Over the weekend, Rebecca Watson wrote an article at SkepChick accusing atheist YouTuber Jaclyn Glenn of plagiarizing one of her videos. Watson had previously accused Glenn of plagiarizing from YouTube comments and tweets in another one of her videos.
I don’t watch Glenn’s videos, and I generally don’t care much either way about plagiarism accusations. But there is a particular defense that some people deploy against plagiarism accusations that always grates on my brain: what I call the “He Hate Me” defense. Dave Foda provides a nice example of this in a Facebook post defending Glenn and attacking Watson,
After having reviewed what Watson has written about this, and the material she used to support her position, I have to conclude that Watson is wrong. I believe that the only reason Watson went after Glenn is because Glenn isn’t a rad-fem [3] minion. Watson has mentioned Glenn before [4], in 2014. If Glenn were rad-fem, it’s highly unlikely that Watson would have said anything about Glenn at all. This is rad-fem stock-in-trade: Find something or someone to rail against, no matter how obscure or irrelevant, and blow up social media with it.
I suspect he’s largely correct. The only reason Watson would take extra notice of Glenn’s videos for possible plagiarism is because she strongly disagrees with Glenn on the substance of many of her videos.
The same thing happened with CJ Werleman last year. Werleman was a marginal atheist writer who began attacking New Atheist authors in Salon and Alternet. Those (often unfair) attacks, led people who now found themselves on the opposite ideological spectrum from Werleman to take extra notice of potential plagiarism in Werleman’s writing.
Werleman quickly went to the “He Hate Me” defense, writing an “apology” that claimd,
Since my recent appearance on the Young Turks Network, my criticism of Sam Harris’ position, as it specifically pertains to the main driver of terrorism led many of his ardent fans to attack me. I have no problem with that – I made myself fair game. Rather than attack my argument, however, Harris’ most strident supporters, co-opted a campaign to discredit me, and thus, in turn, my argument against Harris. Again, as a public figure I am fair game.
His supporters have gone even further, including a few that repeatedly edit his Wikipedia page in an attempt to emphasize the source of the plagiarism accusations rather than their actual content.
But in both the case of Watson’s raising the issue of Glenn’s plagiarism and the New Atheists raising the issue of Werleman’s plagiarism, the correct answer is “so what?” That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.
Yes, those who disagree with us are far more likely to probe our writings and videos for logical flaws, plagiarism and other defects. Good for them. To the extent that this is a problem, it is our fault for not making better arguments or taking extra steps to prevent plagiarism, rather than our opponent’s audacity to actually point these things out.