X-Post: In Reply to @rsmccain (Robert Stacy McCain)'s Fact-Averse Hit Piece for His Ideological Brother-in-Arms, Donald Kent Douglas

Portrait of a Stalker Troll: @Repsac3, Also Known as Walter James Casper III : The Other McCain

Professor Donald Douglas has spent years fighting one particularly obsessed troll, Walter James Casper III, who might actually out-rank Bill Schmalfeldt in the Stalker Hall of Shame, because Casper has been cyberstalking Douglas for more than five years.

First off, the photo, which McCain and several of his readers have delighted in attacking like junior high mean girls. This is where it came from: James Casper | A St. Baldrick's Participant. That's right, I had just (in 2011) shaved my head for a charity for cancer kids. And yes, McCain... It does look like an egg.

(There's one from another year where I grew and kept a big bushy beard so I looked like yer average Wooly Willy character for the day we did the St Baldrick's event, to amuse my preschool-aged niece and nephew... Dr Douglas seems to like posting and making fun of that one a lot, too.)

As for "stalking" (or later, "trolling" or "harassing,") there's a reason that both of McCain's links suggesting he's offering evidence of my supposed bad behavior online go to a search of Donald Douglas' blog posts about me over the last year or so, rather than my posts about him; The results would show that:

The last time I posted about Dr. Douglas on my blog was on Wednesday, August 7th, 2013.

The last time I posted something about Dr. Douglas that wasn't a response to his posting or tweeting about me a day or two earlier? I don't even know... (I went back over a year, and couldn't find one.)

What Donald is upset about (and McCain is unquestioningly, unthinkingly regurgitating here on behalf of his blog buddy) is that I read Dr Douglas' blog without his permission. That's what Dr Douglas (and McCain) are labeling "stalking."

Among the significant characteristics of cyberstalkers is the disproportionality of their obsessions. Professor Douglas is not an academic celebrity or influential media personality. He’s a professor of political science at Long Beach City College in California. It is not as if he’s at Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, Yale or some other big-money “prestige” school, and yet the fact that Professor Douglas is (a) conservative and (b) a blogger is sufficient to justify in Casper’s sick mind the most insane forms of stalking behavior.

"Stalking behavior" like what, exactly?

Reading his blog?

Responding when he posts about me?

What is McCain talking about?

Another characteristic of cyberstalkers is their resort to psychological projection: They are not obsessed with you — no! — you are obsessed with them, and don’t you dare accuse them of harassing you — of course not! — you are instead harassing them.

The facts are there... Every post where I've mentioned Donald Douglas in well over a year has been in response to his posts and tweets about me. From the time he stopped posting about me back in August until his unprovoked and unwarranted attack just before midnight on January 6th, I haven't said word one to or about the guy. This isn't rocket science...

This kind of “accuse the accusers” tactic serves two purposes for the troll: First, it is a psychological rationalization by which he justifies his behavior and, second, it serves to obfuscate the situation in the eyes of law enforcement or other authorities.

Again, the record is pretty clear... While much of what McCain says here about trolling online is likely true, he's backing the wrong horse... It's not that the authorities that Dr Douglas reported me to are confused, McCain... It's that his allegations don't stand up to the slightest scrutiny (which McCain would know, had he bothered to look).

Something else: The conflict between Casper and Professor Douglas is not about politics, nor is it about Professor Douglas.

That is to say, Casper’s espousal of left-wing political ideas is not the reason for his behavior, but simply a pretext, and if he weren’t harassing Professor Douglas, he’d be harassing some other target, selected more or less at random. There is, of course, a specific history to the conflict between them, but it is ultimately irrelevant. There are plenty of people every bit as left-wing as Casper who are not obsessive stalkers, and there are other conservative bloggers who might just as easily become targets for stalking, if ever they attracted the attention of such a grotesquely deformed personality as Casper.

Again, all of this is true as regards the person lashing out...but that person ain't me. Donald Douglas doesn't behave the way he does because he's a conservative; he behaves this way because he's Donald Douglas.

Walter James Casper III has spent years smearing and harassing Professor Douglas, trying to get him fired from his job. This could (and in fact, often does) happen to any blogger who has a day job.

...but rather than provide links to any tweets or blog posts in evidence of this, McCain links to Donald's posts about me on his blog over the last year or so... Why do you think that is? (FWIW, I do the same thing on the sidebar of American Nihilist, believing Donald Douglas' posts are evidence of his bad behavior, not mine. Wonder what McCain's thinkin'?)

Not only did I never try to get Donald Douglas fired from his job, I regularly spoke out against anyone attacking bloggers offline for online behaviors, whether the victim or perps were conservative or liberal. And that includes the guy I once blogged with, who left the blog over our disagreement on the subject. There is no comment or post anywhere where I excuse or condone such behavior. Donald is lying, and McCain is mindlessly parroting Donald's lies. (And yes... The incident that Donald and McCain are talking about occurred in 2009. Really.)

To get an idea of the pathetic nature of Casper’s obsession, he has devoted an entire blog, called “American Nihilist,” to his anti-Douglas jihad. In the past six months, that stalker site has attracted an average of about 15 visitors a day. By contrast, Professor Douglas’s blog has averaged nearly 2,000 visitors daily.
In other words, the readership for Casper’s anti-Douglas rantings is less than 1% of the readership of Professor Douglas’s blog and yet, despite such clear evidence that no one else shares his obsession, Casper continues doing what he does, apparently with no other purpose except to annoy the target of his weird fixation.

As to the origins of American Nihilist, I've posted it many times:

I hate bullies. For well over a year, I read as Donald Douglas excoriated liberal blogger after liberal blogger, often in pretty nasty terms. I found him to be wrong politically, of course, but that wasn't it. My problem with Dr. Douglas was that he was pompous and kinda mean as well as being wrong.

Also, I was mystified by this whole nihilist thing. See, everytime he called me a nihilist, I asked him--a professor of political science--to back what he said with evidence of my nihilism. I'd challenge him to choose any dictionary, copy the definition of the word "nihilism," and then show examples, in the form of quotes from me, that support the notion that I am a nihilist. When he labeled some other blogger, I challenged him to do the same with quotes of that person. And while he was very free with the label, he has never actually shown that any liberal blogger has ever expressed a nihilist thought. In fact, he has never even tried.

As Donald attacked other bloggers on his site or theirs, labeling them no good nihilists everywhere he went, this whole "nihilist" schtick of his became kind of a joke around the liberal blogosphere, and folks began to know him as the wingnut who goes around calling everyone nihilists, like the boy who cried wolf... He practically made the word meaningless through repetition...

So one night I was bored, and created a blogspot blog that was a funhouse mirror of American Power. Where he used black I used white, and where he used white I used black. I intended it to be a one-off joke, where I'd do one or two posts calling everyone and everything "nihilist," and that'd be that. I sent authorship invitations to a few of the bloggers that Donald had recently attacked as being nihilists, figuring we'd all have a good laugh... But instead, a few of 'em accepted the authorship positions and started writing posts, in character. And the rest, as they say...

Authors have come and gone, but the blog is still here, still dealing with Donald's many attacks on others, and yes, launching a few on him, as well. The blogroll is made up of blogs/bloggers that Donald has attacked on his blog. Any of 'em are welcome to become authors here, anytime they wish. Other than illegal acts or items that threaten the continued existence of the blog, I don't censor anyone's writing. They're all adults, and thus each author is responsible for defending or apologizing for his own posts. (Yes, I know that Donald would prefer that I treat them like children, and only allow posts that I personally would approve of, but I see that as being far too "nanny state" for me. Should Donald ever run a group blog of his own, he is free to censor it any way he sees fit, but I believe that each individual author is capable of dealing with/defending their own posts.)

That in a nutshell is why I expose the foolish and the dangerous or nasty things Donald Douglas says on his blog. I don't like bullies in general, and I specifically don't like the way Dr Douglas treats the folks he doesn't agree with, so I decided to do to him what he was doing to others. Should he ever stop mistreating people, I'll stop calling him out for it. In the meantime, we'll all be here, Donald in his place, and we in ours...

As Donald became more focused on me, individually, I stopped making jokes (and eventually, posting original pieces regarding him at all) and started using it to respond to his posts and tweets about me. When he started threatening legal, law enforcement, or government action, I began keeping track of who posted what when, visible for anyone interested (or potentially involved in such action) to see...

As for the numbers, it helps to consider that aside the one page and sidebar where I keep track of Dr Douglas' attacks on me, I haven't posted anything there since August. The other blogger there posts about once a month. And frankly, no one at AmNi is much into treating our blog stats like freshmen boys comparing dick size in the locker room. Don's got a big blog penis. McCain's is even bigger than Donald's. So, why should anyone (aside them, perhaps) care? Does it make what either of them say any more right or wrong, honest or dishonest?

The answer folks, is no.

I can appreciate that Robert Stacy McCain felt obligated to defend his little blog brother Donald Douglas. He and his readers' attacks on my appearance and whatnot is par for the course (and in my opinion, speaks more to who they are than who I am...) Partisans attack because, hey, this is the internet, and ya gotta support your "team."

On the facts though, McCain's post is no better than most of Donald's obsessed, fact-free rants... I stopped doing anything to Donald Douglas that one could even spin into "stalking," "harassment," or "trolling" well over a year ago... (...and even before that, the overwhelmingly vast majority of what I did would be called "blogging" by most fair-minded internet users.) When Donald lashes out at me, I respond by adding the post or tweet to the list with a few comments--and occasionally (read, "last August...up until this post here"), by posting in response, too. Other than that, I do nothing more than read the poor guy's blog. Whatever Donald Douglas' issues may be, they're about him, not me...

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UPDATE: "Journalist" Robert Stacy McCain expresses a decided lack of interest in the truth:

"Tell you what, Casper: You go nurse your hurts in your own dark corner of the Internet and don't give me another excuse to take notice of you. That's gonna be a win-win, see? Because I've got no shortage of weirdos to pay attention to, and you really don't want me on your case." - robertstacymccain

I can only reply that the guy volunteered to be "on my case" by pecking out the lying-assed post in the first place... He could easily've, y'know, not done that...but he did. And it's shoddy and likely intentionally dishonest work.
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ADDED, for the record (High Irony Warning):

"See, these claims that I am engaged in “cyber bullying” and “cyberstalking” of Kimberlin, that I “defame and publicly attack Plaintiff” are merely word games; I report and comment and Kimberlin seems to think that by applying pejorative labels to my writing, he has proven that I’ve done what he says I’ve done." - "Journalist" Robert Stacy McCain - Brett Kimberlin and ‘False Narratives’:

Yeah I feel ya, McCain... Must suck for folks to outright lie about you online and then act as though their claiming (or repeating) an allegation or pejorative about you is unimpeachable proof that what they say is stone-cold fact by virtue of their having said it... If only you and your obsessed little friend practiced the ideals you're trying to preach... (Hell, I'd be shocked if either of you actually quoted and attacked things I wrote rather than repeatedly regurgitating the dishonest and paranoid delusions of "stalking" and "harassment" that your friend Dr Douglas has spent the last year or two spinning and spewing to any and all who would listen...with occasional help from a few unquestioning symps.)
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An American Nihilist x-post