Let’s hand it to Republican congressional hopeful Anthony Sabatini. When he plagiarizes stuff, he goes big, man. The former Florida state House member is fixing to ooze his way into the U.S. Congress, and after this news, one can’t help but wonder if they’ll seat him next to New York Rep. George Santos if he wins. It’s unclear whether the GOP arranges its members alphabetically or by the height of their tall tales—but either way, it works.
The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger has done a deep dive into Sabatini’s college career, and it appears that he “wildly plagiarized” some of his academic work. From Wikipedia, no less! That’s like whipping up a batch of flour paste and claiming it’s an original recipe. What’s next? We find out George W. Bush’s cat paintings are all tracings?
Sabatini, 34, graduated magna cum laude (at least that’s what his biographies say) from the University of Florida, where he wrote his honors thesis on philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Titled “A Profound Logic of the Blood,” the paper appears to be a largely cut-and-paste job from the well-known crowdsourced online encyclopedia, which simply means it wasn’t immediately obvious who exactly Sabatini was plagiarizing from. But, to be clear, it looks all but certain that he committed what’s often a career-killing academic no-no.
The Daily Beast:
But it’s Wikipedia, right? It’s a free online encyclopedia. Doesn’t that mean you can freely take stuff from it? It’s not like one of those Little Free Libraries? Or one of Donald Trump’s classified documents reading rooms?
Well, so much of what Republicans do, say, and claim to be is entirely made up, so he’d fit in well with his comrades in Congress. Then again, if modern-day Republicans were required to include academic citations with their writings and speeches, the endnotes would pretty much universally say “Donald Trump’s ass” followed by 25 pages of “Ibid” in 6-point Comic Sans font.
RELATED STORY: CNN: Sheriff David Clarke plagiarized 47 times in his master's thesis
Perhaps the funniest part is not that Sabatini appears to have plagiarized large chunks of his 2012 paper, but that he somehow managed to misspell “Friedrich” over and over again when referring to the subject of his thesis.
For instance, The Daily Beast notes that the very first sentence of Sabatini’s paper on Nietzsche appears to have been plagiarized, having been lifted nearly verbatim from another work—except for the “Freidrich” bit, of course.
The Daily Beast juxtaposed the first sentence of Sabatini’s paper with a nearly identical sentence that appeared 20 years earlier in an abstract for the book “The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990,” by Steven E. Aschheim.
Here’s Sabatini’s version: “The twentieth century has seen countless appropriations of the ideas of the philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche for cultural and political ends, yet nowhere have these attempts been more frequent or important than in Germany.”
And here’s the quote from the abstract for Aschheim’s book, found by this writer on Google Books: “The twentieth century has seen countless attempts to appropriate the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche for diverse cultural and political ends, but nowhere have these efforts been more sustained and of greater consequence than in Germany.”
Sure looks like plagiarism! But, hey, you be the judge.
The Daily Beast also uncovered a “stretch of totally uncited writing so long that it’s almost courageous.” It appears to have originated in a Wikipedia article about philosopher Martin Heidegger.
The Daily Beast spoke with one expert who appeared gobsmacked by the sheer audacity of Sabatini’s apparent theft. Mark Algee-Hewitt, director of graduate studies for Stanford’s English department, said Sabatini’s paper was a “fascinating text from a plagiarism standpoint,” adding that “the frequent misspellings in Sabatini’s text make matching these harder than it should.” He also noted that the possibility of these similarities occurring by chance is “one in quadrillions, if not more.” Hmm.
So you’re telling me there’s a chance.
But that’s not all! Algee-Hewitt also said, “Many of the references to his secondary sources seem largely fabricated, right down to the page numbers” and that “there are even more instances where sentences, and paragraphs, are taken from unacknowledged, mostly online, sources and inserted directly into the text.”
The bottom line, according to Algee-Hewitt, is that the thesis would “earn an F in most classrooms.”
An F, Sollenberger points out, could have changed everything for Sabatini.
This also isn’t the first time Sabatini has invited controversy. In July, he enthusiastically called for “extinguishing” the left.
RELATED STORY: A new normal? Florida Man running for Congress calls for 'extinguishing' the left
Over the past few years, Sabatini’s been exceptionally asshole-ish on “X, formerly known as a reputable social media company.” For instance, he wants to bring back laws that target “unsightly beggars”—aka human beings with disabilities that Jesus has thus far not seen fit to address.
Wait—did he quote-xweet Wikipedia? Never change, Tonyboy!
He also thinks kids who travel to demonstrations with AR-15s and end up killing people belong in Congress. Though maybe they belong in Congress more than he does.
And while Sabatini declined to comment on The Daily Beast’s investigation on his ability to fail upward, he does have more all-caps thoughts—about even playing fields.
We’ll see if any of this seriously impedes Sabatini’s ambitions. You’d think it would, considering how plagiarism tanked Joe Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign, or how that New Yorker editor got dinged for “self-plagiarism” last year.
But given that the current GOP presidential frontrunner is a thrice-indicted alleged insurrectionist, government documents thief, and—according to at least one federal judge—a rapist, anything’s possible in today’s Republican Party.
RELATED STORY: Moderate House Republicans: We’re ready to fight back. House Democrats: Sure, Jan
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger has done a deep dive into Sabatini’s college career, and it appears that he “wildly plagiarized” some of his academic work. From Wikipedia, no less! That’s like whipping up a batch of flour paste and claiming it’s an original recipe. What’s next? We find out George W. Bush’s cat paintings are all tracings?
Sabatini, 34, graduated magna cum laude (at least that’s what his biographies say) from the University of Florida, where he wrote his honors thesis on philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Titled “A Profound Logic of the Blood,” the paper appears to be a largely cut-and-paste job from the well-known crowdsourced online encyclopedia, which simply means it wasn’t immediately obvious who exactly Sabatini was plagiarizing from. But, to be clear, it looks all but certain that he committed what’s often a career-killing academic no-no.
The Daily Beast:
But it’s Wikipedia, right? It’s a free online encyclopedia. Doesn’t that mean you can freely take stuff from it? It’s not like one of those Little Free Libraries? Or one of Donald Trump’s classified documents reading rooms?
Well, so much of what Republicans do, say, and claim to be is entirely made up, so he’d fit in well with his comrades in Congress. Then again, if modern-day Republicans were required to include academic citations with their writings and speeches, the endnotes would pretty much universally say “Donald Trump’s ass” followed by 25 pages of “Ibid” in 6-point Comic Sans font.
RELATED STORY: CNN: Sheriff David Clarke plagiarized 47 times in his master's thesis
Perhaps the funniest part is not that Sabatini appears to have plagiarized large chunks of his 2012 paper, but that he somehow managed to misspell “Friedrich” over and over again when referring to the subject of his thesis.
For instance, The Daily Beast notes that the very first sentence of Sabatini’s paper on Nietzsche appears to have been plagiarized, having been lifted nearly verbatim from another work—except for the “Freidrich” bit, of course.
The Daily Beast juxtaposed the first sentence of Sabatini’s paper with a nearly identical sentence that appeared 20 years earlier in an abstract for the book “The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990,” by Steven E. Aschheim.
Here’s Sabatini’s version: “The twentieth century has seen countless appropriations of the ideas of the philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche for cultural and political ends, yet nowhere have these attempts been more frequent or important than in Germany.”
And here’s the quote from the abstract for Aschheim’s book, found by this writer on Google Books: “The twentieth century has seen countless attempts to appropriate the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche for diverse cultural and political ends, but nowhere have these efforts been more sustained and of greater consequence than in Germany.”
Sure looks like plagiarism! But, hey, you be the judge.
The Daily Beast also uncovered a “stretch of totally uncited writing so long that it’s almost courageous.” It appears to have originated in a Wikipedia article about philosopher Martin Heidegger.
The Daily Beast spoke with one expert who appeared gobsmacked by the sheer audacity of Sabatini’s apparent theft. Mark Algee-Hewitt, director of graduate studies for Stanford’s English department, said Sabatini’s paper was a “fascinating text from a plagiarism standpoint,” adding that “the frequent misspellings in Sabatini’s text make matching these harder than it should.” He also noted that the possibility of these similarities occurring by chance is “one in quadrillions, if not more.” Hmm.
So you’re telling me there’s a chance.
But that’s not all! Algee-Hewitt also said, “Many of the references to his secondary sources seem largely fabricated, right down to the page numbers” and that “there are even more instances where sentences, and paragraphs, are taken from unacknowledged, mostly online, sources and inserted directly into the text.”
The bottom line, according to Algee-Hewitt, is that the thesis would “earn an F in most classrooms.”
An F, Sollenberger points out, could have changed everything for Sabatini.
This also isn’t the first time Sabatini has invited controversy. In July, he enthusiastically called for “extinguishing” the left.
RELATED STORY: A new normal? Florida Man running for Congress calls for 'extinguishing' the left
Over the past few years, Sabatini’s been exceptionally asshole-ish on “X, formerly known as a reputable social media company.” For instance, he wants to bring back laws that target “unsightly beggars”—aka human beings with disabilities that Jesus has thus far not seen fit to address.
Wait—did he quote-xweet Wikipedia? Never change, Tonyboy!
He also thinks kids who travel to demonstrations with AR-15s and end up killing people belong in Congress. Though maybe they belong in Congress more than he does.
And while Sabatini declined to comment on The Daily Beast’s investigation on his ability to fail upward, he does have more all-caps thoughts—about even playing fields.
We’ll see if any of this seriously impedes Sabatini’s ambitions. You’d think it would, considering how plagiarism tanked Joe Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign, or how that New Yorker editor got dinged for “self-plagiarism” last year.
But given that the current GOP presidential frontrunner is a thrice-indicted alleged insurrectionist, government documents thief, and—according to at least one federal judge—a rapist, anything’s possible in today’s Republican Party.
RELATED STORY: Moderate House Republicans: We’re ready to fight back. House Democrats: Sure, Jan
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.