Daniel Hindes

I was talking to my friend Stephen Usher today about the website we designed for the Austin Branch of the Anthroposophical Society. We are still trying to decide if we like the color of the background. It is nice to have a soft watercolor - it gives a bit of an ethereal feel - but it could be distracting. I brought this up after talking to Caron of Sontec Instruments, who is looking to put a website together for the Colorado Anthroposophical Society. We'll see if the site they design uses a flat color background or if they used a painting.

Reposted from my personal blog (Daniel Hindes' Blog)

Once upon a time I came across a site that annoyed me. It had a wealth of material on esoteric subjects, details that were available nowhere else on the web, and in some cases nowhere else at all. The only problem was that not one piece of it had any citations, and that made it essentially useless for my purposes. It is standard scholarly practice if you are talking about something that happened 300 years ago to describe the sources upon which you base your conclusions. Other scholars such as myself can then go back to the sources and verify your research, or come to different conclusions. But if you have only the conclusions without the sources, than the opinions are essentially worthless. The author of the site was revealed after some clicking around to be Eric P. Wijnants. I wrote as much in a blog post entitled “How Not to Write Occult History”.

It turns out I stumbled on something a little bit larger than just a personal annoyance. In the comments of my blog a graduate student came forward to tell how Eric P. Wijnants had conned her into sending review material, pretending to be a professor at the University of Vienna. Her entire research, previously unpublished, showed up on his website as his own work. In a follow-up post a few years later I summarized the whole affair: “Eric P. Wijnants and the problem of pseudo-scholarly writing without footnotes”. Eric himself, using psudonyms, jumped to his own defense in the blog comments.

But the story continues. It seems Susan Olsson was not the only researcher and graduate student whose material was “borrowed” by Eric P. Wijnants – solicited for scholarly review and then posted wholesale on his site. Brendan French's Ph.D. thesis was similarly plagiarized, as was that of Dr. Walter Penrose.

Because his own name is now linked to this broadening plagiarism scandal, Eric P. Wijnants has increasingly used pseudonyms to solicit work. He also uses the pseudonyms to reference his own work, support himself and his other pseudonyms, and defend himself in public discussions (a tactic known as sock puppeting). Ah the wonders of the Internet, when you can pretend to be anyone you want!

Among Eric’s many pseudonyms:

Eric P. Wynants
Dr. Brigitte Muehlegger
Robert Anton Wilson
Francois Martinet PhD
C.Wong
Bhakti Ananda Goswami
Dr. Raphael Vishanu
Brian Muehlbach
Amara Das Wilhelm

And there are doubtless dozens more. Some of these pseudonyms Eric P. Wijnants uses may be real people, but they are also names that have been borrowed and used by him on the Internet, either to post in public forums or to solicit articles from scholars and researchers.

Eric P. Wijnants’s own website (http://sociologyesoscience.com/) continues to be a hotbed of activity, to which Eric posts up to 20,000 words of unreferenced, often uncited, and unsigned material per day. Much of it is highly specialize and thoroughly researched (by somebody, though if Eric P. Wijnants  did the research, you’d think he’d bother to mention the sources more often – but then if he was actually researching the stuff, there’s no way he would be writing 20,000 words of proofed, edited, and publishable <except for the frequent absences of references> material per day). Either he spends all day in front of a keyboard retyping everything he’s ever read in slightly different words and without a single citation or reference, or – more likely – he is copying and pasting wholesale from all over the place, leaving out the citations and references, and sticking it on his site, where it sits unsigned an unreferenced, but nonetheless implicitly as his own work.

For more evidence that he is likely cutting and pasting (and/or scanning and OCR-ing) consider the page “Historical Overview” on his site (http://soc.world-journal.net/HistoricalOverview.html). The entire page is a bunch of scanned pages from some book and/or magazines(s) showing the history of the world. No, he did not master Adobe Illustrator and make all the charts himself; he scanned them and posted the images on his site. And he did not say where they came from, either. So aside from the blatant copyright violation, if anyone wanted to use them, it would be extremely difficult to find the original source so as to be able to cite it.

Consider Eric P. Wijnants’s output in the first 10 days of March, 2008: 9700 words on the beginning of the cold war, part one. 15,700 words on the beginning of the cold war, part two (between them, 260 citations to over 200 books and documents – I’ll get to that in a minute). A 1500 word commentary to a BBC article on Hitler and the occult, no references. 5500 words on Chinese Tantra (a separate citations page lists 384 sources consulted, including over 100 primary documents – in the original Chinese!). 14,257 words on the end of the cold war (60 references). 628 words on the state of Eastern Europe today (no citations, but a scan of a map, uncredited). 17,700 words on “Populations at War” with 40 citations to over 80 sources. 1900 words on Kurdish nationalism (no references).

That is a total of 66,825 words in 10 days, or about a 200 page book. The topics span at least three different academic specialties, and the references (for 10 days of work, mind you) total 744 different books and documents (over 100 of them in Chinese). Not a bad output for 10 days! At that rate you should be able to complete about 10 doctoral dissertations per year, easily!

Aside from the improbable quantity (he’s been going at close to this rate for years now; in February he posted 24 different “articles” – there are 8 so far this March), what might cause us to believe that this isn’t all Eric’s original output? Well, there are the obvious OCR errors, for one. To give an example, “From romantic hero to man of steel; such was [he evolution of Stalin's self-image.2” (taken from http://soc.world-journal.net/startColdWar.html). Notice the “[he”. That is an OCR error. No typist would ever make that keystroke error. The [ symbol is the left pinky finger. A “t” is the right index finger. You don’t mix those up. But to an OCR program, t can look a lot like [.  Notice also how the footnotes have lost their superscript. If you typed the document in MS Word, you could transfer it to the web easily while maintaining the footnotes properly. Instead Eric uses Netscape Navigator 4.7 to create his web pages.

The well turned phrase “From romantic hero to man of steel” is enough for Amazon to locate the book (thanks to the “Search Inside the Book” feature). Eric P. Wijnants has lifted the entire chapter from Melvyn P. Leffler’s recently (September 2007) published book “For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War”. Does Leffler’s name appear anywhere on Eric P. Wijnants’ website? No.

So what are we to conclude? Eric P. Wijnants is a blatant, serial, high-volume plagiarist. Almost everything on his site comes from somewhere else, and none of it is credited to the original authors. The strange thing is that he becomes indignant when this is pointed out. And the biggest irony is that he runs around the world pretending to be an academic. Half his pseudonyms have PhD’s!

2007 was a good year, and I wrote a number of interesting product reviews.

A recent article I wrote was a list of lens bargains for the Sony Alpha (formerly Minolta Maxxum) lens mount. The article was titled Sony Alpha (Minolta Maxxum mount) lens bargains.

I also wrote a review of my main wide-angle lens, the Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM. And predictably review was titled Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM Review.

A couple years ago I wrote an article called How Ebay profits from software piracy, based on my experiences with one transaction. Those are the most recent articles on my photography blog.

Several years ago I wrote a review of the CompactDrive PSD PD7X. This is a portable hard drive casing that ran off of AAA batteries and allowed you to dump the contents of CompactFlash drive cards on to your portable hard drive in the field. In the days of 16 gig CF cards, it is not terribly useful anymore. It back when he spent $200 for a one gig card, it made a lot more sense.

I also written a review of Genuine Fractals 3.5, were I compared it to Photoshop CS bicubic interpolation, and found Photoshop to upsize better than genuine fractals. The article is titled Genuine Fractals 3.5 Review.

Before that I wrote a review of the Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D. I am still very pleased with the camera, and think that the 7D still takes better pictures than my Sony Alpha 100. Read my review at Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D Review.

My latest article is titled Flatbed scanner comparison: The Canon CanoScan 4400F vs the CanoScan 8600F. in this article I attempt to answer the question, "What is the difference between the Canon CanoScan 4400F and the CanoScan 8600F?

Daniel

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 22 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

In 1995 there was a scandal in the Netherlands when it became publicly known that Dutch Waldorf schools were teaching "racial ethnography," where children learn that the "black race" has thick lips and a sense of rhythm and that the "yellow race" hides its emotions behind a permanent smile. In 1994 the Steinerite lecturer Rainer Schnurre, at one of his frequent seminars for the anthroposophist adult school in Berlin, gave a talk with the rather baffling title "Overcoming racism and Nationalism through Rudolf Steiner." Schnurre emphasized the essential differences between races, noted the "infantile" nature of blacks, and alleged that due to immutable racial disparities "no equal and global system can be created for all people on earth" and that "because of the differences between races, sending aid to the developing world is useless." (Footnote: Schnurre quoted in ibid., p. 144)

So here again we have a misleading statement extrapolated from a basic fact. A scandal in the Netherlands broke when it became publicly known that one teacher in one Dutch Waldorf school was teaching "racial ethnography". She was fired. At the time the press attempted to determine whether this was common to all Waldorf schools, but found out that, in fact, it was not. Further, the claims that Dutch Waldorf schools might be propagating racism were promptly investigated in by the State Education Inspection Service of the Netherlands. The results of this investigation were made public on March 28th, 1995:

"The investigation into Steiner Schools in the Netherlands, carried out by the State Education Inspection Service at the request of Deputy Minister Netelenbos, conclusively proved that there is no evidence of racism in the Steiner Schools. In fact much attention is given in the schools to developing an awareness among the students so that racism is actually countered." (Joint press release of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Science, and Cultural Affairs, and the Association of Rudolf Steiner Schools in the Netherlands. Translation Detlef Hardorp )

The commission investigated all 95 Waldorf schools in the Netherlands. While it found no evidence of racism, it did uncover instances of racial stereotyping in seven of the 95 schools. The Association of Rudolf Steiner Schools in the Netherlands instituted new procedures and a curriculum review in order to ensure that racial stereotyping would not reoccur. (For a detailed description see: http://www.waldorfanswers.org/Netherlands.htm).

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 21 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

Anthroposophists today often attempt to excuse or explain away such outrageous utterances by contending that Steiner was merely a product of his times. This apologia is utterly unconvincing. First, Steiner claimed for himself an unprecedented degree of spiritual enlightenment which, by his own account, completely transcended his own time and place; he also claimed, and anthroposophists believe that he had, detailed knowledge of the distant future. Second, this argument ignores the many dedicated members of Steiner's generation who actively opposed racism and ethnocentrism. Third, and most telling, anthroposophists continue to repeat Steiner's racist nonsense to this day.

The apologia may not convince Staudenmaier, it is also virtually non-existant, and unnecessary; Steiner did not hold any view remotely resembling the ones here attributed to him. We can only wonder what counterargument to his blatant misrepresentations Peter Staudenmaier would be willing to entertain. It is little wonder that anthroposophists are unwilling to stand by and see Steiner's record of struggle for equality being maligned and his work towards racial equality turned into its opposite. It appears Peter Staudenmaier is unwilling to consider even the theoretical possibility that an argument counter to his thesis might have any validity; they are all apologias. Going further into the problems with Peter Staudenmaier's objections, Steiner was generally quite modest about his spiritual enlightenment. When he spoke about his abilities, it was usually in the third person, as in “when the initiate has reached the fourth stage of enlightenment, he is able to see...” and did not specify which stage he felt he had reached. Nor did he claim that his knowledge transcended time and space. And Steiner's indications about the future were in the most general terms, and are not detailed at all. The mere fact that Steiner spoke of events the he felt likely to happen in the future seems to bother Peter Staudenmaier. Steiner's statements are for the most part the equivalent of saying today that bioengineering will play a role in the future.

Finally, Peter Staudenmaier will try to build an entire case for the racism of present-day anthroposophists on a few examples below, attempting to characterize a movement of some half a million people by the actions of at most a few dozen black sheep. Yet even here it is necessary for him to mischaracterize events and misrepresent the actual facts.

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 20 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

But the worst insult, from an anthroposophical point of view, is Steiner's dictum that people of color can't develop spiritually on their own; they must either be "educated" by whites or reincarnated in white skin. Europeans, in contrast, are the most highly developed humans. Indeed " Europe has always been the origin of all human development." For Steiner and for Anthroposophy, there is no doubt that "whites are the ones who develop humanity in themselves. [ . . . ] The white race is the race of the future, the spiritually creative race." (Footnote: Steiner quoted in ibid., p. 128.)

Once again we have a collection of short quotes strung together for effect, without any sort of context. Peter Staudenmaier writes confidently of the conclusions that we should draw from his arrangement. While doubtless effective polemic, this is not scholarship by any stretch of the imagination, nor does it in anyway resemble Rudolf Steiner's actual thought. And again, Peter Staudenmaier is doubtless faithful to Geden’s presentation. What he has not done is any critical examination of whether Geden accurately represents Rudolf Steiner.

Continuing my commentary on the 19th paragraph of Peter Staudenmaier's Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.

Rudolf Steiner's joke about "mulatto children" was made in a specific context. While insensitive today, it was nevertheless a joke. As a scholar who had edited Goethe's scientific writings and written numerous essays on evolution Rudolf Steiner was well aware of the influence of genes on the characteristics of offspring. That Peter Staudenmaier would repeat this joke as a serious statement of Rudolf Steiner's beliefs speaks to either his credulity or his duplicity in dealing with the issue of Rudolf Steiner's view of race. That is, either Peter Staudenmaier did not actually check the context of the original when he wrote from his secondary source, and thus did not notice that his secondary source was misrepresenting Rudolf Steiner, or, knowing that this was actually a joke, he represented it as a serious statement anyway for polemical effect.

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 19 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

Steiner propagated a host of racist myths about "negroes." He taught that black people are sensual, instinct-driven, primitive creatures, ruled by their brainstem. He denounced the immigration of blacks to Europe as "terrible," "brutal," "dreadful," and decried its effects on "blood and race." He warned that white women shouldn't read "negro novels" during pregnancy, otherwise they'd have "mulatto children." In 1922 he declared, "The negro race does not belong in Europe, and it is of course nothing but a disgrace that this race is now playing such a large role in Europe." (Footnote: All quotes from Steiner as cited in Oliver Geden, Rechte ökologie, Berlin 1996, p. 127, 130, and 132. Steiner's typical remarks on Asian stupidity, French decadence, and Slavic primitiveness are of similar caliber.)

First to the footnote: The statement that blacks do not belong in Europe also has a specific context. It was made in at least two places in the complete works, and always referred to the French colonial troops, conscripted in the French colonies and made to fight on the French side of the First World War. These troops were then used in the occupation of the Ruhr around the time that Steiner made these statements. The German public at large was up in arms about the issue. What Steiner clearly meant was that it was not proper for Africans to be impressed into service in foreign European wars. Steiner did not imply that a black person who that wanted to come to Europe of his or her own free will ought not to.

These single-word quotes that Peter Staudenmaier found in Geden attributed to Steiner are doubtless accurate in the narrowest technical sense. That is, the word doubtless occurs in the place stated. Lost is any meaningful context. Peter Staudenmaier appears confident that he, following Geden, is fair and accurate. I submit that an analysis of Steiner’s original statements does not bear this out. The problems are deeper than the mere fact that Peter Staudenmaier has translated Steiner’s reference to black people as “Negroes” using a deliberately archaic formulation that does not reflect the fact that Steiner was simply using the universally accepted terms of his day.

And Peter Staudenmaier has again cited a secondary source. We have a bunch of disturbing single-word “quotes” - direct quotes attributed to Rudolf Steiner himself. Beyond the problem that Steiner did not speak of “Negroes” (for the simple reason that Steiner spoke German and not English) an objective reader wanting to examine the context is prevented by the fact that they are extracted from a secondary source with no reference to the original sources. Further, there is no indication that Peter Staudenmaier has investigated the context himself. Instead he presents single words plucked almost at random and arranged to suit his thesis. This is simple character assassination, not scholarship.