Talk:Leon Trotsky

Christopher Hitchens

Should we give Hitch a mention here, as he is one of the more well-known ex-Trotskyists, and he's not ashamed of it either. StarDelta (talk) 13:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

That'll be a 'no' then. StarDelta (talk) 10:05, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Why not? Evil Zionist (talk) 14:15, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

UK Trots

...are often associated with the adjective 'hairy.' 171.33.222.26 (talk) 13:09, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Jews

Why are you defending Jews all the time? Is RationalWiki financed by the Jews?--Kevin (talk) 15:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Troll! —вιgℓʝвιgℓ (ᴛᴀʟᴋ/sᴛᴀʟᴋ) 11:18, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Factual errors

There's a blatant factual error in the article stating that Trotsky advocated war against Poland. At the outset of the 1919-1921 Polish-Soviet War, the Red Army was preoccupied with civil war and invasions by foreign powers. Poland in fact launched the war to expand its territory from the Ukraine to the upper Baltic, with the support of Britain and France in their strategy to topple the Soviet government.

Permanent revolution was a strategy for gaining state power and had nothing to do with expanding Communist revolution abroad.

If the article is supposed to be a chronicle of the misdeeds of Trotsky, the author might at least include his biggest one. Betcha can't guess what it is! ^{— Unsigned, by: 75.111.20.66 / talk / contribs} 08:37, 30 May 2014‎ (UTC)

Instead of being cute about it, why don't you just say what it is? Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 14:16, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Gossip-column style

The lead closes with this tortured sentence:

"The fact he was a Jew was of particular use to Joseph Goebbels and a certain little Corporal was quite pissed when the pro-Soviet Rosa Luxemburg nearly declared Germany part of the Soviet Union, and his delusional shitty brain went from there."

"a certain little Corporal" is linked, so the reader doesn't need to guess, but I see that style of writing as precious and smug, casting both writer and reader as insiders in the know. If the reader doesn't already know, then they are left out.

"and his delusional shitty brain went from there." OK, what's that supposed to mean, to someone who hasn't spent their time following the ins and outs of that corner of history? Again, the style seems to be more about what a clever wordsmith the writer thinks they are, instead of informing the reader.

I believe there are a few capable editors rummaging around in the wiki with the particular knowledge and writing skills to fix this. Please? Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 14:16, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Beliefs and political position

The big problem with Trotsky is it seems that a lot of people hold him up as exemplifying a more humane type of communism, without much evidence (although he was probably more humane than genocidal, anti-semitic, warlike Stalin, that doesn't prove much). Some attempt at assessing and classifying his ideas and views on government would be good, to separate myth from reality. (It does seem that the name "Trotskyite" is thrown about by both left and right without meaning very much.) Annquin (talk) 15:20, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

I haven't read it, but I think a good place to start assessing Trotsky's politics is "The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect" by John Eric Marot - according to this page (which summarizes the book) and this (which is the book's second chapter with an anarchist foreword which is obviously biased against Trotsky), Marot argues that Trotsky's and Stalin's ideas on how to move forward after Lenin's death were nearly identical. NameThatNobodyTakes (talk) 14:49, 4 February 2016 (UTC)