An Extraordinary Allegation Against Jeremy Duns

On his Wikipedia page, and in an article in the FT, Jeremy Duns states quite clearly that he was born in Manchester.

But on Twitter, @StephenHildon has looked him up and found that no one of that name was born in Manchester or elsewhere up until 2006.

 Stephen Hildon ‏@StephenHildon 19 Nov

@MariaJames9 @NeilClark66 according to an FT article he was born in Manchester but there has never been

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 Stephen Hildon ‏@StephenHildon 19 Nov

@MariaJames9 @NeilClark66 anyone with that name born in a England and Wales up to 2006.

So what is going on?

Has Duns lied about where he was born, and if so why?

Of course, it might be that he was adopted. Or that Duns is a nom de plum.

But again, why has he not said so?

Duns holds other people to account. But why is he not being honest himself?

These are important questions and Duns needs to answer them.

Jeremy Duns - Public School Twitter Bully

A lot has been written about bullying on Twitter. Most attention has focussed on teenagers. But I want to highlight the public school bullying exemplified by the writer Jeremy Duns, who this week launched his second campaign against the obscure blogger Gerard Killoran.

I have made it quite clear in several posts that this blog is written in my own name. But Duns continues to insist that it is written by a man. At various points he has suggested it is written by the thriller writer Stephen Leather. One of his followers (or was it Duns himself?) even set up a blog to push that line. You can read it here. Leave aside the oddness of setting up an anonymous blog to complain about an anonymous blog - who knows how these people think - it provided no evidence to support that conclusion.

Duns's main candidate is Killoran. He launched a furious attack on him last year, which you can read about here. It was an attack of extraordinary verbal violence, of a sort that might cause real harm to an elderly man. But worst of all, it was untrue, as Duns later admitted.

Most people might be humbled by that. But not public school Jeremy, who is always right about everything because he went to a posh school, and is happy to trample on people because he is upper class.

On Oct 21, Duns believed he had found evidence that Killoran was in fact the author of this blog. It seems a 'trap' had been laid by one of his gang, a writer called Luca Veste (who has a book out soon featuring - you guessed - a serial killer who 'experiments' on his women victims). I cannot believe that any man in the 21st century would talk about 'trapping' a women - but Duns thinks it is fine. Based on this 'very clever trap', Duns then launched his usual barrage of tweets against Killoran. You can read them on his Twitter feed - here .

Except, whoops! It turned out this boys club was not as clever as it thought. By the end of the day, Duns had to admit he had got it wrong, and owed Killoran an apology.

Jeremy Duns ‏@jeremyduns22 Oct

Right. Hearty apologies to @ilkleychess for saying they were @mariajames9, who will now continue to smear me for the next decade or two.

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What this shows us is two things.

The first is that Duns is a bully who uses Twitter to smear and attack people, but who does not have any concern at all with getting his facts right.

The second is his sexism. He clearly cannot believe that this blog is written by a woman, because they belong in the bedroom or the kitchen. They cannot be allowed to have strong opinions, or to stand up to public schoolboys like Duns. If they do, he has to deny that they are women.

Duns represents everything that is going wrong with the world. That is why we have to stand up to him and must never give up the fight.

More Shocking Allegations Against Jeremy Duns

Selena Kitt has written a devastating critique of Jeremy Duns and his way of operating on her blog.

You can read it in full here.http://selenakitt.com/blog/index.php/2013/10/15/porn-hunt-2013-gossip-boys-researching-porn-real-hard/

It is hard for me to comment in detail on her allegations in specifics.

But the bullying, the arrogance, the trashing of people's work, the disregard of the truth, and the threatening behaviour, are all precisely what I have been writing about on this blog.

I am afraid it is typical of public-school bullies like Duns.

The issue now is to band together to stop him.

A Shocking Allegation Against Duns

A shocking set of allegations have been made about Jeremy Duns. You can read them here.

Obviously I do not know if they are true or not - and unlike Duns I think everyone is entitled to a fair hearing.

But the bullying, sexism and threatening stance is in line with the issues I have raised on this blog.

A Reply To Jeremy Duns's Smears....

This blog is attracting a growing following, for which I am grateful. Lots of people are disturbed by the influence of the right-wing, public school writer Jeremy Duns, and are looking for a forum in which he can be exposed.

Duns is clearly getting worried about the impact on his reputation, and has smeared me on his own blog, as well as threatening legal action. You can read the attack here...

The nub of his complaint is this -

"The allegations include that I am a bully; a misogynist; a ‘rape-denier’; an ‘abuse-denier’; a plagiarist; use sockpuppet identities (!); and have lied about my professional credentials. Every single one of their claims is completely and utterly untrue."

My response is as follows.

First, Duns seems very concerned that I am someone else. He keeps accusing various different people of being me - and so do some of his associates (see this strange blog, for example).

Actually, I have stated my name quite clearly. It is Maria Emily James. What more does Duns want? That I should post my full address and ID details? I have been threatened with physical violence and legal action for setting up this blog.  Does Duns really believe a woman has to post her address online before she is allowed to raise a feminist issue, and so lay herself open to physical attack.Women get raped for being feminists - the fact that Duns does not understand this tells you what kind of man he is.

But anyway, why does it matter? I have set out a number of issues I have with Duns's work, clearly and reasonably. Why not just answer the issues - rather than attack me personally? Surely an argument is either valid or invalid - it does not matter who is making it?

Secondly, why the legal threats? I have looked at Dun's work, and I find his right-wing, sexist views horrifying. I use this blog to disagree with them, and to build a case against them. But he is of course perfectly free to express them. And he is perfectly free to attack me as well. It is called free speech.

In fact, Duns seems to think that any disagreement with his world view is libellous. It isn't. I have laid out my views and the supporting evidence for them.

For example, I believe that Duns's work is sexist. My evidence is his lavish praise for the James Bond books, some of the most sexist ever written ('the sweet tang of rape' is a line from one of his favourites). You can read the blog post here...http://jeremyduns-watch.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/jeremy-duns-promoting-sexism.html. Now it is perfectly acceptable for Duns to disagree with me - and to maintain that you can be a feminist, as he claims to be, and also lavish praise on a horrifyingly sexist book. But in what sense my claim libellous? Is there any disagreement with his views that Duns would not threaten with a libel action?

He needs to answer these questions. They are important.

Thirdly, what are the inaccuracies? I accept that Duns does not agree with my views. That's called a debate. But where have I made a factual error? If I have done so, I will correct it. But I haven't. In the example above, I laid out Duns's praise for Casino Royale, and then the lines from the book that are objectionable. I concluded that Duns was/is a misogynist. Again, I understand that he does not accept that conclusion. But are the quotes of his not correct? Are the quotes from Casino Royale inaccurate? No. So why am I not allowed to analyse them without threats of legal action?

The same thing happened with my post on David Hewson. I quoted text from his book of violence against women, and explained why I found it objectionable. Hewson replied by calling me a 'liar'. But the quotes were completely accurate, and anyone can look them up online. So what were the lies?

Duns and his gang use the same tactics all the time. Anyone who questions them is accused of lying. But the truth is that they simply cannot accept that a mere women dares to challenge a group of important right wing men - because women belong in the bedroom or the kitchen.

In my view men like Duns with their smug, right-wing public school views represent all that is wrong with our society. I started  this blog because of his sinister bullying of a writer called Steve Roach, but since then his work has disturbed me even more - and many others as well. Now he has resorted to smears and legal threats....because he can't answer the case against him.

Is Jeremy Duns A Public School Twitter Bully?

There has been a lot in the news recently about internet bullying, following the tragic suicide of Hannah Smith who was sent abusive messages on social networking sites.

There is an impression that internet bullying is restricted to teenagers. But unfortunately it is far more widespread than that. Across all walks of life, decent people are being tormented by small groups of aggressive individuals.

Jeremy Duns is a prime example.

There is a long tradition of bullying at Britain's public schools, as anyone who has read Tom Brown's Schooldays will know. David Cameron is a good example - the Eton-educated PM will constantly pick on people less privileged than himself. The public school, right-wing Duns does the same, exploiting the web to attack people as perhaps he did at his expensive boarding school.

I will give two examples.

Last year, Duns dragged an author called Steve Roach into the limelight. First Duns alleged that Roach did not exist and was simply an false identity used by another writer called Stephen Leather. Duns posted this allegations on Twitter as fact. As I am sure most people will accept, this was upsetting for Steve Roach and.he contacted Duns to set the record straight.

Most normal people would be ashamed of themselves by this point.

But Duns only reluctantly conceded Roach existed. He then insisted that Roach had been 'bullied' by Leather. Again, Roach insisted this was not the case, as he told Duns over a telephone conversation, which Duns recorded without informing Roach.

Duns has constantly made false accusations against Roach.

Roach has publicly made this clear, in a comment on Duns's blog (here). 

'You were publicly Tweeting that I was Stephen Leather – patently untrue but that didn't stop you disseminating this false information into the public domain," writes Roach.

Indeed, Duns eventually accepted that he had done something morally wrong. 'As for accusing you of being Stephen Leather, I apologized to you on the phone and on Twitter for this. I apologize again: it's becoming clear that it's a horrible thing to be accused of,' he wrote on Aug 25th, 2012.

But he carried on accusing Roach of being bullied by Leather, even when Roach told him this was not true.

So we should be clear about this. Duns has bullied Roach in a way that he accepts himself was wrong.

The second case is Nate Thayer.

Thayer is a widely respected American reporter.

Earlier this year, Duns started accusing Thayer of plagiarism over an article he wrote. This is a career threatening accusation to be made against a reporter. You can read about the accusation in NY magazine here. 

The accusations were investigated by the Columbia Journalism Review, and found to be untrue -
'That doesn’t make him a plagiarist, and Duns was wrong to accuse him without giving him time to explain himself', it concluded ( the link is here). Mark Ziegler, the writer who Duns said Thayer had stolen from, said himself he did not think it was true (source here).


So just as Duns insists that Roach has been bullied when he says he hasn't been, he insists that Ziegler has been plagiarised when Ziegler says he has not. 
It has done a lot of damage, I believe, to Thayer's career. According to his blog, he is now reduced to writing corporate newsletters for Chinese companies that do not pay him - link here. 


My argument is that this is classic public school bullying of a type perfected by the English upper-classes.  Duns picks on a victim, and then hurls a series of accusations against the person, with no interest in whether they are true or not. 


Duns is being allowed to get away with terrible bullying on Twitter. Even worse, he is taking the culture of the public school and making it normal on sites such as Twitter. It is time he was stopped.
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Ian Rankin's Sneering Sexism

A couple of times now I have blogged about David Hewson's books, and the graphic and to me disgusting portrayals of violence against women in them.

Hewson is not brave enough to respond.

Ian Rankin however posted a sneering tweet saying he read the post and laughed. You can read it on his twitter feed here.

Now, it is of course legitimate to disagree with me. Maybe violence against women in books does not encourage violence against women in real life? Maybe violence against women doesn't matter?

But it is surely a serious subject for debate?

Men like Rankin think it is just funny, while Hewson accuses me of lying.

This is typical of the Duns gang of right-wing sexist crime and thriller writers.They insult anyone who question their male-centric view of the world.

When I looked it up, it turns out that Rankin has a long record of abusing women who raise the issue of violence against them. He insulted women crime writers, saying that the most graphic depictions of violence were written by women, and 'they were mostly lesbians as well'. The details are here.

So, to Rankin, any women who complains about violence is a 'lesbian'. The implication is clear. 'Normal' women should presumably enjoy being beaten by men.

Also reviews have drawn attention to the sexism inherent in his books, particularly his main detective. 

I believe that violence against women is an important issue. The constant portrayal of horrific crimes as a form of light entertainment legitimizes them.

Writers like Duns, Hewson and Rankin encourage a culture in which that violence is seen as acceptable.