Synopses & Reviews
Character assassination is a deliberate damage of an individual's reputation. Most notable victims of character assassination are political and religious leaders, officials, celebrities, writers, scientists, athletes and other public figures. 'Character assassins' target private lives, behavior, values, and identity of their victims. The editors and contributors to this volume have gathered cases and insights from the fields of history, political science and psychology to track many common characteristics of character assassination, as well as to describe their unique features over different times and places. The authors show that character assassination is a timeless, cross-cultural phenomenon that reveals itself in a variety of forms and methods typical for every cultural, political, and technological epoch. The book is designed for an educated audience, historians, sociologists, psychologists, journalists as well as students majoring in political science, history, sociology, psychology, and communications.
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
Eric Shiraev is an 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. Besides his teaching and scholarly work, Eric Shiraev writes policy briefs and opinion essays for government, nongovernment organizations, and the media.
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 PhD thesis on the Roman emperor Elagabalus has appeared in three languages.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Character Assassination: How Political Psychologists May Assist Historians; Eric Shiraev
Ancient Rome
2. Character Attack and Invective Speech in the Roman Republic: Cicero as Target; Henriette van der Blom
3. Reports about the 'sexual life' of early Roman emperors: A case of character assassination?; Jan Meister
4. Creating Tyrants in Ancient Rome: Character Assassination and Imperial Investiture; Martijn Icks
5. Editorial reflections: Ancient Rome
The Middle Ages
6. Falsifying the Prophet: Muhammad at the Hands of his Earliest Christian Biographers in the West; Kenneth Wolf
7. Louis of Orléans, Isabeau of Bavaria, and the Burgundian Propaganda Machine, 1392-1407; Tracy Adams
8. A Newcomer in Defamatory Propaganda: Youth (Late Fourteenth to Early Fifteenth Century); Gilles Lecuppre
9. Editorial Reflections: Medieval Cases
The Early Modern Age
10. The Ass in the Seat of St. Peter: Defamation of the Pope in early Lutheran Flugschriften; Bobbi Dykema
11. Odious and Vile Names: Political Character Assassination and Purging in the French Revolution; Mette Harder
12. Edwina Hagen
13. Editorial Reflections: Early Modern Cases
The Modern Age
14. Character Attacks and American Presidents; Jason Smart and Eric Shiraev
15. The Gao-Rao Affair: A Case of Character Assassination in Chinese Politics in the 1950s; Eric Shiraev and Zi Yang
16. A Character Assassination Attempt: The Case of Václav Havel; Martina Klicperová-Baker
17. Editorial Reflections: Modern Cases
Epilogue