Talk:Bill White (neo-Nazi)

White and anarchism

For Nahila,

There are some apparent intellectual contradictions in LNSGP rhetoric that make fair treatment difficult. I appreciate the difficulty presented by White's claims of both anarchist and national socialist ideology. But anarchism is the last ideology anyone can claim to exclusively own, so if people such as White want to present as an anarchist, it is simply a matter of fact that they present as anarchists. While any thinking person can cite contradictions in another's rhetoric, anarchists have no authority beyond the contradictions they can cite to claim White is not an anarchist, if he says he is. On the other hand, we are not obligated to take his word for it that his ideology is internally consistent.

It is important for readers to appreciate the difference between anomie, which can express as anti-social konTEmp 4 awl wrules, and ideological anarchy. It might seem to a reasonable person that White leans more toward anomie than toward anarchy. But Wikipedia is not a court of ideology, it is an encyclopedia, so we will do best to represent his position as dispassionately as we can -- hence the link to the LNSGP article.

The article is sourced on three contrasting advocacy publications, including an anarchist publication, to show that he is plainly not centered in any well-established ideology. But even if we are to mention his rental properties, as you suggest in your edit summary, we need to be careful not to accept the authority of an ideologically-oriented publication that these properties you or I have never seen are indeed "ghetto" properties.

In submitting the first version of this article, I didn't mention his unsuccessful local candidacies or his land-owner history because I had not yet verified details, the article can be encyclopedic without including every published detail of his life and nobody contracted with me to compose a complete article before any deadline. SpyRing

Is White even claiming that he is an anarchist at this point? My recollection is that he started calling himself an ex-anarchist in late 2000. Either way, "anarchist" has an established meaning (see anarchism) that is in direct contradition to national socialism. At the very least, it should be noted that White's (past) identification as an anarchist rests on shaky grounds.

Please explain why "the majority of anarchists" is a conundrum. Anarchists, like any other group, can be counted and quantified. The anarcho-fascism article was already deleted and so called "nationalist anarchism" has been delt with extensively on the anarchism talk page.

Anyhow, I will try to spend some time helping with this article later in the week. Thanks for getting it started. :) - Nihila 22:16, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

His continued advocacty of libertarianism suggests where his anarchistic ideology has gone. Apparently he doesn't see libertarianism in contradiction with national socialism.

Anarchists could theoretically be counted and quantified, but they have not been, at least not in relation to any matter presented here. The text of a single anarchist publication doesn't neccessarily indicate the views of a majority of anarchists. There has not been and likely will not soon be any concensus about any notion held by "the majority of anarchists" beyond very basic precepts that anarchy is a generic term for movements that tend to advocate elimination of imposed authority. We simply lack any reliable medium for polling and assessing the current views of a majority of people who present as anarchists world-wide.

That there exists a Wikipedia article on a topic is not final evidence that the subject has an "established meaning." Whatever established meaning the article might evidence is rendered vague by the language of the article -- "Anarchism is a generic term describing various political philosophies and social movements that advocate the elimination of all forms of imposed authority, including social hierarchy and coercive power."

However, a mob of anarchists throwing rocks through store windows in Seattle are imposing their authority, whether they admit it or not. So right away, we can find flaws in the Wikipedia definition which arise from a failure to challenge internal inconsistencies of the rhetoric of some professed anarchists. And pacifist anarchists, no matter how Gandhian they might see their own ranks, lack authority to say those others who call their unruly movements anarchism are not indeed espousing a version of anarchy.

Most accurately, "White presented himself as an anarchist at one time." It seems to me the problem arises from a predominant style of writing in this forum, with a somewhat authoritarian overreliance on the passive verb "is" rather than on more accurate active verbs that tell us what a subject has done. A sentence can either refer to the writer's authority that something "is", or it can tell us who did what, with attribution to a published authority beyond the Wikipedia writer.

Other unsubtantiated passive wiggle-words often appearing here include perceptual representations, including "is considered" and "is believed." Basic automated grammar checkers flag passive statements that suggest a perception or count without identifying or accurately quantifying the subject. Either we name who considered somebody to be something, or we are simply stating our own individual notion of somebody else's perception.

Bottom line is, regardless our personal views, encyclopedic writing can niether defend an individual notion of anarchism, nor disparage a particularly offensive activist. Encyclopedic treatment needs to rely on precise language to present verifiable factual representations.

SpyRing 20:14, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)