Talk:Dan Burros/GA1

GA review

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Nominator: PARAKANYAA (talk · contribs) 07:03, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: Premeditated Chaos (talk · contribs) 01:42, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

This'll be a fun one to read at work. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 01:42, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Going to be bold and make some copyedits as I go along rather than nitpicking you on them. Feel free to discuss and disagree with suggestions and copyedits.

Lead

• Made some copyedits here
• "He became antisemitic as a teenager." Any specific triggers for this that could fit in the lead?
  • No source gives any real indication for why he turned out this way to my knowledge.
• I swapped "ceased" for "failed"
• Do we know when he left to become an Odinist?
  • I have never seen a source that says, other than it was after he left the NRP and before he joined the Klan.
• "became a national news story and was widely publicized;" the one feels redundant to the other
  • yeah, settled on the last half
• "A biography of Burros's life" rm life, a biography is by definition about a life
  • fixed by you

Early life

• Did some trimming/copyediting here
• "While his grades were high" - is this in public/secular school or was the Hebrew school also his day to day education?
  • This was in secular middle school. Tried to make that clearer.
• Para 2 is mostly about his Hebrew school, then cuts to high grades, presumably in secular school. Then para 3 is also about his behavior in secular school and seems to repeat some of what's said at the end of para 2.
  • tried to make this clearer by the above clarifying it applies to junior high school. I'm not sure if it's the best way to say this but it is somewhat better
• "This course was not difficult and he likely failed it intentionally" according to who? This seems to be a subjective opinion
  • It was according to his classmate and his biographer. Honestly the fact that he failed Hebrew despite knowing Hebrew probably speaks for itself... I'm not sure how necessary the detail about the class being lax is, so I will just remove it.
    • I dunno, I think it's interesting enough to point out clearly, I just think it needs attribution. Even something like "Classmates regarded the course as easy and suspected Burros had failed deliberately" works fine
      • Re-added along the lines of what you suggested.
• Para 3 has a lot of "He X. He was X. He X." This isn't a GA issue but I'd suggest switching up a bit for smoother flow (mostly so I don't have to bag on you when you go to FAC)
  • Tried to make it have more variety.
• "By his third year of schooling" - I assume you mean third year of high school?
  • yup, fixed
• "Despite having grades good enough to get him into a college" you can safely trim this to "Despite having good grades", the reader will understand the significance when you finish the sentence with him not applying to college
  • fixed

Military career

• "quality member" 'quality' feels like an opinion in wikivoice - perhaps "well-regarded"? or "was regarded as a quality member"?
  • superfluous detail, flows better trimmed i think
• While poking into links the listed airborne divisions, I think I've come across a minor error - as far as I can tell, 187th Airborne combat team (which is what the source says) is a subdivision within 101st Airborne Division rather than being a separate Division. I've asked about it at MilHist; in the meantime I've tweaked the wording
  • Hmm. I had a look at the Rosenthal & Gelb ref from the next sentence, and that one seems to give a clearer indication of his service, quoted directly from the army's records. It doesn't mention the 101st at all, and from what's being said in the MilHist discussion, the 187th may not even have been part of the 101st at that time (it was after 1964, which was when Talese was writing, so I bet he just didn't check). I would probably swap to using Rosenthal & Gelb instead, although I'm not sure I would put as much detail as that has.
    • Ah, anachronism. Replaced with rosenthal & gelb. Thank you for pointing this out, I would not have noticed this myself. Added a bit more detail accordingly, though if you feel that's too much i can reduce it. I tried my best to convey the information accurately though I am sorely lacking in understanding of military terminology.
• Chopped "and did not fit in" given the redundancy to "misfit"
• "the kind of respect he desired he did not receive" - I flipped this and trimmed it a bit, in its original form it was all tied up in itself
  • yeah, even i thought this sentence was weird, i just couldn't figure out how to rephrase it. thank you
    • I've had plenty of these pointed out to me lol. Sometimes it just takes somebody else's eyes.

Political activity - American Nazi Party

• I'm not sure about the placement of what's now para 1. It feels strange to get into an analysis of his views before we've even really been properly introduced to them.
  • Yeah, I agree with this. I kind of just stuck all the parts of Burros's views that I couldn't date temporally into the above section. In other cases I would make a dedicated "views" section, but Burros wasn't that important of an ideologue and didn't have much ideological influence, so it seems unnecessary. I will try to find a way to restructure this and put the information where it flows with the rest.
    • I moved the upper paragraph down to after the ANP membership has been established. Open to further criticism on the placement.
• Sentence 3 feels repetitive of sentence 1
  • rearranged
• "his ultimate goal was the total destruction of the Jewish people" how does this distinguish him from most neo-Nazis? Isn't wanting to destroy Jewish people fundamental to their being?
  • The source mainly uses this to rebut what I think is a common thought when someone learns of someone like Burros, that they are grasping for community or do not truly believe it and such - more saying, yes, he was a "true believer" in neo-Nazi ideology and this was his actual goal and he was not just grasping for community. That was clear in the source but does not work here, so I think I will remove it since the rest of this evidences that well enough.
• Para 2 you've got two "began" in sentence 1. Sentence 2 had another but I revised it some to un-knot it anyway
  • cut second one
• I would suggest reorganizing paras 1-3 of American Nazi Party. Presently you go from him being accepted and an integral member to him grossing everybody else out all in para 1, then briefly to him being essential in para 2, then into everyone being sus of him still in para 2. Now para 3 is back to Rockwell liking him and his activities in the party. I'd reorganize a bit so we go application -> integration with party and Rockwell's uses for him -> gross offputting weirdo -> attempts to remove (I realize this is a bit difficult, given that the sources don't seem to be terribly interested in dating things, so it's hard to see what came first sometimes)
  • I did my best to rearrange it along those lines.
• Made a few prose tweaks in para 2

American National Party

• Have made some minor copyedits/moving things around here
  • lgtm
• "Another telling says..." we haven't yet established the first telling of Burros' quitting, so having "another telling" doesn't make sense
  • just removed, this conflicts with the other sources a bit. for this specific piece of information i think lee is just summarizing one more victim which already gives a more detailed explanation about them being dissatisfied with his leadership
    • writing this made me realize that i got Burros's discharge slightly wrong, he was not honorably discharged but received a general discharge under honorable conditions, which is apparently a different thing. fixed that too
• Not sure we need the Koehl detail, he doesn't come up again
  • he comes up prior to this (spelled as matt - relic of a page move) but i agree this isn't particularly necessary, though I thought someone might wonder. removed
• There is something so fascinating about seeing these morons fracture and fracture again because they're so self-centeredly nasty that they can't help but turn on one another
  • this is what all neo-nazis have done for all time. this article is a microcosm
• Was Frankhouser another ANP member? I'd establish context in the sentence
  • I do not know if he was a proper member of the ANP. Sources vary. Simonelli says he "was a ubiquitous presence within the anti-Semitic radical right. At one time or another he was a member of just about every radical right-wing group in the United States, including Rockwell's", but other sources say he was not a member but a "sympathizer". Rosenthal & Gelb say he hung around basically. I will add associate. Frankhouser is very hard to summarize, he is genuinely one of the weirdest people in this whole movement (George & Wilcox describe him as "a nightmare"), sort of a racist ghost who was rubbing shoulders with every notable racist in America for several decades, and also he was a government informant. Strange fellow. I added "former ANP associate and Klan organizer" to his second mention

National Renaissance Party & KKK

• Some copyedits in these sections but aside from that, basically nothing to complain about here :)
• I'm sorry, I cannot, this guy's whole visage is so goofy he manages to make the KKK hood look even more like a bad LARP costume. I showed this to a girl at work and she said he looks like a child dressed as a starfish
  • He has an extraordinarily unthreatening visage.
• If Frankhouser didn't know Burros was Jewish, how was Burros confiding that he thought his neo-Nazi views were hurtful to his parents?
  • Being in the neo-Nazi movement can be pretty hurtful to someone's family if they don't share their beliefs, even if they aren't Jewish, which is what Frankhouser probably thought he was talking about. It hurt George Lincoln Rockwell's father, and he was not Jewish. There may be some way to clarify this (the sentence it goes after may not be helping matters. maybe move? unsure) but I don't think the idea itself is too confusing

The big reveal

• Rare HUAC win .
  • true!
• Some copyedits here, etc etc
  • lgtm
• When did Burros go from calls threatening Phillips to the "acceptance" situation? Is there a timeframe or a trigger? The transition is currently somewhat abrupt
  • specified that this was his last call and added more detail on prior calls
• If Burros died of 3 wounds, where's the third shot in the narrative of the suicide? (And if it's unknown, who's providing the account?)
  • Hm, this is odd. Rosenthal & Gelb say (according to the autopsy) there were two wounds, and most other sources agree and say he was shot twice. Lee and George & Wilcox say 3 shots. This appears to be simple miscounting and the conspiracism appears to be over the classic "multi-gunshot suicide" conspiracism rather than it being three shots rather than two. rephrased to make clearer.

Legacy

• Copyedited the opening sentence to rm the redundancy & match the lead
• Trimmed the Burros bracket to the more commonly used no relation
• Not sure Hoff replacing Burros is relevant
  • removed

That's it for prose! Images are generally good; since the other images note the lack of renewal in their summaries, I might do so also for File:NRP arrests and booking, July 1963.png and File:Klan eulogizes Dan Burros.png so you don't get nagged at FAC. Will do spot checks shortly.

• added that for the first one. the eulogy one was published in a period where renewal was unnecessary, and any valid claim would get you full copyright, but it was an in-house newspaper photo (not a wire photo), and neither the newspaper nor the photo carry a notice.

PS Take this to FAC or I will be mad <3 ♠PMC♠ (talk) 08:24, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

• not opposed to that if/when this passes, but since i've never done that before, do you think it will need a peer review first? or go straight to FAC? I have never taken anything to FAC. PARAKANYAA (talk) 10:16, 29 May 2025 (UTC)