Talk:Left-wing terrorism/Archive 1

Lenin, socialism and Nazism
Lenin was, of course, involved in activity leading up to the 1905 revolution. Many of these activities obviously involved assassinations and so forth. But, because of the claim's speculative nature of the association, I would agree to leave Lenin out of it until I get more facts.

Of course, communist dictatorships aren't what Marx had in mind, but no one in their right mind would think that right-wing conservatives from Adam Smith to Ronald Reagan would have anything to do with National Socialism or fascism. Yet, they're still often lumped together. Unless we split hairs, no one here is going to be satisfied.

We don't have to split hairs. Left-wing tends to lump all "evil" as right-wing because they like to claim to moral high ground, conveniently ignoring Mao, Stalin, and Hitler and their left-wing governments. We don't need to play the game that one side is responsible for all the evil in the world, we can at least start with intellectually honest definitions though. Jbamb 14:35, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * You'd written:
 *  Nazism which was socialist and can also be considered left-wing.
 * It is an idiosyncratic view to call Nazism left-wing. -Willmcw 17:07, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * How so? All the policies they support would find a welcome home in left-wing governments, and not in right-wing governments.  To suggest otherwise is to say the defining characteristic of right-wing people is killing off entire peoples.  That's simply propaganda. -Jbamb 17:51, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * You are deriving conclusions. We don't do that here. We just summarize verifiable information using a neutral point of view. Do you have significant sources that call Nazism left-wing? -Willmcw 18:05, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Deriving conclusions from what left and right wing is and applying it, yes. Take a look at left-wing, right-wing definitions in wiki.  Can you honestly claim that socialism can find a place in the right?  At best you can call Nazism not a left-right group, but you certainly cannot call it right-wing and maintain intellectual honesty.  They seized power via revolution and took control over everything and socialized it... how is that right wing? -Jbamb 18:09, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Again, we aren't here to make conclusions. We're here to report what conclusions other people have made. Despite their name, Nazis are considered to be fascist rather than socialist. No, they didn't take over everything. Private industry remained in private hands, for example. -Willmcw 19:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Islamic groups
Can I stress, the various Islamic groups you had on here as "left wing terrorist groups" were completely false. Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Al-qaeda etc do not in ANYWAY represent leftist ideologies. They are by their very nature, reactionary, conservative (they look back to an idealised past) and exist in oposition to the concepts of equality and liberty that leftist groups, even if horribly misguided, do aim to achieve.

Deletion suggestion
I have removed the deletion template added by Xemoi as i do not think that the content, much of which was writtern by me is biasised. I can see were Xemoi is coming from with the suggestion that examing left-wing or right-wing terrorism in themselves as it might imply that terrorism is a left-wing phenomemom or a right-wing one however I do think that left-wing terrorism has particular carecteristics that can best be examined in a seperate article. I am open to the suggestion that this page be merged with right-wing terrorism.--JK the unwise 16:19, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

As I said, the best solution is to merge some of the less disputable content in both articles into a single, expanded Political terrorism article. As for this article being biased, there's no possible doubt that it is subreptitiously supportive of some far-leftist goals. I don't think you're the best person to independently indentify or qualify bias here, since you're an avowed Marxist. It's nothing personal, really. But we should avoid unnecessary conflict with these provocative pages, for god's sake. Besides, the very nature of the distinction of "left" and "right" is ridiculous and severely outdated in political science. Only by a political activist perversion could we really think of adding this kind of fishy stuff into an encyclopedia entry. Both pages are clearly designed to push for an agenda, and, as such, are clearly in violation of wikipedia rules. Let's make a more balanced and general description of Political Terrorism, that's it. Xemoi 17:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmmm... I don't really agree with you. But I am just off on holiday so don't have time to right more. Since the deletion is contested by at least one person, namely me, you shouldn't use that deletion template. I would suggest that you nominate the page for merge i.e. use tag. If you think that even the title needs to be deleted as apose to be a redirect then you need to nominade the page for deition see Articles for deletion.--JK the unwise 19:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate having two separate articles. While clearly defining right and left wing terrorism may be difficult, it is worth doing. Left wing terrorists have different political goals than right wing terrorists just as the right wing of the political spectrum has a very different mentality than the left. I could not tell from reading either article (left or right), what the political leaning of the author was (in the article's current state). To me this indicates that an effort has been made to present the material in an unbiassed manner. [User:ewallman 22:02, 13 May 2006]