Talk:Saskia Sassen/Archive 1

Father a Dutch Nazi and SS-officer

It is a fact that Saskia Sassen's father was a fairly prominent Dutch Nazi and officer of the SS who managed to escape from prosecution. User:Kessler has removed my mention of this fact from the article with the remark it was "irrelevant here". I do not agree. — Nol Aders 01:02, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

The father is now dead. He is irrelevant to Saskia Sassen's professional work. So dragging out his old WWII Nazi activities, from long before her birth, simply "taints" her and attempts to "smear" her entirely-separate and admirable career. Any family tree has its "black sheep", and among the Sassens perhaps Willem was that. But other families, too, have had murderers and rapists and worse in their genealogies: Wikipedia should not become a tool simply for gossip and vendetta -- if there is a substantive connection from the activities of the ancestor to the activities of the descendant, then I might see "relevance", but here there is none.

Wikipedia should not be used to hunt down every European family that once had a Nazi in it: certainly any actual Nazi individuals ought to be identified, particularly those apparently like Willem Sassen who escaped judgement & punishment or are thought to have escaped -- but going further and extending that guilt to their children born later turns Wikipedia into an irresponsible witch-hunt, is not NPOV per Wikipedia policy, and discredits the otherwise-admirable effort to identify the Nazis themselves.

--Kessler 15:41, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

There is good reason to believe that Sassen's father was a Nazi and/or a fascist for all of his life (Eichmann interviews, work for south american dictators, etc.). He was Saskia's father and not a "black sheep" somewhere in her family tree. There is good reason to believe that her father's opinions, thoughts and deeds influenced her, at least in her youth. It would be interesting to learn if, and if so, when and how she rid herself of this legacy, and what her attitude to this legacy is today. If she should happen to have never addressed it, this very fact would speak for itself! In my view it is mandatory that Wikipedia at least inform its readers of the fact, that Saskia Sassen's father was the Nazi Willem Sassen. You try to suppress this fact; this is not NPOV; because you admire Sassen, the daughter, you try to put her on a pedestal and summon the rest of us to deny the fact that she had the bad luck of having a Nazi-father – too bad, but that's the way the facts happen to be. — Nol Aders 18:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

This is rv number 2. The procedure here on Wikipedia, I believe, is that on the 3rd rv this becomes more serious: I then will report what you are doing to others here and they will decide whether to permit you to continue. In my opinion you should not: I personally applaud your hunting down Nazis, as I have said -- but I am opposed to your hunting down the children of Nazis, and particularly to your presuming them "guilty until they prove themselves innocent" as you just have said, and to your using Wikipedia for this purpose. So I encourage you to continue discussing your views here, with myself and others, but please do not do another edit or text change: the policy on Wikipedia is to "achieve consensus", and for this you must discuss and persuade.

--Kessler 19:11, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello, Kessler,

what follows is my reaction to your 19:11 posting, that I had been working out for almost an hour or so. I had not noticed your going on. I shall reply to your 20:09 posting in a few minutes. Thank you.

If my count is correct, yours was already revert no. 3, was it not?

In my view, there is no question of guilt. I do not understand, why you are talking (or writing, for that) about guilt. You have not contested the fact that S.S.'s father was a Nazi. Do you argue that her father ever in his life stopped holding and supporting Nazi and fascist views? In my opinion there is no evidence whatsoever to support such an argument; to the contrary, there is strong evidence that the father held Nazi and fascist views until at least the 1970's, when his daughter was in her 20's. It is only reasonable to believe that these views of her father's influenced the daughter in her youth, at least for as long as she was living with her father. (I do not know, how long she was; do you?)

There is no question of "hunting down the children of Nazis"; I protest your insinuation of my doing so.

Apart from that, I think that every biography in an encyclopedia, that exceeds a certain length, should state at least the known information about who the parents and the children of the person were. This implies that if both father and daughter are in the encyclopedia, there must be a link from each of the two articles to the other. I cannot think of any sound reason for an exception to this rule. Can you?

I would suggest you answer to my arguments with regard to the matters, please; you have not done so until now. Is this your way of "discussing" and "persuading"? It is beyond my comprehension how you could hope for "consensus" that way.

Up to the count of three, I have one more revert to go, have I not? — Nol Aders 20:39, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Here is how this works on Wikipedia, Nol Aders, at least my understanding of it anyway... The point above all is to avoid a "fight", which Wikipedia defines more-or-less as either name-calling -- which we have not gotten into, and I hope we won't -- or repeated use of "rv", which we are getting into just now.

If we cannot resolve this ourselves, there then are Wikipedia procedures for disciplining us: review by others which can result in article changes which you and I would not be permitted to correct, and / or the "banning" of us from further work on the article, or even from access to the entire Wikipedia. Neither of us wants this.

Per Wikipedia policy, our overall effort is to establish a "consensus": which may be difficult to do, as you and I appear to be at odds on a very fundamental question here, on which others no doubt are at odds as well. Let us try to "narrow the issue", though, and try to distinguish clearly what we are and are not disagreeing about:

• You appear to feel that the children of Nazis need to be identified publicly, in addition to the Nazis themselves, do you not? I would disagree with that, myself: it is my belief that noting that a Nazi had a spouse and children may not even be relevant, and that publicly identifying the spouse and children by name or "links" or otherwise simply is an attempt to "smear" them...

So, is this the precise point on which you and I disagree, here? Or is there something else involved?

--Kessler 20:09, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello, Kessler,

I appreciate your effort of trying to narrow the issue. I shall do my best to cooperate in this effort.

I think, who the parents of a person are, is a biographical fact. Whoever my parents are—I have to deal with it in some way or another, as I have to deal with other facts like the length or the strength or the healthiness of my body, the color of my hair and my eyes. I also have to deal with man-made facts like my parent's decision to educate me as a buddhist or a muslim or a jew or an atheist (this usually according to their /our familiy's tradition). I am not responsible for my biographical legacy, but I am responsible for the way I deal with my biographical legacy.

I think that it is not "smearing" Saskia Sassen to state the fact that her father happened to be a Nazi. She had to deal with this fact of her biography in some way or another like she had to deal with all other facts of her biography in some way or another. Did she ever come to the conclusion that Nazis are bad or evil? Probably. When and how? Was it not difficult for her when she learned that her father was a Nazi and what Nazis are? and that she (probably) wanted to and (probably) did still love her father (which not all daughters can, but that is still a very different story)? By learning how exactly she dealt with this fact, we might learn what a wise way could be to build one's life with such a legacy; if her way of dealing with this fact were another one, we might also come to the conclusion that she did not deal with her biographical legacy in a wise or responsible way. As long as she does not speak out on these matters, however, this is pure speculation, which I would not get into when writing a serious text.

I think that it is not "smearing" a person by stating that her father was a Nazi, if this is a fact. Such a fact of course is a challenge to anybody who is concerned.

Where would you draw the line, which facts about parents are allowed to be referred to: Nazi? murderer? thief? defrauder? communist? socialist? conservative? reactionary? Stalinist? McCarthyist? revolutionary? convert? emigrant? immigrant? nationalist? ex-concentration camp inmate? homosexual? homophobic? each of these with the prefix ex- (ex-Nazi, ex-communist, etc. — I inevitably must have missed a few very interesting ones!) Could you ever in your encyclopedia link a child to his or her parent? Only those with the boring parents?

Would it be acceptable for you to put in something like "Sassen is the daughter of the Dutch journalist Willem Sassen and grew up …" i.e. leaving the father's qualifications to the article dedicated to him and thus eliminating these qualifications from his daughter's article? This would be ok for me. It would not be acceptable for me, however, not to have a link to her father's article at all, just because her father happened to be a Nazi. — Nol Aders 22:00, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Nol, (responding to your reply #1: I'll archive all this -- pls see explanation at the end, below -- then respond to your reply #2 just received)

Thanks for your reply. You said,

> what follows is my reaction to your 19:11 posting, that I had been working out for almost an hour or so. I had not noticed your going on. I shall reply to your 20:09 posting in a few minutes. Thank you.

OK I'll get to that whenever it comes in...

> If my count is correct, yours was already revert no. 3, was it not?

To be honest I wasn't counting completely :-) I'd seen those two recent rv's and simply figured the next would be "a" #3, if not "the" #3...

> In my view, there is no question of guilt. I do not understand, why you are talking (or writing, for that) about guilt.

It seems to me guilt is the only issue here: guilt of the father being "spread" to the child -- whether or not the father was in fact guilty, which I do not know and have not contested.

I do not believe that the child should be held accountable, in this case. Had the child herself been a Nazi, or had she lived during the Nazi period, or had she ever expressed herself on the issues which so concerned her father, I'd say she might be fair game for a link, yes; but to the best of my own knowledge she was not and did not and has not.

> You have not contested the fact that S.S.'s father was a Nazi.

No, I haven't. That does not mean, however, that I know that he was or that he was not: I don't, in fact. But the point is not germane to my own objection, here, which is that the children of such people should not be stained with the sins of their elders.

> Do you argue that her father ever in his life stopped holding and supporting Nazi and fascist views?

I do not know. And as I just said it would not matter, either way, to the point which I am making here, which concerns the child not the father.

> In my opinion there is no evidence whatsoever to support such an argument; to the contrary, there is strong evidence that the father held Nazi and fascist views until at least the 1970's, when his daughter was in her 20's.

Perhaps, but to me that is a "straw man" argument, as we have been discussing: irrelevant, as I have been saying, to the daughter and her life.

> It is only reasonable to believe that these views of her father's influenced the daughter in her youth, at least for as long as she was living with her father.

This I am sure is correct in the generality -- all fathers "influence" their children -- but one never knows precisely what that influence really is.

Some fathers, for example, "influence" their children to move as far as possible away from their father, both physically and in their political opinions. Quite a few children grow up even hating their fathers, and nearly all spend lifetimes distinguishing -- or trying to -- their own lifestyles, and appearances, and particularly their political opinions, from those of their parents.

Freud had a great deal to say about all this. So did Erik Erikson. So did R.D. Laing. But I am not sure that there is any sort of consensus on the subject. It still is pretty much of a mystery, in fact, just what effect "family life" really has upon the child. One thing we do know though, I believe, is that there is not such a direct causal connection as the one which you seem to be implying here, that mere proximity will transfer a father's political opinions to his daughter. If anything, in my own experience as I have said, it is the other way around: the daughter grows up intentionally and often strenuously disagreeing with the father -- particularly about politics... -- in any event the matter is far more complicated than you suggest.

> (I do not know, how long she was; do you?)

I do not. To me it would not matter if I did. I know plenty of former-"children", too, who resented being held at home too long by their parents and "rebelled" a little later than the others: their rebellion often was even more extreme than that of other children.

> There is no question of "hunting down the children of Nazis"; I protest your insinuation of my doing so.

I am sorry to evoke your protest by the suggestion. I believe, though, that if you would look at the situation here through the eyes of one of its potential victims, you would see that this would be the result. You may not intend this. But were I a child of a Nazi father I certainly would feel persecuted by being linked to him publicly, particularly a link such as Wikipedia provides: blatant and global -- who knows what "nuts" may read the things you and I post here -- and with no reasonable opportunity for the victim's reply and defense and discussion. I think we need to be very careful, about innocent victims: not so about Nazis, as I have said -- but we help Nazis do further damage to people, by victimizing their children, unintentionally or otherwise.

> Apart from that, I think that every biography in an encyclopedia, that exceeds a certain length, should state at least the known information about who the parents and the children of the person were.

But there is much "information" about a person which does not deserve space in a biography: the length of their toenails, the telephone number they once used -- an obscure article on flower-arranging if their career was in politics, or one on politics if they were, only, notable flower-arrangers -- all such data nowadays may be discovered easily, about anyone, but that does not make it "relevant". For some purposes a toenail-length datum might be relevant -- to a criminal investigation, for example, or in archaeology -- but for other purposes, such as consideration of a Nazi's past, it is not. Neither is the name of his child, or even whether he had one.

Relevancy is the key here, not "information"; I am not saying that information about these people does not exist, no, I am saying that some of it is not relevant.

> This implies that if both father and daughter are in the encyclopedia, there must be a link from each of the two articles to the other. I cannot think of any sound reason for an exception to this rule. Can you?

Yes, I can: the reason I gave originally -- irrelevancy -- is the most important in building an encylopedia, I believe. In hunting for "Nazis", your own example, the entire population of the Netherlands might be "linked", for instance: Nazi Germany did rule that entire nation for a while, back in the 1940s... It would be a ridiculous and not very useful association, of course, even though some seriously have suggested it: most of us though believe narrower categories are needed, to make sense of what we really are trying to know, so we have invented groupings such as "party members" and "collaborators" and "non-Nazi other fascists" and "sympathizers" and so on.

And there also are the "innocent": the "victims" and "resistance fighters" and many others. I am suggesting to you that the children of a Nazi may be among the innocent: never the parent, but give the children a chance -- if there is a substantive link between the thought and actions of a Nazi's otherwise-innocent child to her parent then I would make it, but I see no such relationship here. I see only a father and his daughter, and the article on the father's Nazi past is not about his fatherhood.

> I would suggest you answer to my arguments with regard to the matters, please; you have not done so until now. Is this your way of "discussing" and "persuading"? It is beyond my comprehension how you could hope for "consensus" that way.

This accusation I think is unfair: you will see -- above, here -- lengthy and I hope thoughtful attempts to answer your arguments and to discuss and persuade, my hope certainly being that some "consensus" might be achieved here, even between just us two.

I realize that you probably hold your convictions in this matter very strongly, and I must insist that you and I most likely agree on nearly all that you believe about it: to me the Nazis represent one of the most abhorrent eras in human history, and they very much deserve rooting-out, and identification, and punishment for the terrible things they did. If that effort is to be successful it must be respected, however, and if it becomes excessive it will not be: extending the effort to the innocent children of old Nazis would lose it that respect.

So I encourage you to reconsider -- to be very careful, about simply loading "all information" into an effort as emotionally-laden as the identification of Nazis -- do so precisely, and accurately, and carefully, as single mistakes in this arena can discredit the careful work of others, as well. If Willem Sassen was a Nazi, that certainly deserves to be known. But the suggestion, via mere "innuendo" as here, that his descendants therefore are too, will make readers simply discount the article as extremist and not worth consideration. We always will need readers to consider and reject Nazism, but to accomplish this we need to be careful with the facts we have.

> Up to the count of three, I have one more revert to go, have I not? — Nol Aders 20:39, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, stretching your luck, there... :-) No, at "3" my understanding is that then sparks are supposed to fly: after that, no more discussion entre nous here -- at that point supposedly we raise the flag that a "fight" is under way, and we appeal to the millions to wade in and scream and yell and vote and "decide" for us.

That is the democratic way, of course, although I think you'll find on this issue that "pure" democracy will go against you. Even if it doesn't, though, I believe that would be very wrong, and I would continue to protest. I have seen nothing in Saskia Sassen's writing, myself -- and I have read a great deal of it -- to suggest or even hint that she ever has shared in her father's political activities, or his opinions. To the contrary, in fact: S.Sassen seems greatly concerned with a nearly opposite point of view: she writes, favorably, about highly-democratized social movements, and she is respected as one of the more thorough and eloquent advocates of the global working poor -- I encourage you to read some of what she has written, which I am sure will convince you that her views contradict those which you probably, and very rightly, would think that her father held. Perhaps S.Sassen is one of those "daughters" who grew up rejecting the parental advice... :-)

So I will hold my fire, here, if you will too. Please do not do another edit here, until we have resolved this -- likewise I promise to leave that W.Sassen article mention of S.Sassen alone for a while, as well, altho please do not expand or further link it. Let us both think this over, then, and perhaps discuss it a little more. I believe strongly, as you do, in finding the old Nazis and singling them out and describing their sins to the rest of the world -- not their children, but definitely them -- so perhaps, sharing that common interest, you and I can figure out a better way of "saying" what the important things really are, here, on Wikipedia.

(This Talk page has grown too long, incidentally: please don't be alarmed if it "goes away" for a moment -- there is a procedure here for making an "Archive" file out of it, which will appear as a link at the top of the page -- the link will say "Archive1" and the page will be "Archive2". I've never done this, myself, but as soon as I can figure out how to do it I will. I just did not want to upset you by having things suddenly "disappear" -- which happened to me, once, and then did I get upset! -- so I thought I'd warn you.)

I will be very interested to read your responses.

--Kessler 22:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

ps. I see that your reply #2 just came in -- I'll post the above by me first, then "archive", then respond to your #2. Hope that's OK.

ok so far. Thank you. This is exactly the material discussion I had missed first and which I too think is good and necessary. I share your feeling that we probably agree on more issues than we disagree on, so we should find a way out 'entre nous'.

Local time here is almost 1 AM, so although I am a 'night owl', I'll see that I get some sleep. I'll be away and/or busy for a good part of the weekend (this is an exceptionally long weekend in Europe — Ascension day on thursday and many people 'bridging' friday — traffic congestions on all highways leading south :-) I shall probably not be online until monday (and then back at work ...), but I'll do my best. Thanks & so long, Nol Aders 22:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Nol,

Reply to your #2: you said,

> I appreciate your effort of trying to narrow the issue. I shall do my best to cooperate in this effort.

OK, me too :-)

> I think, who the parents of a person are, is a biographical fact. Whoever my parents are—I have to deal with it in some way or another, as I have to deal with other facts like the length or the strength or the healthiness of my body, the color of my hair and my eyes. I also have to deal with man-made facts like my parent's decision to educate me as a buddhist or a muslim or a jew or an atheist (this usually according to their /our familiy's tradition). I am not responsible for my biographical legacy, but I am responsible for the way I deal with my biographical legacy.

Very true -- no disagreement here.

> I think that it is not "smearing" Saskia Sassen to state the fact that her father happened to be a Nazi.

But there is a great difference between emotive and non-emotive language. Language has context: there is not a single "meaning" to a highly-emotive word -- that meaning depends, sometimes entirely, upon the context in which it is used.

"Nazi" is a highly-emotive word. To say that a person's father was "six feet tall" or "had blue eyes" or "lived in a small house" may not be -- unless one is trying to prove that "six feet tall" meant he was cruel, or that "had blue eyes" meant he was "Aryan", or that "lived in a small house" meant he therefore was more honest than some other father. In the case of "Nazi", though, the cultural context is pretty well-established that the term is entirely negative and that it implies guilt-by-association for the child, I believe.

I cannot think of any situation, any context, in which to say "her father was a Nazi" would not imply guilt-by-association... Perhaps if the child were a very well-known anti-Nazi crusader, famous for her work in that precise field and always associated with Nazi resistance and with values opposed to the Nazi cause. Such a phrase certainly never would be neutral: one never simply would say, just casually, "her father happened to be a Nazi" -- that is the very meaning of "emotive", that association with this particular term always implies strong bias pro or con.

So, no, I do think pointing out that someone's father was a Nazi would be "smearing" them: attributing actions and opinions to them, by association with someone else, without proper evidence -- guilt-by-association. I cannot imagine anyone, accused or just a listener, reacting merely neutrally or casually to such an accusation.

> She had to deal with this fact of her biography in some way or another like she had to deal with all other facts of her biography in some way or another.

I am sure you are correct. All children of Nazis must have had to do this -- all children of murderers, as well -- also of criminals -- all children, in fact, whatever the "pasts" of their parents have been.

> Did she ever come to the conclusion that Nazis are bad or evil? Probably. When and how? Was it not difficult for her when she learned that her father was a Nazi and what Nazis are? and that she (probably) wanted to and (probably) did still love her father (which not all daughters can, but that is still a very different story)?

These things I do not know. If they were relevant to the article about her I might wonder, but they seem to me not to be.

> By learning how exactly she dealt with this fact, we might learn what a wise way could be to build one's life with such a legacy; if her way of dealing with this fact were another one, we might also come to the conclusion that she did not deal with her biographical legacy in a wise or responsible way. As long as she does not speak out on these matters, however, this is pure speculation, which I would not get into when writing a serious text.

Yes but is she under some obligation to do so? It might be nice, true, if all "victims" were as forthcoming as you suggest: all of us then might learn a great deal, about how better to cope with such problems ourselves.

Legally and politically, though -- historically -- we have "victimized" such victims, in all societies. People who have come forward, "confessing" or otherwise revealing things about their past, or about the pasts of their fathers etc., we have "judged" and decided to praise or condemn. And very often we have decided in error, very wrongly.

So we have a presumption that someone is "innocent until proven guilty": only in law, perhaps, and only in some legal systems officially, but there also is a feeling -- in most societies now, I believe -- that it is not the burden of the individual to come forward with evidence which might cause themselves harm, but the burden of society to do so. Since the Totalitarian era, at least... Otherwise we would have "police states": it is what the Nazis did, in fact -- demanding "total loyalty" of the citizens, to the point where they would "turn in" to the authorities each other and even themselves, for crimes such as "wrong thinking".

Without the "presumption of innocence" and the "burden of proof", a modern society is not civilized: we would be back in the Nazi era, then, and we would have learned nothing.

> I think that it is not "smearing" a person by stating that her father was a Nazi, if this is a fact.

As I said, to me it depends upon the context... There are different sorts of speech: some non-emotive speech can be very innocent -- some emotive speech can be very damaging even if innocently-intended -- some speech even constitutes an "act" in and of itself.

We legally "protect" some speech: yours is a possible example -- perhaps we all ought to be "free" to call one another a "Nazi", particularly if it turns out in fact to be true... On the other hand the "meaning" of something we say can involve very much more than the mere words. For example we say "fire" to describe the fact of "flame" -- there is nothing bad in that, and if there is a flame then in fact it is true -- but if we yell "fire" loudly, in a crowded theater, knowing that a panic will result and that people will be hurt, then we may be wrong and we may be punished for it. Your example of saying someone's father "was a Nazi" is like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater: it even may be true in fact, but what really counts is the context -- the intention with which you said it, the result of your doing so -- if you are a theater employee trained in evacuation procedures, and instead of using those you just yell "fire", and particularly if you do so hoping that people will panic and be hurt, you are punished.

So the situation matters -- the context is what counts. But that can be complex. One mechanism we use to "filter" complex situations is relevance: was what you did relevant to the situation? -- did your shouting "fire" help things? If what you did we decide was irrelevant, then we begin to wonder why you did it... and then we begin to look for other motives, sometimes very bad motives, such as guilt-by-association...

That is why I suggested, initially here, that "irrelevance" is the problem. An article about a sociologist / urbanologist gets linked to an article about a Nazi... Immediately, the first thought of anyone would be, "what is the relevance?". Your reply has been that, "she is his daughter" -- but his fatherhood is not the point of his article, as I've said -- only that he was a Nazi, and his children are simply not relevant to that -- so then we go looking for other motives you might have had, and we come up with damaging possibilities such as guilt-by-association and even worse, all of which erode the credibility of your otherwise-good anti-Nazi cause...

If there were other connections besides paternity, here, which created relevance, that might help your position: if the child's career somehow echoed that of the father -- if the interests and opinions coincided. But, again, there is no relevance. So that is why "guilt-by-association" -- or, even worse, "smear" -- occur to someone who reads the one passage about the child, in your otherwise-interesting and perhaps even much-needed article: it makes the article sound "extremist", and reasonable people will discount the entire article, for that.

That is why I have been encouraging you to take the offending line about the relationship out: just the one line, not the entire article -- the irrelevancy / extremism of that one line damages both the article about the child, and the much-needed article about the father as well.

> Such a fact of course is a challenge to anybody who is concerned.

"Burden of proof", as suggested above: who has the burden of proving guilt, the accused or the accuser? Sometimes it does injustice to put that burden on the accuser, admittedly. But all the sad political history of the last century -- the Nazi century -- as well as that of many centuries before it, and now perhaps of the new century we have embarked upon since, suggests that abuse of this very old legal principle by the State, against innocent individuals, is by far the greater danger. So we protect the accused: they are "innocent until proven guilty", not the other way around -- which is at it should be, I believe, and I expect you would agree. All sorts of innocent people would be "accused", otherwise, and per Kafka and many others we then would have to spend our lives "defending" ourselves.

> Where would you draw the line, which facts about parents are allowed to be referred to: Nazi? murderer? thief? defrauder? communist? socialist? conservative? reactionary? Stalinist? McCarthyist? revolutionary? convert? emigrant? immigrant? nationalist? ex-concentration camp inmate? homosexual? homophobic? each of these with the prefix ex- (ex-Nazi, ex-communist, etc. — I inevitably must have missed a few very interesting ones!)

Yep, you missed "chocolate-eater" and "paper-clip bender", two of my favorites... :-) Great list!

Remember that I can wiggle out of this with "context": it is not the term itself so much as the entire context within which it is used, to me -- "conservative" can mean so many things -- I had a grandmother who I'd happily label "Stalinist" in behavior, although not in her political opinions -- "communist" means one thing to someone from Hamburg and very much something else to someone from Chicago -- and so on and so on.

If the term is "relevant" in a given very-complicated context, though -- a thing very difficult to determine, admittedly, as even Google with all their inhouse geniuses on the subject still hasn't quite figured that one out -- then I'd include it. I'd refer to parents who had an influence on the child, for example, if I could prove the influence -- pointing to something the child said or did -- and if the influence was germane to the point being made.

So simply saying that a Nazi was father to an urbanologist is not germane: Nazism doesn't have anything to do with urbanology -- and even if it were germane, I can't prove the influence simply by stating it, as the urbanologist in question may violently disagree with her father on all subjects, and may have spent a lifetime doing so, who knows...

> Could you ever in your encyclopedia link a child to his or her parent? Only those with the boring parents?

All parents are boring -- mine were -- to their children, at least... That is one fundamental reason why we all "revolt" against them: to make the world a better place, or at least a more interesting place... sometimes we succeed, & sometimes we don't, and then we ourselves have children who do the same to us, & so it goes...

And, as per the above: if there is a link, you make it -- but if not and it's irrelevant, then no -- link to the parents, by all means, but only if the link is germane to the article and you can prove the influence, boring or not...

> Would it be acceptable for you to put in something like "Sassen is the daughter of the Dutch journalist Willem Sassen and grew up …" i.e. leaving the father's qualifications to the article dedicated to him and thus eliminating these qualifications from his daughter's article? This would be ok for me. It would not be acceptable for me, however, not to have a link to her father's article at all, just because her father happened to be a Nazi.

I thought you might suggest this... :-) Cup which is half-empty also is half-full... Let me think about it...

The objection I have to the Willem Sassen article as it stands currently is one made by others there, already: lack of substantiation, plus a little NPOV. I see that you have been working hard on the former point, adding in good research and links and rounding out the presentation. The NPOV point, about a Nazi, admittedly is a little more difficult to deal with -- not too much that is "good" or even "balanced" can be said about one of those guys...

Nevertheless, W.Sassen had a long career in journalism, and via the Eichmann interviews he played an important part in one of the Holocaust's, and the 20th century's, major news stories. So I suppose if that W.Sassen article gets fleshed out, more -- made more of a reasoned analysis of who W.Sassen was and what he did and why he did it -- one NPOV not in the sense that his Nazism or later political views get defended, but that they get put more into the context of the terrible political and social times of which they were a part -- then links to it from various articles might make more sense. Right now the W.Sassen article seems borderline, and even up for deletion at some point if someone gets mad about that "verified / citing sources" objection etc.: I would disagree, myself, but that is where things are currently -- no point linking to an article about to go away...

But as more work gets done on W.Sassen, I'm sure that situation will improve: we need to know about these old Nazis -- about their real lives, and the work they really did, and the very terrible "context" (that word again) in which they did it, so I hope myself that the article will survive and prosper. Demonization of those people is the great enemy, I personally believe: there is a "universal soldier" aspect, to the entire Nazi phenomenon -- we are all too quick to defend ourselves by demonizing others, when in fact so many of us non-demons supported or at least acquiesced in the Nazi atrocities and if we're not careful we always might do so again. So we do need to know.

But we have to be careful about how we approach the task -- you have to be careful, in building your article, as I've urged -- to reach people and make them listen, and read, and hear and understand, the article cannot / must not be "extremist".

So give me some time, as I've said: and try to add more general things, to the W.Sassen article, which might explain better why a young and intelligent and promising Hollander might have come to think the way he did, and do the things he did, during the 1930s and 1940s. The world has similar situations in it now, and perhaps it always will. So if we can see things from his point of view -- as well as our own now, with all the benefit of hindsight which we now have about him -- that will be NPOV-by-definition, at least, to keep the Wikipedia policy people happy :-), and it will be something with which a younger generation now on Wikipedia can better indentify, hopefully learning not to repeat young W.Sassen's mistakes... That would be an article to which a lot of others might link.

--Kessler 00:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

ps. Have a nice "Ascension Day" and "Bridging Friday": stay off the highways -- over here in the US we call this upcoming weekend "Memorial Day", and the highway congestion here just produces lots of terrible traffic hamburger and little else... good weekend to stay at home and just "cultivate the garden"... talk to you later...