Words Dept.: entry

A minor rumpus is breaking out on Dave Hill’s London blog at the Guardian over claims by Tory Troll (aka Adam Bienkov) that journalist and beloved national treasure Andrew Gilligan has been “sockpuppeting”.

For those unfamiliar with the term, sockpuppeting means creating a “fake online identity” to praise yourself or some other entity with which you are associated, without disclosing the connection. In its most embarrassing form, it might involve a journalist leaving a comment on a blog in which he defends himself in the third person in an attempt to create the impression that the comment originates from an unconnected third party.

This interested me, as Gilligan has occasionally commented at Words Dept. when he’s been mentioned, although always under his real name.

The evidence suggests Gilligan has been repeatedly leaving comments under the presumably ironic name ”kennite”, including one on a Guardian blog post by Polly Toynbee last year, which attacked “jester, toff, self-absorbed sociopath and serial liar” Boris Johnson and described Gilligan as “rightwing”. On that occasion, “kennite” wrote:

If Polly had ever read any of Gilligan’s columns, she would see someone writing from a broadly left-wing, if anti-New Labour, perspective.

Pfft!

Adrian Monck and others have also raised the issue of Gilligan allegedly posting comments using a pseudonym, making him a possible “repeat sockpuppet offender”. Anyway, Gilligan claims “kennite” is his “partner” and that there is nothing wrong with this person bigging him up across the web without revealing the connection. A healthy debate is being had in Hill’s post’s comments section.