Virtual Casement
That Inglis’ influential 1973 biography is both dishonest and negationist has been demonstrated and very few would now attempt to defend it. One of those very few, however, is the self-published Belfast author Jeffrey Dudgeon, a long-term forgery denier, veteran researcher and author of what is perhaps the longest and most sophistical Casement book. One might ask; is he more misleading than Inglis? In terms of both quantity and quality the answer must be yes. Whereas Inglis’ dishonesty focused in his biography mostly on the diaries and was used economically and with just enough subtlety to avoid scrutiny, Dudgeon’s sophistry permeates his entire opus so that his book is generously saturated with fiction. While Inglis concealed his deceits quite effectively, the sheer quantity of Dudgeon’s sophistry means that concealment can only be achieved by rendering his narrative impenetrable and therefore doubt resistant. Certainly his book contains uncontested and verified facts but while these are banal and inconsequential they nonetheless serve to disguise his speculations as ‘virtual facts’.
My own early attempts to read Dudgeon’s book were frustrated because it is uncontrollably speculative and devised to be self-verifying. That such confusing, illogical, syntactically disturbed writing would be taken seriously seemed to me improbable but I was wrong. I did not then understand that the evasions, allusions, conflicting registers, non-sequiturs, wiles, feints, curious locutions and various demotic frothings are the essential ingredients which constitute the impenetrable mask of sophistry. Today Dudgeon’s book is taken seriously and by many vulnerable people who have done no research of any kind; having digested Inglis they have no critical perspective and therefore cannot understand that Dudgeon’s Casement is entirely ‘virtual’.
It is when we focus on this fictional Casement in Dudgeon’s book that we begin to ‘appreciate’ the difficulties Dudgeon had to overcome so that his book might become genuinely influential. In short, Dudgeon’s Casement is an unpleasant sexually-obsessed character driven by incessant carnal desire who daily frequents prostitutes, indifferent to health risks and without moral scruples. Despite this, Dudgeon seems to approve and perhaps admire the sexual behaviour of his fictitious Casement and he does not seem disturbed either by the relentless promiscuity or by the fact that many of the sexual encounters related are with adolescent males and therefore his imaginary Casement is a pederast. Certainly readers will search in vain for any critical remark by Dudgeon regarding either pederasty or promiscuity.
‘He did it often. He did it in public places. He did it with young men and with boys. He was promiscuous and he did not worry about laws and sexual morals.’
Position 15869 Kindle.
But there is another aspect which ought to cause Dudgeon concern since it is a matter of real concern to anyone with a claim to moral judgment in sexual behaviour. The overwhelming majority, perhaps as high as 95% of the fictitious sexual encounters are commercial transactions – they are paid for. This prostitution does not concern the fictitious Casement any more than it concerns Dudgeon and indeed the term prostitute or prostitution appears only five times in his 800 page book. At no point does Dudgeon express disapproval of prostitution, not even indirectly. Indeed, he does not need to disapprove because it is a measure of his sophistry that he denies both that the payments are made for sexual favours and that the partners are prostitutes. Dudgeon’s revision informs us the payments are not payments but are gifts and the sexual favours are given eagerly without desire for monetary gain.
‘The boys are not prostitutes, indeed those on the street are usually eager, but they have self respect…’ while Dudgeon’s Casement is ‘…aware that it would be bad form not to offer a present.’ Position 9899 Kindle edition.
‘Casement enjoyed himself sexually, displaying little or no guilt and certainly no shame … an early exemplar of what is now standard sexual behaviour.’
Position 372 Kindle edition.
Thus Dudgeon would have us believe these transactions are not commercial but are part of an ongoing program to facilitate the redistribution of wealth via gifts from the well-off to the deserving poor. This ‘explanation’ leads to the following equation; the potent sexual appetite of Dudgeon’s Casement is stimulated further by empathy for the poor and his evident voracity stems also from an uncontrollable generosity. However, Dudgeon does not explain how his Casement is able to distinguish in a red light zone between the real prostitutes and the good-natured poor who are willing to perform gratis.
In this way Dudgeon seeks to avoid what is indeed a predicament in his portrayal of the imaginary Casement. On one hand the diaries impose on him a predatory, promiscuous pederast and habitual client of young prostitutes while his priority is somehow to present his Casement as an acceptable homosexual. The Casement depicted in the diaries would be unacceptable to most of his readers not least because the portrait is so obviously homophobic. Therefore Dudgeon feigns not to notice this homophobia (the original motive for producing the diaries) and he boldly informs us such predatory indulgence is now ‘standard sexual behaviour’. By ‘standard’ he can only mean sexual behaviour without moral parameters is normal and widely accepted. Dudgeon may inhabit this world with no moral dimensions but it is highly improbable that many of his readers approve of promiscuous pederasty and prostitution. It cannot be determined if Dudgeon recommends the prostitution and pederasty narrated in the diaries but his failure to condemn invites readers to infer approval.
Prostitution is always problematical because it is often linked to criminal activity, to poverty, squalor and exploitation, to slavery, to trafficking in drugs and people. Even when tolerated and regulated, prostitution reduces what should be a meaningful and spontaneous emotional/physical event into a monetary transaction in which one party purchases ‘a service’ from a stranger who needs money. It is this disparity in wealth which reveals the predatory nature of most prostitution. Thus it eliminates the affection in human sex leaving the act void of emotional meaning.
There is another dimension to the virtual Casement invented in the diaries a century ago but still with us today although greatly revalued so that today’s Casement is widely admired for precisely the behaviour which condemned him in 1916. That disturbed behaviour as reported in the diaries and especially in the 1911 diary would condemn him in the eyes of many homosexuals today as being symptomatic of a degenerative and addictive illness. In short, the portrait is undeniably homophobic and utterly negative. Among those who today believe the portrait is Casement’s self portrait some must have actually read the 1911 diary yet they are insensitive to the extreme homophobia and seem to find the portrait credible and inoffensive. It is difficult to believe they condone or understand the lecherous and priapic sex addict they encounter in the diary. Moreover, those readers also appear to endorse the prostitution and pederasty which is depicted and they do so in the name of what they believe to be tolerance and sexual liberation. Blind to the evident homophobia in the diaries and above all determined to display their tolerance, they are incapable of understanding how they have been manipulated into abandoning all critical perspective on human behaviour.
Dudgeon’s reliance on misleading falsehood is not confined to his own book and in a review of Anatomy of a lie published in the Irish Literary Supplement this year several clear examples can be found. On several points he has intentionally misrepresented my arguments in ways which are reminiscent of that master deceiver Brian Inglis.
False attribution is a favoured defensive tactic of the artists of negationism and propaganda. Dudgeon is a master of this technique which is predicated on the reader being poorly informed. An egregious example is his preposterous claim that I defend the character of Casement’s servant Christensen since I dispute the allegations of his treachery to Casement. Like Dudgeon, I know nothing about Christensen’s character but there is no documentary evidence of such treachery in 1914-15 as demonstrated in pages 183-6 of Anatomy of a lie. The purported betrayal was invented in 1973 by Inglis who provided no evidence. Christensen perhaps was an unsavoury person but the Foreign Office documents clearly show that he did not betray Casement despite many opportunities to do so.
Dudgeon also misrepresents my argument concerning the absence of independent evidence for the material existence of the bound diaries in 1916. Dudgeon claims that I assert ‘the diaries first came into existence when they were typed by Scotland Yard’. This is nonsense. It is undisputed that the typescripts were prepared by the Metropolitan police. The police typescripts are not diaries. Dudgeon then abandons his ill-conceived position with the following outlandish proposal; ‘a corps of male typers’ with detailed knowledge of the Congo, the Amazon and of homosexuality and the literary gifts of Conrad, Conan Doyle and Rider Haggard.’ This feverish nonsense is then put aside as he falls back on the official version of provenance without telling us that his preferred version is one of seven conflicting versions provided by HM officials. Yet to refute my argument he has only to produce independent witness testimony. He cannot do so because there is none.
Elsewhere he claims that I ‘argue against the many’ who believe Casement’s luggage was seized in late 1914 or early 1915. His claim is utterly false; I argue that the trunks were seized at that time and that no incriminating diaries were found then or later. Dudgeon attributes to me an incomprehensible distorted reasoning of his own invention. He does this by confounding yet again the typescripts and the bound diaries. I argue that silence about the luggage contents in 1914-15 is overpowering evidence that no incriminating diaries were ever found.
Elsewhere referring to the 1957 forgery of The Nameless One, Dudgeon claims ‘Frank MacDermot … is accused of faking poetry in cahoots with Unionist MP Montgomery Hyde.’ I do not accuse them of composing the poem. The documents show that MacDermot supplied the typed text to The Sunday Times and that Montgomery Hyde published it alleging falsely that the original manuscript was held in the National Library of Ireland.
Dudgeon claims that the US ambassador was shown the bound diaries in 1916. Dudgeon knows very well the ambassador was shown police typescripts and received two photographs of typescripts as verified by Home Office document HO144/23481. That he will risk stating as true something he knows is false indicates that Dudgeon has lost faith in his own project.
For his review of Anatomy of a lie Dudgeon was specifically invited to comment on the unknown provenance of the diaries, the absence of independent testimony and the role of Inglis. He ignored provenance and failed to give independent testimony to prove the existence of the bound diaries in 1916. He attempted to defend Inglis whose extensive mendacity has been exposed. His defence consisted of denying intent to deceive by claiming Inglis ‘was not always careful with references’. Thus Dudgeon describes Inglis’ calculated duplicity as a kind of clerical carelessness. Unable to convincingly defend Inglis, Dudgeon tries weak rhetoric ‘… which writer gets every transcription right?’ He has nothing to say about the omissions, selective framing, altered documents, false dates and attributions, insinuation and multiple lies which have been exposed.
Dudgeon’s refusal to admit Inglis’ dishonesty makes him complicit in the cover-up which began in 1973. Since the duplicity has now been exposed, authenticity belief requires a cognitive dissonance allowing one to ignore the significance of Inglis’ deceptions. Dudgeon may believe in authenticity but clearly Inglis did not. It is a fact that the consensus for authenticity was created by Inglis’ biography decades ago. Since his multiple deceits have been exposed, no honest person can believe the diaries are authentic. To do so is to believe that lies are true.
© Paul R. Hyde, April 2024.