On the cyberstalking

Almost since the announcement of a book on “Anti-Democratic Thought”, a year ago, a cyberstalking campaign against me has been pursued.

Cyberstalking is a recognized criminal activity. A Wikipedia article on the subject has to be permanently protected from cyberstalkers who would try to damage and falsify the information provided there:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking

Cyberstalking, according to Wikipedia, “is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk someone”. In my case, the originator of this cyberstalking campaign appears to be one anonymous person who operates under various alias names. Most recently, he or she called themselves Brian Gee – such a person does however not exist, as independent inquiries confirmed.

Typical behaviour of cyberstalkers, writes Wikipedia, includes harassment and “false accusations”: “Many cyberstalkers try to damage the reputation of their victim and turn other people against them. They post false information about them on websites. They may set up their own websites, blogs or user pages for this purpose. They post allegations about the victim to newsgroups, chat rooms or other sites that allow public contributions”.

I have been wrongfully accused of fraudulent activities. The person stalking me opened e-mail accounts in my name and those of other people, posted to mailing lists, newsgroups and fora on the Internet under my name and other assumed identities, created defamatory Wikipedia entries, hijacked my profile pages in social networks, obsessed by creating a made-up online file about me, etc.

“Cyberstalkers may approach their victim's friends, family and work colleagues to obtain personal information. They may advertise for information on the Internet [and] often will monitor the victim's online activities and attempt to trace their IP address in an effort to gather more information about their victims”. For a year now, this anonymous person has persisted in contacting everyone I know, everyone who participated in any events I organized, and so on, in order to spread more untruths and obtain information about me.

Many cyberstalkers enlist and encourage “others to harass the victim. [They] try to involve third parties in the harassment. They may claim the victim has harmed the stalker or his/her family in some way”. The person stalking me got others to assist in the cyberstalking. First, he or she pestered people associated with me and SCIS by repeatedly sending them defamatory and slanderous e-mails – until such persons would resign from SCIS. Once this had happened, the cyberstalker used such induced resignations to convince gullible journalists from third-rate newspapers to write articles on SCIS in which the false and entirely unproven accusations against me would be repeated. From that point on, he or she continued the cyberstalking campaign against me by referring to the apparently objective news in the media – which in truth had been created artificially by the stalking itself.

While e-mails from that anonymous source have been circulated repeatedly on mailing lists on which I also sent out calls for papers for events I organized, I have been barred by some list owners (for example of Philos-L) from defending myself on their lists. Only the anonymous smear is given space. This despite the fact that anyone who participated in an event or other activity organized by me and SCIS can confirm that everything happened with the usual academic propriety. A fact that has proven to many people that the claims of the anonymous cyberstalker as far as they could judge by themselves were wholly wrong and unfounded.

Most importantly, it was alleged that I was organizing events in order to defraud participants. Everyone who ever participated in an SCIS event knows that I neither offered any financial assistance to participants nor charged any fees. (Charges may have been applied by conference organizers in the case of workshops or panels taking place in the frame of larger conferences.) No one at any point lost any money due to events organized by me and no one, apart from an anonymous cyberstalker, claims anything of that kind.

The anonymous cyberstalker, who appears to have little knowledge of academia, apparently also labours under the impression that people got paid by me to contribute their papers to my edited volumes. Again, contributors themselves know that this is not the case. Since the publication of my book on “Anti-Democratic Thought”, in December 2008, the cyberstalking campaign has targeted with particular zeal this (and my forthcoming) book as well as the publisher of both titles. As the campaign only started after the first book had been announced and focuses on that book now, it seems obvious to conclude that my academic work on anti-democratic thought is the reason for the ongoing cyberstalking.

While I was duly questioned by UK police regarding the allegations made by the cyberstalker, I have not, to my knowledge, been charged with anything related to fraudulently obtaining money – and certainly I have not been found guilty of it. Already in May 2008, I asked the police as part of a written statement on the issue to also investigate the cyberstalking. While they were willing to investigate false and entirely unproven allegations against me, they seem not to this day to have been able to do anything to stop the stalking.

My advice to anyone contacted by the cyberstalker is to block the e-mail address of the sender – in which case you should not receive any further unwanted communication from him or her. The best way to deal with anonymous cyberstalkers is to ignore them.

I will continue to use my own name. Erich Kofmel.