Talk:Noel Ignatiev

Russian-Jewish descent?
A minor note. I doubt very much that Dr. Ignatiev is "of Russian-Jewish descent". In particular, he has apparently stated that he is not of Jewish extraction: http://racetraitor.org/letters6.html. (Besides, not many Jewish parents name their son Noel, ie Christmas...) So I'm removing pending evidence to the contrary. AnotherBDA 07:38, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
 * According to Instauration (April 1998: 17), "Chief guru of white studies is Noel Ignatiev, who says he is not a Jew but was raised in a Jewish home." Lightningstrikes 04:17, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I read the letters page in question. At no point does he state or hint that he is not of Jewish extraction.Dogface 13:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)


 * An update. On October 20 Malik Shabazz erased the following edit to revert to the statement that Ignative was of Jewish descent.  The only note on the erasure was that the user was deleting "nonsense".  That "nonsense" was as follows: Ignatiev, whose first name is derived from the Christmas holiday, was born to parents said to be immigrants from Russia and occasionally alleged to be Jewish, although Ignatiev is typically a Slavic family name.   This information is sourced and more definite than the unsourced and unlikely assertion -- apparently a relevant one to Mr. Ignatiev's speaking position on various matters -- that he is Jewish.

SDS leader
Noel Ignatiev has a long history as an SDS leader and later as leader of SDS offshoot Sojourner Truth Organization. The total lack of biographical material and corresponding lack of discussion of the ideological genesis of his theories about "whiteness" is a weak point of this article. Peter G Werner 10:09, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

VDARE a reliable source?
Could anyone please tell me why Vdare is quoted in the page as an authority?? I'm sure the learned users of wikipedia could come up with more respectable and widely accepted sources that critique Mr. Ignatiev's positions. - James

I have removed the references to the website vdare.com, as they neither accurately characterize Ignatiev's arguments nor do they represent the consensus of scholarly opinion of his work. Though future revisions may mention the criticisms found on vdare, it should alert readers that vdare.com represents a minority opinion which flirts with "white nationalist" extremism. I will soon add to this article by referencing criticisms of Ignatiev's work from such scholarly journals as the American Historical Review.Rational kernel (talk) 08:31, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

"Flirts with "white nationalist" extremism"? Try refuting what they say instead of simply spewing ad hominem. And you wonder why wikipedia has a bad reputation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.109.239.233 (talk) 10:06, 29 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I was surprised to see VDARE quoted as a "reliable source". As you wrote, it is associated with the white supremacist lunatic fringe. Thank you for fixing that. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 16:55, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
 * This is why wiki has become an unreliable source; in fact in relation to anything remotely connected to politics, race, religion and ideology it's strongly far-left. Sources that espouse the mainstream or leftist (eg; anti-white, anti-male, anti-conservative, etc) viewpoint are automatically accepted as "Reliable" with nary a second glance. Any source however that has even the most tenuous connection to something outside the far-left orthodoxy is denounced and deleted -- *without even a token attempt to challenge or disprove the information being quoted or facts being asserted*. It's transparently unethical, academically unacceptable, and the pinnacle of lazy ad-hominem guilt-by-association nonsense. I see it time and time and time again across immense swathes of this site, and long ago gave up account and my editing because any edit or reversion I attempted for some kind of balance and truth would always be reverted, if not locked, and all the good little liberal drones would come out to pedantize me to death on what they considered reliable and acceptable.
 * We need "wiki files" to expose this crap, as the "Twitter files" did there. At this point I could quote a source like VDARE as saying the sun rises in the East and sets in the West and have it be deleted as false and unacceptable from a biased lunatic fringe source. This is what is wrong with Wikipedia. Public editing sounds great, until you realize like every other public institution it's been controlled by a group of people with very intense and particular political beliefs which they allow to openly co-opt all else here. 2607:FEA8:2E20:3770:6047:D193:6D42:7872 (talk) 13:43, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

And this is why Wikipedia is a hypocritical project. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.82.235.144 (talk) 20:12, 28 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia accepts opinions, unabashed, from people named "Malik Shabazz" on topics pertaining to White/European political movements and affiliations. Yes indeed, Wiki holds zero credibility and seriousness, and should be immediately discounted and rejected by any scholar, historian, researcher, professor, or student. 24.190.209.14 (talk) 04:53, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Written clones
Much of the wording in this article appears to have been directly cut and pasted from other articles. The editor should maybe either clean up the wording or delete it. Just saying... 206.211.166.17 (talk) 19:22, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Cleaning up dates
The timeframe for this article is all over the place. It starts in the 1980s, vacillates between the 50s and 70s and picks up again in the 90's? What? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.108.133.86 (talk) 23:47, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

"Retirement speech" hoax
This section is about a hoax. Its only sources are the original blog post and other primary sources. Was there any secondary coverage in reliable sources of the incident? If not, it should be removed. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 01:31, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I've removed it. No idea why this should be in here at all. Thargor Orlando (talk) 12:18, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

"'Radical' academician"?
Right now, the first line reads "Noel Ignatiev (born 1940) is a radical academician." The use of "radical academician" seems quite inappropriate (and not neutral) to me. I understand that radical, in this context, has a specific political meaning (as opposed to reformist), but I can't help but feel its use here is slanderous. Many academics are political "radicals"; they don't have "radical" in the first line of their page, however. I am removing it to maintain a neutral POV. It talks about his involvement with Marxism below. It's not necessary to use "radical" in the first line. Starvinsky (talk) 02:21, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Abolishing the White Race
I don't want to get into an edit war. I've been trying to add informaion on the controversy around what Ignatiev wrote about 'abolishing the white race', which seems to me like the most obvious and significant controversy where his work is concerned, but this has been repeatedly reverted on me. I'm not trying to pus any POV, but this controversy the FIRST THING that comes up if you google Noel Ignatiev. We do not have a neutral article if this controversy is purposely left out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.97.247.171 (talk) 08:03, 5 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Your edits were reverted primarily because you copied and pasted text from another website in violation of Wikipedia's copyright policy. However, the gist of the material you're trying to add is already in the article, presented in a neutral point of view. Please see the section titled "Ideas".
 * Instead of starting a new section in the biography about a single article written by Ignatiev, you should integrate the material you want to add into the "Ideas" section. Summarize what the source says using your own words. Thank you. — MShabazz Talk/Stalk 14:13, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Its always going to be hard to be NPOV about monstrous humans like Ignatiev. Its absolutely disgusting to try and whitewash his blatant evil racism as "ideas" 46.7.28.113 (talk) 22:57, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The page already spells out how controversial his ideas are in a neutral way, we don't need to make it an tirade against his views. The section even calls it "Ideas and controversies". Harryhenry1 (talk) 06:54, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

First of all, even after I corrected for the copyright issue, you still reverted my editing (claimed there was still a copyright issue, even though I had rewritten the information in my own words).

Including the most significant and well-known of the Ignatiev controversies only in the 'Ideas' section, and not the 'Controversies' section, of our article on Ignatiev seems to me like a blatantly biased way for our article to be done. For instance, under 'Ideas' there is no mention of the accusations against him of advocating genocide. I'd say these accusations are hugely controversial and belong in the article, also in the appropriate section. What do you think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.138.197.106 (talk) 19:53, 5 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Your third effort yesterday at inserting this material didn't "correct for the copyright issue", as you claim. You merely changed a few words and deleted some off-topic sentences.
 * Adding a whole section to this biography to summarize a single source (the  Washington Times article) about a single article by Ignatiev is undue weight. The criticism is clearly related to Ignatiev's views on race and his call for "abolition" of the white race. The criticism should be integrated into the section of the biography about those subjects, not presented separately. — MShabazz Talk/Stalk 20:21, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

I simply thought my rewrite of the information was good enough. Since I'm new to this, can you give me any tips for the future on how to do complete rewrites that correct for copyright issues?

In the 'Ideas' section relating to this controversy there is significantly more about Ignatiev's RESPONSE to the accusations than there is about the accusations themselves. He has been accused of adovcating genocide yet there is no mention of that. I think we need to at least include those of his ideas which are most widely considered controversial. For example, he wrote that his editors 'meant it' when they told a reader: "Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as 'the white race' is destroyed—not 'deconstructed' but destroyed." Obviously that is extremely controversial stuff. Leaving this kind of stuff out just doesn't present a complete picture of the controversy and the article focusing so much on Ignatiev's own response to the controversy around his ideas does not seem to offer a NPOV at all.

Maybe the Ideas and Controversies section should be merged? with an expansion of the part about 'abolishing the white race' so that it tells more about the accusations/criticism around these ideas? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.138.197.106 (talk) 22:05, 5 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I think merging the two sections is a good idea. We should probably give it a try.
 * With respect to avoiding copyright problems, try reading WP:Copying text from other sources. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 00:32, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

I gave the merger a shot with a new rewrite of the 2002 controversy, let me know what you think — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.138.197.106 (talk) 17:12, 6 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Good work. I tracked down the original Harvard Magazine article and used it to give the quotes a little context and include larger portions of the quotes. I also quoted some of David Horowitz's criticism. I hope you think my changes are okay. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 00:34, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Same guy here (just made the account), thanks for saying so. Also your changes look great to me, except that I still think we ought to include that one Ignatiev quote from the Harvard Magazine article. It seems to be the most 'extreme' example of Ignatiev's ideas in the article and it certainly adds a lot of context to the criticism.

"The editors meant it when they replied to a reader, 'Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as 'the white race' is destroyed—not 'deconstructed' but destroyed.'"

Talataash (talk) 14:54, 7 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Go ahead and add it. And thank you for the kind words. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 18:20, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Added, and also unflagged for neutrality dispute. Thanks for discussing that with me (and thanks for the warm welcome!)

Talataash (talk) 20:20, 7 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your persistence. I think you've made the article much better than it was.
 * I moved the sentence you added, to try to keep the narrative flow of the original excerpt. I also split the paragraph because I thought it was getting too long. Let me know what you think. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 04:56, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Nice! That looks much more tidy. forgot signature. Talataash (talk) 18:01, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Death
Apparently Noel Ignatiev has died (10th Nov 2019). Eulogies for this person are being tweeted by supporters. Can you verify? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.13.34.39 (talk) 16:07, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Personal friends of Ignatiev are posting about it on Facebook, which would seem to verify it. As of yet, no official obituary seems to be available online. wwklnd (talk) 17:09, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Race Traitor Magazine
The link to www.RaceTraitor.org has been offline since Noel Ignatiev's passing away, in its stead I have added a link to the web archive of the website here https://web.archive.org/web/2019*/www.racetraitor.org where people can peruse the zine's updates over the last 20 years.ConnieBland (talk) 01:39, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Racist
This man was a disgusting racist. Calls for abolishing a complete race of people is the highest form of racism. Do not try to present him as a "race theorist". He was a disturbed racist. 109.78.140.170 (talk) 06:41, 10 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I have never seen a more clearly accurate understanding of race relations around the world. This theory extrapolates smoothly to the Japanese and Indian peoples 2600:1700:7264:3160:64E1:8877:F812:1EEE (talk) 07:37, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It appears the article now mitigates his genocidal intent, claiming he was speaking metaphorically when he said "The white race will be destroyed." But yes, he was an avowed racist, however if you are racist against Europeans you are considered "anti-racist" by Wikipedia's standards. 2001:8003:2953:1900:50FD:2CD8:8930:2A5B (talk) 04:13, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The article is just describing his own views, since he saw race as a social construct. I wouldn't call it whitewashing to describe what he actually said. Not everyone agrees with his view, and the article reflect this. Accuring the site of being racist again Europeans is also going way too far. Harryhenry1 (talk) 11:26, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

He was best known for his theories on race and for his call to abolish "whiteness".
He was best known for his theories on race and for his call to abolish "whiteness".

He has never used the term "whiteness" in any of his books I have read, he explicitly uses the term "white race". 2001:8003:2953:1900:50FD:2CD8:8930:2A5B (talk) 04:10, 14 April 2024 (UTC)