The malicious fraud committed upon the magazine Quadrant and its editor Keith Windschuttle provides lessons for all of us, particularly editors.
There is no doubt that Windschuttle was negligent and left the magazine wide open to fraud. Any editor should have procedures for identification of contributors and peer review.
These sort of frauds are not the literary type of Helen Demidenko: at least her book can be read and judged (for good or bad) as a literary work regardless of who she really is. The Quadrant fraud is more like a computer virus. Any editor who does not use anti-virus software would be rightly criticised and so it is with Windschuttle. No doubt the author of the fraud would feel the same sort of satisfaction as the author of a virus: it is the pleasure of being maliciously destructive.
If the author had real talent, then she could have researched Windschuttle’s writing and attempted to prove that they were wrong or carelessly written.
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Has Keith Windschuttle’s reputation been damaged or destroyed by the fraud committed upon him and Quadrant? The answer is no, because the people who care about this are the same sort of people who did the fraud: namely, the left-wing glitterati who read Crikey, The Age and The SMH and watch and listen to the ABC.
To them, Windschuttle had no reputation to be destroyed. As a serious historian who exposed the falsity of left-wing Aboriginal history, he had no credibility with them in any event. None of this fuss concerns the man-in-the-street who really doesn’t give a stuff about any of it. Historians will still judge Windschuttle’s work by its content, not by a fraud such as this.
This affair is all about the Left, successfully and publicly, punishing and humiliating Windschuttle for having written about Aboriginal history so as to destroy the Left’s Dreamtime. They will all be immensely satisfied at a job well done. Good for them.
As for Windschuttle, I have no sympathy because he needs none. He is an intellectual icon of the non-Left in a country where it is not acceptable to speak up against the Left orthodoxy in any area — and particularly in the sacred PC areas of Aboriginals, climate, Muslims and the Iraqi War.
Windschuttle should be thankful that he does not live in a really tolerant, progressive country like Holland where deviant views get you killed (as were Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn).
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Peter your own bias colours and clouds your judgment. For a fiercely independent QC this article demonstrates that you type faster than you think. To describe the “enemy” as the “left-wing glitterati who read Crikey, The Age and The SMH and watch and listen to the ABC” says more about you than the targets of your hot headed article. Its also a little ironic that you are a regular contributor to Crikey and your article is published in Crikey.
If to read or listen to intelligent, thought provoking journalism in your view makes a person a member of the left wing glitterati then while you may be highly intelligent you are nonetheless a fool.
You have made no attempt to analyse the issues that arise from the publication of the fraud. To suggest in some way that Helen Demidenko’s fraud was better because it was still a literary peice of work shows you have lost the plot. Dimidenko’s story was hailed because it was thought to be true. She lied for financial gain (isn’t that a criminal offence – financial advantage by deception?) and was outed against her will.
Here the author has made no attempt at financial gain and has outed themselves. They have demonstrated that while Windschuttle will dig to the ends of the earth to cast doubt on anything with which he disagrees, he will not perform the most rudimentary checks on an article, or even the existence of its author, if it aligns with his way of thinking.
Further, it is not just the publication which has damaged Windschuttle and Quadrant – but the defence of Quadrant by many who say it is not the sort of publication where one would expect any due diligence or verification or articles ! If that is the case then I wll refile my Quadrants with the Womens’ Weekly and New Idea stories about royalty and movie stars and models – because Quadrant now has the same credibiity rating.
Next time I suggest you count to 10 before pressing the send button to contribute an article like this.
Cheers, Graham
It is an intersting proposition that if you do not respect a group of people then your reputation cannot be harmed. Unfortunately Peter Farris has damned Keith Windschittle with his defence. He states that Windschuttle has been negligent which is something that both left and right and those in the middle will agree on. He also says that the opinions of millions of people don’t count because they may hold left wing views. He may like to let the members of the Howard government voted out in 2007 know this.
However he mistakes the response of many. If a person is prepared to publish material damning others for sloppiness it is imperative that the same kind of sloppiness is not shown. Windschuttle is guilty of those crimes he suggests others have made in examining Aboriginal history. Whilst Peter Farris seems to believe that Windschuttle has proven that the stories of Aboriginal massacres are incorrect Windschuttle has perpetrated his own fraud as Professor John Quiggin has pointed out by failing to produce evidence of this in a second volume. Of course the first fraud is to say that if there is no written evidence then the events never happened.
As for Keith Windschuttle being an intellectual icon of the non-left, it must be a small pool indeed.
Dear Editor,
Why was Peter Faris granted space in Crikey yesterday for his pro-Windschuttle rant? It was predictable, unenlightened and unenlightening. Windschuttle has been exposed as a hypocrite, hopefully for the benefit of publishing. Faris’s piece belonged in the Comments section at best (the bin would have been more appropriate).
Well, Peter, if you can simultaneously say that Windschuttle is a negligent editor who has damaged the reputation of his magazine, and that his reputation remains in tact, then you are presumably saying that Windschuttle was always a negligent editor who damaged his magazine’s reputation.
Further down, about 350 words into the first article you’ve written for Crikey in months, you argue that the matter is basically of no importance in any case.
Wow. Powerful advocacy skills. Remind us again what it is QCs get the big bucks for?
The truth is, you’re exactly of the Windschuttle type yourself – long haired fitzroy legal service founder, trekking through the political hinterland until you arrive at the point where you believe that Jews and Muslims should have their religion stamped in their passport.
People like you and Windschuttle don’t need sustained attack – you destroy yourselves with the slightest push, publishing the wrong article, coming out of the wrong doorway…
But please, keep the whole affair going with your inept defences….
Crikey has been hoaxed! Peter Faris doesn’t exist!
“The answer is no, because the people who care about this are the same sort of people who did the fraud: namely, the left-wing glitterati who read Crikey, The Age and The SMH and watch and listen to the ABC. “
This is true, but do you really think the ‘average Australian’ knows about the Sokal Affair? Or reads Quadrant? The Windschuttle Affair appeals only to the intellectuals on the right and left. You can’t say it doesn’t matter to the Right, because both Crikey and the Oz have been filled with Op-Ed columns about how this all doesn’t matter right from the get go! Also going from the comments left on most Crikey stories, there are quite a few right-wingers and moderates who read Crikey to balance out the pernicious effect of the evil lefties.
Those sure are a lot of words wasted on something that doesn’t matter. Heh.