Character Assassination throughout the Ages

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Martijn Icks, Eric Shiraev

      Pages 1-13

3. Character Assassination: How Political Psychologists Can Assist Historians

   1. Character Assassination: How Political Psychologists Can Assist Historians

      • Eric Shiraev

      Pages 15-33

4. Ancient Rome

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 35-35

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   2. Character Attack and Invective Speech in the Roman Republic: Cicero as Target

      • Henriette van der Blom

      Pages 37-57

   3. Reports about the “Sex Life” of Early Roman Emperors: A Case of Character Assassination?

      • Jan Meister

      Pages 59-81

   4. Creating Tyrants in Ancient Rome: Character Assassination and Imperial Investiture

      • Martijn Icks

      Pages 83-100

5. The Middle Ages

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 103-103

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   2. Falsifying the Prophet: Muhammad at the Hands of His Earliest Christian Biographers in the West

      • Kenneth Baxter Wolf

      Pages 105-120

   3. Louis of Orléans, Isabeau of Bavaria, and the Burgundian Propaganda Machine, 1392–1407

      • Tracy Adams

      Pages 121-134

   4. A Newcomer in Defamatory Propaganda: Youth (Late Fourteenth to Early Fifteenth Century)

      • Gilles Lecuppre

      Pages 135-148

6. The Early Modern Age

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 151-151

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   2. The Ass in the Seat of St. Peter: Defamation of the Pope in Early Lutheran Flugschriften

      • Bobbi Dykema

      Pages 153-171

   3. Odious and Vile Names: Political Character Assassination and Purging in the French Revolution

      • Mette Harder

      Pages 173-190

   4. “As Awkward and Deficient as His Wife Is Amiable and Accomplished”: The Character Assassination of the Dutch Statesman Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck (1761–1825)

      • Edwina Hagen

      Pages 191-209

7. The Modern Age

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 213-213

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   2. Character Attacks and American Presidents

      • Jason Smart, Eric Shiraev

      Pages 215-235

   3. The Gao-Rao Affair: A Case of Character Assassination in Chinese Politics in the 1950s

      • Eric Shiraev, Zi Yang

      Pages 237-252

   4. A Character Assassination Attempt: The Case of Václav Havel

      • Martina Klicperová-Baker

      Pages 253-269

8. Epilogue

   1. Epilogue

      • Martijn Icks, Eric Shiraev

      Pages 275-278

Using a variety of cases from history and today's life, the book examines character attackers targeting the private lives, behavior, values, and identity of their victims. Numerous historical examples show that character assassination has always been a very effective weapon to win political battles or settle personal scores.

• behavior
• politics
• revolution

"The can be few pleasures more delicious than witnessing the savaging of the reputations of the great and the good. This volume treats us to a rich smorgasbord of notable defamations, from the Romans down to our own day. They are served up by experts who seek to inform and entertain us and who succeed at both." - Anthony Barrett, University of British Columbia, Canada

'This tightly knit volume is a major contribution to our understanding of the ugly side of modern politics. It historicises what appears to be a universal human trait across all political societies the tendency of politics to descend towards mudslinging and character assassination. It asks why character assassination is an attractive political strategy, when it is most effective, and how it can be resisted. It establishes the different strategies of attack and defence that have been used in conjunction with changing media and that apply in closed dictatorial and open democratic societies, and it also establishes why it is a particularly ubiquitous strategy in electoral politics. Perhaps not surprisingly, the volume demonstrates that victims also have more possible strategies of defence under democracies, but it also shows how under an unpopular regime such as the Czechoslovakian regime after 1968 denigration of dissidents such as Václav Havel and Charter 77 could backfire spectacularly.' - Simon Burrows, University of Western Sydney, Australia

Martijn Icks is a researcher and teacher at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, as well as a former Marie Curie Fellow. He specializes in Roman imperial history and the history of character assassination. His study on the Roman emperor Elagabalus has appeared in three languages.

Eric Shiraev is author, co-author, and co-editor of fourteen books and numerous publications in the fields of political psychology, international relations, and cross-cultural studies. He emphasizes the role of identity and culture in politics and international relations. In addition to his teaching and research work, he writes policy briefs and opinion essays for the media and government and nongovernment organizations.

Policies and ethics