A mere week after boldly stating that I am tired of apologizing for myself, who should emerge but a troll. This troll formerly numbered among my friends. Rather, this troll formerly numbered among my “friends.” There are differing levels of friendship and this one was one that was conducted primarily via the internet and focused on common research interests.

Then, earlier this year, this “friendship” took a turn. He became obsessed with attacking other scholars in ways that were not simply unprofessional but veered into defamatory, abusive, illegal, and downright demented. He lied to me about the extent of that behavior. Like most liars, thought that the contradictions in his stories would never become apparent, then became defensive and accusatory when exposed. After that, he tried to use his connection to me to abuse other scholars and I finally had to just send him on his way. When he discovered that, he responded like an abuse ex- and went on the attack.

This is his method of operation. He tries to befriend scholars, praising them to a point of embarrassment, often while defaming others in the very same breath. For instance, approaching someone in an archive to say, “Prof. X, your work is great, have you hear of Prof. Y’s work? It is amazing unlike Prof. A, B, and C’s work. They are frauds and disgraces.” I am all but quoting him here. (What do you do if you are Prof. X and can’t back away slowly because you are trying to research?) If you run afoul of him, suddenly he finds all sorts of flaws in your work, and will take to whatever public venue he has been using to praise you to now attack you.

None of this is about your work, you see. This is about him. He uses other people’s work to call attention to himself. He does not have a PhD nor an MA. He has only published a non-academic book with a very narrow focus and no grounding in academic scholarship nor historical context. The press is essentially print-on-demand and that was several years ago. Yet, he thinks this grans him the authority to command all others to follow his dictates. His claims, in fact, have become more laughable in their grandiosity.

He has behaved quite ugly to scholars, to librarians, to archivists, to public historians. He has stated that he intends to ruin the career of an Ivy League historian. Those are his words.

I’ve met terrible people like this before, had them close to me in my life. They try to destroy you in a variety of ways, but to what end? They don’t realize that, even if they should succeed in fulfilling whatever demented fantasy they have about destroying you or having your lifetime of accomplishments stripped from you, those accomplishments don’t automatically transfer to them. This guy wants to discredit my book, he wants to destroy the career of this other historian. That doesn’t confer upon him either of our doctoral degrees. That doesn’t transfer the authorships of our books to him. That doesn’t transfer our awards to him. That doesn’t give him our jobs.

He still has to be the troll that he is. That seems to be the worst curse that he could suffer.