OrlaNiBradaigh

Why I Edit

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters - Francisco Goya

The use of weaponised disinformation by extremist political organisations is well documented, and in recent decades has been on the rise. It is important for wikipedia, as a crowd-sourced and democratic information source, to remain vigilant of those attempting to manipulate the site for political ends.

In my editing I acknowledge that I will make mistakes. Therefore I will outline each of my edits to pages in the sections below. This is both for me to keep track of what I have worked on and to make clear my errors so I and others can improve their editing skills.

On Bias and the Necessity of Truth

We all have points of view that we are sympathetic toward. I believe it to be inherent to human psychology and that to deny it's impact on one's output is creates the greatest risk to the pursuit of truth.

My personal steps toward the mitigation of my bias are;

• to acknowledge it's inherence
• to analyse it's flaws
• to confront it when challenged
• to reform it when informed

As will I for now be focusing on editing political articles I feel it is important to be open about my political point of view.

The theoretical societal structure under which I would most like would follow are most closely alined with a system call Libertarian Municipalism a version of which is contemporaneously in outlined in the Rojavan constitution. This alignment is constantly changing as I consider and reconsider the values of any given theory. I would also describe myself as Anti-Fascist, in that I am opposed to ideological ends of fascist thought and believe it the duty of any democratic mind to fight fascism where ever it arises, and that the best way to fight fascism is not through violence but knowledge. I also think it is important to understand that we are all capable of being lead toward fascist ideology so the first place fascism must be fought is in our own minds. I am also against any authoritarian ideology, for not only have the some of the greatest atrocities in human history taken place under governmental systems that can be described as authoritarian (Soviet famine of 1932–33, Chinese Land Reform), but authoritarianism by necessity reduces people to objects of state governance, and not as they ought, governors in their own right.

The core of my political and social motivation, the criteria by which I judge political theories are my beliefs that all people are equal, all have a right to absolute freedom of thought, speech and action, all have a right to life free from suffering and all have a right to have a say in how their society is constituted. I hold these values above any affiliation to any political ideology, party or movement. With these I add my belief in the necessity of truth.

I do not see my editing of articles as an attempt to push an ideology of my own, it is for me a challenge to improve my academic research skills while learning more about the ideology and incarnations of the contemporary far-right. I am encourage accusations of bias showing through in my editing that leads me from the truth of a matter. I will strive always respond to criticism with logically consistent and philosophical sound arguments substantiated valid evidence, and I expect critics to the the same.

A History of my Contributions

Soldiers of Odin

Edit I

This edit to the Soldiers of Odin was done in order to remove politically motivated vandalism that framed the group in a highly biased light and explained this using language common to far-right discourse (ie. "fake news media"). The version had also removed cited information revealing the groups white supremacist views. It is in obvious violation of Wikipedia's policy of neutral point of view.

Edit II

This edit is minor, adding I have changed the description of it's type; Hate Group and Far-Right Extremist Organisation, both including multiple citations. I removed NGO as the citation linked to a dead webpage. A user responded to the issues with this edit. Said issues are addressed in edit III

Edit III

This edit was in response to feed back to the previous edit. I wrongly judged what is considered an organisation's infobox type.

I have removed the type heading until I am able to confirm that the group can considered a legitimate non-government organisation. So far I have only found a claim's by a single article that the Finish arm of the group registered themselves as an NGO. The article doesn't source where it received this information and I am yet to find this statement anywhere else besides the very wiki page in question and site's that have blatantly copied from the wiki page. This could either be a case of circular referencing, a misguided article, or a legitimate truthful statement article. Until a more reliable source is found I do not believe I think the information should be excluded. Yle article from which the claim originates, should anyone wish to assist my research.

Additionally I have added a paragraph outlining the claims by ADL and SPLC that have identified SOO as a hate group.

Observations

This page has been subject to regular vandalism. Which I suspect to be a series of attempts by members of this extremist group to alter Wikipedia's neutral explanation of their motives, beliefs and actions.

References

OrlaNiBradaigh (talk) 20:51, 3 June 2020 (UTC)