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Interesting how he still seems to enjoy a clean reputation on the Internet. His Wikipedia page is spotless and there seem to be plenty of places extolling him a

Interesting how he still seems to enjoy a clean reputation on the Internet. His Wikipedia page is spotless and there seem to be plenty of places extolling him all over. I'm pretty surprised, given that he died in 1991 and I figure he'd be universally seen as a terrible person. But he's noted in several places as a master of PR, so perhaps that continued after his death, despite causing the death and enslavement of countless people and losing a Supreme Court case related to his literal enslavement of prisoners. I wonder if he's got fans monitoring things for him after his death? Some form of post-mortem reputation service? In any case, I'm disgusted that someone who literally enslaved more than 16,000 people for over a decade seems to have gotten away with it scot-free. I figured that in the age of the Internet, someone with a horrific legacy like this would never get away with it, but indeed nearly everything about him I can find is positive, and he's even got prisons named after him operating today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Beto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Beto https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbenm https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbenm

gwern 8y ago
Looking at the WP article history, the current mention of his fight with her is in there from the beginning. It's not that anyone has been adding or removing it, just no one cares enough to add more on it...
- owenversteeg 8y ago
  Of course the Supreme Court case is there, it would be very weird if it wasn't. But it's phrased in a very specific and neutral way, as if he was fighting an odd bit of tax legislation, when the reality was he used prisoners as literal cotton picking slaves, personally oversaw brutal violence, and deprived 16,000 prisoners of due process. I mean, come on! He literally used violence to force prisoners to lie under oath to attack an attorney! He operated a system where prisoners were forced to mutilate themselves in order to survive. From the article: One former prisoner named Clyde Sewell told a graphic account of an incident in which three inmates, all supposedly shot by McAdams while they were trying to escape, were laid out as examples, alive but bleeding profusely, at the entrance to the dining hall. “We had to walk through the blood to get to the dining room,” Sewell testified. Can you imagine a hell like this? Can you imagine someone who ruled over it for over a decade and knew about every little detail and was responsible for all this horrific carnage? It's absolutely insane. These things are crimes against humanity. Being responsible for this shouldn't mean some mild mention of "Beto was the lead defendant in 405 U.S. 319 in which the court upheld a Free Exercise claim on the basis of the allegations..." in the last paragraph of an otherwise fairly uninteresting Wikipedia article. It should mean that the person is permanently condemned for the monster they were. That's what I'm complaining about: that somehow, in today's society where people seem to think you can't escape the past, true monsters do escape with their reputation unscathed. And that unsettles me.
  - boomboomsubban 8y ago
    >That's what I'm complaining about: that somehow, in today's society where people seem to think you can't escape the past, true monsters do escape with their reputation unscathed. And that unsettles me. Most of the people writing about Beto are going to be learning about him from other people involved in the criminal justice field. They aren't going to value the word of a defense attorney and some convicts. They also likely don't see many problems in his acts, it's not like the TDCJ or the US has ever really given a shit about prisoners rights.
  - austincheney 8y ago
    > But it's phrased in a very specific and neutral way Wikipedia articles should be neutral, fact based, and objective. If there is something important missing then add it neutrally with a citation. When Wikipedia articles aren't neutral they become a failed shitstorm. For example see the article on Social Justice versus Social Justice Warrior, one of which is not neutral and locked from any edits. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      How do you add "Beto was a sadistic monster" and have it seem neutral? Factual and objective, but I'm sure it would not be accepted.
      - austincheney 8y ago
        You gather addition fact based sources to cite.
    - owenversteeg 8y ago
      I'm confused, I took a brief look at both of those articles and they don't seem like a "failed shitstorm". Sure, there are points to improve, but it doesn't seem terribly bad. Which one is supposed to be the "failed shitstorm" and why? (I've been called an SJW before, so I might have some left-leaning bias here) But those articles are irrelevant to the discussion. I've contributed to Wikipedia for years and I've got a good idea of how to add things from a neutral and objective point of view. My point is exactly that the existing article is not objective. For example, pretend the article of the Charleston white supremacist mass murderer said the following: "Roof was involved in the controversy of the events of June 17, 2015. After a flurry of media attention, he became the lead defendant in the trial United States v. Roof (2:15-cr-00472), which was noted for the request for a bench trial..." The above is entirely correct, and written in a neutral, flat tone, but it completely misrepresents the situation. By noting tiny, irrelevant details like the request for a bench trial and the criminal number, the article both becomes uninteresting and hides the truth. If you read the snippet you wouldn't get the idea that he was a mass murderer. The same thing applies to the article about George Beto. He was objectively a monster. He used prisoners as literal cotton picking slaves, he operated a system that forced prisoners to mutilate themselves, and his direct subordinates shot people for no reason and let them bleed to death in an occupied dining hall "as examples". These things are not speculation, they're not partisan comments on Twitter, they're not even reporting in a possibly-biased newspaper - they're proven facts that were litigated to the highest courts of the land! These things are not even buried in court documents from decades back, they've been reported on and published! There is no reason for them to not be on Wikipedia. Meanwhile, his page is about as dry and non-negative as it possibly could be. It reads like intentionally obfuscated, reputation-managed doublespeak, and only makes reference to some of the things he was convicted of in vague ways. It's a tragedy.
mattigames 8y ago
Happens all over Wikipedia, for example Aleister Crowley (same one the Ozzy Osbourne song "Mr Crowley" is based on) is described as an scholar and where "occultism" is hold in high regard never mentioning its fictional nature and never suggesting or implying its just another money-making scam scheme; heck the Wikipedia page for Crowley or for occultism dosn't mention the word "scam" even once despite being one of the most used by its critiques.
- chris_wot 8y ago
  Well, it's really not on. I've just added a comment on the talk page of the George Beto article, perhaps others should do the same? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:George_Beto#Scrubbed_article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:George_Beto#Scrubbed_arti...?
- daodedickinson 8y ago
  It's a power scheme, NOT a mere standard money scheme.
  - mattigames 8y ago
    Ok, but that isn't mentioned either.

gwern 8y ago

Looking at the WP article history, the current mention of his fight with her is in there from the beginning. It's not that anyone has been adding or removing it, just no one cares enough to add more on it...

owenversteeg 8y ago
Of course the Supreme Court case is there, it would be very weird if it wasn't. But it's phrased in a very specific and neutral way, as if he was fighting an odd bit of tax legislation, when the reality was he used prisoners as literal cotton picking slaves, personally oversaw brutal violence, and deprived 16,000 prisoners of due process. I mean, come on! He literally used violence to force prisoners to lie under oath to attack an attorney! He operated a system where prisoners were forced to mutilate themselves in order to survive. From the article: One former prisoner named Clyde Sewell told a graphic account of an incident in which three inmates, all supposedly shot by McAdams while they were trying to escape, were laid out as examples, alive but bleeding profusely, at the entrance to the dining hall. “We had to walk through the blood to get to the dining room,” Sewell testified. Can you imagine a hell like this? Can you imagine someone who ruled over it for over a decade and knew about every little detail and was responsible for all this horrific carnage? It's absolutely insane. These things are crimes against humanity. Being responsible for this shouldn't mean some mild mention of "Beto was the lead defendant in 405 U.S. 319 in which the court upheld a Free Exercise claim on the basis of the allegations..." in the last paragraph of an otherwise fairly uninteresting Wikipedia article. It should mean that the person is permanently condemned for the monster they were. That's what I'm complaining about: that somehow, in today's society where people seem to think you can't escape the past, true monsters do escape with their reputation unscathed. And that unsettles me.
- boomboomsubban 8y ago
  >That's what I'm complaining about: that somehow, in today's society where people seem to think you can't escape the past, true monsters do escape with their reputation unscathed. And that unsettles me. Most of the people writing about Beto are going to be learning about him from other people involved in the criminal justice field. They aren't going to value the word of a defense attorney and some convicts. They also likely don't see many problems in his acts, it's not like the TDCJ or the US has ever really given a shit about prisoners rights.
- austincheney 8y ago
  > But it's phrased in a very specific and neutral way Wikipedia articles should be neutral, fact based, and objective. If there is something important missing then add it neutrally with a citation. When Wikipedia articles aren't neutral they become a failed shitstorm. For example see the article on Social Justice versus Social Justice Warrior, one of which is not neutral and locked from any edits. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    How do you add "Beto was a sadistic monster" and have it seem neutral? Factual and objective, but I'm sure it would not be accepted.
    - austincheney 8y ago
      You gather addition fact based sources to cite.
  - owenversteeg 8y ago
    I'm confused, I took a brief look at both of those articles and they don't seem like a "failed shitstorm". Sure, there are points to improve, but it doesn't seem terribly bad. Which one is supposed to be the "failed shitstorm" and why? (I've been called an SJW before, so I might have some left-leaning bias here) But those articles are irrelevant to the discussion. I've contributed to Wikipedia for years and I've got a good idea of how to add things from a neutral and objective point of view. My point is exactly that the existing article is not objective. For example, pretend the article of the Charleston white supremacist mass murderer said the following: "Roof was involved in the controversy of the events of June 17, 2015. After a flurry of media attention, he became the lead defendant in the trial United States v. Roof (2:15-cr-00472), which was noted for the request for a bench trial..." The above is entirely correct, and written in a neutral, flat tone, but it completely misrepresents the situation. By noting tiny, irrelevant details like the request for a bench trial and the criminal number, the article both becomes uninteresting and hides the truth. If you read the snippet you wouldn't get the idea that he was a mass murderer. The same thing applies to the article about George Beto. He was objectively a monster. He used prisoners as literal cotton picking slaves, he operated a system that forced prisoners to mutilate themselves, and his direct subordinates shot people for no reason and let them bleed to death in an occupied dining hall "as examples". These things are not speculation, they're not partisan comments on Twitter, they're not even reporting in a possibly-biased newspaper - they're proven facts that were litigated to the highest courts of the land! These things are not even buried in court documents from decades back, they've been reported on and published! There is no reason for them to not be on Wikipedia. Meanwhile, his page is about as dry and non-negative as it possibly could be. It reads like intentionally obfuscated, reputation-managed doublespeak, and only makes reference to some of the things he was convicted of in vague ways. It's a tragedy.

mattigames 8y ago

Happens all over Wikipedia, for example Aleister Crowley (same one the Ozzy Osbourne song "Mr Crowley" is based on) is described as an scholar and where "occultism" is hold in high regard never mentioning its fictional nature and never suggesting or implying its just another money-making scam scheme; heck the Wikipedia page for Crowley or for occultism dosn't mention the word "scam" even once despite being one of the most used by its critiques.

chris_wot 8y ago
Well, it's really not on. I've just added a comment on the talk page of the George Beto article, perhaps others should do the same? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:George_Beto#Scrubbed_article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:George_Beto#Scrubbed_arti...?
daodedickinson 8y ago
It's a power scheme, NOT a mere standard money scheme.
- mattigames 8y ago
  Ok, but that isn't mentioned either.