Talk:Holocaust analogy in animal rights/Archives/ 1

This page is biased.
This page seems biased towards the opinions of PETA et al and does not consider the alternative view adequately. Emerald fairies (talk) 12:58, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * You'll have to be more specific about any changes you want. Merely stating the article is biased isn't helpful. Having read the section on the PETA controversy it may require specific quotes or comments from other writers or commentators offering different views but you need to specify these and they must be supported by reliable sources WP:RS. Robynthehode (talk) 13:12, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

As discussed
Ed, I've created the stub. Good luck! :-) SlimVirgin (talk) 19:40, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * LOL, it's still #5 on my to-do list. But thanks for the headstart! --Uncle Ed 19:43, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Um, Slim, sorry I didn't get started yet. I was working on Mission of the Messiah which somehow seems related.


 * I hope when you finish, we can use the nifty main template to link from PETA to this article; with Animal rights and the Holocaust being a sub-article or "spin-off" from PETA. (If it's neutral, then it's not a fork. Keep saying this, like a mantra. ;-) --Uncle Ed 20:10, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Singer reference
Should the comparison made by a Singer character in the Letter Writer, as referenced by the PETA article, not be included here too? Crum375 23:05, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, also in The Penitent. There's a lot more material to add. I'm planning to work on it over the next few days. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:56, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I've already added the Singer quote, not having read this talk page before. Feel free to rewrite it or put it into better context or whatever. &mdash;Gabbe 11:13, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Merge this and 'Animal rights and antisemitism'
As someone has proposed the 2 be merged, and no-one has discussed it over there, I will ask about it here. Animal rights and antisemitism seems to be the large chunk of text that someone was trying to add to Animal rights a while ago. As it stands, it is entirely biased and therefore POV. I think we should summarise the text further as it seems to be an analysis of one author only, quoting lots of their text. However, it also contains some valid points.

We wouldn't really want to merge it into this article as it would be off topic, but should we merge this article into that one after working on it? What do people think?-Localzuk(talk) 14:21, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Note also, that it was created by Farnsworth J, a known Homey sock. It does seem to be a bit of a POV fork to me.-Localzuk(talk) 14:23, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Now that I look at it, I see it would be off-topic to add it here. I don't know what to do with it. It's an incredibly silly argument/page that HOTR added only to cause trouble. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Requested move 25 September 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved. No such user (talk) 08:18, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Animal rights and the Holocaust → Animal holocaust – The term has become more widely used over the last 20 years or more, not just informally but in academic literature beyond just "animal rights" activism, e.g. in philosophy. Move would create a clearer differentiation of the use of the word for the Shoah, so as to be less offensive. Current title & tone of page is somewhat article like, rather than an encyclopaedic definition.

For the sake of discussion, although I consider the above to be the best option, another alternative might be Holocaust (animals) inline with the other related topics on the disambiguation page.

--Iyo-farm (talk) 12:44, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose: inappropriate conflation with the Holocaust. Note that in the first entry listed, "Animal holocaust" is included in scare quotes. --K.e.coffman (talk) 15:16, 26 September 2021 (UTC)


 * * Comment No, I've been very clear about this. It is not a conflation of the terms, it is about the evolution & use of the second term &, as is discussed in academia, the difference between small h- and capital H- use (referred to in discussiona as h/Holocaust). The word holocaust (-h) has a far older use relating to animal, than to humans. In fact, it has the original claim on it. --Iyo-farm (talk) 16:05, 28 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Oppose this would be a substantive change of focus for this article. The proposed title is also clearly making a political implication (that raising animals for human consumption is morally comparable to the Holocaust) that is a fringe viewpoint. User:力 (power~enwiki,  π,  ν ) 22:04, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose http://ethicalvegan.net/read/animal-holocaust].
 * Oppose: Given that this article documents in some considerable detail just how controversial comparisons between the Nazi Holocaust and the killing of non-human animals have been, it would be a violation of WP:NPOV and thus inappropriate for the article title to make exactly that comparison as an outright assertion. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:18, 28 September 2021 (UTC)


 * * Comment The use of the term exists. The portmanteau or neologism, if you wish. It's use is increasing. That in itself is establishing notability. That you or anyone else finds it "inappropriate" or offensive has no value as per WP:OM. Furthermore, through use it is taking on a new meaning, closer to its original meaning, entirely independently from any comparison to the Shoah. The question is, are there sufficient references, of sufficient quality, to support it? And the answer to that is, easily. I could argue the opposite that this article is only establishing & exaggerating any controversiality, & should therefore should be made more neutral.


 * @ AndyTheGrump. To be quite frank, if anyone should be offended at being compared to burnt animals, it should be the victims of the Shoah (aka "The Holocaust") & their families. That is what I find utterly irrational about your position. That is what you are forcing upon them, & I am attempting to create some more distance between. It was a catastrophe, not an animal sacrifice.


 * (I'm presuming everyone here knows the accurate definitions of the words) --Iyo-farm (talk) 16:05, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Oppose. The page as it stands is already grossly, offensively non-neutral, the proposed title would make it still more so, and would tend devalue the (very strong) connotations of the word "Holocaust" in relation to the awful events of the Second World War. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. If it's to be moved, it should probably be to the round file. Just for the record, I don't eat meat and am in general opposed to the killing of animals for gain; I kill vipers, hornets, rats and other vermin when necessary. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:37, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose; and rapid close – Iyo-farm is now under a partial t-ban which will limit their ability to respond here. Probably this RM should be procedurally closed, as there will be nobody arguing in favor, I suspect. If my WP:!vote is needed, it's Oppose, per power~enwiki, et al. Mathglot (talk) 19:48, 28 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Response No, I can still respond here. We still haven't got beyond WP:OM and WP:IDONTLIKEIT reactions, no one addressing the actual arguments & references that I've provided to establish its notability.


 * Although, having said that, I see now that it would be better to split it into two pages; Animal rights and the Holocaust and Animal holocaust to differentiate the two, as that would be supported by adequate references.


 * Let us remember that the word holocaust does refer to animal slaughter & burnt offerings, & not human beings, therefore if anyone should be offended by the persistent comparison, it should be the human victims of the Shoah, & their families.


 * Thank you. --Iyo-farm (talk) 19:56, 28 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Note to closers: Hm, per the letter of the T-ban, Iyo-farm appears to be correct re the t-ban, and apparently is not banned here at this moment. I have no objection to letting it play out, as the outcome seems clear. Mathglot (talk) 20:08, 28 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Support The usage does exist and is increasingly being used in the animal rights movement and by academic scholars. This is reflected in various publications as listed earlier. Comparing an idea with an existing one and naming the new one accordingly is a normal convention that can be seen throughout human history. That's not be be treated as POV. When women oppression was first voiced out a few centuries earlier, male chauvinists called it but a POV of a fringe section of the population and opposed that women rights should not be compared with men's rights. People even mockingly compared women rights with the then-non-existent-and-absurd animal rights. When Mary Wollstonecraft, a forerunner of today's feminists, published her Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, Thomas Taylor, a distinguished Cambridge philosopher, mockingly published A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, claiming women's rights is as absurd as "rights" to "brutes" like dogs, cats, and horses (Singer, P., Animal Liberation, 2009, New York: HarperCollins, p. 1). Thus, these POV, fringe, etc., are just a matter of time. IMO, if we have enough sources supporting the change, the title can be changed. Rasnaboy (talk) 08:01, 29 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment I think this article should be renamed, but in quite a different direction. "Animal Holocaust" does not seem to have particularly widespread usage as a set phrase, and the different sources on this page are not in agreement over whether such a term is even appropriate. A more suitable and specific name for this page would be "Animal cruelty and the Holocaust analogy", which is what the page is actually about. This is a format used in other places on Wikipedia, such as, for instance (though I hesitate to make the comparison), on: Israel and the apartheid analogy. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:13, 29 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Oppose Any attempt to dilute the Holocaust, no matter the cause, should always be rejected. Comments saying that the word had previous meanings, or has been used differently fail WP:COMMON. I'd agree that maybe "Animal cruelty and the Holocaust analog" could be considered, but maybe after how this gone as a separate move request. 89.241.33.89 (talk) 19:59, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Oppose. There appears to be non COMMONNAME for this topic, and the proposed title has extreme POV issues by uncritically conflating the Holocaust with this. Similar issues exist within the current title, but to a lesser extent. I also note that the current title fails WP:CRITERIA #1, as it is not clear what it refers to; my initial impression was that it referred to an occurrence during WWII. Given this, I would support a move to "Animal cruelty and the Holocaust analogy", or even better "Animal cruelty and the genocide analogy". BilledMammal (talk) 00:14, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 14 October 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. There is unanimous support for this move. (non-admin closure) VR talk 18:50, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Animal rights and the Holocaust → Animal cruelty and the Holocaust analogy – The proposed change of this article's name to "Animal cruelty and the Holocaust analogy" drew a positive reception when posited in a comment in the 25 September move request. I made this suggestion based on the use of analogous formats for other areas of contentious subject matter on Wikipedia. It would also pave the way for restructuring the article in terms of arguments in favour of and against the analogy. Framing the article in these terms would also be more precise and potentially less inflammatory or open to being misconstrued than the present title. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:23, 14 October 2021 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support: This sounds fairly straight and unambiguous. Rasnaboy (talk) 05:24, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Support – meets the requirements for a non-judgmental descriptive title as described in article title policy. I can support this. Mathglot (talk) 07:36, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Support. It would reflect the content much better. Current title is very confusing. Walrasiad (talk) 07:55, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Support. The current title sounds like it refers to animal rights during the Holocaust. BD2412  T 20:38, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per all the above. The current title is misleading. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:00, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per the above. —AFreshStart (talk) 19:11, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

"Earliest use" section
Something worth discussing: The article is about comparisons between animal cruelty and The Holocaust, not about usage of the word "holocaust" to describe animal slaughter. The fact that the term was used is an interesting bit of trivia, but I'm not convinced that this section belongs belong in an article on comparisons with the genocide of European Jewry. Pinging and  here, on account of recent edit history. –Ploni (talk) 21:42, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah I agree. The Independent source even notes that this isn't referring to the Holocaust, but that the term 'holocaust' was generally used to any mass killings prior to the Holocaust. So yeah, it was called a "pet holocaust", but it's not really an analogy to the genocide of European Jewry, as you say, which is what this article is (supposed) to be all about. Don't know about the book, but I'm guessing it makes the same claim. —AFreshStart (talk) 21:49, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I was a bit torn on this, as having some sort of definition does help make the article more self-contained. It helps flag that "holocaust" as a word has a wider usage outside of The Holocaust, and the September 1939 pet extermination seems more than a little interesting in the context. In the absence of such a section, readers would need to click quite a few times to get to similar terminology notes, and nowhere else would they find the 1939 example. (One might argue that it would be worth explaining that the original meaning of holocaust was animal sacrifice.) Iskandar323 (talk) 21:59, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
 * As it happens, in The Great Cat and Dog Massacre (cited in the section), the author explains the use of the term and explicitly rejects comparison with the Holocaust. –Ploni (talk) 22:17, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

"'[...] I would later discover that the term 'holocaust of pets' or 'massacre' were not post-hoc constructions but contemporary descriptions. The Oxford English Dictionary carefully describes the different meanings of the word holocaust, noting that its modern meaning of the 'mass murder of the Jews by the Nazis' did not start to be used until 1942. An earlier meaning of the word meaning a sacrifice or massacre on a large scale was used to describe the unnecessary killing of at least 400,000 'pet' cats and dogs in London in the first week of the war in September 1939. The word may have had a different meaning but it still nevertheless indicated a 'great slaughter or massacre' or a large-scale sacrifice wholly consumed by fire.' This was no routine killing. The government, state, veterinary profession, and animal charities were all opposed to this 'sacrifice.' It was not required by the state even at this initial moment of war.'"
 * Wow, thanks for that! In light of this, the "Earliest use" section should definitely go. I'm sure there is something to be said about the original meaning of the term 'holocaust' meaning animal sacrifice, and it is a rather interesting point. But I just can't see any real reliable sources linking it to the explicit references to the Holocaust (note: this should be mentioned as such in the article, not 'the Jewish Holocaust' – this puts 'Jewish Holocaust' and 'Animal holocaust' on an unfairly even footing, whereas the former is accepted by the vast majority of historians, and the latter only used by some activists/groups. This could be seen as trivialising the Holocaust, even if it is unintentional). —AFreshStart (talk) 22:27, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Large-scale trimming down of this article
Hi there. I have significantly trimmed down this article, as I felt it was too quote-heavy from PETA-aligned individuals, among other things. Also removed content cited to Reddit or YouTube channels. As WP:SPS says, if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent, reliable sources. Kept quotes from published books.

If editors disagree with any of my edits, feel free to revert me. I'm aware I have been very bold with cutting down this article. —AFreshStart (talk) 04:03, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I support trimming but I object to the removal of citations and wikilinks without discussions. I am not going to revert now because everything is tangled and other people are editing, but I feel that sources and name drops to prominent commentators have extra value.  Bluerasberry   (talk)  12:56, 21 January 2022 (UTC)


 * That's fair enough. Out of curiosity, which sources are you referring to? I really don't think we should be re-adding the YouTube or Reddit links, but I'm less certain about removing opinion pieces. The main reason I removed them in my edits was because they were incorrectly attributed. I know my edits were quite drastic, but seeing as this page has evidently had some long-standing issues I was unaware of (as raised by the lead image discussion), I thought it better to be bold. —AFreshStart (talk) 13:15, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I object to the outcome of your actions but you personally did everything correctly. Sometimes correct actions result in undesirable outcomes. Thanks for doing everything right.
 * You link to your changes in your first comment, thanks for that. The first thing I see is that you deleted the wikilink to Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. This book was cited in the first sentence and two times elsewhere. Now it seems to be cited once. Perhaps it should be featured in the article text in addition to being a citation, because it seems to have respected positions on this topic and also fact-checks some claims which other named individuals make.
 * You removed the wikilink in the text body to Alex Hershaft due to citation to reddit. However, this is a person with their own wiki article and a media reputation for talking about the subject of this article. In general I supporting deleting content without reliable references, and I do not expect reviewers to hunt down those sources on the open Internet, but I do encourage reviewers to tolerate lack of sources in one article so long as by linking to a Wikipedia article one can easily find lots of sources. This guy is an animal rights activist and a Holocaust survivor and is famous for both; text about his views belongs in the body of this article.
 * You removed the link to Joey Carbstrong, and while sourcing is not as strong for him, he is on-topic for this article, and perhaps there should be a link to him somewhere here.  Bluerasberry   (talk)  16:20, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
 * No worries, and thank you for being civil with me. I understand this is a contentious topic with strong feelings on either side.
 * I thought that the second paragraph in the lead was undue, but I don't mind it being re-added to the lead (although if it is, I think it should be in the initial sentence, with the criticism from the ADL and USHMM after those quotes to avoid giving these specific comments undue prominence). I also think that Eternal Treblinka should be mentioned cited in-text; I'd be all for someone who is more familiar with the book including a brief summary here, as it seems appropriate.
 * I'm not against including Alex Hershaft's opinions at all in this article; as you say, he has a Wikipedia article and is definitely notable and on-topic for this article. I would prefer better sourcing (preferably from a third party) that summarises his views, rather than rely on self-published sources. But I don't mind a brief summary of Hershaft's views cited to the Reddit comments. After all, he is pictured in the article, and mentioned in the sources here. As you say, he is famous for talking about both issues.
 * I have more of an issue re Joey Carbstrong's comments about the term 'holocaust' being used to refer to the Armenian genocide (or a nuclear holocaust) as proof that the term 'holocaust' isn't specific to Jewish people... This rather overlooks the point that both of these terms refer to harm to human beings (well, the latter is the collapse of all civilisation, but I think you get my point). That's not even going into the subject of non-Jewish Holocaust victims, but that's a subject for a different article. I'm not an expert, but looking at his article, it's clear that he's known for making a lot of purposefully inflammatory comments on the topics of veganism and animal rights. His comments seem to go against the principles of WP:SPS and WP:ABOUTSELF, imo. A problem with these self-published sources means some of the specifics are hardly ever debunked, as they are unlikely to garner the attention of fact-checkers (unlike a book or other published media). —AFreshStart (talk) 17:02, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

"...stated the reason he survived..."
I removed this from the caption of Mr Hershaft's photo as shown in this diff: ...and stated that the reason he survived was to end the oppression of animals. My reasoning was that article is not the place to advance his viewpoint for which he has no proof; moreover, he was a child back then. --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:20, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for spotting that! Yeah, that definitely needed to go... —AFreshStart (talk) 15:15, 23 January 2022 (UTC)