Talk:Robert Faurisson

Inclusion of a rebuttal to the 'Vacuum in the Secret Annexe' claim
The following web page from 'Holocaust Denial On Trial' debunks a number of claims by deniers regarding the Secret Annexe including the claim quoted here of Faurisson's regarding the use of a vacuum cleaner as mentioned in Anne Frank's diary. https://www.hdot.org/debunking-denial/af4-secret-annex/

I think we should include some text from this under the particular Faurisson quote to ensure that having the quotation featured here does not somehow inadvertently inspire any kind of doubt in the validity of Frank's diary.

BenjiThurston (talk) 15:23, 25 October 2018 (AET)


 * I don't think the quote from Faurisson doubting the vacuum adds anything to the article at all to be honest. I'm suspicious that the reason it's been added to the article at all is as a cryptic attempt by a denier to plant a seed of denial in the readers' heads. I'm going to delete it. DiabolikDownUnder (talk) 4:58, 26 February 2019 (AET)
 * Do not delete it until you have a clear consensus from the editors on this page to do so. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:24, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Alright well how would you best propose I do so? DiabolikDownUnder (talk) 8:01, 26 February 2019 (AET)
 * Since I have no idea how long this will take I'm going to add that earlier suggested reference to Debunking Denial in the mean time. I suggest not having the quote at all because it's completely unnecessary, and just saying Faurisson's book 'questioned various elements of the Diary of Anne Frank' will be completely adequate (just as the article mentions that "much of what Faurisson asserted Frank had said was later contradicted by Frank himself" without elaborating as to what either of the men said), because I believe it's enormously dangerous to include an unrefuted Holocaust denial argument like that on a Wikipedia article. DiabolikDownUnder (talk) 10:25, 26 February 2019 (AET)
 * No, you will not. You will wait until you have a consensus -- however long it takes -- before you make any of these changes. Beyond My Ken (talk) 10:56, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It appears to me that the article also debunks Faurisson's claim about the vacuum cleaner; do you not see that? Jayjg (talk) 16:21, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I added the bit debunking Faurisson's vacuum cleaner claim and another user tidied it up for me, but while I'm very satisfied that this addition has been kept to the article I would still like to content that we don't need the full quote from 'The Diary of Anne Frank - Is It Authentic?' Putting aside my suspicions the refutation-less quote was added for nefarious reasons, it just seems needlessly lengthy. Again we reference that Otto Frank contradicted what Faurisson claimed he said without actually providing any examples, so why do we need to detail an example of Faurisson's claims against Anne Frank's diary's authenticity? However since the reference to Lipstadt's site might still be useful in its indication Faurisson was almost certainly leaving out context deliberately when he made claims of inauthenticity against Frank's diary, perhaps we could just summarise his claim about the vacuum briefly without the full quote (perhaps by just slightly elaborating on the preexisting sentence "The text questioned various elements of The Diary of Anne Frank, including the use of a vacuum cleaner by the family while in hiding") and then following it on with the Holocaust Denial on Trial reference? DiabolikDownUnder (talk) 16:41, 27 February 2019 (AET)
 * "Needlessly lengthy"? It takes up less than 2 lines on my screen. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:55, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about relative to the page. Again the reference to Faurisson's claims about Otto Frank's statements to him and Frank's later contradictions of them is summarised very briefly, and yet rather than just state that Faurisson questioned Anne Frank's diary's authenticity and then move on, the article chooses to include what I believe is an entirely superfluous quote from Faurisson's critique. Prior to the addition of the rebuttal, the quote's inclusion posed a danger of making the reader question the authenticity of the diary themselves, whereas now I still think it gives undue weight to Faurisson's misleading claim. Why is the vacuum cleaner claim significant enough to be quoted? DiabolikDownUnder (talk) 23:02, 28 February 2019 (AET)

I don't see a need for the actual quotation; it does seem a bit much, given the brevity of the overall section and article. Jayjg (talk) 16:23, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Those are my thoughts as well. How many other editors' consent will I need before my suggested removal of that quotation can happen? DiabolikDownUnder (talk) 1:26, 2 March 2019 (AET)
 * I've typed up a replacement for that bit of the section, I'll put it here and hope for a response soon. 'The text questioned the credibility of various elements in The Diary of Anne Frank. The website of the historian Deborah Lipstadt, Holocaust Denial on Trial, argues that Faurisson ignores details within Anne Frank's account that explain the aspects he deemed implausible, as well as observable details within the Anne Frank House'. DiabolikDownUnder (talk) 22:31, 3 March 2019 (AET)

Re: correcting quotation, adding context & the issue of citations as it relates to the “Faurisson affair” sub-field
After I corrected a quotation and added what I perceived to be omitted context in the "Faurisson affair" sub-section, an editor (@Vitamortisachla) reverted said change under the premise of undue weight, which, after deliberation, I figured to be cogent as the amount of information I added was unjustified. Yet, I did note that the undoing resulted in my correction of the misleading quotation also being reverted. The editor then made no effort to correct that quotation after having reverted my revision.

Later on, I decided to adjust the paragraph and remove any extra information that wasn't necessary to the conclusion of the paragraph. I then noted in the summary of the edit what I had modified, along with noting that my correction of the misleading quotation was also undone and that the editor hadn't corrected the quotation nor corrected the source of the information.

The quotation being referred to in the preceding paragraph is as follows (underlined): Chomsky stated that "I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust...I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work,"

As it currently stands, the quotation's footnote references "Chomsky and the Neo-Nazis", which I presume is the paper published under the "Quadrant" Journal and is behind a paywall, hence, inaccessible to me; a couple of issues here: there's no hyperlink to the paper; the journal has been criticized as lacking rigorous standards (see below); the quotation itself is factually incorrect (per the transcripts provided by the Chomsky archive).

I'll be quoting from other contributors from Quadrant's Wikipedia page, as to highlight its implausibility as a credible source:

“As of 2017, commentators describe the magazine as presently having a strong right-wing bias and even engaging in extremism.”

“In January 2009, Quadrant published a hoax article. Its author, writer, editor and activist Katherine Wilson, stated that she aimed to show that the magazine and editor Keith Windschuttle had right-wing bias. Wilson claimed Windschuttle and Quadrant would publish an inaccurate article and not check its footnotes or authenticity if it met his preconceptions. Using the pseudonym "biotechnologist Dr Sharon Gould", Wilson submitted an article claiming that CSIRO had planned to produce food crops engineered with human genes.”

“Regular contributors often support conspiracy theories viz that covid-19 has mild impact and that global warming is a hoax, and the 2020 US election was fraudulent.”

I then noted that, if the source of information under scrutiny (i.e. Chomsky's online archive) is problematic then the rest of the sub-section here and on the "Faurisson affair" Wiki page needs to be edited (since they use the same sources as citations) if such sources are to be classified as problematic and/or inadequate; noteworthy here that though the Chomsky.Info website is recognized as his official website, Chomsky has nothing to do with its administration, per the server administrator's claims in the "about" page.

The same editor undid my updated revision again under the premise that there hadn't been an improvement, mentioning to discuss it first, hence the reason for my posting this; I summarize the issues pertaining to the sub-section in the following paragraph, with the most critical errors (i.e. in need of immediate correction) in the italicized form:

There is no mention of the letter (among which Chomsky was one out of 500 signatories) that gave rise to the opportunity to include Chomsky's later remarks as a preface, without his consent. it makes no mention nor does it hint at exchanges between Chomsky and Serge Thion, Chomsky and Jean-Pierre Faye, etc. The quotation I've added in bold at the beginning of this post is factually incorrect; even if we were to consider re-ordering utterances as acceptable in the criterion of what is a legitimate quotation and what isn't, the re-ordering of Chomsky's explicit remarks wouldn't yield this form of a quotation; to presume otherwise is to agree that tampering with quotations is legitimate, which is not standard practice.

While the italicized part serves as a mark of necessary change, the rest of the paragraph isn't to be taken lightly, as it is the case that balancing the sub-section's length leads to a dilemma: Is the premise of an informed reader considered when we are presenting information in author A's article? If it is, then, at what point is one justified in drawing a line of balance between how much coverage Author A's background ought to get, as opposed to Author B? As is presently the case, what is the path to be taken when author A's background is intermingled with author B's background, requiring one narrative with two sub-contextual narratives to be set?

To take the approach the editor has taken, resolving the dilemma requires one to assume that the context isn't of large importance, hence accept that "Chomsky sees no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work" is an accurate description, omitting the fact that Chomsky hasn't read most of Faurisson's work, and further gives no regard to the fact that what was being referred to was a letter written by Faurisson during the Algerian war "which some interpret as having anti-Semitic implications"; the full quote (after the semicolon following this sentence, in bold) is just as handy in drawing an image of how distorted the quote actually is: “In support of the charge of anti-Semitism, I have been informed that Faurisson is remembered by some schoolmates as having expressed anti-Semitic sentiments in the 1940s, and as having written a letter that some interpret as having anti-Semitic implications at the time of the Algerian war.” — Noam Chomsky, “Some Elementary Comments on The Rights of Freedom of Expression” (which was thereafter adopted by Faurisson to function as the preface to his book).

I'm in favor of firstly, correcting the record, and secondarily, strongly considering adding further context without convoluting the general flow of the page (which I think my latest revision sufficed in doing).

Open to any thoughts.

Rrubinski (talk) 13:56, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Death
Why is there no mention about his death? He was murdered, that should be something relevant to add to the article. life. 109.78.51.185 (talk) 09:07, 19 March 2024 (UTC)