Ask The Tropers

Looking quickly, I might be missing something, but I honestly don't think the Birth of a Nation or Mission to Moscow pages are that much less neutral than the Victoria one. There are occasional snide lines here and there that could be fixed or toned down, and a couple of tropes that are misused on Birth, but most of the text still seems to be more or less descriptive without hectoring. (Since the movies are both historical-fiction works and Victoria isn't, there will necessarily be a couple of more opinionated tropes, on Historical Villain Upgrade and such, but not a huge lot of those even so.) So on that count, I'd say all of those three are mostly OK with our policy on Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Language, though all could also still use a little bit of additional polish. All three also use some variant of "controversial" in their introductions/descriptions ("extremely controversial"; "controversial in many quarters"; "not without controversy"), to make clear that they represent opinions that aren't mainstream in the present-day US.

The Turner Diaries article on the other hand is pretty much relentless negativity and political ax-grinding through and through. Which is probably sort of understandable in a way, given that book's provenance and character, though still technically against the rules. I suppose it's mostly people who hate it really much that care enough about it to write on that page (as I doubt its intended audience has much of a presence on here), and then that's how it goes. IMHO, we'd do better to just let it speak for itself—and that would probably also be the most cleanly effective way of showing people how bad it is, rather than drenching the page in outrage and hamfisted snark. Indeed, I could see a danger that the opinionated way it stands now may well serve to actually make it look more attractive and "cool" to the right wing millennials and assorted edgelords, if I know that sort of people right.

I'm probably not going to do any work on that page myself either way, though, since to write honestly about the book, I'd need to read it, and I don't feel much like sponsoring the publisher, and/or sinking that much of my time into something like that. Just offering a suggestion, if anyone else feels like having a go at it. Though I might take a closer look at the Birth and Mission pages later on, if you want help revising the unneutral bits there.

On comparisons of Turner Diaries and Victoria, as was noted above, I haven't read the former, so I can't really give a fair all-around appraisal of it, but with that caveat, just from looking at the quotes from it on here and at Wiki there's the obvious difference that Turner writes gleefully about killing all "race-traitors" (the infamous "Day of the Rope") and moreover, literally advocates and celebrates genocide of almost all of the world's population (something that's in the very opening quote on its page). Victoria as a post-apocalyptic story of course also has a massive body count, though much smaller than that, but more importantly, there the plagues, starvation, etc. that claim millions of victims are generally seen as tragic and part of the apocalyptic horrors, not something good and desirable to cheer for. No one in the book, not even the villains, commits atrocities on Turner's scale.

There's also the stylistic point that Victoria is set in a bizarre Retro Universe speculative setting, with plumed dragoons and wooden biplanes fighting cyber-amazons, crusading Russian czars commanding knightly orders and Red Alert-esque Zeppelins from Another World ruling the skies. That alone would make it at least relatively speaking less "horrible" and more "funny" than Turner's apparently totally humorless and straight-faced genocide fantasies, even if it were equally bad about a lot of the other stuff. Just like (for example) the Imperium of Man in Warhammer 40,000 is more acceptable: i.e., Wacky Space Nazis in fantastic stories are less offensive than "realistic" Nazis when put in a heroic role—even though the Imperium is objectively speaking a nightmarish fascist dystopia that routinely slaughters far more people than even Turner ever manages, and often for equally bad or even dumber/more evil reasons. For various reasons, people don't take it as seriously when the action gets cartoonish enough.

I think the comparison to Warhammer 40k is off base (and I don't necessarily agree that it's heavily sympathetic view of fascism is acceptable either), because Victoria, regardless of how ridiculous it is, still stops to pontificate about the danger posed by savage black culture and "cultural Marxist" (read: Jewish) intellectuals, which are real things that real fascists actually believe. Though my greatest reservations are about the tearjerker page, particularly the last two entries. The first starts fine, then devolves into rambling and ends by invoking the Nazis for seemingly no reason. The second opens by referring to the main characters "heroism", then explicitly calls the New Confederacy a "utopia". That goes into a straight up endorsement of the book and its message, which we absolutely should not allow.

In the last Tearjerker bit, those are in-universe references to how the character is seen in the setting. However, I agree that could certainly be clarified. In fact, if it's OK with you, I'll go rewrite that bit right away to fix that.

I don't see right away what's bad with the one before, though? It's a legitimate comparison IMHO; the point is that the enemy is individually young and innocent and even pitiable, even though he (or she, in this case) is fighting for a ruthless fascist state. Off the top of my head, I can't really think of a better analogy that'll be understood by mainstream America than the Hitler Youth soldiers in World War II.

Rereading it, is this a tearjerker at all? He lives a long life in what he sees as a perfect world. That's a pretty damn happy ending.

In the one before, I just think the entire last couple sentences are pointless. They come off as pitiable, that's enough. The weird need to make clear the writer doesn't sympathize with their "cause" is unneeded.

I still think, if we want neutrality, we can just note that the comparison to The Turner Diaries is often made, and state that it "may or may not be fair".

Dying Alone is considered sad enough to be a regular trope categorized under Tearjerker. I don't see why that wouldn't fit there.

On the other one, I don't know, but I still think it's relevant in the context to note that even though they're pitiable, the Azanians are part of a fascist war machine that is clearly intended to be unsympathetic as a whole. That they are dying fighting for an evil regime is a major part of just what makes their fate so tragic. Comparing them to the Hitler Youth troops the US Army fought in World War II is a good image to bring that situation through to the reader without a whole paragraph of exposition, since it's one that will be at least vaguely familiar (through movies if not real history).

As for Turner again... The problem with that solution on the last bit is that it would not be neutral at all. Since "The Turner Diaries" is such a toxic title, any sort of implied equivalency with it is necessarily also a complete condemnation and consignment beyond the pale. Of course, if the books are legitimately equivalent, that's not an issue—but I don't think we can seriously claim that what basically amounts to a cranky science fiction story, even if a reactionary one, is morally equivalent to an explicitly worded neo-Nazi propaganda tract that supports murder of all interracial couples and sincerely advocates and glories in genocide of 90+ percent of the world population . That's not fair, and there are no "mays" about it. It becomes simply a smear, because Turner is just that horrible. Whatever else one might say about Victoria, it doesn't have anything in it that comes anywhere remotely close to that.

Perhaps instead, we should clarify the reasons why they are not at all equivalent? Say, instead of "While this is less than fair (as a casual look at [Turner's] page will confirm)" (as it goes now), the intro might be more specific and read something like:

"While this is less than fair (since, for example, Turner advocates fascist dictatorship and genocide of billions of people, which Victoria doesn't)..."

That way, other readers won't have to guess, but will see right away why the comparison is unfair.

Or just delete the line. Seems simpler that way. I also think the description should at least have a note explain the origins of the term "Cultural Marxism".

That could also work.

As it stands, "Cultural Marxism" has a link in the intro section to the Wikipedia page that explains it. Would you prefer a text note instead? Having both might seem a little overdone.