does not hold. Really, this article lies quite a bit.--A.S. Brown (talk) 02:33, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Nosamesha removed a great of properly referenced material that was critical of Nolte.
 * Without providing so much of an edit summary, Nosamesha removed a great deal of properly sourced material that quoted Nolte's statements supportive of Nazi Germany and Holocaust denial.
 * This edit is really bad. David Irving goes from being a "Holocaust denier" to a merely a "British author". The sentence "Though Nolte has never denied the Holocaust, he has often praised the work of David Irving, David Hoggan, Fred Leuchter, Arthur Butz, Paul Rassinier and other Holocaust deniers as superior to the work of "mainstream" scholars; in 1993 in his book Streitpunkte Nolte wrote that "radical revisionists [Holocaust deniers] have presented research which, if one is familiar with the source material and the critique of the sources, is probably superior to that of the established historians of Germany" goes to "Though Nolte has never denied the Holocaust, he has on some occasions praised the work of David Irving, David Hoggan, Fred Leuchter, Arthur Butz, Paul Rassinier and other controversial authors as superior to the work of "mainstream" scholars in some aspects; in 1993 in his book Streitpunkte Nolte wrote that "radical revisionists [Holocaust deniers] have presented research which, if one is familiar with the source material and the critique of the sources, is probably superior to that of the established historians of Germany". The sentence "The Italian-Israeli scholar Sergio I. Minerbi criticized Nolte for taking a contradictory series of stands on the Holocaust in Streitpunkte, which allowed him at once and the same time to declare his belief in the reality of the Holocaust while at the same time favorably citing a statement by the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson in such a way as to imply that Faurisson was correct when he denied the Holocaust" goes to "The Italian-Israeli scholar Sergio I. Minerbi criticized Nolte for taking a contradictory series of stands on the Holocaust in Streitpunkte, which allowed him at once and the same time to declare his belief in the reality of the Holocaust while at the same time favorably citing a statement by the controversial French academic Robert Faurisson in such a way as to imply that Faurisson was correct when he questioned aspects of the conventional story of the Holocaust." Faurisson was a Holocaust denier pure and simple, not a "controversial French academic" who "questioned aspects of the conventional story of the Holocaust". This seems to imply that Faurisson was on to something when he denied the Holocaust. And not, Faurisson is not taken seriously, and Nosamesha trying to have the article imply that he is.
 * Nosamesha added in "He is best known for his seminal work Fascism In Its Epoch." This shows a very bad understanding of the historiography of fascism. The Three Faces of Fascism was regarded important in the 1960s, not so today. One of the major problems with Nolte's thesis that fascism was resistance to modernity lies in the fact Fascist Italy aggressively embraced modernity. There are a number of problems with this page. Beyond that, this page, which is mostly Nosamesha's point of view goes all of it way to insist that Nolte reflects the mainstream of the historical profession. Did the majority of historians believe that Jews declared "war" on Germany in 1939 and Hitler was justified in "interning" the Jews as a result? Merely to ask this question is to answer it. I have applying a neutral tag to this article until these matters are addressed. As a start, I cut out this passage. Nolte's assertion that Nazi Germany was a "mirror image" of the Soviet Union has also received support from several other more recent scholars, notably from Stéphane Courtois, who argues both that Nazi Germany adopted its system of repression from Soviet methods and that the Soviet genocides of peoples living in the Caucasus and the exterminations of large social groups in Russia were not very much different from similar policies by the Nazis:

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Corrected references
I was puzzled by all the references labelled Piper. Then discovered that Piper was not an author, but rather the german publisher of the collection of documents relating to the Historikerstreit controversy. The English editor for the collection in English is Knowlton. I then corrected the references replacing Piper by Knowlton. --Joel Mc (talk) 12:04, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

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Recent revert
Hi, did you mean to revert these edits? They look to me like improvements. SarahSV (talk) 05:16, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:44, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * They're full of typos, unnecessary changes of tense, unnecessary splitting and combining of paragraphs, incorrect capitalizations, PoV, etc. On the whole, I did not find them to be improvements - the article was, overall, better before. If you disagree, feel free to restore those parts which you think improve the article. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:48, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Richard J. Evans
The section under NPOV is construed as an attempt to settle a discussion which in fact, within current European scholarship on the topic, is very much ongoing. Also to be noted, that, while an important voice, Richard J. Evans is by no means seen as an authority in the field. Please avoid construct ad hominem cases without ever quoting from German literature or sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.6.148.125 (talk) 15:17, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
 * This is English Wikipedia. There is absolutely no requirements that sources in other languages must be consulted, although doing so is, of course, allowed.  Further, Evans is indeed considered an expert in the subject, except, perhaps, to people pushing a particular point of view.  I have reverted your edit. Beyond My Ken (talk) 15:22, 17 May 2021 (UTC)