Talk:Elohim City, Oklahoma

Private community?[edit]

Could someone please clarify what a "private community" is? Is the land owned by a corporation? by a cooperative? by an individual? by many individuals? Do people live there full-time? Do they own/rent/lease land or houses? Later in the article it is referred to as a "city", which normally means a municipality incorporated by the state; presumably the "private" in "private community" means that it is not a city. Could someone who knows more clarify all this? --Macrakis 19:32, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

G-d?[edit]

What is the idea behind spelling God as G-d? Is there some phonetic/religious reason relating to Judeaism or a wiki vandal at work?

It's because some people don't want to sully God's name by actually writing it down.Kpwa gok 02:00, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

s/some people/Orthodox Jews/. They won't beef if you do it, but they never do, it's sacrilegious. --Charlie —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.153.180.229 (talk) 19:55, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

changed it[edit]

It sure looked like someone trying to be way too politically correct, so I went ahead and changed it back to the good ol' G-O-D

links to Silent Brotherhood and MacVeigh[edit]

Are both links disproven, or just the MacVeigh one? The way the sentence was worded was confusing, so I reworded it, but I don't know enough about the case to be sure. -- nae'blis _(talk) 15:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The McVeigh link is not disproven; far from it. FBI informant Carol Howe testified that the OKC bombing was planned at Elohim City, and while there is no evidence that McVeigh ever physically visited the site, there's plenty of evidence linking him with the Identity movement. The racist fundamentalist leadership of Elohim City denies any such connection and in the absence of evidence Wikipedia cannot state it as fact, obviously, it's just hearsay. On the other hand, if you check with ADL, SPLC, or the FBI you'll find that Elohim City is a long time gathering place for violent racialist extremists, including the ARA bank robbery ring (based out of EC) and the CSA, among many others. --Charlie —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.153.180.229 (talk) 20:03, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yip, and ADL, SPLC, etc. are beacons of credibility. That said, I think there is sufficient other evidence that McVeigh was present at that site and also had contact to Andy Strassmeir who tried to militarize the community. --41.151.51.10 (talk) 18:02, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Grand Jury that was convened to look into the OKC bombing conspiracy theory didn't just find "an absence of evidence" to link Elohim City to that tragedy, they specified in their ruling that it be made clear that they had found NO LINK between Elohim City and those events. This is because they felt that Elohim City had been unfairly vilified by the media. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Victorison (talk • contribs) 00:12, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This certainly isn't going to be useful as a source, but a good friend of mine lived at EC for a few years in the early 90s (93/94) and said that he thought McVeigh was among a group that stayed there frequently but tended to keep to themselves. Most EC dwellers are family oriented, even if their beliefs are abhorrent, and they tended not to mix with the violent extremists that passed through frequently.146.201.16.50 (talk) 19:26, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinates[edit]

Coordinates given in the article appear to be for the site in Oklahoma, but are placed in a sentence referring to the Maryland site. The whole paragraph is confusing in the way it jumps between discussion of the Oklahoma and Maryland locations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.104.39.2 (talk) 20:44, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Is this place in Adair County Oklahoma, or the former site of of the college in Maryland? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.174.0.30 (talk) 23:14, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This has been fixed for ages. Please read the article before commenting. Yworo (talk) 23:23, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinates[edit]

The coordinates need the following fixes:

70.142.44.116 (talk) 17:52, 29 April 2009 (UTC) 35.6417, -94.5145[reply]

This is the correct coordinates. your original is misinformation.

The airstrip belongs to RGB Farms, a corporate farm.... Elohim is 3 miles north of the airstrip.! I know because I was there yesterday.

Coordinates (bis)[edit]

The previous correction is seconded.

Additionally:

"it was located on Route 144 about one mile (1.6 km) west from the intersection of Route 29 (35°35'47.00"N 94°30'42.00"W)"

Route 144 and Route 29 do not intersect.

Actually, they do. But it's all been reworked. Yworo (talk) 23:24, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"The Camp"[edit]

I've removed the bit about Millar's camp in Ellicott City being known only as "The Camp". I've been reminded by a former visitor that it was informally called "The Sons' Retreat" by Millar and also know that Millar's organization was formally incorporated as "Bethel Christian Schools and Church, Inc." at the time. However, I can find no sources to support either of these names so don't see how they can be mentioned in the article. If anyone has sources for either of these names, please let me know. Yworo (talk) 22:50, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright problem removed[edit]

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/27/magazine/apocalypse-now-no-really-now.html?pagewanted=all. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Diannaa (talk) 01:29, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinates are incorrect?[edit]

The coordinates listed in the footnotes lead to Ellicot City, Maryland, not Elohim City, Oklahoma. Shouldn't this be corrected? Gdeblois19 16:25, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

The coordinates in the footnotes are for the location described in the text the footnote is attached to, which is in Ellicott City, MD. In other words, it is completely correct and someone actually reading the article rather than taking the footnote out of context would not have a problem with it. Skyerise (talk) 16:37, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Theodore Rinaldo[edit]

I know that Bob Millar and Rinaldo were associates in the late 1960s. However any sources for this are unlikely to be on the Internet. Anyone know of any event they did together in Maryland or Washington that there might be findable documentation for? Skyerise (talk) 01:35, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Removing poorly sourced "Residents"[edit]

Hey, I'm clicking around "Random Article"s to copyedit, and just did a light pass at this one (existing prose was already pretty solid tho).

Through that process, I became a bit concerned at the list of residents of this controversial town, some of which seemed insufficiently sourced and aren't even notable enough to have their own pages, from what I could see.

Most of the sourcing does hold up, and cheers to the editors who took care in Archive.org'ing the relevant news links.

I did feel two were insufficient, and considering how scandalous it is to list potentially living people as parts of a NeoNazi town without proof, I took the BOLD step of removing those. Most concerning was the woman who was listed with the "source" of inaccessible search results on one of those paid "find people" database sites. Super uncool IMO, as such results wouldn't provide any justification for notable inclusion here, and those sites are public aggregators that get things wrong all the time.

The other name I removed was a man for whom the source provided was a link to a hard-to-follow user-contributed screed on a genealogy site. I scrolled through rather quickly, because the site material itself seemed woefully ineffective to support, again, labelling a living person as a white supremacist. All other people listed in that section seem to be anchored in solid sources which have them listed by name as giving quotes on, or receiving legal charges related to, the town and topics in play here.

Feel free to ping me if you have any questions! Chiselinccc (talk) 07:02, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a NeoNazi town! It is a Christian fundamentalist at the core, and later had some fringe white supremacist elements who were living there but didn't represent everyone. It's was founded by a religious leader and that is what they have always been essentially. I think this article does a disservice by over-emphasizing the ties to criminal elements and other scandalous things, but that's Wikipedia it focuses on controversy which it considers notable due to press coverage. -- GreenC 15:18, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I knew Millar before he founded EC. Even then, he was a proponent of racial separation. There's a reason he attracted the people that he did and tolerated their presence. So don't give me that "we're all just good Christians" shuck & jive. Skyerise (talk) 15:22, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say they were good Christians either, they had issues. But Neo-Nazis, really? Maybe there were some there but Millar was not a Neo Nazi, or put it this way (this is Wikipedia), got a source for that? See also Godwin's Law. -- GreenC 16:21, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Weren't me who said that. It may be an exaggeration for the community, but not for some of its visitors who may have resided there longer than other residents are willing to admit. Skyerise (talk) 16:42, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Skyerise @GreenC apologies, it WAS me that said that, but to be fair I came to the conclusion based on the text of the article alone. (I literally arrived here last night based on wiki's Page Randomizer while searching for gnomish and copyediting tasks).

The bulk of this article, as it is written, focuses almost entirely on the white supremacist and alt-right terrorist affiliations of the town at present- try approaching it with fresh eyes, and maybe you'll see what I mean. If you have a problem with this interpretation, I'd encourage you to take your clear strong knowledge of the town and EDIT the article above to make your argument there. As it stands, the article absolutely makes it seem that this town is solely notable in the present for its affiliations with extremist ideology and fringe political groups.

And good Lord, it's NOT an invocation of Godwin's Law to interchangeably use "NeoNazi" for ACTUAL white supremacists. Imprecise and inaccurate? Perhaps. Not that far off the mark though- Godwin's Law is about invoking Nazis in contexts that have literally nothing to do with Nazis. Groups that bomb government buildings in the name of white supremacy have at least SOMETHING to do with Nazis. Sorry for choosing my words poorly, I did not realize that I would have page watchers who are too close to the topic at hand jump down my throat about it.

I won't be responding again or editing this page because you blew this so out of proportion I'm not interested in collaborating with you. Just reflect on the fact that I am an average reader with no attachment to the topic, and my reading produced the (apparently inaccurate) impression that this town is currently solely notable for these controversies. I stand behind my protection of random people's names from being affiliated with such matters without strong sourced evidence. That's not just wiki policy, it's common sense and decency. Chiselinccc (talk) 22:49, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Skyerise just want to be clear, my frustration is entirely with GreenC and their dramatic hand-waving around Godwin's Law, which is ridiculous when we're talking about actual white supremacist ideology.

My initial ping only applied to you for some reason (noob on mobile problems!) but in my edits last night, I already saw and appreciated your tireless maintenance work on this article, and I have no beef with you. My request to stay off my talk page and not ping me was only meant for GreenC, due to their comments above.

Skyerise, I wish you the best and tip my hat to you for editing with consistency in areas like this that lead to dramatic engagements- as a newbie I certainly don't have the stomach for it, and would get frustrated very quickly! Heck I already did upon reading this brief thread 😅 Chiselinccc (talk) 23:02, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@GreenC see my comment below, my ping didn't work. It's not Godwin's Law to call white supremacists Neo-Nazis, and my comments were merely reflective of the article itself. If you have issues with the impression it gives, then fix the article so it gives a more accurate impression.

Do not ping me or come to my talk page about this, I wanted to respond once but I have no interest in engaging with you any further. Chiselinccc (talk) 22:54, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your personal opinion that this is a "NeoNazi town" is factually wrong, and unsupportable by any source (including this Wikipedia article). That you choose not to remove, strike out etc.. this statement and instead blame me for pointing out your misinformation (on a topic you know nothing about except what you read on this page which is not a reliable source), while going down a lengthy rabbit hole and distraction over the meaning of Godwin's Law... whatever. You are violating BLP for every notable person who lives in this place. Then you say "page watchers who are too close to the topic at hand", implying I am "too close" with "Nazis" and what else could it mean but a COI, right? Sheesh I point out one bit of misinformation and you respond by personally attacking me with even more misinformation, though it appears to me as disinformation. Good luck in your future endeavors on Wikipedia. I suggest you be more careful in how you describe people, even those you otherwise might disagree with. And if someone factually challenging your assertions is "jumping down your throat", I don't think you will last very long on Wikipedia. -- GreenC 23:39, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]