Debate:Questionable Citations

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The other day, I created an article about Islamization and I cited, along with 12 other sources, an article from the European Defence League. The article seemed fine. But today, I was thinking about anti-Semites and white nationalists, because I was looking at an article by James Edwards about mainstream conservatives. The article mentioned Jews, and race, and the whole spiel. In the first paragraph, it implied that mainstream conservatives shouldn't be concerned about preserving tax cuts and Israel, and instead should care more about "ethnic identity." Evidently, it was an unintelligent, unintelligible "critique" of mainstream conservativism from a white nationalist pseudo-intellectual which even I, a movement conservative, found subpar.

With my mind on white nationalism and anti-Semitism, my thoughts drifted to the English Defence League, which Tommy Robinson pledged to filter neo-Nazis out of. And then I though of one of my Islamization sources. "European Defence League." So I went to their website to prove myself wrong. After all, what's in a name, right? The article isn't anti-Semitic at all!

Well, it turned out that there is quite a bit of anti-Semitic content on their website. Literally, an entire category is titled "Jewish Question." In various articles, Jews are blamed for globalism, neoconservatism, mass immigration, and other earthly woes so many Jewish movement conservatives and Zionists stand fully and firmly against. One article purports that Winston Churchill knew of the connections between Judaism and Bolshevism (which don't and have never existed; in addition, the article twisted Churchill's words around to fit their anti-Semitic agenda). So, eventually, I switched that reference to an article by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative source which supports school choice and features at least one quote from Dennis Prager.

This incident really set me on edge. I can't stop thinking about it. Now, I know I need to more thoroughly vet my sources.

But how was I to know that I was citing an anti-Semitic source? That's my question. How can you tell when your citations are questionable?

Also, is this as big a deal as I am making it out to be? Or am I just making a mountain out of a molehill here?

In a separate article about blackface, I cited the South China Morning Post. It was just an article about the Ralph Northam blackface controversy. Was that wrong? Should I have done that?

And how can one detect questionable citations?

Responses

  • Many sources are more complicated than "100% good" or "100% bad" -- in general, I prefer to judge individual articles, not overall sources, since I've seen some really good articles/op-eds and some really bad ones from the same source. The European Defence League might be one of them. Also, (as someone who strongly supports Israel and very extremely happy when Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem) regardless of whatever that article you read said, I think we should try not to go too far in the direction of calling everything moderately critical of Judaism "anti-Semitic." At what point will voicing sincere (but very strong) religious disagreements with Judaism become anti-Semitic? I don't want a slippery slope. --1990'sguy (talk) 20:06, 23 September 2019 (EDT)
  • Yes, I get what you're saying about theological criticisms of Judaism not being anti-Semitic. But that's not what this source does. The titles of different articles say things like, "Jewish Role in Globalism;" "The Influence of Jewish Neoconservatives;" "Jewish Contributions to Mass Immigration." I'm paraphrasing, but they mention Jews by name in the very titles! And yes, I understand what you're saying about citing something based on the article not the source, but what about Conservapedia's policy disallowing linking to hate sites/hate groups. Quote from the Metapedia article: "Note that Conservapedia forbids linking to hate groups." Am I overthinking this? ---BernieandTrumpFan