Roger's Old Tricks

So, today, I see that Roger has made a new post on JTR Forums in the Diary Forgery thread.

Had he, I wondered to myself prior to opening the post, come to his senses, recovered his marbles, put aside his insane new obsession with Lord Orsam and decided to contribute to the discussion about whether Mike Barrett would have been able to use an 1891 diary to create his forged diary of Jack the Ripper?

Don't be silly. Of course he hasn't!

He only wanted to post about......HIMSELF!! (and Lord Orsam, of course.) Oh woe is Roger, another victim at the brutal hands of Lord Orsam, we discover. The guy who introduced us to the narcissism of small disputes, shows no interest in discussing the diary in a diary thread and is interested only in airing his own petty grievances.

Naturally, Roger the dodger is back to his old tricks, completely misrepresenting my blog post We need to talk about Roger (which he doesn't identify) in front of an audience, many of whom may have no idea what he's even referring to, considering that the post has not been mentioned by name or linked to on that forum.

Here is the post he made:

"Imagine my surprise to receive an email telling me that in some far & obscure corner of the internet I am now being called a "Diary Defender" or a "quasi-Diary Defender" because I challenged certain aspects of the confession of a pathological liar and the logic of those promoting it as a truthful and sincere narrative. I've made it plain for nearly a quarter of a century that I don't believe the diary is authentic and have even advanced original arguments why I believe it was written in the late 20th Century.

If I am a "Diary Defender" so was Martin Fido, Melvin Harris, and Alan Gray--the man most responsible for Barrett's confession. All of them believed the diary was a modern fake and none of them believed Barrett was giving a truthful account.

Imagine calling Melvin Harris a Diary Defender! When one sees oneself as a Holy Crusader one tends to lose perspective, subtlety, nuance, and humanity."

One doesn't even need to have read my blog post to see the devious little magic trick Roger pulls in the middle of that post.

He starts off my claiming that he is "now being called a "Diary Defender" or a "quasi-Diary Defender".

"Diary Defender" and "quasi-Diary Defender" are, of course, two totally different things. It wouldn't have been too difficult for Roger to have checked to establish which of those two things I had referred to him as. But Roger doesn't seem to care which of them I did use. Or rather, he preferred to focus on a description I did not use. For in the very next paragraph, Roger puts aside his uncertainty and plumps for the one he likes best: "Diary Defender".

So we can see he is now able to say "If I am a "Diary Defender" so was Martin Fido, Melvin Harris, and Alan Gray..." I guess he didn't think it would work quite as well if he had used the expression "quasi-diary defender" which is the expression I actually used.

And I didn't use it in isolation either. The full context of the sentence in which I said that was this:

"Now it may be that Roger's sudden transformation into a quasi-diary defender, or mini-Morris, was because Michael Banks ignored his requests to stop talking about the 2022 incident."

So the full description was "quasi-diary defender, or mini-Morris". This was an allusion back to the first paragraph of the blog post where I wrote:

"I don't think any of us were expecting 2026 to be the year Roger Palmer turned into a mini-Morris, a Morris Minor if you will, arguing that Michael Barrett was incapable of creating the Maybrick diary. If anyone was going to be resistant to the 25 year + online propaganda campaign of Caroline Morris to present Barrett as a near moron you'd have thought it would be Roger, but no, sadly, he too has succumbed."

Roger, naturally, ignored the "mini-Morris" part of the description. Perhaps because he realizes how true and close to the mark it is.

I developed the point further in the article, saying:

"It would be one thing if Roger's theory stopped at identifying Anne as the forger for the above reasons but he decided to adopt diary defender style arguments to suggest that Mike wasn't capable of writing the diary."

AND

"It's difficult to believe that some sort of hidden agenda isn't involved in him suddenly parroting diary defender talking points."

So I thought that it was perfectly clear that I was saying that because Roger had decided to adopt diary defender style arguments, and parrot diary defender talking points, that Mike wasn't capable of writing the diary, just like Caroline Morris (who also claims not to believe the diary is authentic by the way), he had turned himself into a quasi-diary defender.

At the very least, I had quite obviously explained what I meant by the expression "quasi-diary defender" as being someone who had adopted diary defender style arguments and who parrots diary defender talking points but Roger didn't feel it was important to inform the readers of his post about this. He just wanted them to think I'd called him a "diary defender".

It's no good Roger comparing himself like a martyr to Martin Fido, Melvin Harris or Alan Gray because none of those individuals knew the facts and information which is available to us today and none of them attacked anyone on JTR Forums simply for suggesting that perhaps Mike Barrett might have created the diary. There is no comparison.

Roger's ridiculous allusion to me in his final sentence as a "Holy Crusader" who has "lost perspective, subtlety, nuance and humanity" is not only so unbelievably misguided and ill-informed as to the person I am that it could easily have been written by Major Fruitloop, Tom Mitchell himself, but is ironic given that in that very same post, Roger seems not only to have failed to grasp the subtlety and nuance of the distinction between a diary defender and a quasi-diary defender but, by posting on JTR Forums in a diary thread, as opposed to the comments section of this website, has completely lost perspective. I assume that Roger thinks that anyone who critically analyses his ever-changing, inconsistent and flawed arguments lacks humanity but he can only be fooling himself on that score.

The only positive thing is that in targeting me he has left Michael Banks alone which is at least a small victory.

Maybe one day Roger will wake up from this strange obsession which has caught him in its grip, focus on the bigger picture, and get back to actually challenging the nonsense being spouted about the diary on a daily basis by Caroline Morris and Tom Mitchell. For the moment it seems that these two individuals are his best buddies and new allies in what now seems to be the more important fight against the terrible possibility of Michael Barrett having written the diary. Shock horror!

Or perhaps the even more important fight for Roger is now the one against Lord Orsam.

Utterly absurd.

To Roger I say: Pull yourself together, man. Stop crying and let's see the return of the old sensible erudite Roger who I used to know, like and admire.

LORD ORSAM

20 July 2026