The time S.A. Swaffington vomited over my inbox

I use my Google account almost exclusively for blogging, and rarely for social networking. Only occasionally do I check its emails. So, I was quite surprised when I hopped into my inbox and found that, back in May, I received a string of messages from someone called Lisa.

"Lisa", it quickly turned out, was actually S.A. Swaffington. I wrote about Swaffington, also known as Ryan West, back in April when I took a look at his novel The Rise of the Saxons. Published in 2008 through some kind of vanity press, this is a delightful book which glorifies the racially motivated murder of children in the name of Teutonic supremacy - although Ryan West/S.A. Swaffington insists that he's changed his ways since then.

An excerpt from The Rise of the Saxons.

The first message was from May 18:

Hi, Maggie 

I am the author of the Rise of the Saxons, a book I wrote when I was a kid living at home with my mum. I'm the first to admit that it was a terrible and offensive book and is now something which I'm deeply ashamed of. 

I could never have imagined that 7 years later someone would spend the time and effort to cyber-stalk me and even post my pictures on the web. when I wrote the book, I was an impressionable and angry young kid and had no desire to make a career out of writing, hence the poor spelling and offensive scenes. 

At the time I was angry at the oppression of the English identity and felt a need to express that. I did a poor job, I know. I am now all grown up with a young family and have long-since washed my hands with the book in question. As I've grown up, my views and opinions have also grown and changed. 

I find it shocking that I'm being made to be a racist and a Nazi by someone who has never met me and knows nothing about me. From the backlash I received from that book, several people pointed me in the right direction and educated me on my ancestors. I once believed that the early Anglo-Saxons were racist, cruel invaders, the same as how I portrayed them. I now know this was wrong. I've spent the last 7 years writing new books which show the early English settlers for who they were and not how I was led to believe they were by the mainstream media who are oppressing the English identity. 

The English identity is very important to many of the |English community, and I shall continue to promote our history and identity in a positive manner and continue to write new and exciting books, without any material that you or others like you could use to discredit me. I would hope that you would now be kind enough to remove the article, allow me and my family our privacy and stop stalking me. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. 

Kind regards, Ryan

Okay. First off, I'll address the claim that I posted Swaffington's pictures on the web. I used two photographs of him in my post: one is from his author profile on Goodreads, the other is part of a screencap of his Facebook page which I posted to demonstrate that he was (and, at the time of writing, still is) friends with Ron McVan, an American white nationalist with connections to the convicted terrorist David Lane.

In both cases, I was merely using images which Swaffington himself had made publicly available. As he is a published novelist, and consequently a public or semi-public figure, this is entirely fair game.

 A review of Mein Kampf which S.A. Swaffington posted in 2008 using his "Angelcynn" sockpuppet.

As for "cyber-stalking", this appears to be a reference to how I provided evidence that Swaffington had been using a sockpuppet account on Amazon, known variously as "Angelcynn", "Mr England" and "Free-Thinker", to promote his own work.

Was it "stalking" when Johann Hari's opponents demonstrated that he'd been using a sockpuppet to defend himself on Wikipedia? Was it "stalking" when R.J. Ellory got caught out using sockpuppets to hail his own books as "magnificent"?

Again, as a published novelist, Swaffington is at the very least a semi-public figure. He should accept that, if he uses a sockpuppet to promote his novels on Amazon, then there is a good chance that he will get caught.

Swaffington messaged me again on May 20:

I'm waiting for a response, Maggie. Strange that you're ignoring me, when you're so eager to put my pics on the internet.

On May 21 I updated my post with conclusive evidence that "Angelcynn" was a sockpuppet operated by Swaffington. Shortly afterwards, he changed the account's name to "I'm being cyber-stalked by Maggie Benn (She's an Anglophobic racist)"...

...and sent me another message:

Still stalking me????? But won't get in touch????? I've just changed my profile name. I think you'll like it, you racist, Anglophobic, stalking weirdo. Get a life! And where's all your condemning the Muslim peados who have abused thousands of English children?????????? Hmmmm, clearly you must support them, as do most left-wing liberals, right? You should be utterly ashamed of your self! You disgust me!!!! 

Clearly you don't think that's radical enough for your crappy page, but a book I wrote 7 years ago is worth your time and effort???? WTF???? You've convinced me that you must see me as some kind of threat to your anti-englisc liberal, pro-peado way of life. This just fuels me to continue writing and shove it in the face of you anglo-phobic loonies.

His final message came on the same day:

Gutless coward....

Okay, let's unpack this.

Yes, it's true that I haven't publicly written about the issue of Muslim grooming gangs in Rochdale, Oxford, Derby and elsewhere and the related coverups. But as far as I can tell, neither has Swaffington.

I've looked through his posts at the Anglo-Saxon Foundation and Amazon, and although I've seen him complain a lot about inaccurate media portrayals of pre-Norman England...

...I can't find a single post in which he mentions Muslim paedophiles.

Does that mean that he considers historical inaccuracies in the media to be worse than authorities covering up child abuse? No, of course it doesn't. And by the same token, the fact that I've blogged about his book rather than the Muslim paedophile gangs does not mean I believe him to be a graver issue.

The simple fact is that, as this is a small blog with little influence, it makes sense for me to focus on issues that are not being covered elsewhere, or at least ones which I can add my own research to. For example, when I blogged about the Charlie Hebdo murders (an event which received a lot of media coverage) I chose to focus on a British Islamist forum where certain members had endorsed the killings (something which I had never seen mentioned anywhere in the media). Similarly, although I haven't written about high-profile Islamic extremists such as Anjem Choudary, I have written about lesser-known specimens such as Abu Ibraheem Husnayn. This is also the reason I've written at length about the Englisc nationalist movement instead of more prominent racist groups, such as the BNP.

Swaffington's argument relies on the fallacy of relative privation, also known as appeal to higher problems or, less formally, the "not as bad as" argument. The central flaw is that, if I had written about the Muslim grooming gangs, then he'd be able to point to some other issue which I hadn't covered. No blogger is able to give coverage to every single issue in society; inevitably, some things will be left to other writers.

Coming across all of these messages at the same time was an amusing experience. I saw how they started with Swaffington trying to sound sober-minded and reasonable; so much so that, had I seen that post when it first arrived, I may actually have given him the benefit of the doubt and removed my post about him. And then I saw him swiftly collapse into incoherent rants about paedophile-supporting liberal anglophobes, thereby confirming that - yup - he's the same as all the other Anglo-Saxon Foundation looneys.

Swaffington is a popular fellow at the Anglo-Saxon Foundation - in fact, his name is amongst the forum's most-used tags.

Let's not forget that, as a member of the ASF, Swaffington will be used to seeing racism - actual racism, not the phony "anti-Englisc racism" which he attributes to me. He will also have seen his fellow members openly discuss the prospect of murdering political opponents:

This is exactly the kind of murderous hatred that he was stirring up with The Rise of the Saxons. So how can I possibly believe that he feels remorse about writing that novel when he continues to consort with these extremists?

If Swaffington really wants to atone for his past as a neo-Nazi propagandist, then a good start would be to publicly denounce the Nazi sympathisers in his beloved Englisc nationalist movement - such as Wulf Ingessunu, Wotans Krieger, Clive Calladine, Jim Morgan and Walter Greenway.

When he does that, I will consider the possibility that he is a changed man.