Stan Shebs wrote:
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
It is very unfortunate when a talented contributor leaves the project in disgust, and other people consider doing the same. In this case, 172 was bullied off by people who have yet to respond to the content of his arguments beyond some rhetorical ranting about things which are barely relevant to the content at hand. It was done with personal attacks, using terms such as Stalinist, revisionist, totalitarian, etc.
Just for the record, the sense in which Fred used "revisionist" is a well-understood technical term (it's the first of the definitions in [[revisionism]]), along with "traditionalist" and "post-revisionist". Cold War specialists describe their own positions relative to these groupings for instance. It can hardly be construed as a personal attack by anybody who understands the meaning of the term.
The fact remains that the term "revisionist" is nothing more than jargon. It is far less clear than the other two terms on the above list, "Stalinist" and "totalitarian", and they're debatable enough. "Traditionalist" and "post-revisionist" may be defined in terms of "revisionist" and are thus also jargon. The current Wikipedia article has no less than eight definitions of "revisionism" several of which could be applicable. Since we are criticizing several articles the assortment of possible definitions could follow from one to the other. Indeed the indicated "first of the definitions" states
Among historians, revisionism has traditionally been used in a completely neutral sense to describe the work or ideas of a historian who has revised a previously accepted view of a particular topic. This usage has declined among historians because in recent years the word has come to be used in the following sense:
In other words we have an unsubstantiated "traditional" usage which has declined in favour of one or the other of the remaining seven other definitions, but we can never be sure which. The term "well-understood" is pure sophistry.
Then you would have us believe that the position of "Cold War specialists" would somehow be relevant. Most of us have not been indoctrinated into the brotherhood of "Cold War specialists"; we're not specialists of any kind. Why should we be presumed to have accepted the definition used by a specialist group
The commentary ends with a rhetorical flourish that diminishes the validity of any understanding that is not based on the understanding asserted by the commentator.
I looked in the "New Oxford Dictionary of English" for what it had to say about "revisionism". It begins by saying that it is "often derogatory" and adds the meaning "a policy of revision or modification, especially of Marxism on evolutionary socialist (rather than revolutionary) or pluralist principles." It adds as a secondary meaning: "the theory or practice of revising one's attitude to a previously accepted situation or point of view."
Not all Wikipedians are members of an ivory tower cabal of historians. We have not, as it were, paid our dues to historical orthdoxy. Perhaps we are their worst nightmare when we ask them to substantiate their positions without descending into jargon.
Ec