Man Pretends To Be Nazi To Get Fired

Status: Bizarre Excuse
Last year Jacques Pluss was fired from his position as a history professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University after the school became aware that he was an active member of the American Nazi Party. Now Pluss is saying that yes, he was a Nazi, but he was only pretending to believe all that stuff. It was all part of an effort to go undercover to collect information for a book. So far undercover that no one was aware of his true feelings, except for his mother, who's now dead. Inside Higher Ed reports:

Told that the links among various white power groups have been well documented by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, [Pluss] said, “I became a Neo-Nazi because when I was thinking of applying my historical method last year, I wanted to find the most hard-hittingly obnoxious group that I could come up with.” He stressed that he finds Nazi ideology offensive. He said that he realizes his approach upset his former colleagues and students at Fairleigh Dickinson; at William Paterson University, where he previously was a tenured professor of history; and at the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. Pluss said that he couldn’t tell anyone about his deception as that would have disturbed his “method acting approach.”... Asked if we can know with confidence that he’s not engaged in another hoax, he said, “you don’t know,” but insisted that he was telling the truth — this time.

I think this guy goes beyond simply being full of it. He sounds full-blown delusional.

Identity/Imposters

Posted on Mon Jan 16, 2006



Comments

Wasn't there a college prsident in the Philadelphia area who used similar ruses as part af a year long effort to gain information fr a book?

This was about 20 years ago, I I think she did this in secret under an assumed name.

Mo in NJ
Memory is going.
Posted by mmarvi  on  Tue Jan 17, 2006  at  05:42 AM
I wonder if he was friends with Howard W. Campbell Jr.?
Posted by Dan  on  Tue Jan 17, 2006  at  09:51 AM
I've heard this sort of thing given as an excuse for all sorts of behavior. "I was just doing research." Suuuure.
Posted by cvirtue  on  Tue Jan 17, 2006  at  06:56 PM
Hard-hittingly obnoxious? Try Christian Fundamentalist next time.
Posted by Yaanu  on  Wed Jan 18, 2006  at  04:16 PM
I, too, wonder if this guy's blown a gasket or two. I mean, OK, he was doing research as a participant observer-- but not to tell anybody about it?
And since pretending to be a Nazi is sort of akin to pretending to be a pedarast or a cannibal (i.e. pretty much guaranteed to make you a pariah), it seems like anybody with even partially functioning reason would be sure to have an exit strategy for such a scheme.
Posted by Big Gary  on  Wed Jan 18, 2006  at  04:22 PM
Pluss is full of it. He was tossed from the NSM and came up with this "I was just doing research" story about two weeks later.

You can read more about it at:

http://www.overthrow.com

and

http://overthrow88.blogspot.com
Posted by Bill White  on  Thu Jan 19, 2006  at  05:38 AM
If he could come up with research, information, a project - it would be believeable. Otherwise, it seems like a late attempt to cover his sorry butt.
Posted by chyca  on  Thu Jan 19, 2006  at  07:27 PM
:ahhh: What?
Posted by Lady Hedoniste  on  Wed Jan 25, 2006  at  06:51 PM
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