An Interdisciplinary Approach Eric Shiraev George Mason University, USA
Eric Shiraev Character Assassination: An interdisciplinary approach Eric Shiraev George Mason University, USA Any competition in social, professional, and political life often looks like a contest of words and images. To win in a political race or impress public opinion, people use symbols, labels, and colorful descriptions. Very often such descriptions are clear exaggerations and even distortions. They repeatedly aim not at other people’s actions but rather at their personalities. By attacking an individual's personal life, facts of a biography, and specific individual features (which we will call them "character" for convenience) the attacker tries to hurt the victim politically, morally, socially, or psychologically and thus, depending on circumstances, remove him or her from a contest, sway public opinion, or achieve some other goal. We will call these attempts character assassination, which is a deliberate attempt to seriously damage the reputation, character, social status, or achievements of another person. The motivation for character assassination is typically rooted in the attackers’ (assassin’s) desire to harm the victim psychologically and reduce public support for the victim. This should ultimately devastate or even destroy his or her chances to succeed. In other cases, character assassination is conducted to hurt the cause that the victim symbolizes or defends. More than fifty years ago, Jerome Davis in his classic book, ―Character Assassination‖ tried to show that the attempts to smear someone's reputation are rooted in crystal clear political motivations and count on the public's "fear, ignorance, envy, suspicion, malice, jealousy, frustration, greed, aggression, economic rivalry, emotional insecurity and an inferiority complex" (Davis, 1950, p.
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