Talk:Dan Burros

RfC

BAn RfC: Which descriptor, if any, can be added in front of Southern Poverty Law Center when referenced in other articles? has been posted at the Southern Poverty Law Center talk page. Your participation is welcomed. – MrX 16:38, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Anti-Zionist, maybe Jewish, but certainly not representing "Jewish anti-Zionism"

How can a person who, to say the least, denounces both Judaism and Israel still be representing Jewish anti-Zionism? I didn't remove it when refining the categories, but if someone agrees, they should replace Category:Jewish anti-Zionism in the United States with Category:Anti-Zionism in the United States. --PanchoS (talk) 01:59, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

see also Talk:Bobby Fischer --PanchoS (talk) 02:17, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Unfamiliar abbreviation s

Hi. This article is actually interesting. However, is it possible to clarify what is UKA" or the "ANP publication" (like what specific publication is that?) ? hanks. T 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 20:00, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I was never good at figuring out how I was supposed to handle abbreviations without it seeming clunky. UKA = United Klans of America. I will look at the MOS and see what the guidance is. And there were multiple publications - The Stormtrooper, the Official Stormtrooper's Manual, The Rockwell Report, and National Socialist World (though that postdated Burros and was technically WUNS). Burros was involved in the Stormtrooper and the manual as specified in the body. I will try to make this clearer. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:45, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Dan Burros/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

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)
  • Since you've never gone to FAC, I would probably suggest you go to PR just so can show you've got all your i's dotted and t's crossed.

Spot checks

• Already did a bit of source checking above during the prose review, this is just some arbitrary double checking
• Refs to Atkins check out - pretty short article so I checked them all
• Refs to Talese check out - again, pretty short chunk of the source, so I checked them all over. Aside from the issue noted with the army stuff (which was Talese's fault, not yours), no concerns
• Random pages in Rosenthal/Gelb
  • ref 10, 48, 74, 100, 117, 118, 136 all good

I'm satisfied with the spot check and the changes made, so I'm happy to pass this one. Cheers and looking forward to your eventual FAC! :D ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:34, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by History6042 talk 21:55, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that the Jewish neo-Nazi Dan Burros was one of the soldiers to integrate Little Rock High School in 1957? Source: Rosenthal & Gelb: quote, page 40: "on September 24, Dan and the other soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division arrived in Little Rock under the overall command of Major General Edwin A. Walker. [...] Clarence's mother saw Dan on TV once from Little Rock. Bayonet fixed, he was escorting a Negro girl into Little Rock's Central High School."
  • ALT1: ... that the neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Dan Burros killed himself when The New York Times revealed that he was Jewish? Source: Schmaltz, page 262-263: "The next morning, October 31, Burros left Frankhouser's house to pick up the Sunday edition of the Times at a newsstand. The bold headline leapt from the page, sending a shock through his body: STATE KLAN LEADER HIDES SECRET OF JEWISH ORIGIN [...] Burros stormed back to Frankhouser's home [...] he found Frankhouser’s nickel-plated .32-caliber revolver [...] He pulled the trigger, put the pistol to his head, and fired another round into his brain. The twenty-eight-year-old Nazi turned Klansman was dead.°
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Steamed beef cake
  • Comment: Everything about Burros's life is madness. I think the Little Rock fact is more of a two hit punch which might be too much. The second one is more direct and just as interesting, but there is always some question of tastelessness when running a hook about suicide on the main page. Whichever people want to go with.

Improved to Good Article status by PARAKANYAA (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 11 past nominations.

PARAKANYAA (talk) 05:02, 7 June 2025 (UTC).

• not a review but the ALT1 seems IMHO afoul of WP:DYKGRAT being gratuitous or sensationalistic. Andre🚐 23:44, 7 June 2025 (UTC)
  • That's what I said in my comment, yes. Not sure if this is really "sensationalistic" and not gratuitous in the sense the DYK criteria specify because it is exactly what happened without great amounts of detail, not exaggerated or said in a way that overstates it. A thing happened and then he died. I believe a similar hook ran a long time ago for another article in any case, w/o issue. But I do not really care which we go with. PARAKANYAA (talk) 23:59, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

• GA status confirmed (date is good). Q{Q done. Hooks, hmm, the first one seem to have a minor grammar problem - "soldiers to integrate"? I think it should be "soldiers integrated"... I am not a native speaker, so passing admin should double check. As for the second hook, I don't see much of a problem. I've bene hearing a lot recently about how some hooks are boring. Now we can have hooks that are too eye-catching? C'mon, folks... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:37, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Peer review

Dan Burros

I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to try to get it to FA status, something I have never done before. It passed a GA review from PMC and I would like to see what others think about it, and get it to the best quality I can get it.

Jewish neo-Nazi. What an inherent contradiction, right? There is basically no explanation for why he ended up this way, even in the most extensive sources which basically just accept that they have no way of knowing (the only people who may have known, his parents, never agreed to be interviewed). I find the article to be, if anything, an interesting glimpse into the history of the 1960s racist right. It incorporates basically all relevant and due information on Burros I could find in secondary sources.

My main concerns are prose/grammar awkwardness, and a fear that I have misrepresented his military history as I do not know how that really works and I kept correcting how I had written it as I learned more. If anything lacks context that would be good to have pointed out, as I've read about this topic enough it may be hard for me to notice. It should be mostly fixed now, but extra eyes would be nice.

Thanks, PARAKANYAA (talk) 05:08, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

Sophisticatedevening

Overall I think this is in very good shape, aside from the few prose notes I think this might be ready now. Sophisticatedevening🍷^(talk) 16:14, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

Prose

• In this eulogy, Rockwell wrote thus: "thus" feels unnecessarily verbose here.
  • yeah this sentence was giving me grief. dropped the thus
• Burros was enrolled in Hebrew school … where he had his bar mitzvah. He became antisemitic as a teenager. Use a consistent past tense, switching from past perfect to simple past is unnecessary.
  • fixed
• Wording like Ideologically influenced by fascist ideologue is repetitive and kinda redundant.
  • dropped the "Ideologically"
• After serving in the Army for several years, he was discharged under honorable conditions and joined the American Nazi Party in 1960. A little confusing, did he join in the same year he was discharged?
  • specified date in lead
• The first occurence of American Nazi Party is in the lead, and it is referred to as ANP for the rest of the article. Try to expand into full name at least once every now and then.
  • It's already used fully in a few instances. I added it back to full in a few places where it'd been a while since it had been mentioned in full though

Refs

• A few of the online journal cites are missing access dates, also you may want to add a url to them as well.
  • None have urls so I cannot add access dates.
• A lot of citations use |language=en, it isn't necessary since it doesn't show up at all (although I'm not too sure what FAC thinks about it).
  • As far as I'm aware it's not forbidden, and I think it's useful for metadata/differentiation ressons.

Imgs

• All files' copyright checks out, alt-text is provided, appropriately placed, no MOS:SANDWICH problems, all good AFAICT.

The NYT link

@Javert2113 I don't see what benefit adding a paywalled link to a primary source that contains no new information adds. The reader can't even look at it without a subscription and it's already stated by reliable secondary sources. It is also not a "high quality" source due to being primary, which is an issue since this article is at FAC. I don't think it's worth having this article face FAC problems to include a link the reader can't even look at, which we aren't even using for information. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:20, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

We could have this as an external link I suppose, which is what I wanted to do on an earlier draft, but after reading the WP:EL rules it seemed to be contrary to the guidelines because it didn't really bring any new information that wasn't in secondary sources already cited. But that is still better than using it as a citation. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:28, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

@PARAKANYAA: You've done a great job with this article, but I'm trying to improve it just as much as you are, so let's come to a consensus.

The fact that it's paywalled means very little of import as a source, if I'm not mistaken—most books and magazine articles are likewise paywalled, and no one complains about those; moreover, the reader's access to the source has no bearing whatsoever on my using it. After all, we properly describe reputable newspapers under WP:SOURCE, of which The New York Times clearly is one. As for your second point, I see no reason why it would cause any FAC problems; and I wish you all the best in that aspect.

Of course, I am absolutely willing to have it be an external link—but, that's the thing, it properly falls afoul of WP:ELREG, doesn't it? I think it's best, if nothing else, to have it left here on this Talk page, but I'm certain that there's something to glean from it that can be used in the main article. The Article In Question — Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 19:37, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

@Javert2113 Thank you, sorry if my edit summaries were insufficiently explanatory. It being paywalled is more of an additional reason; I just don't see why we would add it? I said that about it being paywalled because I assumed your rationale in adding it was due to it is an accessible web link rather than books, which I felt was negated by it being paywalled, though perhaps this is not why; people have added subpar sources with that rationale before, so I am sorry if I was incorrect in my assumption.

If the reason is it being a relevant historical primary source, that seems a reason to not add it, because secondary and retrospective analytical sources are preferred over primary ones. The story is also cited as a primary news source by all the other sources we are using, so it is ultimately redundant; I don't see what citing it adds, except allowing the reader to look at a primary source with 2 more clicks (if they have a New York Times subscription), which is the purpose of an EL, not a citation (though I agree with your point on that which is why I did not add it). There's no information we're citing it for; I don't know why we would go to the primary rather than the secondary sources for information on this. Why do you want to add it? I am unsure. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:45, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, good points. I'm not surprised one bit that's it's used as the primary source for the last few days of Burros' life. But I think you have a good point—still, that does leave a stalemate: as a "relevant historical primary source", I think that's enough to merit inclusion in this case; you clearly disagree. Hmm, perhaps it's better used as a source about Frank W. Rotella, Jr.. (If this is also included.) — Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 20:08, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

I just don't see any indication linking to primary sources that we aren't sourcing information from is the purpose of a citation for a tertiary encyclopedia. And it doesn't even really provide access, because it's paywalled. It doesn't add anything. I'm not saying this is an inherently terrible source unusuable for other articles (I need to look into the sourcing on Rotella again; I think he is notable? wouldn't bet my life on it) it's just there are better sources for the Burros article and for what we're citing it for, and featured articles require "high quality" sources. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:43, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Fair enough. Do tell me if you start an article on Rotella—I'd love to help where I can! — Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 23:23, 21 June 2025 (UTC)