UPDATE: The plagiarised posts on AVFM have been taken down without explanation or apology; see my post here for more details and perhaps a little schadenfreude.
UPDATE 2: Elam has belatedly posted an acknowledgement of (some of) the plagiarism. Then he called me fat. See my take here.
You may remember Amartya Talukdar, the marital rape legalization advocate and Holocaust denier who is also a regular contributor to A Voice for Men.
Yesterday, he graced us all with a post on AVFM featuring the ominous title Feminism and Destruction of Humanity.
Not “Feminism and the Destruction of Humanity,” mind you, but “Feminism and Destruction of Humanity.” His previous post for AVFM was titled “Why Capitalists Are Playing Footsie With Feminist.” Not “With Feminists,” or “With Feminism” but “With Feminist.”
AVFM has 19 people on its masthead. It has a “managing editor,” an “assistant managing editor,” and a just plain “editor.” It has three other ostensible “editors” and three more people who are “news directors” of various sorts.
Apparently none of these people — nor anyone else on AVFM’s “staff” — bothers to read posts or their headlines before they go up on the site.
The post is full of sentences that are appalling both in what they say and in how they are written.
Here are some of my favorites:
Feminism not only ascendance in the western world but was exported to other countries through the UN, CEDAW and massive funding.
The Feminist also abhor religion and promote lesbian subculture.
It’s obvious that high divorce rates, lower birth rates and gay subcultures were instrumental in downfall of Rome. It will similarly lead to downfall of modern human civilization under the grip of Feminism.
Thing is, only portions of Talukdar’s post are grammatically disastrous. The first half is a competently written, if rather dull, discussion of Malthusianism and its supposed implications for the contemporary world. Other sections, while sort of loopy in their arguments, are also more or less grammatically correct.
Suspicious, I cut and pasted Talukdar’s post into an online plagiarism checker and, well, let’s just say that the results were about as shocking as an M Night Shyamalan “twist ending.”
Most of the post is plagiarised word-for-word from an assortment of texts easily found online.
In most cases, Talukdar didn’t even bother to alter the wording even a little bit; he basically cut and pasted various passages together from these sources, added a few misshapen sentences of his own, and put his name at the top.
Here’s the opening of Talukdar’s post:
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) postulated in his Essay on the Principles of Population (1798), that food production, limited by the land available, can only grow at an arithmetic rate (1,2,3,4,5…), while population growth tends to grow at a geometric rate (2,4,8,16,32…).
Here’s the original passage, from some lecture notes someone put online:
Malthus postulated in his Essay on the Principles of Population (1798), that food production, limited by the land available, can only grow at an arithmetic rate (1,2,3,4,5…), while population growth tends to grow at a geometric rate (2,4,8,16,32…).
The only change Talukdar made was to add Malthus’ first name and the dates of his birth and death.
Talukdar’s post continues:
These trends, he argued, would result in a point at which a society experiences war, poverty, and famine as the need for food surpasses its availability.
That sentence came, literally word for word, from a page on Neo-Malthusian Theory put online to supplement a college course.
These trends, he argued, would result in a point at which a society experiences war, poverty, and famine as the need for food surpasses its availability.
Talukdar then moved on from Malthus to The Population Bomb:
The Population Bomb was written by Stanford University Professor Paul R. Ehrlich in 1968. It warned of the mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth.
Ta da! He got all that from Wikipedia.
The Population Bomb is a best-selling book written by Stanford University Professor Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne Ehrlich (who was uncredited), in 1968.[1][2] It warned of the mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth.
I think you’ve got the idea here.
Other cut-and-pasted sources for “Talukdar’s” post include pieces in The Economist and Forbes; a somewhat loopy post about Feminism and the Destruction of the Nuclear Family on on a site called The Radical Conservative; an op-ed on an Indian site called The Daily O, which itself seems to have been partly plagiarised from an article from The Weekly Standard that someone posted on FreeRepublic; something called the Palmetto Family Council; and an article on the fall of Rome on a site run by the United Church of God.
Even Talukdar’s sentence blaming the fall of Rome on “high divorce rates, lower birth rates and gay subcultures” turns out to have been half-plagiarised.
And there may be more; I used the free version of the plagiarism checker, which doesn’t check each and every sentence.
The obvious next question is: What about his earlier articles?
Well, I ran “Why Capitalists Are Playing Footsie With Feminist” through the plagiarism checker as well, and, yep, it’s heavily plagiarised too.
Sources for that Talukdar (Not-so) Original include: Wikipedia; Wikipedia; a post on Quora that seems to have been “borrowed” from an old version of a Wikipedia article; a giant chunk of the same Daily O article he also plagiarised in “Feminism and Destruction of Humanity”; Europa.eu; the Green Global Foundation Journal; Foreign Affairs; and (somewhat ironically) a piece by socialist feminist theorist Nancy Fraser in The Guardian.
I’m not going to bother to check any of his others.
So the question now is whether this evidence of massive and obvious plagiarism lead AVFM to finally show Talukdar the door?
I honestly don’t know. After all, they kept publishing him after I presented them with clear evidence he was a Holocaust denier, so what’s a little plagiarism between friends?
By the way, here’s the Mr. Bean skit I got the screenshot above from:
«scurries back in»
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/01/13/a-bronze-age-fire-yields-unparalleled-artifacts-preserved-for-3000-years/
@opposablethumbs – OooOoo, is any of her stuff available online?
@ opposablethumbs
It’s *always* a good time to mention Mary Beard; she’s amazing. I’m a huge fan of hers; as anyone who’s read my upthread analysis of the Roman Empire might have spotted 🙂
(Hey, it’s a thread on plagiarism, I’m getting into the vibe)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rggk_H3jEgw
Would you say this is a good starter?
«reads article»
10 imaginary internet bucks says that they’ll respond that his posts / plagiarism were meant as a tribute and / or satire.
Well, blimey, I wouldn’t. Even if they gave me the title ‘editor’. Enough of the toxic brain sludge, already. That crap is for writing (or, copy-pasting) rather than reading.
I don’t know how you manage, David – looking for the jewels of hilarity in the dunghills of the manosphere.
re: Mary Beard – seconded and thirded. Just reading her SPQR.
She blogs here
http://timesonline.typepad.com/
and has quite a few articles, mostly reviews, available to read here
http://www.lrb.co.uk/
I would say the fall of the Roman Empire was caused by “Well, it was about time for something else” Sinus waves and all that.
Very OT and personal, perhaps TMI aside:
Please wish me luck today. I’m going in for a secondary consult re: some pelvic pain and…other issues.
I’ve had problems with ovarian cysts in the past, but my paternal grandmother also had a diagnosis of ovarian cancer in her mid-30s (my age) that (thankfully, if somewhat improbably) seemed to be resolved by a complete hysterectomy.
My Mom and husband know (the latter once again showing himself to be the best husband ever with his tender and heartfelt response, which mostly consisted of his holding and comforting me while I was a blubbering mess and then seamlessly shifting back to our usual banter when I was ready to move on), but I haven’t mentioned it to my extended real-life network because I don’t want to be a drama llama if nothing or a minimal amount’s wrong.
But I’m still really scared, especially since I kept putting off addressing the symptoms / hoping they were just cyst awfulness that would resolve on their own throughout last year because I didn’t want to lean on our awful insurance.
I know I’m not the most active or beloved poster here, but you all are both a set a set of really cool people and far enough removed from my day-to-day that I can deal if you roll your eyes at my hysteria (ha, no allusion intented) and move along.
@mockingbird Good luck! I hope you hear an answer quickly, and that it’s an answer you can deal with easily.
@ mockingbird
My heart goes out to you, hope all goes well.
I doubt avfm actually has an editor. Either that or they have some seriously lax standards on propaganda and only care about shoveling as much of it as possible.
My very best wishes, mockingbird. I hope you get good news; and if you don’t then I wish you lots of wonderful people in your life to help you with it.
@ Alan Robertshaw, @ mockingbird,
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I only know her reputation (and that she’s spoken out on misogynistic online harassment), which is why her name immediately came to mind. You undoubtedly know way more about her and her work!
@ mockingbird, wholeheartedly wishing you quick and above all good news. (Your OH sounds wonderful, btw. )
It’s always funny when right wing Christian supremacists blame the fall of the Roman Empire on liberal hedonism. Do they not realize that Rome was Christian when they fell but through much of its glory days was not? Don’t they kind of prove that making a state a Christian theocracy is no guarantee of permanent prosperity and success?
Guy’s rule of thumb is a good one. Anyone who invokes the “fall of the Roman Empire” narrative as part of a political commentary on the present day, not only has an obvious axe to grind but a woeful grasp of the basic history they claim to represent. Instant credibility collapse. Real bugbear of mine.
The reasons for the Western Empire’s collapse will always be up for debate, but I think we can safely dispense with Roman moral decadence or Germanic racial superiority. Personally, I’m drawn to a political and structural explanation: in the fifth century, spiralling factionalism tore the empire apart from within. Successive regime changes alienated provincial Roman leaders – which included barbarian Kings – leading to rebellion and usurpation. Too many interest groups wanted a spot at the top. Invaders get some major kill-points, but invasion alone could be defeated in battle (Attila the Hun for one, a real flash in the pan).
Example: in 454 the patrician Aetius, Rome’s most capable general and powerful leader (too powerful), was murdered for his trouble by a court faction which included the Emperor Valentinian III. Within the space of a year: Valentinian was murdered in turn by Aetius’s soldiers; the patrician Maximus (who’s been blamed for both murders) took the throne; King Geiseric the Vandal (most successful invader by far), who’d come to an accord with Valentinian whilst occupying Carthage, invaded Italy from the south and sacked Rome; Maximus was torn apart by a mob; finally a faction in Gaul, led by King Theoderic II the Visigoth, proclaimed the distinguished local general and politician Avitus emperor. He didn’t last long.
@EJ
Personally? I don’t like to ever say never with history, so I don’t think ‘The Fall’ of the Western Empire was ever inevitable. The Empire certainly endured its share of political disasters in the fifth century, which historians have identified as possible points of no return. But at other points committed leadership began to reverse the situation, until basic bad luck put a stop to that.
That’s not to downplay what an extraordinary effort ‘saving’ the Empire would have taken. Defeating political opponents and regaining provinces militarily is one thing; binding those provinces back into the imperial system long-term is another. Particularly if the administrative machinery which made the empire so attractive has all but vanished, and provincial society has already begun to look elsewhere for leadership (i.e. your friendly neighbourhood King of the Goths). Still, the empire had weathered a similar crisis before, in the third century, and emerged whole after a process of restructuring. Whose to say what might have happened? Or whether it would have been worth it.
OT: Death apparently has it in for interesting British gentlemen this week.
Alan Rickman dead at 69.
@ WeirwoodTreeHugger
I know right? The Romans practically invented Christianity! Stop conflating centuries of history you irresponsible bastards! In fact, Gibbon himself is supposed to have blamed Christianity in large part for the Empire’s ‘Decline and Fall’, which is also pretty silly if you ask me (I think he had that whole Enlightenment thing going on). Just shows, people have been playing political football with Rome’s history for ever, and probably always will.
I was just about to post penguin pics but now it seems almost inconsiderate, having just read about Rickman. 🙁
I suppose the penguins could be brain bleach, or I’ll just post penguins “in honor of Alan Rickman”.
@mockingbird
That sounds scary and painful. I hope all goes well.
The Christian right-wingers always have some sort of solution/explanation/diversionary interjection when they’re presented with evidence that contradicts their world-view…
Historically the go-to choices were: burning people at the stake, beheading, torture then beheading, more torture…etc…Luckily it’s now generally frowned upon to burn people at the stake, torture people, or behead people, so they’ve had to move on to bible-ing against the wishes of others, standing outside with signs that have the usual stuff about “God will judge you and you’re going to hell if you don’t change your ways you whores and hedonists”, and posting in the comments on Yahoo articles.
Dear Universe:
Please stop killing the sexy sexy men of Britain! At least stop killing the ones we like, I mean c’mon – if you have to strike someone down there’s a whole crapton of options written about here on this very blog! Choose one of those!
Thanks!
Alan Rickman is known to have liked penguins. Let us post them in his memory.
http://media.giphy.com/media/H4uE6w9G1uK4M/giphy.gif
@EJ
Probably half and half. The circumstances of its rise definitely contributed to the succession crisis problem, which severely hampered the empire’s ability to respond to any of the other factors. But it lasted two centuries before it started having real trouble, and if things had played out differently it could have lasted longer. It did go another thousand years in the East, after all.
@Alan
I did specifically say in the West for that reason.
@Three Snakes
It’s pretty hard to beat Nero’s Golden House for decadent, and that was in the 1st century. The later centuries didn’t really have that kind of money.
@WWTH:
Indeed, the tribes who sacked Rome in 410 were Arians and the crusaders who sacked Constantinople in 1204 were Catholics. Christianity seems to make one better at destroying Roman empires than at defending them.
All of the decadent shit Romans are known for were a feature of Roman elite life in the 1st century BC. Rome “fell” in 476 AD. If that shit caused the fall then it took ~500 years to finally work.