By Martijn Icks In December 62 BCE, Rome was gripped by a bizarre scandal. Publius Clodius Pulcher, a young man from a noble family, had been caught trespassing in the house of one of the most prominent and powerful men in the city: none other than Julius Caesar. He had been trying to sneak in... Continue Reading →
By Sergei A. Samoilenko In January 2019, fake editions of The Washington Postwere handed out by members of culture jamming activist group the Yes Men at several Washington D.C. locations. The group’s co-founder Jacques Servin told the real Post that the fake paper was meant to be a newspaper from the future providing ideas for how... Continue Reading →
By Eric Shiraev The composer Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) could not have even thought about becoming one of the most noticeable victims of character assassination after his death. He had a dynamic and fruitful musical life while serving as Kapellmeister to the emperor of Austria. Yet Salieri is known today to most people as a man... Continue Reading →
By Martijn Icks On June 21st, Edwina Hagen and I organized the colloquium “Character Assassination! Media and Mudslinging from Caligula to King Gorilla” in Amsterdam. We invited experts on various periods in Western history to discuss practices of character assassination from an historical perspective. Comparing various case studies, we hoped to shed light on some... Continue Reading →
We often talk about character assassination in politics, but of course character attacks abound in other social realms as well. Sports, entertainment, academia, science, and every domain of human social life features character attacks as people compete for advantages. In the competitive arena of sports, it’s unsurprising that opponents would harbor aggressive feelings against their... Continue Reading →
By Eric Shiraev Image:Wikimedia Commons/John Tenniel "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less…." One memorable line from Alice in Wonderlandand two others that would follow have prompted these remarks on the meaning of few terms that we,... Continue Reading →
By Martijn Icks Ethnic minorities are particularly vulnerable to character attacks. Last March, Dutch parliament passed a motion urging the political party DENK to stop publishing intimidating video clips about MPs with Turkish roots. Signatories expressed their concern that MPs were attacked “primarily on the basis of their descent” rather than because of their political... Continue Reading →
Or: Why Don’t More Character Assassins get Sued? One of the things that our extensive research into character assassination has uncovered is the staying power of this communication strategy through the ages. As Martijn Icks’s work demonstrates, character attacks can be traced back to our democratic forefathers in ancient Athens. We’ve also seen character assassination... Continue Reading →
By Martijn Icks In my previous blog, I argued for the importance of historical perspectives on character assassination. However, historical research also comes with its own challenges and limitations. Let’s have a look at some of these. Perhaps the most obvious challenge is the danger of anachronism: we should be very careful not to assume... Continue Reading →
