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1996 Videotaped Interview

In the fall of 1996, New Jersey Network News interviewed Finklestein on camera and asked him several questions regarding a local U.S. Senate race.

So the picture caption, "The only known photo of Arthur J. Finkelstein" in the main article, probably needs to be editted for clarification.

72.82.181.60 07:18, 3 July 2007 (UTC) reply

1969-70 At NYSE

In 1969 and 1970 a young man named Arthur Finkelstein worked for the New York Stock exchange in the Data Processing department. He was about 25-27 years old, thin, about 6' tall with dark hair. He was extremely well-read and articulate and often stated that he was a libertarian. He worked at 11 Wall street which was next door to the Broad Street offices of Nixon's former law firm. Could this be the same Arthur J. Finkelstein?

Call945 ( talk) 14:28, 16 October 2008 (UTC) reply

Call945, you are CORRECT, and your sharp-eyed item is now part of the text. Thank you! -- GaryWMaloney, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, definitely like an advertisement. At this point the list of "former clients" does not include a single unsuccessful campaign. -- ❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 01:05, 3 September 2010 (UTC) reply

Check the text -- Every cycle covered lists losing Finkelstein campaigns (Buckley 1976, Nelson 1978, Buckley 1980, fistfuls of losers in both the 1980s and 1990s, etc.). A pollster / consultant typically has a dozen or more clients per election, not all of whom are worthy of mention here. Also, there are severe limits to the public knowledge of his clients -- the Finkelstein firm does not have a website, nor has apparently distributed a client list since the 1980s. If someone wants to plow through 30 years of FEC reports on expenditures to consultants, be my guest. (And that would still omit campaigns for STATE office.) -- GaryWMaloney, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Article is a barely-disguised advertisement, and full of weasily non-encyclopedic tabloid-style language straight out of a Finkelstein and co. instruction book (like "signature efforts", "liberal voting record", "hard-hitting advertising", "soft-pedaling their anti-communism" "his liberal positions on issues", "a champion fundraiser", "the ostensible excuse", "ads that raised questions about the candidate's work ethic", and many more). This article has to be something more than it currently is, but it is quite clearly being "curated" by those seeking to keep it as it is. 92.3.118.48 ( talk) 15:35, 19 February 2020 (UTC) reply
I think the above unnamed complainant doesn't like it when someone dares to write better than he does. Every phrase he cites -- and I mean EVERY one -- is in accordance with the facts. More than anyone in history, Finkelstein made his opponents' voting record the central issue in campaigns. That meant proving people were liberal; the "signature" 1988 Florida Senate campaign had the tagline, "Hey Buddy, You're a Liberal." The 1992 New York Senate campaign tagged Democrat Bob Abrams as "Hopelessly liberal." Etc. etc. In more factual news, Alfonse D'Amato raised and spent more in his 1998 Senate campaign than any other candidate -- and none of it was his own money. Hence, "champion fundraiser." The D'Amato ads against Schumer about his work ethic, bizarre as it seems, kept that race close until D'Amato imploded (described in excruciating detail). It's all cited, Finkelstein's wins and his losses (of which there were many, including the one to Schumer). GaryWMaloney ( talk) 05:03, 15 August 2021 (UTC) reply

Personal bias, no third party references

Majority of the conclusions in this segment are not substantiated and show a personal bias: "For good money, Finkelstein is serving the interest of Russia as well. From 2010, he is an advisor to the Hungarian government's shadow institution, Századvég, and Hungary's ruling party, Fidesz. Fidesz who employs Finkelstein as advisor through Századvég in Hungary, is backing Russia. Despite EU concerns and warning, Fidesz signed a contract with Russia to extend nuclear power plants in Hungary for 30 years. The contract is TOP SECRET for 80 years. So it seems Finkelstein is - indirectly - backing Putin and Russia in Eastern Europe." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.133.29.5 ( talk) 11:37, 17 July 2015 (UTC) reply

Someone needs to do something about this Article

Its written more like a biographical novel the encyclopedic article. Not to mention this person is hardly notable enough to have a quote section. This is obviously the doing of himself or people in his behalf. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.116.122.116 ( talk) 07:12, 19 December 2012 (UTC) reply

When Finkelstein died in August 2017, he was feted with lengthy obituaries in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe and numerous other major news outlets. All the obits contained lengthy quotes by him, as well as about him. Nuf ced. -- GaryWMaloney, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

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Anti-semitic meme

Please be advised that a new anti-semitic meme is tied to this individual; online hate groups have coined a word (which I will not mention here out of caution but which can be seen in this article's edit history) to attribute some of the tactics central to the Southern strategy to Jewish people (and Finkelstein in particular). An anonymous editor at IP 174.99.12.119 has already tried to incorporate it into this page. I'm not sure what the protocol is but protection may be warranted? Nikko2013 ( talk) 01:30, 10 November 2020 (UTC) reply

Well -- I think Nikko2013 has his heart in the right place, and I am sure Finkelstein endured his share of anti-Semitism as well as anti-gay sentiment during his long career. Problem with this item -- the term "Finkel-think" was used in a TIME magazine story in Oct. 1996, and on CNN, to describe something very real in the late stages of the Dole for President campaign. Also, there is no evidence it was considered anti-Semitic at the time (it was merely recognizing Finkelstein's influence among GOP operatives, who used the "liberal liberal" theme/meme against Democrats). If the term is being resurrected after 25 years - first I've heard of it. GaryWMaloney ( talk) 04:47, 15 August 2021 (UTC) reply
Thank you for the correction; I may have missed the detail in the body of the article since it was hyphenated, in contrast to the reference which I removed: the intro of the article simply ended with the sentence "He was also the creator of Finkelthink." (Note that the way that this is phrased suggests a concept enduring beyond Finkelstein.)
In case another such edit is made in the future, I'd like to explain my case that the edit in question was trying to plant the term as an antisemitic meme. The old usage to which you refer doesn't seem to have caught on even enough to register within the extensive database of written works used by Google ngrams, and I don't see any evidence that it penetrated the zeitgeist enough to have a lasting effect. The "resurrection" of the term (as reported on here by a researcher who monitors fascist spaces) can be seen e.g. via a Twitter search of "finkelthink" ("finkel-think" is trickier because the search feature doesn't care about punctuation and thus includes stuff like [1]); there (thankfully) aren't terribly many results, but all are from the last two years and many use coded anti-semitic language; notably, the second result in my search is this montage of straight-up Nazi propaganda. Crucially, the people who are (were, I hope, though the twitter search suggests the trend may not be entirely dead) pushing this are less organized hate groups than Internet trolls loosely united by fascist ideologies. And the edit fits the pattern of such a troll: an unregistered user adding a single uninformative sentence to the page's intro with just the comment "New information". Nikko2013 ( talk) 04:05, 3 April 2022 (UTC) reply
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