Anyone thinking about whether the indefinite block of Abu Hamza is
justified ought to consider (apart from the various policy violations)
his determination to add to the introduction of [[Harold Shipman]]
that he was a *Jewish* British serial killer. It's not just that there
are no reliable sources for this. It's the obsession with trying to
add an entirely non-notable reference to a person's ethnicity in order
to make that ethnicity look bad.
We regularly have anons turn up at [[Ron Karenga]], the founder of the
African-American holiday [[Kwaanza]], who try to describe him in the
first sentence as a "convicted felon,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Karenga&diff=45070575&…
and they do it because he's black and they're racists. That makes them
useless Wikipedians, not because they're racist, because no one cares
if they keep it to themselves, but because they're not willing to be
Wikipedians. I could give scores of examples of the persistent
addition of racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynist slurs
designed to make a person look bad, or to make Islam look terroristic
or Judaism fascist.
That kind of editing is the polar opposite of what it is to be a
Wikipedian. In Abu Hamza's case, it's compounded by the sockpuppetry
and the deceit about it, the reverting, the bad use of sources, and so
on. But it's the lack of even the most basic grasp of what it is to be
a Wikipedian that makes me support an indefinite block.
Sarah