Talk:Saskia Sassen/Archive 3

Reply to Nol
(See links above for previous discussions, archived for length)

Hi Nol,

Re. the "precise point" which we narrowed down... I still cannot imagine any justification for your extending your otherwise-admirable hunt for Nazis to their children and other descendants -- this after an extended-weekend of reflection upon our previous discussions here, per my own suggestion. As promised, I've thought a lot, discussed with others, even dusted off some old books on the subject: Hannah Arendt et al.

It's to the contrary, in fact: I am convinced that your effort to include the children adds not only an unnecessary but an "extremist" taint, to your good work to let the world know about the Nazis, in the Willem Sassen article -- people who ought to read that article instead will just dismiss it, when they see "extremism" in it. Take my own example: I'll help uncover Nazis, and to publicize fascist thought in all its ugly narrow-mindedness -- for years I have maintained a website offering as complete a bibliography on the French Front National as I myself ever have seen anywhere, at -- so I applaud your basic effort. But I won't link to a site which encourages the hunting down of the innocent children of Nazis: we have to do better than the Nazis did -- not as badly, and not worse.

So I encourage you to continue your work on the Willem Sassen article, but I do believe that your references there to the man's children and even to his spouses damage that article greatly, sounding merely like "smear" and "guilt-by-association" and other tactics which you and I have agreed we both deplore, and that they need to be removed.

Jack --Kessler 23:02, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

reverts
You have reverted the names of her parents, not me.--80.141.2.54 22:29, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * What makes you think the problem is only about "the names of her parents", in this instance? As I said earlier in the discussion, here, to me this looks like a "Nazi-hunt" extended to victimize the innocent children of old Nazis. There has to be a limit, on that: both to prevent Wikipedia use for ulterior motives & personal crusades, and to avoid damage to the very valid effort to expose real Nazis -- that gets discredited, if it goes wild and starts hunting-down the spouses and children too, and diluted, so that those it wishes to persuade just become exasperated and ignore the effort altogether.


 * --Kessler 16:01, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I put it in again, didn't read this first, sorry. I believe it is definitely interesting to know the special youth she had. Just saying the "family moved to BA" is just a little too rough. It does not say anything about her work, as I see her publications she is far away from any nazi positions, it is just an interesting part of her life that should not be taken away. regards: --89.51.93.182 15:07, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Request for comment: include Willem Sassen?
I myself didn't yet have a dispute with User:Kessler about this topic, but as I will surely have one soon I just want to put this up before. The question is: should the name of her father and a short explanation be included in her biography or not? User:Kessler is as I understand it arguing that this would brand her a Nazi, too. I would say it does not do that, but even if some people conclude stuff like that, it is a fact from her biography that should not just be left out. In other wikipedias (f.e. Saskia Sassen) it is included. People should have the chance to know the entire thing. As only Kessler and various infrequent visitors have been discussing here, a third maybe more authoritative voice might be interesting. --89.51.93.182 15:43, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

The same thing seems to be happening in the article of the father too. --89.51.93.182 15:51, 2 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Certainly biographies include the names of parents, and certainly a part of her life was the fact that she lived a life in Buenos Aires because her parents fled. —Centrx→talk • 16:08, 2 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Agree that the basics about her family should be included, although I have taken out the idea that they moved to Buenos Aires specifically to avoid prosecution, as there is no source for that. Itsmejudith 16:45, 3 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree that the information should be included. It is appropriate for a biography. Lara Love  T / C  16:02, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't see the point of the discussion. Sassen's father was quite a prominent figure in his native Holland and excluding this information would seem strange. Apart from answering the question why she was raised in Argentina, Willem Sassen's escape has significantly determined his daughter's biography. There is absolutely nothing in her career or writings that would imply any affinity with Nazi or right-wing ideologies. Wikipedia should not apply any well-meaning self-censorship on the off chance that anyone would suspect otherwise, or absurdly deem the daughter, born 4 years after the war, responsible for her father's wartime sins. --Thorsten1 13:48, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Coming in from the Rfc, I would suggest a bit of a compromise - "Her father was Willem Sassen, a collaborator during world war II." If people want to know more about her father, they can click on the wiki link to his page. It's reasonable to include at least some mention of her father if he was a notable person. Statisticalregression 18:21, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I just deleted the following: "Her father was Willem Sassen, a Dutch nazi-collaborator, who later became known for interviewing Eichmann."

The intent of this line was not to provide biographical information but to hunt Nazis, but also to victimize the children of Nazis. I don't personally object to the former activity, although I do to the latter. The point here though is that both are irrelevant to an article about a sociologist. Sassen is a respected sociologist and does not deserve such a smear: if it has been shown that her father's political activities long before she was born have anything to do with her own work and reputation I might understand the line's inclusion, but it hasn't.

Ignoring the heavily-emotive issues involved in labeling people, or their parents, "Nazi", is naive or outright phony: a ruse for a witch-hunt. Saying someone's father was a "Nazi", true or not, is not the same as saying someone's father was "Republican": biographies do not include either unless some relevance to the subject, not just to the subject's father, can be demonstrated -- biographies of prize-fighters don't specify that the person's father was a "Republican".

So here the "Nazi" label is not just irrelevant, it is deliberately inflammatory. Some people who are hunting Nazis are going overboard and trying to identify anyone who might be the child of a Nazi, logging in to Wikipedia always anonymously and mis-using it for their purpose: this is going too far, discrediting the better effort of bringing criminals like the Nazis themselves to justice. Wikipedia will become a place for simple slurs and mud-slinging, if mistaken excesses like this are allowed: we'll find out whose father or mother slept with whom, committed what crime, did whatever other awful thing, without any demonstration of what that has to do with the subject of the biography. Indexes here will pull up "Nazis" and "children of Nazis", "murderers" and "children of murderers": Wikipedia will become a tool for unjustified persecutions.

--Kessler 19:57, 13 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I came here from the RFC. It is fairly usual to identify a subject's parents in a biography, even if neither of the parents is notable. However, it is not necessary to elaborate the profession or other details of the parents within the child's biography unless it is especially relevant to the child (e.g. George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush). I would suggest that the Family and early life section should contain a sentence something like:
 * Her father was Willem Sassen and here mother was Miep van der Voort.
 * i.e. whilst her father and mother are named, and her father linked, no details are given about either. To entirely omit the names of her parents would result in an incomplete biography whilst noting the father's Nazi past within the daughter's biography would give undue weight to that fact within what is always likely to be a fairly short article.CIreland 16:14, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, done. --Kessler 19:56, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * leaving the interwiki out is misleading as people will think it was someone else with the same name. You see the majority is not sharing your point. I see your work on this article has been dominant and good, but in this case you are simply a bit off the track. best regards --89.51.93.182 06:01, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I added back in the names of Sassen's parents, but on reflection that looks just plain silly: here we have a short little article, just as CIreland said, in which every word should count, about a sociologist, and we're spending time and space telling people about her mother and father, neither of whom have had anything to do with her sociology. So I've taken it out: it's still just an irrelevant attempt to label someone "a Nazi".

If more content is needed for this short article I suggest someone put in something more about Sassen's sociology work and her ideas: that would be less the People Magazine irrelevant-family-gossip-approach, and more the substantive encyclopedia which Wikipedia is supposed to be.

--Kessler 18:25, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

And incidentally the policy here in Talk/Discussion, 89.51.93.182, is to "sign your posts"... Wading-in via anonymous URL doesn't qualify for that, IMO.

--Kessler 18:32, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

The several attempts made here to link Sassen to someone else's "Nazi" past are skirting very close to defamation: if anyone wants to discuss Willem Sassen's links to Nazism the place to do that is on the page devoted to him -- here, though, it appears to me that the clear intent of such attempts to link Saskia Sassen have been to associate her with Nazism, and that would be defamation -- so pls see the following Wikipedia policy reminder about that, from the headers (above) to this Wikipedia Talk page,

"This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slander_and_libel

--Kessler 18:49, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Those people are not "someone else" but her parents. Again: nobody is trying to link her to their Nazi-past. I am from Germany, my grandparents were Nazis, according to the logic you are presuming I am following, I should be believing that I am a Nazi, too. I don't. Look at the opinions from others above, they all do not share your point. Including parents in biographies, especially if they are notable, is not slander. Please consider that you might have just run into some weird detail and become a little obsessed by it. Just lean back a little. --89.51.90.126 05:08, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I reformulated it. I also created a userpage to be a little less privat about my work here. --Lamme Goedzak 06:10, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Lately Dr. Sassen has been associated with some very vocal and radical anti-Semitic and anti-Israel organizations. She has singed on to several public petitions and documents which elaborate her opinions in these matters. The fact that she is the daughter of an historically significant Nazi collaborator who is directly linked to Adolf Eichmann is significant in regards to her public position on matters involving Jews.


 * I came via the RfC. CIreland's suggestion above should be an acceptable compromise, but I am very alarmed by the current formulation and by the above anonymous comment. Any major petitions that Dr Sassen has signed can be mentioned in the article with no comment as to their rights or wrongs. We have no right to attach guilt by association or engage in smear campaigns. Itsmejudith 22:12, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The edit in the article would have been more or less what I would have written there (it is about what is standing in the German wikipedia), but I accept that Kessler as a major contributor to this article also can have a say on that. The unsigned above comment is without sources of course not relevant. (as I look at the previous edits of this IP I can also understand the concerns of Kessler a bit better...) --Lamme Goedzak 05:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The experince of her father is relivant in terms of her public politaical discourse. Just incuding a name is not sufficant. How about a simple emperically true biographical statement transfered from the father's wiki pedia article


 * Say an academic, commenting on her work, mentioned her family origin. Or if it was discussed by a leading journalist in an op-ed. Then the article could discuss it. Otherwise, a link to Willem Sassen is perfectly sufficient. Readers can click on it or not as they choose. I follow your line of thinking: "her father was a nazi and she is signing anti-Israel petitions, so maybe she inherited antisemitism from her father". But unless you find a reliable source making that argument it remains just your line of thinking, i.e. original research. The encyclopedia mustn't try to lead readers towards particular conclusions. Itsmejudith 15:03, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The only possible consensus I see here is to only mention the names of the parents. Until the IP brings reputable sources I believe the information should be left out. And please heed your spelling and sign your edits. --Lamme Goedzak 20:16, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced
I've removed this allusion, because no reliable source is backing it up. I could not find on the net any source other than sites that have mirrored Wikipedia to make this claim. It might be right, or wrong, and should certainly be included if, and only if, a WP:RS is found. For the moment, this is not the case. Please see WP:BLP. Tazmaniacs 14:49, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but this is a ridiculously formalistic argument. It's a fact that non-Wikipedia or mirror pages among the 35 Google results that have both "Saskia Sassen" and "Willem Sassen" are few and far between. However, nobody, not even the valiant Kessler, has so far denied that Saskia was Willem's daughter. If any "proof" was needed for this "allusion", then how about a documentary about Willem Sassen that aired on Dutch public TV in 2005 . The front page has a still of Saskia Sassen's face and next to it the text: "Saskia Sassen is the daughter of Willem Sassen. At home, she was witness to the secret conversations between her father and the wanted war criminal Adolf Eichmann." The program features a number of interview sequences with Saskia Sassen, in which she describes meeting Eichmann as a girl, among other things. The documentary is streaming on the page, Saskia Sassen's statements are in English, for your convenience. So unless you want to argue that the program is an elaborate hoax with some spitting-image Sassen impersonator, I think there's no reason not to include this fact. --Thorsten1 19:18, 22 September 2007 (UTC)