Talk:Laura Loomer

Early life defaced, needs removal

Early life defaced with “She has got atleast 30 plastic surgeries to look human” 100.15.89.225 (talk) 21:20, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Similarly the same user suggested she is transgender in the opening 174.112.228.92 (talk) 21:24, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Needs to be reverted to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Laura_Loomer&oldid=1245577033 50.98.35.203 (talk) 21:26, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

That's just insulting to transgender individuals. 64.229.175.109 (talk) 04:23, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Top of the article defaced, needs removal

In her initial description it says that she's "Transgender". She is not in fact, transgender. 2601:283:C000:6B60:8956:272:A4C:C385 (talk) 21:27, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah this was vandalism and has been removed. ser! ^{(chat to me - see my edits)} 22:06, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Incorrect grammer

"She has described herself as 'pro-white nationalism'" in the lede – doesn’t make any sense. Maybe replace it with, "as a proponent of 'pro-white nationalism'"? 47.14.104.130 (talk) 22:22, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't see why this doesn't make sense? She describes herself as being supportive of white nationalism, so pro-white nationalism. I presume it's been quoted as such as it's something she said herself. ser! ^{(chat to me - see my edits)} 22:50, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense because it you don't describe yourself as "nationalism," at least not in standard English. 45.46.24.123 (talk) 23:37, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Similarly, if you're pro-democracy, you're not describing yourself as "democracy"; just what you are in favor of. --GRuban (talk) 23:40, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I think they are suggesting you change nationalism to nationalist. 38.13.43.164 (talk) 09:15, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Is it still a direct quote if you do that? 47.14.104.130 (talk) 15:56, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

It's not incorrect; 'pro-white nationalist' would be incorrect; and also, direct quotes must not be changed. So there are several good reasons not to change it in any of the suggested ways. Primarily that it's just fine as it is, as explained by GRuban above. Bishonen | tålk 16:18, 14 September 2024 (UTC).

You need to read it as pro-(white nationalism), not as (pro-white) nationalism. Horep (talk) 16:25, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Loomer announced a new “view”

On Sept 8 Loomer tweeted a racist rant that said “If Kamala Harris wins, the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center” source: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/activist-laura-loomer-pushes-back-amid-criticism-proximity/story?id=113638412 38.13.43.164 (talk) 09:20, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Already mentioned in the article under "Activities", specifically 2024. ser! ^{(chat to me - see my edits)} 09:50, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Can we get just one exculpatory quote in the lede?

First, full disclosure: I hate this person too. I hope she steps on a lego. If she were to leave public life, it would be great.(I do have a little bit of feeling sorry for her. I mean, "if Trump doesn't get back in, I don't have anything" is a fellow human being in a bad place, and she clearly has [redacted per BLP].) But ofc my feelings and your feelings don't matter in the least. OK, moving on to the subject at hand.

Second paragraph of the lede is

Loomer has worked as an activist for several organizations, including Project Veritas, the Geller Report, Rebel News, and InfoWars. Loomer gained notoriety as a result of being banned from numerous social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, payment processors, vehicles for hire, and food delivery mobile apps for various reasons, including violating policies on hate speech and posting misinformation. Loomer has also been banned and removed from events, and had press credentials revoked, for harassment and causing disturbances.

All referenced, true, and worthwhile to note, so no problem there.

I added this sentence (ref'd) at the end of that paragraph:

Bo Snerdley, though, offered the view that "They banned this woman from everything because she speaks truth."

with an edit summary of

I mean, can we not say SOMEthing good about this person in the lede? The only positive material we have a couple bare lists of name of people who endorsed her, way down in the body. I think we need to put in a couple actual quotes, and probably a couple passages of her own words.

An editor (User:Vosotros32) removed this with an edit summary of

It's misleading to put a quote in the lede implying she is truthful, when article establishes she clearly is not. She has received praise from Trump, which is positive and relevant

Which that's his right and entirely proper per WP:BRD. Per BRD the "D" is next, and that is why I am here. So....

• It's a quote. We have many many quotes here that we don't endorse. If we quote Hitler saying "The Poles started the war" it doesn't mean we are implying that the Poles did actually start the war, and so forth.

• The name, at least, of Bo Snerdley is known to very many people. He was Rush Limbaugh's sidekick, and Limbaugh mentioned him most every program, and he had very many listeners. (Limbaugh's dead, so I can say I think he was a piece of shit and terribly destructive to America. That of course has nothing to do with anything. It's standing that we look for when quoting (is the person notable enough and knowledgeable enough for us to report her words)).

• Come on. I get that this person is not well liked here, at all. But I mean that only means we have to be super careful to try to be as balanced as we can. It's worthwhile in the lede to point out that that she has at least some notable person defending her as a victim in all the bannings show immediately above. We're not leading the reader to believe or not believe anything. We merely report. We have to be ice-cold about this stuff. This person is so [redacted per BLP] that that's hard. But we have to do as best we can. Yes I know that Snerdley is super conservative, but that doesn't matter. This is the Wikipedia way.

Any cogent objections to restoring the quote? Herostratus (talk) 17:09, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, but this all just seems like false balance. You're free to disagree with the rationale for removing it of course, but that doesn't mean it wasn't "cogent". I would've removed it if Vosotros32 hadn't beaten me to it. For one thing, the source is too flimsy, especially for the lead. That source doesn't provide any context at all, either. At best this is damning with faint praise. The quote itself is also loaded and low-information. Grayfell (talk) 18:42, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Definitely gonna object to inclusion of the above quote in lead. Loomer is a known conspiracy theorist, so including such a quote is misleading. Also, what makes Bo Snerdley an especially relevant or meaningful authority on Loomer's character, or the veracity of her statements?

Lead is supposed to follow the body of the article, so it also seems out of place and gives too much weight to one person's (largely irrelevant) opinion about her. 72.14.126.22 (talk) 22:09, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh, no, I didn't mean to imply that the edit summary wasn't cogent. It is! I can see how it might have come across that way, sorry. I just don't agree with the point make tho and I think that, while reasonable, is not very strong, so I'm asking for other arguments.

It is up to the reader, not us, to decide if the subject really is a conspiracy theorist or not. We can and do provide piles of evidence and also quote people saying it. We know how 95% percent of readers are going to decide. But we have to let them anyway.

She's an interesting case. It's a master class in working out our NPOV muscles and no mistake. I suppose since it's such a sky-is-blue question we could say "Bo Snerdley, though, offered the view that 'They banned this woman from everything because she speaks truth', but he is wrong". I don't want to go down that path cos it leads to "Benjamin Netanyahu said... but he's wrong" and "Kamala Harris said... but she's wrong" and so forth.

I mean the questions for anybody working on this article (or any bio) are:

1) do you have feelings about the person -- like and support, or dislike and don't support -- and if so,

2) can you put that entirely aside and be as entirely dispassionate and fair-minded about the person as you would be about a baseball player or a librarian or whatever. Be honest with yourself.

And editors for whom the answer to #2 is no, they probably should work on other articles. And that's fine, and would apply to very many excellent editors I think. It's not personal, it's just business.

On the merits, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I am interested in what other people have to say. Herostratus (talk) 23:40, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

But what does Bo Snerdley have to do with anything? This is just one kinda random quasi-celebrity's opinion, and it lacks context.

Maybe we should include what Jimmy Kimmel thinks, too? Or what Marjorie Taylor Greene has recently said about Loomer, calling out a thinly veiled racist post about curry and call centers? Should that be in the lead, perhaps?

Open the floodgates and have a whole opinion section about "what celebrities and politicians views are" of Loomer and her statements over time? No, of course not. Most of that is really not WP:DUE. 72.14.126.22 (talk) 00:53, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Again, the source is very flimsy here and the context is completely absent. As with any other article, I would remove any promotional quotes from the lead if they are sourced only to a person's own website. This is no different from a book jacket blurb or other bit of PR ephemera. If there is some reason this specific quote is important, it should be contextualized by a reliable source. Just as we shouldn't say that Snerdely is wrong, we shouldn't imply that he's right, either, and inserting this quote in the lead is implying that. It's also implying that is important for some reason, but the source itself doesn't support this.

Asking editors if they have feelings about this person is, in my opinion, a mistake. Editors are humans and we shouldn't artificially ignore context, or pretend that being dispassionate is the same as being emotionless. We can and should recognize our own perspectives and emotions, because they will influence our editing regardless. Grayfell (talk) 01:22, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

It is up to the reader, not us, to decide if the subject really is a conspiracy theorist or not. That's not how an encyclopedia article works. Many reliable sources relate that Loomer promulgates baseless conspiracy theories. That's what we put in the encyclopedia. The lede summarizes the main points. It would be malpractice to include some "exculpatory quote" just because laudatory quotes happen to exist. Conceivably the Snerdly quote would go in a section describing reactions to Loomer. Or if the quote was apropos of a specific event, that's where it could reside.

The following sentence currently in the lede has the same problem and darn well ought to be removed: Staunch Trump supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene characterized Loomer as a "documented liar". MTG's attack on Loomer isn't a lede-worthy reliably sourced fact about Loomer. It's just some dumb opinion, the sentence is undue. -- M.boli (talk) 02:13, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and removed the MTG quote from the lede, as described above. This quote is elsewhere in the article. -- M.boli (talk) 17:21, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Replying to points made above: That we are going to have emotions but can and must act dispassionately here is exactly what I said. Yes we do indeed have quotes about people in many bios of political people -- some positive, some negative, some neutrally descriptive. I random checked some articles And yeah sure we can use a book blurb. Why not? If a notable critic says "This book is great!" in a review or a blurb, same difference. Yeah the Marjorie Taylor Greene stuff belongs in the article, Kimmel or any comedian, most probably not.

If it'd help we can report rather than using an actual quote: "Bo Snerdley, though, said that she was banned from these venues because she tells the truth" is fine. Same difference.

And I agree that it's a good idea to not have the quote in the lede, but only if we also move the second paragraph (except for the first sentence) down into the article body too. We can't separate the quote from the material it is directly referencing. I only put it in the lede cos the other material is there. (I'm doubtful that that stuff belongs in the lede anyway -- lot of people get banned from social media, so its not the source of her notability. Also she's back on Twitter

As to the source, yeah it's its marginal, fair point. I think the reader checking the source can be sufficiently confident enough that Snerdely wrote or at least endorses the statement that a "better ref needed" tag works for now. The reader is thus alerted, and its a call for other editors to look for a better ref. We're not going to get a better ref if the quote isn't even there. But I dunno... if the quote is not lifted from anywhere but rather a private communication in response to "Hey can I get an endorsement for my website" then there wouldn't be a better ref. So I don't know.

I do have a Snerdley quote from Twitter -- I think it is usable per WP:TWITTER, but not sure -- but it's different: "Laura Loomer may be banned from FaceBook, Twitter and the other liberal social media platforms, but she won her primary anyway." That'd support "Bo Snerdely opined that Loomer was banned from these social media sites because they're liberal" which would do I suppose.

Hmmm... I happened to notice this: "Alyssa Rosenberg of The Washington Post wrote that she did not believe Loomer was genuinely offended by the play, but was looking for attention and to collect a $1,000 bounty". (It's not a direct quote but same difference really.) Well who the heck is Alyssa Rosenberg? Unlike Snerdley she doesn't even have an article here. But apparently we need to report this un-wikinotable person speculating about about what is in a living person's mind. At least "speaks truth" is reporting an analysis on actual actions, jeez. Why aren't we all over this stuff?

And all I'm asking for is one gosh-darn quote, sheesh. Herostratus (talk) 04:44, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

At the end of the day, it's a flimsy source and the quote was selected to 'add something good' the lead. It's really hard not to interpret this as an attempt at adding false balance.

As for Rosenberg, she is a columnist for an edited and fact-checked newspaper providing context about one specific incident, which involves a specific monetary 'bounty' which was directly related to that incident. Saying that Loomer "speaks truth", on the other hand, is both extremely vague and also often false, and Snerdley's social media is not reliable for such claims either way.

Perhaps Rosenberg is also a weak source here. Even so, it's still miles ahead of either Snerdley quote.

Your interpretation and summary of that tweet is disputable, but regardless, we need to be able to place this in context, and that context should come from a reliable source. Grayfell (talk) 06:07, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Social media sites generally have rules and restrictions on things like hate speech, but that's not because they are "liberal", so I'm not sure the analysis of that newer Snerdley quote really works, either. In any case, it would be better to just use a direct quote, unless it is an analysis done by a reliable news source, perhaps. 72.14.126.22 (talk) 17:27, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

• The quote is obviously WP:UNDUE for the lead, and your rationale for including it is WP:FALSEBALANCE; the other things in the lead reflect much broader, more high-quality sourcing from a wide variety of sources, or have broad high-quality sourcing to indicate their significance. This is a single random quote of no significance with no meaningful secondary coverage, and you haven't really presented any reason why it would be leadworthy. Your argument above seems to misunderstand how balance on Wikipedia works - our job is to reflect the overall tone, focus, and weight of the highest-quality sources available. If those sources are overwhelmingly negative, then a balanced lead will also be overwhelmingly negative; putting our thumb on the scale by giving undue weight to a quote that has very little coverage would make the article less balanced, not more. --Aquillion (talk) 05:02, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 September 2024

I would state that the word activist is a misnomer and misleading when the article already states she is a conspiracy theorist. Lizzie Borden was a likely murderer not an axe enthusiast. This is factual and evidence based on both fronts Madisonkky24 (talk) 23:16, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

•  Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template.

I get what you're saying, but she ran for office twice. She is both a conspiracy theorist and a political activist. Feel free to continue discussing this here in this section, but please do not re-activate this template until consensus has changed. Thanks. Grayfell (talk) 06:10, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Political bias in this article

Am I missing something here? The article states, "She has described herself as being "pro-white nationalism" and a "proud Islamophobe". The linked footnotes c and d then go on to state every one _else's_ description of Loomer, i.e. everyone other than herself. So I could be generous and say that this was an overlooked grammatical error, but I created this new topic because this is nothing more than political bias passed off as encyclopedic knowledge. At a _minimum_, the Wiki statement should be revised to say that, "Many people describe Loomer as..." I don't know this Laura Loomer person, but because I saw news articles on her, I navigated to her Wiki article, and that was a mistake. What I found was an opinion hit piece, not unbiased encyclopedic work, so I can't trust the rest of the article. What has Wikipedia devolved to? Maybe Wiki should stay out of politics... Way to go, Wiki... 67.60.105.162 (talk) 12:14, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Not a serious remark. Many of the provided references quote Loomer on these two points, and tell us where the quotes came from. -- M.boli (talk) 13:08, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Dont be ridiculous. MonimoniWP (talk) 07:30, 19 September 2024 (UTC) — MonimoniWP (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Could you provide the relevant quote? I read through the NPR article and their referenced material and haven't been able to find any source where Laura Loomer has described herself as a "pro-white nationalist". 71.28.168.77 (talk) 18:25, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Check the source authored by Sara Dorn for Forbes. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:32, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Exactly MonimoniWP (talk) 07:30, 19 September 2024 (UTC) — MonimoniWP (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Semi-protected edit request on 19 September 2024

Why are you allowing people to edit that she's a conspiracy theorist and racist??? MonimoniWP (talk) 07:28, 19 September 2024 (UTC) — MonimoniWP (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

cos she is one ser! ^{(chat to me - see my edits)} 10:36, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

This is a WP:SPA account. 72.14.126.22 (talk) 17:09, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Tagged as such. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:13, 19 September 2024 (UTC)