FAKES, FORGERIES AND DIVERSE DIRTY TRICKS: for the first time ever, Stewart Home sets the record straight on "intoxification"

For centuries scholars have been confounded by forgeries and it is great authors whose names are most often attached to counterfeit works. While I shun publicity, my achievements in the cultural field have inevitably pushed me into the public eye. Despite the fact that I have not yet reached middle-age, the number of texts falsely attributed to me is multiplying almost daily. I have already issued a denial of the vile insinuation that I am the real author of works currently being circulated by Larry 'Scarlett' O'Hara and Michel Prigent. Despite this, a text entitled Anarchism Is Stupid: How Luther Blissett Hoaxed Bakunin's Idiot Children has been e-mailed to several of my acquaintances. The work, falsely credited to me, begins with the statement: 'If Larry O'Hara didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. So we did!' This is followed by an account of how the actor who 'played' Scarlett set honey-traps for his politically naive prey by posing as a 'an independent "anti-fascist" investigator'. The text claims that the point of this prank was to illustrate how easy it is for the state to penetrate and manipulate fringe groups such as Green Anarchist. While I was amused by the work, it is grossly irresponsible of the author to credit it to me.

Another text circulating in electronic form and falsely credited to me is Communism Or Masochism? An Appeal To All Revolutionaries Concerning The Rubber Slave Larry O'Hara. It begins with the following fiction: 'I had been waiting for this moment for a very long time. Finally it had come and the manly Larry O'Hara actually stood before me. For a fleeting moment, I thought I was going to faint! Larry O'Hara looked just as I'd imagined when I was reading his fearless investigations into fascism and spookery - A Lie Too Far/At War With The Truth/Turning Up The Heat/Lobster/The Fascist's Flunkey. He was wearing a Ben Sherman shirt, tight-fitting Levi 501s and 16-hole-Doctor Marten boots. The clothes showed off the fantastic curves of his body to maximum effect.. O'Hara grabbed my arm while Crass, Skrewdriver and Laibach fought for acoustic hegemony in a cacophonous inferno of political extremism. O'Hara's fingers snaked under the waist-band of my jeans and we both found ourselves enslaved by the omnipotent dictatorship of DNA. As we swayed to the primitive rhythm of the swamps, the whole of world history unfolded before my eyes. I discharged my salty cum into O'Hara's mouth and I instinctively knew that he was a second Bakunin, who'd cunningly hidden his black flag of ANARCHY behind the liberal facade of the Green Party.'

From this unlikely beginning, there follows a whole series of points about rhetoric, including a brilliant historical outline of the tradition of excessive or mock praise. The author does an excellent job of exposing Scarlett as a humourless buffoon who doesn't understand my satirical prose. The only reason for attributing the text to me is the fact that while I consider O'Hara repulsive, it is possible that he could fulfil the school teacher fantasies of a seriously perverted masochist. The academic I suspect of composing the work certainly strikes me as sufficiently twisted to shove his pork sword down Scarlett's throat. A warped mind would certainly account for the extraordinarily clear insights the text provides into O'Hara's pathological psychology. Scarlett is a paranoid schizophrenic with strong masochistic tendencies. Anyone who reads what O'Hara has to say about me and my writing can see that he suffers from delusional misinterpretation, not to mention delusions of persecution.

Far more sinister than Anarchism Is Stupid or Communism Or Masochism? is another electronic forgery entitled An Open Letter To My Avant-Garde Chums By Stewart Home. This imposture begins by examining publicity stunts: 'The object of the publicity stunt, legitimate or hoax, is to get someone's name before the public. Generally, but not always, the beneficiary of the publicity wants to be presented in a favourable light, but it is an axiom that any attention is better than none. "Do something worth talking about, and they'll talk," is the rule which press agents, publicity directors and public relations experts follow. With the professionals the desideratum is to make the news-worthy incident seem to be a normal occurrence rather than inspired with an eye on the front page. The method of superior finesse calls for money and persistence in the belief that a brief moment in the limelight is not enough.'

The writer goes on to explain how I have situated myself within an avant-garde tradition whose exponents publicise themselves through scandals. It is claimed that I have legitimated myself in the eyes of the art establishment by manufacturing a vociferous opposition to my activities. There are then several quotes from a genuine letter written by Florian Cramer in 1993, after he'd heard that I had a German publisher for my first novel Pure Mania: 'The best publicity for Pure Mania is probably to spread the rumour of it as a Nazi skinhead cult book and thereby crazing the liberal media and the left-wing "Antifa." Aside from certain public opinion backlashes, this strategy has been proved remarkably successful in selling exploitation movies like Bloodsucking Freaks and Snuff ("Shot in South America where Life Is Cheap") whose producers founded fake feminist protest groups.'

Immediately after this quote, the fake text gets really nasty. This is where we find the 'revelation' that both Scarlett and I are 'assets of the British state'. It is followed by the claim that O'Hara's 'interventions' against me are a publicity scam, a partial pay-off for my 'spook' work. As I have already pointed out, the letter is a forgery and I categorically deny collaborating with Larry O'Hara on any publicity stunts. Although I admitted in Don't Give Up The Day Job that one of Scarlett's 'interventions' was reported by The Bookseller and thus created trade interest in my novel Slow Death during the crucial weeks leading up to its official release, the fact that I have benefited from O'Hara's activities in no way 'proves' that we are acting in cahoots. It is not my fault that Scarlett is inept at pursuing his vendettas.

When Scarlett attempted to make an 'intervention' at my Oval House Theatre lecture on 11 May 1996, his acolytes were handing out xeroxes of the Vox review of Slow Death. This ostensibly negative write-up included the observation that: 'Stewart Home will love this review.' If Scarlett wants the public to believe we are having a spat, it is bizarre indeed that his dupes should be handing out publicity material for my new book. And while 'picket line' tactics could be deployed very effectively against a mentally unbalanced school teacher who is unfit to work with children, given that Slow Death is a novel about manufacturing opposition to cultural figures in order to hype them onto the mass market, it is obvious that anyone who attempts to disrupt my public appearances is going to be suspected of being a plant. However, I am not responsible for the fact that Scarlett's mind has become so unhinged that he is incapable of recognising this. Please note, only an individual who is mentally ill would suggest that O'Hara is 'somebody's valuable asset' who wants to make it look like he is helping out with my publicity.

It is precisely because the person who forged An Open Letter To My Avant-Garde Chums By Stewart Home has only the flimsiest of circumstantial 'evidence' to link me to O'Hara, that they've resorted to chicanery. To claim that Scarlett is working on my behalf is a slanderous fabrication and I would vehemently deny it if I wasn't so absorbed by the urgent task of reinventing world culture in its entirety. As Toby Manning observed in the New Statesman (26 April 96): 'Through Slow Death, Home's career can be seen as a brilliant critique of historification, while his media profile embodies his critique of the cult of personality. Either that or, like his fictional Karen Eliot, he's just an expert con artist who has pulled off a brilliant - and blatant - self-publicising coup. If so, being conned has never been so entertaining.' I have produced this text not because I wish to humiliate O'Hara, but to help someone who is mentally sick. By way of conclusion, I have two questions for Scarlett:

1). When did Larry O'Hara last see a psychiatrist?

2). Who told Larry O'Hara that he was able to tie his own shoe-laces?

Stewart Home, 23 May 1996.

The Green Apocalypse contains documents pertaining to Larry O'Hara's unbalanced mental state and is (no longer, note added) available for £3.50 from Unpopular Books, Box 15, 138 Kingsland High Street, London E8 2NS (address defunct, note added). Slow Death (High Risk/Serpent's Tail) is available from all good bookshops price UK £8.99/US $12.99./CAN $16.99.

Published as a leaflet, London May 1996.

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